"Unlearn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sinned with 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: How long must stretch these ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... would be no where listened to with more freedom than in this State, nor with more firmness of mind. They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... purposes these 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 ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... still to unlearn: an exalted one shall he be, and not only a sublime one:—the ether itself should ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... there 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 ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... first week. New men learn much more readily than those who have become habituated to certain methods or tasks; not having had time or opportunity to experi- ment and learn wrong methods, they have nothing to unlearn in acquiring the right. They fall into line at once and adopt the stride and the manner of work approved by ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... instead of increasing the power that our pupils should possess over their native language. By getting marks at school and college for construing good Greek and Latin into bad English, our pupils systematically unlearn what they may have been allowed to pick up from ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... 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
... an equilibrium in fact as well as in theory, one thing further is necessary—namely, that both parties should understand clearly the fundamental character of the situation. And here labour has more to learn than ability; or perhaps it may be truer to say that socialism has given it more to unlearn. If any exchange takes place between two people, which by anybody who knew all the circumstances would be recognised as entirely just, but is not felt to be just by one of the contracting parties, he, though he may assent to the terms because he ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... be serious. I will venture to affirm that, on this side the Alps, there is no country in Europe whose natives have so little to learn, or to unlearn, in acquiring a good Italian pronunciation, as the English. We have neither the gutturals of the German and the Spaniard, nor the mute vowels and nasal n's of the French to get rid of; there is scarcely a sound in the Italian language which we are not in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... Sense to shun the doctor; to lie down in some safe place Solitude and every desirable discomfort Stumbled against an ill-placed tree Suffering when unaccompanied by resignation Ten times harder to unlearn anything than it is to learn it There is an impassive, stolid ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... she set herself the task of learning ten new words a day; but Miss Martin says that she sometimes had to unlearn several of them, owing to the fondness of her fellow students for slang. However, she was persevering, and in time learned to use the language easily. One of the teachers, who had returned a plate to her with an orange on it, still treasures a half sheet ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... rejoicing over what has been done. For, after all, the truth is, that Scottish Archaeology is still so much in its infancy, that it is only now beginning to guess its powers, and feel its deficiencies. It has still no end of lessons to learn, and perhaps some to unlearn, before it can manage to extract the true metal of knowledge from the ore and dross of exaggeration in which many of its inquiries have become enveloped. At this present hour we virtually know far less of the Archaeology and history of Scotland ten or fifteen centuries ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... are," replied my father, "and I do not like saying them, but there is no royal road to unlearning, and you have much to unlearn. Still, you Musical Bank people bear witness to the fact that beyond the kingdoms of this world there is another, within which the writs of this world's kingdoms do not run. This is the great service which our church does for us in England, and hence many of us uphold it, though ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... 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 to the blanching of a lady's ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... fear is that this double training, in language as well as in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon the young, especially when, at the age of three years old, they are taken from the maternal care and taught to unlearn the old language—except for the purpose of repeating it in the presence of their Mothers and Nurses—and to learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. Already methinks I discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical truth at the present time as compared with the ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... turning to his guest, "I guess you haven't made any mistake in signing up these kids. There's a lot they may have to find out about the wilderness, but it looks to me as if they weren't going to have very much to unlearn." ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... they must unlearn certain things the schools had taught them: preoccupation with the relative merits of Gothic and Classic—tweedledum and tweedledee. Furthermore, they must learn certain neglected lessons from the engineer, lessons that they will ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... than we; and if we know better, it is only because other men, and those few and far between, have laboured amid disbelief, ridicule, and error; needing again and again to retrace their steps, and to unlearn more than they learnt, seeming to go backwards when they were really progressing most: and now we have entered into their labours, and find them, as I have just said, more wondrous than all the poetic dreams ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... afresh.' So you, since this is your mind, had 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
... Somerville conferring with the wise Harriet Martineau as to whether a certain dress should be dyed to match a certain shawl? Well! why not? Because women learn the use of the quill, are they to ignore "featherses "? Because they learn science, must they unlearn the arts, and, above all, the art of being beautiful? If men have lost it, they have reason to regret the loss. Let women hold to it, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... suppose about two out of six-and-twenty. It's particular attention that's been paid to your education, I perceive; you've nothing to unlearn anyhow, that's something. Now, sir, do you think that a classical scholar and a gentleman born, like me, is to demane myself by hearing you puzzle at the alphabet? You're quite mistaken, Mr Keene, you must gain your first elements second-hand; ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... business of it. It is incredible how much harm is done when the seeds 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
... though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, must rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not slighting it, or bidding it hasten its work, nor yet hailing it, with Faust, "Stay, thou art so fair!" Childhood is but change made gay and visible, and ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... it, he came to it as a little child; all he sought for was the simple truth, uncrushed by human traditions, unmingled with human dogmas, untrammelled by human interpretations, unadulterated by human systems. He found that he had a vast amount to unlearn, and saw clearly that if he fearlessly pursued his inquiries they would lead him so far from the belief of popular ignorance, as very probably to bar all worldly success in the sacred profession which he had chosen. But he knew that the profession was sacred, and, fearless by nature, he determined ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... behind them. It is not surprising when we remember what he is trying to do, namely, to induce philosophical thought to run in new channels. The general reader has here an advantage over the other, inasmuch as he has less to unlearn. In the old words, unless we become as little children we cannot enter into this kingdom; though it is true that we do not remain as little children once entry is made. This is a serious difficulty ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... 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. This ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... must unlearn you a little of your kindness. You are mine, now, darling; and I want all ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... 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
... is simply disgraceful! I can't think how you have been let to get like it! Every Monday morning I shall come down and examine these books. So don't think that because there is nobody paying any attention to you, that you are free to unlearn everything you ever learned, and go back till you are not fit for Standard Three. I shall examine ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... 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 ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... inquiry and search of the way, and knowledge upon search, that our former way was wrong, and this is only right. But if this be the porch to enter at, will you sit down and dwell in it, and not go on into the palace itself? Because you must begin to search what you have learned wrong, that now you may unlearn it, will you be ever about the learning to know your condition, and by this means never attain to the knowledge of the truth? But when you have upon any inquiry found yourselves out of the way, you should not entertain that dispute long, but hearken to the plain voice of the gospel, that sounds ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the indispensable law. "The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction," he declared. "They do not pin their reader to a dogma, which he must afterward discover to be inexact; they do not teach a lesson, which he must afterward unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintances of others, and they show us the web of experience not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change—that monstrous, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... to learn and not to unlearn. You will kindly allow me to tell you that the pronunciation of that word 'scevra' with a v, and not 'sceura' with a u, because it is ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 'em," 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 ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... many 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
... End of visiting Foreign Parts, is to look into their Customs and Policies, and observe in what Particulars they excel or come short of our own; to unlearn some odd Peculiarities in our Manners, and wear off such awkward Stiffnesses and Affectations in our Behaviour, as may possibly have been contracted from constantly associating with one Nation of Men, by a more free, general, and mixed Conversation. But how ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... because he did not claim. When the grim war was placed in dread array, Fierce as the lion roaring for his prey, Or lioness of royal whelps foredone; In peace, as mild as the departing sun, A general blessing wheresoe'er he turn'd, Patron of learning, nor himself unlearn'd; 250 Ever awake at Pity's tender call, A father of the poor, a friend to all; Recall such times, and from the grave bring back A worth like this, my heart shall bend, or crack, My stubborn pride give way, my tongue proclaim, And every Muse ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... forget one's own name, 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: 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 recollection, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... calling from the shadows in the rear of my Advance— From the Region of Unprogress in the Dark Domain of Chance— Long I heard the Unevolvable beseeching my return To share the degradation he's reluctant to unlearn. But I fancy I detected—though I pray it wasn't that— A low reverberation, like an echo in a hat. So I've held my way regardless, evoluting year by year, Till I'm what you now behold me—or would if you were here— A condensed Emancipation ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... outline, and uncouth scroll. As experience ripened his understanding, he may have felt that these characteristics of the German School were not such as could be moulded with advantage by an artist, whatever his talent might be, and resolved to do his best to unlearn much that he had acquired. In order to do so with any chance of success, but one course was open to him—that of studying the works of the Italian masters. It has been stated that he went to Italy when very young. With this view I do not concur. In all cases where there is an absence of direct ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... the life problem, is it? Poor little girl, she has got to learn something which the average girl has to unlearn; where they entirely trust their fellow-beings, she entirely distrusts them. I wonder if I shall ever be able to show her the middle path?" Telling the porter to wait a moment, Miss Preston slipped into the library, ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... account of the margin, and not of the text. He carried the book to a painter in the city. This painter, bad as he was, was struck with the original grace of certain of Watteau's figures, and solicited the honor of being his master. In the studio of this worthy man, Watteau did not unlearn all that he had acquired, although he painted for pedlers, male and female saints by the dozen. From this studio he passed to another, which was more profane and more to his taste. Mythology was the great book of the place. Instead of St. Peter, with his eternal keys, or ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... county. He had his early education at a private country school, and was removed from thence to Merchant Taylor's, where he received his first taste of letters; for he always reckoned that time which he spent at the former school as lost, since he had only contracted bad habits, and was obliged to unlearn what had been taught ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... of Orange was ordered to appear before the court and, on his refusal, was declared an outlaw. His eldest son was captured at the University of Louvain and sent to the Spanish court that he might unlearn the principles in ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... unversed in any phase of canning, to master this new method than it was for me with my four years' training course and my five years of teaching canning behind me. And this is the reason. She had nothing to "unlearn," she knew no other method whereas I had to "unlearn" ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... as well as the sages, must learn to forget. If it neither learns the new nor forgets the old, it is fated, even if it has been royal for thirty generations. To unlearn is to learn; and also it is sometimes needful to learn again the forgotten. The antics of fools make the current follies more palpable, as fashions are shown to be absurd by caricatures, which so lead to their extirpation. The buffoon and the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... with idols. We mention sin, and he thinks of eating 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 ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... 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 any one with a ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... to match the rest of her—shouldn't be thrust into any general menagerie-cage, but be kept for the dovecote and the garden, kept where we may still hear her coo. That's what, at college, they'll make her unlearn; she'll learn to roar and snarl with the other animals. Think of the vocal sounds with which she may come back to us!" Mother appeared to think, but asked me, after a moment, as a result of it, in which of the cages of the New York Art League menagerie, and among what ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... now forgotten, . . men—ah, great Heaven! can it be that these most rueful, loathly things have loved, and hoped, and labored through all their days for such an end as this! Escape from death! ... alas, there is no escape, . . 'tis evident we all must die, . . die, and with dust-quenched eyes unlearn our knowledge of the sun, the stars, the marvels of the universe,—for us no more shall the flowers bloom or the sweet birds sing; the poem of the world will write itself anew in every roseate flushing of the dawn,—but we,—we who have joyed therein,—we ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... reminiscence) must by this time be prepared for our moral; and it is very briefly this:—Is it not time to consider the budding brain as entitled to fair play? We, the dear middle-aged people, must surely remember that it has taken us much toil and trouble to unlearn many things. We know, that, when we pen anything for our coevals, it is with due attention to such facts as we can command,—that we have a wholesome fear of criticism,—that, if we make blunders in our seamanship, even though professedly land-lubbers, some awful Knickerbocker ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Pope is speaking,—not always as orators speak, it is true, but gravely, at least, and with that indefinable air of dignity which the habit of command seldom fails to impart. The language is sonorous, and if you have had the good sense to unlearn your barbarous application of English sounds—cunningly devised by Nature herself to keep damp fogs and cold winds out of the mouth—to Italian vowels, which the same judicious mother framed with equal cunning to let soft and odoriferous airs into it, you will ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... same time every beginner should be content to devote two or three of his first days to the Nursery slopes, learning the elements of good Ski-ing before dashing off on an excursion. As I know from painful experience, there is much to unlearn in what one has picked up by the light of Nature. Scrambling down a run, crashing and sitting on one's Skis, may be great fun the first day, but is tiring and humiliating as time goes on. It is infinitely preferable to learn the knack of Ski-ing tidily, and thereby keeping ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... 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
... Mr. Valentine: you must excuse us all. Women have to unlearn the false good manners of their slavery before they acquire the genuine good manners of their freedom. Don't think Gloria vulgar (Gloria turns, astonished): she is not ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... Schools. These excellent schools—one for boys, one for girls, and 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
... 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 back to her ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... not learn that 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 ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... crafty servants or selfish relations; and grew old and fanciful and petulant before their time. It seems a sad waste of life that! Because so many of them are spirits that could have loved finely and devotedly all the time. But here," she said, "they unlearn their caprices, and live a life by strict rule—and they go out hence to have the care of children, or to tend broken lives into tranquillity—and some of them, nay most of them, find heavenly lovers of their own. They are odd, ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was founded, can possibly be wrong. Such was a very natural view for the Chinaman to take when first brought really face to face with the West; and such is the view that in spite of modern educational progress is still very widely held. The people of a country do not unlearn in a day the long lessons of the past. He was quite a friendly mandarin, taking a practical view of national dress, who said in conversation: "I can't think why you foreigners wear your clothes so tight; it must be very difficult to ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... as King Hal to the number of those who fed at his cost. But it was plain my presence or absence would be of as little importance in his eyes as that of one of his blue-coated serving-men. My cousins were mere cubs, in whose company I might, if I liked it, unlearn whatever decent manners, or elegant accomplishments, I had acquired, but where I could attain no information beyond what regarded worming dogs, rowelling horses, and following foxes. I could only ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the special savour Of the product of the churn, Still the difference in flavour I'm beginning to unlearn. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... bonfire visible to London, alarming her guilty towers, and shaking the Monument with an ague fit: all done by a little vial of phosphor in a clown's fob! How he must grin, and shake his empty noddle in clouds, the Vulcanian epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of Science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that phosphor will ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... convention, 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, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... was scarcely a happy one. It did not take MacDowell long to realise that, if he expected to conform to the Stuttgart requirements, he would be compelled to unlearn all that he had already acquired—would have virtually, so far as his technique was concerned, to begin de novo. Rubinstein himself, MacDowell was told by one of the students, would have had to reform his pianistic manners if he had placed himself under the guidance of the Stuttgart ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... it! To this is to be added, that when virtue is become habitual, when the temper of it is acquired, what was before confinement ceases to be so by becoming choice and delight. Whatever restraint and guard upon ourselves may be needful to unlearn any unnatural distortion or odd gesture, yet in all propriety of speech, natural behaviour must be the most easy and unrestrained. It is manifest that, in the common course of life, there is seldom any ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change—that monstrous, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearn'd, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learn'd. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing Lady Prioress and the broad-speaking gap-tooth'd ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... don't want you to begin that way. Start without a pad, and you never will have to unlearn what you get. That's my advice. I'm going to set him at a gallop now. Stand straight and ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... 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 ourselves on the ground, and barricading our heads with bricks, we waited ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... us that to make money, and to be successful, are the highest aims possible. And there are many similar lessons which are being daily learnt in the world school. Now, when we become scholars of Christ, we have to unlearn a great deal of this. Instead of finding the text, "every man for himself," placed conspicuously before us, we see another, and quite opposite command—"No man liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself." We were taught in that other school outside that to make money and to succeed ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... know, Barbreck," said he, "I would not care to say much about what your nobleman has to learn or unlearn? As for the gallantry—good Lord, now!—did you ever hear of one of my house leaving his men to shift for themselves when ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Buddha and the great knowledge. I went and learned the art of love with Kamala, learned trading with Kamaswami, piled up money, wasted money, learned to love my stomach, learned to please my senses. I had to spend many years losing my spirit, to unlearn thinking again, to forget the oneness. Isn't it just as if I had turned slowly and on a long detour from a man into a child, from a thinker into a childlike person? And yet, this path has been very good; and yet, the bird in my chest has not died. But ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... and though she really thought she spoke the truth, she made them say such odd things, that it was no wonder Lady Barbara thought they had very queer notions of education, and that her niece had nothing to do but to unlearn their lessons. Thus: ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of an English clergyman by the name of Penrose, and she wrote English history as such a person might be supposed to write it. With every intention to be honest, her book has many facts and opinions which boys and girls will have to take more time to unlearn than they spent in learning, unless they intend to be children ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... this 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 having ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 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, as fashions, the same rule will hold; ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... 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 possessed ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... other birds, raise the 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 be not mending its manners in this respect. It has but little to unlearn or 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 and finely modeled nest of the goldfinch or ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... as hard 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 ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... Germany," answered Cleveland; "and Ernest cannot well unlearn what he knows already. My dear Maltravers, the boy is not like most clever young men. He must either go through action, and adventure, and excitement in his own way, or he will be an idle dreamer, or an impracticable enthusiast ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... good Irishman makes the best officer, while perhaps the least teachable is the Londoner. A countryman is fresh clay to the potter's hands, the Londoner has much to unlearn ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... Many of them are necessarily incomplete, on account of the elementary character of the work; but it is hoped that this incompleteness has never been allowed to become untruth, and that the pupil will not afterwards have to unlearn anything the ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... Munich, from whom Agassiz learned much, and had nothing to unlearn, was the anatomist and physiologist Doellinger. He published little, but he seems to have been the founder of modern embryological investigation, and to have initiated his two famous pupils, first Von Baer, and then Agassiz, into at least the rudiments ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... of our food. Mr. Chesterton cries out, like the Cyclops in the play, against those who complicate the life of man, and tells us to eat 'caviare on impulse,' instead of 'grape nuts on principle.'[59] But since we cannot unlearn our knowledge, Mr. Chesterton is only telling us to eat caviare on principle. The physician, when he knows the part which mental suggestion plays in the cure of disease, may hate and fear his knowledge, but he cannot divest ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... young Scottish clerk, who had spent a year only in the far Athabasca district. He had not depended on birth or influence for his advancement, was not yet wholly immersed in the traditions or prejudices of either company, and had consequently nothing to unlearn. Montreal became the Canadian headquarters of the company, but now the annual meeting of the traders where he as Governor presided, was held at Norway House. The offices in London were united, and thus the affairs of the fur trade were provided for and outward peace at least was guaranteed. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... was your age,—though no woman, I hope, was ever the worse for my harmless lovemaking. But Thelma is different from most women,—she has a strange nature,—moreover, she has a heart and a memory,—if she once learns the meaning of love, she will never unlearn the lesson. Now, I thought, that like most young men of your type, you might, without meaning any actual evil, trifle with her—play with ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... always hopeful," was the verdict of the most refined and clear-sighted woman who has yet explored the rough mining villages of the Rocky Mountains. There is apt to be a certain coarse virtue in rude health; as the Germanic races were purest when least civilized, and our American Indians did not unlearn chastity till they began to decay. But even where vigor and vice are found together, they still may hold a promise for the next generation. Out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. Parisian wickedness is not so discouraging merely because it is wicked, as from a suspicion ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... like a clown in regal purple dressed: 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 laboured nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile. Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play, These sparks with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman wore yesterday; And but so mimic ancient wits at best, As apes our ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the spreading of Judaism. "Even," says he, "if you yourself remain true to your religion through the influence of the excellent instruction of your parents, yet there is no small danger that your children by such a marriage may be beguiled away by bad customs to unlearn the true religion of the one only God."[299] Throughout, Philo is true to the mission of Israel in its highest sense. That mission is not assimilation, and it is to be brought about by no easy method of mixing with the surrounding people. It can ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... of the Thirty-nine Articles, is dead. He dismisses Predestination, a vindictive God, and Everlasting Torment. He speaks of the very "prison" where Christ is said to have preached after his death, as a place "where spirits surely unlearn many a bias, many a self-wrought blindness, many a heedless error." Hell is therefore a place of purgation, which is certainly an infinite improvement on the orthodox idea of eternal and irremediable woe, however ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... "the 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 ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... miserably with herself upon the disastrous result of her experiment. She tried to believe that her Tom's madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do it. "No," she said, "his HANDS are not mad; they could not unlearn so old a habit in so brief a time. Oh, this is a heavy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seed may not be set free. There are some few who leap 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 continuity in ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... conscience gets into trouble, say to yourself: "There is a time to die, and a time to live; a time to learn the Law, and a time to unlearn the Law; a time to hear the Gospel, and a time to ignore the Gospel. Let the Law now depart, and let the Gospel enter, for now is the right time to hear the Gospel, and not the Law." However, when the conflict of conscience is over and external duties must be performed, close your ears to ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... possession of the supreme ducal authority but a few weeks, not long enough to unlearn the tone of command and the quick power of decision which had distinguished him as ambassador, when he had been chosen with the unanimous approval of this august assembly, to conciliate the court of Rome in the hour of the Republic's great emergency. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... real estate agent!" reflected Croyden. "The man who, according to our way of thinking, is the acme of hustle and bustle and business, and schemes to trap the unwary. Truly, the Eastern Shore has much to learn—or we have much to unlearn! Well, I have tried the one—and failed. Now, I'm going to try the other. It seems to promise ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... historical progress. Other costs will come, if we are worthy; other lessons there will be to learn. I anticipate a place for brave and wise restrictions,—for I am no Red Republican,—as well as for brave and generous expansions. Lessons to learn, errors to unlearn, there will surely be; tasks to attempt, and disciplines to practise; but once place the nation in the condition of health, once get it at one with its own heart, once get it out of these aimless eddies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... to-day, or the financial crises and panics of to-morrow, or to some new field of British effort, to be developed in a year or two; but limited to that time only, when men shall cease the strife of commerce, abandon the pursuit of wealth, yield the palm of enterprise, and unlearn the love of money and its power. There has been nothing spasmodic in this; nothing fitful, alluring, and evanescent; nothing that held out a hope to the enterprising man, and deceived him in all the essential conditions of its fulfillment in the ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... you must establish a character that will serve you all your life." As habit strengthens with age, and character becomes formed, any turning into a new path becomes more and more difficult. Hence, it is often harder to unlearn than to learn; and for this reason the Grecian flute-player was justified who charged double fees to those pupils who had been taught by an inferior master. To uproot an old habit is sometimes a more painful thing, and vastly more difficult, than to wrench out a tooth. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... that Europe has ever produced, had to be taught from the beginning on the new soil, the elements of the higher manhood they so desperately needed. They had learned no first lesson in Europe, and therefore their first lesson in America was to unlearn the very things that constituted their central life and ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... been defined 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
... Morality,' quoth he, 'I must e'en unlearn some of the tricks of my trade. Od's feet, man, if ye object to me, what the henker would ye think of some whom I have known? However, let that pass. It is time that we were at the wars, for our good swords will not bide ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... not realized. As a beginner, her first steps were necessarily slow; but she took pains, and had no bad habits or evil accents to unlearn, and after a while she "got hold" of the language and went on more rapidly. Marian's fluent chatter stimulated her to try to talk as fast also, though Mademoiselle Bougereau, their teacher, found a great deal of fault with Marian, and said that ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... who had thus attained to wisdom, not of words, but of deeds, was, as it were, in an impregnable fortress that could neither crumble into ruin nor be lost by treachery. And so Antisthenes, being asked what was the most essential point of learning, answered, "To unlearn what is evil." That is to say, to the Cynic conception, men were born with a root of evil in them in the love of pleasure; the path of wisdom was a weaning of soul and body by practice from the allurements of pleasure, until both were so perfectly accustomed to its denial as to ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... different significance from what it always did at home. I can see easily enough that if I wish to profit by this tour and come to a correct understanding of the matters of interest connected with it, I must studiously and faithfully unlearn a great many things I have somehow absorbed concerning Palestine. I must begin a system of reduction. Like my grapes which the spies bore out of the Promised Land, I have got every thing in Palestine on too large a scale. Some of my ideas were wild ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... every Individuall Man, and Woman, Learn'd, or unlearn'd, Honest, or Dishonest: In the due ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... finely said, should not be transplanted at fifty. A man who, having left England when a boy, returns to it after thirty or forty years passed in India, will find, be his talents what they may, that he has much both to learn and to unlearn before he can take a place among English statesmen. The working of a representative system, the war of parties, the arts of debate, the influence of the press, are startling novelties to him. Surrounded on every side by new machines and new tactics, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... He had yet to unlearn Captain Clubbe's unconscious teaching that a man's feelings are his own concern and no other has any interest or right to share in them, except one woman, and even she ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... colored race were about as intelligent as Sam's view of themselves. But, for once, I had always had so much to do with fugitive slaves, and had studied the whole subject with such interest, that I found not much to learn or unlearn as to this one point. Their courage I had before seen tested; their docile and lovable qualities I had known; and the only real surprise that experience brought me was in finding them so little demoralized. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... something else; one must find out what it is. Is it something awfully queer?—you blush!—something barely decent? All the greater incentive to curiosity! Curiosity's an immense motive; we shall have tremendous sport. They all do it; it's only a question of how. Of course I've everything to unlearn; but what is life, as Jane Highmore says, but a lesson? I must get all I can, all she can give me, from Jane. She can't explain herself much; she's all intuition; her processes are obscure; it's the spirit that swoops down and catches her up. But ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... learn"—here Gwendolen looked as if she were going to speak, but Klesmer lifted up his hand and said, decisively, "I know. You have exercised your talents—you recite—you sing—from the drawing-room standpunkt. My dear Fraeulein, you must unlearn all that. You have not yet conceived what excellence is: you must unlearn your mistaken admirations. You must know what you have to strive for, and then you must subdue your mind and body to unbroken discipline. Your mind, I say. For you must not be thinking ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... ahead, and is to-day one of the half-dozen leaders: I shall have a good deal to say about him in a later part of this book. Vlaminck a few years ago had the misfortune to learn a recipe for making attractive and sparkling pictures; he is now, I understand, in retirement trying to unlearn it. Rouault is a very interesting artist of whom we see little; from what I have seen I should be inclined to fear that a taste for romance and drama is too often suffered to smother his remarkable gift for painting. Marquet, with gifts equal ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... like what you only like too much, You do like what, if given you at your 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
... types were. Meantime, the student who supposed classifications to be matters of moment, and who laboriously learned to label the animals and birds of his acquaintance with an authoritative Latin name, was perpetually obliged to unlearn what he had acquired, as a new classifier brought new resources of hair-splitting pursuit of a supposed type or ideal to bear on the subject. Where, for example, our great ornithologists of the early part of the century, such as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... 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 ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... putting them 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. Think of what they did under Montrose, and be sure that they will show the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... translators of the long-lost and lately-found 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, and do ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... inductive research; although, when we had fairly recovered our composure, and bad leisurely excogitated the matter, we might have come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one, after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... difficulties that 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 realise in how near a neighbourhood 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 through ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... 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 ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... 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. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
