"Illiterate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stories spread abroad and caused great tumult and alarm. From the foundation of New England it had been the custom of the inhabitants, in matters of doubt and difficulty, to look to their ministers for counsel. So they did now; 10 but unfortunately the ministers and wise men were more deluded than the illiterate people. Cotton Mather, a very learned and eminent clergyman, believed that the whole country was full of witches and wizards who had given up their hopes of heaven and signed a covenant with 15 the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... me that this person should have assurance, in the face of the sun, to go about persuading your Highness that our age is almost wholly illiterate and has hardly produced one writer upon any subject. I know very well that when your Highness shall come to riper years, and have gone through the learning of antiquity, you will be too curious to neglect inquiring into the authors of the very age before you; and to think that this insolent, in the ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... people and their rights bore me. I am sick of both. In these modern days to be vulgar, illiterate, common and vicious, seems to give a man a marvellous infinity of rights that his honest fathers never dreamed of. Believe me, Prince, in good democracy every man should be an aristocrat; but these people in Russia who seek to thrust us out are no better than the animals in ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... so wide and so wonderful that those who look upon it with the seeing eye and the understanding heart catch glimpses of the King in His beauty through the fairness of the land that is very far off. On past the mossy stone, like an overgrown and illiterate milestone, which marks the boundary between Mershire and Salopshire; and then through a typical English village, noteworthy because the rites of Mayday, with May-queen and May-pole to boot, are still celebrated there exactly as they were celebrated some three hundred years ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... you with only a few months' preparation stood fearless at your post in Mesopotamia and won recognition by your calm collectedness and true heroism? They may say that you are but a small handful, what of the vast illiterate millions? Illiterate in what sense? Have not the ballads of these illiterates rendered into English by our Poet touched profoundly the hearts of the very elect of the West? Have not the stories of their common life appealed to the common kinship of humanity? ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... was in progress then, and the spectacle of an illiterate impostor trying to establish his claim as the rightful heir to a great estate was highly diverting to Mark Twain.—[In a letter of this period he speaks of having attended one of the Claimant's "Evenings."]—He wanted to preserve the evidence as future literary material, and Stoddard ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... work in six large quarto volumes, History, Condition, and Prospects of Indian Tribes, published by Government under his editorship, includes the substance of most of his previous writings. It is a singularly crude and illiterate production, stuffed with blunders and contradictions, giving evidence on every page of a striking unfitness either for historical or philosophical inquiry, and taxing to the utmost the patience of those who would extract what is valuable in it from its oceans ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... of this Apology does not desire it may be inferred from the foregoing remarks, that horror of Atheism, and detestation of its apostles, is confined to the low, the vulgar, the base, or the illiterate. Any such inference would be wrong, for it is certainly true that learned, benevolent, and very able Christian writers, have signalised themselves in the work of obstructing the progress of Atheism by denouncing its principles, and ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... as in other matters, important discoveries are sometimes made, and great events occasionally accomplished, by very ignoble agencies. Mat's deplorable ignorance of Painting in general, and grossly illiterate misunderstanding of the subject represented by Columbus in particular, seemed to mark him out as the last man in the world who could possibly be associated with Art Mystic in the character of guardian genius. Yet such was the proud position which he was now selected by Fate to occupy. In ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... He had promised her that night that he would care for her babe. And his life had long since shown what a promise meant to him. He knew he would be unable to learn of the child's progress directly from these women, for they were both illiterate. But Captain Julio brought an encouraging message from them, and assured Jose that he would always make inquiry for the babe on his trips down the river. Jose's long-distance dealings with the genial captain had been conducted through Juan, who had constituted himself the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was said, a fellow, whom I afterwards heard called by the name of Jim Davies, asked if I was willing to take an oath that I would be honest. I said, 'Yes.' He stood up and dictated an oath full of blasphemy, shocking with imprecations, and grossly illiterate. The eyes of the crowd fastened upon me, and some of the ruffians watched me in a scowling way with faces dark with suspicion, till I repeated the horrid language of the man Davies, and swore, after which the greater bulk of ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... her as a companion. Indeed, Frank was more than pleased, for he saw in this girl a singular character. Illiterate though she seemed, she was pretty, vivacious, and so bright that it was plain education and refinement would make her ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... lying between St. Just and the sea—a sort of common, covered with heath and furze—on which the ancient Britons have left their indelible mark, in the shape of pits and hollows and trenches, with their relative mounds and hillocks. Here, in the days of old, our worthy but illiterate forefathers had grubbed and dug and turned up every square foot of the soil, like a colony of gigantic rabbits, in order to supply the precious metal of the country to the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... middle of the nineteenth century, there was a growing feeling, originating in New England and spreading westward, that illiterate voters were a menace to sound government. Accordingly, educational tests were imposed in a number of states. These tests generally require voters to be able to ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... remarkable fact that one of the few truly original and novel ideas the past century can boast, and the one which has had the deepest influence on geology, had its origin in the brain of an illiterate Swiss chamois hunter named Perraudin. Throughout the Alps, on lofty crags, great bowlders were often found, which had no relation to the geology of the region and which were called erratics, because they had evidently come there from ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... into hypocrisy, he carefully retained his folly as a cloak for his knavery. Of his success in deception, the present narrative exhibits abundant proofs. The number of his dupes was not confined to the vulgar and illiterate, but included individuals of real worth and learning, of hostile parties and sects, who courted his acquaintance and respected his predictions. His proceedings were deemed of sufficient importance to ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... a famous Empire run-up by Jordan, the sly builder and decorator who had got on so surprisingly. In James's younger days, Jordan was an obscure and illiterate nobody. And now he had a motor car, and looked at the tottering James with sardonic contempt, from under his heavy, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He was rather stout, frail in health, but silent and insuperable, was A. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... which is merely one of his exaggerations for the sake of point. She had not a fine understanding: though she was neither silly nor stupid, her sense was altogether inferior to her sensibility. Although living in a most bookish circle she was, as Macaulay himself admits, almost illiterate: and (which he does not say) her comparative critical estimates of books, when she does give them, are merely contemptible. This harsh statement could be freely substantiated: but it is enough to say that, when a girl, she preferred some forgotten rubbish called Henry ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... whom they traded. Even ancient Greece showed a wide difference in type of character and culture between the inland and maritime states. The Greek landsman was courageous and steadfast, but crude, illiterate, unenterprising, showing sterility of imagination and intellect; while his brother of the seaboard was active, daring, mercurial, imaginative, open to all the influences of a refining civilization.[255] To-day the distribution of the Greeks along the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... pity anyone reads it!"—she answered—"But what are we to read? If low-minded and illiterate scavengers are employed to write for the newspapers instead of well-educated men, we must put up with the mud the scavengers collect. We know well enough that every journal is more or less a calendar of lies,—all the same we ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... condescends to an intimacy with a simple son of sea and shore who is not only practically illiterate but is entirely ignorant of his patron's prowess, the opinions of the illiterate concerning the personal characteristics of the genius obtain a very remarkable value as being honest criticism by man of man, uninfluenced ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... person, not wholly illiterate and ignorant of Church-History, could go about the metropolis only, seeking after such matters during one month, without gathering into ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... influence exercised by Plato and Swift on the love affairs of Shelley, Hazlitt, and Burns. And afterwards they write essays on the lectures, and the names in order of merit are put in conspicuous places. You see how your little germ has grown? The illiterate middle-class of your days ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... character to a humdrum narrative, and the gestour would know how to make the best of incidents which he knew from experience to be specially interesting to an audience. Such yarns would be most attractive to "lewd" or illiterate men— ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... chastity, must have had pernicious effects on the morals of the inhabitants. But when it is considered too that the Knights of Malta had been for the last fifty years or more a set of useless idlers, generally illiterate, for they thought literature no part of a soldier's excellence; and yet effeminate, for they were soldiers in name only; when it is considered that they were, moreover, all of them aliens, who looked upon themselves not merely as of a superior rank to the native nobles, but as beings ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Huddy, Lavinia thought. But this was nothing. The owner of a travelling play acting booth was as a rule an illiterate showman. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... bestowed upon him, or perhaps because of it, the following night Senator Ingalls made his famous speech against suffrage, and it fell to my lot to answer him. In the course of his remarks he asked this question: "Would you like to add three million illiterate voters to the large body of illiterate voters we have in America to-day?" The audience applauded light-heartedly, but I was disturbed by the sophistry of the question. One of Senator Ingalls's most discussed personal peculiarities was the parting of his hair in the middle. Cartoonists ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... easily deducible from hence, we shall only appeal to the wonderful effect, which the fable, pronounced by Demosthenes against Philip of Macedon, produced among his hearers; or to the fable, which was spoken by Menenius Agrippa to the Roman populace; by which an illiterate multitude were brought back to their duty as citizens, when no other species of oratory ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... having had children, are precious and final qualifications. It is a natural faculty that is required; it is not merely having a genteel young woman at a table in a ward. One of the finest nurses I met was a red-faced illiterate old Irish woman; I have seen her take the poor wasted naked boys so tenderly up in her arms. There are plenty of excellent clean old black women that would make ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... educational work The existence of non-missionary schools may either increase the need for missionary schools or decrease it The extent to which education is provided for the better educated and the more illiterate The extent to which education is provided for boys and girls, for Christian and non-Christian scholars The extent to which mission schools receive Government grants throws light on their character and purpose The extent to which education is provided for illiterate adults The importance of ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... see the lovely colours of nature unspoiled; impossible for them to supply beautiful incident and action in their ornament, unless they see beautiful incident and action in the world about them. Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form and refine their designs; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever they do will still be spurious, vulgar, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... striking than the contrast between the illiterate locutions and the eccentric orthography of Fenella's letters and the subtle remarks and speculations upon the symbols of nature.—the dukkeripen of the woods, the streams, the stars, and the winds. But when I came to analyse ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... father naturally raised the question in the Hon. Morison's mind as to precisely what the girl's attitude toward escape might be. It seemed, of course, preposterous that this fair and beautiful young woman should prefer to remain in the filthy douar of an illiterate old Arab rather than return to the comforts, luxuries, and congenial associations of the hospitable African bungalow from which the Hon. Morison had tricked her. The man flushed at the thought of his duplicity which these recollections aroused—thoughts which were interrupted by The ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which has sometimes been doubted. 'Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world?' May it not be the power of God which, amidst this wreck of eloquence and learning, has preserved unmutilated, even to these later days, the simple and unstudied compositions of the illiterate Galileans—the impassioned but rugged addresses of the tent-maker of Cilicia?" Dr. Adam Clarke, no mean judge, pronounced by the late Rev. Robert Hall to have been "an ocean of learning," said, "I have diligently examined the question, and I can conscientiously say that we have the Sacred ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... would render miserable the peasant who still lacked the development to appreciate the elegancies of refinement; while the tidy cottage and plain comforts which might constitute the paradise of the humble and illiterate rustic, would be utterly inadequate to the requirements of larger and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... meant by this well-sounding term was a certain bundle of ideas—some of them very illiterate, some very delicate hair-splitting, some curious even to comicality,—gathered out of the writings of a certain number of men, who assuredly were not inspired, since they often travesty Scripture, and at times diametrically contradict it. Having lived in the darkest times of the Church, they ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... the tell-tale Day! The light will show, character'd in my brow, The story of sweet chastity's decay, The impious breach of holy wedlock vow: Yea, the illiterate, that know not how To cipher what is writ in learned books, Will quote my loathsome ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... teacher" they wished to see, not the "foreign devil." When I rose from the table, half a dozen guests sitting at the other tables rose also and bowed to me as I passed out. Of all people I have ever met, the Chinese are, I think, the politest. My illiterate Laohwan, who could neither read nor write, had a courtesy of demeanour, a well-bred ease of manner, a graceful deference that never approached servility, which it was a constant pleasure to ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... had sprung up between the two men a strange sort of friendship, a strange sort of intimacy. For even when he came to have a strong liking for Lonesome Pete, Conniston could never for a second look upon this illiterate, uncouth cowboy as an equal, could not refrain from feeling toward him an amused and tolerant contempt. If palmy days ever came again, he was used to thinking, he would find a place for the red-headed man in his ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... the life and career of Joseph Smith, Jr., or 'Joe Smith,' as he was universally named, and the Smith family, they were popularly regarded as an illiterate, whiskey-drinking, shiftless, irreligious race of people—the first named, the chief subject of this biography, being unanimously voted the laziest and most worthless of the generation. From the age of twelve to ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... dear, that there are as many novelties attempted to be introduced, the adoption of which would be prejudicial to society, as there are of those which would be beneficial to it. The well-informed, though by no means exempt from error, have an unquestionable advantage over the illiterate, in judging what is likely or not to prove serviceable; and therefore we find the former more ready to adopt such discoveries as promise to be really advantageous, than the latter, who having no other test ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... it was with difficulty that he could refrain from imprecating destruction on his brethren while the cup was passing from hand to hand. After he had been some time a member of the congregation he began to preach; and his sermons produced a powerful effect. He was, indeed, illiterate; but he spoke to illiterate men. The severe training through which he had passed had given him such an experimental knowledge of all the modes of religious melancholy as he could never have gathered from books; and his vigorous genius, animated by a fervent spirit of devotion, enabled ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... situation of a writer may certainly produce a provincial dialect, which will often differ essentially from the language used at the same time in other parts of the same country. But this can only happen in the case of persons of no education and totally illiterate; and such persons seldom write. It is unnecessary however to discuss this point very accurately, as nobody, I believe, will contend, that the poems attributed to Rowley are written in any provincial dialect. If there ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... thousand, the ostracism was imperfect); then, laying every name by itself, they pronounced him whose name was written by the larger number, banished for ten years, with the enjoyment of his estate. As, therefore, they were writing the names on the sherds, it is reported that an illiterate clownish fellow, giving Aristides his sherd, supposing him a common citizen, begged him to write Aristides upon it; and he being surprised and asking if Aristides had ever done him any injury, "None at ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... a fencing-school, and to fear the thrust of an unskilful person who never handled a foil. Thus you, though you speak boldly in the presence of the chief men of the Republic, among whom there might perhaps be found some who would despise you, dare not, nevertheless, speak in the presence of an illiterate multitude, who know nothing of the affairs of state, and who are not capable of despising you, and you fear to be laughed at by them." "Do they not usually," said Charmidas, "laugh at those who speak best?" "So likewise," said Socrates, "do the men of quality with ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... Within a radius of seventy-five miles there are not far from 450,000 Negroes. By the last census, Mississippi's colored population was 650,291. The lowest estimate of the present number is 800,000. At least seventy per cent. of this population is illiterate. Tougaloo is thus in the very midst of America's Africa. Just at hand, also, is the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, into which Negroes are pouring from other States. Here they are gaining homes and establishing communities. Their numbers are expected continually to increase. ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various
... residence" set Defoe a little apart from the literary society of the day. Swift, Pope, Addison, Arbuthnot, and the rest, considered him untrained and uncultured, and habitually spoke of him with the contempt which the regular feels for the volunteer. Swift referred to him as "an illiterate fellow whose name I forget," and Pope actually inserted ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... alone for his invincible arm. But the extent of his empire affords the only remaining evidence of the number and importance of his victories; and the Scythian monarch, however ignorant of the value of science and philosophy, might perhaps lament that his illiterate subjects were destitute of the art which could perpetuate the memory ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... mistress, Euphemia, may require a few words of introduction. Those who have not read the adventures and experiences of Pomona in "Rudder Grange" should be told that she first appeared in that story as a very young and illiterate girl, fond of sensational romances, and with some out-of-the-way ideas in regard to domestic economy and the conventions of society. This romantic orphan took service in the "Rudder Grange" family, and as the story progressed ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... illiterate, and had no sympathy with his son's efforts to educate himself. Fortunately for him, however, his stepmother helped and encouraged him in every way possible. Shortly before her death she said to a biographer of Lincoln: "I induced my husband to ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... an ignorant and illiterate fellow who lets drive at the door with such kicks. You have brought on ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... transplanted from Europe. On the contrary, we had been taught to regard them as most unfortunate in the circumstances under which [11] they so gloriously conquered their merited freedom. We saw them free, but perfectly illiterate barbarians, impotent to use the intellectual resources of which their valour had made them possessors, in the shape of books on the spirit and technical details of a highly developed national existence. We had learnt also, until this new interpreter of history ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... had ceased to be incidental and become portentous, Hazel lay and tried to think. But she only heard two voices in endless contradiction, 'I munna go. I mun go.' At last she got up and fetched the book of charms, written in a childish, illiterate hand, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... Ned Crawford's provisions, he had continued to board with Anita, or with any mess of military men among whom he might happen to be. He had made many acquaintances, and he had found the ragged, unpaid, illiterate Mexican soldiers a genuinely hospitable lot of patriotic fellows. He came to his supper somewhat late on the evening of March 21st, and that night, after going to care for his pony, he came back and slept on a blanket on the floor ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... and indeed he got the most by them! for I will venture, (contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep causes to great events,) to ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough's greatness and riches to those graces. He was eminently illiterate, wrote bad English, and spelled it still worse. He had no share of what is commonly called parts; that is, he had no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. He had, most undoubtedly, an excellent good plain understanding, with sound judgment. But these alone ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... with a conviction of imminent disaster. He pulled out a sheet of cheap note-paper—and a wad of bank-notes. His face worked curiously as he read a few lines, scrawled in illiterate, female handwriting. ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... Carmichael concluded that she was still under the glamour of an ancient superstition, and took the veil after a very commonplace and squalid Protestant fashion. This particular "fruit" against whom Carmichael in his young uncharitableness especially raged, because he was more self-complacent and more illiterate than his fellows, married the daughter of a rich self-made man, and on the father's death developed a peculiar form of throat disease, which laid him aside from the active work of the ministry—a mysterious providence, as he often explained—but ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... relieve the Crown) amounted to a libel upon a morally clean book, restricting its perusal in families; and the fact that the shilling book sold by and among humble people was alone prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally false notion that the "Age of Reason" was vulgar and illiterate. The theologians, as we have seen, estimated more justly the ability of their antagonist, the collaborator of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Clymer, on whom the University of Pennsylvania had conferred the degree of Master of Arts,—but ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the profits of the business, and defends him against the charge of inconsistency. Morris may not have thought out the question in all its aspects, but much of the criticism passed upon him was even more illogical and depended on far too narrow and illiterate a use of the word Socialism. He knew as well as his critics that no new millennium could be introduced by merely taking the wealth of the rich and dividing it into equal portions among ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... from this place, as he had been driven from other places, but he was cheap and other workmen were not better, and thus he remained there two years. His life was uneventful. One day he received a letter, written in Esthonian, but as he himself was illiterate, and as the others did not understand Esthonian, the letter remained unread; and as if not understanding that the letter might bring him tidings from his native home, he flung it into the manure with ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... borne good fruit. These literary guilds befitted and denoted a people which was alive, a people which had neither sunk to sleep in the lap of material prosperity, nor abased itself in the sty of ignorance and political servitude. The spirit of liberty pervaded these rude but not illiterate assemblies, and her fair proportions were distinctly visible, even through the somewhat grotesque garb ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the persons of Nestorius and others, it took refuge in Syria, where it flourished for many years in the schools of Edessa and Nisibis, the foremost of the time. From these it found its way among the Arabs, and even to the illiterate Muhammad, who gave it (1) theoretic theological expression in the cxii. surah of the Koran: "He is One God, God the Eternal; He neither begets nor is begotten; and to Him there is no peer," in which both the fundamental ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... or late in the etiquette of the trees. A contemporary English novelist was once asked by a foreigner what was the most important crop in England. He answered without a moment's hesitation: "Rye." Ignorance so complete as this seems to me to be touched with magnificence; but the ignorance even of illiterate persons is enormous. The average man who uses a telephone could not explain how a telephone works. He takes for granted the telephone, the railway train, the linotype, the aeroplane, as our grandfathers took for granted the miracles of the gospels. He neither questions ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... emerged from a district which at that time was traversed by few people; perhaps only by some illiterate Mexican adventurers, though it had once been settled by a thrifty people whose stage of culture was that of the Pueblo Indians of to-day, and who had vanished, nobody knows how many centuries ago. Over it all hovered a distinct atmosphere ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... had been warned by an artist friend who had kindly promised to sing songs between the stories, that my audience would be of varying age and almost entirely illiterate. Many of the older men and women, who could neither read nor write, had never been beyond their native village. I was warned to be very simple in my language and to explain any difficult words which might occur in the particular Indian story I had chosen ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... men of letters have developed wonderful feats of memory; and among illiterate persons, by means of points of association, the power of memory has been little short of marvelous. At a large hotel in Saratoga there was at one time a negro whose duty was to take charge of the hats and coats of the guests as they ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Thicknesse undertook to construct a letter, every word of which should be French, yet no Frenchman should be able to read it; while an illiterate Englishman or Englishwoman should decipher it with ease. Here is the specimen ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... believe that his drawings were at first hand, and made by himself from nature. "Thomson's Seasons," read to him about this time by his brother Giles, gave him a glimpse of the union of poetry with natural beauty; and lit up in his mind an ambition which finally transformed the illiterate, rugged, half-tutored youth into the man who wrote "The Village Patriarch," and the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... to recommend that a communicant, who, after conference with his minister, should declare that he could not conscientiously receive the bread and wine kneeling, might receive them sitting. Mew, Bishop of Winchester, an honest man, but illiterate, weak even in his best days, and now fast sinking into dotage, protested against this concession, and withdrew from the assembly. The other members continued to apply themselves vigorously to their task: and no more secessions took place, though there were great differences ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the band was a man far from illiterate: he was able to travel by the stars, or the compass, and had marked, in his erratick expeditions, such places as are most worthy the notice of a passenger. He observed to me, that buildings are always best preserved in places little frequented, and difficult ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... and delivered like a parcel the fair Andalusian. But to rouse the servants caused delay; and on returning to the street through the broad gateway of the convent, whom should she face but the Alcalde! How he escaped the trench, who can tell? He had no time to write memoirs; his horse was too illiterate. But he had escaped; temper not at all improved by that adventure, and now raised to a hell of malignity by seeing that he had lost his prey. In the morning light he now saw how to use his sword. He attacked Kate with fury. Both were exhausted; and Kate, besides that she ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the following Memoirs has upon these grounds fair claims to the public favour and attention; he was an illiterate old steward, whose partiality to THE FAMILY, in which he was bred and born, must be obvious to the reader. He tells the history of the Rackrent family in his vernacular idiom, and in the full confidence that Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy Rackrent's affairs ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... The chief justice of Louisiana was convicted of fraud. A supreme court judge of South Carolina offered his decisions for sale, and Whipper and Moses, both notorious thieves, were elected judges by the South Carolina Legislature. In Alabama there were many illiterate magistrates, among them the city judge of Selma, who in April 1865, was still living as a slave. Governor Chamberlain, a radical, asserted that there were two hundred trial judges in South Carolina who ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... but an atom in the most renowned of the savage races known to history, a people that, according to the white man's standard, is uncivilized, uneducated, illiterate, and barbarous. Yet the upbringing of every Red Indian male child begins at his birth, and ends only when he has acquired the learning considered essential for the successful man to possess, and which has been predetermined through many ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... principles of the Reformation than the diffusion of the Book of Martyrs on this gigantic scale. In a few years there was scarcely a parish church in England that did not possess a chained copy of the work. The illiterate might frequently be seen standing in a group round the lectern, while one among them better instructed than the rest read to them aloud its graphic and lying legends. Added to this, in many churches ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... lawyers, and were jealous of wealthy merchants. "These lawyers," said Amos Singletary, "and men of learning, and moneyed men that talk so finely and gloss over matters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate people swallow the pill, expect to get into Congress themselves. They mean to be managers of the Constitution. They mean to get all the money into their hands, and then they will swallow up us little ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... observed by John Bell, "The preservation of health and the attainment of long life are objects of desire to every man, no matter in what age or country his lot is cast, nor by what arbitrary tenure he holds his life. They are the wish of the master and the slave, of the illiterate and the learned, of the timid Hindoo and the warlike Arab, of the natives of New Zealand not less than of the inhabitants of New England,—an indispensable condition for the greatest and longest enjoyment of the senses and propensities; ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... conspicuous compartment facing the door. This is a sort of signature, whose brilliancy eclipses all other names, and really dazzles the eyes of the spectators. But at the same time it draws the attention both of the learned and the illiterate: I will venture to affirm that the name of one of these jewellers is more frequently spelt and pronounced than that of any great man recorded in history, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... public or semi-public libraries, there were of course great numbers of private libraries. Wealthy and cultivated men throughout the Roman empire and beyond had their private collections, as wealthy and cultivated men do to-day. While the illiterate classes were proportionally much more numerous than they are in modern communities, and the use of books was limited to a comparatively small portion of the population, the small educated class ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... herself again, weakly. It was true, she knew the fantastic rigmarole, which made absurd the secret dictates of these illiterate desperadoes. But that absurdity meant death, none the less—death for the one she loved. In her misery, she listened almost apathetically as Hodges went on talking in ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... public Prints: "Passion has not sufficient coolness to pause for metaphor, nor has metaphor ardor enough to keep pace with passion."—Nothing can be less true. Metaphoric strength of expression will burst even from vulgar and illiterate minds when they are agitated. It is a natural effort of roused sensibility in every gradation, from unlettered simplicity to the highest refinement. Passion has no occasion to pause for metaphors, they rush upon the mind which it has ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... nation is lost, irredeemably lost, because it lacks the inner driving power," etc., which has brought Von Kluck so triumphantly through Paris. Even a half-educated Englishman, who has heard of no Italian poet except Dante, knows that he was something more than amiable. Even a positively illiterate Frenchman, who has heard of no Italian warrior except Napoleon, knows that it was not in "inner driving force" that the artilleryman in question was deficient. "Who can live in Italy to-day?" Evidently the Prussian philosopher can't. His impressions are taken from Italian operas; not from Italian ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... to offer the sterile theorists of the new illiterate literature, who are as incapable of appreciating his refined and subtle perversities as they are of admiring the beautiful form in which his full-blooded and exuberant imagination clothes his conceptions. He is an aesthete, but his aestheticism has never expressed itself in barren theory, but has ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... at all. But the House of Lords is not an illiterate audience, and I recollect that on one occasion, when Lord Cromer himself was speaking on preferential treatment for ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... at the big, slouching figure disappearing at the corner. The name of Wood was famous in the Confederacy. The greatest of all the cavalry commanders in a service that had so many, a born military genius, he was an illiterate mountaineer, belonging to that despised, and often justly despised, class known in the South as "poor white trash." But the name of Wood was now famous in every home of the revolting States. It was said that he could neither ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... read out forged letters to the illiterate people. A very judicious expedient, I must say. Village folks can be got to believe anything. But how ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... are familiar with criminal statistics in the United States and other countries, will, I am confident, agree with me that this is a most remarkable record for a population of 300,000,000, illiterate, superstitious, impregnated with false ideas of honor and morality, and packed so densely as the people of India are. The courts of justice have reached a high standard; the lower courts are administered almost exclusively ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... common to both Christians and heathens, that assigns to them the gifts of prophecy and divination. The habit that the mantis has of first stretching out one fore leg, and then the other, and of preserving such a position for some little time, has also led to the belief among the illiterate that it is in the act, in such cases, of pointing out the road ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... once. If you went back it's just possible that into the fellow's dull mind might steal a ghost of suspicion. I'm ready to take my turn now, though I hate the damned inactivity. I am a presumed illiterate. I struggle over the printed page—and with me loafing in his office he would chat ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... picture saw only a ludicrous image, and that image himself, was of another race than that he had ever mingled with. Profoundly indifferent as he had always been to the criticism of his equals in station, the mischievous laughter of this illiterate woman jarred upon him worse than his cousin's sarcasm. It was with a little dignity that he pointed out the fact that at present the child needed nourishment. "It's very young," he added. "I'm afraid it wants ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... observe, that while we give the substance of this worthy gentleman's narrative, we pretend not to give his precise words. It is highly probable that he adapted his language to the humble capacities of his low and illiterate auditors; and we have taken the liberty to clothe his ideas in words better suited to the more intelligent and refined understandings ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Anglo-Saxon Church," "the Anglo-Saxon church presented a melancholy spectacle to the friends of religion: 1. The laity had resumed the ferocious manners of their pagan forefathers. 2. The clergy had grown indolent, dissolute and illiterate. 3. The monastic order had been apparently annihilated. It devolved on King Alfred, victorious over his enemies, to devise and apply the remedies for these evils." The good king endeavored to restore the monastic institution, but, owing to the lack of candidates ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... and over can read and write total population: 82% male: 87% female: 77% note: over two-thirds of the world's 785 million illiterate adults are found in only eight countries (India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Egypt); of all the illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds are women; extremely low ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... any opinion on the proper qualifications for voting, we call attention to the significant facts that in every State there are more women who can read and write than the whole number of illiterate male voters; more white women who can read and write than all negro voters; more American women who can read and write than all foreign voters; so that the enfranchisement of such women would settle the vexed question of rule by illiteracy, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... While many are illiterate, the Belgians are giving much attention to schools these times. Even while they were guests of France, with their government located at Havre, they established twenty-four schools for the children ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... impression of the Volga was poisoned by the rain, by the tear-stained windows of the cabin, and the wet nose of G., who came to meet me at the station. In the rain Yaroslavl looks like Zvenigorod, and its churches remind me of Perervinsky Monastery; there are lots of illiterate signboards, it's muddy, jackdaws with big heads ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the Congress for the benefit of the most illiterate and humble of our people, and with the intention of encouraging in them industry and thrift. Most of its branches were presided over by officers holding the commissions and clothed in the uniform of the United States. These and other circumstances ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that Papists have an implicit faith in their priests. What they mean is this: If a piece of arras, or a carpet, is folded up, then it is implicit according to the original Latin word; if it is unfolded and displayed, then it is explicit. Therefore, when a poor illiterate man (suppose a bog-trotter of Mayo or Galway) says to his priest (as in effect always he does say), 'Sir, I cannot comprehend all this doctrine; bless you, I have not the thousandth part of the learning for it, so it is impossible that I should ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... is interesting. He was by no means illiterate. His writing is trim, his accounts in good form and correctly figured. But it was more a fashion in that day to spell as pronounced, and his orthography gives us a ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... bestow competence on her. Three years had intervened, and how, in their pennyless state, could her mother have existed during this time? This excellent woman was worthy of her child's devotion. A perfect confidence and friendship existed between them; besides, she was by no means illiterate; and Lucy, whose mind had been in some degree cultivated by her former lover, now found in her the only person who could understand and appreciate her. Thus, though suffering, she was by no means desolate, and when, during fine summer days, she led her mother into the flowery and shady lanes ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... the vicissitudes of those that are polished by refined nations;[AF] and that, however paradoxical it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that the degeneracy of a language is more frequently to be attributed to an extravagant refinement than to the neglect of an illiterate people, unless indeed external causes interfere. May we not hence conclude, that as the Romansh has never been used in any regular composition in writing till the sixteenth century, nor affected by any foreign invasion or intimate connexion, it is not likely to have received any material ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... A most wonderful scene. The B'hagiratha or Ganges issues from under a very low arch at the foot of the grand snow-bed. The illiterate mountaineers compare the pendent icicles to Mahodeva's hair. Hindoos of research may formerly have been here; and if so, one cannot think of any place to which they might more aptly give the name of a cow's mouth than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... great importance, and indirectly throw much light on the condition of man in ancient times." [102] But they serve far more purposes than this. They are the raw material, out of which many of our goodly garments of modern science and religion are made up. The illiterate negroes on the cotton plantation, and the rude hunters in the jungle or seal fishery, produce the staple, or procure the skins, which after long labour afford comfort and adornment to proud philosophers and peers. The golden cross on the saintly ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... You will think me an illiterate dog: I am, for the first time, reading ROBERTSON'S SERMONS. I do not know how to express how much I think of them. If by any chance you should be as illiterate as I, and not know them, it is worth while curing ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but danger; seducing women to learn their husband's secrets; exiling his daughter, not because she had lovers, but because she had other lovers than himself; exiling Ovid because of Livia, who in the end poisoned her prince, and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering of speech, and coarse of manner—a hypocrite and a comedian in one—so guileful and yet so stupid that while a credulous moribund ordered the gods to be thanked that Augustus survived him, the people publicly ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... status, they are, taken the country over, rather better educated than men. There are more girls than boys in the high schools of the United States; more girls than boys in the higher grammar grades. Fewer women than men are numbered among illiterate. As for the great middle class of women, it is obvious that they are better read than their men. Their specific knowledge of affairs may be less, but their general intelligence is not less ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... results are inevitable. The successful men become egotistic, and it is a common, well-nigh universal, practise for all sorts and conditions of men to speak harshly of the authorities. In the loafers on the street corners, in the illiterate that use the country store as their club, in the very halls of congress, are heard the most unsparing criticisms and denunciations of the administration. These unwarranted comments fell thick and fast on Lincoln, because he was at the post of responsibility ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... that eliminating the Negro factor from the South and taking simply our native white population the percentage of illiteracy in North Carolina of this class is one-tenth of one per cent, greater than the percentage of illiteracy in Ireland, the most illiterate ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 2, February, 1896 • Various
... gone up slightly. On the other hand, many men of very low intelligence never reached the receiving camps at all, being inmates of institutions for the feebleminded or excluded from the draft because of known mental deficiency; and, of those who reached {280} the camps, many, being illiterate, did not take the Alpha test. It is for this reason that the graph for drafted men stops rather short at the lower end; to picture fairly the distribution of intelligence, it should taper off to the left, beyond the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... action, had hesitated, reluctant, the wounded man had deliberately torn out the arrow, and with oaths and curses for the other's cowardice had bound up the wound himself with strips torn from his shirt and resumed the fighting. His courage there, and before and after, although he was an illiterate person and could neither read nor write, had caused him to be appointed boatswain of the ship that had carried Morgan's flag, and he had followed his leader for many years with a blind devotion that risked all and stuck at nothing to be of service ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... transcending all example of his own or the previous age, and as a man of general literature so much beyond his contemporaries, except Cicero, that he looked down even upon the brilliant Sylla as an illiterate person,—to class such a man with the race of furious destroyers exulting in the desolations they spread, is to err not by an individual trait, but by the whole genus. The Attilas and the Tamerlanes, who rejoice in avowing themselves ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Actes des Apotres; Suleau and Andre Chenier, in several royaliste or moderee papers,—excited and disputed dominion over the minds of the people. It was the ancient tribune transported to the dwelling of each citizen, and adapting its language to the comprehension of all men, even the most illiterate. Anger, suspicion, hatred, envy, fanaticism, credulity, invective, thirst of blood, sudden panics, madness and reflection, treason and fidelity, eloquence and folly, had each their organ in this concert of every passion and feeling in which the city ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... corruption of taste and language, still preserves the majesty of the Roman laws. In some respects, the office of the Imperial quaestor may be compared with that of a modern chancellor; but the use of a great seal, which seems to have been adopted by the illiterate barbarians, was never introduced to attest the public acts of the emperors. 4. The extraordinary title of count of the sacred largesses was bestowed on the treasurer-general of the revenue, with the intention perhaps of inculcating, that every payment flowed from ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... possibilities of education at such an early age, he was illiterate in his speech and as ignorant of the conventionalities of polite society as an Indian; but he possessed a heart overflowing with the milk of human kindness, was generous in the extreme, and honest ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... household, lent me the aid of his nimble hand to seize the fugitives. I have already stated that the entomologist has need of simplicity of mind. In this important business of the Necrophori, my assistants were a child and an illiterate. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... assured faith, that He was the Son of God. Now it was natural to observe, how it was not flesh and blood that had revealed it to him, but God: for if this knowledge were dependent on natural causes or means, how came it to pass that they, a company of poor fishermen, illiterate men, and persons of low education, attained to the knowledge of the truth; while the scribes and Pharisees, men of vastly higher advantages and greater knowledge and sagacity in other matters, remained ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... influence of public opinion' in biassing the narrative of travellers, we must not forget that the strongest evidence about savage practice is derived from the 'undesigned coincidence' of the testimonies of all sorts of men, in all ages, and all conditions of public opinion. 'Illiterate men, ignorant of the writings of each other, bring the same reports from various quarters of the globe,' wrote Millar of Glasgow. When sailors, merchants, missionaries, describe, as matters unprecedented ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... language is a change from the usual mode of expression, we are not to think of it as being unnatural. It is, in fact, as natural as plain language, and nearly every one, from the illiterate to the most learned, makes use of it, more or less, in his ordinary conversation. This arises from, the fact that we all enjoy comparisons and substitutions. When we say that we have been pegging away all ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... ordinary arrangement was for peasants to hold their scraps of land for life; and land having recently increased in value enormously, a large proportion of these were of the value of forty shillings. Hence, the whole constituency would be altered; thousands of new electors, all of them poor and illiterate, would be added in many constituencies; and the representation of the country would at once pass into Roman Catholic hands. To fix a higher qualification for Roman Catholics than for Protestants would ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... crowd," he says. My friend is very keen on the new crowd; everything else he declares is "passe." Anyhow, it is a very valuable experience to talk with an exhibitor at an art exhibition. Your mind is impregnated, until it swells dizzily in your head. That would be he, the illiterate-looking little creature with the uncombed and ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... game, while mink and otter and muskrat skins will provide him flour and clothes from the fur-trader. Each of Sam's sons is earning seven hundred dollars a year hunting big game on the rock ridge farther north—more than illiterate, unskilled men earn in eastern lands. Then in spring Sam will emerge from his cabin, build another birch canoe and be off to the duck and wild geese haunts. When we paddled away in the morning, Sam still camped on the sand bank. He sat squat whittling away at kin-a-kin-ic, ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... complimentary about his Majesty's ship Pleiades being one of the very few ships in the Service whose captain still maintained so ancient and honoured a custom, the discontinuance of which could only be advocated by common, illiterate persons—such as ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... escaped the most sagacious observers of nature. By so doing, we may discover laws of the animal economy which have no place in our system of Nosology, or in our theories of physic. The practice of physic hath been more improved by the casual experiments of illiterate nations, and the rash ones of vagabond quacks, than by all the once celebrated professors of it, and the theoretic teachers in the several schools of Europe, very few of whom have furnished us with one new medicine, or have taught us better to use ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... regeneration, and the Gospel should reach the masses by a natural and earnest method. The university system calls for reorganization, and a rigid censorship exercised upon the teachings of the professors. Childhood must be no longer neglected, and the illiterate must become indoctrinated into the elements of Scriptural truth. The prevalent social evils should receive severe rebuke from the private Christian and the public teacher. Calixtus, Boehme, Arndt and Gerhard have done nobly, but they have pursued paths so totally divergent that their labors ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... fields and forests and mines, but in the free schools, churches, and printing presses. Ignorance breeds misery, vice, and crime. Mephistopheles was a cultured devil, but he is the exception. History knows no illiterate seer or sage or saint. No Dante or Shakespeare ever had to make ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... arrived at the beach, the darkness of the night was illumined by the light of an immense fire. Ordering his boat's crew (with the intrepid though illiterate William at their head) to keep close and be upon their guard, Boldheart bravely went on, arm in arm with ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... denouncing the outrages inflicted on the friends of the apostolic see. It is hard to dissociate the pope's feeling in this matter from his rejection of the nomination of the king's chancellor, Ralph Neville, Bishop of Chichester, to the see of Canterbury, as an illiterate politician. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... many American papers seized on the challenge as a great event; and the Sun threw the shadow of Mr Boulnois quite gigantically across its pages. By the paradox already noted, articles of valuable intelligence and enthusiasm were presented with headlines apparently written by an illiterate maniac, headlines such as "Darwin Chews Dirt; Critic Boulnois says He Jumps the Shocks"—or "Keep Catastrophic, says Thinker Boulnois." And Mr Calhoun Kidd, of the Western Sun, was bidden to take his butterfly tie and lugubrious visage down to the little house outside Oxford where Thinker Boulnois ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... with being called John Smith. "Jos Maria Jesus Joo dois Sanctos Sylva da Costa da Cunha" is his name; and he recites it, as I, in my boyhood's days, used to "say a piece" while standing on a chair. There is no school in the town. In Brazil, 84 per cent. of the entire population are illiterate. ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... clear that he is not a college graduate, his letter effectually disproves the allegation that he can neither read nor write. Moreover, even if his education is limited, this cannot be considered exceptional, for the sheriffs of many counties in the South today are illiterate and mentally undeveloped. I judge from the contents of Mr. Evans's letter that there is no truth in the allegation that he divided any part of his own compensation with any one or more of his assistants. He left the office with a spotless record, every dollar of the public funds that passed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... on the part of those who depose to them. These things could not have occurred as they are narrated, and Dr Bataille is exploiting the ignorance of that class of readers to whom his mode of publication appealed. As products of imagination his marvels are crude and illiterate; in other words, they belong to precisely that type which is characteristic of romances published in penny numbers, and when he pledges his rectitude regarding them he does not enlist our confidence but indicates the slight value which he ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... use special forms of music to produce a definite effect upon the worshippers who hear them. All of you must be aware that there are some kinds of music which have the remarkable effect upon you, of lifting you higher than you can rise by your own unassisted effort. Even the songs of illiterate Christian bodies do have some effect upon them, in raising them to a higher level, although they possess little of the true quality of the mantra. In Theosophy you find all these things dealt with scientifically—a mass of knowledge, but all growing out ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... as many inhabitants as Cuba, more than eleven times as large. Of its 807,000 people, 326,000 are colored and many of the others of mixed blood. They differ little from other Spanish-Americans, being fond of ease, courteous, and hospitable, and, as in other Spanish countries, the common people are illiterate, public education having been grievously neglected. The natives are the agriculturists of the country, and are a majority in the interior, while the Spaniards, who control business and commerce, are found mainly in the towns ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... substantially the same. The girl's affections are bestowed naturally in her own class, and the disconsolate urban discovers that a wide divergence of feelings and sympathies, a gulf not to be voluntarily bridged over, lies between the man of the world and the illiterate peasant; that the results of habit are not lightly to be got rid of; and that a happiness which lies below us in the social scale may be as unattainable as higher prizes. The relations of the romantic and dreamy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... is the Established Church of Russia. The priests are as a class illiterate, and but little removed above the mujicks in their habits of life. A priest is expected to marry, but can only marry one wife. When she dies, he enters the monastic order. His sons enter the clerical seminaries, and his daughters marry priests, while ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... with the genuinely Republican South. The group of Tientsin generals and "politicals," confused by these developments, remained inactive; and this was no doubt responsible for the mad coup attempted by the semi-illiterate General Chang Hsun. In the small hours of July 1st General Chang Hsun, relying on the disorganization in the capital which we have dealt with in our preceding account, entered the Imperial City with his troops by prearrangement ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... miss! I don't know any business you have to think at all: thought does not become a young woman. But the point we would request of you is, that you will promise to forget this fellow—to illiterate him, I ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... practical tendencies, as observers of the other sex, incline them to question the gain of such an expenditure of energy. The dispersal of the alphabet over a printed page is not less perplexing to the illiterate. As soon as Emma Dunstane discovered the Copsley head-gamekeeper at one wicket, and, actually, Thomas Redworth facing him, bat in hand, she sat up, greatly interested. Sir Lukin stopped the carriage at the gate, and reminded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
