"Man of the world" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under stress believe so many things. A little anger, a little passion, a little melancholy, and things resolve themselves into so many differences of color and line. And what standard of truth is there? Suppose he were to tell any man of the world of the occurrence, and to ask who she was, what she was, and what he had been to her. They would have said it was simple. She was a harlot of Marseilles, and he was her amant de coeur. But the beauty of it! he would have objected. All the beauty was ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... craftsmanship carried the eye in faultless lines to his verni boots. Judged by his profile, he was not ill looking. His features were regular, the mouth and chin strong, the forehead slightly rounded, and the nose gave the merest hint of Semitic origin. Taken altogether, he had the style of a polished man of the world, and Spencer smiled at the sudden fancy that ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... furniture—well, it don't suit, that's all! Willum's the kind should have what 's all the go—plush and satin and chenille-like." The old farmer looked at the architect meaningly; he felt himself suddenly a man of the world; he stood almost straight in his wrinkled boots, looking around the little kitchen fiercely and roaring: "Golden oak or bird's-eye maple! I got catalogues. Spare no expense. Get him what ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... away in disgust. Such language was to him simply disgusting. It fell upon his ears as false maudlin sentiment falls on the ears of the ordinary honest man of the world. Barrington Erle was a man ordinarily honest. He would not have been untrue to his mother's brother, William Mildmay, the great Whig Minister of the day, for any earthly consideration. He was ready to work with wages or without ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... new minister had been ambassador to Paris before the campaign of Wagram, and, while he had been unable to prevent the war, he had left a very favorable impression at Napoleon's court, where his success as a man of the world, as a great nobleman, had been very brilliant. He then, in the lifetime of his father, Prince Metternich, bore only the title of Count. In his desire to attest his belief in the possibility of a reconciliation between Austria and Napoleon, he had left his wife, Countess Metternich, in France ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... visibly embarrassed before the calmness of this man of the world. He took off his hat, which he had kept on his head hitherto, and began to ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Caffarelli, on the top of the Capitol Hill (the two great statues of Castor and Pollux standing by their horses looking as if they were guarding the entrance) were a brilliant centre for all the Roman and diplomatic world. He was a thorough man of the world, could make himself charming when he chose, but he never had a pleasant manner, was curt, arrogant, with a very strong sense of his own superiority. From the first moment he came to Paris as ambassador, he put people's backs up. They never liked him, never ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him, he seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels. They were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay jests were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Chatelet informed himself as to the manners and customs of the upper town, and took his cue accordingly. He appeared on the scene as a jaded man of the world, broken in health, and weary in spirit. He would raise his hand to his forehead at all seasons, as if pain never gave him a moment's respite, a habit that recalled his travels and made him interesting. He was on visiting terms with ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... place, was the nature of this regard? Was it merely avuncular, or something different? Drayton assured himself that it was the former. He was a man of the world, and had done with passions. The idea of his falling in love made him smile in a deprecatory manner. That the object of such love should be a girl eighteen years his junior rendered the suggestion yet more irrational. She was lustrous ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... "Dick, you're a man of the world; this sort of sentiment is not worthy of your intelligence. Katharine is a loving girl and naturally a bit jealous of you and your dissecting room. You must realize she had cause for surprise that day? Why, the little ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... had in great measure shifted it into the channel of their religion. Hence to the Restoration courtiers enthusiasm and outspoken emotion seemed marks of hypocrisy and barbarism. In opposition to such tendencies they aimed to realize the ideal of the man of the world, sophisticated, skeptical, subjecting everything to the scrutiny of the reason, and above all, well-bred. Well-bred, that is, according to the artificial social standards of a selfish aristocratic class; for the actual manners of the courtiers, as of such persons at all ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... picturesque—artistic in effect; to which also the costume—the red cardinal stockings, the large silver buckles, the short silk cloak, and the red cap—contribute in no small degree. In his demeanour he has all the self-possession and ease of a perfect man of the world." ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... predecessors, and both desired to come to an agreement. The responsibility on the American side fell upon Daniel Webster, the new Secretary of State. With less foreign experience than John Quincy Adams, he was more a man of the world and a man among men. His conversation was decidedly less ponderous than his oratory, and there was no more desirable dinner guest in America. Even in Webster's lightest moments, his majestic head gave the impression of colossal mentality, and his ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... knew how to do must have been well worth hearing, and also that to read his words, when listening to them is no longer possible, is a great delight. Having done that, he has no doubt carried his object. He was too much a man of the world to have an impracticable theory on which to expend himself. Oratory had come uppermost with him, and had indeed made itself, with the Romans, the only pursuit to be held in rivalry with that of fighting. Literature had ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... daughter. And she's heard things that puzzled her young ears naturally, and she told me that some people say you're being too kind to Sabina and other people say you're treating her hardly. Of course, that puzzled Estelle, clever though she is; but, as a man of the world, I saw what it meant and that kindness may really be cruelty in the long run. You'll ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... accent was not perfect, or that I had omitted some point of etiquette in which an Orthodox Russian would have been drilled, such as asking his blessing and kissing his hand in gratitude, by way of saying "good-morning," or something of that sort. His manner was that of a man of the world, artistically tinged with monastic conventionality, and I wondered whether he were not an ex-officer of the Guards who had wearied of Court and gayeties. He offered to show us about, and took us to the printing-house, founded in the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... began the world too late to acquire; and which, with his studious and philosophical turn, I believe he thinks are not worth his attention. He may, very probably, make a figure in the republic of letters, but he had ten thousand times better make a figure as a man of the world and of business in the republic of the United Provinces, which, take my word ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... fallen asleep when he entered, and lay as sweetly beautiful as the little vivid beauty he had left in the other room. The man of the world paused and instinctively exclaimed in wonder. He had been told that it was a little gamin who had saved his daughter from the assassin's bullet, but the features of this child were as delicately chiseled, his form as finely modeled, his hair ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... of my new master, with every convenience for annotation and elucidation, the translation of the Vedas was commenced. Like my father, my employer was possessed of vast erudition; but, unlike him, he was also a man of the world, high in favor at court, wealthy, honored, and enjoying the friendship of all the most noted savans and other celebrities of the metropolis. During the progress of the work some of these would occasionally enter the study where ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... man living, when he hears of this appointment, does or can hesitate a moment in concluding that it is the result of corruption, and that you only want to be informed what the corruption was. Here is such an arrangement as I believe never was before heard of: a secluded woman in the place of a man of the world; a fantastic dancing-girl in the place of a grave magistrate; a slave in the place of a woman of quality; a common prostitute made to superintend the education of a young prince; and a step-mother, a name of horror in all countries, made to supersede the natural mother from whose body the Nabob ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that was generous in the heart of Byron, the worn man of the world. Like his own Childe Harold, "With pleasure drugg'd he almost long'd for woe." So to Greece he went, and the last nine months of his life were spent to such good purpose that when he died the whole Greek nation ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... appear an unwonted severity, and even a tyrannical vindictiveness in this firmness of the holy prelate, his companions and those who knew his character best find in it an evidence of his zeal for the cause of religion, and his desire for the true conversion of the sinner; and the man of the world will find in him the champion of the poor and oppressed against the tyranny of power. It is a well-known fact of history that he did not cease, during all this time, to beseech heaven with prayers and tears for the emperor, whom he sincerely loved. But his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... of Sir Walter Scott is that of a man accustomed to see much of the world without being exactly a man of the world himself. He has evidently great social tact, perfect self-possession, is quiet, and absolutely without pretension, and has much dignity; and yet it struck me that he wanted the ease and aplomb of one accustomed to live with his ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... father of his success, praising his master "as being of as good character, both for accuracy in his business, and good morals, as any of his way in London." The order in which this aspiring young man of the world records the virtues will not be overlooked. He then adds, "If it had not been for Mr. Short, I could not have got a man in London that would have undertaken to teach me, as I now find there are not above five or six who could have taught me all ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... of it," said Frank. "She shall henceforth be nameless, nameless, nameless, Grigalach! I make a note besides of your valuable testimony to her character. I only want to look at this thing as a man of the world. Admitted she's an angel - but, my good ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... valet: "nothing suits him." And it must be confessed that the valet's state of mind concerning his master much resembled ours regarding Thorpe. At every woman in the place except my mother he levelled trenchant sarcasms: the men, he declared, possessed every trait which could shock or weary a man of the world, and not only displeased his eyes, but were so foreign to his spheres of thought that he was obliged to ignore them. At the habits and customs of everybody alike he shrugged his shoulders, and we used to wonder to each other why so great a man stayed in Belfield at all. But he did us no harm, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... mind, and may call upon you. As yet, my plans are not arranged. Perhaps Mr. Reed, whom I take to be an experienced man of the world, may be able to offer a suggestion. You seem to be at work," he added, with a look at the table at ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... man of the world, tried to persuade Heaton to abandon his particular line of research, but ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... the sensualist, Correggio suits him better; Titian is not defined enough for the formalist,—Leonardo suits him better; Titian is not pure enough for the religionist,—Raphael suits him better; Titian is not polite enough for the man of the world,—Vandyke suits him better; Titian is not forcible enough for the lovers of the picturesque,— Rembrandt suits him better. So Correggio is popular with a certain set, and Vandyke with a certain set, and Rembrandt with a certain set. All are great ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... wealthy, independent and brilliant young politician lies a wide gulf. The last man on earth, in his private capacity, to find his estimate of his friends influenced by their personal possessions was the fine aristocrat Lord Francis Ayres. But he was a man of the world, the very responsible head of the executive of a great political party. As that executive head he was compelled to regard Paul from a different angle. The millions of South Africa or the Middle West might vainly knock at his own front door till the crack of doom, while Paul the penniless sauntered ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... hurts strangers or captives than do the other tribes of men. The definition of the true savage is that he laughs when he hurts you; and howls when you hurt him. This extraordinary inequality in the mind is in every act and word that comes from Berlin. For instance, no man of the world believes all he sees in the newspapers; and no journalist believes a quarter of it. We should, therefore, be quite ready in the ordinary way to take a great deal off the tales of German atrocities; to doubt this ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... humility in a man of the world; 'tis worse than even the hypocrisy of the saints: I am not ignorant, and therefore never deny, that I am a very handsome fellow; and I have the pleasure to find all the women ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the constrained effort of the ennuye; man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... which I cast from me as unworthy. It is impossible that my sentiments can change towards Emily—that at any age she can be anything but the sole object of my love. Why, then, wait? I entreat you, my dear Uncle, to come down and reconcile my dear mother to our union, and I address you as a man of the world, qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes, who will not feel any of the weak scruples and fears which agitate a lady who has scarcely ever ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... singularly interesting and even picturesque figure. He is, in more senses than one, in language, in turn of thought, in style of mind, in the direction of his activity, the first of the moderns. He is the first literary man who was also a man of the world, as we understand the term. He succeeded Ben Jonson as the acknowledged dictator of wit and criticism, as Dr. Johnson, after nearly the same interval, succeeded him. All ages are, in some sense, ages of transition; but there are times ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... which there is no need to repeat: there is no harm in either, and they are far from being the most singular communications which he made to Stella; but they go beyond what, even in that day, will be considered as the probable conversation of a maiden lady of thirty-one, with a bachelor man of the world of forty-three. But they by no means exceed what we know to be the license then taken by married women; and Swift's tone with respect to the stories, combined with his obvious respect for Mrs. Barton, may make any one lean to the supposition that he believed himself to be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... his nails, and plainly very ill at ease. 'I couldn't do anything better for her than advise her to accept these proposals, could I? Now, I ask you, Nickleby, as a man of the world; could I?' ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... made popular modes of thinking and acting far nobler than those inculcated from many a pulpit; and the result is patent, that many a 'publican and sinner,' many an opera-frequenting, betting, gambling man of the world, is a far safer person with whom to transact business than the Pharisee who talks most feelingly of the 'frailties of our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of the distant village of Muro, which belonged to the Serra family, Don Teodoro had been tutor to Bosio Macomer. He had lived in Naples as a priest at large, a student, and in those days, to some extent, a man of the world. When Bosio was grown up, his tutor had remained his friend—the only really intimate friend he had in the world, and a true and devoted one. It was perhaps because he was too much attached to Bosio that Matilde Macomer had induced him at last to accept ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... gentlemen. The other division of them, the prigs, are truly not to be endured, for they are but half learned, are ignorant of the world, narrow-minded, pedantic, and overbearing. And now and then you meet with a rara avis who is accomplished and agreeable, a man of the world without licentiousness, of learning without pedantry, and pious without sanctimony; but this ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of the slight beading of his forehead and the blurr about the gas jets, began to feel very much the man of the world,—not a "six bottle man" perhaps, but—and he laughed complacently—a "two bottle man." If he'd lived back in the good old sporting days very likely he could have done better. But he's taken care of two full bottles, hadn't he? Mr. Tutt replied that he'd ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... knowledge, often seems to fall far short of what a man should be. He was not one of the high-minded and proud searchers after knowledge and truth, like Descartes, who were content to accept a frugal independence so that their time and their thoughts might be their own. Bacon was a man of the world, and wished to live in and with the world. He threatened sometimes retirement, but never with any very serious intention. In the Court was his element, and there were his hopes. Often there seems little to distinguish him from the ordinary place-hunters, obsequious ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... stranded ship. He did not disturb Bill Brennen or Nick Leary. He knew that they would be around at his house for orders by sun-up. The last cabin he visited was that of Pat Kavanagh. Kavanagh was a man of parts, and had been a close friend of the old skipper. He was a man of the world, having sailed deep-sea voyages in his youth. He was a grand fiddler, a grand singer, and had made more "Come-all-ye's" than you could count on your fingers and toes. He had a wooden leg; and his daughter was the finest girl ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... chattered amusingly to him with what I, who kept an eye open and an ear cocked, considered to be a very subtly flattering deference. Adrian responded with adequate animation. As an ordinary clever, well-bred man of the world he might have done this almost mechanically; but I fancied that he found real enjoyment in the light and picturesque talk of his two neighbours. When the ladies left us, he discussed easy politics with ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... rendezvous an hour in advance of the time appointed. As he resolutely resisted all invitation to occupy the room alone until my arrival, declaring that he had never been guilty of such a breach of etiquette, and as he was, moreover, according to his word, the most courteous man of the world in it, and I did not wish to "contrary" him, he was obliged to pass the time in the street, which he did by planting himself on the front steps or expanding himself on the railings of an elderly and lonely dame, who could not endure that even a mechanic should linger at her door, and was in agony ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... chancing to be a little merry, he let slip the opinion that a flask of Trebbiano and a berlingozzo[18] were worth all the Kings and Queens that had ever reigned in those regions. And if the matter had not happened to fall into the hands of a Bishop, who was a gentleman and a man of the world, and also, above all, a tactful person, both able and willing to turn the thing into a joke, Visino would have learnt not to play with savages; for those brutes of Hungarians, not understanding his words, and thinking that he had uttered something terrible, such as a threat that he would rob their ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... said Angela, "You wish to make this callous man of the world realise that a woman may be beautiful, and brilliant, and independent, and yet live a pure, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... sent his son to Oxford. William had been entered as a gentleman-commoner of Christ Church, at the beginning of the Michaelmas term of 1660. It was clearly the paternal intention that the boy should become a successful man of the world and courtier, like ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... well as the Absurdities of Conversation. He must have a lively Turn of Wit, with an easie and concise manner of Expression; Every thing he says, must be in a free and disengaged manner. He must be guilty of nothing that betrays the Air of a Recluse, but appear a Man of the World throughout. His Illustrations, his Comparisons, and the greatest part of his Images must be drawn from common Life. Strokes of Satyr and Criticism, as well as Panegyrick, judiciously thrown in (and as it were by the by) give a wonderful Life and Ornament ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the average of mentality and enterprise in what he considered the "slow-poke" town of Bayport, found in the brilliant arrival from foreign parts the personification of his ideals, a satisfying specimen of that much read of genus, "the complete man of the world." He fell on his knees before that specimen and worshiped. Such idolatry could not but have some effect, even upon as blase an idol as Mr. Phillips, so the latter at first tolerated and then even encouraged the acquaintanceship. He began to take this young follower ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Little he dreamed, man of the world though he was, that the small courtesy would mean as much to the Indian maiden as it did, nor could he know that from that hour the dreams of Pocahontas were all to be built around the daily life of the pale-faced men in the Jamestown settlement. Even when she joined her playmates in her favorite ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to think so. He is mending fast, sir; and if you have any doubt about it, and cannot trust in the opinion of a man of the world, go and watch him, and see how interested he seems in all that is going on. Why, a fortnight ago he lay back in his chair dreaming and thinking of nothing but himself. Now he is beginning to forget that there is such a person. He's better, ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... most desperate adventures. Shiel is of opinion that the Association might be suppressed by law; O'Connell thinks it could not, and that if it might legally it could not practically. O'Connell says he can keep the country quiet another year certainly, Doyle thinks not. Doyle is a very able man, a man of the world, dislikes O'Connell, but is obliged to act in concert with him. Doyle, conscious of his own talents, is deeply mortified that no field is open for their display, and he is one of those men who must be eminent in whatever ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... not to have been written by a literary man—it is the babble of a thoughtless wit and a man of the world. But it is worthy of him whose contracted heart could never open to patronage or friendship. From such we might expect the unfeeling observation in the "Anecdotes of Painting," that "want of patronage is the apology for want of genius. Milton and La Fontaine did not write in the bask of court ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... courage of her son had developed. In her code of manhood there was no tolerance for infirmity of purpose, and mental fear was as degrading and as disintegrating as physical cowardice. He had been a man of the world in the miniature world that the miles of mountains had enclosed around him. He had lived every phase of the life of his people, and lived them openly. When he renounced drinking and gambling he was through with them for all time. When he joined the church, his religion was made ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... which is of universal interest—in melodious and splendid diction. But, above all, he stands as the representative of his age: a wit among the comic dramatists who were going out and the essayists who were coming in; a man of the world with Lady Mary and the gay parties on the Thames; a polemic, who dealt keen thrusts and who liked to see them rankle, and who yet writhed in agony when the riposte came; a Roman Catholic in faith and a latitudinarian in speech;—such was Pope as ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... ease on the oriental couch, Theron experimented cautiously upon the unaccustomed tobacco, and looked at Celia with what he felt to be the confident quiet of a man of the world. She had thrown aside her hat, and in doing so had half released some of the heavy strands of hair coiled at the back of her head. His glance instinctively rested upon this wonderful hair of hers. There was no mistaking the sudden fascination its ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... giant physically, with a mind that worked easily, but he was indolent and always wrote under pressure, with the printer's devil waiting for his "copy." He was a thorough man of the world, yet full of the freshness of fancy and the tenderness of heart of a little child. All children were a delight to him, and he never could refrain from giving them extravagant tips. The ever-present grief that could not be forgotten by fame ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... boldly into the town, transacted what business he could, talked with the thoroughly disturbed bankers, and then defiantly made his way to the chateau. He was in love with the Princess— desperately in love. He understood perfectly—for he was a man of the world and cosmopolitan—that nothing could come of it. She was a princess and she was not in a story book; she could not marry him. It was out of the question; of that he was thoroughly ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... But I have an idea, which I think it best to set before you frankly. You are a bachelor: it is not good to be a bachelor," he went on, laying his hand affectionately on the doctor's arm, and flushing—old man of the world though he was—flushing to the eyes. "What—what do you think of my daughter? I mean, not as a doctor, but as ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... even in her tenderest inclinings towards her guardian, had at times thought him a little too talkative—a little too much of the brilliant man of the world. Now, in her bitterness against him, his gaiety was positively offensive to her. She rose, and proposed that they should quit her own private room for the general drawing-room of ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... door opened on the garden; opposite this was the bed,—a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge; in the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet, which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world: there were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the other near the bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase was a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney was of wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire. In the chimney ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... testimonies to the truth, as unimpeachable and precious as the Major's. Mr Dombey, in his friendlessness, inclined to the Major. It cannot be said that he warmed towards him, but he thawed a little, The Major had had some part—and not too much—in the days by the seaside. He was a man of the world, and knew some great people. He talked much, and told stories; and Mr Dombey was disposed to regard him as a choice spirit who shone in society, and who had not that poisonous ingredient of poverty with which choice spirits in general are too much adulterated. His station was undeniable. Altogether ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... himself, despite his extreme youth, to be a man of the world and of experiences, and a practised talker. Conversation between him and Nella Racksole seemed never to flag. They chattered about St Petersburg, and the ice on the Neva, and the tenor at the opera who had been exiled to Siberia, and the quality of Russian tea, and the ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... her god-father's without telling her that I knew the countess. I fancied the lady would pretend not to know me, but I was wrong, as she welcomed me in the handsomest manner as if I were an old friend. This, no doubt, was a surprise for the count, but he was too much a man of the world to, shew any astonishment. He asked her when she had made my acquaintance, and she, like a woman of experience, answered without the slightest hesitation that we had seen each other two years ago at Mira. The matter was settled, and we spent ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... called "the Silent" because of the rare discretion that never revealed a secret nor spoke an imprudent word. In religion he was indifferent, being first a Catholic, then a Lutheran, then a Calvinist, and always a man of the world. His broad tolerance found its best, or only, support in the Erasmian tendencies of Coornheert. His second wife, Anne of Saxony, having proved unfaithful to him, he married, while she was yet alive, Charlotte of Bourbon. This act, like the bigamy of Philip of Hesse, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... great man. In the same manner, says he, as want of cleanliness, decency, or discretion in a mistress are found to alienate our affections. For so he expresses himself, where he talks, not in the character of a philosopher, but in that of a statesman and man of the world, to his friend Atticus. [Lib. ix. epist. 10]. But the same Cicero, in imitation of all the ancient moralists, when he reasons as a philosopher, enlarges very much his ideas of virtue, and comprehends every laudable ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... again very much altered. It has been said, that though he was a boy at twenty-one, he was a man at twenty-two. But now, at twenty-three, he appeared to be almost a man of the world. His manners were easy, his voice under his control, and words were at his command: he was no longer either shy or noisy; but, perhaps, was open to the charge of seeming, at least, to be too conscious of his own merits. He was, indeed, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... had other members of brass and gold and fine silver which they had none of; and that vehement sensibility, tenacious energy of imagination, a bounding swell of poetic fancy, had not obliterated, but had rather quickened, the sense of the highest kind of man of the world, which did not decay but waxed stronger in him with years. His openness to beauty and care for it were always inferior in keenness and in hold upon him to his sense of human interest, and the superiority ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... tree, which one bred in the country cannot soon forget, and which a visiter learns, perhaps, sooner than any association of placid delight connected with rural scenery. When, too, the traveller, or the man of the world, after a life spent in other pursuits, returns to the village of his nativity, the old hawthorn is the only playfellow of his boyhood that has not changed. His seniors are in the grave; his contemporaries are scattered; the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... Museum in Cairo and elsewhere. The oldest copy of the work contains many mistakes, and in some places the text is unintelligible, but many parts of it can be translated, and the following extracts will illustrate the piety and moral worth, and the sagacity and experience of the shrewd but kindly "man of the world" who undertook to guide the young prince of his day. The sage begins his work with a lament about the evil effects that follow old age in ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... and smiled on him most pleasantly. Lord Dunseveric was sufficiently a man of the world to understand that this pretty lady was flattering him. He even thought that she was not doing it very well, that her methods were too obvious to be really artistic. Nevertheless, he liked it. We most of us enjoy being flattered ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... splendor of college life was heightened by the first acquaintance I made in my new environment. This was Boller of '89, and today Boller of '89 holds in my mind as a true pattern of the man of the world. His was the same stuff of which was made "the perfect courtier." The difference lay solely in the degree of finish, and justly considered, true value lies in the material, not in the gloss. Boller, polished by the society of Harlansburg, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... with his appearance. There was a gentleness and refinement in his manner which charmed Mrs. Melwyn; united to the ease and politeness of a man of the world, equally acceptable to the general; Catharine was delighted; and Lettice only in a little danger of being ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... too much a man of the world to assert anything so monstrous; but he took no pains to contradict the story. In all his conversations with persons of rank and education, he advanced his claims modestly, and as if by mere inadvertency; and seldom pretended to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... with the sage wisdom of a man of the world. "The long green is a big help, but you've got to have the stuff in you. Success comes to the fellow who goes after it in ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... mother and child, made by the priest in two or three minutes, would have satisfied a superficial observer; but Father O———, who had been the director for twenty-five years of the aristocratic institution of the Jesuits at Vaurigard, was a man of the world, and knew too well the best Parisian society, all its shades of manner and dialect, not to understand that in the mother of his new pupil he beheld a representative of ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... poster, ink down, takes the place which a tablecloth would have taken under other circumstances. If there is not much crockery to use, there is but little to wash. And, in short, as well trained a man of the world as Dane had made himself thoroughly comfortable in his new quarters before the week ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... never spanked" said Fitz. "When I'm naughty mamma writes to papa, and he writes to me, and says he's sorry to hear that I haven't yet learned to be a gentleman, and a man of the world, and an American. That's worse than ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... hardened into wrought metal a character never very ductile. Tom was now, in his own way, an altogether accomplished man of the world, who knew (at least in all companies and places where he was likely to find himself) exactly what to say, to do, to make, to seek, and to avoid. Shifty and thrifty as old Greek, or modern Scot, there were few things ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... too much a man of the world to devote his attentions in society exclusively to one, and make them the subject of special remark. He left the inner drawing-room, and came up to the doctor to ask him if he knew the young lady who had sung the last ballad. The doctor knew her well. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... separated from her husband into our society here. We are foolish enough still to cling to these old-fashioned ideas. There was the less excuse for the Vicomtesse, because M. de Beauseant is a well-bred man of the world, who would have been quite ready to listen to reason. But his wife is quite mad——" and so ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... for every time I go over the same ground, I go the faster, and grow the bigger. While all I want is to be friends with them, and to tell them something to their advantage, like Mr. Joseph Ady: only somehow they are so strangely afraid of hearing it. But, I suppose I am not a man of the world, and have no tact." ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... expel them. The popular educationists would say that they had the far nobler idea of turning out citizens. I concede that it is a much nobler idea, but where are the citizens? I know that the boy in "Etons" is stiff with a rather silly and sentimental stoicism, called being a man of the world. I do not fancy that the errand-boy is rigid with that republican stoicism that is called being a citizen. The schoolboy will really say with fresh and innocent hauteur, "I am an English gentleman." I cannot so easily picture the errand-boy drawing up his head to the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... bank very wisely sent a cable to their legal agent, Clarence A. Seward, in New York, asking him to set the American detective force on the alert. He was a man of the world and understood quite well what sort of men then ruled at Police Head quarters. So he sent at once for Robert A. Pinkerton and gave him entire charge of the American end of the line. Eventually they unearthed the whole plot, secured the evidence that convicted us and recovered ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... afraid, have wanted to—he asked to be permitted to go and stroll with her; so that he evidently definitely preferred conversation to faces. A sensible, companionable man. A clever, well-read man. A man of the world. A man. She was very glad indeed she had not written to Kate the other day. What did she want with Kate? She had found a ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... spite of her beauty, on very inferior boards. Her success and her money she owed to Raoul Nathan. This association of their two fates, usual enough in the dramatic and literary world, did no harm to Raoul, who kept up the outward conventions of a man of the world. Moreover, Florine's actual means were precarious; her revenues came from her salary and her leaves of absence, and barely sufficed for her dress and her household expenses. Nathan gave her certain perquisites which he managed to ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... a man of the world, I know. You have a grudge against him who once was Jean de Mauprat, and who to-day is the humble Brother Jean Nepomucene. But if the precepts of our divine Master, Jesus Christ, cannot persuade you to pity, there are considerations of public propriety and of family ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... as to whom one is not quite clear whether he lives in Europe in order to cultivate an art, or cultivates an art as a pretext for living in Europe. Mr. Leath's art was water-colour painting, but he practised it furtively, almost clandestinely, with the disdain of a man of the world for anything bordering on the professional, while he devoted himself more openly, and with religious seriousness, to the collection of enamelled snuff-boxes. He was blond and well-dressed, with the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... In the man of the world, though one would hardly believe it as one sees the cynical look and sneer and hears him say, 'I don't want your church—your Army!' there is underneath, in spite of his apparent indifference, a longing after God and a disgust of ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... bad men and wrong thoughts by force, is one of the earliest religious instincts. It is the child's instinct- -pardonable though mistaken. The natural man—whether the heathen savage at one end of the scale, or the epicurean man of the world at the other—has no such instinct. He will feel no anger against falsehood, because he has no love for truth; he will be liberal enough, tolerant enough, of all which does not touch his own self- interest; but that once threatened, he too may join the ranks of the bigots, ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... been so much engrossed with the conversation as to have at all the air of being 'surprised,' or he was too good a man of the world to shew it. He had sprung up instantly as Wych Hazel came in, and now he came round to where she stood to shake hands, looking very bright, but as if her appearance was the simplest thing in ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... I directed my steps to a club where I was engaged to dine. I found half-a-dozen whist tables in full swing. The conversation about the war soon, however, became general. "This is our situation," said, as he dealt a hand, a knowing old man of the world, a sort of French James Clay: "generally if one has no trumps in one's hand, one has at least some good court cards in the other suits; we've got neither trumps nor court cards." "Et le General Trochu?" some one suggested. "My opinion of General Trochu," said a General, who was sitting reading ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... had not been able to induce any one to bring them an easy chair from the town,) looked as neat and elegant as if he had been dressed by the valet of a duke. He was of northern blood, with clear full blue eyes, calm features, a tempering of the soldier, scholar, and man of the world, in his aspect; whether that various intercourses had given himself that thorough-bred look never seen in Americans, or that it was inherited from a race who had known all these disciplines. He formed a great but pleasing contrast to his ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... saunter too, looking me pleasantly in the eye, and merely exchanging the cold salute of the road:—"Yar onor, boyoee," a mere sidewalk how d'ye do. After several experiences like this, I began to entertain a sort of respect for Kooloo, as quite a man of the world. In good sooth, he turned out to be one; in one week's time giving me the cut direct, and lounging by without even nodding. He must have taken me ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... took his place. Sir Jan was an expert in mining, ex- President of the Rand Chamber of Mines, and ex-Managing Director of the Robinson Group, also a Member of the Legislative Assembly of South Africa. Keen and clever in business and a polished man of the world, he was a ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... Europe, but which, in reality, had no solidity. I am perfectly convinced that the Khedive was thoroughly sincere in his declared purpose of suppressing the slave-trade, not only as a humanitarian, but as an enlightened man of the world, who knew, from the example of the great Powers of Europe, that the time had arrived when civilization demanded the extinction of such horrors as were the necessary adjuncts of slave-hunting. The Khedive had thus determined to ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... found himself, and so lost himself—lost, I mean, much of that stiff, ugly, self-consciousness which had encased him as the shell encases the lobster. His forehead had become more massive, and the very outline of his features had altered. He was a man of the world, whose strenuous fighting now was to be done as a general—not, as hitherto, in the ranks. His manner was very quiet and gentle. "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength," says the Psalmist. That was ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... me why you let that cunning man of the world, Colonel Vaughan, give you ten shillings? This has been on my mind for six or seven years, and I have never had an opportunity of getting it off before. You know if you won't have me for a lover, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the acknowledged intention of doing his walking at an hour when he could not possibly be with Clare. For he could not keep away from her, whether Mrs. Bowring were with her or not. He was too much a man of the world to sit all day long before her, glaring at her in shy silence, as a boy might have done, and as he would have been content to do; so he took immense pains to be agreeable, when her mother was present, and Mrs. Bowring liked ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... the classes. Except in our work, they have no use for us; if now and then they fancy qualifying their material splendor or their spiritual dulness with some artistic presence, the attempt is always a failure that bruises and abashes. In so far as the artist is a man of the world, he is the less an artist, and if he fashions himself upon fashion, he deforms his art. We all know that ghastly type; it is more absurd even than the figure which is really of the world, which was born and bred in it, and conceives of nothing outside of it, or above it. In the social world, as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Disraeli—revengeful, avaricious, bigoted, benevolent, magnificent, talented—he is always a character of striking power and intensity. The ancient type of Greek does not appear in modern fiction. If he did, it would be as a subtle reasoner, perfect critic, polished man of the world, full of the intellectual and social graces, ever adaptable to circumstance, choosing his idea and never letting the idea govern him. And, in the matter of loves and hates, it was rather his maxim that one should neither hate nor love over-much, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... fox!" he said to himself. "Spying on me—what an idiot I was not to look out for that. The narrow old fool! He doesn't know what 'man of the world' means. But I'll marry her in spite of him. I'll let nobody cheat me out of what I ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... what that unity is. If this fact were more constantly kept in view, the effort of philosophers to bring the ultimate colligating principles of thought into clear consciousness would not, at the outset at least, be regarded with so much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from the practical man of the world, not so much in the nature of the task which he is trying to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purpose with which he enters ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... if you expect that I am to rule myself by your father's notions, you expect a great deal too much. He was not a man of the world ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... her as an afterthought. The place to pause is on the threshold—not half-way in the room. The way not to enter a drawing-room is to dart forward and then stand awkwardly bewildered and looking about in every direction. A man of the world stops at the entrance of the room for a scarcely perceptible moment, until he perceives the most unencumbered approach to the hostess, and he thereupon walks over to her. When he greets his hostess he pauses slightly, the hostess smiles and offers her hand; the gentleman ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... muttered, as he sauntered along in the direction of Telegraph Hill. "Who'd have thought a green country clodhopper would have gone up as he has, while an experienced man of the world like me is out at the ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... [to the Footmen] Put the fruit on the side-board. Like whom? Alexander Mikylovich? Of course not; because he is a living negation of all Nicholas's pet theories. A nice pleasant kindly man of the world. But oh! That terrible night-mare—that affair of Bors Cheremshnov's. What has ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... judgement, he might also say—of another person. "I mean of the average intelligent man, but you see I take what I can get." There would be the technical, the strictly legal view; then there would be the way the question would strike a man of the world. He had lighted another cigarette while he talked, and I saw he was glad to have it to handle when he brought out at last, with a laugh slightly artificial: "In fact it's a subject on which Miss Anvoy and I are pulling ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... where his Contemplative rivals lack utterance, he speaks most feelingly to the heart in his own peculiar language of Dramatic composition—he glances over creation with the eye of love, all the charities of life follow in his steps, and his thoughts are as the breath of the morning. A man of the world, living in it and loving it, yet with a heart that it could not spoil nor wean from its allegiance to God—'non meno buon Cristiano che eccellente pittore,' as Vasari emphatically describes him—his religion breathes of the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... on that ride. Pere Francois is thoughtful, as he spends his evening hour at dominoes with Aristide Dauvray. His eyes stray to fair Louise, busied with her needie. At last, he has a man of the world to lean on, in tracing up this child's parentage. Raoul and Armand are deep in schemes to enrich Joe's queer collection, the nucleus of that "bachelor ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... tree should groan or a butterfly curse; but wait—there's more." In his earnestness Strang sat up, adding, "Then Gargoyle got up and stretched out his hands, not to the sky, but to the air all around him. It was as if—" Here Strang, the normal, healthy man of the world, hesitated; it was only the father of the little boy who had died who admitted in low tones: "You would have said—At least even I could imagine that Gargoyle—well—that he saw something like a released principle of life fly happily back to its main source—as if a little mote like a sunbeam ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a distant relative in this city, an old gentleman who belongs to clubs and is what is known as a "man of the world." He has quite a sense of humor—is famous for good stories. He told me that he was interested in me—that he would be glad to find a place for me in life, if I would only get over my youthful follies. It has been years since I saw him, but I ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... lied out of self-respect, and in order not to reveal a domestic secret which she regarded as derogatory to the honour of her family. The truth was that, being carried away by her passion for Ligny, Felicie had given Girmandel the go-by, and he, being a man of the world, had promptly cut off supplies. Madame Nanteuil, despite her years, had resumed an old lover, out of her love for her child, that she might not want for anything. She had renewed her former liaison with Tony Meyer, the picture-dealer in the Rue de Clichy. Tony Meyer was a poor ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... bold as to write: "The name of the town where I am located is the same as that of the dance hall on Umptumpus avenue in ——" well, a certain well-known American city. He was also caught up; for the censor, being himself somewhat of a man of the world, shot the letter back with the tart comment: ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Lowell was a fine poet, a humorist and man of the world. He wrote easily and lived easily. He was the companion of wealthy and distinguished men. He acquired prosperity, as it were, by natural inclination. Next to the King of Prussia he was the most fortunate man of his time. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... hand generously. 'I'm awfully glad to see you,' he began, and then, feeling that he must be a man of the world: 'Come and have a drink. Are ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... came in answer that a polished man of the world could write—not in the least like the bear I had imagined him to be, but courteous and even merry. In it he said he should feel honoured if I would visit his poor abode, and he seemed to have read my books and knew all about me, so with very mixed feelings Jimmie and ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... the zealot for purity feels clean and free once more. The minuteness of uniformity maintained in certain sectarian communities, whether monastic or not, is something almost inconceivable to a man of the world. Costume, phraseology, hours, and habits are absolutely stereotyped, and there is no doubt that some persons are so made as to find in this stability an incomparable ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James |
