"Pedant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see the pitchfork employed against gentlemen who have doomed such innumerable caravans to hell. In Nietzsche they found, after many long years, a foeman worthy of them—not a mere fancy swordsman like Voltaire, or a mob orator like Tom Paine, or a pedant like the heretics of exegesis, but a gladiator armed with steel and armoured with steel, and showing all the ferocious gusto of a mediaeval bishop. It is a pity that Holy Church has no process for the elevation of demons, like its process ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... pedant, whose "Counterblast to Tobacco" has worked the poorest of results, seems to have had a nice taste for fruits; and Sir Henry Wotton, his ambassador at Venice, writing from that city in 1622, says,—"I have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... dearest and best friend outside of Shakespeare is D'Artagnan—the elderly D'Artagnan of the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." I know not a more human soul, nor, in his way, a finer; I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant in morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the "Pilgrim's Progress," a book that breathes of every beautiful and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... obviously impossible, that all the world, the ignorant and the well-informed, the man of genius, the man of fashion, and the man of business, the pedant and the philosopher, should agree in their opinion upon any speculative subject; upon the wide subject of education they will probably differ eternally. It will, therefore, be thought absurd to require this union of opinion amongst the individuals ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... and practice what we teach. Let the grave pedant say as much—But now to business. The jewels are disposed of; and Beverley again worth money. He waits to count his gold out, and then comes hither. If my design succeeds, this night we finish with him. Go to your lodgings, and be busy. You understand conveyances, ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... At the age of eighteen, Chesterfield, then Lord Stanhope, was entered at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. It was one of the features of his character to fall at once into the tone of the society into which he happened to be thrown. One can hardly imagine his being 'an absolute pedant,' but such was, actually, his own account of himself:—'When I talked my best, I quoted Horace; when I aimed at being facetious, I quoted Martial; and when I had a mind to be a fine gentleman, I talked Ovid. I was convinced that none but the ancients ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... that Monsieur de Chavannes had applied for the place. What on earth have I to do with the young gentleman's character or principles? I know that he is very gentlemanlike, and is neither a coxcomb nor a pedant, which is refreshing in ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... taught which is liberal, and at the same time useful to mankind? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical literature within proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to these tests in our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed-up pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses and the rememberer of words would soon assume that station which is the lot of those who go up unbidden to the upper places of ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... pale-faced, languid, discontented, envious girl who has just returned from a school beyond her father's means, even if she can play upon an instrument, and has worn herself thin in exhausting studies under the stimulus of ambitious competition, or the harangues of a pedant who thinks what he calls "education" to be the end of life,—an education which reveals her own insignificance, or leads her to strive ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... in an ill day, and was succeeded by one in all respects her opposite: a coward, a pedant, a knave, a tyrant, a mean, base, beastly sensualist—a bad man, devoid even of a bad man's one redeeming virtue, physical courage—a bad weak man with the heart of a worse and weaker woman—a man with all the vices ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... fools, by the insincerity of patrons, by that bread which is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope which makes the heart sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to eminence and command. It was natural that, in the exercise of his power, he should be "eo immitior, quia toleraverat," that, though his heart was undoubtedly generous and humane, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... observed to me, that in paraphrasing Horace, my sex would be an unpardonable crime with every Pedant, whether within, or without the pale of professional criticism. It is not in their power to speak or write more contemptuously of my Horatian Odes than the Critics of Dryden's and Pope's time, in the literary journals of that Period, wrote of their Translations ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... pretenders, not one of whom had ever been among the Indians, nor farther to the northwest than Montreal, nor of higher rank than barkeeper of a tavern or marker of a billiard-table, excepting one, who had been a school-master, and whom he emphatically sets down for "as foolish a pedant ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... secure him immortality than all his verse? They call him the English Bayard, and the Frenchman need not be displeasured by the comparison. But when you come to read his poetry you find that our Bayard had in him a strong dash of the pedant and a powerful leaven of the euphuist. Subtle, delicate, refined, with a keen and curious wit, a rare faculty of verse, a singular capacity of expression, an active but not always a true sense of form, he wrote for the few, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... pedant, spares neither the rose nor the thistle, nor does he forget the solitary blade of grass in the distant waste. He destroys thoroughly and unceasingly. Everywhere we may see how he crushes to dust plants and beasts, men and their ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... some calumniously. [Paulus Jovius, &c. See Pauli, iii. 70-73.] "Hector of Germany!" say others. He tried some small prefatory Siege or scalade of Pesth; could not do it; and came his ways home again, as the best course. Pedant Chroniclers give him the name HECTOR, "Joachim Hector,"—to match that of CICERO and that of ACHILLES. A man of solid structure, this our Hector, in body and mind: extensive cheeks, very large heavy-laden face; capable of terrible bursts of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... to a German Brigadier-General on behalf of some homeless women and children, the Prussian martinet—half pedant and half poltroon—answered her with a quotation from Nietzsche to the effect that "Pity is a waste of feeling—a moral parasite injurious to the health." She early felt the cruel and iron will of ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... every point upon equal terms. And yet under all her learning and her firmness ran a sweet, womanly nature, peeping out in her talk, shining in her greenish eyes, showing itself in a thousand subtle ways which the dullest of men could read. And he, though a bit of a prig and a pedant, was by no means dull, and had honesty enough to confess when he was in ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for holiday. She read voraciously, so that her application of English became so keen that she was the first to detect verbal dissonances. She, the youngest of two girls and a boy, would often correct their speech, not as a budding pedant, but because her ears were delicately attuned to the music of the tongue and could not, without offence, hearken to discords. She was an affected prude. Her self-chosen style of dress, her pose, her disdainful ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of his public acts. He noted all the Apostate's foibles by the side of his virtues and his magnanimities. He traced without hesitation the course of that strange insurrection which hurled a coarse fanatic from the throne, only to place in his room a literary pedant with inked fingers and populous beard. He accepted everything, from the parasites to the purple slippers. The dangers of so humble an attendance upon history were escaped with success in the first instalment of his "world drama." In the strong and mounting ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... soaring mind! O lottery of fate! where still the wise Draw blanks of fortune, and the fools the prize! These cross, ill-shuffled lots from heaven are sent, Yet dull Religion teaches us content; But when we ask it where the blessing dwells, It points to pedant colleges, and cells; There shows it rude, and in a homely dress, And that proud Want mistakes for ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... dashes of coarse fun and drollery, Might smooth the wrinkles of a pedant's brow, And loose a stoic's muscles: and sometimes Beneath his various merry-andrew coat I've thought I spied the stamp of manly genius, Some vestige of his father's purest wit. But ah! I fear 'twas a false light betray'd me. Let him write farce; but let ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... remark, that a thought which is often quoted from Francis Bacon, occurs in Bruno's Cena di Cenere, published in 1584; I mean the notion, that the later times are more aged than the earlier. In the course of the dialogue, the Pedant, who is one of the interlocutors, says, 'In antiquity is wisdom;' to which the philosophical character replies, 'If you knew what you were talking about, you would see that your principle leads to the opposite result of that which you ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... off from his fellows, and skulked in every out-of-the-way corner of Europe, a hunted being in peril of his life. There had come a great change over their lives, and they had drifted farther apart again. He himself had gone out into the world something of a scholar and something of a pedant, and he had found that all his ideas of life had lain rusting in his country home, and that he had almost as much to unlearn as to learn. With ample means, and an eager thirst for knowledge, he had passed from one to another of the great seats of learning ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and it was done, as all good work in art must be done, by following Nature so closely that it only differed from her handiwork in its profusion in so narrow a compass. A few years later our healthy English taste was spoiled by the pedant gardening of the Dutch with their straight flat ponds, and their trees all clipped and in a line like vegetable grenadiers. In truth, I think that the Prince of Orange and Sir William Temple had much to answer for in working this change, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Pedant!" he cried, with quivering lips, "prate not to me of thy vain legends and gossip's tales! think not to snatch from me my possession in another, when thine own life is in my hands. Unhand the maiden! ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the dear flighty creature, and the sentence which she passes upon the Poets. She has a fling at Homer, whom the beauteous Harriet, in her dispute with the university pedant, had before criticized upon in a masterly manner, and like a good Englishwoman, from the authority of her godfather Deane, concluded, that our Milton has excelled him in the sublimity of his images, this, is a controversy which ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... however, the term 'genius,' in its common sense, seems ludicrously inadequate. James V. had some of the erratic qualities of the poetic tribe, but his claim to the songs—such as the 'Gaberlunzie Man'—which go under his name, is exceedingly doubtful. James VI. was a pedant, without being a scholar—a rhymester, not a poet. Of the rest we need not speak. Seldom has the sceptre become an Aaron's rod, and flourished with the buds and blossoms of song. In our annals there has been one, and but ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... always wrong, I was quite sure to come out second best, in the judgment of his friends and worshippers, who had no sympathy for anybody who ventured to tilt with their champion. Nevertheless I persisted, and, not standing much in awe of the pedant and the pedagogue, however much I admired the logician and the poet or the lawyer, I lost no opportunity of asserting my independence, and took, I am afraid, a sort of malicious pleasure in showing that I had views and opinions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... of college life in the old days was the relation of students to classical professors. The majority of the average class looked on such a professor as generally a bore and, as examinations approached, an enemy; they usually sneered at him as a pedant, and frequently made his peculiarities a subject for derision. Since that day far better relations have grown up between teachers and taught, especially in those institutions where much is left to the option ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... man a prig at all? Was he a pedant? have those who have sedulously spread that report of him in the West told the truth about him? Or—hath a pleasant little lie or twain served ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... a person of much more consequence in English literature than the conceited and pragmatical pedant who wrote Pierce's Supererogation. He is familiar, almost literally to every schoolboy, as the author of the charming piece, "Cupid with my Campaspe Played," and his dramatic work will come in for notice in a future ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... pedant does not communicate, but promulgates his knowledge. He does not give it you, but he inflicts it upon you; and is(if possible) more desirous to show you your own ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... that Emerson is one of the writers who make their way more easily into our minds by virtue of style. That his writing has quality and flavour none but a pure pedant would deny. His more fervent votaries, however, provoke us with a challenge that goes far beyond this. They declare that the finish, charm, and beauty of the writing are as worthy of remark as the truth and depth of the thought. It is even 'unmatchable and radiant,' says one. Such exaggerations ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... confession, and glancing, as his hearer fancied, at a certain article in the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' He had afterwards a pleasant chat with Freeman, 'not a bad fellow at all,' though obviously a 'terrible pedant.' He hears from Coleridge, who has finally decided against accepting the Mastership of the Rolls, and hopes that Fitzjames may still be his colleague. The old Chief Baron is still charming, and says ('though I don't believe it') that he never knew what mental fatigue meant, and that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... is true enough; the misfortune is that I can't act upon it. I am no uncompromising artistic pedant; I am quite willing to try and do the kind of work that will sell; under the circumstances it would be a kind of insanity if I refused. But power doesn't answer to the will. My efforts are utterly vain; I suppose the prospect of pennilessness is itself a hindrance; ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... any other subject More brave men been lost in occasions of little moment More solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak More supportable to be always alone than never to be so More valued a victory obtained by counsel than by force Morosity and melancholic humour of a sour ill-natured pedant Most cruel people, and upon frivolous occasions, apt to cry Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency Most men do not so much believe as they acquiesce and permit Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice Mothers are ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... caricature so flagrantly untrue. She knew Mark Pattison's quality, and could never have meant to draw the writer of some of the most fruitful and illuminating of English essays, and one of the most brilliant pieces of European biography, in the dreary and foolish pedant who overshadows Middlemarch. But the fact that Mark Pattison was an elderly scholar with a young wife, and that George Eliot knew him, led later on to a legend which was, I am sure, unwelcome to the writer ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a funeral oration is wanted for a cardinal or other great personage, the executors do not apply to the best orators in the city, to whom they would have to pay a hundred pieces of gold, but they hire for a trifle the first impudent pedant whom they come across, and who only wants to be talked of, whether for good or ill. The dead, they say, is none the wiser if an ape stands in a black dress in the pulpit, and beginning with a hoarse, whimpering mumble, passes little ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... already set down Grace Harvey as a hypocrite, and Willis as a dotard. Will you make up your mind in the same foolishness of over-wisdom, that Frank Headley is a merely narrow-headed and hard-hearted pedant, quite unaware that he is living an inner life of doubts, struggles, prayers, self-reproaches, noble hunger after an ideal of moral excellence, such as you, friend Tom, never yet dreamed of, which would be to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... who was as far gone as all the other male guests, played with Mengs's children. There was nothing of the pedant about this philosopher; he loved children and young people, and his cheerful disposition made him delight in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the stronger for the experience which he has gained. It is not uncustomary in those who have excelled in scholarship to despise those who have excelled merely in sympathetic understanding of the human race. But in the military services, though there are niches for the pedant, character is at all times at least as vital as intellect, and the main rewards go to him who can make other men feel ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... is naught but a miserable pedant, who loves nothing so well as hearing himself talk, and prating by the hour together on matters of law and religion, and on the divine right of kings. He is not the King such as England has been wont to know—a King to whom his subjects might gain access to plead his protection ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... perplexity, and said, "I don't know what to do, pray advise me; my master is gone the circuit, and left me particular orders to send him an express if the King died: but here's the Prince, dead and he said nothing about him." You would easily believe this story, if you knew what a mere law-pedant it is! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... will be removed by a candid perusal of this memoir. Cavour himself, as a statesman and a man, was of exactly that stamp which we flatter ourselves to be the exclusive growth of America and England. He was nothing of a visionary, nothing of a political pedant, nothing of a doctrinaire. Franklin himself had not a more practical understanding, or more of large, plain, roundabout sense. He had, too, Franklin's shrewdness, his love of humor, and his relish for the natural pleasures of life. He had a large ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... reformer of comedy, exclaimed, "Take courage, Moliere, this is true comedy." The learned Menage was the only member of the society who had the good sense to detect the drift; he perceived the snake in the grass. "We must now," said this sensible pedant (in a remote allusion to the fate of idolatry and the introduction of Christianity) to the poetical pedant, Chapelain, "follow the counsel which St. Remi gave to Clovis—we must burn all that we adored, and adore what we have burned." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Caravaggio and Salvator Rosa than from any of his predecessors, except Velasquez. The presence of Tiepolo, the last of the Venetians, in Spain may have influenced him. Certainly Raphael Mengs, the "Saxon pedant," did not—Mengs associated with Tiepolo at Madrid. It is in company with the bravos of the brush, Caravaggio and Rosa, that Goya is closely affiliated. We must go to Gustave Courbet for a like violence of temperament; both ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... compare this meaningless stuff with Kent in F? Why, in Kent, the dominant sentiment of each composition is admirably preserved. His 'Magnificat' is lofty jubilation, with a free, onward rush. His 'Dimittis' is divine repose after life's fever. But this poor pedant's 'Magnificat' begins with a mere crash, and then falls into the pathetic—an excellent thing in its place, but not in a song of triumph. As to his 'Dimittis,' it simply defies the words. This is no Christian sunset. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... opposition with violent measures, was imbued with whig theories. While George sought to rule by securing the support of parliament, Grenville tried to use that support to enable him to rule the king. He was a pedant, and lectured the king on his duty like a schoolmaster. Bute stood in his way as the king's ally and secret counsellor. His victory over him was partial and short-lived. While Bute was in the country the king corresponded with him, and he returned to London in the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know; and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance, than the pedant by his awkward attempt to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... to choose an able master for his son—'a man of profound learning, possessed of both the ancient languages, whose method of teaching is the finest and most time-saving that has yet been tried; a gentleman withal, with nothing of the pedant in him.'[6] The boy was lucky also in the companion of his studies, a cousin, Cristoforo Tasso, who had come from Bergamo to profit ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... you make gay what circle fits ye, Bandy Venetian slang with the Benzon, Or play at company with the Albrizzi, The self-pleased pedant, and patrician crone, Grimanis, Mocenigos, Balbis, Rizzi, Compassionate our cruel case,—alone, Our pleasure an academy of frogs, Who nightly serenade us from ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "the prettiest pedant in the world," was thus paid out for his intrigues against La Bruyere ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... every State to do; Of whose best phrase and courtly accent join'd, He forms one tongue, exotic and refined Talkers I've learn'd to bear; Motteux I knew, 50 Henley himself I've heard, and Budgell too. The Doctor's wormwood style, the hash of tongues A pedant makes, the storm of Gonson's lungs, The whole artillery of the terms of war, And (all those plagues in one) the bawling Bar: These I could bear; but not a rogue so civil, Whose tongue will compliment you to the devil; A tongue, that can cheat widows, cancel scores, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... in his monitor and his preceptor; two great men, whom history has not failed to distinguish—Archie Armstrong and George Buchanan—the wit and the scholar, which in him became the representatives of two much more useful and esteemed qualities—fool and pedant! ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the election and coronation of Alexander VI, and quotes portions of the declarations of loyalty which the Italian envoys addressed to the Pope. Court flattery could not be carried further than it was in this case by Hieronymus, an affected pedant, an empty-headed braggart, a fanatical papist. Alexander made him Bishop of Andria and Governor of the Romagna. In 1497 Hieronymus, then in Cesena, composed a dialogue on Savonarola and his "heresy concerning the ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... chamber to bring the hand-mirror, and when in an instant she returned and, at her bidding, he held the shining glass before her, she patted his cheeks with their thin, fair, pointed beard, and called him her faithful little Wolf, her clear, stupid pedant and Satan in person, who would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to construe the positive with as, the comparative with than, and the superlative with of. But here custom allows us also to use the comparative with of, after the manner of the superlative; as, "This is the better of the two." It was but an odd whim of some old pedant, to find in this a reason for declaring it ungrammatical to say "This is the best of the two." In one grammar, I find the former construction condemned, and the latter approved, thus: "This is the better book of the two. Not correct, because the comparative state of the adjective, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... meaning it, instructive; but his talk is to profitable conversation what the stone is to the pulp of the peach, what the cob is to the kernels on an ear of Indian corn. Once more: Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant, with all his knowledge and valuable qualities, and will "cavil on the ninth part of a hair," if it will give him a chance to show ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... education. Her half-brother, Hippolyte Chatiron, and she received lessons from M. Deschartres, who had educated Maurice Dupin. He was steward and tutor combined, a very authoritative man, arrogant and a great pedant. He was affectionate, though, and extremely devoted. He was both detestable and touching at the same time, and had a warm heart hidden under a rough exterior. Nohant was in the heart of Berry, and this meant the country and ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... excels, clearly show the influence of the old Dutch school. A writer in "Moderne Kunst" says, in general, that she shows us real human beings under the "precieuses ridicules," the languishing gallants and the pedant, and often succeeds in individualizing all these with the sharpness of a Chodowiecki, though at times she is merely ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... "Unwieldy pedant, let thy awkward muse, With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art; Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart. Then be advis'd, and scribble not agen; Thou'rt fashioned for a flail, and not a pen. If B——l's immortal wit thou ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... A pretty wench, a passing pretty wench. A sweeter duck all London cannot yield; She cast a glance on me as I pass'd by, Not Helen had so ravishing an eye. Here is the pedant Sir Aminadab; I will inquire of him if he can tell By any circumstance, whose wife she is: Such fellows commonly have intercourse Without suspicion, where we are debarr'd. God save you, gentle ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... potentially comic. Thus laughter becomes a social initiation. It is a kind of hazing which we visit upon one another. But we do not isolate the comic personage as we do the solitary, tragic figure. The comic personage is usually a type; he is one of an absurd group; he is a miser, a pedant, a pretentious person, a doctor or a lawyer in whom the professional traits have become automatic so that he thinks more of his professional behavior than he does of human health and human justice. Of all these separatist tendencies, laughter ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Teller of Tales; and even the Divine Boileau, little better than a Plagiary. As for the English Poets, he treats almost with the same Freedom; Shakespear with him has neither Language nor Manners; Ben. Johnson is a Pedant; Dryden little more than a tolerable Versifier; Congreve a laborious Writer; Garth, an indifferent imitator of Boileau. He traduces Oldham, for want of Breeding and good Manners, without a grain of either, ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... there glisten eyes, There throb young hearts with generous hope; Thence, playmates, rise for high emprize; For, though he fail, yet shall ye cope With worldling wrapped in silken lies, With pedant, hypocrite, and pope. ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... little secrets that they told to none. Little secret plans as to what they were to read about, and think about, and pray about on certain days of the week and at certain hours of the day and the night. You must not call the father an old pedant, for the fact is, it was the son who was the pedant if there was one in that happy house. The two intimate friends had a word between them they called agenda. And nobody but themselves knew where they had borrowed that uncouth ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... of his time. He was also spoken of as a superior person, inheriting all his father's intellectual gifts, and having the reputation of being singularly free from the vices of profligate youth. He was neither prig nor pedant, and he was very popular in the best society; but he was not ashamed to let it be seen that his ambition soared higher than the fashionable world of turf and stable, cards and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a young gentleman of Odo's rank to be attended at the Academy not only by a body-servant but by a private governor or pedant, whose business it was to overlook his studies, attend him abroad, and have an eye to the society he frequented. The old Marquess of Donnaz had sent his daughter, by Odo's hand, a letter recommending her to select her son's governor with particular ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and good constitution (for such only can produce strong and vigorous children), she need not possess a cent. If well-read, so much the better, provided she is not too fond of her book to neglect overseeing her affairs and suffering the hole in her stocking to go unmended. She must not be a pedant or a scold but must know enough of books to distinguish between a volume of history and a novel; and have sufficient spirit to prevent being imposed upon. Communication addressed to A. B. and left at the composing room, if originating in honorable intentions will be ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... "an elaborate satire on the character and manners of his wife." "If," he writes, "in a poem by no means ascertained to be my production there appears a disagreeable, casuistical, and by no means respectable female pedant, it is set down for my wife. Is there any resemblance? If there be, it is in those who make it—I can see none."—Letters, 1900, iv. 477. The allusions in stanzas xii.-xiv., and, again, in stanzas xxvii.-xxix., are, and must have been meant to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... formerly her father's tutor, who had remained in Madame Dupin's service as "intendant." The serio-comic figure of this personage, so graphically drawn by George Sand herself in the memoirs of her early life, will never be forgotten by any reader of those reminiscences. Pedant, she says, was written in every line of his countenance and every movement that he made. He was possessed of some varied learning, much narrow prejudice, and a violent, crotchety temper, but had proved during ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... country, Aeschines, of the same honour and the same obsequies—not the successful or the victorious alone! And she acted justly. For all these have done that which it was the duty of brave men to do; but their fortune has been that which Heaven assigned to each. {209} Accursed, poring pedant![n] if you, in your anxiety to deprive me of the honour and the kindness shown to me by my countrymen, recounted trophies and battles and deeds of long ago—and of which of them did this present trial demand the mention?—what spirit was I to take upon me, when I mounted the ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... not obtrude itself; it adds greatly to the sense of size, and makes us doubly aware of the movement of life, the colossal circulation to which London owes so much of its impressiveness. We gain more by this than we lose by the infraction of some pedant's canon about the artistically correct intersection of right lines. Vast as is the world below the bridge, there is a vaster still on high, and when trains are passing, the steam from the engine will throw the dome of St. Paul's into the clouds, and make it seem as though there were a commingling ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... our conventional Irishman in the pedant who, on going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave-boys of fifteen years each, and replied, "If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... attention to what constitutes proof; he saw all fallacies and discovered at a glance illusions in logic that had long been palmed off on the world as truth. He saw the gulf that lies between coincidence and sequence, and hastened the day when the old-time pedant with his mighty tomes and tiresome sermons about nothing should be no more. And so today, in the Year of Grace Nineteen Hundred, the man who writes must have something to say, and he who speaks must have a message. "Coleridge," says Principal Shairp, "was the originator and creator of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... desire to live by my goods; and I hope you will be pleased to allow some difference between a neat fresh piece, piping hot out of the classicks, and old threadbare worn-out stuff that has past through every pedant's mouth and been as common at ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... relish'd a joke, and rejoic'd in a pun;[82] Whose temper was generous, open, sincere; A stranger to flatt'ry, a stranger to fear; Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will, Whose daily bons mots half a column would fill; A Scotchman, from pride and from prejudice free, A scholar, yet surely no pedant was he. ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... enough for me—true enough to kill generally—and who the deuce can be at the bother of your pragmatical preparations! I am sure it might be said of you, as it was of James the First, of most pacific and pedantic memory, that you are 'Captain of arts and Clerk of arms'—at least you are a very pedant ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the remaining figures in this "model of human life," to quote Fielding's own descriptive phrase of his book, those which tell us most of their author are that worthy, authoritative, humourous clergyman, Dr Harrison; the good Sergeant Atkinson; and that fiery pedant Colonel Bath, with his kind heart hidden under a ferocious passion for calling out every man whom he conceived to have slighted his honour. Dr Harrison does not win quite the same place in our hearts as the man whom Thackeray ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... not even the grace to be ashamed! Yet I am shamed, messire, that Osmund Heleigh should have become the book-muddled pedant you are. For I ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... are never lightly to be set aside. He is singularly shrewd and unprejudiced in his judgements, and has a remarkable faculty of hitting the right nail on the head. But Chapman, in whom the barbarian and the pedant were so strongly commingled, was a type that fell outside the wide range of Dryden's appreciation. The Restoration writer fails, in the first place, to recognize that Bussy D'Ambois is pitched advisedly from first to last in a high key. Throughout the drama ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... toys and churches they make to satisfy them. It is more penetrating, in my opinion, to ask of a creed whether it served than whether it was "true." Try to judge the great beliefs that have swayed mankind by their inner logic or their empirical solidity and you stand forever, a dull pedant, apart from the interests of men. The Christian tradition did not survive because of Aquinas or fall before the Higher Criticism, nor will it be revived because someone proves the scientific plausibility of its doctrine. What we need to know about the Christian ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... interested in every natural fact. The depth of his perception found likeness of law throughout Nature, and I know not any genius who so swiftly inferred universal law from the single fact. He was no pedant of a department. His eye was open to beauty, and his ear to music. He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He thought the best of music was in single strains; and he found poetic suggestion in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... telling him if his eye should see anything of it through the newspapers, he would wonder how so much A B C knowledge could be tolerated here, but that I saw it was necessary to state it, and therefore he must not think me so much of a pedant as he might otherwise be disposed to do. Had the thing been suffered to pass unnoticed, I might have hoped at some time or other to gain some credit for a speech when I saw an occasion offered to make one; and I have vanity enough to believe that I could make a much better almost ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... chimneys and pits. Borrow certainly does remind us of these things. In the first place he does so by a hundred minute and scattered suggestions of the romantic and sublime, and so general that only a pedant will object to the nightingales which he heard singing in August near Bethesda. He gives us black mountains, gloomy shadows, cascades falling into lakes, "singular-looking" rocks, and mountain villages like ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... another a Cartesian[17] but he who is one himself, a pedant but a pedant, a provincial but a provincial; and I would wager it was the printer who put it on the title of Letters ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... despite its author's cleverness, is once more an essentially vulgar book, and a vulturine or ghoulish one—fixing on the wounds and the bruises and the putrefying sores of its subject—dragging out of his grave, for posthumous crucifixion, a harmless enough pedant of not very old time; and throwing dirty missiles at living magnates. It is one of the books—unfortunately not its author's only contribution to the list—which leave a bad taste in the mouth, a "flavour of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... impatient, more aspiring, less sensuous art which belongs to Western civilisation may bear many a change and not die utterly; nay, may feed on its intellect alone for a season, and enduring the martyrdom of a grim time of ugliness, may live on, rebuking at once the narrow-minded pedant of science, and the luxurious tyrant of plutocracy, till change bring back the spring again, and it blossoms once more into ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... been the leader in a barring out. (Johnson's Works, vii. 419.) Garrick entered the school about two years after Johnson left. According to Garrick's biographer, Tom Davies (p. 3), 'Hunter was an odd mixture of the pedant and the sportsman. Happy was the boy who could slily inform his offended master where a covey of partridges was to be found; this notice was a certain pledge of his pardon.' Lord Campbell in his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... by rules rather than by their reasons, like the old-fashioned German tacticians who were vanquished by Napoleon, or the physician who preferred that his patients should die by rule rather than recover contrary to it, is rightly judged to be a mere pedant, and ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the same time pale, a thing which always displeases me and which is, in fact, unpleasant; it impresses me as a sort of diseased healthfulness. Moreover, he had the slow yet jerky way of speaking that characterizes the pedant. Even his manner of walking, which was not that of youth and health, repelled me; as for his glance, it might be said that he had none. I do not know what to think of a man whose eyes have nothing to say. These are the signs which led me to an unfavorable opinion of Mercanson, an opinion which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... said I, feeling much like a chidden schoolboy; "and I am sorry you should think me a pedant." ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Doctor Rogers to the Duke at Ghent. This was extremely obliging upon their part, for if Valentine Dale were a "slow old gentleman," he was keen, caustic, and rapid, as compared to John Rogers. A formalist and a pedant, a man of red tape and routine, full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces which he mistook for eloquence, honest as daylight and tedious as a king, he was just the time-consumer for Alexander's purpose. The wily Italian listened with profound attention ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mellow— Callow pedant! I began To instruct the little fellow In the mysteries known to man; Sung the noble cithern's praise, And the flute of dear old Pan, And the lyre ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... check my bosom's fondest thought, And interrupt the golden dream, I crush the fiend with malice fraught, And still indulge my wonted theme. Although we ne'er again can trace In Granta's vale the pedant's lore; Nor through the groves of Ida chase Our raptured visions as before, Though Youth has flown on rosy pinion, And Manhood claims his stern dominion, Age will not every hope destroy, But yield some hours ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... stranded on the ignorance of those who surrounded her, and found herself isolated as a sort of pedant; and as time went on, the narrowness of interests chafed her, and in like manner left her alone. As she grew past girlhood, the cui bono question had come to interfere with her ardour in study for its own sake, and she felt the influence of an age eminently practical and sifting, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... epilogues to Phaedra and to Lucius he is very happily facetious; but in the prologue before the queen, the pedant has found his way, with Minerva, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in childish fashion by all shortcuts available, to get at the heart of the matter—a habit of mind detestable to pedants, since to them the letter is the main object, not the spirit. Happily Julius was ceasing to be a pedant, even in matters ecclesiastical. He loved the little boy, the mingled charm and pathos of whose personality held him as with a spell. With untiring patience he answered, to the best of his ability, Dickie's endless questions, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... little-boy matters; and I will say, by the by, that the same sort of speculation has often occurred to the minds of older people in connection with her. She knew the value of varied information in making a woman, not a pedant, but a sympathetic, companionable being; and such she was to almost every ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... rule, the spirit of liberty had grown strong, and had become equal to a great contest. The contest was brought on by the policy of his successor. Charles bore no resemblance to his father. He was not a driveller, or a pedant, or a buffoon, or a coward. It would be absurd to deny that he was a scholar and a gentleman, a man of exquisite tastes in the fine arts, a man of strict morals in private life. His talents for business were respectable; his demeanour was kingly. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... arrogance and without excusing himself; so that when he had them, he enjoyed them without affectation, and when he had them not, he did not want them. No one could ever say of him that he was either a sophist or a [home-bred] flippant slave or a pedant; but every one acknowledged him to be a man ripe, perfect, above flattery, able to manage his own and other men's affairs. Besides this, he honored those who were true philosophers, and he did not reproach those who pretended to ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... be of the party; for it is prudent to use all precautions with a man who, with a great deal of merit, on such occasions is not over scrupulous, if we may credit your philosopher." "Do not pay any attention to that pedant," replied the Chevalier de Grammont: "but tell me what put it into your head to form a design upon that inanimate statue, Miss Stewart?" "How the devil should I know?" said Hamilton: "you are acquainted with all her childish amusements. The old Lord Carlingford was at her apartment one evening, showing ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... enterprise declares itself very soon. He was so successful a teacher that he could no longer find it possible to carry on his work in his own house or possibly "like a pedant that keeps a school in a church," he required a building larger and more convenient. In other words he was prepared to take a risk and to invest his own capital in buildings. It is the only instance that has been recorded of what Mr. A. F. Leach calls a Private Adventure ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... most profound, began to address him in Latin; but, turning quick towards him, he gaily said, "Monsieur, j'ai l'honneur de representer Ciceron, le grand Ciceron, pere de sa patrie! mais quoique j'ai cet honneur-la, je ne suit pas pedant!—mon dieu, Monsieur, je ne parle que le Francois dans la bonne compagnie!" And, politely bowing, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... carry this contention—that all Literature is personal and therefore various—into a field much exploited by the pedant, and fenced about with many notice-boards and public warnings. 'Neologisms not allowed here,' 'All persons using slang, or ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... a clear thinker. He is also an original and independent thinker. He has not the professional taint of the German pedant. He has the German professor's minute knowledge of concrete facts, and his doctrinaire love of abstract principles, but he is not a mere scholar and teacher. He always remains the man of the world, and he brings to the consideration of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... instance of the pedant's audacity, he had well nigh, in his first transports, taken corporal satisfaction on the spot; but, foreseeing the troublesome consequences that would attend such a flagrant outrage against the laws of the university, he checked his indignation, and resolved to revenge the injury in a more cool ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... doting pedant Claudius was adding new letters to the alphabet, Messalina was parading with utter shamelessness her last and fatal passion for Silius, and went so far as publicly to marry her paramour. It was the freedman Narcissus who made ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Sievers an interesting companion; nothing of the pedant and much of the philosopher. Their conversation was of course chiefly on topics of local interest, anecdotes of the castle and the country, of Vivian's friends, the drunken Johannisberger and his crew, and such matters; but there was a keenness of satire in some of Mr. Sievers' observations ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... of pedantry to be always wrong. Your true prig of a pedant goes immensely out of his way to be vastly more correct than other people, and succeeds in the end in being vastly more ungrammatical, or vastly more illogical, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... knowledge, however, which is essential for culture; for culture is such an appropriation of knowledge that it becomes a part of ourselves. It is no longer something added by the memory; it is something possessed by the soul. A pedant is formed by his memory; a man of culture is formed by the habit of meditation, and by the constant use of the imagination. An alert and curious man goes through the world taking note of all that passes under his eyes, and collects a great mass of information, which is in no sense ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... chance meeting with which it concluded had jarred unpleasantly. Confound the fellow! Was he the first man in the world who had been thrown over by a girl because he had been discovered to be a tiresome pedant? For even supposing Miss Boyce had described that little scene in the library at Mellor to her fiance at the moment of giving him his dismissal—and the year before, by the help of all the news that reached him about the broken engagement, by the help still more of the look, or rather ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his eldest daughter. He gets it, and gives it to the "poor damsel," who is languishing, as he says, and who dies the next month,—all the sooner, I have little doubt, for this uncertain and violent drug, with which the meddlesome pedant tormented her in that spirit of well-meant but restless quackery, which could touch nothing without making mischief, not even a quotation, and yet proved at length the means of bringing a great blessing to our community, as we shall see by and by; so does Providence use our very vanities ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pedant, with his narrow understanding, his thin purism, and his idyllic sentimentalism, found that the summoning archangel of his paradise proved to be a ruffian with a pike. The shock must have been tremendous. Robespierre did not quail nor retreat; he only revised his notion of the situation. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... continually seeking new outlets—new forms for its expression. He had just the temperament to take up with the mode of the Nineties that drove the Young Men to asserting themselves and upholding their doctrines in papers and magazines of their own. The pedant may trace the fashion back to the Hobby-horse of the Eighties, or, in a further access of pedantry to the Germ of the early Fifties. He may follow its growth as late as the Blast of yesterday and The Gypsy of to-day. But I do not have to go further than my book shelves, I have only ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... dress, and her acquaintance with the most fashionable games and amusements, while her piety is to be anxiously concealed, and her knowledge affectedly disavowed, lest the former should draw on her the appellation of an enthusiast, or the latter that of a pedant. ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... she said to me, "you are nothing but an old pedant. I always suspected as much. The smallest little ragamuffin who goes along the road with his shirt-tail sticking out through a hole in his pantaloons knows more about me than all the old spectacled folks in your Institutes and your Academies. To know is nothing at all; ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... mayn't agree With FECHNER'S pedant formulae, I don't complain of such disparity; Too flawless that perfection shows; For me a larger comfort flows From human failings (take your nose— I like its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind Pedant.' ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the romantic movement. For the significant circumstance about the attitude of the last century toward the whole medieval period was, not its ignorance, but its incuriosity. It did not want to hear anything about it.[2] Now and then, hints Pope, an antiquarian pedant, a university don, might affect an admiration for some ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... I, and I would be searching about in my mind for the right words, like a pedant, for was I not college-bred—"to me," said I, "they aye look just grandly contemptuous," and, mind you, my heart went out to the great strong man at my side because of the soft place in his warm heart for the grim ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... believe that the stodgy girl who spends her morning in the British Museum working at the higher mathematics or Sanscrit is likely to spend her afternoon in bed, yet this is what happens frequently; the real sensualist is the pedant; "and, if one wants love, the real genuine article," whispered a thought, "one must ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... judges. Dio Cassius soon after his death wrote a biography, in which all his acts received a malignant interpretation. Quintilian disliked him, and harshly criticised his literary defects. The pedant Fronto did the same. Tacitus, with a larger heart, made allowance for his temptations, and while never glossing over his unworthy actions, has yet shown his love for the man in spite of all by the splendid tribute he pays to the constancy ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... had to hide himself under some disguise, a name, 'Elia,' taken literally as a pen name, or some more roundabout borrowing, as of an old fierce critic's, Joseph Ritson's, to heighten and soften the energy of marginal annotations on a pedant scholar. In the letter in which he announces the first essays of Elia, he writes to Barron Field: 'You shall soon have a tissue of truth and fiction, impossible to be extricated, the interleavings ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... inculcate all that Ascham upheld, may have been suggested by Ascham. It is in three books, and draws largely on Quintilian, the first two books being substantially little more than a compilation, but a very judicious one, from the Institutes of Oratory. But Wilson is no pedant, and has many excellent remarks on the nature of the influence which the classics should exercise on English composition. One passage is ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... than simple farmhands. One digs, with a spade, a ditch deep enough to uproot an oak. Another places on his nose a pair of wooden or cardboard spectacles. He fulfils the duties of "engineer," walks up and down, constructs a plan, stares at the workmen through his glasses, plays the pedant, cries out that everything will be spoiled, has the work stopped and begun afresh as his fancy directs, and makes the whole performance as long and ridiculous as he can. This is an addition to the formula of an ancient ceremony held in mockery of theorists in general, for peasants despise ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... not what I love most in the world, I explained myself badly (in my last letter). I spoke to you of distractions and of nothing more. I am not such a pedant as to prefer phrases to living beings. The further I go the more my sensibility is exasperated. But the basis is solid and the thing goes on. And then, after the Prussian war there is no further ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... you, therefore, Martyrs of Morocco; you do not regret your madness, I am sure, and if ever some righteous pedant gone astray in the groves of paradise undertakes to demonstrate to you that it would have been better worth while to remain in your own country, and found a worthy family of virtuous laborers, I fancy that Miramolin, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... a pretty enough havoc with fine-spun rhetoric to raise the wig off a pedant's head, Jean and I thought we read some sense in ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... quietly about thy quiet Lea, and left him his roaring Brora and windy Assynt. How could this noisy man know thee—and know thee he did, having argued with thee in Stafford—and not love Isaak Walton? A pedant angler, I call him, a plaguy angler, so let him huff away, and turn we to thee and to thy sweet charm in ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... them. He speaks with the utmost gravity of the fine arts, the fashions, and even matters the most trivial, and he turns into ridicule the most sacred subjects. In the midst of his own circle of fops and silly women, he utters his shallow conceits with all the pompous assurance of a pedant. ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... address'd: The world, (if ought the world I durst In this believe) did call me first Of those, who by the magick play Of harmonizing colours, sway The gazer's sense with such surprise, As make him disbelieve his eyes. 'Tis true that some of vision dim, Or squeamish taste, or pedant whim, My works assail'd with narrow spite; And, passing o'er my colour bright, Reproach'd me for my want of grace, And silks and velvets out of place; And vulgar form, and lame design, And want of character; in fine, For lack of worth of every ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... Nicolai school. There were rebels, and Wagner makes it clear that he was amongst them. To begin with, he had been in the second class at the Kreuzschule. The more effectually to imbue him with the Nicolai ambition of becoming a scholar, i.e. a pedant, and a complete, if sausage-munching, German gentleman of the period, they degraded him to the third. No doubt there were protests: one cannot believe that Wagner the boy any more than Wagner the man could refrain from declamation under a grievance; but with such impervious skulls and thick hides ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... course be only a matter of conjecture. It is evident that Bolingbroke himself dreaded the influence of Warburton, for he alludes constantly and almost nervously to 'the foul-mouthed critic whom I know you have at your elbow,' and anticipates objections which he suspected 'the dogmatical pedant' ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... grown of size, a tutor had, No pedant rude, with Greek and Latin mad, But young and smart, a master too of arts, Particularly learned in what imparts, The gentle flame, the pleasing poignant pang, That Ovid formerly so sweetly sang. Some ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... Shakespeare (but Shakespeare had already felt the Renaissance spirit) fully and perfectly, on the broad ground of humanity, so that anachronisms, and faults of costume, matter not one jot to any one but a pedant or a fool. When he came to something in the story—something in sentiment, manners, religion, what not—which was out of the range of his own experience, he changed it into something within the range of his own experience. When the whole story ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... a prince who very narrowly escaped figuring as a self-conscious absurdity, as an anachronism, as a life-long prisoner of etiquette. However, with the assistance of his cousin—who, incidentally, was also his heir—the prince most opportunely died. Oh, pedant that you are! in any event he was interred. And so, the prince was gathered to his fathers, and his cousin Augustus reigned in his stead. Until a certain politician who had been privy to this pious fraud——" The tutor shrugged. "How can I ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... corporation ownership; of some of their histories; of some of their doings, and of some of their contemplated doings. These kindergarten pictures I will endeavor to paint, not in that "over-the-head" verbosity or "under-the-feet" profundity and intricacy of the political economy pedant, which are as the canvases of the Whistler school to the masses; but rather will I use the brush of the artisan who in giving us our white fences, our gray cottages, and our green blinds sets off those things which make up the pictures the people ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... experiences. A man must have a rich and varied experience of men and women before he can use books to advantage. Life is varied, men and women many, while the individual life is short; wise men read books, therefore, to enrich their experience, not merely as the pedant does, to garner facts. "J'etudie les livres en attendant que J'etudie les hommes," writes Voltaire. "Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life," ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Petersen Syv (1631-1702) was a very able philologist, who was also a minor poet of ambition. In 1695 he reprinted and edited Vedel's text, adding 100 more kjaempeviser which had been unknown to Vedel. But his work was not so well done; Syv was something of a pedant, and unfortunately either too critical or not critical enough. He ventured to correct the irregularities of the ballads, and not seldom has spoiled them. He bore the proud title of Philologer Royal of Denmark, and he was above all things else a grammarian. But he added ...
— Grimhild's Vengeance - Three Ballads • Anonymous
... hypothesis from Shakspeare himself, who, of all authors, drew his portraits for all ages. With the whole sum of the idolatry which affects us at his name, the mass of readers peruse, without amusement, the characters formed on the extravagances of temporary fashion; and the Euphuist Don Armado, the pedant Holofernes, even Nym and Pistol, are read with little pleasure by the mass of the public, being portraits of which we cannot recognize the humour, because the originals no longer exist. In like manner, while the distresses of Romeo and Juliet continue to interest ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Fresco. Gazette. Gondola. Granite. Grotto. Guitar. Incognito. Influenza. Lagoon. Lava. Lazaretto. Macaroni. Madonna. Madrigal. Malaria. Manifesto. Motto. Moustache. Niche. Opera. Oratorio. Palette. Pantaloon. Parapet. Pedant. Pianoforte. Piazza. Pistol. Portico. Proviso. Quarto. Regatta. Ruffian. Serenade. Sonnet. Soprano. Stanza. Stiletto. Stucco. Studio. Tenor. Terra-cotta. Tirade. Torso. Trombone. Umbrella. Vermilion. Vertu. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... youth may, in his effort to prove his individuality, become vain and conceited, and fall into an attempt to appear interesting; or he may become slavishly dependent on conventional forms, a kind of social pedant. This state of nullity which contents itself with the mechanical polish of social formalism is ethically more dangerous than the tendency to a marked individuality, for it betrays emptiness; while the effort towards a peculiar differentiation from others, to ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... proceeded to Lincolnshire, and had the happiness of finding my family well when I arrived at home. My father was quite satisfied with the letters I conveyed from Professor Von Slammerbogen; my mother delighted to receive me in any character, whether that of pedant or prodigal. Nicholas, my elder brother, I found as much attached, as when I left him, to practising "Dull Care", upon the violin. In Tom, however, there was a considerable modification, he having left his sinister arm at Hougomont, in exchange for a three months' campaign in country quarters ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... one of the strangest types is presented in Bruckner,—a pedant who by persistent ingenuity simulates a master-work almost to perfection. By so much as genius is not an infinite capacity for pains, by so much is Bruckner's Ninth not a true symphony. Sometimes, under the glamor ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... was what we have often met, a pedant gardener, saw, however, that the squire's mind was disturbed. In the short conversation which they had, he spoke abruptly, and with a flushed countenance; but he was too shrewd to ask him why he seemed so. It was not, he knew, his business to ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... dark was the frown upon her usually serene countenance, so angry the light in her fine hazel eyes, so anxious and perturbed her entire being, that she appeared almost ugly. Not only so, but added to impatience and anger there seemed something like repugnance, disgust, directed at the miserable pedant who under the fires of womanly wrath blinked and smiled, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Faust. Pedant! will writing gain thy faith, alone? In all thy life, no man, nor man's word hast thou known? Is't not enough that I the fatal word That passes on my future days have spoken? The world-stream raves and rushes (hast not heard?) ...
— Faust • Goethe
... their verdict against hexameter verse in English. The genius of the Northern languages refuses this old heroic measure, which the Latins borrowed from the Greeks, and all the scholarship and finish of Longfellow has not been able to establish it in English. Harvey was a pedant so thoroughly tinctured with classical learning, that he would trammel his own language by ancient rules, instead of letting it grow into the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... opportunity to annoy them. One day, when the ante-room was filled with young officers of the British frigate, one of the boobies, pointing to Lord Charles, called to me, "Poll, who is that?" I answered, "Red tape and sealing-wax;" and raised a general shout at the expense of the little diplomatic pedant. An Irish midshipman present, a Mr. O'Gallagher, pointing to Mr. Henry, asked me, "Who is that, Poll?" "Good for nothing," I replied; and Mr. Henry flew at me in a rage, swore I had been taught to insult him, and that he would wring my neck ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... kindling the King into hot provocation; "extreme displeasure, AUSSERSTES MISFALLEN," as his Answer bore: "Rectify me all that straightway, and relieve these Arnolds of their injuries!" You Pettifogging Pedant Knaves, bring that Arnold matter to order, will ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and leave the care of his commonwealth to busy himself idly about her; and after him your Diogenes Laertius, the biographer, and your Theodorus Gaza, the philosopher, and your Argiropilus, the emperor, and your Bessario, the cardinal, and your Politian, the pedant, and your Budaeus, the judge, and your Lascaris, the ambassador, and the devil and all of those you call lovers of wisdom; whose number, it seems, was not thought great enough already, but lately your Scaliger, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... recognized only the religion of the heart, whilst that of the Pharisees consisted almost exclusively in observances. Jesus sought the humble and outcasts of all kinds, and the Pharisees saw in this an insult to their religion of respectability. The Pharisee was an infallible and faultless man, a pedant always right in his own conceit, taking the first place in the synagogue, praying in the street, giving alms to the sound of a trumpet, and caring greatly for salutations. Jesus maintained that each one ought to await the kingdom of God with fear and trembling. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... lessened almost out of my knowledge. I looked with contempt on the tribes painted on the church walls, which I once so much admired, and on the carved chimneypiece in the Squire's Hall. I found my old master to be a poor ignorant pedant; and, in short, the whole scene to be extremely changed for the worse. This I could not help mentioning, because though it be of no consequence in itself, yet it is certain, that most prejudices are contracted and retained ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... had not his too fond friends persuaded him to republish the follies and coarsenesses of his youth. He was now one of the most famous scholars in Europe, and the intimate friend of all the great literary men. Was he to go on to the end, die, and no more? Was he to sink into the mere pedant; or, if he could not do that, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... sensuality which oscillate between the conventicle and the tavern as the poles of duty and pleasure, or, more pathetically still, he may attempt to bring the code of the observatory to bear immediately on the vagaries of the untameable world, and suffer the pedant's disaster. A martyr to the good that is to be, he has voluntarily maimed himself "for the kingdom of Heaven's sake"—if, perchance, the kingdom of Heaven might come by observation. The enthusiasm of his self-denial shows itself in his unavailing struggle to chain language ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... cried, from the depths of his heart. 'I feel as if I had been the merest pedant and blunderer—the ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... relish of the ferule still, Some nose-wise pedant saith; whose deep-seen skill Hath three times construed either Flaccus o'er, And thrice rehears'd them in his trivial flore. So let them tax me for my hot blood's rage, Rather than say I doated ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber |
