"Commentator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the age of eighty-one was "combing and curling, and weaving and unweaving, his writings after a variety of fashions." Possibly, the great dramatist would at last have corrected one of his couplets as a modern commentator has done for him, so that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... light comedy, and is called "The Ballet of the Gueegueence or the Macho-Raton." The characters are a wily old rascal, Gueegueence, and his two sons, the one a chip of the old block, the other a bitter commentator on the family failings. They are brought before the Governor for entering his province without a permit; but by bragging and promises the foxy old man succeeds both in escaping punishment and in effecting a marriage between his scapegrace ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... obtained that singular and benignant influence over his fellow-countrymen for which the life of Duncan Forbes is far more remarkable, far more admirable, than for the exercise of his brilliant and varied talents. He had "raised himself," observes the same discriminating commentator on his life and correspondence, "to the high station which he afterwards held by the unassisted excellence of a noble character, by the force of which he had previously won and adorned all the subordinate gradations of office."[201] He adorned this unenvied and unsullied pinnacle of fame by virtues ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... the leading contender for the title of Miss Mars, 1996, if you liked big bosomy blondes, but Tony would have been just as attentive to her if she'd looked like the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz." because Gloria was the Pan-Federation Telecast System commentator with the expedition. ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... beautiful little farm a few miles away, on the banks of the river Rhone, overlooking the city of Geneva and the lake. It was an ideal spot, and rightly he called it "Delices." Here he was going to end his days amid flowers and birds and books and bees, an onlooker and possibly a commentator on the times, but not a doer. His days of work were over. Of the world of strife he had had enough—thus ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... remark," said old Vittum, always an irrepressible commentator when comment seemed to be necessary, speaking after Latisan and Lida had walked away into the mist—"I'll say to all that she ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Philology I don't meddle with. I know that Cowell has discovered they are all wrong in their Sanskrit. Montaigne never doubts Tacitus' facts: but doubts his Inferences; well, if I were sure of his Facts, I would leave others to draw their Inferences. I mean, if I were Commentator, certainly: and I think if I were Historian too. Nothing is more wonderful to me than seeing such Men as Spedding, Carlyle, and I suppose Froude, straining Fact to Theory as they do, while a scatter-headed Paddy like myself can keep clear. But then ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... Asia Minor vanquished {143} by Pompey in 67 performed strange sacrifices on Olympus, a volcano of Lycia, and practiced occult rites, among others those of Mithra which, he says, "exist to the present day and were first taught by them."[14] Lactantius Placidus, a commentator on Statius and a mediocre authority, also tells us that the cult passed from the Persians to the Phrygians and from the Phrygians ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... John" and "Romeo and Juliet."—I am neither a commentator nor a reader of commentators on Shakspeare. When I meet with a difficulty, I get over it as well as I can, and think no more of the matter. Having, however, accidentally seen two passages of Shakspeare much ventilated in "N. & Q.," I venture to give ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... civility, and detaining and turning them back if there arise matter of suspicion; but conducting themselves in all matters civilly and courteously to the people of the country, and to those who travel in it.' You see, most excellent and valiant archer," added the commentator Bertram, "that courtesy and civility are, above all, recommended to your worship in your conduct towards the inhabitants, and those passengers who, like us, may chance to fall under your rules in ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... informed me that "it is vulgarly called Citrezze; but the correct version is 'Le Giadrezze,' which, as you are aware, sir, signifies pleasantness" This functionary was evidently ignorant of the fact that so long ago as 1771 the learned commentator (Carducci) of the "Delizie Tarentine" already sneered at this popular etymology; adding, what is of greater interest, that "in the time of our fathers" this region was covered with woods and rich in game. In the days ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... divinity, who was advancing towards his seventieth year, that my time had been delightfully engaged with John Bunyan's commentary on Genesis. "What," said the D.D., with some appearance of incredulity, "Bunyan a commentator—upon Genesis!! Impossible! Well, I never heard of that work of the good Bunyan before. Why, where is it to be found?" Yes, it is true that he has commented on that portion of sacred scripture, containing the cosmogony of creation—the fall of man—the first murder—the deluge—and other facts which ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the sacred books.—Luther and Melanchthon Development of scholasticism in the Reformed Church Catholic belief in the inspiration of the Vulgate Opposition in Russia to the revision of the Slavonic Scriptures Sir Isaac Newton as a commentator Scriptural interpretation at the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... us that the Devil has not lost his natural Powers by his Fall; and our learned Commentator Mr. Pool is of the same Opinion; tho' he grants that the Devil has lost his moral Power, or his Power of doing Good, which he can never recover. Vide Mr. Pool upon Acts xix. 17. where we may particularly observe, when the Man possess'd with an evil Spirit flew upon the seven Sons of Scaeva ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... innocent in appearance that Hayward, not seeing into what a quandary they led him, answered blandly; Weeks made a courteous objection, then a correction of fact, after that a quotation from some little known Latin commentator, then a reference to a German authority; and the fact was disclosed that he was a scholar. With smiling ease, apologetically, Weeks tore to pieces all that Hayward had said; with elaborate civility he displayed the superficiality of his attainments. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... repent or perish. Thus Christ was commissioned to preach to men said to be in prison, because in darkness, error, and condemnation, though they were still living in the flesh. Isa. 61:1. Dr. Adam Clarke, the eminent Methodist commentator (in loco), places the going and preaching of Christ in the days of Noah, and by the ministry of Noah for one hundred and twenty years, and not during the time while he lay in the grave. ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... old commentator: 'This will enlighten those who doubt if the Vestals wore their hair.' 'I infer,' said the doctor, 'that I have doubted in good company; but it is clear that the Vestals did wear their hair ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... A commentator on the above prescription observed that few coxcombs, dandies, and heads filled with bitter conceits, would like to be anointed with this cure of self-sufficiency. The wax might make the plaster stick, but ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... study, the sallow face of Professor Alaric Hobbs was seen bending over many documents and papers. He was not only busied as a volunteer lawyer for Fraser, but was now the commentator and collaborator of that famous interrupted work, "The History of Thibet." "Say! Go light now on the old man!" prayerfully whispered Alaric Hobbs, drawing Major Hardwicke into the study. "Captain Murray is a devilish good fellow. He is going to make this great traveler, Frank Hatton, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... keen critic, he is also a deliberate commentator. The difference is fundamental. The commentator builds upon the foundation the critic has erected; he does not merely state what he thinks about a book or character, rather he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... fury of his children, by making him go through caverns from Pallene to Egypt, he follows the tradition which says that he originally came from that town in Thessaly, and that he retired thence to Egypt. Virgil, and Servius, his Commentator, assert that Proteus returned to Thessaly after the death of his children, who were slain by Hercules; in which assertion, however, they are not ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... all appreciated; it is stated that the collection, which cost him less than L500, realized, when sold by auction by King in 1798, upwards of L2,000. Dr. Farmer is better remembered by posterity as a Shakespearian critic or commentator. He was a Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's, and appears to have had what Dibdin describes as 'his foragers, his jackalls, and his avant-couriers,' who picked up for him every item of interest in his particular lines. As becomes the true bibliophile, he ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... dual interest: first, being the work of one primarily a commentator, it presents a crystallized epitome of all earlier knowledge; and secondly, it has served as a basis of subsequent star-catalogues.[1] The Ptolemaic catalogue embraces only those stars which were visible at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... term the dramatic proprieties that give to many of the Psalms, in the language of a recent commentator, "a greater degree of fitness, spirit, and grandeur"; and they impart to the history of David a certain decorousness of illustration and perspicuity of feature which it would not otherwise possess. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... about twelve years ago, was a strange whimsical old gentleman, full of "odd crotchets," and abounding in theatrical anecdote and the "gossip of the green-room." But as to his ever having been "a profound commentator on the dramatic works of Shakspeare," I must beg leave to express my doubts. At one period he filled the post of sublibrarian to the Prince Regent; and that he was "ardently devoted to the pursuits of literature" cannot ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... merely descriptive or dramatic. But he has for his author not only that intense sympathy which is the best basis for criticism, but a real justness of poetic taste which the learned and painstaking German commentator frequently wants. That he was a sound and accurate scholar in that somewhat narrow sense of the word which denotes a grammatical and literary mastery of Greek and Latin, goes without saying. Men of his generation ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... for a commentator at last who passes dry-shod over the turbide onde of inappreciative criticism, and, quietly waving aside the thick atmosphere which has gathered about the character of Dante both as man and poet, opens for us his City of Doom with ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... king James, in 1685, he was chosen for parliament, being then fourscore, at Saltash, in Cornwall; and wrote a Presage of the Downfal of the Turkish Empire, which he presented to the king, on his birthday. It is remarked, by his commentator, Fenton, that, in reading Tasso, he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of the holy war, and a zealous enmity to the Turks, which never left him. James, however, having soon after begun what he thought a holy war at home, made haste to put all ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... perplexed by the divisions among the orthodox clergy. Finally, his rhetoric was shaped by deistic predecessors who used sarcasm and satire to mock the gravity of church authority. So much was their wit a trademark that as early as 1702 one commentator had noted, "when you expect an argument, they make a jest."[15] Collins himself resorted to this practice with both instinctive ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... for the Christians of Asia in and around Ephesus. It is a strange fact that St. Augustine, in quoting iii. 2, describes the passage as "said by John in his Epistle to the Parthians." This statement is a riddle which no commentator has been able to answer satisfactorily. As the Eastern Churches had little or no knowledge of this title, we are compelled to regard it as a mistake. It may have arisen from some scribe failing to read a ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... ever-accumulating mass of proofs of the profundity of the wisdom which has so far anticipated all the wisdom of man; and of the divine origin of both the great books which he is privileged to study as a pupil, and even to illustrate as a commentator,—but the text of which he ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... baptismal name of the person referred to. Sir Philip Sidney was addressed as 'Willy' by some of his elegists. A comic actor, 'dead of late' in a literal sense, was clearly intended by Spenser, and there is no reason to dispute the view of an early seventeenth-century commentator that Spenser was paying a tribute to the loss English comedy had lately sustained by the death of the comedian, Richard Tarleton. {81a} Similarly the 'gentle spirit' who is described by Spenser in a later stanza as sitting 'in idle cell' rather than turn his pen ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... replied the other, "but I have read his commentator, Bardolphus, who wrote a treatise upon the ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... exigencies of the flowing discourse of the learned author. Surely such inconsistency, so glaring and so portentous, and all exhibited on one and the same page, is no evidence that the genius of the great commentator was as steady and profound as ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... unwilling to outlive the virtues which prompted it,—a passage teeming with poetical feeling: but the commentator has ruthlessly altered ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... quality, quantity, or other idea, but what, not the most fluent quipu reader could tell unless he was acquainted with the general topic treated of. Therefore, whenever news was sent in this manner a person accompanied the bearer to serve as verbal commentator, and to prevent confusion the quipus relating to the various departments of knowledge were placed in separate storehouses, one for war, another for taxes, a third for history, and so forth. On what principle or mnemotechnics the ideas were connected with the knots ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... notes which simply translate the difficulty and subside. These are a boon to the scholar. Without them it would be almost impossible to prepare one's work during school, and we should be reduced to the prosaic expedient of working in prep. time. What we want is the commentator who translates mensa as 'a table' without giving a page and a half of notes on the uses of the table in ancient Greece, with an excursus on the habit common in those times of retiring underneath it after dinner, and ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... simply of the simple life which she knew so well. She had depicted Spanish daily life from the keenly instinctive standpoint of a woman's observation; and only a week before she had sent a single essay—marked number one—to the editor of the Commentator, John Craik. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... "When the snake," says an Arabic commentator, "tempted Adam it was a winged animal. To punish its misdeeds the Almighty deprived it of wings, and condemned it thereafter to creep for ever on its belly, adding, as a perpetual reminder to it of its trespass, a command for it to ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... who, according to Suidas, lived under Theodosius, and to whom Stephanus of Byzantium refers, writing so early as at the end of the fifth century. But the lexicographer Suidas enumerates the works of Horapollo, the philologer and commentator on Greek poetry, without naming the Hieroglyphica, which is the only treatise alluded to by Stephanus. Besides, all the other ancient writers who mention Horapollo at all leave us quite free to suppose that there ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... who gave me an account of a dinner at Fowell Buxton's on Saturday to see the brewery, at which Brougham was the 'magnus Apollo.' Sefton is excellent as a commentator on Brougham; he says that he watches him incessantly, never listens to anybody else when he is there, and rows him unmercifully afterwards for all the humbug, nonsense, and palaver he hears him talk to people. They were twenty-seven at dinner. Talleyrand was to have gone, but was frightened ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... The commentator, wrongly supposed to be Rashi, gives an interesting note upon the passage in I Chron. xx. 2, where it is mentioned that David took the crown of the king of the children of Ammon, and found it to weigh a talent of gold, and it was set upon David's head. Rashi states that ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... Science Review, and is from the pen of Professor Stephen Leacock, head of the department of Political Economy of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. A distinguished citizen of one great British federation may well be accepted as the ablest commentator on the foundation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... once a commentator, if I rightly recollect, Who, discussing the Equator, treated it with disrespect; But his temperate impeachment, though it showed a mental twist, Pales before the drastic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... commentator wast thou, when thou would'st affect to understand Shakespeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... sweep him away! When it rains, may the lightning strike him! May evil nights be his!" It is believed that in the knot the sorcerer has bound up the life of his enemy. In the Koran there is an allusion to the mischief of "those who puff into the knots," and an Arab commentator on the passage explains that the words refer to women who practise magic by tying knots in cords, and then blowing and spitting upon them. He goes on to relate how, once upon a time, a wicked Jew bewitched the prophet Mohammed himself by tying nine knots on a string, which ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... learned commentator Christian adds a few more cases where formerly the criminal law was harshly prejudiced against women. Thus: "By the Common Law, all women were denied the benefit of clergy; and till the 3 and 4 W. and M., c. 9 ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of the public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on Shakespeare in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the Armies of Brutus, and Cassius, defeated by Augustus, almost in the same place, at the Battle of Philippi. He concludes also that by Hylaeus is meant Mark Antony, who assumed the name of Bacchus, and ruined himself by his profligate passion for Cleopatra. Another Commentator observes, that as the Giants, and Lapithae, are said to have made the Palace of Saturn shake, so also did Brutus, and Cassius, and afterwards Mark Antony, make all Italy tremble, and that it is Rome itself that ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... heated discussion at an extraordinary meeting of shareholders at Welshpool carried matters no further than the decision that the first sod, when it was cut, should be of Montgomeryshire soil, "but whether," adds a critical commentator, "at Llanymynech, Welshpool or Newtown, no one knows." Fresh controversy arose concerning the secretaryship, to which office Mr. Princep had been appointed by Mr. Ormsby-Gore, after a very fleeting appearance on ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... in a note that his translation is not in accordance with the text, but he adds: "Nous ne concevons pas la penee ainsi exprimee." It is a good thing for Shakespeare that he has found a French commentator who understands what he meant to say better than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Aristotle were divided into two parties, one of which relied on the naturalistic interpretation of the Greek exegete, Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 A.D.), the other on the pantheistic interpretation of the Arabian commentator, Averroes (died 1198). The conflict over the question of immortality, carried on especially in Padua, was the culmination of the battle. The Alexandrist asserted that, according to Aristotle, the soul was mortal, the Averroists, that the rational part which is common to all men was immortal; while ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... actor and able commentator on Shakespeare (actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not give with equal truth or force of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet, before ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... George Steevens, the Shakesperian commentator, who was born on the 10th of May 1736, was the only son of George Steevens of Stepney, for many years an East India captain, and afterwards a Director of the East India Company. He received his early education at a school at Kingston-on-Thames ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... is everywhere broken into crags.' Prawle Point—'Prol in Anglia'—was known to foreigners for many centuries; and Mr R. J. King, in an admirable article on Devonshire, says that it 'is mentioned by an ancient commentator on Adam of Bremen's "Historia Ecclesiastica," as one of the stations at which vessels touched on their voyage from Ripa in Denmark. The passage was made from the "Sincfala," near Bruges, and "the station beyond 'Prol'" is St Matthieu—one day's sail. Adam of Bremen dates about ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Justice Henry Baldwin, another of Marshall's friends and associates, published his "View of the Constitution," in which he rendered high praise to the departed Chief Justice's qualifications as expounder of the Constitution. "No commentator," he wrote, "ever followed the text more faithfully, or ever made a commentary more accordant with its strict intention and language.... He never brought into action the powers of his mighty mind to find some meaning in plain words... above the comprehension of ordinary minds.... He knew ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... commentaries of this description,—in which too often we find little more than a dull or florid prose version of what the author has given us admirably in verse. Apart from obsolete words or allusions, Herrick is the best commentator upon Herrick. A few lines only need therefore here be added, aiming rather to set forth his place in the sequence of English poets, and especially in regard to those near his own time, than to point out in detail beauties which he unveils in his own way, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... There is a piscina in the chancel, and one in the S. wall of the nave; there are also two hagioscopes. "The chancel arch," writes Canon Benham, "seems to me Anglo-Saxon, and the chancel is a most curious apse." Thomas Warner, a friend of Shakespeare, and Isaac Reed, a Shakespearian commentator, were both ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... ascetic life during these years was noted. He was known as a man of extremely refined tastes and sensitive though not querulous nature. A commentator says of him: ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... of that union of speculative boldness and critical sobriety which everywhere distinguishes him. It is pleasant to meet with a writer who can treat of primitive religious ideas without losing his head over allegory and symbolism, and who duly realizes the fact that a savage is not a rabbinical commentator, or a cabalist, or a Rosicrucian, but a plain man who draws conclusions like ourselves, though with feeble intelligence and scanty knowledge. The mystic allegory with which such modern writers as Lord Bacon have invested the myths of antiquity is no part of their original clothing, but is rather ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the murder of the Countess Franceschini by her husband; and her four days' survival of her wounds, does one half of Rome express itself—"The Other Half" in contrast to the earliest commentator on the crime: "Half-Rome." This Other-Half is wholly sympathetic to the seventeen-yeared child who lies in the hospital-ward at St. Anna's. "Why was she made to learn what Guido Franceschini's heart could hold?" demands the imagined spokesman; and, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... they were joined to the "Atellane" fables, says Casaubon; which were plays invented by the Osci. Those fables, says Valerius Maximus, out of Livy, were tempered with the Italian severity, and free from any note of infamy or obsceneness; and, as an old commentator on Juvenal affirms, the Exodiarii, which were singers and dancers, entered to entertain the people with light songs and mimical gestures, that they might not go away oppressed with melancholy from those serious pieces of the theatre. ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... this tyrant, the pretty Cunizza, whom Dante places in his "Paradiso." This final disposition of Cunizza, whom we should hardly think now of assigning a place among the blest, surprised some people even in that day, it seems; for an old commentator defends it, saying: "Cunizza was always, it is true, tender and amorous, and properly called a daughter of Venus; but she was also compassionate, benign, and merciful toward those unhappy ones whom her brother cruelly tormented. Therefore the poet is right in feigning to find ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... Greek literature the province of history has been already separated from that of poetry. The ancient bardic lore and primaeval traditions were refined to suit the new and sensitive poetic taste. No commentator has been able to explain the nature of ambrosia. In the genuine bardic times, no such vague euphuism would have been tolerated as that of Homer on this subject. The nature of Olympian ambrosia would ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... water.' In the Mitakshara, on the subject of personal purification, the direction is, after evacuations, 'Dwijo nityam upaspriset, Let the man of two births always perform the upaspersa,' i. e. says the commentator, 'achamet, let him sip water.' The sense of the passage of the text is, 'that Nala sat down to evening prayer; (as Menu directs, he who repeats it sitting at evening twilight, etc.,) after performing his purifications, and sipping water, but ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... was made by Petrarch, and it is strange that this escaped Humboldt in his famous sketch in the second volume of Cosmos, as well as his commentator Schaller, and Friedlander. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... sphere and that the water which bounds Europe on the west washes the eastern shores of Asia. Instructed by him, the Spaniard, Seneca, believed that a ship, with a fair wind, could sail from Spain to the Indies in a few days. The opinion was revived in the Middle Ages by Averroes, the Arab commentator of Aristotle. Science and observation assisted to confirm it; and poets of ancient and of more recent times had foretold that empires beyond the ocean would one day be revealed to the daring navigator. The genial country of Dante and Buonarotti gave birth to Christopher Columbus, by whom ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... res judicata[Lat]. plebiscite, voice, casting vote; vote &c. (choice) 609; opinion &c. (belief) 484; good judgment &c. (wisdom) 498. judge, umpire; arbiter, arbitrator; asessor, referee. censor, reviewer, critic; connoisseur; commentator &c. 524; inspector, inspecting officer. twenty-twenty hindsight[judgment after the fact]; armchair general, monday morning quarterback. V. judge, conclude; come to a conclusion, draw a conclusion, arrive at a conclusion; ascertain, determine, make up one's mind. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... actually at defiance. On being, to Napoleon's extreme delight, ordered to retreat, he treated the order with contempt and instantly advanced.—Rauschnick's Life of Bluecher. "This second disjunction on Bluecher's part," observes Clausewitz, the Prussian general, the best commentator on this war, "was of infinite consequence, for it checked and gave a fresh turn to the whole course ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... was good-natured enough to repeat it to me five or six times; but as it sounded worse and more unintelligible every time, I finally called it Jerusalem, and let it go at that. For the sake of geographical accuracy I have so marked it down on my map; but let no future commentator point to it triumphantly as a proof that the lost tribes of Israel emigrated to Kamchatka; I don't believe that they did, and I know that this unfortunate settlement, before I took pity on it and called it Jerusalem, was distinguished by a name so utterly barbarous that neither ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... dealt with the Bible after the only fair and trustful method; that is, to consider it at first according to the theory which it sets forth concerning itself, before trying quite another theory of the commentator's own invention; and which combined with a courageous determination to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that Christian spirit of trust, reverence and piety, without which all intellectual acuteness is but blindness ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... deer they killed... covers for their books." There is no doubt that it had occurred to artists to experiment upon human skin, and perhaps the fact that this was an unsatisfactory texture is the chief reason why no books were made of it. A French commentator observes: "The skin of a man is nothing compared with the skin of a sheep.... Sheep is good for writing on both sides, but the skin of a dead man is just about as profitable as his bones,—better bury him, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... soul, a living being. The ordinary version (King James) gives "a living soul" in the margin of Gen. 1:30, showing that the same expression is used of all the animal creation in the Hebrew text. The famous Methodist commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, says ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... plainly susceptible of this meaning and no other, that it would be hardly worth recording in its original state, were it not a proof of what may be (and very often is) affected not only in historical prose but in imaginative poetry, by the exercise of a little ingenious labour on the part of a commentator. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... some degree to the influence of the doctrine of absorption in the Mahometan philosophy of Averroes, a commentator on Aristotle, who was the contemporary of Abelard, that we may attribute the disbelief in immortality to which we find a tendency toward the close of the thirteenth and during the fourteenth century.(294) Though it is probable that ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Castelvetro, the Italian commentator on Aristotle, having heard that his house was on fire, ran through the streets exclaiming to the people, alla Poetica! alla Poetica! To the Poetic! To the Poetic! He was then writing his commentary on the Poetics ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that it is almost forbidden to human reason to stray in these regions; and that the part of a prophet is, next to that of a commentator of prophecies, one of the most difficult and thankless that a man can attempt to sustain ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... cherished in many a Hebrew family, as for example, that of Jacob (cf. the story of his flight from Laban, Gen. 31) or of David (I Sam. 19). The spirit of the law is truly interpreted by the later priestly commentator who places completely under the ban all attempts visibly to represent the Deity. Is the spirit of this command disregarded by the modern Greek church? In certain parts of the Roman Catholic world? In ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... part of the purchase of Maryland from the savage proprietors (for we do not massacre, we are such good Christians as only to cheat) was a quantity of vermilion and a parcel of Jews-harps! Indeed, if I pleased, I might have another study; it is my fault if I am not a commentator and a corrector of the press. The Marquis de St. Simon, whom I mentioned to you, at a very first visit proposed to me to look over a translation he had made of The Tale of a Tub: the proposal was soon followed by a folio, and a letter of three sides, to press me seriously to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... is, however, an illustration of the difficulties which beset the editors of our old dramatists especially. Had the word modern occurred in an early edition of Shakspeare, it would have perplexed very commentator; but few would have ventured to substitute the correct word, moderate. The difficulty lies in finding the just mean between timidity and rashness. With regard to typographical errors, the obvious ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... "redolent of scorn" in connection with words that formerly expressed sacred functions and offices, Landor adds: "Gray is highly poetical in his 'redolent of joy and youth.' The word is now vilely misused daily." "By and bye," writes the Dean. "Why write bye?" asks his commentator. Once or twice Landor credits Horne Tooke with what the Dean gives as his own, and occasionally scores an observation as old. "Why won't people say messager?" he demands. "By what right is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... extra wages for doing their own work to make themselves comfortable. All of these advantages and more which the Ruhleben prisoners enjoy have been largely the result of the effort of the camp administration which this commentator criticises. ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... standing than himself, the other younger; Gabriel Harvey, first a fellow of Pembroke, and then a student or teacher of civil law at Trinity Hall, and Edward Kirke, like Spenser, a sizar at Pembroke, recently identified with the E. K., who was the editor and commentator of Spenser's earliest work, the anonymous Shepherd's Calendar. Of the younger friend this is the most that is known. That he was deeply in Spenser's confidence as a literary coadjutor, and possibly in other ways, is shown in the work which he did. But Gabriel Harvey was ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... have somewhere at some time fallen in with some remark by some commentator to some such effect as this: that it would be somewhat difficult to excuse the unwomanly violence of this demand. Doubtless it would. And doubtless it would be somewhat more than difficult to extenuate the unmaidenly indelicacy of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Massinger for the family library by my friend the Reverend Alexander Dyce, the learned Shakespearean editor and commentator, was my first introduction to that mine of dramatic wealth which enriched the literature of England in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, and culminated in the genius of Shakespeare. It is by comparison with them, his contemporaries, that ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... dead wall or a dead partridge. It might even be argued by the wholly inexpert that if the business of art is with beauty, the art is higher, other things being equal, in proportion as the beauty it portrays is of a higher order. Thus in the painting of women, the ignorant commentator sometimes asks himself in what supreme sense it was worth while for an artist to expend his powers upon the portrait of some society fool who could pay him twelve hundred pounds therefor; or in what supreme sense a painter can be called an artist who prefers such a task, and the flesh-pots, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... of an unpeopled marsh; when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians. I remain, ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... passage around the north of Asia and Europe, which is adduced by the commentator, in Harris's Collection, is now thoroughly known ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... difficulties, and clears away haze, without distracting the mind. There is also an art of bringing out relief by an accompaniment, like the two images of the stereoscope. This is most likely to arise through a living teacher or commentator, who, by his tones and emphasis, as well as by his very guarded and reserved additions, can make the meaning of the author take ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... other than that of a common purpose between William Sharp and the Irish writers of the Celtic Renaissance. He was a friend of Mr. Yeats, a correspondent of Mr. Russell, and the chief commentator in the English reviews on the work of the Irish group of its writers. At one time, after 1897, the relationship promised to be very close, indeed. William Sharp, experimenting in psychics with Mr. Yeats, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... which he was concerned. Chronology is hopelessly and inextricably confused; while inaccuracies and difficulties of the kind described abound on every page of the 'Chronicle,' rendering the labor of its last commentator and defender one of no small difficulty. The third group of arguments assails the language of the 'Chronicle' and its MS. authority. Fanfani, who showed more zeal than courtesy in his destructive criticism, undertook to prove that Dino's style in general ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Armstrong in "Of Taste"], who is acquainted with no language but what is spoken in his own county, may have a much truer relish of the English writers than the most dogmatical pedant that ever erected himself into a commentator, and from his Gothic chair, with an ill-bred arrogance, dictated false criticism ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... He is a lying, censorious, gossiping, quibbling wretch, and sets people together by the ears over that sober drink—coffee; he is a wit as he is a commentator upon the Gazette; and he rails at the pirates of Algiers, the Grand Signior of Constantinople, and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of Harvey as his audacity. He has a gentleness and charm quite unexpected in so savage a commentator. He will discuss and advise but he will not argue; and all of the time he will probe with uncanny accuracy for the weaknesses of those with whom he is dealing. It is rather by the weaknesses of others than by his own strength ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... that he who wrote them has entered—where no commentator could conduct him—into the solemn pathos of Virgil's Musaeum ante omnis—; where the singer whose very existence upon earth has become a legend and a mythic name is seen keeping in the underworld his old pre-eminence, and ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... guided, others are not," said the radio commentator who released this story. "They can stay stationary, dash off to right or left, and move like lightning. But they ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... despight of all controversy] [Warbarton had suspected an allusion to ecclesiastical disputes.] I am in doubt whether Shakespeare's thoughts reached so far into ecclesiastical disputes. Every commentator is warped a little by the tract of his own profession. The question is, whether the second gentleman has ever heard grace. The first gentleman limits the question to grace in metre. Lucio enlarges it to grace in any form or language. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... with what we find in the first book of the Odyssey, where the king of the gods says, "Men say that evil comes to them from us, but they bring it on themselves through their own folly." The answer is plain enough even to the Greek commentator. The poets make both Achilles and Zeus speak appropriately to their several characters. Indeed, Zeus says plainly that men do attribute their sufferings to the gods, but they do it falsely, for they are the cause of their ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... another commentator, whom the papers named. He is dead, however, and I have taken his place," said ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lay claim to infallibility. There are verses in the Mahabharata that are exceedingly difficult to construe. I have derived much aid from the great commentator Nilakantha. I know that Nilakantha's authority is not incapable of being challenged. But when it is remembered that the interpretations given by Nilakantha came down to him from preceptors of olden days, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... incidents. The clergy are there made the principal object of ridicule, which is understood but by few among the laity. To explain this a commentary would be requisite, and humour when explained is no longer humour. Whoever sets up for a commentator of smart sayings and repartees is himself a blockhead. This is the reason why the works of the ingenious Dean Swift, who has been called the English Rabelais, will never be well understood in France. This gentleman has the honour (in common with Rabelais) of being a priest, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... a growth, and a slow growth. Evils in one age painfully sow the seed that is to come up good in another. The historian, and still more the critical commentator on his own times, needs to be patient, calm, judicial, hopeful. Mr. Carlyle is impatient, fervid, willful, nay, despotic, and he is not hopeful, not hopeful enough. One healthily hopeful, and genuinely ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... I. ii. 4. Better than Chrysippus and Crantor. They were both philosophers, Chrysippus a subtle stoic, Crantor the first commentator upon Plato. ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... Cankara, the great Hindu theologian and commentator of the Upanishads, as well as all modern interpreters of the Upanishads, have failed to see the ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... efficient, and final causes. Aristotle was a pedantic blockhead, and still more knave than fool. The same censure we may safely put on that wiseacre, Dioscorides, with his faculties of simples— his seminal, specific, and principal virtues; and that crazy commentator, Galen, with his four elements, elementary qualities, his eight complexions, his harmonies and discords. Nor shall I expatiate on the alkahest of that mad scoundrel, Paracelsus, with which he pretended to reduce flints into salt; nor archaeus ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... morning she was still in bed, sitting up in a dressing sack, and turning the pages of a weekly publication that dealt in news of local high life. Its chief item, to-day, was the announcement of a dance she was to give shortly—at the club, as usual—and she had just finished for the second time the commentator's ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... distance. And Sir Henry Yule's difficulty arose just from the fact that what the information accessible to him seemed to show about the location of the name Pashai could not be satisfactorily reconciled with those plain topographical data. Marco's great commentator, thoroughly familiar as he was with whatever was known in his time about the geography of the western Hindukush and the regions between Oxus and Indus, could not fail to recognize the obvious connection ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... beautiful imbibed, which are essential to an accomplished and really useful writer of travels? Sulphuric acid and Optics, Anatomy and Mechanics, will do many things; but they will never make an observer of Nature, a friend of Man, a fit commentator on the world ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... come to that later. Here's the forecast: Today and tomorrow, the weather will continue fine; warm in the sun, chilly in the shadows. There won't be anything to keep you from the polls, tomorrow, except bird-hunting, or a last chance at a game of golf. This is the first time within this commentator's memory that the weather has definitely been in favor of the party out ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... that it was necessary to make some remark in acknowledgment of this courtesy on his visitor's part, and so, as he continued his work, he condescended to explain its purpose. "I am playing the part of a commentator," he remarked. "I sold seven of my horses a few days ago, and the purchaser, before paying the stipulated price, naturally required an exact and authentic statement of each animal's performances. However, even this does not seem to have satisfied the gentleman, for ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... says a distinguished commentator upon Holy Writ, "that the woman was a perfect resemblance of the man, possessing neither inferiority nor superiority, but being in all things like and ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... was a cousin and a companion of the Apostle, also a well known Commentator on the Koran and conserver of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of Dumbarton Avenue and Greene (29th) Street, the four little yellow houses made into one make the home of Drew Pearson, the widely-known columnist and commentator—co-author with Robert S. Allen ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... glue, so David collapsed and Talboys conquered—"spell" benumbed "charm." The sea-wizard yielded to the petrifier, and "could no more," as the poets say. Talboys smiled superior. But, as his art was a purely destructive one, it ended with its victim; not having an idea of his own in his skull, the commentator, in silencing his text, silenced himself and brought the society to a standstill. Eve sat with flashing eyes; Lucy's twinkled with sly fun: this made Eve ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... used it as a school book, translating it both out of Latin into English, and out of English back into Latin, imprinting it thereby almost word for word upon my memory. I had also read the work of his commentator on the causes of incredulity. Leland on the deistical writers, and Paley's Evidences, and others, I read after. But in this great old library I met with numbers of interesting and important works that I have never met with since. And here, in the dimly lighted antiquated ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... edition of this valuable work that we are now called upon particularly to speak. As a new edition of the book was demanded, it was of the greatest importance that it should be placed in the hands of an editor competent to discuss, in a manner worthy of the distinguished commentator, those numerous and perplexing questions which have arisen since his death. The representatives of Mr. Wheaton were singularly fortunate in obtaining the aid of so prominent and so busy a man as Mr. Dana,—one who is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... According to that inscription, he was "ardently devoted to the pursuits of literature," personally acquainted in early life with the most distinguished authors of his day, long the intimate friend of David Garrick, "and a profound commentator on the dramatic works of Shakspeare." Can any of the learned readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES" ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... American Society of Mechanical Engineers (Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1897, vol. 28, p. 459), evoked strong criticism of Bessemer's lack of generosity (ibid., p. 482). One commentator, friendly to Bessemer, put it that "Bessemer's relation to the open-hearth process was very much like Kelly's to the Bessemer process.... Although he was measurably near to the open-hearth process, he did not follow it up and make it a commercial ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... gathered multitudes and the priests standing with their empty urns, symbol of the impotence of their system, 'on the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.' Brethren, such a commentary, at such a time, from such a commentator, may well absolve me from the necessity of enforcing the evangelistic bearing of the words of my text. And so, then, with that understanding of the deepest meaning of these words that we have to look at, I ask you to take them in the simplest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Domingo Banes, the great commentator on St. Thomas. On the margin of the MS., Banes has with his own hand written: "This was at the end of August, 1562. I was present, and gave this opinion. I am writing this in May" (the day of the month is not legible) ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... 'imposing on himself and others.' 9. The orthodox doctrine of China concerning the connexion between intelligence and virtue is most seriously erroneous, but I will not lay to the charge of the author of the Great Learning the wild representations of the commentator of our twelfth century, nor need I make here any remarks on what the doctrine really is. After the exhibition which I have given, my readers will probably conclude that the Work before us is far from developing, as Pauthier asserts, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... century. Another Moslem whose translated writings had great influence on Europe was Averroes (1126-1198) who tried to unite the philosophy of Aristotle with Mohammedanism (R. 88). His influence on the thinkers of the later Middle Ages was large, he being regarded as the greatest commentator on Aristotle from the days of Rome to ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... says one commentator, that "he confines men within doors" by these great rains. Instead of houses we infer it to mean "the caves of the earth," already spoken of, (chap. xxx, v. 6,) and this is rendered more evident by the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... ingenious commentator has suggested that the opera has some basis in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Sarastro is Prospero, Pamina Miranda, Tamino Ferdinand, and perhaps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... and extracts from, the standard commentary upon Yajnavalkya, the Mitakshara, necessarily form the staple of our notes. All such extracts are distinguished by the initial (M.), and the author of the commentary we invariably refer to as, the Commentator. ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... verse-writer in satiric and other forms. Mass of production, and in some cases personal interest, gives these a certain standing above their fellows. But the crowd of those fellows, about many of whom even the painful industry of the modern commentator has been able to tell us next to nothing, is almost miraculous when we remember that printing was still carried on under a rigid censorship by a select body of monopolists, and that out of London, and in rare cases the university towns, it was impossible for a minor poet to get into ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the way, one commentator derives from tittivillitium, and another from talley-hobut tilley-valley, I saya truce with your politeness. You will find them but samples of womankindBut here they be, Mr. Lovel. I present to you in due order, my most discreet sister Griselda, who disdains ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... more colloquial and less scientific) is almost all pure Greek. The Greek tongue was extraordinarily well adapted as a vehicle of scientific thought. One of the characteristics of Euclid's language which his commentator Proclus is most fond of emphasizing is its marvellous exactness (ακριβεια {akribeia}). The language of the Greek geometers is also wonderfully concise, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary. One of the complaints often made against Euclid is that he is ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... a third Literary Correspondent, and the only other considerable one, here, from a German Commentator on this matter, is a ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... honest editor, publisher, and printer, for the last century and a half; and he who loves the comic side of human nature will find the serious notes of a variorum edition of Shakspeare as funny reading as the funny ones are serious. Scarce a commentator of them all, for more than a hundred years, but thought, as Alphonso of Castile did of Creation, that, if he had only been at Shakspeare's elbow, he could have given valuable advice; scarce one who did not know off-hand that there was never a seaport in Bohemia,—as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... in Greek Grammar has as his ultimate view the clearer and nicer appreciation of the shades of Greek expression, and is merely serving a high ideal of mental refinement. It seems to me purely conventional to accept as valuable the work of a commentator on Sophocles, because it is traditionally respectable, and to say that a commentator on sunsets, as I once heard a poet described, is an effeminate dilettante. It is the motive that matters. Personally, I think that a man ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson |
