"Read between the lines" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Blix. "They were born for each other. Just see, K. D. B. is a good housekeeper, and wants a respectable middle-aged gentleman. Captain Jack is a respectable middle-aged gentleman, and wants a good housekeeper. Oh, and besides, I can read between the lines! I just feel they would be congenial. If they know what's best for themselves, they would write to ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... man with a heart constant and stout enough to face the risks he ran would be hard to kill. When you read between the lines, it's a moving tale. Think of the long, perilous rides he made through an enemy's land, all for a glance at his disdainful lady! They watched the fords in those days, but neither brawling rivers nor well-mounted horsemen could stop him. At last, he came one night with a ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Naboth, Jehu to Samaria. In all these cases letters were used for treacherous purposes, and they are all short. Probably the authors of these plots feared to betray their real intention orally, and so they committed their orders to writing, expecting their correspondents to read between the lines. It is not till the time of Isaiah that the references to writing become frequent. Intercourse between Palestine on the one hand and Babylon and Egypt on the other had then increased greatly, and the severance of the nation itself tended ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... over this curt missive, which was not couched precisely in the suave words that might be expected from the Greek. Read between the lines, its meaning was significant. Michael and his nephew, hungering for the spoils, had patched up a truce. They were already contemplating another military pronunciamento, and Beliani, having made his own ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... for a visit, supposedly to give Grandmother a chance to see her only sister once more, but in reality to have Ethel ingratiate herself with the old lady, thereby causing her to leave the girl the bulk of her fortune. Ethel read between the lines and at first refused, but after listening to her mother for a while and thinking perhaps she was right, she allowed herself to ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... needed addition, but as it stands "is pitched in an entirely wrong key. The cognate offices in the Rituale Romanun and the Priest's Prayer Book ought to have shown the Committee, were it not for their peculiar unteachableness, a better way." To one who can read between the lines, this arraignment of the Americans for their lack of docility to the teachings of the Priest's Prayer Book is ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... address must have been to those who had expected a declaration of specific policy. Yet the historian, wiser by the march of events, may read between the lines. When Jefferson said that he desired a wise and frugal government—a government "which should restrain men from injuring one another but otherwise leave them free to regulate their own pursuits—" and when he announced his purpose "to support the state governments ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... she says is the truth, and nothing but the truth; but it is not the whole truth—that she could not tell. If she wrote it, it could not be printed. If it were printed, it could not be read. But if we read between the lines, we do just catch glimpses of what she ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... up to her when he found himself alone with her for a moment, "I don't understand this letter. I cannot read between the lines, somehow, and yet there seems something more than ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... knows nothing of the principle that what ought to be must actually have been from the beginning. Until the building of Solomon's temple the unity of worship according to it had, properly speaking, never had any existence; and, moreover, it is easy to read between the lines that even after that date it was more a pious wish than a practical demand. The Priestly Code, on the other hand, is unable to think of religion without the one sanctuary, and cannot for a moment imagine Israel without it, carrying its actual existence back to the very beginning of the theocracy, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... doctor's errand for him. The entry concerning it occupied the next day. I read between the lines how much he enjoyed his position of god from the machine, swooping down on the two he found out there, estimating their situation and behavior in his usual hair-splitting fashion, sitting as a court ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions!" This latter passage is characteristic, and many who do not like Jefferson will read between the lines the exultation of a man who was not always careful to draw the line between ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... "Disestablishment"—which was in the thesis given him to write upon—is likely to provoke—"Will it come? ought it to come? must it come? Is it near, or somewhat distant, or indefinitely remote?" On these questions he has not a word to say. But, all the same, people will naturally try to read between the lines, and to find out what was in the writer's thoughts about these questions. We cannot, however, see that there is anything to be gathered from the Letter as to the political aspect of the matter; he simply confines himself to the obvious lesson which passing events ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... meditative methods of the Chinese sage to the pre-existing foundations of earlier sects."* This is not the place to discuss details of religious doctrine, but the introduction of the Tendai belief has historical importance. In the first place, it illustrates a fact which may be read between the lines of all Japanese annals, namely, that the Japanese are never blind borrowers from foreign systems: their habit is "to adapt what they borrow so as to fit it to what they possess." In the second place, the Tendai system became the parent of nearly all the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... university career to Burleigh's assistance[6]." And yet, limited as our knowledge is, it is possible, I think, to form a fairly accurate conception of Lyly's manner of life at Oxford, if we are bold enough to read between the lines of the scraps of contemporary evidence that have come down to us. Lyly himself tells us that he left Oxford for three years not long after his arrival. "Oxford," he says, "seemed to weane me before she brought me forth, and to give me boanes to gnawe, before I could ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... not deceived, but read between the lines and made out the hidden words, which were not flattering to herself. And to her it was manifest that Edgar's attentions, offered with such excited publicity, were not so much to gratify her or to express ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... very much. Of course, she's told me nothing. She's too loyal. But I can read between the lines. Tell me, though. Do ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... my wife told me. Of course it was a most improper sort of letter to write considering the circumstances. It pained Mrs. Fyne to discover how thoroughly she had been misunderstood. But what is written is not all. It's what my wife could read between the lines. She says that the girl is ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... wish that it had been otherwise—that you could have learned to care for Tim—but you know better than any one of us where your happiness lies, and you are right to take it. And never think, Sara, that this is going to make any difference to our friendship. I could read between the lines of your letter that you had some such foolish thought in your mind. So little do I mean this to make any break between us that—as I can quite realize it would be too much to ask that you should come to ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... myself sufficiently to read the letter; but I obeyed mechanically. This letter contained a few words of serious advice, breathing nothing but words of paternal love; though I read between the lines that it had cost him a struggle after her confession to regain this kind of calm affection for her. He had left with Cupid's arrow in his heart. The letter concluded with the most ardent wishes for her happiness; and he expressed ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... another instant to hear the rest. To him this seemed like the scheming of his brother. Now he imagined he could read between the lines! That letter sent to Alwa had been misreported to him, and had been really a call to come and free the prisoner and wreak Rangar vengeance! He understood! But first he must save his palace, if it could be saved. The priests must have deceived him, so he wasted no time in arguing ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Benincasa, were nuns in the Convent of Montepulciano. To one of them the following letter is addressed. One can read between the lines a lively solicitude. Never cloistered herself, Catherine had a close intimacy with cloisters, and knew their best and worst. She held in hearty and loyal respect the opportunities which they offered for leading an exalted life; ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... waxed impatient. "But I've mulled over the thing to the very end, and I know, I know father would be happier left to his delusions. Yes, and mother, too. You see, I've read the book, and knowing Dad as I do, I read between the lines, and I see how it would be like stabbing his heart and draining his life blood to stultify that book. No, Zizi, don't tempt me,—indeed, ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... so, and the record is lost. Here is a case where the record is preserved. But Karslake, being a young man not very much given to introspection, his work is more a picture of things seen than a transcription of things thought. However, one may read between the lines; the very breaks are eloquent, while the break at the end speaks with a significance that no words ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... he has expressed his deepest thoughts, his most impressive views, and even foreshadowed those intimate convictions which he never expressed, but which he desired to record in such a manner that those that can read between the lines might find them there; and certainly there we find them. His aspiration has been to present to the world a picture of the physical world from which he would exclude everything that relates to the turmoil of human society, and to the ambitions of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... most profoundly the changing course of my earthly career, and of the condition of my mind, and has had the faculty of seeing what I have not expressed, and what, so to speak, could only be read between the lines. How truly has he remarked that, during the first ten years of my official and court life at Weimar, I scarcely did anything; that despair drove me to Italy; and that I there, with new delight in producing, seized upon the history of Tasso, in order to free myself, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... whimsicality is full of good sense; this dream overflows with realities; this improbable and chimerical romance contains the substance and the marrow of a rational and truly modern treatise on pedagogy. Sometimes we must read between the lines, add what experience has taught us since that day, transpose into an atmosphere of open democracy these pages, written under the old order of things, but even then quivering with the new world which they were bringing to light, and for which they ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Miss Salome a look as of one who would say, You're bat-blind if you can't read between the lines of that; but Miss Salome was placidly unconscious. She was not really thinking of the subject at all, and did not guess that Chester meant anything ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dictionary &c. 562; polyglot. V. interpret, explain, define, construe, translate, render; do into, turn into; transfuse the sense of. find out &c. 480a the meaning &c. 516 of; read; spell out, make out; decipher, unravel, disentangle; find the key of, enucleate, resolve, solve; read between the lines. account for; find the cause, tell the cause &c. 153 of; throw light upon, shed light upon, shed new light upon, shed fresh light upon; clear up, clarify, elucidate. illustrate, exemplify; unfold, expound, comment upon, annotate; popularize ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... cruelly: And ceaseth not my thought to gaze upon your ghost by night, * Which falsing comes and he I love still, still unloveth me. Would Heaven ye wist the blight that I for you are doomed to bear * For love of you, which tortures me with parting agony! Then read between the lines I wrote, and mark and learn their sense * For such my tale, and Destiny made me an outcast be: Learn eke the circumstance of Love and lover's woe nor deign * Divulge its mysteries to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... days with Novisko. From there he went to Sofia. He was heard of in Athens and Constantinople. My own agent wrote me that he was in Belgrade. Hunterleys is the bosom friend of the English Foreign Secretary. That I know for myself. You have your reports. You can read between the lines. I tell you that Hunterleys is the man who has paralysed our action amongst the Balkan States. He has played a neat little game out there. It is he who was the inspiration of Roumania. It is he who drafted the secret understanding with Turkey. The war which we hoped for will ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... could I, when I knew that for one who read between the lines the story of my own suffering was there? My secret had been hard enough to keep faithfully, even from her to whom the truth, had she ever divined it, must ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fulsome in its praise, we can read between the lines the confidence and affection which inspired his troops during all the ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... do so when he realized how many of his other interests depended on his good-will and the trust company's assistance. Phil had not told Adam this when he went over the scene in the office the morning they closed up the accounts, but Gregg had read between the lines. The one bright ray of sunshine was Madeleine's refusal to break her word to her father. That ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... about the child, telling briefly how he was killed. He barely mentioned the sister, and he told nothing whatever of his own part in it all. They looked at him curiously, as if they would read between the lines, for they saw he was deeply stirred, but they asked nothing. Presently they all fell to studying, Courtland with the rest, for the morrow's work ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... bear it no longer! The world holds but one thought; the day and the night are lost in the constant reiteration of every word he ever said to me, in the resuscitation of every glance, every touch. And, poring over these in my memory, I try to read between the lines the words that are not there, to read ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... and read between the lines all I feel. I am sure you can if any one ever did, but I cannot put into words my admiration for you—and that comes from deep down in my heart. Good-bye, with all good wishes for ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... recognized as an American citizen after fighting forty years to prove my citizenship, it begins to look as if we women have not fought in vain." ... A braver-hearted woman than Susan B. Anthony never lived, but those who can read between the lines of her remark will not miss the little touch of pathos in her pride, and the hint of the disappointments which have ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... perhaps, noted principally for its conciseness. Tacitean brevity is proverbial, and many of his sentences are so brief, and leave so much for the student to read between the lines, that in order to be understood and appreciated the author must be read over and over again, lest the reader miss the point of some of his most excellent thoughts. Such an author presents grave, if not insuperable, difficulties to the translator, but notwithstanding this fact, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... Instantly I could read between the lines, and I felt that I had been too charitable to Burke Collins. Here was the wife slaving to secure that beauty which would win back the man with whom she had worked and toiled in the years before they came to New ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve |
