"Unlearn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spring, Wake the echoes with wild inarticulate song: And the notes of the nightingale plaintively ring, As she pours from her dun throat her lay sweet and strong. Sitting there, to Priapus, the gracious one, pray That the lore he has taught me I soon may unlearn: Say I'll give him a kid, and in case he says nay To this offer, three victims to him will I burn; A kid, a fleeced ram, and a lamb sleek and fat; He will listen, mayhap, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... speak, to express that opinion. On this he said, with a tenderness and humility not only most touching, but to me most embarrassing, that "It might be so; what was he to judge of other men; he was old, and things were now looked at very differently; that he knew he had many things to unlearn and learn afresh; and that I must not mind what he had said, for that in truth belief in the heroes of his youth had become part of him." I am afraid these are my words, and not his; and I cannot give his way of speaking, which to ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... denunciation of impiety cannot be sinful, else I have to unlearn all I have ever been taught; and being the chief Shepherd of an honorable Brotherhood, is it not thy duty to cry out at every appearance of wrong? That His Serenity, the Patriarch, receives thy acquittal and is notably an ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... one's tongue, come in one ear and go out the other. slip memory, escape memory, fade from memory, die away from the memory; lose, lose sight of. fail to recall, not be able to recall. [cause oneself to forget: transitive] unlearn; efface &c. 552 , discharge from the memory; consign to oblivion, consign to the tomb of the Capulets; think no more of &c. (turn the attention from) 458; cast behind one's back, wean one's thoughts from; let bygones be bygones &c.(forgive) 918. Adj. forgotten &c. v.; unremembered, past ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the Germans of the time of Louis XIV, who tried so hard to speak French that in the end they forgot their own language, the French musicians of the nineteenth century had taken so much pains to unlearn their language that their music had become a foreign lingo. It was only of recent years that a movement had sprung up to speak French in France. They did not all succeed: the force of habit was very strong: and with a ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... words of the Great Spirit. If you will return to your cabins, and forget the things that were taught you, and unlearn the tongue of the white man, to use again the language of your fathers—if, instead of the rifle, you will shoot with the bow, and cause the arrow to whistle instead of the bullet—if you will cease to give the spoils of the chace and the produce ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Lord' as a local deity of Israel, as his ample confession of faith in verse 15 proves; but neither had he reached the point of feeling that the Being worshipped makes the altar sacred. No wonder that he did not unlearn in an hour his whole way of thinking of religion! The reliance on externals is too natural to us all, even with all our training in a better faith, to allow of our wondering at or severely blaming him. A sackful of earth from Palestine has been supposed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... word, You find abundantly detestable. For me, I think I speak as I was taught; 265 I always see the garden and God there A-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned, The value and significance of flesh, I can't unlearn ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it. But these nations have come out of the 'pre-economic stage' too soon; they have been put to learn while yet only too apt to unlearn. Such cases do not vitiate, they confirm, the principle—that a nation which has just gained variability without losing legality has a singular likelihood to be ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... thy dusk hair deck With graces like thine own unsought. Ah! but such place would daze and wreck Its simple, lowly rustic thought. For so advanced, dear, to thee, It would unlearn humility! Yet do not, with an altered look, In these weak numbers read rebuke; Which are but jealous lest too much God's master-piece thou shouldst retouch. Where a sweetness is complete, Add not sweets unto the sweet! Or, as thou wilt, for others so In ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... opposite of a flatterer, and, having been the intimate friend of the Prince of Orange at a time when the interval between the House of Orange and the House of Bentinck was not so wide as it afterwards became, had acquired a habit of plain speaking which he could not unlearn when the comrade of his youth had become the sovereign of three kingdoms. He was a most trusty, but not a very respectful, subject. There was nothing which he was not ready to do or suffer for William. But in his intercourse with William he was blunt ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Floyd Grandon arrives. Cecil captures him in wildest delight. Violet is glad to meet him first before all these people; alas for love when it longs for no secrecy! She colors and a sweet light glows in her face, she cannot unlearn her lesson all at once. Then she is quiet, lady-like, composed. Floyd watches her with a curious sensation. It is a new air of being mistress, of ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... life he did, confounds me. Oh, my lord, I am in darkness, and no broad blaze comes down to flood me. The rays that come to me are but faint cross lights, mazing the obscurity wherein I live. And after all, excellent as it is, I can be no gainer by this book. For the more we learn, the more we unlearn; we accumulate not, but substitute; and take away, more than we add. We dwindle while we grow; we sally out for wisdom, and retreat beyond the point whence we started; we essay the Fondiza, and get but the Phe. Of all simpletons, the simplest! Oh! that I were another ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... imperishable and inestimable principles of human liberty." With strong religious tendencies and convictions, he contemplated taking orders in the Church; but his father saw things differently,—and thus, with academic prejudices which most graduates have to unlearn, he went abroad in 1832 to complete the education of an English gentleman, spending most of his time in Italy and Sicily, those eternally interesting countries to the scholar and the artist, whose wonders can scarcely be exaggerated,—affording a perpetual charm and study if one can ignore ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... factory sounds like a well-delivered speech. Now, the fault was not because Mr. Greeley did not know how to read as well as almost any man that ever lived, if not quite: but in his youth he learned to read wrong; and, as it is ten times harder to unlearn anything than it is to learn it, he, like thousands of others, could never stop to unlearn it, but carried it on through his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... hung above him while he was dashing down the Gorse happy as a king, with the wild hail driving in his face, and a break of stormy sunshine just welcoming the gallant few who were landed at the death, as twilight fell? Was it likely that he could unlearn all the lessons of his life, and realize in how near a neighborhood he stood to ruin when he was drinking Regency sherry out of his gold flask as he crossed the saddle of his second horse, or, smoking, rode slowly homeward; chatting with the Seraph through the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in Zululand, recently said, "No human of an African village would allow such a promiscuous mixing of young men and women, boys and girls." He had reference to the children of the overcrowded folk, who at five have nothing to learn and much to unlearn ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... the Piece is crude in parts, and far enough from perfect. Our good painter has yet several things to learn, and to unlearn. His brush is not always of the finest; and dashes about, sometimes, in a recognizably sprawling way: but it hits many a feature with decisive accuracy and felicity; and on the palette, as usual, lie the ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... a fine and quiet afternoon, about three o'clock; but the winter solstice having stealthily come on, the lowness of the sun caused the hour to seem later than it actually was, there being little here to remind an inhabitant that he must unlearn his summer experience of the sky as a dial. In the course of many days and weeks sunrise had advanced its quarters from north-east to south-east, sunset had receded from north-west to south-west; but Egdon had hardly ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... tell you what I think, my dear,' said Lady Kenton, greatly touched. 'You have nothing to unlearn, and there is nothing needful to the position but what any person of moderate ability and good sense can acquire, and I am quite sure that Lord Northmoor would be far less happy without you, even in the long-run, besides the distress you would cause him now. It is not a brilliant, showy ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you know, at some big benefit. He always said no respectable human voice could be judged there—it seems the acoustics is wrong. But it is an exceptionally fine voice, nevertheless, and so pure and unspoiled. She had nothing to unlearn, literally, and her acting, Madame says, is superb. She can memorise anything, and in ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... attention is paid to these primary principles and to correct articulation, a large majority of students will graduate from our common schools prepared to advance in the art of elocution or of singing without being obliged first to unlearn a vast amount of error and to correct a long list of ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... said he; "though you'll have to unlearn that name, my young whipstercock, seein' we're here to stay for a while. The Earl marched down into Fowey last night while you were asleep, and is down there now making it right and tight. Do you ever play at blind-man's buff in ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... learned in law being sent to preside over the business of equity, of which he knew nothing, and the man learned in equity being entrusted with the direction of law of which he knew worse than nothing; being obliged to unlearn all he had previously learnt, before he began ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... I must unlearn you a little of your kindness. You are mine, now, darling; and I want all ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... arrows of dismay into the heart, presenting only frightful pictures and examples of God's anger, filling the heart with this kind of knowledge to the exclusion of every other thought or perception. Thus recognition of God's wrath is learned only too well, for it becomes bitterly hard for man to unlearn it, to forget it in the knowledge of Christ. Again, the wicked world eagerly contributes its share of hindrance, its bitter hatred and venomous outcry against Christians as people of the worst type, outcast, condemned enemies of God. Moreover, by its example it causes the weak ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... hold a district: you must study human nature and act accordin'. You can't study human nature in books. Books is a hindrance more than anything else. If you have been to college, so much the worse for you. You'll have to unlearn all you learned before you can get right down to human nature, and unlearnin' takes a lot of time. Some men can never forget what they learned at college. Such men may get to be district leaders by a fluke, but ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... assure you that since I left home it has been extremely good. I think I am making some small progress in those attainments which are only acquired by prayer, and holy devotedness to God. I find the work I have undertaken is an all-important one. I have many things to learn, and many things to unlearn. I have had some severe trials, and some mortifying scenes. At other times I have been unspeakably blessed, and I have been greatly encouraged at some favourable prospects. Several times my views have been greatly enlarged, and my mind enlightened, while, with a warm and full ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... found, therefore, from the dandelion that there were no books, and it came upon me, believe me, as a great surprise, for I had lived quite certain that I was surrounded with them. It is nothing but unlearning, I find now; five thousand books to unlearn. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... flesh or the killing of insects. The word holiness reminds him of crowds of pilgrims flocking to some famous shrine, or of some anchorite sitting lost in religions abstraction till his legs rot off. He has much error to unlearn before he can take in ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... know that nations can learn and unlearn a language. The Irish, adopting the language of their English conquerors, is one of many examples of the same sort in history. What effects upon language took place, prior to recorded history, from the mingling of tribes and peoples, it is impossible to ascertain. The consequences to ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Italian populations still remained under the rule of the Empire, the melancholy book of Austrian dominion in Italy might be fairly said to be closed forever. A new era was dawning for the House of Hapsburg, which was to show that, unlike the Bourbons, it could learn and unlearn. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... into the circle of her trance ideas. Generally she names all her friends anew; often her tone of voice is a little altered; sometimes she introduces with particular combinations of letters some odd inflection, which she maintains rigorously and cannot unlearn. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... share of office for their countrymen, or make up their minds to go without; they ought not first to demand office for Irishmen, and then call every Irishman a traitor and self-seeker who took it. In a very short time he told me that he found he had much to unlearn as well as learn: that many things of which he had been most sure now turned out to be mistakes, and many very plain matters to be exceedingly complicated; but that the one thing about which there could be no mistake was, that, in such a state of opinion, he was no proper guide for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... 320 Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd: For different styles with different subjects sort, As several garbs with country, town, and court. Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze the unlearn'd, and make the learned smile. Unlucky, as Fungoso[15] in the play, These sparks with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman wore yesterday; 330 And but so mimic ancient wits at best, As apes our grandsires, in their doublets dress'd. In words, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... gifted with an enlightened reason; and this letter shows that he himself has been moving rapidly in the direction in which Buenderlin and Denck were travelling, though neither now nor at any time was Franck a mere copier of other men's ideas.[5] "We must unlearn," he writes, "all that we have learned from our youth up from the papists, and we must change everything we have got from the Pope or from Luther and Zwingli." He predicts that the external Church will never be set up ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... confidence, founded rather upon a certain dexterity than upon a habit of thought; they are like the improvisatori in poetry; and most commonly, as Metastasio acknowledged of himself, had much to unlearn, to acquire a habit of thinking with selection. To be able to draw and to design with rapidity, is, indeed, to be master of the grammar of art; but in the completion, and in the final settlement of the design, the portfolio must again and again ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... their bold seizure of the island in the name of liberty for the earnest friars, and sealing their brave conquest in the blood of the obstinate Polynesian who had hated to learn a new liturgy and to unlearn his old Protestant songs, feared that the dispersion of the people upon their little plantations, to which they were greatly attached, would make their Frenchifying a long task. So, about sixty years ago, a governor, who, ten thousand miles from his superiors, with an exchange of letters taking ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... for the people of the Dynastic States to unlearn their preconceptions will be longer than the interval required for a ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... of scorns For men unlearn'd and simple phrase) A child would bring it all its praise, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... is for mortals to unlearn Beliefs bred in the marrow of their bones! How hard it is for mortals to discern The truth that preaches from the silent stones, The silent hills, the silent universe, While Error cries in sanctimonious tones That all the light of life and God is hers! Lo in the midst we stand: we cannot ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... sad numbers, too sad to upraise In hymning bright Sylvia, unlearn'd in such ways! Our mournful moods lay we away, And prank our thoughts in holiday, For syllabling to Sylvia; When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, To bear with us this burthen, For ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... objection he answers by reverting to his first statement. "Man is made for progress. He could not progress if his doubtings were at once changed to certainties, and all he struggles for at once found. He must yearn for truth, and grasp at error as a 'midway help' to it. He must learn and unlearn. He must creep from fancies on to fact; and correct to-day's facts by the light of to-morrow's knowledge. He must be as the sculptor, who evokes a life-like form from a lump of clay, ever seeing the reality in a series of false presentments; attaining it through them, God alone makes the live ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... child has learnt to live in the past, or the future, rather than in the present, it has learnt one of the first and saddest of life's experiences—a lesson so hard in the learning, so impossible to unlearn in all the years ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... reasons but incidentally created a unified internal market which made mass-production of articles of common consumption profitable for the first time. But, even after Russian capitalism was thus enabled to stand on its own feet, it did not unlearn the habit of leaning on the government for advancement rather than relying on its own efforts. On its part the autocratic government was loath to let industry alone. The government generously dispensed to the capitalists tariff protection and bounties in the form of profitable ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... ignorance or of perfect knowledge—disturbance is troublesome. When first starting on an Atlantic steamer, our rest is hindered by the screw; after a short time, it is hindered if the screw stops. A uniform impression is practically no impression. One cannot either learn or unlearn without ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... by some lexicographer as a "cooking animal." I think it would be more appropriate to call him a learning animal, for man does not always cook, but he never ceases to learn—also to unlearn. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... greatly defective. It is susceptible of much improvement. How shall we effect this improvement? The old are too old to learn, or, rather, to unlearn what have been the habits of their lives. The young cannot learn as they ought to learn, and as the public interests require, because they have no suitable school for their instruction. We have no place where they can learn the principles upon which the practice of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... upon every side, as he rode through the town, mingled with occasional vociferations of "long life to the beggars." These party cries were instantly and sharply rebuked by Orange, who expressed, in Brederode's presence, the determination that he would make men unlearn that mischievous watchword. He had, moreover, little relish at that time for the tumultuous demonstrations of attachment to his person, which were too fervid to be censured, but too unseasonable to be approved. When the crowd had at last been made to understand that their huzzas ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of wrong notions are laid in the mind in those early years, later on to bear a crop of prejudice; for the subsequent lessons, which are learned from real life in the world have to be devoted mainly to their extirpation. To unlearn the evil was the answer, according to Diogenes Laertius,[1] Antisthenes gave, when he was asked what branch of knowledge was most necessary; and we ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Peggy, I suppose; but it is hard to unlearn so much old schooling and to accept of new teachings. Did your faith support you when you were perplexed and disappointed—when friends were unfaithful, and the world hard ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... have on the tip of one's tongue, come in one ear and go out the other. slip memory, escape memory, fade from memory, die away from the memory; lose, lose sight of. fail to recall, not be able to recall. [cause oneself to forget] unlearn; efface &c 552, discharge from the memory; consign to oblivion, consign to the tomb of the Capulets; think no more of &c (turn the attention from) 458; cast behind one's back, wean one's thoughts from; let bygones be bygones &c (forgive) 918. Adj. forgotten &c v.; unremembered, past recollection, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... public order and public prosperity, intimately united as they are, go on before his eyes; he does not conceive that one can subsist without the other; he has therefore nothing to forget; nor has he, like so many Europeans, to unlearn the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... age alive by force, and to sit here and silently watch me? Or do you bring me some reasons to prove, that it will not be base and unworthy for Cato, when he can find his safety no other way, to seek it from his enemy? If so, adduce your arguments, and show cause why we should now unlearn what we formerly were taught, in order that rejecting all the convictions in which we lived, we may now by Caesar's help grow wiser, and be yet more obliged to him, than for life only. Not that I have determined aught concerning myself, but I would have ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... inquiry whether our bird is slowly relapsing into the habit of the European species, which always foists its egg upon other birds; or whether, on the other hand, it is not mending its manners in this respect. It has but little to unlearn or to forget in the one case, but great progress to make in the other. How far is its rudimentary nest—a mere platform of coarse twigs and dry stalks of weeds—from the deep, compact, finely woven ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... or nursed with tender care, have been made to contend with the savage. By imitating his arts, they have learned, like him, to traverse the forest; and, in every season, to subsist in the desert. They have, perhaps, recovered a lesson, which it has cost civilized nations many ages to unlearn, that the fortune of a man is entire while he remains ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... strain a point to bless. What was Columbus but a marauder, a buccaneer? Was not Drake, in law and in fact, a pirate; Washington a traitor to his soldier's oath of allegiance to King George? I had much to learn, and to unlearn. I was to find out that whenever a Roebuck puts his arm round you, it is invariably to get within your guard and nearer your fifth rib. I was to trace the ugliest deformities of that conscience of his, hidden away down inside him like ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... we flourished brave, like scripture-trees called bays, Faring high, drinking hard, in money up to head —Not to say, boots and shoes, when ... Zounds, I nearly said— Lord, to unlearn one's language! How shall we labor, wife? Have you, fast hold, the Book? Grasp, grip it, for your life! See, sirs, here's life, salvation! Here's—hold but out my breath— When did I speak so long without once swearing? 'Sdeath, No, nor unhelped by ale since man and ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... upon the shelf; I am a shuttlecock myself The world knocks to and fro;— My archery is all unlearn'd, And grief against myself has turn'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... found to have an income of $20.00 a week. "Well," said the visitor, "that is very little money on which to raise a family." The agent felt that this visitor had not only a great deal to learn, but a great deal to unlearn. ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... me a pleasant sin: Repent with me, for I repent. Woe's me the lore I must unlearn! Woe's me that easy way we went, So rugged when I would return! How long until my sleep begin, How long shall stretch these nights and days? Surely, clean Angels cry, she prays; She laves her soul with tedious tears: ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... down, as soon as they are saved, to the simple, bare, lowly faith which liberates God's power, and He can use them mightily all along, but they are very few. Practically in most cases there is time involved, because we take so long to unlearn our own sufficiency and our own resources, and even after we have received the promise of the Spirit through faith, we are puzzled, it may be, by a want of ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... be crying; if you choose you may be just as the same as any other lady—and you shall; and you will be very much admired, I can tell you, if only you will take the trouble to quite unlearn all your odd words and ways, and dress yourself like other people; and I will take care of that if you let me; and I think you are very clever, Milly; and I ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... must have a great facility in transacting business rapidly. But a great number of persons are now bred from their earliest manhood in the very midst of that routine; they learn it as they would learn a language, and come to be no more able to unlearn it than they could unlearn a language. And the able ones among them acquire an almost magical rapidity in effecting the business connected with that routine. A very good manager and very good board of directors can, without unreasonable difficulty, be provided ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... brimming with the modern passion for efficiency, learned foreign tongues, and browsed in the musty archives, he would have discovered that there was much to unlearn. The early scribes piled fancy upon invention, believing or pretending that Rembrandt was a miser, a profligate, a spendthrift, and so on. "Houbraken's facts," we read, "are interwoven with a mass of those suspicious anecdotes ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... the law of authority in Mississippi. Very few lawyers coming from the common-law States, have ever been able to succeed in Louisiana, especially after having practised in other States for any length of time. They have not only to learn the civil law, but to unlearn the common. Some, who did not know the extraordinary powers of Prentiss's mind, feared he, like many others who had made the attempt, would fail; but, almost from the moment of his advent at the New Orleans bar, his success was complete. To realize the expectations of the public, required ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... cramped, cold, northern world; we must find ourselves face to face at last, in Pacific isles or African forests, with the underlying truths of simple naked nature. For that, in its perfection, we must go to the Tropics; and there, we shall learn and unlearn much, coming back, no doubt, with shattered faiths and broken gods, and strangely disconcerted European prejudices, but looking out upon life with a new outlook, an outlook undimmed by ten thousand preconceptions which hem in the vision ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... them; but when I write, it is into another world,—not a better one, perhaps, but one with very dissimilar habits of thought to this wherein I am domesticated. How much those of us, who have been formed by the European mind, have to unlearn, and lay aside, if we would act here! I would fain do something worthily that belonged to the country where I was born, but most times I fear it may ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... or the morbid car of some medieval monk, which has banished, say, consecutive fifths from what is called g pure writing '; that further, you need only to have the regulation number of years behind you, to fling squeamishness to the winds. In other words, you learn rules to unlearn them with infinite pains. But the pupil, in his innocence, demands a rigid basis to go on—it is a human weakness, this, the craving for rules—and his teachers pamper him. Instead of saying: develop your own ear, rely on yourself, only what you teach yourself is worth ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... lines. The spirit of a popular subject in the fewest possible strokes was what Jan had to aim at for his daily bread, under peril of bodily harm hour after hour, for day after day, and his hand gained a cunning it might never otherwise have learned, and could never unlearn now. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... at school, nor at school was it possible he should unlearn it. He acquired that belief from his home, from the conversation of his equals, from the behaviour of his inferiors; he found it in the books and newspapers he has read, he breathed it in with his native air. He regards it as manifest Fact in the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... You are now by God's blessing restored to your ancient freedom; put off the barbarian; clothe yourselves with the morals of the toga; unlearn cruelty, that you may not be unworthy to be our subjects. We are sending you Spectabilis Gemellus as Vicarius Praefectorum, a man of tried worth, who we trust will be guilty of no crime, because he knows he would thereby seriously displease ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Jewish heroes did fill my whole heart and soul. I learnt from them lessons which I never wish to unlearn. Whatever else I saw about them, this I saw,—that they were patriots, deliverers from that tyranny and injustice from which the child's heart,—"child of the devil" though you may call him,—instinctively, and, as I believe, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... life. There had come a great change over their lives, and they had drifted farther apart again. He himself had gone out into the world something of a scholar and something of a pedant, and he had found that all his ideas of life had lain rusting in his country home, and that he had almost as much to unlearn as to learn. With ample means, and an eager thirst for knowledge, he had passed from one to another of the great seats of learning of the world. But his lesson was not taught him at one of them. He learned it not amongst the keen conflict of intellect at the universities, not in the ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to unlearn a thing as to learn it," said Kelly sententiously. "You can't make a man who has learned to wear shoes enjoy going around in ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... pictures before he has trained his power to see. He becomes a student of pictures rather than a student of nature, and when in doubt will go to art rather than to nature for help and suggestion. Could anything be more fatal? Consider the things that student will have to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms of nature—the only healthy, the only prolific way of thinking. He sees always through other people's eyes, and thinks with other people's brains, and feels other people's emotions; that is not creation; that is the attitude for the spectator, not ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... drawing-room. She must be one of the devout kind. He was sorry. He believed they were a narrow and prejudiced sort of people, given to laying down the law and erecting barricades across other people's paths. He was sorry this fair girl was one of them. But she was a lovely specimen. Could she unlearn these ways, perhaps? But now, what was she going to bring forth to him out of the Bible? He watched the fingers that turned the leaves; pretty fingers enough, and delicate, but not very white. Gardening probably was not conducive ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... differences are unimportant, but to the painter they are all-important: the painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the colour which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear. Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy—the distinction ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... wrote—a curious production. Wild, whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies. Some of them are already exploded, some of them are established facts. But for the most part to read such a thesis is to realise how full the world is of unanticipated things. He will have much to learn, much to unlearn, when he wakes. If ever ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... curse of time. Alas! In grief I am not all unlearn'd; Once thro' mine own doors Death did pass; [3] One went, who ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... monster at her throat.' And from these premisses, Macaulay proceeds to his inevitable conclusion. 'He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet must,' he says, 'first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among his contemporaries; and ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... better reconcile yourself now to living like an ordinary man; you will give up your extravagant haughty hopes and put yourself on a level with the commonalty; if you are sensible, you will not be ashamed to unlearn in your old age, and change your ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... through some course of military training, but Lochiel urged so many and such weighty reasons against it that he gave up the plan. "There is not time," said the sagacious old chief, "for our men to learn your method of warfare. They would merely unlearn their own. This is one which must seem strange to your notions of war; but it is one which they thoroughly understand, and which makes them, when led by such a general as you, a match for the most practised veterans. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... these things, preachers formerly said very little, but urged the necessity of puerile and useless works, such as certain holy-days, fasts, brotherhoods, pilgrimages, worship of saints, rosaries, monastic vows, &c. These useless things, our adversaries, having been admonished, now unlearn, and no longer teach as formerly. Moreover, they now begin to make mention of faith, about which they formerly observed a marvellous [sic] silence. They now teach, that we are not justified by works alone, but join faith to works, and maintain that we are justified by faith and works. ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... his manful energies, accepted and crowned by deliberate, and, we rejoice to think, by continually growing, public favour. He has after all, and it is not the least nor lowest item in his praise, been the severest of his own critics, and has not been too proud either to learn or to unlearn in the work of maturing his genius ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... muttered, "she knows nothing at all about any of it. I don't know that I am sorry. She will have all the pleasure of learning all she needs to know, and she won't have anything to unlearn. I wish I could forget some things as completely as she seems to have done. I hope a good many of them will never come ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... greater importance. From their cradle she instilled into them the most perfect maxims of piety, and contempt of the world. The ancient Romans dreaded nothing more in the education of youth, than their being ill taught the first principles of the sciences; it being more difficult to unlearn the errors then imbibed, than to begin on a mere tabula rasa, or blank paper. Wherefore Anthusa provided her son the ablest masters in every branch of literature, which the empire at that time afforded. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... environment. It was all frightfully strange and different. From the sunny island in the Mediterranean he found himself transported suddenly to the northern gloom of the Champagne region. The very language was different. He must unlearn Italian, and learn French. It always came hard to him. To the end of his days he never could spell correctly—although he did learn in time to express ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... time to learn a chicken a thing, but a heap longer to unlearn him. After that two or three of these yere automobeels went by every day, all a-blowin' of their horns, all kickin' up a hell of a dust. And every time them fourteen Honk-honks of mine took along after 'em, just as I'd taught 'em to do, layin' to get to ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... case at least, lent its representatives to assist the torturers, and if the facts were not so well attested, they, too, would pass belief. But we know they are not fictions; they were actualities. To push them out of recollection into forgetfulness is to unlearn one of the chief lessons that History can teach us—the lesson of warning. The atrocities of biological experimentation can no more be dismissed with a shrug of incredulity than one can sneer at the agonies of Gerard or Damiens because they, too, suggest a heartlessness in the ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... for more besides, for Mrs. Thackeray's not young, that's clear enough; and I know there's a good many things that she's not ignorant of. She's precious knowing about many things that don't do her much good; and if the books could unlearn her, I'd say for one let her keep 'em. But as for looking at Margaret's books—why, Brother Cross, you ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... for a subsidy, at the same time furiously attacking his old opponents. This so exasperated the chief men of the Court, that they persuaded the Duke to recall Frischlin; but instead of finding a welcome from his old patron, he was cast into prison, in order that he might unlearn his presumption, and acquire the useful knowledge that modesty is the chief ornament of a learned man. But Frischlin did not ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... one for infants—were erected about six years ago, and are still maintained at the expense of the Messrs Vivian. At the time of our visit, there were 600 of the rising population of the place doing their utmost to unlearn the Welsh idiom, and to acquire the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety. We regret that we cannot dwell on this the most gratifying circumstance of our visit. Messrs Vivian & Sons are unquestionably ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... words to Fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile." "In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastick, if too new or old: Be not the first by whom the new are try'd, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside." ALEXANDER POPE: Essay ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the north, one man loosing off his rifle at us as he ran, and his bullet making an ugly swish in the air just above our heads. It was that Chinese hip-shot which is practised with jingal and matchlock in the native hunting, and which these Northern Chinese can with difficulty unlearn. As that swish reached us we pressed forward even more eagerly, and soon had debouched once more on the long Customs Street—this time many hundreds of yards higher up than we had ever been before. Flattening ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... portions of the text of Eusebius to put forth the enclosed prospectus, of which I send six copies, you are hereby implored to obtain subscribers in the two Universities, and among the learned, and the unlearned who would unlearn their ignorance—This they (the Convent) request, I request, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a donkey as not a good weapon, say so. Give a child a chance. If you think a man never went to sea in a fish, tell them so, it won't make them any worse. Be honest—that is all; don't cram their heads with things that will take them years and years to unlearn; tell them facts—it is just as easy. It is as easy to find out botany, and astronomy, and geology, and history—it is as easy to find out all these things as to cram their minds with things you know nothing ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll |
