"Well-read" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... collection of books, and has upon his shelves dictionaries and encyclopedias, together with a decent representation of those works which people call 'standard.' But it is of importance to remember this: That while he may be a well-read man, as the phrase goes, he is not and never has been of that class which Emerson describes with pale sarcasm as 'meek young men in libraries.' It is clear that Hardy has not 'weakened his eyesight over books,' and it is equally clear that he has 'sharpened his ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... of Cassiodorus is derived from his position rather than from his character. He was a statesman of considerable sagacity and of unblemished honour, a well-read scholar, and a devout Christian; but he was apt to crouch before the possessors of power however unworthy, and in the whole of his long and eventful life we never find him playing a part ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... agreed, that no one would quote if he could think; and it is not imagined that the well-read may quote from the delicacy of their taste, and the fulness of their knowledge. Whatever is felicitously expressed risks being worse expressed: it is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us. We quote to save proving what has been demonstrated, referring ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... and the last ball at the Philharmonic. Politics are lightly touched upon, for two of the gentlemen present are Spaniards, and for obvious reasons a Cuban usually avoids all topics which concern the government of his country. Occasionally someone who is well-read in the day's newspaper, essays a mild discussion with somebody else who has not seen the paper for a week; but as Cuban periodicals are under official control, they are not remarkable for their political veracity, and ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... "a sage grave man," Talk'd of the Ghost in Hamlet, "sheath'd in steel:"— His well-read friend, who next to speak began, Said, "That was Poetry, and nothing real;" A third, of more extensive learning, ran To Sir George Villiers' Ghost, and Mrs. Veal; Of sheeted Specters spoke with shorten'd breath, And thrice he quoted "Drelincourt ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... I have been polytheistic as any other well-read pagan of my day, and changed the heads and the labels of the fetiches on my altar almost as often as my ball wardrobe. I aspired to 'culture' in all the 'cults', and I improved diligently my opportunities. One year the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... points out, the true source of inspiration was a passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy—"the book," as Byron maintained, "in my opinion most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the reputation of being well-read with the least trouble" (Life, p. 48). Burton is discoursing on injury and long-suffering. "'Tis a Hydra's head contention; the more they strive, the more they may; and as Praxiteles did by his glass [see Cardan, De Consolatione, lib. iii.], when he saw a scurvy face in it, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... must go somewhere for their outings. They can't be everlastingly nosing shop windows in all weathers; so why not go in and have a look at your pictures? Besides, Miss Rosemary is a young lady of parts. Sir Deryck assures me she is a gentlewoman by birth, well-read and intelligent.—Now, laddie, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... deceitful but a galloping consumption. There is enough of old medical observation and opening science in the Letter, as well as of sweet old literature, and still sweeter old religion, to make it a classic to every well-read doctor in the language. 'To be dissolved and to be with Christ was his dying ditty. He esteemed it enough to approach the years of his Saviour, who so ordered His own human state, as not to be old upon earth. He that early arriveth into the parts and prudence of age is happily old without the uncomfortable ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... poverty out of my own narrow means. I have begun to practice Greek declamation with Cassius, and wish to have a Latin course with Bruttius. My friends and daily companions are the pupils whom Cratippus brought with him from Mitylene, well-read men, of whom he highly approves. I also see much of Epicrates, who is the first man at Athens." After some pleasant words to Tiro, who had bought a farm, and whom he expects to find turned into a farmer, bringing stores, holding consultations with his bailiff, and putting by fruit-seeds in his ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... England, the people, for the most part, keep no servants, but perform all the household work themselves, with no end of spinning and sewing besides. It is the true Arcadia, where you find cultivated and refined people busying themselves with the simplest toils. For these people are well-read and well-bred, and truly ladies in all things. And so my little Marie and I, we feed the hens and chickens together, and we search for eggs in the hay in the barn. And they have taught me to spin at their great wheel, and at a little one too, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... accepted it, the beginning of an acquaintance was formed between the rectory at Sutton and the family at Boughton which grew into an intimacy as time went on. Campbell was a gentleman, a travelled man, of clear head and ardent mind, candid, well-read in English divinity, a devoted Anglican, and the incumbent of a living so well endowed as almost to be a dignity. Mary was pleased at the introduction, as bringing her brother under the influence of an intellect which he could not make light of; and, as Campbell had a carriage, it was natural that ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... originally from Aix, in Provence, evinced itself in the light, warmth, and sensibility of his nature; there was perceptible the same sky that had rendered so prolific the genius of Mirabeau. His father, a military and well-read man, educated him equally for war and literature. One of his uncles, employed in the foreign office, made him early a diplomatist. A mind equally powerful and supple, he lent himself equally to all—as fitted for action as for thought, he passed from one to the other with facility, according ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... following little inconsistency in a commonly-received tradition has led me, at the request of a large party of well-read and literary friends, to request your solution of the difficulty in an early ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... altogether. "Mr. Bomford is also," she went on, "extremely pleasant and remarkably well-read. His manners are charming." ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... determined man," he said; "he will carry out any scheme in which he is interested. Had he consulted me about this, I would have been glad to have aided him with money or advice. My son-in-law is an extremely well-read, refined, well-bred man. He does not court publicity. While he was staying in my house he spent nearly all the time in the library translating an Indian book on Buddhism. My daughter has no ambition to be a queen or anything else than what she is—an American girl. But my son-in-law means to ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... these considerations that there is no sphere of literature which is so often the refuge of wealthy scholars, idle men of taste, baffled politicians of independent means, ambitious and well-read but not specially gifted citizens who have inherited comfortable estates. It is so dignified an employment, that it gratifies pride,—so possible without trenchant opinions, that it does not alarm the conservative,—so thoroughly respectable, safe, and capable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... sisters, of which Miss Evans of Mobile is one of the many American dilutions,—that quality by which any sort of masculine wickedness and brutality short of refusing ladies seats in horse-cars is made lovely and attractive to the well-read and well-bred of the sex,—is very pleasantly derided, while the tropical luxuriance of general information characteristic of "St. Elmo" is unsparingly ridiculed, with the help of frequent extracts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... possessed a vigorous intellect, great energy of thought and action, overbearing-purpose, and unflinching courage. His information was not extensive, nor his judgment profound, and yet he was a well-educated, well-read, and very thoughtful, reflective man. He was adapted to be the sole leader of an insurrection where the object might be clear, the undertaking desperate, and the work short. His nature was not adapted either to lay an extensive ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of nineteen, he left for good, Maryland, his native state. Few men in the San Francisco bay region are more widely known than he. His ready wit, cheery laugh and fund of information—for he is extremely well-read—always insure for him an attentive ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... drinking, and loose living of every description. It is true that the intellectuals and worldly folk in general did not share this prejudice. Walter Scott had made novel-reading common among the well-read; but the narrower sectarians in England, the people of the back country and the small towns in America, learned to regard the novel as unprofitable, if not positively leading toward ungodliness, and ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... say you are discussing conditions in Europe. You must speak in one way to the man who has traveled and in an entirely different way to the man who has never gone abroad—in one way to the well-read man, in an entirely different way to the ignoramus. Let us say you are discussing urban life, urban problems. You must speak in one way to the man who lives in the city, in another to the man who lives in the country. Let us say you are discussing the labor problem. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of the House Committee on Ways and Means was William L. Wilson, a sincere and well-read tariff reformer who had been a lawyer and a college president, in addition to taking a practical interest in politics. The measure which he presented to the House on December 19, 1893, was not a radical proposal, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley |
