"Conversant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ago. But it is also true that a good part of the reduction in the price of oil is due to the abundant production of the petroleum wells, which have furnished us so lavish a supply. The principal charges against this trust, made by those who were conversant with its operations, have never been that it was particularly oppressive to consumers of oil; but that, in the attempt to crush out its competitors, it has not hesitated to use, in ways fair and foul, its enormous strength and ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... The subjects of the poems are often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess, by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the present arrangement all his poetical translations will be ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... these days, and was in the habit of seeing Mr Vavasor frequently. Indeed, he had not left London since the memorable occasion on which he had pitched his rival down the tailor's stairs at his lodgings. He had made himself pretty well conversant with George Vavasor's career, and had often shuddered as he thought what might be the fate of any girl who might trust herself to marry ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... the same as to need no remark), it is admitted on all hands to be derived from one or other of the Semitic languages, the Hebrew or the Arabic. It is customery with the mathematical historians to refer it to the Arabic, they being in general more conversant with it than with the Hebrew. The Arabic being a smaller hand than the Hebrew, a dot was used instead of the circle for marking the "place" at which the hiatus of any "denomination" occurred. If we obtained our cipher from ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... duties of a civil jury. They have surely enough to do in weighing and determining the larger questions of policy, without entering into the minute details necessarily involved in the consideration of railways, roads, bridges, and canals. These should be transferred to parties conversant with such subjects, and responsible to the public for their decisions. Besides this, the direct pecuniary loss to Scotland by the present system of sending witnesses to London—though personally I have no reason to complain—is quite enormous, and demands attention in a national ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... ready and conversant with the Greek tongue, yet he did not use it everywhere; but chiefly he avoided it in the senate-house, insomuch that having occasion to employ the word monopolium (monopoly), he first begged pardon for being obliged to ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Rabatta by name, was short and deformed of person and withal flat-cheeked and flat-nosed, insomuch that never a Baroncio(1) had a visage so misshapen but his would have shewed as hideous beside it; yet so conversant was this man with the laws, that by not a few of those well able to form an opinion he was reputed a veritable storehouse of civil jurisprudence. The other, whose name was Giotto, was of so excellent a wit that, let Nature, mother of all, operant ever by continual revolution of the heavens, fashion ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the stranger, and entered into conversation with him willingly enough. He found him an intelligent and clever man, with a tone and manner superior, in many points, to his dress and equipage. He seemed to speak with authority, and was conversant with the great world of London, with the court, and the camp. He knew something also of France, and its self-called great monarch. He spoke with a shrug of the shoulder and an Alas! of the court of Saint Germain, and the exiled royal family ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... who knows nothing but books, must be ignorant even of them. 'Books do not teach the use of books.' How should he know anything of a work who knows nothing of the subject of it? The learned pedant is conversant with books only as they are made of other books, and those again of others, without end. He parrots those who have parroted others. He can translate the same word into ten different languages, but he knows nothing of the thing which it means in any one of them. He stuffs ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... to a vulgar, illiterate, cockneyfied, dirty, dandified linendraper's shopman, in the person of Tittlebat Titmouse. In the midst of his distresses his attention is directed to a "Next of Kin" advertisement. It relates to him and to the Yatton property; and if you be the least conversant with stage effect, you know what is coming: though the author thinks he is leaving you in a state of agonising suspense by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... now to claim all my attention in different Manner from that in which they have been used to receive it, as they are now arrived at that age when it is necessary for them in some measure to become conversant with the World, My Augusta is 17 and her sister scarcely a twelvemonth younger. I flatter myself that their education has been such as will not disgrace their appearance in the World, and that THEY will ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... qualified to judge respecting this. We have his testimony most explicitly denying the natural right of property in slaves, and declaring that the Constitution did not recognize the equity of its extension in the new States or Territories. Who was there more conversant with the genius of our country than Washington; and yet how full is his testimony to the evil of slavery; its want of natural right to support it, and the necessity of its speedy suppression and abolition? Is it possible that he, himself a slaveholder ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... a mug of punch upon him; then he turned for the door, ordering the dog drivers to follow. But the warmth and promise of rest were too tempting, and they objected strenuously. The Kid was conversant with their French patois, and followed ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... no parallel to the women of America during the last year's war. They were fully alive to its issues, intelligently conversant with its causes, its purposes and possibilities; they studied camp locations, conditions and military rules; and through the hand the heart found constant expression, as many a company of grateful boys can testify. The experience of this war ought to have effectually destroyed the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... one, conversant with the writings of Johnson, fail to discern his hand in this passage of the Dedication to John Warren, Esq. of Pembrokeshire, though it is ascribed to Warren ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... No doubt, however, he knows very little. It is for that reason that I wish to intrust him to you. You will polish him up for me and make him conversant with everything. My desire is that in a year or two he should know everything about the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... first time. She did not understand Italian, but, under the guidance of a competent master, she memorized the unknown words, pronunciation and all, so perfectly that no one suspected but that she was perfectly conversant with the liquid accents of that "soft bastard Latin" of the South. Success alone justified so dangerous an experiment. The audience was most fashionable and critical, and the reception of the new singer was of ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... dispense with further argument as to the grant of a Transvaal Constitution, as I see the course we have adopted does commend itself to the good sense of all Parties in this country and is sustained at almost every point by almost every person conversant with South African affairs. ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... are now introduced is about thirty feet square, and as you look around you perceive the hangings on the walls and the rich decorations of the ceiling. Here are placards on the walls, which, your guide will tell you, if you are not conversant with the Chinese tongue, bear on them sentences from the writings of Confucius, Mencius, and others, with exhortations to do nothing against integrity or virtue, to venerate ancestors and to be careful not to ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... battalion to which he belonged, into the service of Prussia and placed on the retired list of the latter with a very small pension. He did not seem at all satisfied with this arrangement. He had served in several campaigns against the French in Germany, Italy and France, and was well conversant in ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... my fellow-traveller spoke sensibly on the subject, with which the experience of thirteen years had made him perfectly conversant. I began to apprehend that we also had taken too flattering a view of a settler's life as it must be in the backwoods. Time and our own personal knowledge will be the surest test, and to that we must bow. We are ever prone to ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... their own religion, who had a considerable army to support them; rather than submit to so infamous an usurper as Cromwell, or such a bloody and ignominious conventicle as the Rump. And I have often heard, not only our friends the Dissenters, but even our common enemy the Conformists, who are conversant in the history of those times, freely confess, that considering the miserable situation the Irish were then in, they could not have thought of a braver or more virtuous attempt; by which they might have been instruments of restoring the lawful monarch, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... substance of to-day, and thus make it a bright transparency ... to seek resolutely the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents and ordinary characters with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me was dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was there.... These perceptions came too late.... I had ceased to be a writer of ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... another lady, but before I could reply, her companion answered for me: "The ability of these ladies is so great that they would be incapable of such feelings." A guest of their own, who had spent much time in Shanghai, was thoroughly conversant with foreign dress and manners; she described the former with great originality, but admitted that even she was baffled by one thing: "The spotted webbing with which foreign ladies cover their face, is it worn for purposes of concealment or as an aid to the eyesight?" My answer that it ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... that the endowment for which we ask will encourage future instructors to imitate the example of their predecessors. I have been conversant with many schools, I have not known one in which the principles of mental and moral philosophy, of the English and the Latin language, and of the fine arts have been more thoroughly and faithfully studied than in Abbot ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... strange to any one not conversant with the facts of the case, that the small, sparsely populated village should require the services of a curate, and especially a hardworking man like Mr. Anderson; but a sad affliction had befallen the young vicar of Sandycliffe; the result of some ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... defends him against Dryden's censure. But Dennis regrets his ignorance of poetic art and the disadvantages under which he lay from not being conversant with the ancients. If he had known his Sallust, he would have drawn a juster picture of Caesar; and if he had read Horace "Ad Pisones," he would have made a better Achilles. He complains that he makes the good and the bad perish promiscuously; and that in "Coriolanus"—a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... all the problems respecting the Old Testament and original sin, which many learned persons, as good Christians as Dr. Kennedy, did not hesitate to reject. He then showed the doctor, in answer to the latter's rather intolerant assertion of the omnipotence of the Bible, how conversant he was with the subject by quoting several Christian authors who thought differently. He quoted Bishop Watson, who, while professing Christianity, did not attribute such authority to the contents of the Bible. He also mentioned the Waldenses, who were such good Christians that they ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... have been given on a previous page; the salaries allowed them, as a rule, can scarcely be called too liberal, and unfortunately the Court of Directors does not at present feel that it is justified in sanctioning any pension scheme. Those of my readers who are conversant with the working of Public Offices will recognize that this decision of the Directors deprives the service of one great incentive to hard and continuous work and of a powerful factor in the maintenance of an effective discipline, and ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... conversant with the literature of playing cards will be the Knave of Clubs, shown in Fig. 2, which is one of the fragments of a pack of cards found, in 1841, by Mr. Chatto, in the wastepaper used to form the pasteboard covers of a book. These cards ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... shown much feeling at the loss which they, too, have sustained,—more than might have been expected, when it is considered that few of them are conversant with the English language, and that to those few English poetry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the alkahest of the alchymists, by means of which the different substances in the chemical constitution of precious stones might have been united as well as crystallised. One would have thought, that a philosopher, so conversant in the operations of subterraneous fire, would have perceived, that there is but one general principle of fluidity or dissolution, and that ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... years do live full well; which if we find ourselves the first year not able to maintain, then will we in the next year come down to Oxford fare, where many great, learned, and ancient fathers and doctors are continually conversant; which if our purses stretch not to maintain neither, then may we after, with bag and wallet, go a-begging together, hoping that for pity some good folks will give us their charity and at every man's door to sing a Salve Regina, whereby ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of sailors are not few, as those assert who are conversant in maritime affairs. Amongst others, is the custom, pretty well known, of whistling for a wind. A gentleman told me, that, on his first voyage, being then very young, and ignorant of sea usages, he was in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... poetry is not inevitable; not inevitable enough. But Wordsworth's poetry, when he is at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself. It might seem that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem, but wrote his poem for him. He has no style. He was too conversant with Milton not to catch at times his master's manner, and he has fine Miltonic lines; but he has no assured poetic style of his own, like Milton. When he seeks to have a style he falls into ponderosity and pomposity. In the Excursion we have his style, as an artistic product of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... industrial arts, when life was less crowded and when there were fewer world languages. Even less than a hundred years ago a man was an accomplished cosmopolitan if he knew French and his own mother tongue. To-day he wants and ought to be conversant with French, German, and Spanish, at the very least, besides English, and before long he will have to tackle Russian and Japanese. As a matter of fact in some of the European countries and in South America the school children actually spend ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... Latin, and his words were of great rarity, it may excite inquiry how poor Bunyan was conversant with is opinions. This is easily solved. Foxe gives a translation of Wicliffe's doctrines in his Martyrology, the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fashionable streets of London one can hardly fail to be struck with the well-dressed look of gentlemen of all ages. The special point in which the Londoner excels all other citizens I am conversant with is the hat. I have not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a statue to the wisest Grecian, the Senate determined[6] Pythagoras to be meant, preferring him in their judgements before the divine Socrates, whom their Gods pronounc'd the wisest. Some think him a Iew by birth, but most agree that hee was much conversant amongst the learneder sort, & Priests of that Nation, by whom he was informed of many secrets, and perhaps, this opinion, which he vented afterwards in Greece, where he was much opposed by ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... we did not set out without considerable grumbling from the voyagers of both Companies respecting the overlading of their dogs. However we left the matter to be settled by our friends at the fort who were more conversant with winter travelling than ourselves. Indeed the loads appeared to us so great that we should have been inclined to listen to the complaints of the drivers. The weight usually placed upon a sledge drawn by three dogs cannot at the commencement ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... controlling. The Governor was an illiterate person, but of generous, confiding, and susceptible impulses; and the elder Mather was precisely fitted to acquire an ascendency over such a character. He had been twice abroad, in his early manhood and in his later years, had knowledge of the world, been conversant with learned men in Colleges and among distinguished Divines and Statesmen, and seen much of Courts and the operations of Governments. With a more extended experience and observation than his son, his deportment was more dignified, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... had no Boswell. My books have been translated into all civilized tongues, my sayings are as familiar in men's mouths "as household words," and though about me the world may know little, no one can be considered well educated who is not conversant with my books. ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of his time at Bankton in religious solitude; and one most intimately conversant with him assures me that the traces of that delightful converse with God which he enjoyed in it might easily be discerned in the solemn yet cheerful countenance with which he often came out of his closet. Yet his exercises there must sometimes have been very mournful, considering ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... time was drifting into Conservatism; and also a man of strong and subtle character to whom questions of ethics were at all times as important as questions of pure literature. Above all, he was a scholar, specially conversant with England and English letters. He was, for instance, the "French critic on Milton," on whom Matthew Arnold wrote one of his most attractive essays; and he was fond of maintaining—and proving—that when French people did make a serious study of ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... telegraph offices in Japan, and over twenty million messages are annually despatched therefrom. I think it will be admitted that—especially in view of the difficulties occasioned by the necessity of the operators in the telegraph offices being conversant to some extent with the characteristics of two absolutely different descriptions of languages—the progress made by Japan, and the development and extension of the telegraph service of the ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... illustrious gentleman, but Pancho cannot be prevailed upon to sit either to an artist or to a photographer. Whenever the subject is broached by me, El Rey del Orbe grins, shakes his head knowingly, and observes, in the only English with which he is conversant: ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Gentleman's Library Manual,' 1827, is his best-known work, although from a literary standpoint it is a poor concern; he also wrote 'Gates' to the French, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac, 'unlocked by new and easy methods.' Goodhugh was conversant with several of the Oriental and many European languages. His knowledge of books was a very extensive and profound one, and as a literary bookseller he is an interesting figure in the annals of bibliopolic history. Fifty years ago many good books ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... Whitaker's astonishment that Margaret Johnson should make the confession she appears to have done, in a clear case of imposture, few of his readers will be disposed to participate, who are at all conversant with the trials of reputed witches in this country. Confessions were so common on those occasions, that there is, I believe, not a single instance of any great number of persons being convicted of witchcraft at one time, some of whom did not make a confession ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... practical observation were connected with an eclipse which he observed from his father's house in Winchester Street. It also appears that he had studied theoretical branches of astronomy so far as to be conversant with the application of mathematics ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... camp, to a lieutenant of infantry at the time. So that, you observe, I am altogether militaire. As a child, I was wakened up with the drum and fife, and went to sleep with the bugles; as a girl, I became quite conversant with every military manoeuvre; and now that I am a woman grown, I believe that I am more fit for the baton than one-half of those marshals who have gained it. I have studied little else but tactics and have as my ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... to translate now the bible into English, since the four great doctors durst never do this? This replication, is so lewd, that it needeth no answer, no but stillness, either courteous scorn; for the great doctors were none English men, neither they were conversant among English men, neither in case they could the language of English, but they ceased never till they had holy writ in their mother tongue, of their own people. For Jerome, that was a Latin man of birth, translated the Bible, both out of Hebrew and out of Greek, into Latin, and ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... the most frightful discoveries we have made since women began to vote. When Mr. Dorer speaks of the innate conservatism of women he shows that he is not conversant with the woman movement. It is true that there are a few intensely partisan women, who can be held by party ties, but the rank and file observe no such allegiance. They read and study, but in addition they go to the legislative halls, ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... employment, that which is most traduced to contempt is that the government of youth is commonly allotted to them; which age, because it is the age of least authority, it is transferred to the disesteeming of those employments wherein youth is conversant, and which are conversant about youth. But how unjust this traducement is (if you will reduce things from popularity of opinion to measure of reason) may appear in that we see men are more curious what they put into a new vessel than into a vessel seasoned; and ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... so conversant as his cousin in the ways of cooks and gentleman's servants, made no reply ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... imaginary state of things rise up in minds that possess a power and facility in combining images. Mr. Pitt's ambition was conversant with old situations in the old state of things, which furnish nothing to the imagination, though much to the wishes. In his endeavours to realise his father's plan of reform, he was probably as sincere as a being, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... corporation may feel for its collection is very different from the undivided strength of the collector's love of his gallery. And even if we were to admit the possibility of an ideal corporation consisting of men perfectly conversant with art, and animated with passion equal to the collector's passion, the history of its labour would still be written in the words "vexatious discussion and lost chances". The rule that no picture is to be purchased until it has been seen and approved of by the corporation forbids ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... slaves. Wherever they went, there went death, and that was all. Compare this with ordinary wars; compare it with the annals of the French Revolution. No one, perhaps, has yet painted the wrongs of the French populace so terribly as Dickens in his "Tale of Two Cities"; yet what man, conversant with slave-biographies, can read that narrative without feeling it weak beside the provocations to which fugitive slaves testify? It is something for human nature that these desperate insurgents revenged such wrongs by death alone. Even that fearful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... knew of each other's presence, we could not infer from the result that the design of both or of either was frustrated. One of them may have intended to frustrate the other's design, and to effect his own. Or both may have been equally conversant with the properties of the matter and the relation of the forces concerned (whatever the cause, origin, or nature, of these forces and properties), and the result may have been according to ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... of the St. Legers, a very interesting gentleman was spending a few days; he bore the common name of Chase, but he was no common man. Though still in the prime of life, he had traveled the world over, made himself conversant with all languages, manners, and customs, studied into all fanaticisms and all religions, and if he had ended in having faith in none, as such people often do, he admirably kept his ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Jerome, the poet's remains are now covered by a huge marble monument in the cinque-cento style, adorned by a bas-relief of his funeral and a statue of him by Fabris. Whatever may be said regarding the artistic merits of this monument, no one who has read the poet's immortal epic, and is conversant with the sad incidents of his life, can stand on the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... that two of his relations who were conversant with the subject, together with a distinguished geologist and a superintendent of mines, had been down to Hellebergene with Rafael, and had found that his statements were well grounded, he was captured and borne off in triumph ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... poetical world has sustained are sufficiently known by those who are conversant with the few invaluable fragments of Menander, who might have interested us perhaps more than Homer: for he was evidently the domestic poet, and the lyre he touched was formed of the strings of the human heart. He was the painter of passions, and the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the changes of the summer clouds. To a poet, nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, must be familiar to his imagination: he must be conversant with all that is awfully vast, or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety; for ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... that bridge and tower was near, (So was by name the wandering damsel hight) Grappling with Roland stood the Sarzan peer, And would into that river pitch the knight. She, conversant with Brava's cavalier, The miserable county knew aright; And mighty marvel in that dame it raised To see him rove, a ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Such Bills are not so numerous as Bills relating to Scotland, but nevertheless it is most desirable that in the discussion of a Welsh Bill minorities in Wales should be represented not by members sitting for English constituencies, but by representatives chosen by themselves who would be fully conversant with Welsh conditions. In the absence of such representation there will always remain the feeling that the minority has been unfairly treated, and it is this sense of unfairness that so often calls forth opposition ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... merest notion of matters military were most of the men conversant, and alike in ordinary marching—when it was most difficult for them even to maintain regularity of step—or in more complicated drilling, there was a lack of the right spirit, no go, no gusto—scores and scores of them running round doing something, going through a routine, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... would say, "require that all who are engaged in them should be minutely conversant with their state of progress. I have long enough taken the statements of parties at a distance: now I must see and ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... has been said "that Colonel Burr was not a deep-read lawyer; that he showed himself abundantly conversant with the general knowledge of the profession, and that he was skilful in suggesting doubts and questions; but that he exhibited no indications of a fondness for the science, nor of researches into its abstruse doctrines; that he seemed, indeed, to hold it and its administration ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Americanizer that it alone is adequate. There is, however, one other influence which if brought to bear, especially in the large communities, would be helpful. I refer to the Protestant faith. For the most part Bohemians conversant with their history as a people are naturally hostile to the Catholic Church, and when the restraints which held them in their own country are removed by emigration, many of the more enlightened quietly drop their allegiance, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... 1. is conversant about Letters, 2. of which it maketh Words, 3. Grammatica, 1. versatur circa Literas, 2. ex quibus componit Voces, verba, 3. and teacheth how to utter, write, 4. put together and part them rightly. docetque eloqui, scribere, 4. ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... there under circumstances as romantic as any we read of in books, and that this marriage, privately carried out, had been followed by an immediate voyage of the happy couple on one of the White Star steamers. With the rest you are conversant. I do not need to say anything about what has followed ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... Conversant with the French, German, and Italian Languages, and well acquainted with Botany and Entomology, is desirous of obtaining some permanent Employment. The most satisfactory References as to competency and respectability of family and connexions can ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... of our time, though conversant with the PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, and HOLY WAR, are apparently little aware of the glowing genius, and fervent piety, and strong sense, and picturesque imagery, and racy, vigorous English, that mark the many other writings of the honored tinker ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... medical professor in England, and between whom and herself there had long subsisted a mutual friendship. I mentioned this to Dr. Poignand, but he rather discountenanced the idea, observing that he saw no necessity for it, and that he supposed Dr. Fordyce was not particularly conversant with obstetrical cases; but that I would do as I pleased. After Dr. Poignand was gone, I determined to send for Dr. Fordyce. He accordingly saw the patient about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon. He however perceived no particular cause of alarm; and, on that or the next day, quoted, as ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... passion are in his soul, and he perceives they are contrary one to the other, and violently represses the inflammatory one of the two. On the other hand, in deliberations and speculations without passion (such as the contemplative part of the soul is most conversant with), if they are evenly balanced no decision takes place, but the matter is left in doubt, which is a sort of stationary position of the mind in conflicting arguments. But should there be any inclination to one of the two sides, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Discoveries and performances: To the end, that such Productions being clearly and truly communicated, desires after solid and usefull knowledge may be further entertained, ingenious Endeavours and Undertakings cherished, and those, addicted to and conversant in such matters, may be invited and encouraged to search, try, and find out new things, impart their knowledge to one another, and contribute what they can to the Grand design of improving Natural knowledge, and perfecting ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... aware myself of any complete scale of wages having been drawn up, but I have been on 10 or 12 different properties, I have conversed with several proprietors, and I am glad to say that with some of them there appears to be a disposition to meet the charge fairly and honorably. Those who are more conversant with figures than I am, will be enabled to show what the owner can afford to give for the cultivation of his property. In the mean time I would say to you, do not make any hasty bargain: take time and consider the subject, for it is one of vital interest and importance ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was not allowed to enter his head till the last was arranged: an opinion was thus cautiously received, and maturely weighed, before it was added to the general stock. As nature led him to mount from a part to the whole, he was most conversant with the beautiful, and rarely comprehended the sublime; yet, said Sagestus, with a softened tone, he was all heart, full of forbearance, and desirous to please every fellow-creature; but from a nobler motive than a love of admiration; the fumes of vanity ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... possesses is the main thing, and his absorption in these things may lead to a warped sense of the more ideal and refined relationships which are had in view by the writer in quest for degeneracy. It will still be admitted, however, by those who are conversant with the history of science, that the greatest scientific geniuses have been men of profound quietness of life and normal social development. It is to the literary and artistic genius that the seeker after abnormality has to turn; and in this field, again, the facts serve ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... the extent and variety of his learning. With a lively curiosity he pushed his inquiries into every department of knowledge, and made himself conversant with the various branches of science. But of all the subjects which presented themselves to his inquisitive mind those which relate to man in his intellectual constitution and social relations engaged and fixed his attention. His favorite branches were Intellectual Philosophy, Ethics, and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... by sober reflections upon the "position of his case." Emily Dumont was not of that class of women with whom he was accustomed to deal. He had found in her an element with which he had not before been conversant,—of which, indeed, he had read in books of poetry, but did not believe it ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... to the livery and ordered a carriage, and they all went to drive. Hanny was quite conversant with upper New York and Westchester County; but she had only been once to Brooklyn. It had quite a country aspect then; but there were beautiful drives, and Greenwood Cemetery had already ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... dreads his mother's chidings? Nay, but I will essay the wiliest craft to feed thee and me for ever. We twain are not to endure to abide here, of all the deathless Gods alone unapproached with sacrifice and prayer, as thou commandest. Better it is eternally to be conversant with Immortals, richly, nobly, well seen in wealth of grain, than to be homekeepers in a darkling cave. And for honour, I too will have my dues of sacrifice, even as Apollo. Even if my Father give it ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... up and consider at length why Saunier draws his entrance pallet with fifteen degrees draw and his exit pallet with only twelve degrees draw. To make ourselves more conversant with Saunier's method of delineating the lever escapement, we reproduce the essential features of his drawing, Fig. 1, plate VIII, of his "Modern Horology," in which he makes the draw of the locking face of the entrance pallet ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... the heroes of the fabulous ages, I was completely conversant with each of their circumstances, and for this reason. I must acknowledge, that, as the hour approached for punishment, I was apt to be troubled in mind, similarly to a patient about to undergo a disagreeable operation; but no sooner ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... proficiency in no inconsiderable number of the sister sciences is an absolute necessity. But if this is true in general, none, I think, will question the assertion that a proficient in any of the physical sciences must be fairly conversant with photography as a science, or at least as an art. If we take for example a science which has of late years made rapid strides both in Europe and America, the science of astronomy, we shall not have far to go to find convincing proof ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... in antagonism, more or less open, to the civil administration of justice. The criminal was looked on by the priest rather as a sufferer to be delivered, than an offender to be punished. All who are conversant with the lives of saints must recollect cases in which the saint performs even miracles on behalf of the condemned. Mediaeval tales are full of instances of the same feeling which prompted the Italian brigands, even in our own times, to ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... little maiden who hemmed shirts and made comfort-bags for soldiers,—each and all have been the joint doers of a great heroic work, the doing of which has been the regeneration of our era. A whole generation has learned the luxury of thinking heroic thoughts and being conversant with heroic deeds, and I have faith to believe that all this is not to go out in a mere crush of fashionable luxury and folly and frivolous emptiness,—but that our girls are going to merit the high praise given us by De Tocqueville, when he placed first among the causes of our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... I do, how utterly impossible it is for any member of the Executive to carry on his work effectively without the support of public opinion—it only remains for me to say that, as far as the nature of the case allows, I shall always be anxious that the House shall be conversant with everything ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... or of the senate, and to whose hands alone the jurisdiction of life and death was intrusted, behaved like men of polished manners and liberal education, who respected the rules of justice, and who were conversant with the precepts of philosophy. They frequently declined the odious task of persecution, dismissed the charge with contempt, or suggested to the accused Christian some legal evasion, by which he might elude the severity of the laws. Whenever they were invested with a discretionary power, they used ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... conditions, and the Moslem True Believer's simple, forthright method of reducing error is to cut off the head holding it. I don't say that this is right; I say only that, being practical and comprehensible, it commands a certain respect from the impartial observer not conversant with scriptural justification of ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the word, and very little can I remember of what he said, so hampered was I by his presence; but it was plain that he sought to entangle my uncle in his talk. That was no easy thing to do, my uncle was so temperate and logical, and so much more conversant with the Holy Scriptures than ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... the writer know what really happened, and in what order it happened, but his successful presentation will depend to some extent upon the consideration given to adapting the story to the audience. A person thoroughly conversant with the game will understand the technical terms, and may prefer the first account to the second, but those to whom the game is not familiar would need to have so much explanation of the terms used that the narration would ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... brother-in-law, a baker in London. With no greater advantages than the somewhat limited school education then given to the sons of burgesses of small provincial towns, his ardent love of literature and powerful memory enabled him to become conversant with the works of the more distinguished British authors, as well as the best translations of the classics. At the expiry of eight years he returned to Ayr, and soon after entered the employment of Charles Hay, Esq., of Edinburgh, in whose service he continued during a course ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... fall. Oft ye shall see the strongest bar of steel, That fire hath hardened to extremity, Shattered to pieces. A small bit controls The fiery steed. Pride may not be endured In one whose life is subject to command. This maiden hath been conversant with crime Since first she trampled on the public law; And now she adds to crime this insolence, To laugh at her offence, and glory in it. Truly, if she that hath usurped this power Shall rest unpunished, she then is a man, And I am none. Be she my sister's child, Or ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... mule were great curiosities, and whenever he came to town on his mule they attracted a great deal of attention. He was an exhorter in the Methodist Churches for colored people, and always had in his pocket a Testament or hymn book. He was perfectly conversant with the Bible, and could refer readily to any passage of Scripture that you might mention. He was born in 1783, and died a few years ago, having attained the age of one hundred years, his mind being as vivid and active as at any time. We shall never forget Uncle Alek and ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... wholly ignorant on the subject, though I have consulted every farmer's wife in the neighborhood on the matter. They all say that cream will go to sleep sometimes, though it usually wakes up after a few hours.* [I have since been told by an old woman conversant with sleepy cream, that a quart of milk nearly boiling hot will wake it up.] Perhaps, after all, we were too impatient, and should not have given in after only nine hours' churning. With this solitary exception our ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... of Spain, stated that he thought the proceedings should be recorded in two languages at least, and that Secretaries conversant with these languages and specially acquainted with the subject matter pending before the Conference should be selected; that, in order to have the record of the proceedings accurate, officers qualified in this way were requisite, and that it would be preferable to elect ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... are conversant about Hero's, Kings, and Princes, therefore the Morals there, should be directed to Persons engaged in Affairs of State, and at the Helm, and be of such a Nature as these; A Crown will not render a Person Happy, if he does not pursue his Duty towards ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... railed at, and scoff'd in our kind. That same Conscience is a vild terror to man's mind. Yet, faith, I care not, for I have borne many more than these, When I was conversant with the clergy beyond the seas; And he that will live in this world must not care what such say, For they are blossoms blown down, not ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... to a brave enemy for having done me an injury, and show me the man, being a Scotchman born, and having a natural love for his own country, who hath not, in these times, rather preferred a steel cap to a hat and feather, or who hath not been more conversant with drawn blades than with prayer-book; and you yourself know, father, whether, in our proceedings against the English interest, we have not uniformly had the countenance of the sincere fathers of the Scottish Church, and whether we have not been exhorted to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Yankee, and thoroughly conversant with the Yankee vernacular which he used freely. In exhibiting the General, Barnum often said to visitors that Tom Thumb's parents, and the rest of the family, were persons of the ordinary size, and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... religion has been already mentioned. The philosophy of this age compared with former ones was essentially a discussion of method. The two rival philosophies which now arose are generally placed in opposition to each other, as physical and mental respectively, that of Bacon being conversant with nature, that of Descartes with man.(364) But in truth in one respect both were united. Each was analytical; each strove to lay down a general method for investigating the sphere of inquiry which it selected. Both were reactions against the dogmatic assumptions of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... proposed to me one day that we adopt a child. My doubts as to the advisability of such a course were confirmed by Huldah, our strong staff in household help. In our section of the country servants were generally quite conversant with the intimate and personal ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... friends. By making the figures of the ladies small, and crowding them, Legume managed to get a hundred or two on the canvas. A period in their history to which Frenchmen refer with so much pleasure, and with which they are so conversant, was treated by the artist with professional zeal. The merits of the painting were carefully canvassed by the two judges. Mr. Pinchfip found it exceedingly graceful, neat, and pretty. Mr. Van Brick admired the females, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... conversant with City affairs," he said, "or did you deign to visit the spot where merchants mostly congregate, you would have heard the story, which was over the whole City yesterday, and spread dismay from Threadneedle Street to Leadenhall. The story is, that the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome, yesterday ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by a morbid sensibility and a philosophy which dims rather than enlightens. He possessed, however, many of the mental concomitants of a great poet; he loved rural retirement and romantic scenery; well appreciated the beautiful both in nature and in art; was conversant with the workings of the human heart and the history of nations; was influenced by generous emotions, and luxuriated in a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... living. She had many friends, and hospitably received many strangers at her house; many Greeks and learned men were continually about her; nor was there any foreign prince but received gifts from her and presented her again. Those who were conversant with her, were much interested, when she pleased to entertain them with her recollections of her father Scipio Africanus, and of his habits and way of living. But it was most admirable to hear her make mention of her sons, without any tears ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... harbours are in warm sheltered situations. Sir R.C. Hoare was right when he observed, that these "harbours" were generally near some Roman road or Roman settlement. It is therefore wonderful that it should not at once occur to every one conversant with the Roman occupation of this island, that all these "COL-harbours" mark the settlements, farms, outposts, or garrisons of the Roman ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... to arrive at a satisfactory settlement in foreign affairs with Bratianu than it had been with Majorescu, as the former was thoroughly conversant with all West European matters, and at the bottom of his heart was anti-German. One of the distinctions to be made between Liberals and Conservatives was that the Liberals had enjoyed a Parisian education: ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... Thoroughly conversant with the animal's habits, he knew that it must have an abiding-place—a nest. This might be near at hand. The proximity of the lagoon almost convinced ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... comprehensive the knowledge possessed by any one who proposes to instruct others, the more concisely as well as the more correctly will he present his matter. He knows how to adjust the proportions of interest in his main and incidental themes. By this test we should judge Mr. Greene to be most faithfully conversant with his subject, and to have had his knowledge stored up in his mind, uncommunicated, long enough to have well digested and assimilated it. The admirable division of his theme for treatment under twelve distinct, though closely related topics, shows something better than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... list of abbreviations and familiar names with which times past and present have supplied us, that which honest Falstaff found most pleasing to his ears, "Jack with my familiars!" is the household word with which ours are most conversant. Were not Jack the Giant-killer, Jack and the Bean-stalk, and Little Jack, the intimates of our earliest days? when we were lulled to sleep by ditties that told of Jack Sprat and his accommodating wife (an instance of the harmony in which those of opposite ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... comes from the sun. Imagine the heat we should have to endure if the sun were to approach us, or we the sun, to one 160th part of its present distance. It would not be merely as if 160 suns were shining on us all at once, but, 160 times 160, according to a rule which is well known to all who are conversant with such matters. Now, that is 25,600. Only imagine a glare 25,600 times fiercer than that of the equatorial sunshine at noon day with the sun vertical. In such a heat there is no substance we know of which would not run ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... where he makes Peter a party to finding out what he wants, totidem syllabis and totidem literis, {35} when he cannot find it totidem verbis[75] This is Protestant method: the Roman plan is viam faciam; the Protestant plan is viam inveniam.[76] The public at large begins to be conversant with the ways of wriggling out, as shown in the interpretations of the damnatory parts of the Athanasian Creed, the phrases of the Burial Service, etc. The time will come when the same public will begin to see the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Corsebank, on the stream Crawick, and afterwards to Carcoe, in the neighbourhood of Sanquhar. Instead of a course of indiscriminate reading, he now followed a system of regular study; and ere his twentieth year, was not only a respectable classical scholar, but tolerably conversant with some of the modern languages and the exact sciences. He opened an evening school for the instruction of his humble pastoral associates; and about the close of 1819, was induced to remove to Greenock, there to make the attempt of earning a livelihood by teaching. In October ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... for tunes with symmetrical eight-bar staves and the like, has always been the rule in the highest forms of music. To describe it, or be affected by it, as an abandonment of melody, is to confess oneself an ignoramus conversant only with ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... hold the labored pitching of the schooner was adding seasickness to the sufferings of the poor wretches there. Doleful cries resounded, among which one at all conversant with their language would have ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... "Specimens of Dramatic Poets contemporary with Shakespeare;" and these made Lamb known as a man conversant with our old English literature, and helped mainly to direct the taste of the public to those fine writers. The book brought repute (perhaps a little money) to him. Soon afterwards he published "The Adventures of Ulysses," which was intended to be an introduction to the reading ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... passed uncertain doors, I had heard the click of billiard balls, the sound of many voices, and the harsh laugh of Sir Guy; I knew consequently that the gentlemen were all busy at "pool," or some equally intellectual pastime, and had not yet gone to dress. I was sufficiently conversant with the habits of my own sex to be aware that no lady would willingly tarnish the freshness of her dinner toilette by coming down before the very last minute, and I anticipated therefore no further interruption than ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville |
