"Literati" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati, should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... to have taken a leaf from this poor devil's manual in respect to the coffee-house at least. Indeed, coffee-houses in those days were the resorts of wits and literati, where the topics of the day were gossiped over, and the affairs of literature and the drama discussed and criticised. In this way he enlarged the circle of his intimacy, which now ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... term oftentimes subjoined. The Chaldeans, who were particularly possessed of the land of Ur, and were worshippers of fire, had the name of Urchani. Strabo limits this title to one branch of the Chaldeans, who were literati, and observers of the heavens; and even of these to one sect only. [Greek: Esti de kai ton Chaldaion ton Astronomikon gene pleio; kai gar] [159][Greek: Orchenoi tines prosagoreuontai]. But [160]Ptolemy speaks of them more truly as a nation; as does Pliny likewise. He mentions their stopping ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... obscure, is unimportant. He came of a Honanese family who were nothing more distinguished than farmers possessing a certain amount of land, but not too much of the world's possessions. The boy probably ran wild in the field at an age when the sons of high officials and literati were already pale and anaemic from overmuch study. To some such cause the man undoubtedly owed his powerful physique, his remarkable appetite, his general roughness. Native biographers state that as a youth he ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... lower, a traitor to his family name; as if in a dream that appeases the sense of obscene horror, he saw him in league with the abandoned and proscribed, associating with thieves, street bandits, high-flying swindlers, counterfeiters, anarchists, prostitutes, and literati. He saw him in dirty dives, a fugitive from justice wandering along the highway, drunk in a gambling den, a beggar at a fair, and ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... city. In 1729 he had published his comic pastoral, and was then in a bookseller's shop in the Luckenbooths. Here he used to amuse Gay, famous for his Newgate pastoral, with pointing out the chief characters and literati of the city as they met daily in the forenoon at the Cross, according to custom. Here Gay first read the Gentle Shepherd, and studied the Scottish dialect, so that, on his return to England, he was able to explain ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... evening at Button's Coffee-house, where he and a set of literati had got poring over a Latin manuscript, in which they had found a passage that none of them could comprehend. A young officer, who heard their conference, begged that he might be permitted to look at the passage. ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... appreciate the strength or the delicacy of a line judged for itself, quite independently of the forms represented. We must also bear in mind that all of the Chinese painters were scholars, belonging to the class of the literati.[14] Writers, poets, statesmen, soldiers, Buddhist or Taoist priests, and philosophers have all furnished the greatest names in art. Under such conditions the technical relationship between the line of the painter ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... is, to the stock of nations to which the Jews, the northern Arabs, the Aramaeans or Syrians, the Phoenicians, and the Assyrians belong. Their language fell into disuse, and grew to be a learned tongue studied by the priests and the literati; their Cushite character was lost, and they became, as a people, scarcely distinguishable from the Assyrians. After six centuries and a half of submission and insignificance, the Chaldaeans, however, began to revive and recover themselves—they renewed the struggle for national ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... her. But, if really so, that made no difference in his feelings towards my sister and myself. Us he did like; and, as one proof of his regard, he presented us jointly with such of his works as could be supposed interesting to two young literati, whos combined ages made no more at this period than a baker's dozen. These presentation copies amount to two at the lest, both octavoes, and one of them entitled The Father's—something or other; what was it?—Assistant, perhaps. How much assistance the doctor ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... famous decree,—at a time when there was less of faith and religious feeling in Italy than ever before,—this abstract dogma became a sort of watchword with theological disputants; not ecclesiastics only, the literati and the reigning powers took an interest in the controversy, and were arrayed on one side or the other. The Borgias, for instance, were opposed to it. Just at this period, the singular picture I allude to was painted by Girolamo da Cotignola. It is mentioned ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... a score of men filed into the office, all of them with set faces and indignant demeanors. The Cap'n was not well posted on the breed of literati, but with half an eye he noted that these were not the ordinary sort of men. There were more silk hats, there were broad-brimmed hats, there was scrupulousness in attire, there was the disarray of Bohemianism. And it was plainly evident that these later arrivals had had word of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Chronicles alike. The actual words of these poems had to be preserved as well as the metre, and therefore it was necessary to indite them phonetically. For the rest, the Nihon Shoki, which resulted from the labours of these annalists and literati, was so Chinese that its authors did not hesitate to draw largely upon the cosmogonic myths of the Middle Kingdom, and to put into the mouths of Japanese monarchs, or into their decrees, quotations from Chinese literature. "As a repertory of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... pensions. What a blot upon Western civilization is this treatment of the teachers in our lower schools. These people are doing the work that even the savage races universally consider to be of the highest type. Benighted China places her teachers second only to the literati themselves in the place of honor. The Hindus made the teaching profession the highest caste in the social scale. The Jews intrusted the education of their children to their Rabbis, the most learned and the most honored of their race. It is only Western civilization—it is almost only ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... few more striking or more interesting proofs of the overwhelming influence which the study of the Greek and Roman classics exercised on the judgments, feelings, and imaginations of the literati of Europe at the commencement of the restoration of literature, than the passage in the Filocopo of Boccaccio, where the sage instructor, Racheo, as soon as the young prince and the beautiful ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that these governing scholars found their salvation lay in suppressing all progressive ideas. The ideas behind the Boxer troubles and the outbreaks over the introduction of railroad and other foreign devil machinations have emanated from the minds of the literati, and been spread by their ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... of state the great diamond found on the field of Marat after the defeat of the Duke of Burgundy. The members of the House of Este were there with their courts and their proteges, their artists and their literati, as well as with their ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... busy deciphering of dusty MSS. turned to his country in her hour of need, and defended her where defence should have been superfluous, but was, unhappily, of small avail. And still he works nobly for the dear old flag, and, intimately lie as he is with the first literati and politicians of Europe, it is not easy to measure his influence. His purely literary habits forbid all suspicion of his disinterestedness, and will go far to commend him to the sympathies of the commanding intellects of the age. Let us ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... downwards, and especially as reflected in the standard literature of Confucianism, has been consistently pacific and intensely opposed to militarism in any form. It is such an uncommon thing to find any of the literati defending warfare on principle, that I have thought it worth while to collect and translate a few passages in which the unorthodox view is upheld. The following, by Ssu-ma Ch'ien, shows that for all his ardent admiration of Confucius, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... circumstances contributed to multiply the beneficial effects derived from this invention, among which the most considerable were the protection afforded to literature and the arts by the States of Italy, and the diffusion of Greek learning by the literati who sought an asylum in Europe after the capture ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... Leonora—presided over this court, and to it came, from time to time, many of the most beautiful women of Italy. Tarquinia Moeza was there, a woman of beauty and of rare poetic gifts; Lucrezia Bendidio, beautiful and accomplished, and having constantly about her a most admiring throng of poets and literati; and later came the two acknowledged beauties of the day, Leonora di Sanvitali, Countess of Scandiano, and her no less charming mother-in-law, Barbara, Countess of Sala. Among the men of this company, suffice it to ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... opinion with respect to the Basque which deserves more especial notice, from the circumstance of its being extensively entertained amongst the literati of various countries of Europe, more especially England. I allude to the Celtic origin of this tongue, and its close connexion with the most cultivated of all the Celtic dialects, the Irish. People who pretend to be well conversant with the subject, have ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... his two sons and his only daughter. The former were not only manly and expert in the use of the sword and spear, but had the best education that the classics of Confucius and the Chinese college and literati in Yedo could give them. Next to them in his love was his only daughter Kiku, seventeen years old, and as fair as the fairest of Yedo's many fair daughters. No vain doll was Kiku, but, inheriting her mother's beauty, she added ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... a variety of argument to prove that literary men are not Maecenased by either the government or aristocracy of Great Britain. He points out the advantages which the French literati have from their Institute, the ennoblements, the decorations, and pensions which they receive; and certainly ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... causes may be assigned for this wane of popularity: he took no care to conceal his contempt for all who depended on mere scholarship for eminence, and he had a perilous knack in sketching with a sarcastic hand the characters of the learned and the grave. Some indeed of the high literati of the north—Home, the author of Douglas, was one of them—spoke of the poet as a chance or an accident: and though they admitted that he was a poet, yet he was not one of settled grandeur of soul, brightened by study. Burns was probably aware of this; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... latter of whom are under a vow of celibacy. The soldiers come after the priests in rank. Their dress is very similar to that of civilians, but they wear the embroidered badge of their respective chiefs. The fifth class consist of medical men and literati, as also inferior government officers. They are allowed, however, to wear swords and trousers. Below them again are the merchants, who are despised by the superior ranks, and are never allowed to wear swords. Mechanics rank the seventh class, and the eighth and last ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the pomposity of the 'belles-lettres' carry us any farther than the very fine 'letters' or litteral; while even Solomon So-so may take courage when he reflects (provided Solomon be ever guilty of reflecting) that the 'literati' have 'literally' nothing more profound about them than the knowledge of their 'letters.' The Latins were prolific in words of this kind; thus they had the literatus and the literator—making some such discrimination ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to speak at length of the illustrious alumni of the Brothers; of Professor Thatcher, the favorite of college,—of Professor Silliman, the Nestor of American literati,—of the revered head of this institution, President Woolsey, first President of the Brothers in 1820,—of Professor Andrews, the author of the best dictionary of the Latin language,—of such divines ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... rent with the cries of orphans and poverty-stricken widows. Sorrow reigned in every household, and the town of Weimar became a prominent part of the funeral scene. But, unaccountable as it may appear, the resident literati were not much disturbed. Living so near the top of Parnassus, they would not listen to the storms below. Goethe, the acknowledged prince, wrote as zealously as ever in his villa-garden, and it will ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... for not including some seventy, or a hundred and seventy more, 'who,' it is said, and probably with truth, 'have as good a right to be there as many of those admitted.' Still it is possible to pick out a few of general reputation, whom literati from all parts of the Union would agree in sustaining as specimens of distinguished American poets, though they would differ in assigning their relative position. Thus, if the Republic had to choose a laureate, Boston would probably ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... am not quite sure but we ought to be angry at your taking these sort of hoaxing liberties with our literati; and I don't know but some of us will be making reprisals. What should you say to it in Germany if one of these days for example you were to receive a large parcel by the 'post-wagen' containing Posthumous Works of Mr. Kant. I won't ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... compared with the ten million of unleavened youth born in the same year, and yet they are the pick of the middle classes and must become the leaders of the masses. The masses in China, it is alleged, would not be anti-foreign were it not for the influence of their literati, and the thoughts of these Indian literati must also become the thoughts of the Indian masses. It is the mind of these literati, mainly, which we are trying to gauge. According to the census of 1901 their total number approached one million, being those who could read ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... too little understood the real motives and object of the French Revolution, and were too soon provoked by the predatory incursions of the French troops, to be infected with revolutionary principles. These merely fermented among the literati; the Utopian idea of universal fraternization was spread by Freemasonry; numbers at first cherished a hope that the Revolution would preserve a pure moral character, and were not a little astonished on beholding the monstrous crimes to which it gave birth. Others merely ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... names from Maine to Mexico. Even the far, far west, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, have contributed; whilst Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and South Carolina, swell the list of the most distinguished American literati, embracing a fair sprinkling of fair ladies. There is even a subscriber from the shores of the Pacific.' The testimonial is an elaborately carved library chair, bearing on the top rail a mask of Shakspeare, copied in ivory from the Stratford bust, wreathed with oak-leaves ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... such a company, it is extremely right to be in it sometimes, and you will be but more esteemed in other companies, for having a place in that. But then do not let it engross you; for if you do, you will be only considered as one of the 'literati' by profession; which is not the way either, to shine, or rise in ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Stowe writes: "I remember well the scene at that exhibition, to me so eventful. The hall was crowded with all the literati of Litchfield. Before them all our compositions were read aloud. When mine was read I noticed that father, who was sitting on high by Mr. Brace, brightened and looked interested, and at the close I heard him ask, 'Who wrote that composition?' 'Your daughter, sir,' was the answer. It was the proudest ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... her, kissed her. Miss Liblichlein was pleasantly dazed by all the new things; soon it occurred to her that most of what she saw was not as beautiful as she had once imagined. Right from the start she was irritated that the director of the theater, the collegues, the literati of the Cafe Kloesschen—all the people with whom she often came in contact, found pleasure in touching her, caressing her hands, pressing their knees against hers, looking directly at her without shame. Even being touched by Schulz became burdensome ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... soldiers and settlers with Spanish women modified the original race; the Iberians invaded the politics and the literature of their conquerors. St. Augustine mourned the odiosa cantio of Spanish children learning Latin, but the language of Rome itself was altered by its Iberian emperors and literati; the races, in fact, amalgamated, and the Spaniard of to-day, to those who know him well, bears a strange resemblance to the Roman citizens with whom the letters of the Younger Pliny so charmingly make us familiar. The dismemberment of the Roman ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... room for him in front; and there, feeling he had not to do with savages, he became kindly and conversible. We beat together over a wide range of topics;—the Scotch banks, and Sir Robert Peel's intentions regarding them,—the periodical press of Scotland,—the Edinburgh literati,—the Free Church even: he had been a consistent Moderate all his days, and disliked renegades, he said; and I, of course, disliked renegades too. We both remembered that, though civilized nations give quarter to an enemy ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... merit; nor do I find one man that has treated this subject sensibly, besides myself.—Smithson's Amiableness of Candour and Diffidence, page 8.—What modesty! what candour! amiable critic! doubtless your ingenuous style has obtained you a place on the shelves of the literati; and like Ovid and Horace you have secured as well as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... to Korea and thence to Japan. The ancient books were more numerous in Korea than in Japan, but after annexation the Japanese set about destroying these books, so that Koreans should not be able to learn them. This 'burning of the books and murder of the literati' was for the purpose of debasing the Koreans and robbing them ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... Suard has the remains of much beauty, a belle esprit, and aims at singularity and independence of sentiment. Would you believe it, Mr. Day paid his court to her thirty years ago? She is very civil to us, and we go to their house once a week: literati frequent it, and to each of them she has ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the Duomo, in a narrow thoroughfare leading from the Duomo to the Piazza of La Scala, where a confectioner of local fame conferred upon the happier members of the population most piquant bocconi and tartlets, and offered by placard to give an emotion to the nobility, the literati, and the epicures of Milan, and to all foreigners, if the aforesaid would adventure upon a trial of his art. Meanwhile he let lodgings. It was in the house of this famous confectioner Zotti that Vittoria and her mother had lived ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... life did not lose him the good opinion even of the voluptuaries of the showiest of capitals, whose very iron railings are not free from gilt. Franklin was not less a lady's man, than a man's man, a wise man, and an old man. Not only did he enjoy the homage of the choicest Parisian literati, but at the age of seventy-two he was the caressed favorite of the highest born beauties of the Court; who through blind fashion having been originally attracted to him as a famous savan, were permanently retained ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... time has elapsed since this publication made its appearance in Edinburgh, and though it came into the world in the modest garb of anonymous obscurity, the Northern literati are unanimous, we understand, in ascribing part of it, at, least, to the pen ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... considered to be tusks of the giant rat tien-shu, which is only found in the cold regions along the coast of the Polar Sea, avoids the light, and lives in dark holes in the interior of the earth. Its flesh is said to be cooling and wholesome. Some Chinese literati considered that the discovery of these immense earth rats might even explain ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... she said, "it does great honour to the poet, for it is admitted to be a masterpiece by all the literati in Rome, and Donna Lucrezia knows ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... accompanying likeness of the author, and her inscription and dedication of the volume to the "Right Honorable the Countess of Huntingdon," show, that she, though young, was a person of no ordinary mind, no common attainments; but at the time, one of the brightest ornaments among the American literati. She also was well versed in Latin, in which language she composed several pieces. Miss Wheatley died in 1780, at the age of 26 years, being seven years of age when brought to this country ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... panes of paper greased with lard. The teachers were usually in keeping with their primitive surroundings. The profession offered no rewards sufficient to attract men of education or capacity. After a few months of desultory instruction young Abraham knew all that these vagrant literati could teach him. His last school-days were passed with one Swaney in 1826, who taught at a distance of four and a half miles from the Lincoln cabin. The nine miles of walking doubtless seemed to Thomas Lincoln a waste of time, and the lad was put at steady work and ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... parodies reproduced in the present volume. A group of precocious Eton lads, Canning, J. Hookham Frere, John Smith, and Robert (Bobus) Smith, during the years 1786-1787 produced forty octavo numbers of a weekly paper called The Microcosm. They succeeded in exciting some interest among the literati,[7] were coming out in a "Second Edition" as early as the Christmas vacation of 1786,[8] and in the end sold their copyright for fifty pounds to their publisher, Charles Knight of Windsor.[9] Canning wrote Nos. XI and XII (February 12, 1787), a critique of the "Epic Poem" concerning ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... LIBERALITY, THEOLOGY AND RELIGION.—Upon these subjects it is customary to find a mingling of contradictions. Leading New England literati, who inherit all the narrowness and self-sufficiency of British conservatism, are frequently impelled to utter expressions which would lead the reader to think them persons of liberal and progressive minds. Such expressions we find in the writings of Dr. Holmes, a thorough medical bigot and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... he was able to pursue literature, with the aid of a small patrimony (about L300 a year), without being doomed to the hard privations of Johnson, or the humiliating shifts of Goldsmith. He lived independently of patronage from the great,—the bitterest trial of the literati of the eighteenth century, which drove Cowper mad, and sent Rousseau to attics and solitudes,—so that, in his humble but pleasant home, with his young wife, with whom he lived amicably, he could see his friends, the great ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... were Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore, Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, Mr. Langton, Dr. Robertson the Historian, Dr. Hugh Blair, and Mr. Thomas Davies, who wished much to be introduced to these eminent Scotch literati; but on the present occasion he had very little opportunity of hearing them talk, for with an excess of prudence, for which Johnson afterwards found fault with them, they hardly opened their lips, and that only to say something ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... and had enriched himself by buying up the tickets bearing those names in the great lotteries which are always held in connexion with this event, Chinese opposition went down like a house of cards; and the only question with many of the literati was whether, at some remote date, the Chinese ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Italy at the period of Milton's visit; his acquaintance with Italian literati at Florence; visit to Galileo; at Rome and Naples; returns to England, July, 1639; settles in St. Bride's Churchyard, and devotes himself to the education of his nephews; his elegy on his friend Diodati; removes to Aldersgate Street, 1640; his ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... preachers, Thee in thy ultimate, (the preparations only now completed, the edifice on sure foundations tied,) Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational joys, thy love and godlike aspiration, In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung'd orators, thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans, These! these in thee, (certain to ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman |
