"The ways of the world" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always carried around in my trunk. It was the picture in which she wore the Green ruby. Don't you remember it? "Well, you can't imagine how she carried on. She acted like a sav—but I won't say it. She has had no advantages—yet, and she's a bit untrained in the ways of the world. Of course, she hated Agatha's face because it was beautiful. She complained to the old man. The worst of it all is that I had already shown her a picture of the ruby, taken from that eastern magazine, and she recognised it as the one on Agatha's neck. "Well, you ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... reached an age which makes some girls young women, it had not as yet had that effect upon her. She was then nineteen; but her life in her father's house had been dull and monotonous; she had gone very little into company, and knew very little of the ways of the world. The Mackenzie baronet people had not noticed her. They had failed to make much of Walter with his twelve thousand pounds, and did not trouble themselves with Margaret, who had no fortune of her own. The Ball baronet people were at extreme variance ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... much to please him; nevertheless, there may be seen over the Church of Murello a Pieta with two little naked Angels by his hand, executed passing well. Finally, after having lived like a man of good judgment and one not unpractised in the ways of the world, he fell sick of a most violent fever at the age of sixty, in the ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... young in the ways of the world, so eager to make friends with everybody, so delighted with an entirely superficial butterfly like Cards, so devotedly attached to his wife, that I must confess that the outlook seems to me bad. There's going to be a tremendous tug-of-war in a minute and it's not going to be easy ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... during the time that we lived on this farm that my little story is most eventful. I was, at the beginning of this period, perhaps the most ungainly awkward boy in the parish—no solitaire was less acquainted with the ways of the world. What I knew of ancient story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthrie's Geographical Grammars; and the ideas I had formed of modern manners, of literature, and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Khel. The Colonel's wife was a pretty, delicate, graceful creature, some three years older than her black-browed handsome friend, and much more learned, as, of course, befitted a married woman, in the ways of the world. And Lady Lucy saw the budding of young passion in the heart of her junior ... and it occurred to her that it would furnish a very excellent excuse for the constant presence of Captain Mildare, if ...! the sweetest and most limpid women have their turbid ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Esperance instantly leaped to a conclusion. Giovanni's flirtation with the fair flower-girl had gone a trifle too far, had assumed a serious aspect. He would interfere, he would remonstrate with him. It might not yet be too late after all. Annunziata was a pure and innocent creature, unused to the ways of the world and incapable of suspecting the wickedness of men. She was on the point of falling into a deadly snare, on the point of being wrecked upon the most dangerous shoal life presented. Her very purity and ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... inexperienced in the ways of the world, confides his secrets to another, who deceives him, but who is skilful in disguising his perfidy, and if by his very sincerity he furnishes him with the means of doing him injury, we find his conduct simple. We laugh ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was above want—was I at rest? Not yet. I felt urged on to wander—Cain's curse descends to Cain's children. I travelled for some considerable time,—I saw men and cities, and I opened a new volume in my kind. It was strange; but before the deed, I was as a child in the ways of the world, and a child, despite my knowledge, might have duped me. The moment after it, a light broke upon me,—it seemed as if my eyes were touched with a charm, and rendered capable of piercing the hearts of men! Yes, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had only been ordained three or four years, and was a little younger, and much less experienced in the ways of the world, than Sigismund Zaluski. He was a good well-meaning fellow, a little narrow, a little prejudiced, a little spoiled by the devotion of the district visitors and Sunday School teachers; but he was honest and energetic, and as a worker among the poor few could have equalled him. He seemed ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... bones behaved in a similar manner, but that is not so remarkable. Being nearer the daylight than Jacob's, they might be expected to be more learned in the ways of the world. Master Ludwig's, especially, were like beauty, only skin deep; they were the most knowing bones you ever heard of. Just put before him ever so quietly a grammar book with a long lessons marked in it, and immediately the sly bone over ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... very little, but, with his deadly clarity of vision for once working beneficently, sat there aware how young and somehow rather lovable they were through it all, while he himself, whom they were obviously treating as so so much younger in the ways of the world, felt old compared with them. The only thing he did not fully realise was just how young that ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the Gospel. If a believer in that blessed hope lives an unholy life it is an evidence that he has never known in his heart what this hope is. It is a hope which teaches us to walk in the light as He is in the light. No believer who knows that blessed hope and waits for its fulfilment can go in the ways of the world to enjoy its hollow pleasures. It is a ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... dispute; that she was thoroughly unscrupulous as to the means by which she attained her ends (whatever they were) seemed more than probable. Perhaps she did not differ greatly from other young female persons in her own walk of life, but I would have been better pleased if Jerry's education in the ways of the world could have proceeded a little more slowly. It seemed to me as I compared them, that the girl Una, who had called herself Smith, brazen as she was, would have been a much saner companion. I could not believe, of course, that either of them could sway Jerry definitely from the path of ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Marie Louise, he used to be forever teasing her ladies about a thousand things; it often happened that they stood up against him, and he would carry on the discussion and laugh heartily when he had succeeded in vexing the young girls, who, in their frankness and ignorance of the ways of the world and the court, made very lively and unaffected answers which were amusing for those to whom they ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... rules of conduct make fellowship impossible. The lax Christians, who, on the strength of their objective possession, viz., the apostolic doctrine and writings, sought to live comfortably by conforming to the ways of the world, necessarily sought to rid themselves of inconvenient societies and inconvenient monitors;[213] and they could only do so by reproaching the latter with heresy and unchristian assumptions. Moreover, the followers of the new prophets could not permanently recognise the Churches of the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... of volition was but the result of his perception of the vanity of all earthly ambitions, and his absence of desire the outcome of his contempt for all that was worthless and transitory, his aversion to the ways of the world a tragic foregoing of the hope of ever getting behind it, and reaching the eternal root and significance of the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Margaret the very next day and tell her a secret, a very great secret, which she was sure would comfort her and make ample amends to her for all her distress of the night before. Little Annie Eustace was so very innocent and ignorant of the ways of the world that had her nearest and dearest been able to look into her heart of hearts, they might have been appalled, incredulous and reverent, according to their natures. For instance, this very good, simple young girl who had been born with the light of genius always assumed that her friends would be as ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was indeed easy enough to believe (so much I told her) if one looked upon the woman as she was, and only difficult in the prejudicial light of her matrimonial record. I did not add these things. "But you are a good deal older," I could not help saying, "in the ways of the world, and it is there that Bob is ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... to go to his home," she replied. "You must remember, my boy, that I was young and ignorant. I knew nothing of the ways of the world, nothing of men, but I loved him devotedly. He was my king, my life! When he had read the letter, he said he must leave the following morning, and urged me to go back to my home and wait until he could come and fetch me. I was to tell them, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... that the cat met Mr. Fox in the wood, and because she thought he was clever and experienced in all the ways of the world, she addressed him in a ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... astonishing how quietly he went, hanging on to me. The little colonel was reading The Times in the salon. We passed the open door, and saw over the paper his high forehead puckered with perplexity as to the ways of the world. But he did not raise his head or drop The Times at the sound of our entry. I took the boy upstairs to my room and guided him inside. He said, "Thanks awfully," and then lay down on the floor and fell into so deep a sleep that I was scared and thought for a moment ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... physician after all," he said to himself, reining in his beautiful Arab at last, and baring his brow to the fresh breeze. "Even as she is his best friend. Only we don't believe it. We live in the world and follow the ways of the world, until our faculties are blunted, our natures demoralised, our tastes vitiated, our energies enfeebled. How many lands I have travelled over, how many cities I have seen, and yet I verily believe that the wild Sioux ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... "Quite old enough in the ways of the world," she interjected, "to know my own mind. I love you, Guy, and unless I've mistaken your attitude, you love me. When our minds meet in such a matter, why should anything be permitted to intervene?" Her hand still ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... character of a child. Little girls who are in the constant habit of attending these parties, soon exchange the natural manners and frank simplicity so delightful at their age, for the confidence and flippancy of women long hacked in the ways of the world. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... nature. San Giacinto had risen to his feet, and there was something in the huge, lean strength of him, in the bold look of his eyes, in the ring of his deep voice, that inspired respect. Rough he was, and not over refined or carefully trained in the ways of the world, cruel perhaps, and overbearing too; but he was every inch a Saracinesca, and the ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... mind of any one unshaken by the ways of the world, exemption from sorrow, freedom from passion, and security: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... on a bench, or country people a starting home after market,—down rushes the Major to clink his glass against their glasses and cry,—Hola! Vive Somebody! or Vive Something! as if he was beside himself. And though I could not quite approve of the Major's doing it, still the ways of the world are the ways of the world varying according to the different parts of it, and dancing at all in the open Square with a lady that kept a barber's shop my opinion is that the Major was right to dance his best and to lead off with a power that I did not think was in ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens
... knew little more concerning the hereafter, he was far better informed in the ways of the world, for his life had been paved with opportunities, and he had made use of them. However, without a standard in his heart such as Edwin had erected and with no home government to protect and guide him, as a petted and humored and spoiled child he had indulged ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... object in view was to twist me round her finger—and I beg to inform you that she has completely succeeded. My dear Randal, this pretty creature's cunning is remarkable even for a woman. I am an old lawyer, skilled in the ways of the world—and a young girl has completely overreached me. She asked—oh, heavens, how innocently!—if Mrs. Norman was likely to make a long stay at her ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... a proverb which says, 'Physician, cure thyself.' What did I tell you, Monsieur La Mothe? The five minutes are not up yet." But Stephen La Mothe discreetly answered nothing. One of the first lessons a man learns in the ways of the world is to keep his fingers from between ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... to undertake the management of her affairs. Frederick engaged to carry on her law-suit, and to plead her cause against this rapacious Mr. Hodgkinson of Hull.—Whilst the suit was pending, Miss Turnbull had an opportunity of seeing something of the ways of the world; for the manners of her Yorkshire acquaintance, of all but Ellen and the Elmours, varied towards her, according to the opinion formed of the probable event of the trial on which her fortune depended. She felt these variations most keenly. In ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... I mean, Phil. This is a serious time in your life. You've got to adapt yourself to the ways of the world—the world of convention. You must consider yourself as a member of society. It's only in a limited sense that we can be individualists. And I can't have my daughter weighed down with such cares as these you threaten to assume. It would hurt me more than I can tell you if ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... attention, drawing erelong to her side a wealthy young southerner, who, just freed from the restraints of college life, found it vastly agreeable making love to the fair Helena. Simple-minded, and wholly unused to the ways of the world, she believed each word he said, and when at last he proposed marriage, she not only consented, but also promised to keep it a secret for a time, until he could in a measure reconcile his father, who he feared might disinherit him for ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... impression upon the mind of the fair Alice Goldworthy, whom he had casually met in polished society, and whose admiration he had enlisted, as much by the charms of inimitable wit as by the graces of his matchless person. What wonder that the gentle girl, all unskilled as she was in the ways of the world, should receive his frequent visits with pleasure; and when her kind father intimated to her that her lover was a man possessing no visible resources, and was besides very unwilling to allude to his former history, which was involved in much obscurity, what wonder that ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... through? A crown of blossom is waved above it; But heart and life of the whirl—'tis you! Margaret! pearl! I have sought and found you; And, though the paths of the wind are free, I'll follow the ways of the world around you, And build my nest on the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... wicks for the candle molds and wondering at the ways of the world. He had not intended to do wrong. He may have thought that the stones, although put aside by the workmen, were common property. He had made a mistake. But how are mistakes to be avoided in life? He would ask ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... artificial allurements must have either very strong nerves or very bad sight, if he persist in saying that there is more danger to be apprehended from the former than the latter. He knows very little of modern manners and must be a very suckling in the ways of the world who imagines that a young man has any thing to fear from the actresses on the stage, who has gone through the ordeal of a common ball-room, or even walked of a fine day through our streets. The ladies of London, Dublin, New-York, Philadelphia ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... island could induce us to read, however ardent our sympathies may have been, the lyrics about slavery or the war, except in very rare cases. The truth is, the Muse, for a lady who has seen so much of life and the ways of the world, is an excessively jealous personification, and is apt to punish with oblivion a mixed devotion at her shrine. The poet who desires to improve and exalt his time must make up his mind to a double martyrdom,—first, to be execrated by vast numbers of respectable people, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... either of his classmates. The influences of his home had been of a different character from those which had surrounded his two friends. Not that the love for him had been less, but certain elements of refinement had been lacking and his familiarity with the ways of the world was much less. Besides, his father had been in humbler circumstances, and Peter John was to room in college in Leland Hall, one of the oldest of the dormitories, where the room rent was much less than in Perry Hall and more in accord with Peter John's pocket. In ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... getting him out. And if some of the old stagers contented themselves with eating his dinners, and returning them in the proportion of one to five, the unsophisticated gratitude of youth, less cunning in the ways of the world, declared unhesitatingly, in its own idiomatic language, "that old Hodgett was a regular brick, and gave very beany feeds." And so his fame travelled far beyond his own collegiate walls, and out-college honourables and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Cook, I quite forgot to express my sympathy with you; I heard that you had lost your cat.' The blow was deliberately administered, and I felt it as an insult. I was wrong, I know. I was ignorant of the ways of the world, and I ought to have been aware of the folly of placing myself above the level of my guests, and of the extreme unwisdom of revealing myself in that unguarded way to strangers. Two or three more experiences of that kind ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... trip, both of which errors you must be careful to avoid. It is a simple matter of arithmetic to calculate what is best for you to do; but I hope on this horse question you may have the benefit of advice from some one who has had experience with the ways of the world. You will need ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... were to be seen from time to time to relieve the tedium of life with the offensive Philadelphus. This admission instantly brought a shock to her. She had learned to study herself in these last few days since she had become aware of the ways of the world. Life was to be no longer a period of obedience to laws which the Torah had laid down; it was to be a long resistance against desirable things that she yearned for but which she dared not have. She learned at this moment that she could be her own chief stumbling-block, and that love, ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... him, my dear,' said Mrs. Barebones, the consumptive cat; 'he's a wild, thoughtless creature, quite inexperienced in the ways of the world. Heed the counsels of one whose sands of life are almost run and who, before she goes to the land of cats, would fain warn a youthful friend and, if possible, avert her from her own sad fate. This racking cough (ugh! ugh!) and this distressing cat-arrh, (snuff! snuff!) with which ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... gentleman of fashion, without fleecing him and rooking him, as would inevitably be the case if he fell into the clutches of those birds of prey always on the lookout for young squires from the country coming up to learn the ways of the world, with a plentiful supply ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Sister Halsey, that you look down on us all as if we weren't good enough for you, although you're too kindly to let it be seen. According to the ways of the world, of course, it's so. If I'm as rough and uneducated as most of our folks, at least I can think in my mind what it would be not to be rough, and I can think sometimes how ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... strange fellowship of four: Ann and I, the organist and Master Peter, and, albeit we were not much experienced in the ways of the world, I dare boldly say that we did more good and dried more tears ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the Creole 'pollo,' or man-about-town. He is short of stature, lean and bony. He has a long thin face, with a very sun-burnt complexion, a prominent proboscis, and his hair, eyes and eyebrows are remarkably black and lustrous. The pollo's weakness is over-confidence in himself and in the ways of the world. To him everything appears bright and sunny. Nothing in his estimation seems impossible of realisation. If you are in a difficulty, Bimba is the man to help you through, or at least to offer to do so! Bimba takes especial care to let everybody know that ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... into the retirement of domestic life, we think it proper to notice the events which closed the great struggle between England and France for empire in America. In that struggle he had first become practised in arms, and schooled in the ways of the world; and its results will be found connected with the history of his ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... they had elected a Conservative. They might send up to Parliament the most antediluvian old Tory they could find in England if they wished, only not his son, not a Palliser as a Tory or Conservative. And then, though the little town had gone back in the ways of the world, the county, or the Duke's division of the county, had made so much progress, that a Liberal candidate recommended by him would almost certainly be returned. It was just the occasion on which a Palliser should show himself ready to serve his country. There would be an expense, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... a young fellow of ingenuous character, brought successively under the lead of several different persons wise in the ways of the world, who act toward him, each in his turn, the part of "guide, philosopher, and friend." Candide, with such a mentor bearing the name Martin, has now arrived ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... favorite objections of these wiseacres was, that Hope Mills was founded on a wrong basis. Who knew just exactly what amount of goods Winston sold? Well, there was the amount manufactured,—the amount on hand every six months. True,—with a disbelieving shake of the head,—but he was up in the ways of the world; and what would hinder him, Ananias-like, from keeping back part of the price? When this was shown to be an utter impossibility, they still were quite sure Winston harbored in his secret soul some plan for cheating the workmen at the last. Here would be all this accumulation of capital, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... harvest news came that the Scioto Company had burst, as bubbles will, leaving to its dupes only a number of well-executed maps, some worthless parchments called deeds, and that valuable experience which comes with a knowledge of the ways of the world. Barlow, being the company's principal agent abroad, came in for his full share of the abuse excited by its operations; and yet it is evident that he was as innocent of its real character as any one, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... conversation and manners, the contamination of heresy, with which they took it for granted he was infected, from having dwelt so long among those obstinate and perverse heretics, the English; but Anastasio was too well acquainted with human nature, and with the ways of the world, to be thrown off his guard. He gave most munificently to the church; and, in spite of all their attempts to place Isabella in a convent, as a boarder, succeeded in retaining her under the immediate care of her ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... I enjoy as good an opinion of myself as most men, that I was much less successful in making my way at court than I had expected. My competitors for advancement were numerous, and more versed in the ways of the world than I. Like them, I was obliged to begin by paying a most assiduous attention to men in office. Having once gained the privilege of being seated in the mejlis (assembly) of the head of the law, who was in fact my chief, I little by little ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... according to their own accounts, "a strange family; they rarely acted like other people; their hearts were in the right place, but their heads seemed to be doing anything but what they ought."—"They were remarkable," says another statement, "for their worth, but of no cleverness in the ways of the world." Oliver Goldsmith will be found faithfully to inherit the virtues and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... position, if not into obscurity. If Miss Loring is the woman God has created for you, in the name of all that is holy, do not let another man usurp your rights. Do not let one like Dexter bear her off to gild a heartless home. Remember that Jessie is young, inexperienced, and unskilled in the ways of the world. She is not schooled in the lore of love; cannot understand all its signs; and, above all, can no more look into your heart, than you can look into hers. How is she to know that you love her, if you stand coldly—I might say cynically—observant ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... a strange service that Sunday morning. The son introduced the father, and the father, looking at his son, who seemed so short a time ago unlearned in the ways of the world, gave as his text, "A little ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... was a man of great intelligence, of remarkable personal attractions, and amiable character. His death was a loss to Motley even greater than he knew, for he needed just such a friend, older, calmer, more experienced in the ways of the world, and above all capable of thoroughly understanding him and exercising a wholesome influence over his excitable nature without the seeming of a Mentor preaching to a Telemachus. Mr. Stackpole was killed by a railroad accident on the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... up. Upon the education of the boys the Prince of Wales utilized his own knowledge of life as well as the traditions of his father's training of himself. He is said to have believed that the study of men and the ways of the world had not been sufficiently considered in his own case and that he wished his sons, while escaping the nervousness, constraints and adulation which surrounded the Court, should also avoid the sycophancy and flattery which might be ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... nothing. It did not seem to me that Mrs. de Lancey had succeeded in killing the natural human impulses in Violet, though perhaps the girl was not as well versed in some of the ways of the world as others of her set. Still, I felt that her own natural common sense would protect her, even though she had been kept from a knowledge of much that in others of her set was part of ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... if by tacit consent, every incident or development of Lali's life was influenced by his judgment and decision. He had been more to her than General Armour, Mrs. Armour, or Marion. Schooled as he was in all the ways of the world, he had at the same time a mind as sensitive as a woman's, an indescribable gentleness, a persuasive temperament. Since, years before, he had withdrawn from the social world and become a recluse, many of his finer qualities had gone into an indulgent seclusion. He had once ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her to be quiet. She looked down herself, but nevertheless contrived to use her eyes as a kind of furtive electric battery in the midst of the most innocent conversation. It was clear that Polly had flown farthest in the ways of the world, and when you looked at her again you could see that the balance of her life had been ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... tyranny and oppression, hatred and vengeance. It was therefore not surprising that, when my turn came, I did to others as I had been done by. Jackson had no excuse for his treatment of me, whereas, I had every excuse for retaliation. He did know better, I did not. I followed the ways of the world in the petty microcosm in which I had been placed. I knew not of mercy, of forgiveness, charity, or goodwill. I knew not that there was a God; I only knew that might was right, and the most pleasurable sensation ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... lived to be nearly twenty-eight years old, a short life to show ability in most of the ways of the world, but long enough to test the quality of a poet, not merely in promise, but in performance. There is no doubt that he had the indefinable but unmistakable touch of genius. Only a portion of his slender production is of high rank, but it is enough to preserve his name. His ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... the world. It remains a question how much this adult philosophy appeals to him. Although his tales were written for his grandchildren, so finished a telling of the tale as we find in Laboulaye, with its delightful hits of satire, appeals more to the grown-up versed in the ways of the world. But the sage remarks of worldly wisdom of Uncle Remus could not fail to impress a little boy: "Go where you will and when you may, and stay long ez you choosen ter stay, en right dar en den you'll sholy fin' dat folks ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... her shoulders. Self-possession, the lifetime habit of the lawyer and judge, kept his countenance impassive. He bade her a courteous good-morning and gave her a chair, but the story he had already read in her face made him sick at heart. He knew the ways of the world, of civil courts, of men, and of some women; so he waited to see what turn affairs would take. His manner, however, had that habitual dignified kindliness that bound people to him, and made them trust him even when he was pitted with all his ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... syllogism which ends in Nature's supreme quod erat demonstrandum. What was there to distract him or disturb him? He did not know,—but there was something. This sumptuous creature, this Eve just within the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the world, but on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge,—alive to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating with voices and music, as the flower of some dioecious plant which has grown in a lone corner and suddenly unfolding its corolla on some hot-breathing June evening, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... she have her tea-party as she likes it?" she said to herself as she went out. "The master's away, and she's not likely to do this sort of thing when he's about." Kate, who was thirty-one, and experienced in the ways of the world, was quite aware of the element of awe in Toni's love for her husband—an element of which Toni herself was as yet wholly unsuspicious. "And I've no doubt this young lady as is coming down isn't used to great things. You can see as Mrs. Rose hasn't lived with ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... of his past? Have I not a right to be happy? Money, estate, name, are mine, all that means an open sesame to the magic door. Others go in, but I beat against its flinty portals with hands that bleed. No! I have no right to be happy. The ways of the world are open; the banquet of life is spread; the wonder-workers plan their pageants of beauty and joy, and yet there is no praise in my heart. I have seen, I have tasted, I have tried. Ashes and dust and bitterness are all my gain. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Viola," interrupted Rachel, rising. Her face had hardened again. "We cannot change the ways of the world." She crossed the room, but stopped with her hand on the door-latch. Turning to her daughter, she said: "Whatever Kenneth may think of me, he has the greatest respect and admiration for you. He bears no grudge against Minda Carter. On the contrary, he has shown that he would ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... almost in my own house. And I am prepared to maintain the privilege to be a poetic one. In truth I am prepared to maintain that both attitudes are valuable, and should exist side by side. And so my friend and I walk side by side along the ways of the world, he being full of a rich and humane sentiment, because he remembers passing that way a few hundred times since his childhood; while to me existence is a perpetual fairy-tale, because I have forgotten all about it. The lamp-post which moves him to a tear of reminiscence wrings from me a cry of ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... girl who had earned her bread as a governess, simply because he loved her. It was a wonder to himself that he, a lawyer, a man of the world, a member of Parliament, one who had been steeped up to his shoulders in the ways of the world, should still be so pure as to be capable of such a sacrifice. But it was so; and the sacrifice would undoubtedly be made,—some day. It would be absurd in one conscious of such high merit to be afraid of the ordinary social incidents of life. It is ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... well as I do! And she is unformed; unused to all the ways of the world; a mere novice ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... had not been slow to learn the ways of the world. She knew all this, and she knew also that her cotton umbrella and all but ragged shawl would not command respect in the eyes of the palace servants. If she were too humble, she knew well that she would never succeed. To overcome by imperious overbearing with such a shawl as hers upon her shoulders, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... passages-at-arms with Mrs. Dodd. They had all been down to breakfast but Lady Wakely and another woman, who were accustomed to the ways of the world. ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... Goose replied promptly, "for the story is one that teaches a lesson, even if it does come from Mr. Crow. It seems that once upon a time a young Mr. Rat said to his father, speaking as if he knew the ways of the world better than did those who had lived in it many years ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... to consider that in climbing to some unknown, unseen height in deep darkness I was, after all, doing a wiser thing than living in the world with the ways of the world,—ways that are for the most part purely hypocritical, and are practised merely to overreach and out-do one's fellow-men and women—ways of fashion, ways of society, ways of government which are merely temporary, while Nature, the invincible and eternal, moves ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... beautiful accord with all things noble and charming in nature. He is really very intelligent-looking. He makes me think of the little boy that ran through the streets of a large city all of one cold winter, and then became a great artist, but he was so poor and inexperienced in the ways of the world, that he had to suffer a long time before his genius was discovered. Some time I will tell you about him, that you may know that true genius and worth may be found among the lowest children of earth, and, like the diamond, they will ...
— The Pearl Story Book - A Collection of Tales, Original and Selected • Mrs. Colman
... this money, and after a sad parting with my mother and my little sister, set out one September morning for Osage. At the moment I was oppressed with the thought that this was the fork in the trail, that my family and I had started on differing roads. I had become a man. With all the ways of the world before me I suffered from a feeling of doubt. The open gate allured me, but the homely scenes I was leaving suddenly put forth a ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... he felt no embarrassment among men, he said 'that he never yet was able to divest himself of an anti-Chesterfieldian awkwardness in mixed companies.' He did not take advantage of his residence in Philadelphia to accustom himself to the ways of the world. There he lived in lodgings and met the leading public characters of both parties. But when he took his seat in the cabinet, he found it necessary to enter upon housekeeping and to take a prominent part in society, for which his wife ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... himself, "is a young man; he will think nothing of this: a fellow at his age cares nothing for money." George did care but little for the money, but he did care about his father; and he understood the ways of the world well enough to know that his father ought to have paid his own bill. He began for the first time to experience something of that feeling which his uncle so ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the finale, I was distinctly conscious, as he bubbled compliments in my ear, of soft thrills of gratified pride stealing from hat-rim to boot-heels. I was wise, quoth he—anybody could see that with half an eye; sagacious, versed in the ways of the world, an acquaintance to be desired; one who had tasted the cup of ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... upwards, he had read nothing but the new novels, and the verses in the almanacs, which helped him not a little in making, what he called, poetry of his own; for, of course, our little hero was a poet. All the common usages of life, all the ways of the world, and all the customs of society, seemed to be quite unknown to him; add to these good qualities, a magnificent conceit, a cowardice inconceivable, and a face so irresistibly comic, that every one who first beheld it was compelled to burst out a-laughing, and you will have some notion of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... under the combined influence of the sense of responsibility and the excitement of the hour 'languid Johnny,' to borrow Bulwer Lytton's phrase, 'soared to glorious John.' Palmerston, like Melbourne, was all things to all men. His easy nonchalance, sunny temper, and perfect familiarity with the ways of the world and the weaknesses of average humanity, gave him an advantage which Lord John, with his nervous temperament, indifferent health, fastidious tastes, shy and rather distant bearing, and uncompromising convictions, never possessed. Russell's ethical fervour ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... long in these mountain solitudes," thought she; "her ideas will become romantic, and her taste fastidious. If it is dangerous to be too early initiated into the ways of the world, it is perhaps equally so to live too long secluded from it. Should she make herself a place in the heart of her mother and sister it will be so much happiness gained; and should it prove otherwise, it will be a lesson learnt—a hard one indeed! but hard are the lessons ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Do you recollect what is said in the epistle of John—'The world knoweth us not'? I do not see how a Christian can be fashionable. To be fashionable, one must follow the ways of the world." ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... they gave each other no peace. Only now and then, when they crouched side by side on the turf by the roadside and stretched their wrinkled necks to look after the passers by, a temporary soul-brotherhood grew up between them, as they discussed the ways of the world, the weaver, the system of caring for the poor, and the wretchedly thin coffee in their abode, or exchanged their slender stock of ideas—which with the sailmaker consisted in a conclusive psychology of women, with Huerlin in recollections of his travels and fantastic plans for financial ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... honourable friend, through a long and amiable life, has mixed in the business of the world without being stained by its contaminations: and he, in consequence, is apt to place—I will not say too high, but higher, I am afraid, than the ways of the world will admit, the standard of political morality. I fear my honourable friend is not aware how difficult it is to apply to politics those pure, abstract principles which are indispensable to the excellence of private ethics. Had we employed in the negotiations that serious ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... novice that the boy and youth have the first and most difficult lessons to learn; but frequently even the matured man has still much to learn. The study is of considerable difficulty in itself, but it is made doubly difficult by novels, which depict the ways of the world and of men who do not exist in real life. But these are accepted with the credulity of youth, and become incorporated with the mind; so that now, in the place of purely negative ignorance, a whole ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... if we become working girls, not one of our old wealthy, fashionable set will have anything to do with us. What makes people act so silly? Any one of them on the avenue may be where we are in a year. I've no patience with the ways of the world. People don't help each other to be good, and don't help others up. Grown-up folks act like children. How parents can look forward to the barest chance of their children being poor, and bring them up as we were, I don't ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... "I am only a poor girl unskilled in the ways of the world, and knowing nothing but music and French; I fear that the details of business are beyond my grasp. But if it is lost, I ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... yet he was very simple, easily affected by the misfortunes of others, direct in all his impressions; but no one could take him by surprise, because his faith in the eternal redemption of all trials was beyond the ways of the world. His optimism was simple Christianity. He always said he believed there was as great a number out of the Church as there was in it that followed the teaching of Christianity. He was among the believers, with his ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... life—if existence in a studio can be so called—was merry. I was learning the ways of the world. I liked the life. I wrote to John almost every day. The freedom of the den, the change from rote lessons to post- graduate work was pleasant. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... a want of knowledge of him, at home. Amelius, popular with everybody, had touched the great heart of this man. He perceived the peril that lay hidden under the strange and lonely position of his fellow-voyager—so innocent in the ways of the world, so young and so easily impressed His fondness for Amelius, it is hardly too much to say, was the fondness of a father for a son. With a sigh, he shook his head, and gathered up his letters, and put them back in ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... ready to prove himself as the living God, by being ever willing to help, succor, comfort, and answer the prayers of those who trust in him: so that we need not go away from him to our fellow-men, or to the ways of the world, seeing that he is both able and willing to supply us with all we can need ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... persons, possessed of more wealth than is good for the exercise of wisdom. Also, my son, thy future teaching must be not confined to the learning that wise men can impart unto thee. Thou art going to the great city to learn the ways of the world, to train thyself in self-reliance, and to prepare thyself for all the ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... the Western Whirlwind had certain qualities in common; both had ambitions to be "sporty." They shared an inclination for lurid neckties, fancy socks and striped silk shirts; they believed themselves wise as to the ways of the world, and each had been heard to express the opinion that Ridgley School was a "slow old dump." Campbell was the leader of the two—he dominated Bassett as a political boss dominates his hench-men. One reason was that Bassett foresaw favors ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... Ernesto's friend, pretends to have discovered a suitable partner for him in the person of his (Malatesta's) sister, an "Ingenue", educated in a convent and utterly ignorant of the ways of the world. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Garland combination dining-and living-room, with the kitchen in the corner, made his interesting confidence relative to the suitcase. He made it in mouth-filling phrases, with many teasing generalizations about the ways of the world and the evils of modern society, which was only his gempman's way when playful. But by close application his auditors soon got at the heart of his meaning, to wit: Doctor actually was going uptown to his ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... infant "Sun" in it and takes him home. Next year he gets one day three fishes, and finds the infant "Moon", and the third year he has four fishes one day and finds the baby-girl, "Star." When the children have grown up the monk sends them to town in order that they should learn the ways of the world. The eldest hearing a Jew offering a box for sale, saying, "Whoever buys this box will be sorry for it, and he who does not buy it will be equally sorry," purchases it and on taking it home finds his sister weeping for the golden apple which the "wise woman" (who had ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... on his journeys, how hard soever or perilous the way might be. Yea, Clement, thou lookest the sooth, though thou sayest it not, I was nought loth thereto, partly because I would not grieve thee, my man; but partly, and belike mostly, because I was wishful to see the ways of the world even at the risk of being thrust out of the world. So it befell us on a time to make a journey together, a journey exceeding long, in the company of certain chapmen, whereof some, and not a few, died on the way. But we ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... young, so unsuspecting, so artless, and knew so little of the ways of the world or its intriguing people that ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... Dost thou, then, hesitate? Monarch, thou art well acquainted with the ways of the world, and knowest that A wife, however virtuous and discreet, If she live separate from her wedded lord, Though under shelter of her parent's roof, Is mark for vile suspicion. Let her dwell Beside her husband, though he hold her not In his affection. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... are a silly young thing, as ignorant of the ways of the world as an unfledged Java sparrow; but your heart is pure and true, and your affection is no adroitly set steel-trap, to spring unawares, and catch and cut me. From the day when you first came among us with your sweet childish face and holy eyes, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... silent: the truth suggested itself to him with the boy's innocent answer. He was tied to a bed of dried leaves in the corner of a wattle hut, but he had not wholly forgotten what the ways of the world were like. ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... man, Mrs Thorne, and don't know much about the ways of the world. I have always been down in the country, and maybe I have prejudices. You won't refuse to humour one of ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... test had come, would he meet it, calmly, even alone with his God, if need be?—or would he basely flee? He was not alone. Carmen stood by him. She had no part in his cowardice. But Carmen—she was only a child, immature, inexperienced in the ways of the world! True. Yet the great God himself had caused His prophets to see that "a little child shall lead them." And surely Carmen was now leading in fearlessness and calm trust, in ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... People of repute can't let in young women (found upon a heath, forsooth), without knowing who's who. I have learn'd the ways of the world, sir. ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... Chuck had grown wise in the ways of the world since he first ran away from the home where he was born. Twice since then he had built a new home, and now this would be better than either of the others. He paid no heed to Polly, when she pouted because he did not dig where she wanted him to. ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... that? I try hard to give you credit, Jonathan, for not knowing the ways of the world—but it's always been difficult to believe that Minnie Farrell ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as the wizard tramp. The latter was a very strange and peculiar character, a victim of the rum habit, which had brought him away down until he became a tramp of the most pronounced type. This man, however, was really a very shrewd fellow, well educated, not only in book learning, but in the ways of the world, and seeing that Desmond had resolved to take a desperate chance, the tramp volunteered to land him a winner; he succeeded in so doing. The champion of the walking match carried his money to his mother, the tramp went upon an extended spree and spent his share. Afterward the tramp and Desmond Dare ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... the road, as we finally drive down the hill, their figures silhouetted against the sky. They have been on the whole pleased and awakened by their adventure; they will discuss and compare their emotions, finger their silver, wonder and speculate, and go their separate ways, convinced anew that the ways of the world and its worldlings are verily ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... low-brow criminal, Blake knew, who ran for a hole and hid in it until he was dragged out. The more intellectual type of offender preferred the open. And Binhart was of this type. He was suave and artful; he was active bodied and experienced in the ways of the world. What counted still more, he was well heeled with money. Just how much he had planted away after the Newcomb coup no one knew. But no one denied that it was a fortune. It was ten to one that Binhart would now try to get out ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer |
