"Untaught" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at that time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in this manner. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discovery of the line ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... flowers grow; And there the watchful Purity doth go Moistening with dew-drops all the ground below, Drawn from a river untaintedly flowing, They who have gained by a kind fate's bestowing Pure hearts, untaught by philosophy's care, May gather the flowers in the mead that are blowing, But the tainted in spirit may never ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... of a dawning crisis that would call upon me to declare war against my worse or better self, for, of course, they could not both be mistress of the field. How could I, all untaught, suspect that upon the issue of such a victory would depend the happiness or misery of my ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... his untaught genius was to them as wondrous and beautiful as if from the pencil of a Raphael or Titian. Every object of his pleasure or regard was treasured as a sacred thing. Even the withered flowers that had bedecked his death-couch were preserved with pious care, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... sermon, full of fire and of native force. They came away greatly moved, and each wrote to Lord Jeffrey to lose not a week in coming to hear the greatest natural orator they had ever heard. Jeffrey came next Sunday, and often after declared he never heard such words, such a sacred, untaught gift of speech. Nothing was more beautiful than my father's admiration and emotion when listening to his uncle's rapt passages, or than his childlike faith in my father's exegetical prowess. He used to have a list of difficult passages ready for "my nephew," and the moment the oracle gave ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... which never fails to rise at every innovation, now began to increase; when a numerous group of the common classes of people, and of untaught men of all countries and of every nation, without prophets, without doctors, and without doctrine, advancing in the circle, drew the attention of the whole assembly; and one of them, in the name of all, thus ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... wanderings, to the caves of Death, 80 Searching its cause in its effect; and drew From withered bones, and skulls, and heaped up dust Conclusions most forbidden.[134] Then I passed— The nights of years in sciences untaught, Save in the old-time; and with time and toil, And terrible ordeal, and such penance As in itself hath power upon the air, And spirits that do compass air and earth, Space, and the peopled Infinite, I made Mine ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... dedicatory preface Luther lays the greatest stress upon this, for he writes: "Though I know of a great many, and must hear it daily, who think lightly of my poverty and say that I write only small Sexternlein (tracts of small volume) and German sermons for the untaught laity, I will not permit that to move me. Would to God that during my life I had served but one layman for his betterment with all my powers; it would be sufficient for me, I would thank God and suffer all my books ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... brother's mouth with his little hand; whereat Bob flew into such a passion, that he quite forgot Olive, and all he was about to say, in the excitement of a pugilistic combat with his unlucky cadet In the midst of which the two belligerents—poor, untaught, motherless lads—were hurried ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... he says, "and have no manner of fear of little ones such as gnats and flies, and yet because of the continual nuisance which they find them, complain more of these than they do of the other: so most men hate the unmannerly and untaught as much as they do the wicked, and more. There is no doubt that he who wishes to live, not in solitary and desert places, like a hermit, but in fellowship with men, and in populous cities, will find it a very necessary ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Yet it always makes me nearly cry, to hear of those poor working men trying to express themselves and nobody ever teaching them, nor anybody in all England, knowing that painting is an art, and sculpture also, and that an untaught man can no more carve or paint, than play the fiddle. All efforts of the kind, mean simply that we have neither master nor scholars in any rank or any place. And I, also, what have I done for Coniston schools yet! I don't deserve an oyster shell, ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... Atkins said his heart sunk within him to hear a poor untaught creature desire to be taught to know God, and he such a wicked wretch, that he could not say one word to her about God, but what the reproach of his own carriage would make most irrational to her to believe; nay, that already ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... before rebellion stirred, Who did not spend his strength in empty sound; His was a mind deep-reaching and profound. Others might beat the air, and make a noise, And help to amuse the silly girls and boys; But as for him, he was a man of thought, Deep in theology, although untaught. He could not read or write, but he was wise, And knew right smart how to extemporize. One Sunday morn, when hymns and prayers were said, The preacher rose and rubbing up his head, "Bredren and sisterin, and companions ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... said, To leave untaught and then kill is cruelty; not to give warning and to expect things to be done is tyranny; to give careless orders and be strict when the day comes is robbery; to be stingy in ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... lowering look of one in whom brute instinct was sovereign for the time,—a look that makes the noblest countenance base. He was but a man,—a poor, untaught, outcast, outraged man. Life had few joys for him; the world offered him no honors, no success, no home, no love. What future would this crime mar? and why should he deny himself that sweet, yet bitter morsel called revenge? How ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... in these men, which is less agreeable, is a sort of blunt insensibility to giving physical pain. If they are cruel to animals, for instance, it always reminds me of children pulling off flies' legs, in a sort of pitiless, untaught, experimental way. Yet I should not fear any wanton outrage from them. After all their wrongs, they are not really revengeful; and I would far rather enter a captured city with them than with white troops, for they would be more subordinate. But for mere physical suffering they would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... action of Semantha's that goes far, I think, to prove what a brave and loyal heart the untaught German girl possessed. She was very sensitive to ridicule, and when people made fun of her, though she would laugh good-humouredly, many times she had to keep her eyes down to hide the brimming tears. Now her stepfathers name was a ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... art ready to go with me, even to Gades, and to the Cantabrian, still untaught to bear our yoke, and the inhospitable Syrtes, where the Mauritanian wave perpetually boils. O may Tibur, founded by a Grecian colony, be the habitation of my old age! There let there be an end to my fatigues by sea, and land, and war; whence if the cruel fates debar me, I will ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... accompanying an electric discharge. But these conceptions are extremely recondite, and have been attained only through centuries of philosophizing and after careful observation and laborious experiment. To the untaught mind of a child or of an uncivilized man, it seems far more natural and plausible to regard the sky as a solid dome of blue crystal, the clouds as snowy mountains, or perhaps even as giants or angels, the lightning as a flashing dart or a fiery serpent. In point of fact, we ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... desires and perceptions of man untaught by anything but organs of sense, must be limited to objects ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... done no harm,' said Felix. 'Mr. Audley has just been talking to me about that poor boy. He really is as untaught as that little scamp at the potteries that ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... native talent for drawing, had it been cultivated, might have brought him into the front rank of artists; but on the perverse principle, then common, that training is either useless to native capacity or ruins it, he remained untaught, and his vigorous draughtsmanship, invaluable as it was in his scientific career, never reached its full technical perfection. But the sketches which he delighted to make on his travels reveal the artist's eye, if not ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... marks his earlier poems, and which perhaps verges on sentimentalism, gradually gives place to a Pharisaic and contemptuous tone; a tone more lofty and manful in seeming, but far less divine in fact. Perhaps comparative success had injured him. Whilst struggling himself against circumstances, poor, untaught, unhappy, he had more fellow-feeling, with those whom circumstance oppressed. At least, the pity which he could once bestow upon the misery which he met in his daily walks, he now kept for the more picturesque woes ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... rude, low-born, untaught, Bewildered and alone, A heart, with English instinct fraught, He yet can call his own. Ay! tear his body limb from limb; Bring cord, or axe, or flame!— He only knows that not through him Shall ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... marched back to our quarters at Chiahuitztla, into which we were escorted by all the chiefs. Our conduct on this expedition raised us higher than ever in the esteem of the natives, who could distinguish the excellence of justice, though untaught, and saw that the behaviour of Cortes corresponded with his professions of having come into their country to redress injuries, and to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... her tears, High her verdant crown she rears; At her call the sunny hours Wreathe her humid locks with flowers; Bright with many a lucid gem Shines her spotless diadem: Every grove hath found a voice, Countless tribes in Thee rejoice! In melody untaught they sing Glory to the eternal King! Earth and heaven respond their strains, Lord of ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... imperial tongue is stern and rough, Us'd to command, untaught to plead for favour. Far be it we should honour such as these With humble suit; no, rather let my head Stoop to the block than these knees bow to any Save to the God of heaven and to my king, And sooner dance upon a bloody pole Than stand uncover'd to the ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... deliverance for this folk? And yet the riddle was not to be solved By guess-work but required the prophet's art; Wherein thou wast found lacking; neither birds Nor sign from heaven helped thee, but I came, The simple Oedipus; I stopped her mouth By mother wit, untaught of auguries. This is the man whom thou wouldst undermine, In hope to reign with Creon in my stead. Methinks that thou and thine abettor soon Will rue your plot to drive the scapegoat out. Thank thy ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... obtained a place in the thoughts and language of primitive man. The gradual intrusion of specific rational ideas is natural to the human mind, since it is logically progressive, and the fact may be observed by those who watch the mental growth of children, and of ignorant and untaught adults. ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... rough as the elements, and unlearned as the animals I tended. I often compared myself to them, and finding that my chief superiority consisted in power, I soon persuaded myself that it was in power only that I was inferior to the chiefest potentates of the earth. Thus untaught in refined philosophy, and pursued by a restless feeling of degradation from my true station in society, I wandered among the hills of civilized England as uncouth a savage as the wolf-bred founder of old Rome. I owned but one law, it was that of the strongest, and my greatest deed of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... certainly clear to her;—all this and a thousand amusing prettinesses (to say nothing of her canine feat of bringing her game straight to her master's feet, and refusing to resign it to any hand but his), does my beautiful greyhound perform untaught, by the mere effect of imitation and sagacity. Well, May, at the end of the coursing season, having lost Brush, our old spaniel, her great friend, and the blue greyhound, Mariette, her comrade and ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... more than time that they should be sent to Moscow to study, as well as to learn how to comport themselves in society. What sort of an education could they have got in the country? The eldest boy will soon be thirteen, and the second one eleven. As yet, my cousin, they are quite untaught, and do not know even how to enter ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... could read wot you thought, And he knew wot you did; He could find things untaught, No matter whar hid; And he went to it, blindfold and smiling, being led by the hand like ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... untaught their native grace, Joy in every grinning face, To the music they are gaily ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells
... to create demand for his own supplies. If he was betrayed into an error, he quickly retrieved it. He could live upon nothing and consequently could travel anywhere in search of such things as he desired. He could barely read and write, and could not spell, but he was daring and astute. His untaught brain was that of a financier, his blood burned with the fever of but one desire—the desire to accumulate. Money expressed to his nature, not expenditure, but investment in such small or large properties as could be resold at profit in the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... other and not very staid person, so easily schooled, easily taught to respond; so easily thrilled, easily beguiled, easily caressed. Why, with her head falling back on your shoulder so readily, and her lips so lightly persuaded, one can scarcely believe her to have been untaught through all these years of dry convention and routine, or unaware of that depravity, latent, which it took your unerring faith and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... winged herald, Jove-born Mercury, The self-same day that he asleep had laid Enchanted Argus, spied a country maid, Whose careless hair, instead of pearl t'adorn it, Glister'd with dew, as one that seemed to scorn it; 390 Her breath as fragrant as the morning rose; Her mind pure, and her tongue untaught to glose: Yet proud she was (for lofty Pride that dwells In tower'd courts, is oft in shepherds' cells), And too-too well the fair vermillion knew And silver tincture of her cheeks that drew The love of every swain. On her this god Enamour'd was, and with his snaky rod Did charm ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... London garrets; not one in fifty thousand would share poverty with the brightest genius ever born. Seeing that marriage is so often indispensable to that very success which would enable a man of parts to mate equally, there is nothing for it but to look below one's own level, and be grateful to the untaught woman who has pity ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Menelaus spoke, In words though few, yet clear; though young in years, No wordy babbler, wasteful of his speech: But when the skill'd Ulysses rose to speak, With down-cast visage would he stand, his eyes Bent on the ground; the staff he bore, nor back He wav'd, nor forward, but like one untaught, He held it motionless; who only saw Would say that he was mad, or void of sense; But when his chest its deep-ton'd voice sent forth, With words that fell like flakes of wintry snow, No mortal with Ulysses could compare: Then little reck'd we of his ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... visible face Of our Mother I sought for my food; Crumbs by the way to sustain. Her sentence I knew past grace. Myself I had lost of us twain, Once bound in mirroring thought. She had flung me to dust in her wake; And I, as your convict drags His chain, by the scourge untaught, Bore life for a goad, without aim. I champed the sensations that make Of a ruffled philosophy rags. For them was no meaning too blunt, Nor aspect too cutting of steel. This Earth of the beautiful breasts, Shining up in all colours aflame, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... founder, the miscreant Sumroo, and the merits of the gallant young Irishman, tall, handsome, intrepid, and full of the reckless generosity of his impulsive race, soon raised him to distinction. About his military genius, untaught as it must have been, there could be no doubt in the minds of those who had seen the originality of his movement at Golkalgarh; his administrative talents, one would suppose, must have given some indication by this time of what they were hereafter to appear ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... fire, as it turned out. At Scranton our train was held up. There were torpedoes on the track; rails torn up or something. For want of something better to do, we went out to take a look at the town. At the head of the main street was a big crowd. Untaught by experience, we bored our way through it to where a line of men with guns, some in their shirt-sleeves, some in office coats, some in dusters, were blocking advance to the coal company's stores. The crowd hung sullenly back, leaving a narrow ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... babies in thousands, more than Tom, or you either, could count. All the little children whom the good fairies take to, because their cruel mothers and fathers will not; all who are untaught and brought up heathens, and all who come to grief by ill usage or ignorance or neglect; all the little children in alleys and courts, and tumble-down cottages, who die by fever, and cholera, and measles, and scarlatina, and nasty complaints ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... peculiar effect of their frequent transitions from the most fanciful imagery to the language of prose. No mere student can hope to rival, far less to reproduce, in a foreign tongue, the charm of verse which sprang untaught from the hearts of simple folk, which lives unwritten on the lips of lovers, and which should never be dissociated from singing.[29] There are, besides, peculiarities in the very structure of the popular rispetto. The constant ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the author's own series of tests are much more likely to lead to reliable diagnosis than the series of Binet, which demands so much of the rather specialized capacity of abstract formulation. Healy's tests, on the other hand, deal fairly with the primitive, untaught mind and that which has an unequal and deceptive development of language ability. In connection with these tests, it is interesting to note, by the way, that he finds irregularity in results (or cooperation) to be so often associated with epilepsy and depletion from sex over-indulgence ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Impelled by the inspiration of a former life, all creatures visibly (reap) in this world the fruits of their acts. Indeed, all creatures live according to the inspiration of a former life, even the Creator and the Ordainer of the universe, like a crane that liveth on the water (untaught by any one.) If a creature acteth not, its course of life is impossible. In the case of a creature, therefore, there must be action and not inaction. Thou also shouldest act, and not incur censure by abandoning action. Cover thyself up, as with an armour, with action. There may ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... he said, "is a different sort of handwriting from that on the paper. The red-ink note about the avenger of the tortoise is in a crude, large, clumsy, untaught style of writing. This is small, neat, and well formed—except that it is a trifle shaky, probably because ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... years spelt by the untaught Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply, And many a holy text around she strews, To teach the rustic moralist ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Christian ideas had to be painfully recorded on sacred buildings and their furnishings for more than a thousand years; with all the patient acquiescence of untaught ignorance, and the struggling uncertainty of genius pursuing a distant glimmering light, apparently unconscious of all that had preceded it in Egyptian and classic art. The great political and religious ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... this teaching necessitate morbid consideration of the subject. It will, in fact, in many cases clear away the morbid curiosity and surreptitious seeking after information in which untaught girls indulge. Skillfully and delicately taught this knowledge as an important and serious part of woman's work, girls will be sweeter and more womanly for the knowledge of their responsibility to society and to their ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... only had come into the secret place where his Maker and himself stood face to face; thought of him, therefore, with a reverence whose roots dug deep down below his coarseness, into his uncouth gropings after God. Outside of this,—Gaunt had come to the mountains years before, penniless, untaught, ragged, intent only on the gospel, which he preached with a keen, breathless fervor. Scofield had given him a home, clothed him, felt for him after that the condescending, curious affection which a rough barn-yard hen might feel for its adopted poult, not yet sure if it will turn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... this land hath bred, Through peril onward led, Free, of undaunted mood, Still lavish of their blood, With soul untaught to yield, Rending each chain! To such the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... As a result, the prison must necessarily be managed largely by the inexperienced, for the men, generally, no doubt, come to the office without having given any special attention to the subject. This is much like setting a company of untaught ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... ermine. Nor did the contrast between the ladies end here: the full and rich-toned voice of Constance Cecil was the perfection of harmony, while the light and gay speech of her companion might be called melody—the sweet playful melody of an untaught bird. ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... where the rosy-bosom'd Hours, Fair Venus' train, appear, Disclose the long-expecting flowers And wake the purple year! The Attic warbler pours her throat Responsive to the cuckoo's note, The untaught harmony of Spring: While, whispering pleasure as they fly, Cool Zephyrs through the clear blue sky ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... and stair, ragged misery or wasting age of the inhabitants,—all these conduce, each in due measure, to the fulness of his satisfaction. What is it to him that the old man has passed his seventy years in helpless darkness and untaught waste of soul? The old man has at last accomplished his destiny, and filled the corner of a sketch, where something of an unshapely nature was wanting. What is it to him that the people fester in that feverish misery in the low quarter ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Untaught by experience, Henry III. listened to the appeals of his mother and her husband. Richard of Cornwall, who came back from his crusade in January, 1242, was persuaded that he had another chance of realising his vain title of Count of Poitou. But the king had ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... bosom laid Of a pure virgin mind, In quiet ever, and in shade, Shepherd and sage may find; They, who have bowed untaught to Nature's sway, And they, who follow Truth along her ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... have dared and suffered so much to achieve the mastery of the world—they might have begged it, and saved an infinity of needless slaughter. These people have no proper pride, no manly shame, because they have no hope. Untaught, unskilled in industry, owning nothing, their government an absolute despotism, their labor only required at certain seasons, and deemed amply rewarded with a York shilling or eighteen pence per day, and themselves the virtual serfs of great landholders who live in Rome or ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... connected with this belief in conjuration grow out of mere lack of enlightenment. As primeval men saw a personality behind every natural phenomenon, and found a god or a devil in wind, rain, and hail, in lightning, and in storm, so the untaught man or woman who is assailed by an unusual ache or pain, some strenuous symptom of serious physical disorder, is prompt to accept the suggestion, which tradition approves, that some evil influence is behind his discomfort; and what more natural than to conclude that some rival in ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... recorded words we are still aware of living force and power. We can picture his manly form in its simple attire, as he paces up and down, dominating his hearers by his persuasive speech, convincing their reason, controlling their judgement, compelling their action. None knew the untaught and unteachable art of oratory better than Tecumseh. Throughout his life it ever played an important part, from his first outburst, which was in defence of a helpless captive, until his last appeal to the courage of a British general. Tecumseh ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... to be paid for it, because the trifle I offered was much more than his Court of Conscience informed him it was worth. I could moralize here a little; but I will only ask you, in which state think you man is best; the untaught man, in that of nature, or the man whose mind is enlarged by education and a knowledge of the world? The behaviour of the inhabitants of this little hamlet had a very forcible effect upon me; because it brought me back to my earlier days, and reminded me of the reception I met with in ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... my pretensions to musical taste are merely a few of nature's instincts, untaught and untutored by art. For this reason, many musical compositions, particularly where much of the merit lies in counterpoint, however they may transport and ravish the ears of your connoisseurs, affect my simple lug no otherwise ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Clarke was an untaught orator. He had very strong feelings; and a clear head; which are the two grand sources of eloquence. 'You know,' said he, 'how much mischief I have done you; for it cannot be denied. I struck you first, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... haunted hall, Of the primeval curse, and tell in turn What loathly vengeance paid a brother's shame. [Footnote: Alluding to the banquet of Thyestes.] Say, does my arrow miss or hit the mark? Am I a begging, babbling soothsayer? Bear witness on thy oath how well I know, Untaught, the sinful record of ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... untaught notions remind of other seers of a larger scope. She, too, receives this life as one link in a long chain; and thinks that immediately after death, the meaning of the past life will appear to us as ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... untaught and simple native was to be converted, the missionary took note of the spiritual capacity as well as of the spiritual wants; he did not force him to receive, at once, the whole creed of the church, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... work,—only to have it spoiled entirely by the wicked acts of that villain Merritt,—I tell you, Farnsworth, she's a girl of a thousand! I read her, I understand her better than you do, and I see far beneath her untaught, outward manner the real girl,—the sterling traits ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... suffering to the animal—the suffering, or discomfort and danger, having in the first place given rise to the habit. Assuming again that the habit had existed so long as to become, like that of the reptile, a fixed, immutable instinct, a hereditary knowledge, so that the young huanacos, untaught by the adults, would go alone and unerringly to the meeting-place from any distance, it is but an easy step to the belief, that after the conditions had changed, and the refuges were no longer needed, this instinctive knowledge would still exist in them, and that they would take the old road ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... forcibly of the moral degradation that such herding increased, or induced, that when it became necessary to build new tenements they were much better arranged. Every manufacturing town in New England has now its unwholesome because untaught population, a danger signal on the line of progress of the republic. It is only popular education that can remove this obstruction of ignorance. The foreign population of Amesbury today is large, and although it gives hands to the mills, it adds neither ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... am, Rebecca, as thou hast spoken me, untaught, untamed—and proud, that, amidst a shoal of empty fools and crafty bigots, I have retained the preeminent fortitude that places me above them. I have been a child of battle from my youth upward, high in my views, steady and inflexible in pursuing them. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... incumbent Linnet, l. 348. The affection of the unexperienced and untaught bird to its egg, which induces it to sit days and weeks upon it to warm the enclosed embryon, is a matter of great difficulty to explain; See Additional Note IX. on Storge. Concerning the fabrication of their nests, see Zoonomia, Sect. XVI. 13. ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... passed the nights in communing with these heavenly teachers, and lay at rest during the daytime. She spoke with great contempt of the frivolity and benighted ignorance of the modern Europeans, and mentioned in proof of this, that they were not only untaught in astrology, but were unacquainted with the common and every-day phenomena produced by magic art. She spoke as if she would make me understand that all sorcerous spells were completely at her command, but that the exercise of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... love, a thrall Obedient to Kaikeyi's call? As thus I muse upon his woe And all his wisdoms overthrow, Love is, methinks, of greater might To stir the heart than gain and right. For who, in wisdom's lore untaught, Could by a beauty's prayer be bought To quit his own obedient son, Who loves him, as my sire has done! Bharat, Kaikeyi's child, alone Will, with his wife, enjoy the throne, And blissfully his rule maintain O'er happy Kosala's domain. To Bharat's single lot will fall The kingdom and the power ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... ink and a bit of paper, and wiz a half-dozen strokes he know 'ow to frame a gust of wind!" I think myself that Leech could frame a gust of wind as effectually as Keene, by the sheer force of his untaught natural instinct—of his genius; but not with the deftness—this economy of material—this certainty of execution—this consummate knowledge ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... trifles is a blessing to the untaught," she said. "You have not crumpled a ribbon. Truly, Carus, only long and intense devotion to the art could turn you out ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... through Christian Science Sunday services. If Christian Scientists occasion- [15] ally mistake in interpreting revealed Truth, of two evils the less would be not to leave the Word unspoken and untaught. I allowed, till this permission was withdrawn, students working faithfully for Christ's cause on earth, the privilege of copying and reading my works for Sunday [20] service; provided, they each and all destroyed the copies at once after said ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... to Christ must naturally issue in a deep desire to be with Him and to see Him face to face; and though it is quite possible to have been misled or untaught in regard to the conditions of His coming, the contemplation of such a promise from Him can but kindle a glowing hope in a truly devoted heart. It is a direct contradiction to claim supreme affection for Him, and yet be careless of His ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... from all further approaches of this man; at least, until we know him better. There is a power of attraction about him that few so young and untaught in the world's strange lessons ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... perfectly sane. The great charm of her little book is the sunny hopefulness and happiness which shines from every page, and the tender affection for her suffering Lord which mingles with her devotion without ever becoming morbid or irreverent. It is also interesting to see how this untaught maiden (for she shows no traces of book learning) is led by the logic of the heart straight to some of the speculative doctrines which we have found in the philosophical mystics. The brief extracts which follow will illustrate all ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... are to attribute this and similar passages to Christian influence (for Popol Vuh, as we have it, is but an attempt to collect the fragments of the lost book that remained in men's minds after the conquest), or whether the purer portions of the myth be due to untaught native reflection and piety, it is not possible to determine. It is improbable that the ideas of a hostile race would be introduced into religious hymns by their victims. Here, as elsewhere in the sacred legends of civilised peoples, various strata ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... schooling, fair one. The eye does its work untaught, and he knows how well, who is struck ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... from them, as in the case of young animals sucking, yet the more complex instincts seem to have originated independently of intelligence. I am, however, very far from wishing to deny that instinctive actions may lose their fixed and untaught character, and be replaced by others performed by the aid of the free will. On the other hand, some intelligent actions, after being performed during several generations, become converted into instincts and are inherited, as when birds on oceanic islands learn to avoid man. These actions may then ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... at breaking up the party at Dunbar had yet been made, as its situation made it a convenient abode for the Court. Though he had never had such advantages of education as, strangely enough, captivity had afforded to his father, he had not been untaught, and his rapid, eager, intelligent mind had caught at all opportunities afforded by those palace monasteries of Scotland in which he had stayed for various periods of his vexed and stormy minority. Good Bishop Kennedy, with whom he had now spent many ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to any instructed mind, though it may possess a certain degree of specious plausibility for the untaught. It is enough to answer that the entire equality of the States, in every particular, is a vital condition of their union. Every new member that has been admitted into the partnership of States ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Brunck's, or Porson's [4] note, [v] More than the verse on which the critic wrote: Vain as their honours, heavy as their Ale, [5] Sad as their wit, and tedious as their tale; 60 To friendship dead, though not untaught to feel, When Self and Church demand a Bigot zeal. With eager haste they court the lord of power, [vi] (Whether 'tis PITT or PETTY [6] rules the hour;) To him, with suppliant smiles, they bend the head, While ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the wall. Our forefathers left the turnstile behind them in their English meadows, but not the short-cut from house to house, from field to field or from village to village. There is always a shorter way than the crowd travels. Boys and animals, those untaught explorers and surveyors, are the first to find it. Once within the pasture, a hundred short paths led hither and thither wherein grew a little low, sweet grass which the red cows grazed and sheep nibbled; and as they sauntered along ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... was more nature than art that evoked my enthusiasms, and that in art I felt mainly the expression of the love of the beauty of nature. Sexton gave me some idea of the use of oils, and from that time most of my leisure hours and my vacant days were given to painting in an otherwise untaught manner, copying such pictures as I could borrow, or translating engravings into color—wretched things most certainly, but to me then, with my crude enthusiasm, productive of greater pleasure than the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... scarce the deepest nook of hell I deemed a refuge from the spell, Yet, obstinate in silence still, The haughty demon mocks my skill. But thou—who little know'st thy might, As born upon that blessed night When yawning graves, and dying groan, Proclaimed hell's empire overthrown - With untaught valour shalt compel Response denied to magic spell.' 'Gramercy,' quoth our monarch free, Place him but front to front with me, And by this good and honoured brand, The gift of Coeur-de-Lion's hand, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... listened to the song of a bird and tried to attune your own thoughts to its unrestrained and untaught melodies? There are no true skylarks in America, and therefore you may never be able to repeat the experience of the poet or fully to appreciate the "harmonious madness" of his matchless poem; for no other bird is so literally the embodiment of song ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... saw was the beautiful face of the Mary of "Assumption," with the waves of her golden hair lying upon her shoulders and the light of an eternal sun shining down upon her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and buffeted by fortune, and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, had the compensation or the curse which is ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... sunset: or the mysterious robe of twilight drapes her, or her garment is sable as the Night. The grand sweep of her shoulders and the splendid pillar of her throat reveal the beauty of her form even to the eyes of an untaught, neglected child. Her face is pale, but as full of sunlight as of shadow, and her eyes are really grey and deep as mountain lakes. The sorrow of all the world and all its joy seem to have rolled over her like many waters, and when she smiles the sweetness ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... because some unaccountable glamour leads them to continue to bring up their girls in the same inefficient physical habits which resulted in so much misery to themselves. Housework as they are obliged to do it, untrained, untaught, exhausted, and in company with rude, dirty, unkempt foreigners, seems to them a degradation which they will spare to their daughters. The daughter goes on with her schools and accomplishments, and leads in the family the life of an elegant little visitor during all those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... his genius put to scorn The proudest in the purple born, Whose wisdom never grew To what, untaught, he knew— ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... level of beauty, and grace, and fitness, or at least the perception of them. Lois pondered and revolved this all till she began to grow rather dreary. Think of the Esterbrooke school, and of being alone there! Rough, rude, coarse boys and girls; untaught, untamed, ungovernable, except by an uncommon exertion of wisdom and will; long days of hard labour, nights of common food and sleep, with no delicate arrangements for either, and social refreshment utterly out of the question. And Madge away; married, perhaps, and ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... morning, the gudewife gave her seven heads of lint, saying she would take no excuse; they must be returned in three days spun into yarn. The girl saw her mother was in earnest, so she plied her distaff as well as she could; but her hands were all untaught, and by the evening of the second day only a very small part of her task was done. She cried herself to sleep that night, and in the morning, throwing aside her work in despair, she strolled out into the fields, all sparkling with dew. At last she reached a knoll, ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... did not rally to its support, and it had to contend with the opposition of party papers already existing, upon whose manor it was poaching. The Globe expired after an existence of thirty days. Its proprietor, still untaught by such long experience, invested the wreck of his capital in a Philadelphia Jackson paper, and struggled desperately to gain for it a footing in the party. He said to Mr. Van Buren and to other leaders, Help me to a loan of twenty-five hundred dollars for two years, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... beyond the present division between North and South.... Were we really animated by the spirit of hostility which is always assumed to prevail among us towards America, we should view the terrible spectacle with exultation and delight, we should rejoice that the American people, untaught by past misfortunes, have resolved to continue the war to the end, and hail the probable continuance of the power of Mr. Lincoln as the event most calculated to pledge the nation to a steady continuance in its suicidal ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... stripped of all the prickles save two, she probed the tunnel and, screwing the instrument triumphantly, withdrew a huge white grub, which she ate forthwith; and then, with a grimace, assumed an air of shame and contrition, for she had astonished herself as well as others by an exhibition of untaught bush-craft and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... how ridiculous it would be of me to compete with Lysias in an extempore speech! He is a master in his art and I am an untaught man. ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... upon Frank; but again coolness and practice prevailed against blind fury and untaught strength, and ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... NORMAL AND INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE, at Tuskegee, Alabama, is one of the most uniquely interesting institutions in America. Begun, twenty years ago, in two abandoned, tumble-down houses, with thirty untaught Negro men and women for its first students, it has become one of the famous schools of the country, with more than a thousand students each year. Students and teachers are all of the Negro race. The Principal of the ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not only heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life. One summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... has science confirmed the "intuitions" (whatever that conveniently cloudy word may mean) of the primitive savage. The acquisition of correct views would indeed be an easy thing if they could be gained by the "intuitions" of an untaught savage. ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... At the same time it must be observed—that, as this Class comprehends the only judgments which are trustworthy, so does it include the most erroneous and perverse. For to be mistaught is worse than to be untaught; and no perverseness equals that which is supported by system, no errors are so difficult to root out as those which the understanding has pledged its credit to uphold. In this Class are contained censors, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... artist treats his sketch-book, and has scratched outlines of beasts and fishes with his sharp shell as an artist uses his point. These ancient bones, in short, are the sketch-books of European savages, whose untaught skill was far greater than that of the Australians, or even of the Eskimo. When brought into contact with Europeans, the Australian and Eskimo very quickly, even without regular teaching, learn to draw with some spirit and skill. In the Australian stele, or grave-pillar, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... love thus thrown aside, Vain were their hopes and labours to obtain; The heart thou spurnest I alike disdain, To thee displeasing, 'tis by me denied. But if, discarded thus, it find not thee Its joyless exile willing to befriend, Alone, untaught at others' will to wend, Soon from life's weary burden will it flee. How heavy then the guilt to both, but more To thee, for thee it ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Ellen Neil was tall, and her motions full of untaught elegance and natural grace. Her countenance was a fine oval; her features, though not strictly symmetrical, were replete with animation, and her eyes sparkled with a brilliancy indicative of a warm heart and a quick ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... pens. 'And to explain his wants, he took up his Prayer-Book, which his sister had decorated with several small devotional prints. Copying these minutely line by line in pen and ink, was the solace of his prison hours; and though the work was hardly after drawing-masters' rules, the hand was not untaught, and there was talent and soul enough in the work ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it? I know not; yet I feel it to be something infinitely more old than I—something not of only one place or time, but vibrant to all common joy or pain of being, under the universal sun. Then I wonder if the secret does not lie in some untaught spontaneous harmony of that chant with Nature's most ancient song, in some unconscious kinship to the music of solitudes—all trillings of summer life that blend to make the great sweet ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... forth the horse!'—the horse was brought; In truth, he was a noble steed, A Tartar of the Ukraine breed, Who look'd as though the speed of thought Were in his limbs; but he was wild, Wild as the wild deer, and untaught, With spur and bridle undefiled— 'T was but a day he had been caught; And snorting, with erected mane, And struggling fiercely, but in vain, In the full foam of wrath and dread To me the desert-born was led: They bound me ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... error of my judgment, by the (almost) amazement that her unexpected performance awak'd me to; so forward and sudden a step into nature I had never seen; and what made her performance more valuable was that I knew it all proceeded from her own understanding, untaught and unassisted by any ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins |
