"Unversed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his imagination; but now there was no doubting. There, sprawled in an ugly, inhuman heap on the floor, head resting against the cushioned seat of the cab, was the figure of a man. There was no doubt that he was dead. Even Spike, young, optimistic, and unversed in the ways of death as he was, knew that he ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... as hard to get over as to swallow hot ashes or chew stones. This then has been my First Reason, a strong and a just one. By revealing the shadowy and broken powers of the adverse faction, it has certainly given new courage to a Christian man, not unversed in these studies, to fight for the Letters Patent of the Eternal King against the remnant of ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... belief were voluntary, believe in the world to come? Leila's curiosity and interest were aroused: she willingly listened to her new guide—she willingly inclined to conclusions pressed upon her, not with menace, but persuasion. Free from the stubborn associations, the sectarian prejudices, and unversed in the peculiar traditions and accounts of the learned of her race, she found nothing to shock her in the volume which seemed but a continuation of the elder writings of her faith. The sufferings of the Messiah, His sublime ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Montriveau were alike in this—they were both equally unversed in love lore. The lady's knowledge of theory was but scanty; in practice she knew nothing whatever; she felt nothing, and reflected over everything. Montriveau had had but little experience, was absolutely ignorant of theory, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... latter one failed especially disastrously. They had not been to America for nothing. They had learned the virtues of the boycott as employed by organized labour, and he, their father, Chun Ah Chun, they boycotted in his own house, Mamma Achun aiding and abetting. But Ah Chun himself, while unversed in Western culture, was thoroughly conversant with Western labour conditions. An extensive employer of labour himself, he knew how to cope with its tactics. Promptly he imposed a lockout on his rebellious progeny and erring spouse. He discharged his scores of servants, locked ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... sails of a ship caught the moonbeams. She could see the vessel plainly and that it was bearing full for the island. Alas! This might scarcely be the little Shearman boat manned by two fishermen only; even she, unversed in sea knowledge could tell that. It was as large as the Peregrine itself—certainly as ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... first shown herself particularly well disposed towards Madeleine, and had more than once invited her to come and pay her a visit in the town. Nothing had hitherto come of the invitation, for even Madeleine, unversed as she was in the ways of society, could see that nothing more was meant ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... unversed in mischief, from the skies Amidst the gathered matrons down she came, In raiment and in face to mortal eyes No more a Goddess, but an aged dame, The wife of Doryclus, of Tmarian fame. E'en venerable Beroe, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... old man," he faltered, "unversed in affairs of State. If it be true, however, that the ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... was the most self-possessed man in the court. Pale he was, it is true, but upright, clear-sighted, determined. Unversed as he was in the intricacies of the law and possessing none of the experience which characterised the counsel for the prosecution, Mr. Bakewell felt that here indeed was a foeman worthy of his steel, and that had he been trained for the bar he would not have long ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... a better chance of spending a few months at a lunatic asylum than of obtaining the Prize." A current Cambridge story at the time explained the selection. There were three examiners, the Vice-Chancellor, a man of arbitrary temper, with whom his juniors hesitated to disagree; a classical professor unversed in English Literature; a mathematical professor indifferent to all literature. The letter g was to signify approval, the letter b to brand it with rejection. Tennyson's manuscript came from the Vice-Chancellor scored all over with g's. The classical professor failed ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... was a certain Baron Asperen de Langerac, wholly unversed in diplomacy or other public affairs, with abilities not above the average. A series of questions addressed by him to the Advocate, the answers to which, scrawled on the margin of the paper, were to serve for his general instructions, showed an ingenuousness ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... primrose by the river's brim! Like Peter Bell (unversed in woodland lore), He'll miss your meaning; you will be to him A yellow primrose—that and nothing more; He'll read in you no sign Of Nature's views ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... had kept himself informed of what was going on in Vienna. He knew that when his son's attentions to Constance became marked, her guardian had compelled him to sign a promise of marriage. In this the father again saw a trap laid for his son, who in worldly matters was as unversed as a child. But Leopold Mozart did not know how the episode ended, and little suspected that future generations would see in it one of the most charming incidents in the love affairs of great men. For, when her guardian had left the house, Constance ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... in the disputes between Henry II. and his sons—Provencal should not have exercised more direct influence over English literature. It was a partly excusable mistake which made some English critics, who knew that Richard Coeur de Lion, for instance, was himself not unversed in the "manner of trobar," assert or assume, until within the present century, that it did exercise such influence. But, as a matter of fact, it did not; and the reason is sufficiently simple, or at least (for it is double rather than ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... which Fisher major sat with his pen and account-book followed the captain's speech. Of all the company present, only one failed to enrol himself. He was a new boy called Fisher minor, who, evidently worn out by the fatigues of the day and unversed in the etiquette of first-night, had sought the dame at a somewhat early hour, and received her ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... whole kuren or with neighbouring kurens, to shoot the innumerable steppe-birds of every sort, deer, and goats. Or they went out upon the lakes, the river, and its tributaries allotted to each kuren, to throw their nets and draw out rich prey for the enjoyment of the whole kuren. Although unversed in any trade exercised by a Cossack, they were soon remarked among the other youths for their obstinate bravery and daring in everything. Skilfully and accurately they fired at the mark, and swam the Dnieper against the current—a deed for which the novice was triumphantly ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... not learned in the variations of his voice, as I am in those of father and Algy, in either of which I can at once detect each fine inflection of anger, contest, or pain; but, comparatively unversed as I am in it, there sounds to me a slight, carefully smothered, yet still perceptible, intonation of disappointment—mortification. I wish that the air would give me back my words; but that it never yet was known ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... seriously injured, and that unless he slept he might die, and, quickened by the terror of what might befall her in such a case, the woman presently produced a small phial full of a brown, viscous fluid. What it might be he had no notion, being all unversed in the mysteries of the pharmacopoeia; but she told him that it had belonged to her now defunct husband, who had always said that ten drops of it would make a man ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... hayseed in his hair, and the stains of bitumen upon his gnarled hands, ate and drank of the best, seeing a glorified vision of his Lily crowned with diamonds at last. The vision faded somewhat when Nathaniel began to talk dollars and cents. Even to Uncle Jap, unversed in such high matters as finance, it seemed plain that Leveson & Company were to have the dollars, and that to him, the star-spangled epitome of Yankee grit and get-there were ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... speech he made to the motley and their friends last Monday night? That was as fine an interpretation of the ethics involved in the enforcement of law as I have ever heard or read—delivered to simple minds unversed in the science ethical. He landed hot shot into the very stronghold of the enemy and his audience saw his points. I find the mind of David Kildare rather well provisioned with the diverse ammunition needed in political warfare. The ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... been drawn to him as the one man on the spot who was likely to be of use to them. Her brother, a good, sensible fellow of some character, was nevertheless an ordinary country gentleman, given up to sport of all kinds and naturally quite unversed in the subtleties of life and character which can be studied only by those who live in the more intellectual atmosphere of cities. The same judgment would apply to his friend Kelson, a chivalrous sportsman, ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... pass over us unobserved on windy days. It is so difficult to observe when you are thinking. A man absorbed in reverie cannot see half the things that many country folk with less active brains never fail to observe. When we find people who live in the country unversed in the ways of birds, the knowledge of flowers and trees, and the habits of the simple country folk, we need not necessarily conclude that they are dull and empty-headed; the reverse is often the case. A man absorbed in business or serious affairs may love the country and yet know little of its ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... clamorous questions, and the prisoners dance for joy, and the sick men stand in the open calling down all known diseases on the head of the doctor, who has certified that they are "medically unfit for active service." At even the Mavericks might have been mistaken for mutineers by one so unversed in their natures as Mulcahy. At dawn a girls' school might have learned deportment from them. They knew that their colonel's hand had closed, and that he who broke that iron discipline would not go to the front: nothing in the world will persuade one of our soldiers, when he is ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... Bashti had issued stern injunctions against wholesale slaughter. But this was not because his heart was kind. Rather was it because his head was shrewd. Slain they would all be in the end. Bashti had never seen ice, did not know it existed, and was unversed in the science of refrigeration. The only way he knew to keep meat was to keep it alive. And in the biggest canoe house, the club house of the stags, where no Mary might come under penalty of death by ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... Now, McCarthy was unversed in the virtues of social wisdom, and, though he felt somehow the error of her position, he could not put it into definite thought; so he steered wisely, if ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... with less danger exhibit the follies of the Hotel de Rambouillet and the ruelles of the capital. The good bourgeois Gorgibus is induced by his niece and daughter, two precieuses, to establish himself in Paris. Their aspirant lovers, unversed in the affectations of the salon, are slighted and repelled; in revenge they employ their valets, Mascarille and Jodelet, to play the parts of men of fashion and of taste. The exposure and confusion of the ladies, with an indignant rebuke from Gorgibus, close the piece. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... an honour, which would certainly occur only once even in her eventful life, must not be slighted. She greatly mistrusted herself, for she had lived very quietly in her lighthouse-home, and was thoroughly unversed and inexperienced in the ways of the great world; and the thought of going into such illustrious society as that of the Duchess might well have made even more worldly-wise people than ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope |
