"Write about" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Christ and a book about him were the same thing. But this is a commonplace absurdity of what one may call the dedicatory genre, in which writers almost always speak of their book as if there were no difference between the book itself and its subject: thus, if they write about Caesar or Cato, "Caesar and Cato," they say, "prostrate themselves before you;" If about Cicero, "Look," they say, "Cicero addresses you and takes you as patron:" all of which are correctly to be reckoned in ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... doing anything, or not doing anything, because it was against the law or custom, never entered his head! Very few people who read Cellini realize that there are men like him now. Every bit. They don't write about themselves, that's all. There will always be a certain number of men of his kidney, a sort of seasoning for the rest of us. They fear nothing and they ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... think of so many things, and moreover, it is improper to write about such problems; they ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... "Certainly! love—but let me write about it, for I have particular reasons. And, my dear, now we are by ourselves, let me caution you not to mention that Mr. Palmer can stay but one week: in the first place it is uncivil to him, for we are not sure of it, and it is like driving him away; and in the next place, there are reasons I can't ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... well, mother. But even the journey will be an advantage. The movement will do me good, and I can tell John much better than I could write. Who could write about a complicated business like this? He will understand me when he sees me at half a word; whereas in writing one can never explain. Don't oppose me, please, mother! I feel that to do something, to get myself in motion, is the only thing for ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... to write these lines by the fact that these bones require protecting from the vandalism of certain persons unknown, also I have been approached by pioneers several times to write about this desecration of the last ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... days after Lunardi's first ascent Johnson wrote to a friend, 'I had this day in three letters three histories of the flying man in the great Ballon. I am glad that we do as well as our neighbours.' Three letters were enough, and on the same day Johnson wrote to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Do not write about the balloon, whatever else you may think proper to say'. On the 29th of September 1784 Lunardi's balloon caught fire by accident, and was burnt on the ground. Johnson's quiet and sensible comment is conveyed in ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... the party, especially if they take the pavillion to themselves, may escape this abomination. The Rhine has been too often described to require a record here; but the rapturous nonsense which the Germans pour forth whenever they write about the national river, offends truth as much as it does taste. The larger extent of this famous stream is absolutely as dull as a Dutch pond. The whole run from the sea to Cologne is flat and fenny. As it approaches the hill country it becomes picturesque, and its wanderings among the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... should again read purely for the pleasure of it, as I had in the early days before the critical purpose had qualified it with a bitter alloy. But I found that not being forced to read a number of books each month, so that I might write about them, I did not read at all, comparatively speaking. To be sure I dawdled over a great many books that I had read before, and a number of memoirs and biographies, but I had no intense pleasure from reading in that time, and have no passions to record of it. It may have been ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not now write about politics, because we do not talk, or at least write about them in France any more than in Naples; besides, such subjects are not suitable to ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... hale us forth upon the rounds once more, So that we may expect it not in vain, The joke of how with curses deep and coarse Papa puts up the pipe of parlor stove. So ye Who greet with tears this olden favorite, Drop one for him who, though he strives to please Must write about the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Philosopher, "was made for man, not man for poetry. I am inclined to think that the contest you speak of is somewhat in the nature of a 'put-up job' on the part of you poets. In the same way newspapers will always advocate war; it gives them something to write about, and is not altogether unconnected with sales. To test Nature's original intentions, it is always safe to study our cousins the animals. There we see no sign of this fundamental variation; the difference is ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... give me merely externals, which are not worth writing about. I go places merely because for one reason or another they attract me. Then if it happens that I get close enough to the life, I may later find that I have something to write about. A man rarely writes anything convincing unless he has lived the life; not with his critical faculty alert, but whole-heartedly and because, for the time being, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Doesn't he call him Burgomaster Schulze? One does not say burgomaster of a dead man—one says Our Illustrious—Does not the wretch write about rough cobble stones? Does he not attempt with that to ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... would be better to fix upon a subject first; but then she has never yet written a paper herself, so she does not realize that you have to have some thoughts before you can write them. She should think, she says, that I would write about something that I see. But of what use is it for me to write about what everybody is seeing, as long as they can see it as ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... clowns are now by common consent of Tories and Liberals alike transformed into capable citizens. Such a phrase gives us a painful glimpse of the accurate knowledge of their countrymen that is possessed by eminent men who write about them from the dim and distant seclusion of college libraries and official bureaux. If Sir Henry Maine could spare a few evenings from dispassionate meditations on popular government in the abstract, to the inspection of the governing people ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... may ask, write about "The Death Wake" at all? Why rouse again the nightmare of a boy of twenty? Certainly I am not to say that "The Death Wake" is a pearl of great price, but it does contain passages of poetry—of poetry very curious because it is full of the new note, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... his father and added doughnuts to the plate, just to save time. He couldn't admit it to Scotty, of course, but he was plenty curious in spite of his skepticism. He knew Scotty, and his pal wouldn't get excited over some silly business that Barby might write about. ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... been uneasy at my not writing to you ere this, but you must remember it is scarcely a week since I received your last, and my life is not so varied that in the interim much should have occurred worthy of mention. You insist that I should write about myself; this puts me in straits, for I really have nothing interesting to say about myself. I think I have now nearly got over the effects of my late illness, and am almost restored to my normal condition of health. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... that "Cervantes sneered Spain's chivalry away?" I know not; and the author of such a line scarcely deserves to be remembered. How the rage for scribbling tempts people at the present day to write about lands and nations of which they know nothing, or worse than nothing. Vaya! It is not from having seen a bull-fight at Seville or Madrid, or having spent a handful of ounces at a posada in either of those places, kept perhaps by a Genoese or a Frenchman, that you are competent to write about such ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... from children are many containing suggestions of "what to write about in the next Oz Book." Some of the ideas advanced are mighty interesting, while others are too extravagant to be seriously considered—even in a fairy tale. Yet I like them all, and I must admit that the main idea in "The Lost Princess of Oz" was suggested to me by ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the works of a poet whose instinct is to write about everything under the sun, one obvious theme untouched, or touched hardly at all, then it is at least presumable that there was some good reason for that abstinence. Such a poet was Shakespeare. It was one of the divine frailties of his genius that he must be ever flying off ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... about "Tray," But no one has courage to write about Skye; So methinks I will rhyme, in my own rugged way, Of the queer little dog with the ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... a wooden lid and a lock and key. The contributions were to be dropped in through a slit in the lid which the carpenter made for us, and my brother took possession of the key. The title of the paper was to be The Tin Box, and we were instructed to write about the happenings of the week and anything in fact which had interested us, and not to be such little asses as to try to deal with subjects we knew nothing about. I was to say something about birds: there was never a week went by in which I didn't tell them a wonderful story of a strange bird I ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Nothingness revealed to me by the rigid positivists and iconoclasts of the century; but my heart died within me; my whole being froze as it were into an icy apathy,—I wrote no more; I doubt whether I shall ever write again. Of a truth, there is nothing to write about. All has been said. The days of the Troubadours are past,—one cannot string canticles of love for men and women whose ruling passion is the greed of gold. Yet I have sometimes thought life would be drearier ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... wreaths floating on the water, the dark blue sky that was bursting into stars, the mysterious outline of the hills, the ravishing perfumes rising from the garden below. "It is like a poem," she thought. "Why does no one write about it? Oh!" with a hard gasp, "if I could—if I could only write!" A meteor shot down the heavens. For the moment it seemed that the fallen star flashed through her brow and lodged, effulgent, in her brain. "I—I—think I could," she thought. "I—I—am sure that I could." ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... understand me. I don't want to be the one-sided artist merely; I want to do things as well as write about them, and I want the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... what subject I write about, so long as I write,' she answered carelessly. 'If you have got a subject in your head, give it to me. I answer for the characters and ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... never been done to bricks and soldiers by those who write about toys—my bricks and my soldiers were my perpetual drama. I recall an incessant variety of interests. There was the mystery and charm of the complicated buildings one could make, with long passages and steps and windows ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... the father, 'aren't you glad Miss Brangwen has come? She makes animals and birds in wood and in clay, that the people in London write about in the papers, praising them ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... so full of this affair of poor Mr. Trumbull, and so anxious about Sam Brattle, that I cannot now write about anything else. I can only say that no man ever behaved with greater kindness and propriety than Harry Gilmore, who has had to act as magistrate. Poor Fanny Brattle has to go to Heytesbury to-morrow to give her evidence. At first they said that they must take the father also, but he ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... write about to you but of love and yourself? My pen, I see, has not lost its personal gait in running over the mill books. Perhaps it politely anticipates what is expected! So much the better, say, for you expect what all men give—love and devotion. You would not know a man who could not love you. Your ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... sake, Arnold," he implored. "To look at you is an incitement to laziness. The world's full of things to write about. Make a choice and have done with it. Write something, even if you have to ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... times; it died, as so many others died, of the financial crash which was the inevitable sequel and retribution of speculative madness. Its history resembles the history of other Western towns of the sort so strongly, that I should not take the trouble to write about it, nor ask you to take the trouble to read about it, if the history of the town did not involve also the history of certain human lives—of a tragedy that touched deeply more than one soul. And what is history worth but for its human interest? The history ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... ahead. I'm toughened up, I've had some good things knocked into me and a lot of fool things knocked out of me. But that's just it. Are all the fine things fool things? Don't I still want to write? Sure I do. Well, what am I going to write about? What do I know of the big things of life? I was always hunting for what was great. I'm never hunting for it now, and unless I get something mighty quick my father will make me go into his business. What am I going to ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... what I am going to write about? Do I feel it strongly? Do I know it thoroughly? Do I imagine it clearly? The young contributor had better ask himself all these questions, and as many more like them as he can think of. Perhaps he will end by ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Nothing has happened to write about, except a call on Miss Norton, who has a room full of pretty things, and who was very charming, for she showed me all her treasures, and asked me if I would sometimes go with her to lectures and concerts, as her escort, if I enjoyed them. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... baptized the whole people of the fjord, and then sailed southwards along the land; and on this voyage happened much and various things, which are set down in tales and sagas,—namely, how witches and evil spirits tormented his men, and sometimes himself; but we will rather write about what occurred when King Olaf made Norway Christian, or in the other countries in which he advanced Christianity. The same autumn Olaf with his fleet returned to Throndhjem, and landed at Nidaros, where he took up his winter abode. What I am now ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... write about, difficult to contemplate. Scores of these boys, who for months had been away at the front, living without many refining influences, living, too, under strict discipline amidst all the stress and horror of war, were suddenly given their liberty, and let loose in our ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... was the crowning gift of these women. This evanescent art was the life and soul of the salons, the magnet which attracted the most brilliant of the French men of letters, who were glad to discuss safely and at their ease many subjects which the public censorship made it impossible to write about. They found companions and advisers in women, consulted their tastes, sought their criticism, courted their patronage, and established a sort of intellectual comradeship that exists to the same extent in no country outside ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... all, when one wishes to write about life, especially about that part of it which is inward, the inwrought experience of living may be of value. And that is a thing which one cannot get in haste, neither can it be made to order. Patient ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... more "scenes" in Parliament in the few sessions that I have selected to write about in this volume than there were in the rest of the last century put together. This was largely due to the climax of Irish affairs in the House. For effect in debate the English and Scotch Members,—not to speak of the Welsh Representatives,—are failures compared with those Members ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... generally gleaned from other books and compiled under one authorship as original compositions. Why cannot they be content with laying their English stories in English scenery: places they know well and can write about. Some save up their money in order to go abroad and visit one particular place, so as to bring new scenes into their new books. But ah, how weary you get of this one place! It is brought into at least three of their next novels. Everything, past, present and future seems to happen there. Your ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... to-night at the Little Church Around the Corner, between two of the acts of Salome. I mean that I've got the straight tip, and I know it to be true. I wish to quote you, if possible, in what I shall write about it for the morning papers. I'd like to get a statement from ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... "She begun to write about the time I did," he said, tasting the flavor of reminiscence. "I used to see her name in the papers when I never so much as thought I should write a line myself. She's been a great influence in ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... out of ill-will or good-will to some persons, to relate falsehoods. These men do like those who compose forged deeds and conveyances; and because they are not brought to the like punishment with them, they have no regard to truth. When, therefore, Justus undertook to write about these facts, and about the Jewish war, that he might appear to have been an industrious man, he falsified in what he related about me, and could not speak truth even about his own country; whence it is that, being belied ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... to hear from a little Southern girl, who likes YOUNG PEOPLE very much. I am nine years old. I have no sister, and but one brother. My papa is a doctor, and is often from home; so when Buddie and I are at school, mamma is alone. I love to go to school. I have two cats—Muldrow and Dumpie. I will write about our beautiful ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... it. But the 6 nearer border of this sea, which we call the circle of the world, surrounds its coasts like a wreath. This has become clearly known to men of inquiring mind, even to such as desired to write about it. For not only is the coast itself inhabited, but certain islands off in the sea are habitable. Thus there are to the East in the Indian Ocean, Hippodes, Iamnesia, Solis Perusta (which though not habitable, is yet of great length and breadth), besides Taprobane, a fair ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... of artists is a sad one! One must sacrifice all; peace, domestic happiness, love, family, and friends and for what? . . . for that which they write about us; for such wreaths that last only a few days; for the handclaps of the tiresome throng. . . . Oh, beware the provinces, mademoiselle! . . . Look at me . . . Do you see those wreaths? . . . They are splendid and withered, are they ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... and bring an admiration for the hardy Gloucester men who take their lives in their hands on nearly every trip they make. There are Martin Carr and Wesley Marrs and Tommy Clancy, and others of the brave crew that Connolly loves to write about."—Chicago Post. ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... the Col de Balme, he finds the wonders "above and beyond one's wildest expectations." He cannot imagine anything in nature "more stupendous or sublime." His impressions are so prodigious that he would rave were he to write about them. At the hospice of the Great St. Bernard he awakes, believing for a moment that he had "died in the night and passed into the unknown world." Tyndall's scientific ballast cannot keep him from soaring in a similar manner. His Glaciers of the Alps contains some highly strung sentences of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... HINTS. "Never write about any matter that you do not well understand. If you clearly understand all about your matter, you will never want thoughts, and ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... I told Elizabeth, I think, all I had to write about Arthur C. I had a letter from him a few days ago, hoping to see me in London, where I thought I might be going about this time, and where I would not go without giving him notice to meet me, poor lad. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... not write about it," said the girl with a sudden gravity that ennobled her face. "I don't like talking about it; ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... are very popular these days. The author-fighter has contributed some of the most informing volumes that have been issued on the great conflict. Of all of those who have been to the front and have returned to write about it, no one, perhaps, has had more unusual experiences than fell to the lot of this youth. He has written a book in which he tells what happened to him and his immediate associates; a book that is remarkable for the thrilling character of its narrative, the spirit of ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... journalist is a super-gossip—not about trivial things but about important things. Unless a man has a ceaseless desire to learn what is going on in the heads of others, he won't be much of a journalist—for how can you write about others unless you ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... he exclaimed, with scornful pity; 'no wonder you remain a hedge-flower! Why, poets write about us, and there is actually a song called "I'd be a Butterfly." Only think ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... interlacing horns, an ocean of lowing and stamping: hundreds of immense white bullocks, with horns a yard long and red tassels, packed close together on the little piazza d'armi under the city walls. Bah! Why do I write this trash? What's the use of it all? While I am forcing myself to write about bells, and Christmas festivities, and cattle-fairs, one idea goes on like a bell within me: Medea, Medea! Have I really seen her, or am ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... impossible to write about the period of the Renaissance without grave misgivings as to the ability to render justice to a period which has employed the pens of many cultivated writers, and to which whole volumes, nay libraries, ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... physician in every community, sooner or later in his experience there come thoughtless women making requests that we even hesitate to write about. Their excuses for the crime which they seek to have the physician join them in committing, range all the way from "I don't want to go to the trouble," to "Doctor, I've got seven children now, and I can't even educate and dress them properly;" or, maybe, "I nearly ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... be, I was so fascinated in watching her—there was one stray curl which lay like a strand of woven gold upon her brow. Confound it! It's all very well for the fellow who writes fiction for a living to write about people's emotions. He is cold himself. If he were like me, and wished to describe his own feelings, he might find himself in the same difficulty as myself, and give ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... sculpture (not in themselves more perfect in sympathy, though larger in number, than those on music) he is simply the first to write of these arts as an artist might, if an artist could express his soul in words or rhythm. It has always been a fashion among poets to write about music, though scarcely anyone but Shakespeare and Milton has done so to much purpose; it is now, owing to the influence of Rossetti (whose magic, however, was all his own, and whose mantle went down into the grave with him) a fashion to write about pictures. But ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... generously gave her[6] far more money than they were worth; but out of his respects unto the deceased and his memory, he most willingly paid her the money. He left behind him two sons and two daughters. He left in writing very little but his annual prognostications. He began first to write about the year 1630; he wrote Bellum Hibernicale, in the time of the long parliament, a very sober and judicious book: the epistle thereunto I gave him. He wrote lately a small treatise of Easter-Day, a very learned thing, wherein he shewed much learning ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... Augustus Timson bestowed on Lady Fanny. The fashionable authoress is nearly extinct, though some persons write well albeit they are fashionable. The fashionable novel is as dead as a door nail: Lothair was nearly the last of the species. There are novelists who write about "Society," to be sure, like Mr. Norris; but their tone is quite different. They do not speak as if Dukes and Earls were some strange superior kind of beings; their manner is that of men accustomed to and undazzled by Earls, writing for readers who do not care whether ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... that I ought not to write about biology on the ground of my past career, which my critics declare to have been purely literary. I wish I might indulge a reasonable hope of one day becoming a literary man; the expression is not a ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... contented. Meanwhile, clever as it is, the tale seems oddly anaemic and unreal. It is like those tragically trivial journals of 1914 that still survive in the dusty waiting-rooms of dentists. I don't suggest that Mr. BROWN, whose previous book I much admired, should write about the War; but I could wish him a little more in tune with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... does not proceed a bit," said Florence; "I cannot master it. I am not a heroine, and how can I write about one? I think it was a very shabby trick on the part of Sir John Wallis to set us such ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... ancient but not very populous city,—which nevertheless possessed an interest in my eyes, from the circumstance of my having chosen to write about it long before I ever dreamed of seeing it,—you quit the steamer, and, seating yourself in one of the long line of railway cars awaiting you, are whisked over the intervening neck to French-town,—by courtesy so called, since the town is yet ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... in stories. Maybe your father and mother are a real prince and princess, or some other great persons, and you were stolen away from them when you were a baby by cruel people. What a story that will make. I shall write about it ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... medical proceedings with awe. 'Mr. Null is a wonderful man,' he whispered, before he followed the doctor out. Ill and wretched as I was, this little interruption amused me. I wonder why I write about it here? There are serious things waiting to be told—am I weakly putting ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... come back, unless he brings me back a lady. This will be found at night, many hours after, instead of me. Oh, if you knew how my heart is torn. If even you, that I have wronged so much, that never can forgive me, could only know what I suffer! I am too wicked to write about myself! Oh, take comfort in thinking that I am so bad. Oh, for mercy's sake, tell uncle that I never loved him half so dear as now. Oh, don't remember how affectionate and kind you have all been to me—don't remember we were ever to be married—but try to think as if I died when I was little, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... events he describes. He paid some visits to England in which he obtained information, and as he always looked upon himself as an Englishman, his history naturally includes England as well as Normandy. He began to write about 1123, and from that date on he may be regarded as a contemporary authority, but from the Conquest the book has in many places the value of an original account. It is an exasperating book to use because of the extreme confusion in which the facts are arranged, or left without arrangement, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... the receipt of a friend's letter. Is it very frivolous to write all these letters, on no business whatsoever? What I think is, that one will soon be going into the country, where one hears no music, and sees no pictures, and so one will have nothing to write about. I mean to take down a Thucydides, to feed on: like a whole Parmesan. But at present here I am in London: last night I went to see Acis and Galatea brought out, with Handel's music, and Stanfield's scenery: really the best done thing I have seen for many ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... was a crushing letter from the lady principal. She said that "The Ten Points of a good Doll" seemed a preposterous subject for senior students of literature to write about, and "My Favourite Elopement in Fiction" would be outside the purview of any of her girls. She would substitute instead (with my permission), "The Debt of Literature (as well as Science) to DARWIN" and "My Favourite Piece of Epic Poetry." In fine, if I did not really mind, she would herself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... shall mention in the first place to be the principal of all. For if we remember that in the beginning the Greeks had taken no care to have public records of their several transactions preserved, this must for certain have afforded those that would afterward write about those ancient transactions the opportunity of making mistakes, and the power of making lies also; for this original recording of such ancient transactions hath not only been neglected by the other states of Greece, but even among the Athenians themselves ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... machinery to set a writer in motion. American civilization has hitherto had other things to do than to produce flowers, and before giving birth to writers it has wisely occupied itself with providing something for them to write about. Three or four beautiful talents of trans-Atlantic growth are the sum of what the world usually recognises, and in this modest nosegay the genius of Hawthorne is admitted to have ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Johnson (1709-1784), the lexicographer, was one of the most constant frequenters of the coffee houses of his day. His big, awkward figure was a familiar sight as he went about attended by his satellite, young James Boswell, who was to write about him for the delight of future generations in his marvelous Life of Johnson. The intellectual and moral peculiarities of the man found a natural expression in the coffee house. Johnson was fifty-four and Boswell only twenty-three when the two first met in Tom Davies' book-shop in Covent Garden. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... you would be sorry for us. I did not need your sympathetic note to tell me that. Our dear boy's death has given to three hearts—his mother's, his brother's and mine—a wound that will never heal. I cannot write about it. My wife sends her warm remembrance with mine ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... things, O'Donnell," he said, "do you know there is a haunted house near where we are staying? You don't? Very well, then, if I tell you what I know and you write about it, will you promise not to allude to the house by its right number? If you do, there will be the dickens to pay—simply call it '—— House,' near Sandyford Place. You promise? Good! Let us take a little stroll before we turn in—I feel I want a breath of fresh air—and I will tell you the experience ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... of the self-advertising, club-organizing class will always say that to a reporter at the time she gives him her card so that he can spell her name correctly; but Sam recognized that this young woman meant it. Besides, what was there that he could write about her? Much as he might like to do so, he could not begin his story with: "The Flagg Home for Convalescents is also the home of the most beautiful of all living women." No copy editor would let that get by him. So, as there was nothing to say that he would be allowed to say, he promised ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... have been all right, only a horrible heavy petticoat got loose and demoralised me. I don't know how it happened, but I got all wrong somehow, and a breaker caught me. Don't get drowned, Tishy; or, if you do, don't be revived again! I don't know which is worst, but I think reviving. I can't write about it. I'll tell you when ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the questions that proposed themselves, or to follow any one of them along its slenderest ramifications. The science of aesthetics is a complex business and so is the history of art; my hope has been to write about them something simple and true. For instance, though I have indicated very clearly, and even repetitiously, what I take to be essential in a work of art, I have not discussed as fully as I might have done ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... of the world. So when I saw a little book called Der Bier Comment for sale I bought it instantly, for I wanted to know how beer turned a schoolboy into a man of the world. It began with a little preface, a word of warning to anyone attempting to write about the morals, customs, and characteristics of the German nation. No one undertaking this was to forget that the Germans had an amazing Bierdurst, and that they liked to assuage this thirst in company, to be cheerful and easy, and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... When you write about the Jews, although I am not in agreement with you, altogether in agreement, you yet seem to me to touch upon a domain where you might have much to offer us, many beautiful prospects to open to us. In the same way, when you ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... criticism is at some points purely conventional, as for instance when he calls the poet "that powerful magician, whose art could fascinate us even by means of deformity itself "; but on the whole Scott seems to write about Shakspere in a ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... To write about these festivals is so pleasant, it brings back so many delightful memories, that I could go on writing for long and long. But there is no use in doing so, as they are all very much alike, with little local differences ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... of Life that we came most nearly together. I thought I knew something about that,—that I could speak or write about it somewhat ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... it desirable, it was hardly possible to write about Nelson without also dealing with Britain's great adversary and ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... to write about modesty I should say: I know the esteemed public for which I have the honour to write far too well to dare to give utterance to my opinion about this virtue. Personally I am quite content to be modest and to ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... this unlucky race, Mary Stuart was the favourite of misfortune. As Brantome has said of her, "Whoever desires to write about this illustrious queen of Scotland has, in her, two very, large subjects, the one her life, the other her death," Brantome had known her on one of the most mournful occasions of her life—at the moment when she was quitting ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... attempted to commemorate my husband's brave career in the Civil War, as I was not married until some years after the close of that war, nor to describe the many Indian campaigns in which he took part, nor to write about the achievements of the old Eighth Infantry. I leave all that to the historian. I have given simply the impressions made upon the mind of a young New England woman who left her comfortable home in the early seventies, to follow a second ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... the time we write about, regular witch-finders, as in the time of James I., still the feeling against witches, and the belief that they practised, still existed. They were no longer handed over to summary and capital punishment, but whenever suspected they were sure to meet with very rough treatment. Such was ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... about myself, who and what I am! My name is surrounded with such hate and fear that no one can judge what is the truth and what is false, what is history and what myth. Some time you will write about it, remembering your trip through Mongolia and your sojourn at the ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... Whitman a long while for my attempt to write about him, I got tete-montee, rushed out up to M. S., came in, took out Leaves of Grass, and without giving the poor unbeliever time to object, proceeded to wade into him with favourite passages. I had at least this triumph, that he swore he must read some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and Nat's thin face flushed up with the earnestness of his desire to make Mrs. Bhaer "glad and proud," not "sorry and disappointed." "It must be a great deal of trouble to write about so many," he added, as she shut her book with an encouraging pat on ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... of comfort to me to write about everything, for one way and another I've had a good deal to put up with, all because of—girls. And I have to be good-tempered and nice just because they are girls. And besides that, I'm really very fond of them; and they're not bad. But no one ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... emphasized anything that would bring into relief his personality. I expect that I've been too much concerned to draw a picture of him as a man, in doing which I've perhaps been unsuccessful in giving you a picture of him as a priest. It's always difficult to talk or write about one's intimate religious feelings, and you've been the only person to whom I ever have been able to talk about them. However much I admire and revere Father Rowley I doubt if I could talk or write to him about myself as I do ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... what is one to say? To write about it at all seems indeed more than commonly futile. The wise thing to do is to enter its doors whenever one has the opportunity, if only for five minutes; to sit in it as often as possible, at some point in the gallery for choice; ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... you sooner, save that the developments here have given me so little that is pleasant to write about. My experience with Grierson's agent has been too exasperating for description, and I should have given up and have got out at once had it not been for the Missouri in me, and had I not got a feeling of encouragement ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... stop to write about the squirrels that run up and down the trees, nor the big tent where we get our dinners, nor the little tent where we sleep, nor the pictures at evening in the Amphitheatre (that's a great hall where they hold meetings), nor lots of other things. Next year I hope ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Southerner of the spirit, whatever he may be of the flesh. There is something of North Carolina and something of Massachusetts in his attitude, but none of the all-inclusive Americanism that alone is able to write about the South with sympathy of the heart ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... hastily and in some embarrassment. He could write about love with a cynic's pen, but he could not bear to talk about it even in a joking way. He eyed the speaker with the frightened fascination of a charmed rabbit, until she laughed in mischievous ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... motives for things, or he takes it for granted that the motives are never disinterested ones. To say that Thackeray was a cynic because he drew a large number of villains is as untrue as to say Swift was a cynic because he wrote satire. Thackeray wrote about villains because he wished to also write about heroes; Swift was satirical because he had the intelligence to see that his contemporaries were fools when they might have been wise. The cynics are the people of to-day who write books which attribute low motives to every one, which turn love into lust, which care not what is written ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... staff from St. Dunstan's church, to immolate the betrayer of trust. I have written to him as he never was written to before by an author, I'll be sworn, and I hope you will amplify my wrath, till it has an effect upon him. You tell me always you have much to write about. Write it, but let us drop metaphysics;—on that point we shall never agree. I am dull and drowsy, as usual. I do nothing, and even that nothing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... only kept it warm. In the mean time, however, the correspondence was not so regular as before—and perhaps the expressions on both sides not quite so tender; for it is impossible for a man in the Clarendon, with a carriage at the door to carry him down to Ascot, to write about flames and arrows, which come so naturally when musing on the Cam or Isis. And in the midst of this London career—during all which, he assured me, he liked her better than ever—he was startled by hearing that Mr Elstree was very ill. He hurried down to Leicestershire, but found ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... that of love and truth—a freedom of which outward freedom is scarce the shadow—of such liberty, for all the good books he had read, for all the good poems he had admired, Richard had not yet begun to dream, not to say think. Then again, he would write about love, and he had never been in love in his life! All he knew of love was the pleasure of imagining himself the object of a tall, dark-eyed, long-haired, devoted woman's admiration. He had never even thought whether he was worthy of being ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Charles could go. Well, the house won't run away. And Mr. Audubon has travelled all over the world. Mr. Whitney wrote an article about him. That's the work I'd like to do—go and see famous people and write about them." ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... modern whims in Boston has been the study of the poems of Robert Browning. All at once there sprang up on every hand strange societies called Browning Clubs, and the libraries were ransacked for Browning's works, and for the books of whoever has had the conceit or the hardihood to write about the great poet. Lovely girls at afternoon receptions propounded to each other abstruse conundrums concerning what they were pleased to regard as obscure passages, while little coteries gathered, with airs of supernatural gravity, to read and ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the entrance of Princess Casimira, Sobieski's eldest daughter. Wogan welcomed her coming for the first time in all his life, for she was a kill-joy, a person of an extraordinary decorum. According to Wogan, she was "that black care upon the horseman's back which the poets write about." Her first question if she was spoken to was whether the speaker was from top to toe fitly attired; her second, whether the words spoken were well-bred. At this moment, however, her mere presence put an end to the demands for an explanation ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... things are hard to think about—harder yet to write about! The very persons who would send the white soul into arms whose mere touch is a dishonor will be the first to cry out with indignation against that writer as shameless who but utters the truth concerning the things they mean ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Attic phrase in Plato let them seek, I poach in Suidas for unlicens'd Greek. For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, Goddess, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... illustration mentioned there is that furnished by the fact before us now. What must His thoughts about Himself have been who could speak of Himself in relation to all others as Christ does here? When men write about Jesus as though He were merely a gentle, trustful, religious genius, preaching a sweet gospel of the love of God to the multitudes of Galilee, they are but shutting their eyes to one half of the facts which it is their duty to explain. Speaking generally, we do well to distrust ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... why He has put some thorns into my domestic life; but for them I should be too happy to live. It does not seem just the moment to com plain, and yet, as I can speak to no one, it is a relief, a great relief, to write about my trials. During my whole sickness, Martha has been so hard, so cold, so unsympathizing that sometimes it has seemed as if my cup of trial could not hold another drop. She routed me out of bed when I was so languid that everything seemed a burden, and when sitting up made me ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... handsome woman, who looked like some modern painter's conception of the goddess Bellona; "it's my misfortune to write eternally about husbands and wives and their variants. My public expects it of me. I do so envy journalists who can write about plagues and strikes and Anarchist plots, and other pleasing things, instead of being tied down to one ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... moral philosophy which is so closely related to it. A pleasing manner of writing began to be necessary everywhere; and since such a manner must, above all, be comprehensible, so did writers arise, on many sides, who undertook to write about their studies and their professions clearly, perspicuously, and impressively, and as well for the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... curious to contrast the comparative enthusiasm with which the Whartons write about Horace Walpole with the invective of Lord Macaulay. To the great historian Walpole was the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most capricious of men, who played innumerable parts and over-acted them all, a creature to whom whatever was little seemed great and whatever ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... her mind what she should do now for her future. She said that she would for a while keep this little red brick house that they had lived in. Perhaps she might just take in a few boarders. She did not know, she would write about it later and tell it all to ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... party say of those of the other, or are reported to say, there is often but little truth; and that there is still less of truth in what the editors and correspondents of the ultra journals of one party write about the characters, conduct, and sentiments of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... different from that Cato pictures, that it is doubtful whether even Cato himself was quite as economical and efficient, and so as capitalistic in his farming, as he advises others to be: certainly a whole race of contemporary country gentlemen was not equal to it. It is much easier to write about business-like ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... your destiny to write about Cromwell: and you will make a book of him, at which the ears of our grandchildren will tingle;—and as one may hope that the ears of human nature will be growing longer and longer, the tingling will be proportionately greater than we are accustomed to. Do ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... forewarned by having been for only that once overtaken. I have ever since been thankful for it as a mercy; and few have been so favoured; how many can truly say, only that once? But I pass on, having a great deal more to write about temperance. On my first visit to America in 1851, all that mighty people indulged freely in strong drinks of the strangest names and most delicious flavours: on my second in 1876,—just a quarter of a century after,—there was almost nothing to be got but iced water. Accordingly when ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... doing it for Fulkerson, and he experienced another proof of the bluntness of the feminine instincts in some directions, and of the personal favor which Fulkerson seemed to enjoy with the whole sex. This alone was enough to account for the willingness of these correspondents to write about the first number, but March accused him of sending it to their addresses with boxes of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he could but persuade men. The truth of the words of God had shone out upon him with an immediateness and infinity of meaning and power, which made them, though the same words he had looked on from childhood, other and greater and deeper words. He then left the ordinary commentators, and men who write about meanings and flutter around the circumference and corners; he was bent on the centre, on touching with his own fingers, on seeing with his own eyes, the pearl of great price. Then it was that he began to dig into the depths, into the primary and auriferous ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... and self-sacrifice. But Gluck's music was, in Owen's opinion, old-fashioned even at the time it was written—containing beautiful things, of course, but somewhat stiff in the joints, lacking the clear insight and direct expression of Beethoven's. "One man used to write about her very well, and seemed to understand her better than any other. And writing about this performance he says—Now, if I could find you his article." The search proved a long one, but as it was about to be abandoned Owen turned up the cutting ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... tenacity as a fighter. But I shall make amends. It seems when I fished I was steeped in dreams of the sea and the beauty of the lonely islands. I am not in Jump's class as a fisherman, nor in Lone Angler's, either. They stand by themselves. But I can write about them, and so ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... want to write about the women and girls I see, here in New York, in the camps and towns, on the trains, everywhere. Lenore, the war has thrown them off their balance. I have seen and studied at close hand women of all classes. Believe me, as the boys say, I have thought more ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... trouble him—but never, never: neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, for a moment, disburdened, ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... the case..." she said. "How about your thesis?" she went on swiftly. "What are you going to write about?" ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... I started to write about. A great many men carry their life as an author carries a book which he is writing— never losing the sense of their burden. When a writer undertakes a book, and feels the necessity of perfect continuity of thought and symmetry of ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... opportunity you would give to Dr. Barlow Blade, the trance medium. Everything I see in this country belongs to a state of arrested development, and it has been arrested at a most interesting point. It is picturesque. It is colonial. I am amazed that this fact has not been dwelt on by people who write about ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... to think of dress once more, or I ought to say undress, for with the skirts short and the sleeves short and the bodice low there isn't very much left to write about. I hope these short tight skirts will reach the ankles before they reach England, for I notice the people who have the courage to wear them generally lack the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... I have not written since the last day I was at Cabool; and I have had few opportunities of doing so, as we have been on the move ever since, and until we reached Kelat there was very little to write about. We broke ground and marched to the other side of Cabool on Monday, the 16th of September, and halted on the 17th for a grand tomasha at the Bala Hissar, or Shah's Palace, being no less than the investiture of the order of the Doorannee ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... of the Entente and the United States, and for the object—which appeared superfluous—of protecting Vis from German submarines. If the Italians had been everywhere as inoffensive as at Vis, it would be more agreeable to write about their doings. Captain Sportiello, a naval officer, showed himself throughout the months of his administration to be sensible; he frequented Yugoslav houses. The greatest divergence occurred on June 1, 1919, when the Italians planned to have a demonstration ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... accept his own defeat with philosophy, but another man's success!—could he accept that? How strangely everything had changed in the last few days! He had never known real mental anguish; heartaches in others had always afforded him mild amusement and contempt. It was one thing, he reflected, to write about human emotions; it was entirely another thing to live and act them. He saw that his past had been full of egotism and selfishness, but he also saw that his selfishness was of the kind that has its foundation in indifference and not in calculation. The voices went on down stairs, but he ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... excitement about the characters, personalities, and anecdotage of merely literary men, poets, and playwrights, who held no position in public affairs, as Spenser did; or in Court, Society, and War, as Sidney did; who did not write about their own feuds and friendships, like Greene and Nash; who did not expand into prefaces and reminiscences, and satires, like Ben Jonson; who never killed anybody, as Ben did; nor were killed, like Marlowe; nor were involved, like him, in charges ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... life—nearly twenty-five, it is said—are so sad that one can hardly bear to write about them. The first place at which he sought refuge was at Ephesus, with Antiochus the Great, lord, at least in name, of a vast number of mixed races from Asia Minor to the river Oxus. Here, still keeping in mind the ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang |
