"Pedantical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Quaker cousins and spending most of her time in mending stockings. So many people make stockings who refuse absolutely to mend them that I imagine there must be something peculiarly unattractive in this work of restoration, and it was a fortunate day for Margaret when the pedantic young man of the house proposed to marry her. After this we discover that she has both a history and a will of her own. She leaves the Quakers, and goes as secretary to a lady who holds eccentric if broadminded views on every conceivable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... as Ulysses, In such a stupendous labour as this is, Come lend me the aids of thy hands and thy feet, Though the first be pedantic, the other not sweet, Yet both are so restless in peregrination, They'll help both my journey, and eke ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... "and it is ill of you, lady, to listen to the falsehoods of that reverend mummer, who is neither true priest nor true soldier. But I will fetch one who shall confront him either in casque or cowl." So saying, she went hastily out of the chapel, while the monk, after some pedantic circumlocution, acquainted the Lady Eveline with what he had overheard betwixt Jorworth and Wilkin; and proposed to her to draw together the few English who were in the castle, and take possession of the innermost square tower; a keep which, as usual in Gothic fortresses of the Norman ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... had been pleased to call the three; that term (delightful touch of classic colour on one's own trite but withal pedantic age) being then familiar, as the designation of three conspicuous agents on the political scene of the generation just departing. Only, these young Latinists went back for the associations of the word to its Roman ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... of host, and the man seemed to have dropped twenty years from his shoulders. A miracle of rejuvenation seemed to have come upon him: his eyes were bright and eager, the color was high in his cheeks, and the dry, pedantic tone had gone from his voice. Ste. Marie watched him, and at last he thought he understood. It was half revolting, half pathetic, he thought, but it certainly ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... art fidelity of treatment is essential to a theme. Indeed, I am sure that this peculiar office would regard it as fantastic for a poor devil of an artist to want to be faithful or sincere. The demand would appear pedantic and extravagant. ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Pope's tune with the omission of the rhymes, whilst Thomson, revolting more or less consciously against the canons of his time, too often falls into mere pompous mouthing. Shaftesbury, in the previous generation, trying to write poetical prose, becomes as pedantic as Johnson, though in a different style; and Gibbon's mannerism is a familiar example of a similar escape from a monotonous simplicity into awkward complexity. Such writers are like men who have been ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... no corner of it untouched. I fancy this part of his study was peculiarly pleasant to him; for he loved simple and natural things, and the beauty which he found nearest life. At least he scorned the pedantic affectations of literary superiority; and he used to quote with joyous laughter the swelling exclamation of an Italian critic who proposed to leave the summits of polite learning for a moment, with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... moments when the best books in the world seem irrelevant, and all "culture" an impertinent intrusion; but however it comes and however it goes, it is the thing that makes our gravity ridiculous; our philosophy pedantic. It is the thing that gives to the "amusements" of the imagination that touch of burning fire; that breath of wider air; that taste of sharper salt, which, arriving when we least expect it, and least—heaven knows—deserve it, makes any final opinion upon ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... office in the shire of—at the time of this catastrophe, was well born and well educated; and, though somewhat pedantic and professional in his habits, he enjoyed general respect as an active and intelligent magistrate. His first employment was to examine all witnesses whose evidence could throw light upon this mysterious event, and make up the written report, proces verbal or precognition, as it is technically called, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Queen Elizabeth's days, and since, here has put in a piece of red, and there a piece of blue, and here a piece of green, and there a piece of orange-tawny. We borrow words from the French, Italian, Latin, as every pedantic man pleases". ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... conspirators, Guy Fawkes, who was busy with the last preparations for the execution of the plot. With a smiling countenance he confessed his purpose, which he seemed to regard as the fulfilment of a religious duty. The pedantic monarch thought himself in the presence ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... standing by the side of my bed, so composed in his features and so drab in his attire, that it was hard to associate him with the stirring scenes of yesterday and with the repulsive part which he had played in them. Now in the fresh morning sunlight he presented rather the appearance of a pedantic schoolmaster, an impression which was increased by the masterful, and yet benevolent, smile with which he regarded me. In spite of his smile, I was more conscious than ever that my whole soul shrank from him, and that I should not be at my ease until I had broken this companionship which had ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the regularity of masonry. The colour and technique are equally uncompromising, and the surface becomes a beautiful enamel, unyielding, definite in its lines, lacquer-like in its firmness of finish, while the Gothic forms, which had hitherto been so prevalent, were replaced by more or less pedantic adaptations from Roman bas-reliefs. This system of design was practised most determinedly in Padua itself, but it soon spread to Venice. Squarcione himself was employed there after 1440, and though Antonio da ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... translation of Lane, by the too strict an adherence to Oriental forms of expression, and somewhat pedantic rendering of the spelling of proper names, is found to be tedious to a very large number of readers attracted by the rich imagination, romance, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... for Rabelaisian humour; his head was crammed with all sorts of out-of-the-way learning constantly tickling his comic sense by its very uselessness; he relished more keenly than any man the solemn futilities of mediaeval doctors, and the pedantic indecencies of casuist fathers; and, along with all these temptations to an enterprise of the kind upon which he entered, he had been experiencing a steady relaxation of deterrent restraints. He had fallen out with his uncle some years ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... with their incessant flutter, and bluster, and twitter, and twaddle; with their perpetual strain after effect; with their deathless desire to get one rung of the ladder higher than they ever can get; with their preposterous affectations, their pedantic unrealities, their morbid dread of remark, their everlasting imitations, their superficial education, their monotonous commonplaces, and their nervous deference to opinion;—it is your middle classes that have utterly destroyed good manners, and have made the prevalent ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... mind for the discoveries of the sixteenth century; it had raised up an inquisitive spirit, and had led to profound reflections on the existence of God, on his attributes and will, on the nature of the soul, on the faculties of the mind and on the practical duties of life. But this philosophy became pedantic and cold; covered, as with a funereal shade, the higher pursuits of life; and diverted attention from what was practical and useful. That earnest spirit, which raised up Luther and Bacon, demanded, of the great masters of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Moliere, it is to be disposed to like neither false wit nor pedantic science; it is to know how to recognize at first sight our Trissotins[6] and our Vadius even under their rejuvenated jaunty airs; it is, not to let one's self be captivated at present any more than formerly by the everlasting Philaminte, that affected pretender of all times, whose ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... said there was no such ground for an heroic poem, as King Arthur's fiction, and Sir Philip Sidney had an intention of turning all his Arcadia to the stories of King Arthur. He said Owen was a poor pedantic school-master, sucking his living from the posteriors of little children, and has nothing good in him, his epigrams being bare narrations. He loved Fletcher, Beaumont and Chapman. That Sir William Alexander was not half kind to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... the critic of irreverence, who doubts the wisdom of universities, and of pedantic scholars who burrow like moles in the mouldering remnants of antiquity, but see nothing of the glorious sky overhead. While I have no reverence for barren or wasted intellect, I have the profoundest respect for the fruitful intellect which produces ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... a natural and never-failing humour, as genial as it was pungent. It was his characteristic glory that he knew how to be a man of the world without being frivolous, and a man of letters without being pedantic. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... but vain of his knowledge in medicine—so vain, that he advertised his merits, and offered advice gratis. It was his misfortune to encounter Burns at a mason meeting, who, provoked by a long and pedantic speech, from the Dominie, exclaimed, the future lampoon dawning upon him, "Sit down, Dr. Hornbook." On his way home, the poet seated himself on the ledge of a bridge, composed the poem, and, overcome with poesie and drink, fell asleep, and did not awaken till the sun was shining ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to touch more delicately and happily both the weakness and the strength of Germany; pedantic, simple, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... perception,' with what does he perceive? The first answer is, that he perceives sights with the eye, and sounds with the ear. This leads Socrates to make the reflection that nice distinctions of words are sometimes pedantic, but sometimes necessary; and he proposes in this case to substitute the word 'through' for 'with.' For the senses are not like the Trojan warriors in the horse, but have a common centre of perception, in which they all meet. This common principle is able to compare ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... and putting on a very grave supercilious air, the superior asked him, what resolution he had taken? To which Mr. Lithgow replied, that he was already resolved, unless he could show substantial reasons to make him alter his opinion. The superior, after a pedantic display of their seven sacraments, the intercession of saints, transubstantiation, &c. boasted greatly of their church, her antiquity, universality, and uniformity; all which Mr. Lithgow denied: "For (said he) the profession of the faith I hold ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the House of Commons, or Lords, And they seem to be busy with simple words In their popular sense or pedantic— But, alas! with their cheers, and sneers, and jeers, They're really busy, whatever appears, Putting peas in each other's ears, To drive ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... can pay for the best arrangements for circumventing the law's intentions, but even in spite of the recent concessions, is still hard on the ignorant poor and low class. The law is a snob as well as a pedantic, pompous ass. ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... sitting down before the writing-table, commenced to go through drawers and pigeonholes. It had not been a habit of his to keep letters; but nevertheless a certain number had accumulated, and these he was averse to let fall into the hands of strangers. He performed his work coolly, with a pedantic thoroughness. He had no sympathy with those people, who, doing what he was about to do, left ragged ends behind them. His mind had always inclined to law and order. And so, having written a note authorising Frau Krause to keep his books and clothes, in place of the outstanding ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... somewhat pedantic visitor told Billy that he would never be a great man if he did not try to understand the book in question—to thoroughly ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... "general," was an extremely stolid young person, and, in some respects, a model servant. She never argued. She never seemed to have any notions of her own whatever. She accepted our ideas without comment, and carried them out with such pedantic precision and such evident absence of all feeling of responsibility concerning the result as to surround our home legislation with quite ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... Balzac was perhaps not so brilliant in conversation as were her brothers and sisters. Her mind had something pedantic in it, and she was rather a good listener than a good talker, but whatever she said was to the point, and she was eloquent with her pen. She had that large glance only given to superior minds which allows them, according to the words of Catherine of Russia, 'to read the future in the ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... absolutely a total loss; for, as already set forth in some detail, he was hopelessly old-fashioned in thought and speech—hopelessly old-fashioned and pedantic in his style of writing; and since his mind mainly concerned itself with retrospections upon the things that happened between April, 1861, and May, 1865, he very naturally—and very frequently—forgot ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... career, and nobody can share his labours or mitigate his privations. In short, there is no link between him and the spectator. Unless we interpret the statue in this manner, it loses all interest—it never had any beauty—and the St. John becomes a tiresome person with a pedantic and ill-balanced mind. But Donatello can only have meant to teach the lesson of concentrated unity of purpose, which is the chief if not the only characteristic of this St. John. Technically the work is admirable. The singular care with which the limbs ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... have suffered from the rule Of sceptics, icily pedantic, Who blighted, ere I went to school, My dreams when they were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... adorned by several celebrated wits, was less rich in humour than the present. Literature had a grave and pedantic character, for where there was any mental activity, instruction was sought almost to the exclusion of gaiety. It required a greater spread of education and experience to create a source of superior humour, or to awaken any considerable demand for it. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... poor Tom Castleton, and others involved in the imbroglio, counted themselves as my bosom cronies, while she, poor wretch (a man must get home somewhere), was in the nursery; and that, finally, if she had been taught English grammar and spelling at school, she would have dispensed entirely with my pedantic assistance and written the story herself. Anyhow, man-like, I am broad minded enough to proclaim that it doesn't very much matter. Man and wife are one. She thinks they are one wife. I know they are one husband. Between speculation and knowledge why so futile a thing as a quarrel? I proceed ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... face, and with these peculiarities: that his hair, eyebrows, and lashes were perfectly white, his eyes of a singularly mild blue, his skin of a pinkish tint; that he was given to blushing whenever he met women or strangers, and that he spoke with pedantic preciseness, in a wondrously low voice. But despite his bashfulness, there was a great deal in the man, and when an emergency rose ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... with a real compass for political guidance? Let me in the first place frankly express my own belief that to many readers of history the study is not only useless, but even positively misleading. An unintelligent, a superficial, a pedantic or an inaccurate use of history is the source of very many errors in practical judgment. Human affairs are so infinitely complex that it is vain to expect that they will ever exactly reproduce themselves, or that any study of the past can ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... very extensive, so was he very happy in a memory, tenacious of every thing that he had read. He was not more possessed of knowledge than he was communicative of it. But then his communication of it was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the conversation; but just such, and went so far, as, by the natural turns of the discourse in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or required. He was extreme ready and gentle in his correction of the errors of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... came with the Renaissance,[263] but even this long step in advance did not immediately liberate the art from bondage. A new generation of professors arose who added fresh material to the storehouses, already overflowing, of pedantic erudition, and showed the utmost contempt for any fruit of other men's labour which might not square exactly with the utterances of the founders. This attitude rendered these professors of Medicine the legitimate objects of ridicule, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... that garment of truth which God made originally "seamless as the firmament," now for so long a time torn in shreds by hating schismatics. Oh, when shall we learn that a loving pity, a filial faith, a patient modesty, best become us and fit our state? The pedantic sciolist, prating of his clear explanations of the mysteries of life, is as far from feeling the truth of the case as an ape, seated on the starry summit of the dome of night, chattering with glee over ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... great mariner, and one of the first scholars of his age. To call him a spider of hell was not only indecent in itself, but perfectly foolish, from the term being totally inapplicable to the object, and fit only for the very pedantic eloquence of the person who used it. But if Sir Walter Raleigh had been guilty of numberless frauds and prevarications, if he had clandestinely picked up other men's money, concealed his peculation by false bonds, and afterwards attempted to cover it by the cobwebs of the law, then my ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... dissection of personality. His power lay in his style and the knowledge that enabled him to inform the general public of facts which were the private possession of the inner political circle. His mind was narrow and pedantic. He stood with Grenville on American taxation; and he maintained without perceiving what it meant that a nomination borough was a freehold beyond the competence of the legislature to abolish. He was never generous, always abusive, and truth did not enter into his calculations. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... school had taken its place with its mock courts, contests in oratory, set themes in fictitious controversies. The analytical rules of rhetoric were growing ever more intricate and time-wasting, and how pedantic they were even before Vergil's childhood may be seen by a glance into the anonymous Auctor ad Herennium. The student had to know the differences between the various kinds of cases, demonstrativum, deliberativum ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... pedantic volumes to Sir Walter Besant's delightful sketch, there are any number of versions of the story of Cook's life and work. Let us assume that everyone knows how James Cook, son of a superior farm labourer in Yorkshire, at thirteen years of age apprenticed to a fishing village ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... and contrasts of virtue. We have compiled a complete botanical classification of the weeds in the poetical garden, but the flowers still flourish, neglected and nameless. It is true, for example, that Scott had an incomparably stiff and pedantic way of dealing with his heroines: he made a lively girl of eighteen refuse an offer in the language of Dr. Johnson. To him, as to most men of his time, woman was not an individual, but an institution—a toast that was drunk some time after ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... stifling atmosphere of anachronisms, and beheld with the calm complacency of the age of prose an Iachimo in powder and patches, a Lear in lace ruffles, and a Lady Macbeth in a large crinoline. I can understand archaeology being attacked on the ground of its excessive realism, but to attack it as pedantic seems to be very much beside the mark. However, to attack it for any reason is foolish; one might just as well speak disrespectfully of the equator. For archaeology, being a science, is neither good nor bad, but a fact simply. Its value depends entirely on how it is used, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... be congratulated. They provided a good unpretentious evening's entertainment. No dull and pedantic realism for them. The dialogue was bright, occasionally to the sparkling point. The players were competent and zealous. Mr. KENNETH DOUGLAS gave the right variety to his three parts, Goring as he was, Goring as he was assumed to be for purpose of bluffing the enemy, and Kit Brent; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... the thorns than to the roses of every institution, and that the thorns should irritate one against the existing state of things. The old government officials, when they came into direct contact with the governed population, showed themselves to be pedantic, and estranged from the practical working of life by their occupation at the green table; but they left behind them the impression of toiling honesty and conscientiously for justice. The same thing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... an appreciation of the Sacred City on a Hill. It is, in a limited sense, a philosophy of the Holy Land; it deals in a masterly way with problems connected with the Jews; it is so unscholarly as to insist that the scholars who refuse to call the Mosque of Omar that at all are pedantic; it has a fine chapter on Zionism; it describes Jerusalem, not so much as a city, but as an impression that fastened itself on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... too hard for us, that all ailments are not alike, that the same treatment and the same drugs will not always answer; and then you will understand what a difference there is between refusing and being unable. Pray bear with me while I generalize a little, without condemning my disquisition as pedantic, irrelevant, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... said, Hunter, that hunting worlds never contain intelligent native life. Unless the planet is minutely explored how can your survey teams be sure of that fact?" His voice bordered on the pedantic, but his ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... natural for Dryden to appeal to the most accomplished of those amongst whom he lived, and to whose taste he was but too strongly compelled to adapt his productions. Sedley, therefore, as a man of wit and gallantry, is called upon to support our author against the censures of pedantic severity. Whatever may be thought of the subject, the appeal is made with all Dryden's spirit and elegance, and his description of the attic evenings spent with Sedley and his gay associates, glosses over, and almost justifies, their occasional irregularities. We have but ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... not meet with that abandon in society that is to be met with in Paris; you must measure your words well to shine in a Genevese society. This, however, is a very pardonable sort of coxcombry; and tho' it appear sometimes pedantic, and occasionally laughable, yet it tends to encourage learning and science, and compels the young men to read in order to shine ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... important contribution to American history, Mr. Doyle, the English historian, says: "Gratitude is quickened when we compare the simple, vigorous, and picturesque chronicle set before us by Bradford, with the tedious and pedantic writings from which so much of the later history of New England has to be extracted.... His work is in the true sense scholarly. The language is like the language of Bunyan, that of a man who trained himself not merely to speak but to think in the words ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... go in Germany you hear stories of police interference and petty tyranny, and it is mere luck if you do not innocently transgress some of their fussy pedantic regulations. In South Germany I once put a cream jug on my window-sill to keep a little milk cool for the afternoon. The jug was so small and the window so high that it can hardly have been visible from the street, but my landlady came to me excitedly and said the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... own family, and a son who loved his mother could have little affection for a father who had ever been that mother's worst persecutor. From his sixth to his ninth year Alexius was educated by the diffuse and pedantic Vyazemsky, but after the removal of his mother to the Suzdal Prokovsky Monastery he was confided to the care of learned foreigners, who taught him history, geography, mathematics and French. In 1703 Alexius was ordered to follow the army to the field as a private ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... books twenty years too old for me, yet, by mental cuticular absorption, taking in and assimilating much that contributed to the formation of taste and character. My familiar use of language that sounded pedantic because I got it from books, my frequent references to characters I had known in print, were gibberish and vanity of vanities to my new associates. My very plays were unintelligible to girls who had never heard ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... the industrious men with pedantic minds who day by day read the dispatches that accumulated in the office of the Board of Trade became aware, during the years from 1758 to 1761, that the old policy of defense was not altogether adequate. "The granting of lands hitherto unsettled," so the ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... Thy Notes pedantic shall no more engage; Arbuthnot's Wit enlivens not the Page. Thy Muse, that Prostitute abandon'd Jade, Now flounders in the Mire without Swift's Aid. Thy base Invectives Men no more regard; With just Disdain thy ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... mimicry of it can result only in these abstraction's. For us it is elsewhere, beyond these finite shapes, on which, by an illusion, it seemed to rest. The Greek statues are tropes, which we gladly allow in their original use, but, repeated, they become flat and pedantic. Hence the air of caricature in modern portrait-statues; for caricature does not necessarily imply falsification, but only that what is given is insisted on at the expense of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the master of the college, pointing to its dark front. "Oh, no," was the master's reply, "the colour deceives you; that building is not more than two hundred years old." In invidious contrast to this mass, debased but imposing in its style, the pedantic mania for pure Gothic which marks the Neo-catholic reaction in Oxford, and which will perhaps hereafter be derided as we deride the classic mania of the last century, has led Mr. Gilbert Scott to erect a pure Gothic library. This building, moreover, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of the language of Shakespear in his finest passages, as of unrivalled excellence and beauty; I might almost have called it miraculous. O, si sic omnia! It is to be lamented that this felicity often deserts him. He is not seldom cramp, rigid and pedantic. What is best in him is eternal, of all ages and times; but what is worst, is crusted with an integument, almost more cumbrous than that of any other writer, his contemporary, the merits of whose works continue to invite us to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... pedantic verbiage in a language description, product specification, or interface standard; text that seems designed to obfuscate and requires a {language lawyer} to {parse} it. Though hackers are not afraid of high information density and complexity in language (indeed, they rather enjoy both), ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... is one of the chief misfortunes affecting Michael Angelo's reputation, that his ostentatious display of strength and science has a natural attraction for comparatively weak and pedantic persons. And this sheet of Vasari's "teste divine" contains, in fact, not a single drawing of high quality—only one of moderate agreeableness, and two caricatured heads, one of a satyr with hair like the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... and pedantic persons have united to find fault with certain elements of Cooper's art. Mark Twain, in one of his least inspired moments, selected Cooper's novels for attack. Every grammar school teacher is ready to point out that his style is often prolix ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... stood well behind his father, turned aside his face, that the King might not note the smile upon it. James, however, having plunged into one of his pedantic hobbies, had small perception of aught aside from ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... divided by a sharp, straight line from the pure whiteness of the upper portion of the hand. Still more was the character of this feminine circle expressed in the manner in which the three ladies spoke Russian and French—spoke them, that is to say, with perfect articulation of syllables and pedantic accuracy of substantives and prepositions. All this, and more especially the fact that the ladies treated me as simply and as seriously as a real grown-up—telling me their opinions, and listening to my own (a thing to which I was so little accustomed ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... with Greek and Latin mythology one might employ both Herakles and Hercules. Also many Indian names such as Ramayana, Krishna, nirvana have become Europeanized or at least are familiar to all Europeans interested in Indian literature. It seems pedantic to write them with their full and accurate complement of accents and dots and my general practice is to give such words in their accurate spelling (Ramayana, etc.) when they are first mentioned and also in the notes ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... this, and Wade launched into a long, pedantic discussion of how the left and right hemispheres of the brain get out of step at times, causing a sensation of having seen a thing before when it was impossible to have seen ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... amounts practically to a prophecy of the difficulty of capturing a point like Spion Kop, in the passage where he describes how impossible it is to judge of the value of a hill-top until you get there. (Pope, by the way—and I state the point not from any desire to be pedantic, but because Steevens had a classical way with him which would out, disguise it how he might—Pope, I say, in his "Essay on Criticism," had before made the same remark.) Then again you have in his chapter on Aliwal the curiously ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... however, showed what the war-spirit can make of Shakespeare. It was interpreted in the pedantic historical vein, and was given as a bloody, brutal mediaeval piece without a thought or a smile or a tear. Richard was shown as a "Hun" of the worst kind. His murderous career was facilitated by his characterless victims. Anne ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... changed, both will be the natural tendency of the capitalist, and both are abhorred by the governmental worker. He has no right to run risks, but does not feel it his duty to avoid an unproductive luxuriousness. He wastes in the routine where he ought to economize, and is pedantic in the great schemes in which his imagination ought to be unbridled. The opponents of socialism have often likened the future state to a gigantic prison, where every one will be forced to do the work without a chance for a motive which appeals to him as an individual. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... both a great deal, but the Simile in a way somewhat peculiar: in fact, as it is commonly used by other poets, he does not seem to have been very fond of it; and when he admits it, he generally uses it in the most informal way possible. But, first, at the risk of seeming pedantic, I will try to make some analysis of the two ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... must have met at these luncheon parties, and actually conversed with, at least a hundred different men of all ages and occupations, and I do not remember among them a single dull, pompous, morose, or pedantic person. The parties did not usually exceed six or eight in number, so that there was no necessity for breaking up into groups. The shuttlecock of conversation was lightly bandied to and fro across the round table. Each took his share and none ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Jacob Flanders to read Marlowe in the British Museum? Youth, youth—something savage—something pedantic. For example, there is Mr. Masefield, there is Mr. Bennett. Stuff them into the flame of Marlowe and burn them to cinders. Let not a shred remain. Don't palter with the second rate. Detest your own age. Build a better one. And to set that on foot read incredibly ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the volume before it was published. Valor, piety, virtue, learning, wit, are by them ascribed to the "great Smith," who is easily the wonder and paragon of his. age. All of them are stuffed with the affected conceits fashionable at the time. One of the most pedantic of these was addressed to him by Samuel Purchas when the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... kind, the whole very fine and lavish of marble. What was most curious was some immense maps forming a tapestry and representing the different divisions of the world on an enormous scale. This somewhat pedantic decoration gives to the hall an academic air; and one is surprized not to see a chair in place of the bar, with a professor in his gown in place of a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... find that the man with whom I had spent a whole afternoon in the firm conviction that he was outwardly, as well as inwardly, my equal and a gentleman—(how the tears, half of shame, half of joy, rise to my eyes now as I think of my poor, pedantic little scruples then!) the man of whom I had assuredly thought and dreamed many and many a time and oft was—a professional musician, a man in a band, a German band, playing in the public orchestra of ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... getting tired of a pedantic husband in the way so familiar to students of novels, goes off with a companion more to her taste, anyone can foresee trouble, or what would there be to write about? When, further, her detestable lover, seeking change ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... monarchy. The increase in the liberal members of the Chamber, or legislative assembly, impelled Richelieu, the head of the ministry, to resign (Dec., 1818). A more liberal man, Decazes, succeeded him. He was supported by a party which arose at this time, called Doctrinaires on account of a certain pedantic spirit, and a disposition to shape political action by preconceived theories or ideas, which was imputed to them. In their ranks were Royer-Collard, Guizot, Villemain, Barante, and others. They advocated a constitutional monarchy. Among ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... A PEDANTIC fellow called for a bottle of hock at a tavern, which the waiter, not hearing distinctly, asked him to repeat. "A bottle of hock—hic, haec, hoc," replied the visitor. After sitting, however, a long time, and no wine appearing, he ventured to ring again, and enquire ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... "condemns Luigi Bonci for the first count, to be publicly executed in Cannara, and to make compensation to the heirs of the murdered man, according to the valuation of the civil tribunals, and to pay the cost of the trial; and on the second count, the court" (with a pedantic mockery of mercy) "considers the first three months of the incarceration the prisoner has already undergone to be sufficient punishment, coupled with a fine of five scudi and ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... so familiar in their Latin form as to render this practically impossible; as for instance in the case of Cyprus or Corinth, or of a name like Thucydides, where a return to the Greek k would be both pedantic and unmeaning. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Plantations in America. The price was to be nine-pence Pennsylvania money, with considerable allowance to shopmen who should take quantities. The brevity of Franklin's advertisement is in strong contrast to the learned length of Webbe's pedantic prospectus. He claims that the idea of the magazine had long been in his mind, and that Webbe had stolen his plans. Before he had divulged the scheme to Webbe he had proceeded so far in the matter as to choose his writers and ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... custom prescribes rules of behavior in respect to many things which are really indifferent; in regard to the cut of the clothes we wear, in regard to the accepted form of salutation, in regard to the language of polite speech, and much more of the same sort. Now, the ethically-minded man is not a pedantic micrologist who wastes his time on the minutiae of conduct. But where custom relates to things not indifferent, where a principle is involved, there is no detail of conduct so minute as not to challenge the ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... impartiality; Callias, here as always inclining to the Sophists, but eager for any intellectual repast; Prodicus, who finds an opportunity for displaying his distinctions of language, which are valueless and pedantic, because they are not based on dialectic; Hippias, who has previously exhibited his superficial knowledge of natural philosophy, to which, as in both the Dialogues called by his name, he now adds the ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... that is right," Uncle Philip admitted. "It is not always easy to say the right word to a little fellow who has the right on his side and needs to have the other side shown to him, too; he is terribly pedantic besides, and says that one can't sing a morning song in the evening, and when he began to wail in his helplessness, it made me miserable. How should one always just be able to ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... with perfumes, is now saturated with the atmosphere of dusty tomes and damp newspapers. We meet with no one but persons anxious either to teach or learn. What will become of us if we give way to this pedantic pride? If we surrender to this anxiety to analyze everything? If we go on so, to suit us, God will be compelled to make a new world, to give occupation to the lofty fancies of naturalists and physical philosophers, who seem to me to have weighed and ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... be proved by any number of novels and plays—is a quaint, pedantic person, with spectacles and a beard, but without any passions—except for books. He takes delight in large fat words, but is utterly indifferent to such things as clothes and women—except the dowdy one he married when too young to know better.... It is always so interesting to see ourselves ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... of the actual office of this excellent minister, whom Julian afterwards created praefect of Gaul. Sallust was speedly recalled by the jealousy of the emperor; and we may still read a sensible but pedantic discourse, (p. 240-252,) in which Julian deplores the loss of so valuable a friend, to whom he acknowledges himself indebted for his reputation. See La Bleterie, Preface a la Vie ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... unconscious of that subtle chemistry of things that transcends all written law and makes for the spirit and, beyond that, the inutility of all law, as all wise judges know. You could have looked at his lean, pedantic body, his frizzled gray hair, his fishy, blue-gray eyes, without any depth of speculation in them, and his nicely modeled but unimportant face, and told him that he was without imagination; but he would not have believed you—would have fined ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... must ultimately become the prey of the victor, and be punished like the Alban Metius, whom Tullus Hostilius caused to be torn asunder by horses that pulled his limbs in different directions. The pedantic epistle had no effect ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... institutions. Hence both good and evil have arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth and breadth ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... strives to insulate itself and its acquisitions, to forget the nature of the process by which it substituted scientific for common notions, and so with one as with the other lay the basis of self-deception by a pedantic and superstitious employment ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... pedantic!" she said, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders and a moue of discontent. "And, oh! how ungallant! You have learnt ugly, English ways, monsieur; for there, I am told, men hold their womenkind in very scant esteem. There!" she added, turning ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Belhaven's fame as an orator that his most effective passages are based on classical allusions intelligible at once to his audience then, but likely to appear pedantic in times when Latin has ceased to be the "vulgar tongue" of the educated, as it still was in the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... as late as the reign of Henry {41} VI. (1422-1471). Chaucer's contemporary, John Gower, wrote his Vox Clamantis in Latin, his Speculum Meditantis (a lost poem), and a number of ballades in Parisian French, and his Confessio Amantis (1393) in English. The last named is a dreary, pedantic work, in some 15,000 smooth, monotonous, eight-syllabled couplets, in which Grande Amour instructs the lover how to get the love of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... will be very silly—and I hope you won't think it pedantic in a girl, but really it does look so to me—what difference would there be between such a commission and the Star-Chamber judges of the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... politeness, is the art of showing men, by external signs, the internal regard we have for them. It arises from good sense, improved by good company. Good-breeding is never to be learned, though it may be improved, by the study of books; and therefore they who attempt it, appear stiff and pedantic. The really well-bred, as they become so by use and observation, are not liable to affectation. You see good-breeding in all they do, without seeing the art of it. Like other habits, it is acquired ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the magnate to whom he had sent the note the previous day, a man of large yet slow and cautious nature, learned and even pedantic, yet far-sighted and practical; very human and hearty in social intercourse, which, however, left him as it found him,—with no sentimental or unbusiness-like entanglements. The consul had known him sensible and sturdy at board ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for the first few minutes after their hostess left them she only noticed that her new acquaintance looked and spoke like a gentleman, that he had a very pleasant voice, and that, without being pedantic, he was not talking nonsense. Imagine the sensation which took place in her head when, at some bright speech from her antagonist—for they had immediately fallen into an argument—she raised her laughing eyes to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... not alter my purpose. I wanted a figurehead for my petition, and the figurehead I had chosen I could not get. I began to wonder and doubt. I next approached a very different man, the late Professor Churton Collins, a great friend of mine, who, in spite of an almost pedantic rigour of mind and character, had in him at bottom a curious spring of sympathy—a little pool of pure love for the poets and writers whom he admired. I got him to dinner and asked him to sign the petition; he refused, but on grounds ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... that "wondrous Classic lore" Meant something most pedantic; That Mathematics were a bore, And Morals un-romantic. I knew my own beloved light-blue Might much improve their rowing: In fact, I knew a thing or ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... passed off as a thriving and industrious peasantry, well paid and contented, were difficulties that Mr. Kearney did not propose to confront. Indeed, to do him justice, he thought there was a good deal of pedantic and 'model-farming' humbug about all that English passion for neatness he had read of in public journals, and as our fathers—better gentlemen, as he called them, and more hospitable fellows than any of us—had ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... is much easier to acknowledge this principle, and to commend it in words, than to ascertain what it is, and abide by it in practice. Good use is that which is neither ancient nor recent, neither local nor foreign, neither vulgar nor pedantic; and it will be found that no few have in some way or other departed from it, even while they were pretending to record its dictates. But it is not to be concealed, that in every living language, it is a matter of much inherent difficulty, to reach the standard ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to your second letter which I found also on my return: I am very glad you like the plays {282} and am encouraged to hope that other persons who are not biassed by pedantic prejudices or spites might like them too. But I fully expect that (as I told you, I think) the London press, etc., will either sink them, or condemn them as on too free a principle: and all the more if they have ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... tell you this will you think me some little girl who cultivates a garden-full of illusions? You, who are witty and wise, have you not guessed that when Mademoiselle d'Este received your pedantic lesson she said to herself: "No, dear poet, my first letter was not the pebble which a vagabond child flings about the highway to frighten the owner of the adjacent fruit-trees, but a net carefully and prudently thrown by a fisherman seated on a rock above the sea, hoping ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... tried his hand at an essay, but he found that the old easy style which had been his principal asset had deserted him. It was stiff and pedantic, and what was worse—bitter; and he tore it up savagely after he had read it through. He tried desperately to recover some of his old time optimism—and he failed. He told himself again and again that it was up to him to see big, to ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... we have of the species they represent. His learning overwhelmed me; I would gladly have read, as he did, everything that had been written before my time; but there were authors who wearied me, and I confess that at that age Linnaeus was among the number. I found him dry, pedantic, dogmatic, conceited; while I was charmed with Aristotle, whose zoology I have read and re-read ever since at intervals of two or three years. I must, however, do myself the justice to add, that after I knew more of the history of our science I learned also duly to reverence Linnaeus. ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... by the law of self-preservation to put, not only his brothers, but all their sons, to death; so that there was, after every new succession, an entire clearance of all the male members of the imperial family. Aurangzeb said to his pedantic tutor, who wished to be raised to high station on his accession to the imperial throne, 'Should not you, instead of your flattery, have taught me something of that point so important to a king, which is, what are the reciprocal duties of a ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... not like German learning or German art, and consider the one pedantic and the other heavy and uninspired. A Frenchman wrote very feelingly the other day, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, about a return to the old French culture, an escape from what he described as the German habit of accumulating mere facts to something ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... impassioned, is a fundamental defect of his. It is the very impetuosity of this mental energy to which is due the miscalled obscurity of much of Browning's work—miscalled, because, however remote in his allusions, however pedantic even, he is never obscure in his thought. His is that "palace infinite which darkens with excess of light." But mere excess in itself is nothing more than symptomatic. Browning has suffered more from intellectual exploitation than ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... exercise of memory, would render such a task by no means impracticable or unprecedented. As for the unity of the poem, thus composed, it would have been, as it is, the unity, not of technical rules and pedantic criticism, but the unity of interest, character, imagery, and thought—a unity which required no written references to maintain it, but which was the essential quality of one master-mind, and ought to be, to all plain men, an irrefragable proof ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she recovered her recollection, . . . horror occupied her mind." Countless mysteries coagulate around this veil, and the reader is apt to be disappointed when the awful curtain is withdrawn. But he has enjoyed, for several hundred pages, the pleasures of anticipation. A pedantic censor may remark that, while the date of the story is 1580, all the virtuous people live in an idyllic fashion, like creatures of Rousseau, existing solely for landscape and the affections, writing poetry on Nature, animate and inanimate, including ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the precise sense and manner in which this theory of labour as the sole producer of wealth is elaborated and defended by Marx in his Bible of Scientific Socialism. His argument, though the expression of it is very often pedantic and encumbered with superfluous mathematical formulae, is ingenious and interesting, and is associated with historical criticism which, in spite of its defects, is valuable. Marx was, indeed, foremost among those thinkers already referred to who first insisted on the fact that ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... fevered hands, a transmutation were to take place, and we were to find inside it—oh! I don't know; shall we say Pascal's Pensees?" He articulated the title with an ironic emphasis so as not to appear pedantic. "And then, in the gilt and tooled volumes which we open once in ten years," he went on, shewing that contempt for the things of this world which some men of the world like to affect, "we should read that the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Letters the majority of the students are sceptics at bottom—sceptics of discreet and good-natured average views. Of course they are professors before everything else, though they are a trifle ashamed of it; and, as professors, they judge things with no little pedantic irony, devoured by a spirit of criticism, and quite incapable of creating anything themselves. I should certainly be astonished to see the man of genius whom we await come out of their ranks. To my thinking, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... resented it, thinking towards and speaking to him repellently. Something in her did not like him. She knew he did not approve of her, and she did not like being disapproved of. Neither did she approve of him. He was pedantic—and far too good for an honest and brave youth: not that she could say she had seen dishonesty or cowardice in him, or that she could have told which vice she would prefer to season his goodness withal, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... learn. A private teacher could never find his account in teaching either an exploded and antiquated system of a science acknowledged to be useful, or a science universally believed to be a mere useless and pedantic heap of sophistry and nonsense. Such systems, such sciences, can subsist nowhere but in those incorporated societies for education, whose prosperity and revenue are in a great measure independent of their industry. Were there no public institutions for education, a gentleman, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... with her, and lady Ann—for reasons—had little to say against her, she was at Mortgrange as much as she pleased—never too much even for Arthur, whose propriety, rather insular, a little provincial, and sometimes pedantic, she would shock twenty times a day; for he was fascinated by her grace and playfulness, though he declared he would as soon think of marrying a humming-bird as Barbara. He tried for a while to throw his net over ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... fine feeling to have finished the History; there ought to be a future state to reward that grind! It's not literature, you know; only journalism, and pedantic journalism. I had but the one desire, to get the thing as right as might be, and avoid false concords—even if that! And it was more than there was time for. However, there it is: done. And if Samoa turns up again, my book has to be counted with, being the only narrative ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ordinary address and intercourse amongst natives in the Orient was simple and less discolored by what may be called pious profanity. Their discourse was often dull and prolix, but never a composite of sacrilege and exaggeration. Only in their writings were they pedantic. From this the reader can anticipate somewhat of the meeting between Sergius and Lael. It is to be borne in mind additionally that they were both young; she a child in years; he a child in lack of worldly experience. Children cannot be other ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... invalidate his main argument. It gives an opportunity for a great deal of superficial criticism on the part of unsympathetic writers, which, however, can do little harm to Eucken's position. One has to remember that it is difficult to combine the fervour of a prophet with pedantic exactness, and that an inspired and profound philosopher cannot be expected to spend much time over ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... literature; yet one saw him to be a man of solid understanding, and not without perception of humour. He had read vastly; his memory was a literary cyclopaedia. His failings, obvious enough, were the results of a strong and somewhat pedantic individuality ceaselessly at conflict ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... returning to its native dust. There are other extremely interesting ruins here, notably a portion of a prehistoric column, and the lower half of a very large statue situated in the plaza. Mr. Ruskin said in his pedantic way that he could not be induced to travel in America because there were no ruins. There are ruins here and in Yucatan which antedate by centuries anything of recorded history relating to the British Isles. Across the Tula River and up the Cerro del Tesoro are some other ancient ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... always counter with something we know, and that he knows nothing of, such as the Creed, or the history of Little Bukleton, or some favourite book. Then, again, if one is alone with one's opponent, it is quite easy to pretend that the subject on which one has shown ignorance is unimportant, peculiar, pedantic, hole in the corner, and this can be brazened out even about Greek or Latin. Or, again, one can turn the laugh against him, saying that he has just been cramming up the matter, and that he is airing his ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... dispel the frown on her brow, except the satisfaction she felt when she had the good fortune to give pain to any of her dependants; a horrid grin then distorted her features, and her before lifeless eyes glistened with malice and rancorous joy. She had read just enough to make her pedantic, and too little to give her any improving knowledge. Her understanding was naturally small, and her self-conceit great. In her person she was tall and meagre, her hair black, and her complexion of the darkest ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... great ideal. Goodness knows what stuff they talked together. Mary said she would blush to think of it till her dying day, and I gathered that on her side it was a mixture of Launcelot Wake at his most pedantic and ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... definition in no pedantic sense. I mean, in general, logical definition where the class or genus of the thing to be described—whether best-selling novel or sentimental tendency—is first made clear, and then its differentia, its differences from the type analyzed out and assorted. But this process in literature cannot ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... had received more than one long and rambling letter from a man who was as unlike the rest of mankind as he was unlike them himself. This was the Marquis of Mirabeau (1715-89), the violent, tyrannical, pedantic, humoristic sire of a more famous son. Perhaps we might say that Mirabeau and Rousseau were the two most singular originals then known to men, and Mirabeau's originality was in some respects the more salient of the two. There is less of the conventional tone of the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... linking so harmoniously prince to peer, and peer to knight—the easy grace, the polished wit of the courtiers—the wisdom of Lanfranc, and the higher ecclesiastics, blending worldly lore with decorous, not pedantic, regard to their sacred calling—the enlightened love of music, letters, song, and art, which coloured the discourse both of Duke and Duchess and the younger courtiers, prone to emulate high example, whether for ill or good—all impressed Harold with a sense of civilisation and true royalty, which ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Their skies are beautifully observed—graduated in value with delicate verisimilitude from the horizon up, and wind-swept, or drenched with mist, or ringing clear, as the motive may dictate. All objects take their places with a precision that, nevertheless, is in nowise pedantic, and is perfectly free. Cazin's palette is, moreover, a thoroughly individual one. It is very pure, and if its range is not great, it is at any rate not grayed into insipidity and ineffectualness, but is as positive as if it were more vivid. A ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... a patronizing pedantic air, "the commonwealth is interested to see that litigation does not arise; and to that end, I hope you will not refuse us the benefit of your experience. We are about to draw up a deed of sale running into a considerable sum, and we would ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... faint suspicion that if Patoff had mimicked Miss Dabstreak in the first half of his speech, he had imitated me in the second portion of the sentiment. I do not like to be made game of, because I am aware that I am naturally pedantic. It is an old trick of the schools to rouse a pedant to desperate and distracted self-contradiction by quietly ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... The teaching unusually sound and good. The manner and conduct developed in the boys quite admirable. But I have never seen a gentleman so perfectly acquainted with boy-nature as the Eton master. There was a perfect understanding between him and his charges; nothing pedantic on his part, nothing slavish on their parts. The result was, that either with him or away from him, the boys combined an ease and frankness with a modesty and sense of responsibility that was really above all praise. Alfred went from there to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... But snub would have done, Mr Herrick. Reprove sounds pedantic. That will do, but bear in mind ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... Count observed that his master corrected the date, and substituted that of the next day. He looked at the clock; it indicated almost midnight. The minister saw, in this altered date, nothing more than a pedantic desire to afford proof of exactitude and good government. As to the exile of the Marquise Raversi, the Prince did not even frown; the Prince had a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to Clarissa.— Mr. Brand to be sent up to inquire after her way of life and health. His pedantic character. Believes they will withhold any favour till they hear his report. Doubts not that matters will soon ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... . It is, I think, worth your while to look at Dean Stanley's Volume of Bishop Thirlwall's Letters; nay, even Dean Perowne's earlier volume, if but to show how the pedantic Boy grew into the large-hearted Man, and even Bishop: but, from the first, always sincere, just, and not pretentious. I remember him at Cambridge: he, Fellow and Tutor, and I undergraduate: and he took a little fancy ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... disappointed them by withholding the entreaties which her instincts urged but her wifely obedience restrained. Her influence as yet was that of a noble, fascinating woman, who softened the jars occasioned by the King's narrow and pedantic nature, and purified the Court from the grossness of the past. But in the dark days that were to come, her faith and enthusiasm breathed new force into a down-trodden people; and where all else was shattered, the King and Queen still held forth the ideal ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Contignation.—This rather pedantic, and now, I think, quite obsolete word (from tignum, 'beam') means 'having a common ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... said Challenger in his booming, pedantic fashion. "We cannot do less than call it Ixodes Maloni. The very small inconvenience of being bitten, my young friend, cannot, I am sure, weigh with you as against the glorious privilege of having your name inscribed in the deathless roll of zoology. Unhappily you have crushed ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... very common epithet of contempt for pedantic and affected expressions. The following, from Churchyard's "Choice," sig. E e 1., sets it in its ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... neat, pedantic definition of sapience, tailored especially to exclude the Fuzzies, and they will present it in court and try to get it accepted, and it's up to us to guess in advance what that will be, and have a refutation of it ready, and also a definition ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... speech of Gros-Rene ridicules the pedantic arguments of some of the philosophers of the time of Moliere. It also attributes to the ancients some sayings of authors of the day; for example, the comparison, from a Greek author, "that a woman's head is like a quicksand," is from a contemporary; the ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... Genethliac and horoscopal f. Damasked f. Knavish f. Fearney f. Idiot f. Unleavened f. Blockish f. Baritonant f. Beetle-headed f. Pink and spot-powdered f. Grotesque f. Musket-proof f. Impertinent f. Pedantic f. Quarrelsome f. Strouting f. Unmannerly f. Wood f. Captious and sophistical f. Greedy f. Soritic f. Senseless f. Catholoproton f. Godderlich f. Hoti and Dioti f. Obstinate f. Alphos and Catati f. Contradictory f. Pedagogical f. Daft f. Drunken f. Peevish f. Prodigal ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... existence of such a contingency, and moral courage to assume the responsibility of acting on it. Such a crisis is the severest test of character. To dare to disobey from a paramount sense of duty is a paradox that a little soul can hardly comprehend. Unfortunately, Blasco Nunez was a pedantic martinet, a man of narrow views, who could not feel himself authorized under any circumstances to swerve from the letter of the law. Puffed up by his brief authority, moreover, he considered opposition to the ordinances as treason to himself; and thus, identifying himself with ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... When a pedantic schoolmaster sees a boy eagerly watching a paper kite, he observes, "What a pity it is that children cannot be made to mind their grammar as well as their kites!" And he adds, perhaps, some peevish ejaculation on the natural idleness of boys, and that pernicious love of play against which ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Cubism remains a form of graphic art. However pedantic and ridiculous its transformation of drawing, it yet recognizes the existence of drawing. Therefore, to the Futurist, Cubism is reactionary. What difference does it make, he asks, whether you draw ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox |
