|
|
|
More "Rote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old, and under the dominion of a very learned tutor, who taught them Latin, Greek and Hebrew, alternately with an equally precise, stiff old esquire, who trained them in martial exercises, which seemed to be as much matters of rote with them as their tasks, and to be quite as uninteresting. It did not seem as if they ever played, or thought of playing; and if they were ever to be gay, witty Frenchmen, a wonderful change must come ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... know that service all by rote, And there was many and many a lovely note; Some singing loud, as if they had complained; Some with their notes another manner feigned; And some did sing all out with ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives.[214] We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men and talents and characters they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... effaced. These people are simply the wandering bards and minstrels, who find their place in an Independent Malay State as naturally as did their prototypes in the countries of Europe during the Middle Ages. They learn by rote some old-world tale, which has been transmitted by word of mouth through countless generations, and they wander from village to village, singing it for pay to the unlettered people, to whom these songs and stories represent the only literature which comes within their experience. Such minstrels ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... wicket-gate yonder, over the plain, for that stands in the head of the way up which thou must go, and I wish thee all good speed. Also I advise that thou put this letter in thy bosom; that thou read therein to thyself, and to thy children, until you have got it by rote of heart,[22] for it is one of the songs that thou must sing while thou art in this house of thy pilgrimage (Psa. 119:54); also this thou must deliver in at the further gate.[23] Now I saw in my dream, that this old gentleman, as he told me this story, did himself seem to be greatly affected ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... deemed it scarcely possible that he could have got rid of the innumerable provincialisms which must cling to his youth: and we laid our account at the best with meeting a fine forward boy who would speak, perhaps not very well either, by rote; and taking the most prominent favourite actor of his day, as a model, be a mere childish imitator. We considered that when young people do any thing with an excellence disproportioned to their years, they are viewed through ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... day passes," he wrote to Moore, "that I don't think and speak of you. You can not doubt my sincere admiration, waiving personal friendship for the present. I have you by rote and by heart, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... discarded, And magpies with their posts rewarded. 'Those fowls of omen I detest, That pry into another's nest, State-lies must lose all good intent; For they foresee and croak the event. My friends ne'er think, but talk by rote, Speak what they're taught, and so to vote.' 'When rogues like these,' a sparrow cries, 'To honours and employments rise, 110 I court no favour, ask no place; For such preferment is disgrace. Within my thatched retreat I find (What these ne'er ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... calls I ever saw were formal, every one stiff, and speaking by rote, or talking politics. How glad I used to be to get on horseback again! But to see these—why, it is like the shepherd's glimpse at the pixies!—as one reads a new book, or watches what one only half understands—a ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ribaldry is learned by rote, And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote: One likes no language but the 'Faery Queen'; A Scot will fight for 'Christ's ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... source then must be studied, known, and well attended to; or we only follow the art blindly, and without certainty. Thence the common indifference of so many performers, who mind nothing more than a rote of the art, without tracing ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... Guard relieves, [next] An' Orthodoxy raibles, [rattles by rote] Tho' in his heart he weel believes An' thinks it auld wives' fables: But, faith! the birkie wants a Manse, [fellow] So cannilie he hums them; [prudently, humbugs] Altho' his carnal wit an' sense Like hafflins-wise o'ercomes ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... your helth. And as how you'd get better when the Court riz. But now the Court is riz, and pears like you aint no ways better from all accounts. And tell you how we knowed. See Hannah and me, we got a letter from Mrs. Whaley as keeps the 'Farmers.' Well she rote to Hannah and me to send her up some chickins and duks and eggs and butter and other fresh frutes and vegetubbles, which she sez as they doo ask sich onlawful prices for em in the city markits as she cant conshuenshusly ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Carroll's children were so drilled in Shakespeare that there was not one of them who could not, when somewhat older, repeat long passages by rote, and they made the rehearsal of scenes from Shakespeare's plays one of their favorite amusements. Anna Ella showed no taste for accomplishments; cared neither for dancing, drawing, music, or needlework. She used to boast ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... you, it's not for me to say them nay; but I would that I had more learning for your sake, and I shall be jealous of them, that I shall, when I find that you can read off out of any book you have got as smoothly as you do the verses you have learned by rote. Oh, you will be laughing ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... trade of a false witness requires except wickedness. There was nothing plausible about him. His voice was harsh. Treachery was written in all the lines of his yellow face. He had no invention, no presence of mind, and could do little more than repeat by rote the lies taught him ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... if the attack is made ever so slightly on his flank. Perhaps the greatest disadvantage of this method is that it does not give the student the best kind of training. What he needs most in life is the ability to arrange and present ideas rapidly, not to speak a part by rote. ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... trouble you with mysteries or personal experiences. You would write as your Southern mockingbird sings his "green-tree ballad"; the thought of that bird mewed in a city cage and taught to perform by rote and not for spontaneous joy, troubled me not a little. I am sending you ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... of honest, bold, free and successful fellows. I am dwindling into a whining, submissive, crouching, very humble, yes if you please, no thank you Madam, dangler! I have been to school! Have had my task set me! Must learn my lesson by rote, or there is a rod in pickle for me! Yes! I! That identical Clifton; that bold, gay, spirited fellow, who has so often vaunted of and been admired for his daring! You may meet me with my satchel ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... people! "Simple, says ye!" remarked Mr. Dooley. "Simple like th' air or th' deep sea. Not complicated like a watch that stops whin th' shoot iv clothes ye got it with wears out. Whin Father Butler wr-rote a book he niver finished, he said simplicity was not wearin' all ye had on ye'er shirt-front, like a tin-horn gambler with his di'mon' stud. ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... on rocky shores the distant rote. Oh, could we float forever, little boat, Under the blissful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... marvel is how A strain of such rapturous rote Should have gone on thus till now Unchanged in ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... Cartier Islands the landing of illegal immigrants from Indonesia's Rote Island has become ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... dint of skill and patience, work that is very passable. The women weave their own cloth on the native looms, and practice various other industries. The children are well trained in hospitality and public manners, which they learn by rote. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... such general applause that Barre was forced to command the possessed nun to say aqua in Hebrew. The poor woman, who found it difficult enough to repeat correctly the few Latin words she had learned by rote, made an impatient ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hate my pen; I hate my stool; What am I but a nerveless tool? But we did not work by rote or rule When I counted socks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... that there was nothing to cause education to be concerned with any but one or two of the subjects which are included by Western peoples under that designation. It became at an early age, and remained for many centuries, a rote-learning of the elementary text-books, followed by a similar acquisition by heart of the texts of the works of Confucius and other classical writers. And so it remained until the abolition, in 1905, of the old competitive examination system, and the substitution of all that ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... illustrate my assertion by a few examples. Mrs. Piozzi, who often repeated by rote, what she did not understand, comes forward ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... speech, Andy," said Niederkircher, shaking hands with him, and gazing tenderly into his flushed face. "It was evident that your words were not learned by rote, but came from your heart, and hence they could not but make a profound impression. But now, commander-in-chief of the Tyrol, dinner is ready. The soup is already on the table, and I myself shall have the honor of waiting ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... can resolve it by rote, Lady, twas that yeare the Cuckoo sung in May: another token Lady; there raigned in Rome a great Tyrant that yeare, and many Maides lost their heads ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... questions furnish an excellent topical analysis of the text.[3] In a certain sense they ask "what the book says," but the teacher is advised emphatically to discourage any such thing as committing the text to memory. The tendency to rote-learning is very strong. I had to contend with it in teaching history to seniors at Harvard twenty years ago, but much has since been done to check it through the development of the modern German seminary methods. (For an explanation of these methods, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... long afterwards—but that I was actually present in those scenes; they are impressed upon me with such an astonishing air of fidelity." While, on the one hand, he never repeated the words that had to be delivered phlegmatically, or as by rote; on the other hand, he never permitted voice, look, gesture, to pass the limits of discretion, even at moments the most impassioned; as, for example, where Nancy, in the famous murder-scene, shrieked forth her last gasping and despairing appeals to her brutal paramour. The ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... with a grimace. "You are about to say I repent of folly—or the enticing of a virgin—or that I fell victim to the blandishments of some tricky dame—I know all that cant by rote!—a man always repents until his broken head is mended, but all that is apart from the real thing—which is this:—In what way does my moment with a lady in the dark affect the Viceroy of the Indies? Why should his Excellency trouble himself that Ruy ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His manner was too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep are without a shepherd," he said. "The young men marry among the Gorgios, or they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and the fields and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have learned conceits from the catch-books. You quarrel by rote. Were I as eager to answer me, I might say: 'Ah, false flower, you grow out of the foulness underneath. You give your fragrance to all without discretion—a common lover, prodigal of favors, fit only to be torn to shreds by pretty, spiteful fingers, and ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... theory. A child is, correctly speaking, instructed in the grammar of a language, and taught to speak the language. Thus, teaching may be merely mechanical; while "instruction" implies a degree of understanding in the pupil, as well as in the master. A child who has been taught to learn lessons by rote, without understanding them, will find difficulty in comprehending instruction in the principles of what he has learned: hence, we speak of teaching a brute, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... room,—had it been her mind to do so. So he stood still over her, and she smiled at him. Such a smile! It was cold as death, flattering no one, saying nothing, hideous in its unmeaning, unreal grace. Ah! how I hate the smile of a woman who smiles by rote! It made Mr Palliser feel very uncomfortable,—but he did not analyse ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... was agitated in vigorous negation, and "Card for Mister Kirkwood!" was mumbled in dispassionate accents appropriate to a recitation by rote. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... credited. In the first place, judged by the standards of modern missions, the superficiality of his work was {409} almost inconceivable. He never mastered one of the languages of the countries which he visited. He learned by rote a few sentences, generally the creed and some phrases on the horrors of hell, and repeated them to the crowds attracted to him by the sound of a bell. He addressed himself to masses rather than to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... was a quiet, unfaltering decision in her replies, which were given with much humility of manner. I could not help sometimes doubting whether the whole thing was really unprepared and extemporaneous, or whether she might not have learnt her lesson and repeated it by rote, or whether, in short, it might not have been a piece of acting. This impression lasted only for a moment, for there was such an artless and modest manner in the young girl, that I could not fail on the whole to give her the fullest credit for sincerity, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... clergy, nineteen of the noblesse, fifty-two of the third estate. The king opened the assembly on the 4th of November, 1596, with these words, full of dignity, and powerful in their vivid simplicity: "If I desired to win the title of orator, I would have learned by rote some fine, long speech, and would deliver it to you with proper gravity. But, gentlemen, my desire prompts me towards two more glorious titles, the names of deliverer and restorer of this kingdom. In order ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Therfore in stede of weping and praieres, Men mote[85] give silver to the poure freres. His tippet was ay farsed[86] ful of knives, And pinnes, for to given fayre wives. And certainly he hadde a mery note. Wel coude he singe and plaien on a rote.[87] Of yeddinges[88] he bar utterly the pris. His nekke was white as the flour de lis. Therto he strong was as a champioun, And knew wel the tavernes in every toun, And every hosteler and tappestere, Better than a ...
— English Satires • Various
... understanding from the main club for we have lots of people in Tex. want to no direct about it and want to go. We take your paper in this citey and your paper was all we had to go by so we are depending on you for farther advise. Dear editor you muss excuse our bad letter for we rote it in a hurry. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... god-hede, He toke my self to hys maryage, Corou{n}de me quene i{n} blysse to brede, I{n} lengh{e} of daye[gh] at eu{er} schal wage, 416 & sesed i{n} alle hys herytage Hys lef is, I am holy hysse; Hys prese, hys prys & hys parage, Is rote & grou{n}de of ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... of all endeavor, Mar some nocturne by a single note; Is there immortality of discord In your failure to preserve the rote? ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... man's boot which I drew painfully, with many yawns; history no glorious epic revealing as it unrolls the Meaning of Things, no revelation of that wondrous distillation of the Spirit of man, but an endless marching and counter-marching up and down the map, weary columns of figures to be learned by rote instantly to be forgotten again. "On June the 7th General So-and-so proceeded with his whole army—" where? What does it matter? One little chapter of Carlyle, illuminated by a teacher of understanding, were worth a million such text-books. Alas, for the hatred of Virgil! "Paret" (a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... honestly, and as handsome, as well dressed, and as pleasant to listen to, with that sweet low voice and piquant smile, as any. Besides he could draw, and had more yards of French and English verses by rote than Aunt Becky owned of Venetian lace and satin ribbons, and was more of a scholar than he. He? He!—why—'he?' what the deuce had Devereux to do with it—was he vexed?—A fiddle-stick! He began to flag with Miss Ward, the dowager's niece, and was glad when the refined Beauchamp, at her ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the excitement, the animosity, and the contention which arose in the New England colonies from these discussions over "singing by rule" or "singing by rote." Many prominent clergymen wrote essays and tracts upon the subject; of these essays "The Reasonableness of Regular Singing," also a "Joco-serious Dialogue on Singing," by Reverend Mr. Symmes; "Cases of Conscience," compiled by several ministers; "The Accomplished Singer," by Cotton Mather, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the clerk, turning to the accused man, and speaking in the same sing-song tones of one who repeated a formula by rote, "you stand convicted of the crime of wilful murder. Have you anything to say for yourself why the Court should not give you judgment of death according ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... so keeping all the yeare long; any hearbes, fruit, or flowers in pickle; also pickle it selfe. Fr. compote, stewed fruit. The Recipe for Compost in the Forme of Cury, Recipe 100 (C), p.49-50, is "Take rote of p{er}sel. pasternak of rases. scrape hem and waische he{m} clene. take rap{is} & caboch{is} ypared and icorne. take an erthen pa{n}ne w{i}t{h} clene wat{er}, & set it on the fire. cast all ise {er}inne. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... difficulties: sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it some of the main Church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote; sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of various dialects, and even by signs. On one occasion he tells us that a very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to China was delayed because, among ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... out some portion of the edifice more ancient than the rest, and when I asked him how he knew this, he said that he had learnt it from the archaeologists, who could read off such things like a book. This guide was a lively, quick-witted man, who did his business less by rote, and more with a vivacious interest, than any guide I ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... advantageous in it. He was little: his head was large and his legs small; his features were not disagreeable, but he was affected in his carriage and behaviour. All his wit consisted in expressions learnt by rote, which he occasionally employed either in raillery, or in love. This was the whole foundation of the merit of a man ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she bade them not think that they had needed this desire, if she had seen a time so fit; and it so ripe to be denounced. That the greatness of the cause, and the need of their return, made her say that a short time for so long a continuance ought not to pass by rote. That as cause by conference with the learned should show her matter worth utterance for their behoof, so she would more gladly pursue their good after her days, than with all her prayers while she lived ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... with a rollicking stave at lip, And loud is the chorus skirled; With the burly rote of his rumbling throat He batters it down ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... I love to hear your voice. An Esquimaux would feel himself getting civilized under it for there's sense in the very sound. A man's character speaks in his voice, even more than in his words. These he may utter by rote, but his 'voice is the man for a' that,' and betrays or divulges his peculiar nature. Do you like my voice, James? I ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... With gold and Selver to despende This worthi yonge lady sende: And thus sche made him wel at ese, And he with al that he can plese Hire serveth wel and faire ayein. He tawhte hir til sche was certein Of Harpe, of Citole and of Rote, With many a tun and many a note 830 Upon Musique, upon mesure, And of hire Harpe the temprure He tawhte hire ek, as he wel couthe. Bot as men sein that frele is youthe, With leisir and continuance This Mayde ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... of Loegria (England). With his consent he embarked, and after tossing for many days on the sea, was driven by the winds to the coast of Ireland. He landed, full of joy and gratitude that he had escaped the peril of the sea; took his rote,[Footnote: A musical instrument.] and began to play. It was a summer evening, and the king of Ireland and his daughter, the beautiful Isoude, were at a window which overlooked the sea. The strange harper was sent for, and conveyed to the palace, where, finding that he was in Ireland, whose champion ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... then, in the words of the prophet (Mic. vi. 9), 'The Lord's voice crieth to the city,' and to the country also, with an unusual and amazing loudness. Surely, it warns us to awaken out of all sleep, of security or stupidity, to arise, and take our Bibles, turn to, and learn that lesson, not by rote only, but by heart. 1 Pet. v. 8: 'Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom amongst you he may distress, delude, and devour.'... Awake, awake then, I beseech you, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Syllable: Singing by rote means that the singer sings something learned by ear without regard to notes. Singing by note means that the singer is guided to the correct pitch by visible notes. Singing by syllable means that the singer sings the tones of a song or part to the sol-fa syllables instead of to words, neutral vowels ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: For him her Old World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see Once ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of her mother's coquetry and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I knew she must have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nearly always alone, one has occasion to gauge the deep dreariness of human beings pure and simple, when, so to speak, the small, learnt-by-rote lessons of civilization, of kindness, graciousness, or intelligence, are not being called into play by common business or acquaintanceship. There, in the train, they sit in the elemental, native dreariness of their more practical, ungracious demand on ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... attend—the Legal School under the Old Dispensation, the Ecclesiastical School under the New—it has been taken for granted that he can neither discern what is true, nor desire what is good. The truth of things has therefore been formulated for him, and he has been required to learn it by rote and profess his belief in it, clause by clause. His duty has also been formulated for him, and he has been required to perform it, detail by detail, in obedience to the commandments of an all-embracing Code, or to the direction of ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the perplexing prohibition, "Thou shalt not commit doldrum." Ladies and gentlemen, I confess, also, that I don't like those schools, even though the instruction given in them be gratuitous, where those sweet little voices which ought to be heard speaking in very different accents, anathematise by rote any human being who does not hold what is taught there. Lastly, I do not like, and I did not like some years ago, cheap distant schools, where neglected children pine from year to year under an amount of neglect, want, and youthful ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... of pryde The moder and the feruent rote Of all the synnes at euery tyde Wherfore trede thou her vnder fote With helpe of vertue so swete and sote Whiche is best salue to hele thy sore And to thy helth ...
— The Example of Vertu - The Example of Virtue • Stephen Hawes
... appalled. A lot of things happen, mostly disagreeable, and then a mate comes looming up through the haze of pieces. So he goes away awestricken but unharmed, secretly believing that all chess-players are humbugs, and that intelligent chess, which is neither chancy nor rote-learned, is beyond the wit of man. But clearly this is an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the beginner can understand the beginning of the game he must surely understand the end; how can he commence playing until he knows what he is playing for? It is like starting ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... was a lazy learned man, who liked to think and talk, better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote. His long compound Latin phrases required less thought, and took up more room than others. What shews the facilities afforded by this style of imposing generalization, is, that it was instantly adopted with success by all those who were writers by profession, or who were not; and that ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... nature gets limited accordingly. I observed that all our young figure-painters were rendered, to all intents and purposes, blind by their knowledge of anatomy. They saw only certain muscles and bones, of which they had learned the positions by rote, but could not, on account of the very prominence in their minds of these bits of fragmentary knowledge, see the real movement, color, rounding, or any other subtle quality of the human form. And I was quite sure that if I examined the mountain ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius, For Cassius is a-weary of the world; 95 Hated by one he loves; brav'd by his brother; Check'd like a bondman; all his faults observ'd, Set in a note-book, learn'd, and conn'd by rote, To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger, 100 And here my naked breast; within, a heart Dearer than Plutus' mine, richer than gold: If that thou be'st a Roman, take it forth; I, that denied thee gold, will give ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... indigetes." The act of worship is grave and formal; it has to be done with precision and in strict accordance with the rules; silence is commanded; the sacrificer repeats the prayer proper for the occasion after some one who knows it by rote; the worshippers veil their heads. In this the Roman ritual is markedly different from the Greek. Mommsen says the Greek prayed bareheaded, because his prayer was contemplation, looking at and to the gods; and the Roman with head covered, because ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the fellow's words who handed it? I asked from whom it came, he spoke by rote, "The pepper bites, the corn is ripe for harvest, I come from Eisenach." 'T is ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... perfect morning, clear and crisp, and the long sunlit vista of Van Diemen's Avenue tempted us sorely. We went through our daily struggle. Those people who work by rote, who are herded in offices and factories, and who are compelled by the laws of their industries to remain at their posts whether the sun shines or not, often regard the lives of free lances like us as merely agreeable holidays; they would certainly be somewhat staggered ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... village had looked pityingly at her, and the judge had put his questions kindly; but for all that, she was no match for the bright intellects of the law. Lawyers are great men to simple folk; they can quote paragraph this and section that; they have learned such things by rote, ready to bring out at any moment. Oh, they are great men indeed. And apart from all this knowledge, they are not always devoid of sense; sometimes even not altogether heartless. Inger had no cause to complain of the court; she made no mention of the hare, but when ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... creating anxieties in which she had no share. Her paroxysms of exhilaration, followed by a gnawing sense of failure and uselessness, were known to her mother only as "wildness" and "low spirits," to be combated by needlework as a sedative, or beef tea as a stimulant. Mrs. Wylie had learnt by rote that the whole duty of a lady is to be graceful, charitable, helpful, modest, and disinterested whilst awaiting passively whatever lot these virtues may induce. But she had learnt by experience that ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... minds for eminent purposes would be folly. Even supposing they could be educated—which is scarcely supposable, for it would seem a contravention of Heaven's fiat—they could no more apply this learning, which would simply be by rote, than they could go to the moon. Such men are not unfrequently met with, and are designated, by common consent, learned fools. Nature points out the education they should receive. In like manner with those of higher and nobler attributes, educate them for their ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... March, O.S., his wife died. Why Sir John Hawkins should unwarrantably take upon him even to suppose that Johnson's fondness for her was dissembled (meaning simulated or assumed,) and to assert, that if it was not the case, 'it was a lesson he had learned by rote[688],' I cannot conceive; unless it proceeded from a want of similar feelings in his own breast. To argue from her being much older than Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not really love her, is absurd; for love is not a subject of reasoning, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... I havnt rote for some time I had such sore feet lately. When they broke up our regiment and sent me over to the artillery I thought I was goin to quit usin my feet. That ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... strong-box at the Fair the other day, while the three Englishmen hammered away in vain at Brother Jonathan Herring's. The Englishmen represented brute force. The Germans had been trained to appreciate principle. The Englishman "knows his business by rote and rule of thumb"—science, which would "teach him to do in an hour what has hitherto occupied him two hours," "is in a manner forbidden to him." To this cause the "Times" attributes the falling off of English workmen in comparison with those ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that Aprille with his shoures sote The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 5 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yong sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y ronne, And smale fowles maken ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sensation entirely my own. This was peculiarly so. It wrought strangely upon my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was replete with tenderness and with the most lively affection. I read and re-read till afraid I should get it by rote, and ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... adopted—"The prosperity of England depends on the Church of her people." He was not an orator. Indeed, it might be hard to find a man, who had for years been conversant with public life, less able to string a few words together for immediate use. Nor could he learn half-a-dozen sentences by rote. But he could stand up with unabashed brow and repeat with enduring audacity the same words a dozen times over—"The prosperity of England depends on the Church of her people." Had he been asked whether the prosperity which he promised was temporal or spiritual in its nature, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... he absorbed the matter at hand in the way he breathed, without the least conscious effort; or his interest remained unstirred, in which case no amount of mechanical application would help. Learning by rote offered no escape in the latter case, for his memory operated in the same way as the rest of his mind, sucking up what fitted it as a blotter sucks the ink, and presenting a surface of polished marble to any matter not germane according to its own ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... is in great part passed over. Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged in abnormal order: definitions and rules and principles being put first, instead of being disclosed, as they are in the order of nature, through the study of cases. And then, pervading the whole, is the vicious system of rote learning—a system of sacrificing the spirit to the letter. See the results. What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early thwarting, and a coerced attention to books—what with the mental confusion produced by teaching subjects before they can be understood, and in each of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of address, which is here distinguished by the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Hall one ouel Pease of Painted Glass In Chakers of yoler & Green & blew 10 yong Hedge frougs Two Pikse of Armse on Each Side W.B. there was in this Rote on y' Glass Lyfford but there is only now ford y' 3 fust Leters ar Broken & Lost oute One Pecs of y' Painted Glass in y' frount Chamber window as foloweth In a Surkel 6 flours of Luse 6 Red Lyans Traveling 4 Rede Roses 2 Purpul Roses With a ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... in this connection, therefore, is not, "Can children memorize?" but rather, "Are they capable of more than mechanical memorizing, or learning by rote? Can they think well enough to memorize largely through association of ideas, ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... the brightness and indistinctness of a trance. Our continuity of consciousness is broken, crumbles, and falls to pieces. We go on learning and forgetting every hour. Our feelings are chaotic, confused, strange to each other and ourselves.' But in time we learn by rote the lessons which we had to spell out in our youth. 'A very short period (from 15 to 25 or 30) includes the whole map and table of contents of human life. From that time we may be said to live our lives over again, repeat ourselves—the same thoughts return at stated intervals, like the tunes ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten times as much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could be reckoned in money's-worth. But after the attendant has hurried you from end to end of the edifice, repeating a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each successive hall of its poetic glamour and witchcraft by the mere tone in which he talks about it, you will make the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... brilliant scholars in the form. From now on she gave this talent full play, memorising even pages of the history book in her zeal; and before many weeks had passed, in all lessons except those in arithmetic—you could not, alas! get sums by rote—she was separated from Inez and Bertha by the width of ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... names that signifie nothing; but are taken up, and learned by rote from the Schooles, as Hypostatical, Transubstantiate, Consubstantiate, Eternal-now, and ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... worth the faire gemme vertulees! Wo worth that herbe also that dooth no bote! 345 Wo worth that beautee that is routhelees! Wo worth that wight that tret ech under fote! And ye, that been of beautee crop and rote, If therwith-al in you ther be no routhe, Than is it harm ye liven, by my ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... can do ill, but Euphrasia I thought few people could do well, and I feared I was not one of them. Moreover, the language is at once so poor and so bombastic that I took double the time in getting the part by rote I should have taken for any part of Shakespeare's. My dress was beautiful; I think I will tell it you. You know you told me even an account of hat and feathers would interest you. My skirt was made immensely full and with a long train; it was of white merino, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... days (the hot days of summer, and the cold days of winter), when we had to sit for hours on hard wooden benches, before uncomfortable desks, bending over grimy slates and ink-besprinkled "copy books," and poring over studies in which we took no interest—geography, which we learned by rote; arithmetic, which always evaded us, and grammar, which we never could master. We could repeat the "rules," but we could not "parse;" we could cipher, but our sums would not "prove;" we could rattle off the productions of Italy—"corn, wine, ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... dining-room. There, after we had partaken of the national "zakuska" preceded by a nip of vodka, he presided, sitting in the centre of the long table with General Pau, the senior foreign officer, generally on his right, and one of the other foreign officers taken by rote, or else a visitor, on his left. I understood that General Alexeieff had excused himself from these somewhat protracted repasts, on the ground that he really had not the time to devote to them; ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... not a member of any church, although her nature was deeply religious. Hers was the religion the soul inculcates, not that which is learned by rote in the temple. She was a Christian because she thought Christ the greatest figure in world history, and also because her own conduct of life was modelled upon Christian principles and virtues. She was religious for ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... Shakspeer rote good plase, but he wouldn't hav succeeded as a Washington correspondent of a New York daily paper. He lackt the rekesit ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... and sperit loved to grope around more and find out things to praise and blame by rote and not by note, and Dorothy and Robert Strong ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Veda) where his worship was extended more broadly. He seems to have become the special war-god of this family, and is consequently invoked with Indra and the Maruts (though this may have been merely in his rote as sun). The goats, his steeds, are also an attribute of the Scandinavian war-god Thor (Kaegi, Rig Veda, note 210), so that his bucolic character rests more in ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Northerton's remarks, "D—n Homo," etc.;[Sec.] but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... a scientific way, reasoning from cause to effect; I doubt if it dawned upon one of them that there was such an unheard-of accomplishment to be acquired. They were trying—if they were trying anything at all—to pick up modern science in the folk manner, by rote, as though it were a thing to be handed down by tradition. So at least I infer, not only from watching this particular class then and on other occasions, but also ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... power; and no one else, if he had such power, would dare to knock so loudly against the iron portals. Up! up! a man like him is worth a thousand of the scoundrels who come down hither every day by rote." Then, turning to the devil Leviathan, his favourite, he added, "I choose thee, the subtlest seducer, the deadliest hater of the human race, to ascend and purchase for me, by thy dangerous services, the soul of this desperado. Only thou canst chain, satiate, and then, drive to despair, his ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... than Kien, and verie white of woulle. Horses haue thei none, ne none desire, for that their Chamelles in al niedes serue them as well. Thei haue siluer and golde plentie, and diuerse kindes of spices, whiche other countries haue not. Laton, Brasse, Iron, Purple, Safron, the precious rote costus, and all coruen woorkes, are brought into theim by other. Thei bewrie their kyng in a donghille, for other thei wille skante take so muche laboure. There is no people that better kiepeth their promise and couenaunt, then ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... he said by rote, "you're well, and your parents also in good health. May I have the pleasure of dancing the cotillon as ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... with an earnest cheer, [E] The whilst the rest their anthem-book repeat The Alma Redemptoris did he hear; And as he durst he drew him near and near, And hearkened to the words and to the note, 70 Till the first verse he learned it all by rote. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... goanna, then you watch a while you see, Old goanna cure himself with eating little pfeller tree.' 'That's the cure,' said William Johnson, 'point me out this plant sublime,' But King Billy, feeling lazy, said he'd go another time. Thus it came to pass that Johnson, having got the tale by rote, Followed every stray ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... and Greek history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor memory. It was much the same, however, with English literature or social science or French, subjects that might be expected to awaken some response in the mind of a girl. The only subject that she really liked was dancing, which ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... is to make us have a mind to't To fret and vex at folly, as I do, is folly itself To give a currency to his little pittance of learning To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word To keep me from dying is not in your power To kill men, a clear and strong light is required To know by rote, is no knowledge To make little things appear great was his profession To make their private advantage at the public expense To smell, though well, is to stink To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die To what friend dare you intrust your griefs To whom no ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... easy learnt the art to talk by rote: At Nando's 'twill but cost you half a groat; The Redford school at three-pence is not dear, Sir; At White's—the stars instruct you for a tester. 21 But he, whom nature never meant to share One spark of taste, will never catch it there:— Nor no where else; howe'er the booby beau Grows great with ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... choirs the twittering race, That make a chorus with their single note; And tend on new-fledged birds in every place, That duly they may get their tunes by rote; And oft, like echoes, answering remote, We hide in thickets from the feather'd throng, And strain in rivalship each throbbing throat, Singing in shrill responses all day long, Whilst the glad truant listens ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... unemployed hours. They collected colored mosses, star-fish, and other marine curiosities; they sailed, fished, scampered over the rocks, drove over the beach at twilight, sang, danced, and bowled. And when weary of active amusement, they reclined on the grass and listened to the melancholy rote of the sea,—the steady pulsations of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... wunder Why I ever rote you this; I am sorry I am leevin Daddie needs me in his biz. I don't reely like this quiet Kind of sober farmer life; I like something allus doin, But for this, I'd be your wife. I got two of old Jim's bullets, Didn't like to let you know, Cause the one that you ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... rote, as she had learned from her mother, the ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... on the Continent: people who think that Beattie's Minstrel is our most modern and fashionable poem; that the Night Thoughts is the masterpiece of our literature; and that Richardson is our only novelist. Oh, no! Madame Carolina would not have disgraced May Fair. She knew Childe Harold by rote, and had even peeped into Don Juan. Her admiration of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews was great and similar. To a Continental liberal, indeed, even the Toryism of the Quarterly is philosophy; and not an Under-Secretary ever yet massacred a radical innovator without giving ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... song by rote; To each word a warbling note, Hand in hand with fairy grace Will we sing and ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... yesterday before the court,' no doubt," he interrupted, "and I remember perfectly that you were 'awakened only.' I could repeat the most of it by rote, indeed. But do you suppose that I believed you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man must serve his time to every trade, Save censure.—Critics all are ready made. Take hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A mind well skill'd to find or forge a fault, A turn for punning—call it Attic salt: Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a lucky hit, Shrink not from blasphemy, 'twill pass for wit, Care not for feeling,—pass your proper jest, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... an idea that you might, yourself, dislike it. You cannot doubt my sincere admiration, waving personal friendship for the present, which, by the by, is not less sincere and deep rooted. I have you by rote and by heart; of which 'ecce signum!' When I was at * *, on my first visit, I have a habit, in passing my time a good deal alone, of—I won't call it singing, for that I never attempt except to myself—but of uttering, to what I think tunes, your 'Oh breathe not,' 'When the last glimpse,' and 'When ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of judgments, and the arbitrators of rewards or punishments. The immunity which they enjoyed from war, allured many young men to enrol themselves in this order. Their education was a poetical one, for it was necessary to learn by rote several thousand verses, in which all the knowledge ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... some Paynim country. They were, as I surmise, of the same breed as those of whom the excellent John Milton wrote: "The sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." Alas! my memory is not what it was, for at one time I could say by rote whole books of that ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... endeavored to form your heart habitually to virtue and honor, before your understanding was capable of showing you their beauty and utility. Those principles, which you then got, like your grammar rules, only by rote, are now, I am persuaded, fixed and confirmed by reason. And indeed they are so plain and clear, that they require but a very moderate degree of understanding, either to comprehend or practice them. Lord Shaftesbury says, very prettily, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... ordained. He refers, behind the event, to the will that declares it. And yet, this will be no formal lifeless resignation. He will not be stripped of his manhood, or become unnatural in his religion. His resignation will not be the cold assent of reason, or the mere rote and repetition of the lips. No, it will be born in struggling and in sorrow. Religion is not a process that makes our nature callous to all fierce heats or drenching storms. Neither is he the most religious man who is calmest in the keen crisis of trouble. I say in the crisis of trouble-for to human ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... words had however decided him in the part he should take, making him sure that Colet was not controverting the formularies of the Church, but drawing out those meanings which in repetition by rote were well-nigh forgotten. It was as if his course were ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... holding the wheel when some straight stretch or clear, deep channel offered his master a chance to leave his post for a few minutes. For strain on the memory, his education is comparable only to the Chinese system of liberal culture, which comprehends learning by rote some tens of thousands of verses from the works of Confucius and other philosophers of the far East. Beginning at New Orleans, he had to commit to memory the name and appearance of every point of land, inlet, river or bayou mouth, "cut-off," light, plantation and hamlet on either bank of the river ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... teaching Filomena her large letters up to N, and making her say them by rote, and with that end in view have divided them into three portions—ABCD—EFG—ILMN. She manages all right, except that she always jumps E and L. Lesson closed: "Were you at church to-day, Filomena?" ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... haberdashery. He marked how this and that were done, and in what sort to fashion his visage and frame his phrases to this or that woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him: "Shopmen quite ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones can sell what ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... flute or the fiddle, he is altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of address, which is here distinguished by the name of ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... expands into elementary mathematics in the higher; into arithmetic, with a little algebra, a little Euclid. But I doubt if one boy in five hundred has ever heard the explanation of a rule of arithmetic, or knows his Euclid otherwise than by rote. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Alas, far times ago A woman lyred here In the evenfall; one who fain did so From year to year; And, in loneliness bending wistfully, Would wake each note In sick sad rote, None to ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... realising with a wonder beyond words how different it was. Every word, every glance between him and Betty had, hitherto, been part of a play. She had been a charming figure in a charming comedy. He had known, as it were by rote, that she had feelings—a heart, affections—but they had seemed pale, dream-like, just a delightful background to his own sensations, strong and conscious and delicate. Now for the first time he perceived her as real, a human being in the stress of a real human emotion. And he was conscious ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... in the afternoon, or only drinks with his meals, or only takes two or three drinks a day, usually is a liar, too—not always, but usually. There are some machine-like, non-imaginative persons who can do this—drink by rote or by rule; but not many. Now I do not say many men do not think they drink this way, but most of these men are ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... understood to be his education was simply the practice of reading, writing, and spelling, carried on by an elaborate appliance of unintelligible ideas, and by much failure in the effort to learn by rote. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... lesson in philosophy. In this course logic, morals and metaphysics were taught. Here the young persons handled, adjusted, and knocked about more or less adroitly the formula on God, nature, the soul and science they had learned by rote. Less scholastic, abridged, and made easy, this verbal exercise has been maintained in the lycees.[6219] Under the new regime, as well as under the old one, a string of abstract terms, which the professor thought he could explain and which the pupil thought he understood, involves young ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Chesholm Courier did not chronicle, concerning Miss Catheron's evidence—the formal, constrained manner in which it was given, like one who repeats a well-learned lesson by rote. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Wo worthe also your corrupte Iugement Wo worthe delyte in worldely rychesse Wo worthe bebate without extynguyshment Wo worthe your wordes so moche impacyent Wo worthe you vnto whome I dyde bote And wo worthe you that tere me at the rote ...
— The Conuercyon of swerers - (The Conversion of Swearers) • Stephen Hawes
... at folly, as I do, is folly itself To give a currency to his little pittance of learning To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word To keep me from dying is not in your power To kill men, a clear and strong light is required To know by rote, is no knowledge To make little things appear great was his profession To make their private advantage at the public expense To smell, though well, is to stink To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die To what friend dare you intrust ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... remarks, "D—n Homo," etc.;[Sec.] but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... book of artfully turned phrases; a book in which all the characters, especially women, would think and speak and act by rote and rule—as according to Mr. Peter Vibart; it would be a scholarly book, of elaborate finish and care of detail, with no irregularities of style or anything else to break the monotonous harmony of the whole—indeed, sir, it would be ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... years ago, was compelled to be familiar with the Genevan creed, as expressed in "The Shorter Catechism," but most little Presbyterians regarded that document as a necessary but unintelligible evil—the sorrow that haunted the Sabbath. I knew it by rote, Effectual Calling and all, but did not perceive that it possessed either meaning or actuality. Nobody was so unkind as to interpret the significance of the questions and answers; but somebody did ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her—as easy as to the most brilliant scholars in the form. From now on she gave this talent full play, memorising even pages of the history book in her zeal; and before many weeks had passed, in all lessons except those in arithmetic—you could not, alas! get sums by rote—she was separated from Inez and Bertha by the width ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... of piano recitals which take place yearly in the musical centers of Europe, only a comparatively small number are of real musical interest. In many cases it seems as though the players were merely repeating something learned by rote, in an unknown language; just as though I should repeat a poem in Italian. The words I might pronounce after a fashion, but the meaning of most of them would be a blank to me—so how could I make ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... that the Greeks borrowed the names of their gods from Egypt, but the gods themselves were entirely different ones. It is also true that some of the gods of the Romans were borrowed from the Greeks, but their life was left behind. They merely repeated by rote the Greek mythology, having no power to invent one for themselves. But the Greek religion they never received. For instead of its fair humanities, the Roman gods were only servants of the state,—a higher kind of consuls, tribunes, and lictors. The real Olympus of Rome was the Senate Chamber ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... correspondences between Sound and Number, and the attribution to these again of certain colors. The vibrations of sound and light, as air and ether, had intrinsic importance, it seemed, in the uttering of certain names; all of which, however, Spinrobin learnt by rote, making neither head nor ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... he had said the words, that she would have a theological objection to this view, and oppose it by rote; but there was nothing of disapproval in her mien; there was even a gleam of greater kindliness for him in her eye, and she said, not in answer, but as making a remark ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... "They can't be forged. We have no precedents to follow. Those chaps over there will know the thing by rote and probably would recognize the signatures more ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... she would have known, also, how to make room,—had it been her mind to do so. So he stood still over her, and she smiled at him. Such a smile! It was cold as death, flattering no one, saying nothing, hideous in its unmeaning, unreal grace. Ah! how I hate the smile of a woman who smiles by rote! It made Mr Palliser feel very uncomfortable,—but he did not ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... cause education to be concerned with any but one or two of the subjects which are included by Western peoples under that designation. It became at an early age, and remained for many centuries, a rote-learning of the elementary text-books, followed by a similar acquisition by heart of the texts of the works of Confucius and other classical writers. And so it remained until the abolition, in 1905, of the old competitive examination system, and the substitution of all that is ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... La Corriveau repeated by rote, as she had learned from her mother, the ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the times ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... you make of yourselves to God our Master and King. For that is the real thing you seek to do today, to give yourselves to God. This is your spiritual coming of age, in which you set aside your childish dependence upon teachers and upon taught phrases, upon rote and direction, and stand up to look your Master in the face. You profess a great brotherhood when you do that, a brotherhood that goes round the earth, that numbers men of every race and nation and country, that aims to bring God into all the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... but th as iS Several agent round her and tha ar interfer With mee eSpeSly William a StavSon he liveS her at enfield he Wanted mee to giv him one of you Sur klerS So he Wod be agent but i Wodent let hi m hav hit an he rote to you i SupoSe an haS got a Suplye of pillS an ar aruning a gant mee he iS Sell ing them at 20 centS a box i Want you to St op him if ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... Guiltlessness is a negative, sanctity is a positive state, and is acquired as the result of active correspondence with the will of God. In order that there may be this correspondence the will of God must be known, not merely as we know the things that we have learned by rote, but known in the sense of understood and appreciated. The will of God is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but it needs to be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be convinced of the importance of divine truth to him. We know that just ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the 17th of March, O.S., his wife died. Why Sir John Hawkins should unwarrantably take upon him even to suppose that Johnson's fondness for her was dissembled (meaning simulated or assumed,) and to assert, that if it was not the case, 'it was a lesson he had learned by rote[688],' I cannot conceive; unless it proceeded from a want of similar feelings in his own breast. To argue from her being much older than Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not really love her, is absurd; for love ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the two things differ so that we should refer the inheritance of eyes and noses to memory, while denying any connection between memory and gout? We may have a ghost of a pretence for saying that a man grew a nose by rote, or even that he catches the measles or whooping-cough by rote during his boyhood; but do we mean to say that he develops the gout by rote in his old age if he comes of a gouty family? If, then, rote and red-tape have nothing ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... tell him most exquisitely all their shape, colour, bigness, and particular marks? or of a gorgeous palace, an architect, who, declaring the full beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it were, by rote, all he had heard, yet should never satisfy his inward conceit, with being witness to itself of a true living knowledge; but the same man, as soon as he might see those beasts well painted, or that house well in model, should straightway grow, without need of any ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... things with Cooper the Purveyor, whose dullness in his proceeding in his work I was vexed at, and find that though he understands it may be as much as other men that profess skill in timber, yet I perceive that many things, they do by rote, and very dully. Thence home to dinner, whither Captain Grove came and dined with me, he going into the country to-day; among other discourse he told me of discourse very much to my honour, both as to my care and ability, happening at the Duke of Albemarle's table the other ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... story? All that I know now, so far as I could gather from your wife, poor soul, is of course inconceivable: that you went out one man and came home another. You will understand, my dear man, I am speaking, as it were, by rote. God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise. Oh, dear me, that man Hume—"on miracles"—positively amazing! So that too, please, you will be quite clear about. Credo—not quia impossible est, but because you, Lawford, have told me. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... you know, deep underground, Hid in your bed from sight and sound, Without a turn in temperature, With weather life can scarce endure, That light has won a fraction's strength, And day put on some moments' length, Whereof in merest rote will come, Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb; O crocus root, how do you know, ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... one another in hunting after the leaping Romeo. They call without the slightest impetus. One can imagine how the true Mercutio called—certainly not by rote. There must have been pauses indeed, brief and short-breath'd pauses of listening for an answer, between every nickname. But the nicknames were quick work. At the Lyceum they were quite an effort of memory: "Romeo! Humours! Madman! ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... Bridget, who confessed thrice a-year, and knew the marvellous histories of a dozen saints by rote. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... their equipment, have produced, by dint of skill and patience, work that is very passable. The women weave their own cloth on the native looms, and practice various other industries. The children are well trained in hospitality and public manners, which they learn by rote. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... addressing Scott himself, in 1818, if his story were not true. It thus follows that his mother knew the sixty-five stanzas of the ballad by heart. Does any one believe that, as a woman of seventy-two, she learned the poem to back Hogg's hoax? That he wrote the poem, and caused her to learn it by rote, so ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... good proficiency, but nothing worthy of note occurred in relation to his studies till he was about fifteen years of age. He then began to think, as he says. Before that time, he had repeated by rote whatever he had been taught. The first impulse to reflection was a new discovery. He had been taught from childhood that accent is a stress of voice laid on some syllable or letter of a word. But this definition had not been illustrated by an example, and the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... bones. Thus, unversed in the deeper phases of causation, men are hurried unprepared into ranks of a noble profession to struggle as best they may, through lack of deeper knowledge, with the serious symptoms of disease—at first by rote but later, are tempted to ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... voice. Note at times, in reading him, in the closing pages of the fifth book of The Republic for instance, the strange accumulation of terms derivative from the abstract verb "To be." As some more modern metaphysicians have done, even Plato seems to pack such terms together almost by rote. Certainly something of paradox may always be felt even in his [33] exposition of "Being," or perhaps a ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... lesson, that not one word of it could be extracted from her, even by the cowskin; nothing but piercing shrieks, enough to make my heart bleed, could the poor victim utter. Irritated at the child's want of capacity to repeat by rote what she could not understand, the old man darted from his seat, and struck her senseless to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... not skill enough to advise a diet sutable to diseases; a thing most necessary, as well in curing diseases as in preserving of health, and which requires a great insight into the nature of things; nor the true grounds and reasons of compounding, practising their way rather by rote then by rule; with better reason may a Brick-layer or Carpenter pretend to be a Mathematical, or a Common Fidler to be a Musick Reader in the Universities, or Gresham-College, since both these have the practical part of those Sciences, which Apothecaries ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... change that note To which fond love hath charm'd me, Long long to sing by rote, Fancying that that harm'd me: Yet when this thought doth come, 'Love is the perfect sum Of all delight,' I have no other choice Either for pen or ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... they ma find you as they leave me at present wich i av the lumbeigo vere Bad and no Go the doctor ses bob wot you no was in the ninth lansers he dide comen home so ive only fred left out of the ate. I rote to im fore munths agorne, but no anser, no doubt becos i cum to london soon arter, so no more ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... "I kep' thinkin' of the clack. Now," sez he, "I'm goin' to build a house by rote and not by note. I will git me away from wimmen, and when I'm on the lot with the timber before me, my mind will ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... family at home, and amused them by describing the town, with every part of which he was particularly acquainted. He could repeat all the observations that were retailed in the atmosphere of the play-houses, and had all the good things of the high wits by rote long before they made their way into the jest-books. The intervals between conversation were employed in teaching my daughters piquet, or sometimes in setting my two little ones to box to make them sharp, as he called it; but the hopes of having him for a son-in-law, in some measure ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... gymnastics and the romping plays must be alternated with quiet employments, of course, but still active. They will sing at their plays by rote; and also should be taught other songs by rote. But there can be introduced a regular drill on the scale, which should never last more than ten minutes at a time. This, if well managed, will cultivate their ears and voices, so that in the course ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... cultivating the sentiment of gratitude, as is the case in all other departments of moral training, can not be taught by definite lessons or learned by rote. It demands tact and skill, and, above all, an honest and guileless sincerity. The mother must really look to, and aim for the actual moral effect in the heart of the child, and not merely make formal efforts ostensibly for this end, ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... art I know, I the viol well can play; I the pipe and syrinx blow; Harp and geige my hand obey; Psaltery, symphony, and rote Help to charm the listening throng; And Armonia lends its note While ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... consented. He ran down the cliff to his boat, pushed out, and headed toward the rock, but a fisherman shouted that a gale was rising and the tide was coming in; indeed, the horizon was whitening and the rote was ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... riter ov th time, naimd Max Beerbohm, hoo woz stil alive in th twentieth senchri, rote a stauri in wich e pautraid an immajnari karrakter kauld "Enoch Soames"—a thurd-rait poit hoo beleevz imself a grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th Devvl in auder ter no wot posterriti thinx ov im! It iz a sumwot labud sattire but not without vallu az showing hou ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... (Cornhill); but in the following year, when Brembre succeeded to his mayoralty, and the so-called "king's party" was again in the ascendant, Philipot again appears as alderman of his old ward, continuing in office until his death (12 Sept., 1384), when he was succeeded by John Rote.—Letter Book H, fos. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... by rote; To each word a warbling note, Hand in hand with fairy grace Will we sing and bless ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... tunes should be enlarged. Learning a tune by note, without having previously heard it, was almost a mortal offence, and at last something like a compromise was effected in some of the churches, where alternate singing by rote and rule satisfied both parties. The ministers added to the general confusion with a flood of circulars on the subject. Several of them issued a tract entitled "Cases of Conscience about singing Psalms," ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... they had needed this desire, if she had seen a time so fit; and it so ripe to be denounced. That the greatness of the cause, and the need of their return, made her say that a short time for so long a continuance ought not to pass by rote. That as cause by conference with the learned should show her matter worth utterance for their behoof, so she would more gladly pursue their good after her days, than with all her prayers while she lived be a means to linger out her living thread. That for their comfort, she ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... was past all reason. Luckily, having written it, I had his part by rote; and so, snatching his Menelaus' wig and beard, I ran ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... grey day, adds that of ungovernable rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is made to understand him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, uninterruptedly, without a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, thinking of something else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent to the violence ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... be proper. But, as an honest man, I cannot possibly give my rote for it, until I have considered it more fully. I will not deny that our Constitution may have faults, and that those faults, when found, ought to be corrected; but, on the whole, that Constitution has been our own pride, and an object of admiration ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Billy we ben readn fairy tales, an I never see such woppers. I bet the feller wich rote em will be burnt every tiny little bit up wen he dies, but Billy says they are all true but the facks. Uncle Ned sed cude I tell one, and I ast him wot about, and he sed: "Wel Johnny, as you got to do the tellin I'le leav ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... his fibre, there was nothing advantageous in it. He was little: his head was large and his legs small; his features were not disagreeable, but he was affected in his carriage and behaviour. All his wit consisted in expressions learnt by rote, which he occasionally employed either in raillery, or in love. This was the whole foundation of the merit of a man so ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... At once the ravens were discarded, And magpies with their posts rewarded. Those fowls of omen I detest, That pry into another's nest. State lies must lose all good intent, For they foresee and croak th' event. My friends ne'er think, but talk by rote, Speak when they're taught, and so to vote. When rogues like these (a Sparrow cries) To honour and employment rise I court no favour, ask no place, From such, preferment is disgrace: Within my thatch'd retreat I find (What these ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... were not under the care of their teachers. Then we would have them read, or in turn sing a Psalm or a hymn, or learn some passage from a good book. We sang with them, and asked them questions in what they had been studying. They knew Gellert's songs by rote. There was nothing but peace and contentment in our circle. The servants never saw or heard anything unpleasant. Every little disturbance was hushed at once; and all the family felt the power of my wife in our household arrangements; and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... there are many examples of each in the Scriptures. As there was no definite notation among the ancient Hebrews, the actual tunes that were sung with these songs will never be known. But it may be possible that the melodies have been preserved by rote, for it is certain that these three schools of singing exist to-day in Arabia and Syria. Whole villages are known to unite in a seven-day festival of rejoicing, not unlike the one at the wedding of Samson, as described in ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... no 'Higher Law,' but thinks State Rights the Catechism; Which having learned by rote, he links ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... poor mind is always repeating itself, going by rote through the same train of words, ideas, actions; and that such a mind is neither interesting nor practical. It is not practical, because the circumstances of life are rarely exactly repeated, so that for a present purpose it is rarely enough to remember only one former case; ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... is better, therefore, not to entrust the people with the key of knowledge; for nothing is so useless as knowledge under an infallible Church. The matters which the Italian youth are taught they are taught by rote. "Ignorance is the mother of devotion,"—a maxim sometimes quoted with a sneer, but one which embodies a profound truth as regards that kind of devotion which is prevalent ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... to the nunnery, she wearied Olga, complaining of her unbearable misery, weeping, and feeling as she did so that she brought with her into the cell something impure, pitiful, shabby. And Olga repeated to her mechanically as though a lesson learnt by rote, that all this was of no consequence, that it would all pass and ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Arthur's time, says that accurate and unprejudiced observer the "Wife of Bath," the land was filled with fairies—NOW it is filled with friars as thick as motes in the beam of the sun. Among them there is the "Pardoner," i.e. seller of pardons (indulgences)—with his "haughty" sermons, delivered "by rote" to congregation after congregation in the self-same words, and everywhere accompanied by the self-same tricks of anecdotes and jokes,—with his Papal credentials, and with the pardons he has brought from Rome "all ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... any case that sequence of second prizes must have filled him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah! The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came he would show what was really in him. Too late ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... it is hardly possible, at least not near so easy as in Logic, to present the semblance of preparation by learning questions and answers by rote:—in the cant phrase of undergraduates, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... passed partly at Cockermouth, and partly with his maternal grandfather at Penrith. His first teacher appears to have been Mrs. Anne Birkett, a kind of Shenstone's Schoolmistress, who practised the memory of her pupils, teaching them chiefly by rote, and not endeavoring to cultivate their reasoning faculties, a process by which children are apt to be converted from natural logicians into impertinent sophists. Among his schoolmates here was Mary Hutchinson, who ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Crichton, rose; she made a step forward irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story, learnt by rote. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... surpassed by their grandfathers. Thus initiated they are qualified to deliver an opinion in public at a time of life when an English schoolboy could scarcely return an answer to a question beyond the limits of his grammar or syntax, which he has learned by rote. It is not a little unaccountable that this people, who hold the art of speaking in such high esteem, and evidently pique themselves on the attainment of it, should yet take so much pains to destroy the organs of speech in filing down and otherwise disfiguring their teeth; and likewise ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrook. The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. A parvis fiunt MINIMI. I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she envy it, & rote [? rout] us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come & try it. I heard she & you were made uncomfortable by some unworthy to be cared for attacks, and have tried to set up a feeble counteraction ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Where each calamity is groaning witness Of the poor martyr's faith. I never heard Of any true affection, but 'twas nipt With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats The leaves off the spring's sweetest book, the rose. Love, bred on earth, is often nursed in hell: By rote it reads woe, ere ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... wunnerful manner the french Waiters has of carryin a tray loded with drinkabels is worthy of the hippythep. He sez orlso has is name, hinsted of LHEROT, ort to be andid down to posterittory as 'L'HEROS'—wich word as rote down by hisself means 'The Hero.' He got a 1000 Franks, wich is rayther more nor wos ever got ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... in the rest: Foes to all living worth except your own, And advocates for folly dead and gone. Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is the rust we value, not the gold. Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learned by rote, And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote: One likes no language but the Faery Queen; A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green: And each true Briton is to Ben so civil, He swears the Muses met ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... silent, preoccupied, then, resting his chin on his hand and speaking in a curiously monotonous voice, as though repeating to himself by rote, ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... did with such absorption that when the group broke up, several hours later, Average Jones was committed, by plan and rote, to the new and hopeful ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and half in that species of despair which delights in self-torture—propounds them not altogether because he believes in the prophetic or demoniac character of the bird (which reason assures him is merely repeating a lesson learned by rote), but because he experiences a frenzied pleasure in so modelling his questions as to receive from the expected "Nevermore" the most delicious because the most intolerable of sorrow. Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, or, more strictly, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... bearing funeral offerings. She remonstrates with Electra for uselessly wailing, instead of adapting herself to her fate.—Elec. retorts that she has learned her lesson by rote. She advises to hate when there is strength to back hatred, yet she will not join in working revenge.—Electra covets not her choice of ease and wealth, and to be called her mother's child, while it is open to her to be her father's!—Cho. moderates: ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... ancient than the rest, and when I asked him how he knew this, he said that he had learnt it from the archaeologists, who could read off such things like a book. This guide was a lively, quick-witted man, who did his business less by rote, and more with a vivacious interest, than any guide I ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... resemblance to them, may be added logicians and sophisters, fellows that talk as much by rote as a parrot; who shall run down a whole gossiping of old women, nay, silence the very noise of a belfry, with louder clappers than those of the steeple; and if their unappeasable clamorousness were their only fault it would admit of some excuse; ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... his living—didn't he? He couldn't read all the books and find out about everything right off. But you bet he found out a lot, and he believes that after a fellow gets some rudiments of education he can learn more by studying in his own way and experimenting than by just learning by rote and rule. Maybe he's not altogether right about that, for education is mighty fine and I'd like to go to a technical school; Gus and I both are aiming for that, but we're going to read and study a lot our own way, too, and experiment; aren't we, Gus? Nobody can throw ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the searchlight of scientific inquiry upon him. His faults lie nearer the surface and are more easily detected than those of the white race. Let him not be overwhelmed when all his faults are observed, set in a note book, learned and conned by rote, to be cast into his teeth. If all the ugly facts about any people were brought to light they would furnish an unpleasant record. When the Savior told the woman of Samaria all that she ever did, a very unsavory career was disclosed. If all the misdeeds ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... as he willed it, she bethought her that Margot Poins was to go to a nunnery. That afternoon she had decided that Mary Trelyon, who was her second maid, should become her first, and others be moved up in a rote. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... about two months; then we are to go on by Nice, Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Naples, and so come back by—Italy." He had got up the first names by rote, and run them off glibly enough, but was evidently at fault about the last one. I fancy he had some vague idea of Austrian troops being quartered in these regions, and looked upon Hesperia in the light of an obscure state or ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... one ouel Pease of Painted Glass In Chakers of yoler & Green & blew 10 yong Hedge frougs Two Pikse of Armse on Each Side W.B. there was in this Rote on y' Glass Lyfford but there is only now ford y' 3 fust Leters ar Broken & Lost oute One Pecs of y' Painted Glass in y' frount Chamber window as foloweth In a Surkel 6 flours of Luse 6 Red Lyans Traveling 4 Rede Roses 2 Purpul Roses With a Croune a tope with 2 flours of Luse & A Crass ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... the truth, perfect beauty in both sexes is a more irresistible object than it is generally thought; for, notwithstanding some of us are contented with more homely lots, and learn by rote (as children to repeat what gives them no idea) to despise outside, and to value more solid charms; yet I have always observed, at the approach of consummate beauty, that these more solid charms only shine with that kind of lustre which the stars have after ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... anxious to kick up their lyric squalls. Not a bit of it, my hearty; for one reason—it don't pay; There is small demand, my TOMMY, for a DIBDIN in our day. Oh, I know that arter dinner your M.P.'s can up and quote Tasty tit-bits from old CHARLEY, which they all reel off by rote; But if there is a cherub up aloft to watch poor JACK, That there cherub ain't a poet,—bards are on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... from information communicated by them. And when he reflects that their answers, being clothed in their own words, guaranteed the fact, that it was the ideas upon which they had seized, and that their knowledge participated in no degree of rote, the conviction to his mind is irresistible, that the universal application of the Lesson System to Prison Discipline, and to adults everywhere, would be followed by effects, incalculably precious to the individuals themselves, and to the improving ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... marine, naval, maritime, nautical, Davy Jones, pelagic, pelagian, loom, looming, submarine, ultramarine, rote, frith, estuary, fiord, kraken, Triton, haliography, haliographer, hydrography, thalassography, marinorama, nereid, mirage, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... assches there offe, the coles wil duellen and abyden alle quyk, a zere or more. And that tre hathe many leves, as the gynypre hathe. And there ben also many trees, that of nature thei wole never brenne ne rote in no manere. And there ben note trees, that beren notes, als grete as a mannes hed. There also ben many bestes, that ben clept orafles. [Footnote: Giraffes.] In Arabye, thei ben clept gerfauntz; that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see Once more a ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... not the stoic lesson, got by rote, The pomp of words, and pedant dissertation, That can support us in the hour of terror. Books have taught cowards to talk nobly of it: But when the trial comes, they ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... so terrible a purpose! Steadily the oars click in the rowlocks; stroke after stroke of the broad blades draws him away from the lessening line of land, over the wavering floor of the ocean, nearer the lonely rocks. Slowly the coast-lights fade, and now the rote of the sea among the lonely ledges of the Shoals salutes his attentive ear. A little longer and he nears Appledore, the first island, and now he passes by the snow-covered, ice-bound rock, with the long buildings showing clear in the moonlight. He must have looked ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... must be studied, known, and well attended to; or we only follow the art blindly, and without certainty. Thence the common indifference of so many performers, who mind nothing more than a rote of the art, without tracing it ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... of reckoning,' 'a queen of fashion, 'to give a free hand,' 'to be at a deadlock,' and so forth; and in what particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in conversation. Failing these, he would adorn it with puns and other 'plays upon words' which he had learned by rote. As for the names of strangers which were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat them to himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would suffice to furnish him with explanations for which ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... which I heard repeated identically again and again, as if it were learned by rote: "The Germans had peacefully entered the land; boiling hot water was showered on them from upper stories; they were shot at from houses and hedges; many soldiers had thus been killed; the wells had been poisoned. Such acts of treachery had necessarily brought reprisals, etc., etc." It was ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... first is called addicio, e secunde is called subtraccio. The thryd is called duplacio. The 4. is called dimydicio. The 5. is called m{u}ltiplicacio. The 6 is called diuisio. The 7. is called extraccio of e Rote. What all ese spices ben{e} hit schall{e} be tolde singillati{m} in ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous
... of the child has indeed improved, but it has become somewhat fastidious. Only that which seems interesting and intelligible to the child impresses itself permanently; on the other hand, useless and unintelligible verses learned by rote, that persons have taught him, though seldom, for fun, are forgotten after a ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... poetrie, most liberall endowed with wisdome, fortitude, justice, and temperance, departed this life;"[243] and right well did he deserve this eulogy, for as an old chronicle says, he was "a goode clerke and rote many bokes, and a boke he made in Englysshe, of adventures of kynges and bataylles that had bene wne in the lande; and other bokes of gestes he them wryte, that were of greate wisdome, and of good learnynge, thrugh whych bokes ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... that blessed man born, For the ague to him we apply, Which judgeth with a bote; I beshrew his heart's rote That will trust him, and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... what liked him vary mutch and feel vary bad. fift Wee dont none of us ixpect to have no moar sutch good Times at the braker as wee did Befoar. sixt Wee aint scollers enougth to rite it down just what wee feel, but wee feel a hunderd times more an what weave got rote down. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... brought me balm: 'Twas but the tempest's central calm. Vague sinkings of the heart aver That dreadful wrong is come to her, And o'er this dream I brood and dote, And learn its agonies by rote. As if I loved it, early and late I make familiar with my fate, And feed, with fascinated will, On very dregs of finish'd ill. I think, she's near him now, alone, With wardship and protection none; Alone, perhaps, in the hindering stress Of airs that clasp him with her dress, They wander ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... first the old traditional curriculum, the learning by rote of the classics without explanation in early youth, followed by a more intelligent study in later years. This is exactly like the traditional study of the classics in this country, as it existed, for example, in the eighteenth century. Men over thirty, even if, in the end, they ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... the Ground as I was, and retired a Space, I know not whither, but methinks he walked hastilie to and fro. Thus I remained, agonized in Tears, unable to recal one Word of the humble Appeal I had pondered on my Journey, or to have spoken it, though I had known everie Syllable by Rote; yet not wishing myself, even in that Suspense, Shame, and Anguish, elsewhere than where I was cast, at mine ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... words in a strange, semi-mechanical manner; very much as if she had learned the sentence by rote, and were repeating it without knowing what ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... attendant upon the repetition of some performance by one who has done it very often before, but who requires just a little prompting to set him off, on getting which, the whole familiar routine presents itself before him, and he repeats his task by rote. Surely then we are justified in suspecting that there must have been more bona fide personal recollection and experience, with more effort and failure on the part of the infant ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... courte, and stode where the kynge shulde passe by: By and by the kynge knewe hym, and called hym to hym. Conon stepte to the kynge and presented his rote with a gladde chere. And the kynge toke it more gladly, and bad one, that was nerest to hym, to laye it vp amonge those iewels that he best loued; and than commaunded Conon to dyne with hym. Whan dyner was done, he thanked Conon: and whan the kyng sawe that he wolde departe home, he commaunded to ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... the successor of the inventor discovered the defect of this instruction, which was purely mechanical and acquired by rote. He thought he perceived this defect in the concrete verb, in which the deaf and dumb, seeing only a single word, were unable to distinguish two ideas which are comprehended in it, that of affirmation and that of quality. He thought he perceived ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds, Or crazy rules to make us wits by rote, Last just as long as every cuckoo's note: What bungling, rusty tools are used by fate! 'Twas in an evil hour to urge my hate, My hate, whose lash just Heaven has long decreed Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed: When man's ill genius to my presence sent ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... in a fatherly tone, "lemme tell you something. While I've been a-roostin' up here in my perch, I've been a-watchin' you boys; a-watchin' an' a-worryin'. What have you been a-doin'? You've been a-raisin' hell, you have. Son, you ain't a rote a word, have yer? An' you, Whinney—boy, you ain't ketched a bug nor a beetle, have yer? And you, ole Swanko-panko, you ain't drawed a line, ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... played by rote; Stephen by thought. It was the cruellest thing to checkmate him after so much labour, she considered. What was she dishonest enough to do in her compassion? To let him checkmate her. A second game followed; and being herself absolutely indifferent as to the result (her playing was above ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... not to permit such pupils to graduate into the high school. Indeed, algebra, Caesar, and Greek history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor memory. It was much the same, however, with English literature or social science or French, subjects that might be expected to awaken some response in the mind of a girl. The only subject that she really liked was dancing, ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... think that Beattie's Minstrel is our most modern and fashionable poem; that the Night Thoughts is the masterpiece of our literature; and that Richardson is our only novelist. Oh, no! Madame Carolina would not have disgraced May Fair. She knew Childe Harold by rote, and had even peeped into Don Juan. Her admiration of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews was great and similar. To a Continental liberal, indeed, even the Toryism of the Quarterly is philosophy; and not an Under-Secretary ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the successes, whether solid or specious, with which he has been credited. In the first place, judged by the standards of modern missions, the superficiality of his work was {409} almost inconceivable. He never mastered one of the languages of the countries which he visited. He learned by rote a few sentences, generally the creed and some phrases on the horrors of hell, and repeated them to the crowds attracted to him by the sound of a bell. He addressed himself to masses rather than to individuals and he regarded the culmination of his work as being merely ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... he had bled the patient, as he would have bled, by rote, to recall to life one actually cut down from the beam. But, although the young blood did flow, bearing testimony to the fact that the heart still beat in that deathlike frame, the vitality left seemed so faint as to defy the power ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... his tone! I could scarcely interpret it. Was he talking by rote, or was he utterly done with life and all its interests? No one besides myself seemed to note this strange passivity. To the masses he was no longer a suffering man, but an individual from whom information was to be got. The next question was a ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... three methods is by far the best, whether the memory desired be rote or logical, for several reasons. In the first place it involves both the other methods or goes beyond them. Second, it is economical, for the learner knows when he knows the lesson. Third, it is sure, for it establishes connections ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... we had fallen into an ambuscade of savages in some Paynim country. They were, as I surmise, of the same breed as those of whom the excellent John Milton wrote: "The sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." Alas! my memory is not what it was, for at one time I could say by rote whole books of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... override that of the Governor himself, yielded so far as to allow the father to see his daughter, on condition that he spoke to no other English prisoner. He spoke to her for an hour, exhorting her never to forget her catechism, which she had learned by rote. The Governor and his wife afterwards did all in their power to procure her ransom, but ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... cannot be an actress; I cannot resign my real self for that vamped-up hypocrite before the lamps. Out on those stage-robes and painted cheeks! Out on that simulated utterance of sentiments learned by rote and practised before the looking-glass till every gesture ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had been reduced to a regular science, and that the forms and models of the vessels built there were determined by fixed mathematical principles, which every skillful and intelligent workman was expected to understand and to practice upon; whereas in Holland the carpenters worked by rote, each new set following their predecessors by a sort of mechanical imitation, without being governed by any principles or ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... greatest disadvantage of this method is that it does not give the student the best kind of training. What he needs most in life is the ability to arrange and present ideas rapidly, not to speak a part by rote. ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... the silence of all the rest. El Safy stood up, and was rigid. There ensued a passionless flow of question and answer. The Old Man murmured to the roof, scarcely moving his lips; El Safy answered by rote, not moving any other muscles but his jaw's. As for the Assassins, they stayed squat against the walls, as if they had ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... don't speke wun word tu a livin sole bout this coz I don't want nobodi tu kno i hav got enny mony. yu wont now wil yu. i am first rate heer, only that gude fur nuthin snipe of liz madwurth is heer yit—but i hop tu git red ov her now. yu no i rote yu bout her. give my luv to awl inquiren friends. this is from your sister til ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Welt. Im wallend weien Gewande Wandelt' er riesengro ber Land und Meer; 10 Es ragte sein Haupt in den Himmel, Die Hnde streckte er segnend ber Land und Meer; Und als ein Herz in der Brust Trug er die Sonne, 15 Die rote, flammende Sonne; Und das rote, flammende Sonnenherz Go seine Gnadenstrahlen Und sein holdes, liebseliges Licht, Erleuchtend und wrmend 20 ber Land ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... other populists, you'll note, Of views enthusiastic, He'd learned by heart, and said by rote A creed iconoclastic; And in his dim, uncertain sight Whatever wasn't must be right, From which it follows he had strong Convictions that what was, ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... crieth to the city,' and to the country also, with an unusual and amazing loudness. Surely, it warns us to awaken out of all sleep, of security or stupidity, to arise, and take our Bibles, turn to, and learn that lesson, not by rote only, but by heart. 1 Pet. v. 8: 'Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom amongst you he may distress, delude, and devour.'... Awake, awake then, I beseech you, and remain no longer under the dominion of that prince of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... gets to know the instruction by rote is not bothered by extreme detail. On the contrary, he grasps it at a glance, and focuses his mind upon any new feature and upon the speed and exactness of muscular action needed for ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... the girl. "Don Fernando—Majesty?" Yet a third time she repeated it, as by rote; and, very slowly, understanding grew into the words, and with understanding, terror. The dark innocent eyes went appealingly from one to the other, and the lids began to flutter wildly in a kind of spasm. "Majesty? Majesty?" Then, suddenly, she ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... from the village had looked pityingly at her, and the judge had put his questions kindly; but for all that, she was no match for the bright intellects of the law. Lawyers are great men to simple folk; they can quote paragraph this and section that; they have learned such things by rote, ready to bring out at any moment. Oh, they are great men indeed. And apart from all this knowledge, they are not always devoid of sense; sometimes even not altogether heartless. Inger had no cause ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... of religious mysteries, the framers of laws, the pronouncers of judgments, and the arbitrators of rewards or punishments. The immunity which they enjoyed from war, allured many young men to enrol themselves in this order. Their education was a poetical one, for it was necessary to learn by rote several thousand verses, in which all the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his 'Natural Theology,' gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the academical course which, as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself about Paley's premises; and taking these on trust, I was charmed and convinced by the long line of argumentation. ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... "Pyramus and Thisbe" has a special dedication to the Head Master, Lambert Osbalston. As schoolboy, Cowley tells us that he read the Latin authors, but could not be made to learn grammar rules by rote. He was a candidate at his school in 1636 for a scholarship at Cambridge, but was not elected. In that year, however, he went to Cambridge and ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... This passage is "rote sarcustic." But surely Dr. Munro will not, he cannot, argue that Mr. Bruce was "an unconscious thought-reader" when he "cleared out" the interior of the canoe, and found three disputed objects "in ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... the richest dresses, the most imposing ceremonies, could confer on it; yet it fell short in effect of the simplicity of the Presbyterian worship. The devotion in which every one took a share seemed so superior to that which was recited by musicians as a lesson which they had learned by rote, that it gave the Scottish worship all the advantage of reality ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... depress it. For this reason Flyblow (who is received in all the families in town through the degeneracy and iniquity of their manners) is to be treated like a knave, though he is one of the weakest of fools: he has by rote, and at second-hand, all that can be said of any man of figure, wit, and virtue in town. Name a man of worth, and this creature tells you the worst passage of his life. Speak of a beautiful woman, and this puppy ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the same unconscious manner; for he stood observing Bertha with an anxious wondering face, that never ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... off reading by rote and Reb' Lebe began to reveal the mysteries to us, I was so eager to know all that was in my book that the lesson was always too short. I continued reading by the hour, after the rebbe was gone, though I understood about one word in ten. My favorite Hebrew reading ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... 'em before he died, "Wherever you are, whatever betide, Every year as the time draws near By lot or by rote choose you a goat, And let the high priest confess on the beast The sins of the people, the worst and the least. Lay your sins on the goat! Sure the plan ought to suit yer, Because all your sins are "his troubles" in future. Then lead him away to the wilderness black To die with ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... family (to which is ascribed the sixth book of the Rig Veda) where his worship was extended more broadly. He seems to have become the special war-god of this family, and is consequently invoked with Indra and the Maruts (though this may have been merely in his rote as sun). The goats, his steeds, are also an attribute of the Scandinavian war-god Thor (Kaegi, Rig Veda, note 210), so that his bucolic character rests more in his goad, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... woman, fidgeting about on her seat, watching with craned neck those who stuffed their way within the already crammed room, her eyes never still, her lips moving constantly, as though mumbling some never-ending rote. Fairchild stared at her, ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... that I was actually present in those scenes; they are impressed upon me with such an astonishing air of fidelity." While, on the one hand, he never repeated the words that had to be delivered phlegmatically, or as by rote; on the other hand, he never permitted voice, look, gesture, to pass the limits of discretion, even at moments the most impassioned; as, for example, where Nancy, in the famous murder-scene, shrieked forth her last gasping and despairing appeals to her ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... and euydence Howe youthe which is nat norysshed in doctryne. In age is gyuen vnto al Inconuenyence. But nought shall make youthe soner forto inclyne. To noble maners: nor Godly dysciplyne: Than shal the doctryne of a mayster wyse and sad: For the rote of vertue and wysdome ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... results will flow from it at present not anticipated by 'statesmen,' who know little or nothing about the hard matter-of-fact conditions under which trade is carried on, and who are assiduously primed by underlings with statistics which they repeat by rote, and as to the real value or signification of which they are completely and hopelessly ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... maintained the right, Through storm and shine, in the world's despite; When fools or quacks desired his vote, Dosed him with arguments learned by rote, 20 Or by coaxing, threats, or promise tried To gain his support to the wrong side, "Nay, nay," said John with an angry frown, "Your coin is spurious—nail ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... a kind attendant will so reassure the subject that it will become resigned to unnatural confinement, in a day or two. This precaution may, in itself, determine the outcome, and the wise veterinarian will not overlook this feature or fail to deviate from the usual rote in the handling of average cases. Recovery may be brought about in irritable subjects by this concession to the ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... opinyon: I don't think Cap. Dhryfuss wr-rote th' borderoo. I think he was th' on'y man in Fr-rance that didn't. But I ain't got as high an opinyon iv th' Cap as I had. I ain't no purity brigade; but, th' older I get, th' more I think wan wife's enough f'r anny man, an' too manny f'r some. They ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... myself, without reluctance, in these gloomy thoughts; but at length, the dejection which they produced became insupportably painful. I endeavoured to dissipate it with music. I had all my grand-father's melody as well as poetry by rote. I now lighted by chance on a ballad, which commemorated the fate of a German Cavalier, who fell at the siege of Nice under Godfrey of Bouillon. My choice was unfortunate, for the scenes of violence and carnage ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... thought of folly Ravidus (poor churl!) Upon my iambs thus would headlong hurl? What good or cunning counsellor would fain Urge thee to struggle in such strife insane? Is't that the vulgar mouth thy name by rote? 5 What will'st thou? Wishest on any wise such note? Then shalt be noted since my love so lief For love thou ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... honest, bold, free and successful fellows. I am dwindling into a whining, submissive, crouching, very humble, yes if you please, no thank you Madam, dangler! I have been to school! Have had my task set me! Must learn my lesson by rote, or there is a rod in pickle for me! Yes! I! That identical Clifton; that bold, gay, spirited fellow, who has so often vaunted of and been admired for his daring! You may meet me with my satchel at my back; not with a shining, but a whindling, lackadaisy, green-sickness ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... In the fore noon I went to meting & heard Mr. Eals his text was in the 5th Chapter of James 16th verse a good sermon I rote a letter & sent home & in the after ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... Gewande Wandelt' er riesengro ber Land und Meer; 10 Es ragte sein Haupt in den Himmel, Die Hnde streckte er segnend ber Land und Meer; Und als ein Herz in der Brust Trug er die Sonne, 15 Die rote, flammende Sonne; Und das rote, flammende Sonnenherz Go seine Gnadenstrahlen Und sein holdes, liebseliges Licht, Erleuchtend und wrmend 20 ber ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... boy's (Bob's) cookery language, and Madame Le Roi's: What with fillets of roses, and fillets of veal, Things garni with lace, and things garni with eel, One's hair, and one's cutlets both en papillote, And a thousand more things I shall ne'er have by rote, I can scarce tell the difference, at least as to phrase, Between beef a la Psyche and curls a la braise.— But, in short, dear, I'm trick'd out quite a la Francaise, With my bonnet—so beautiful!—high up and poking, Like things that are put to ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... visage and frame his phrases to this or that woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him: "Shopmen quite ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... is learned more available for future use. Our previous studies of learning thus lead us to inquire whether committing to memory may not consist partly in rehearsing what we wish to learn, and partly in observing it. Learning by rote, or by merely repeating a performance over and over again, is, indeed, a fact; and observant study is also ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... is wot my french frend calls a 'Tray bong Gassong,' and the wunnerful manner the french Waiters has of carryin a tray loded with drinkabels is worthy of the hippythep. He sez orlso has is name, hinsted of LHEROT, ort to be andid down to posterittory as 'L'HEROS'—wich word as rote down by hisself means 'The Hero.' He got a 1000 Franks, wich is rayther more nor wos ever got ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... New—it has been taken for granted that he can neither discern what is true, nor desire what is good. The truth of things has therefore been formulated for him, and he has been required to learn it by rote and profess his belief in it, clause by clause. His duty has also been formulated for him, and he has been required to perform it, detail by detail, in obedience to the commandments of an all-embracing Code, or to the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... think that they had needed this desire, if she had seen a time so fit; and it so ripe to be denounced. That the greatness of the cause, and the need of their return, made her say that a short time for so long a continuance ought not to pass by rote. That as cause by conference with the learned should show her matter worth utterance for their behoof, so she would more gladly pursue their good after her days, than with all her prayers while she lived be a means to linger out ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... he cannot see through a milestone yet, he can see farther into one than his neighbours. Indeed his neighbours cannot see into a milestone at all, but only see the outside of it, and know things only by rote, like parrots, without understanding what they mean and how they ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... as you are caught in the noose of love it is one of worth and merit that has taken you, and one that has not only the four S's that they say true lovers ought to have, but a complete alphabet; only listen to me and you will see how I can repeat it by rote. He is to my eyes and thinking, Amiable, Brave, Courteous, Distinguished, Elegant, Fond, Gay, Honourable, Illustrious, Loyal, Manly, Noble, Open, Polite, Quickwitted, Rich, and the S's according to the saying, and then Tender, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of address, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... rowlocks; stroke after stroke of the broad blades draws him away from the lessening line of land, over the wavering floor of the ocean, nearer the lonely rocks. Slowly the coast-lights fade, and now the rote of the sea among the lonely ledges of the Shoals salutes his attentive ear. A little longer and he nears Appledore, the first island, and now he passes by the snow-covered, ice-bound rock, with the long buildings showing clear in the moonlight. He must have looked at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... to sit for hours on hard wooden benches, before uncomfortable desks, bending over grimy slates and ink-besprinkled "copy books," and poring over studies in which we took no interest—geography, which we learned by rote; arithmetic, which always evaded us, and grammar, which we never could master. We could repeat the "rules," but we could not "parse;" we could cipher, but our sums would not "prove;" we could rattle off the productions ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... April with his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour Of which vertue engendred is the flour; When Zephyrus eke with his sote brethe Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppes—and the yonge Sonne Hath in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... he willed it, she bethought her that Margot Poins was to go to a nunnery. That afternoon she had decided that Mary Trelyon, who was her second maid, should become her first, and others be moved up in a rote. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... wickedness. There was nothing plausible about him. His voice was harsh. Treachery was written in all the lines of his yellow face. He had no invention, no presence of mind, and could do little more than repeat by rote the lies taught him ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... many who have been two years at the work. I have always said that it is a mistake to teach children young; their minds do not take in what you say to them. You may beat it into them, but they only get it by rote; and painfully, because they don't understand how one thing leads to another, and it is their memory only, and not their minds, ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... grateful coolness. The air seemed full of half-vibrations, sub-noises, that crowded it as completely as do the insect sounds of midsummer; yet she could only distinguish the ripple beneath her feet, and the rote on the distant beach, and the busy wash of waters against every shore and islet of the bay. The mist was thick around her, but she knew that above it hung the sleepless stars, and the fancy came over her that perhaps ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... before the successor of the inventor discovered the defect of this instruction, which was purely mechanical and acquired by rote. He thought he perceived this defect in the concrete verb, in which the deaf and dumb, seeing only a single word, were unable to distinguish two ideas which are comprehended in it, that of affirmation and that of quality. He thought he perceived also that defect in the expression of the qualities, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... is learned by rote, And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote: One likes no language but the 'Faery Queen'; A Scot will fight for 'Christ's Kirk o' ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... village potentate or Brummagem magnate. The word occurs in S. Foote's farrago of nonsense, which he wrote to test the memory of old Macklin, who said in a lecture "he had brought his own memory to such perfection that he could learn anything by rote on once ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... that science, when most rightly applied and best understood, can do no more but teach us prudence, moral honesty, and resolution, they thought fit, at first hand, to initiate their children with the knowledge of effects, and to instruct them, not by hearsay and rote, but by the experiment of action, in lively forming and moulding them; not only by words and precepts, but chiefly by works and examples; to the end it might not be a knowledge in the mind only, but its complexion and habit: not an acquisition, but a natural possession. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Of course he spoke with a conventional sense of duty only, for that sort of wondering had not been unknown to himself in bygone days. And as he looked at the unpracticed mouth and lips, he thought that such a daughter of the soil could only have caught up the sentiment by rote. She went on peeling the lords and ladies till Clare, regarding for a moment the wave-like curl of her lashes as they dropped with her bent gaze on her soft cheek, lingeringly went away. When he was gone she stood awhile, thoughtfully peeling the last bud; and then, awakening from ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... of the presence-chamber, and of the canopy to shade the fauteuil which aped a throne, made me smile. All the world is a stage, thought I; and few are there in it who do not play the part they have learnt by rote; and those who do not, seem marks set up to be pelted at by fortune, or rather as sign-posts which point out the road to others, whilst forced to stand still themselves amidst the ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... rob. Rade, rode. Raep, a rope. Ragweed, ragwort. Raibles, recites by rote. Rair, to roar. Rairin, roaring. Rair't, roared. Raise, rase, rose. Raize, to excite, anger. Ramfeezl'd, exhausted. Ramgunshoch, surly. Ram-stam, headlong. Randie, lawless, obstreperous. Randie, randy, a scoundrel, a rascal. Rant, to rollick, to roister. Rants, merry meetings; rows. Rape, v. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... authority, by an enlightened yet strictly orthodox Parsi, that there is hardly a man or a woman who could give an account of the faith that is in them. 'The whole religious education of a Parsi child consists in preparing by rote a certain number of prayers in Zend, without understanding a word of them; the knowledge of the doctrines of their religion being left to be picked up from casual conversation.' A Parsi, in fact, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... worst had brought me balm: 'Twas but the tempest's central calm. Vague sinkings of the heart aver That dreadful wrong is come to her, And o'er this dream I brood and dote, And learn its agonies by rote. As if I loved it, early and late I make familiar with my fate, And feed, with fascinated will, On very dregs of finish'd ill. I think, she's near him now, alone, With wardship and protection none; Alone, perhaps, in the hindering stress Of airs that clasp ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... "Wife of Bath," the land was filled with fairies—NOW it is filled with friars as thick as motes in the beam of the sun. Among them there is the "Pardoner," i.e. seller of pardons (indulgences)—with his "haughty" sermons, delivered "by rote" to congregation after congregation in the self-same words, and everywhere accompanied by the self-same tricks of anecdotes and jokes,—with his Papal credentials, and with the pardons he has brought from Rome "all hot,"—and with ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... him—that was only natural. In a few days, now, when the shock of the sensation had worn off, things would be different. They would forgive him for breaking a sort of unuttered communal law, but one hallowed, as it were, by rote and custom. He vaguely comprehended that there might be such a law for his case—a canon of procedure which, unnatural in itself, had come with the passage of the passing years to ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Abigiel hes under Rote me by saying it is veri Disagria bell to Hur to Expose to the World the miseris & Calamatis of a Distractid famely, and I think as much for hur Father & mother to Witt Stephen deming & his wife acts very much like Distractid or BeWicht & I believe both, for the truth of this I will apell ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... little realm of Wanless went on its diurnal course. Luncheon was served at two by a trembling parlour-maid; the coffee was set in the hall, the cigar-box, the spirit-flame. Frodsham came for orders, Mr. Menzies reported Glyde absent without leave. These things were done by rote: yet the whole house knew the facts. Sanchia, dining in the middle of the day, plied her knife and fork with composure. It was her way to face facts once for all, tussle with them, gain or lose, and be done with them. She had been angry with ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... one of signal and disgraceful defeat. In any case that sequence of second prizes must have filled him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah! The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came he would show what was really in him. Too late he recognised his error, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... expected to find him excited after the events of the past night, but instead he was intent only upon committing a portion of the Latin grammar to memory, learning by rote as children did ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... mind and sperit loved to grope around more and find out things to praise and blame by rote and not by note, and Dorothy and ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... had been art instead of nature, something by rote instead of a segment of inner harmony, she could not have succeeded so well. He warded off the few blunders, and at the third change she had another well-bred partner. But she was glad to get back to him. The joy shone in her ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... yielded so far as to allow the father to see his daughter, on condition that he spoke to no other English prisoner. He spoke to her for an hour, exhorting her never to forget her catechism, which she had learned by rote. The Governor and his wife afterwards did all in their power to procure her ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... seen an elephant or a rhinoceros, who should tell him most exquisitely all their shapes, colour, bigness, and particular marks; or of a gorgeous palace, the architecture; with declaring the full beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it were by rote, all he had heard, yet should never satisfy his inward conceits, with being witness to itself of a true lively knowledge: but the same man, as soon as he might see those beasts well painted, or the house well in model, should ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... her chief might misconstrue any suggestion from her as an act of impertinence, Miss Perkins, having learned all the company's cut-glass quotations by rote, could easily have supplied the remainder of the letter. As it was, she waited impatiently, tapping the corner of the desk with her idle pencil. Jimmy turned at the sound, and glanced at the pencil with unmistakable disapproval. Miss Perkins waited in silence. After one or two more uneasy ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... actions, nor distinguished rank, to set him off; and as for his fibre, there was nothing advantageous in it. He was little: his head was large and his legs small; his features were not disagreeable, but he was affected in his carriage and behaviour. All his wit consisted in expressions learnt by rote, which he occasionally employed either in raillery, or in love. This was the whole foundation of the merit of a man so ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... dates, and for learning by rote; but good in retaining a general or vague recollection of many facts. R.D.—Wonderful memory for dates. In old age he told a person, reading aloud to him a book only read in youth, the passages which were coming— knew the birthdays and death, etc., ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... to the portent of a puggaree which, perhaps, he wears on a grey day, adds that of ungovernable rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is made to understand him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, uninterruptedly, without a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, thinking of something else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent to the violence ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... as a memento. Unthinkingly the girl consented. He ran down the cliff to his boat, pushed out, and headed toward the rock, but a fisherman shouted that a gale was rising and the tide was coming in; indeed, the horizon was whitening and the rote was ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... talk by rote; Thy farewells array the West; Fur that clasped thee round the throat Leaps—a squirrel—to its nest! Backward from a sparkling eye Half-forgotten jests return Where the rabbit lollops by ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... or three o'clock in the afternoon, or only drinks with his meals, or only takes two or three drinks a day, usually is a liar, too—not always, but usually. There are some machine-like, non-imaginative persons who can do this—drink by rote or by rule; but not many. Now I do not say many men do not think they drink this way, but most of these men ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... ein starker Mann, Jetzt lief er gewaltig Dietrichen an; Er schlug ihm eine Wunde durch seinen Eisenhut, Dass man hernieder rinnen ihm sah das rote Blut. 20 ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... quickly fascinated by the professor of mental and moral philosophy, a delicate-looking young college graduate. She worked very hard, studying her lessons far into the night, memorizing long lists of names, dates, maxims, learning by rote whatever was contained in those ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... to names that signifie nothing; but are taken up, and learned by rote from the Schooles, as Hypostatical, Transubstantiate, Consubstantiate, Eternal-now, and the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... courage is but a holiday kind of a virtue, to be seldom exercised, as experience will teach you. You need firmness to resist all kinds of attacks. You need good-nature, and yet you must repel temptation with a look as black as Erebus. You need affability, yet you must speak almost by rote, and the opportunities to keep from speaking outnumber the exigencies in which you must speak by ten to one. You must be tender, and yet you must be cruel as a surgeon. Without these opposites well balanced in your character, you will not fight the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... from his writhing throat, Those hellish instruments have haply drawn, And pain hath conn'd the aspish lies by rote; But to my heart no poison'd tooth hath gnawn, For in ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... readily be seen that there was nothing to cause education to be concerned with any but one or two of the subjects which are included by Western peoples under that designation. It became at an early age, and remained for many centuries, a rote-learning of the elementary text-books, followed by a similar acquisition by heart of the texts of the works of Confucius and other classical writers. And so it remained until the abolition, in 1905, of the old competitive examination system, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... disparting Poland? We have seen, say, a million of Frenchmen, and nearly the same of Italians, since then, with a dozen or so of kings and emperors,—but never the faintest likeness to those deluding pictures. We learned at the same time, by painful rote, the population of various capital cities; but we cannot find in any statistic-book gazetteer, neither in McCulloch nor in Worcester, any of the old, familiar numbers. Also in that same Wonder-Book of Malte-Brun, edited by Pietro il Parlatore, we recall a sketch of a boy running ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... confer on it; yet it fell short in effect of the simplicity of the Presbyterian worship. The devotion in which every one took a share seemed so superior to that which was recited by musicians as a lesson which they had learned by rote, that it gave the Scottish worship all the advantage of ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... resemblance between instincts and habits could be pointed out. As in repeating a well-known song, so in instincts, one action follows another by a sort of rhythm; if a person be interrupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is generally forced to go back to recover the habitual train of thought: so P. Huber found it was with a caterpillar, which makes a very complicated hammock; for if he took a caterpillar which had completed its hammock up to, say, the sixth stage of construction, and ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... defective in her lesson, that not one word of it could be extracted from her, even by the cowskin; nothing but piercing shrieks, enough to make my heart bleed, could the poor victim utter. Irritated at the child's want of capacity to repeat by rote what she could not understand, the old man darted from his seat, and struck ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a member of any church, although her nature was deeply religious. Hers was the religion the soul inculcates, not that which is learned by rote in the temple. She was a Christian because she thought Christ the greatest figure in world history, and also because her own conduct of life was modelled upon Christian principles and virtues. She was religious for religion's sake and not for public ostentation. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... saith." Said he, "Let not thy heart be troubled," and added, "I will go every day to the session of the leach." So he began resorting daily to the physician and committing to memory his answers and that which he spoke of jargon,[FN435] till he had gotten a great matter by rote, and all this he learned and thoroughly digested it. Then he returned to his wife and said to her, "I have stored up the physician's sayings in memory and have mastered his manner of muttering and diagnoses and prescribing remedies and I wot by ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... may not wepe although him sor smerte. Therfore in stede of wepyng and preyeres, Men{43} moot yive silver to the pour freres. His typet was ay farsd ful of knyfes And pynns, for to yiv fair wyfes. And certeynly he hadde a mery note; Wel couthe he synge and pleyen on a rote. Of yeddynges he bar utterly the prys. His nekk whit was as the flour-de-lys. Therto he strong was as a champioun. He knew the tavernes wel in every toun, And everych hostiler and tappestere, Bet then a lazer, or a beggestere, For unto such a worthy man as he Acorded ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... Moses told 'em before he died, "Wherever you are, whatever betide, Every year as the time draws near By lot or by rote choose you a goat, And let the high priest confess on the beast The sins of the people, the worst and the least. Lay your sins on the goat! Sure the plan ought to suit yer, Because all your sins are "his troubles" ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... partly at Cockermouth, and partly with his maternal grandfather at Penrith. His first teacher appears to have been Mrs. Anne Birkett, a kind of Shenstone's Schoolmistress, who practised the memory of her pupils, teaching them chiefly by rote, and not endeavoring to cultivate their reasoning faculties, a process by which children are apt to be converted from natural logicians into impertinent sophists. Among his schoolmates here was Mary Hutchinson, who ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... books, such as the Bible, are finding their way into the Roman States; and it is better, therefore, not to entrust the people with the key of knowledge; for nothing is so useless as knowledge under an infallible Church. The matters which the Italian youth are taught they are taught by rote. "Ignorance is the mother of devotion,"—a maxim sometimes quoted with a sneer, but one which embodies a profound truth as regards that kind of devotion ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... agent for you pills in thiS Setlement but th as iS Several agent round her and tha ar interfer With mee eSpeSly William a StavSon he liveS her at enfield he Wanted mee to giv him one of you Sur klerS So he Wod be agent but i Wodent let hi m hav hit an he rote to you i SupoSe an haS got a Suplye of pillS an ar aruning a gant mee he iS Sell ing them at 20 centS a box i Want you to St op ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... well-a-day! A few cant phrases learnt by rote Each beardless booby spouts away, A Solon, in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... the repetitions. Instead of reading over the entire series or a large part of it many times, the series is slowly read over once or several times by pairs, only two words at a time, but the method of acquirement is precisely the same as in the former rote process. Let us look at this last proceeding in detail. (1) It is usually applied only where there is a natural suggestiveness between each pair of words. (2) But no previous study is prescribed in regard to what constitutes this suggestiveness, ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... died. Why Sir John Hawkins should unwarrantably take upon him even to suppose that Johnson's fondness for her was dissembled (meaning simulated or assumed,) and to assert, that if it was not the case, 'it was a lesson he had learned by rote[688],' I cannot conceive; unless it proceeded from a want of similar feelings in his own breast. To argue from her being much older than Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not really love her, is absurd; for love is not a subject of reasoning, but of feeling, and therefore ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... things that were not intended as education at all. What was understood to be his education was simply the practice of reading, writing, and spelling, carried on by an elaborate appliance of unintelligible ideas, and by much failure in the effort to learn by rote. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... she will probably be capable of seeing how, if the general tone of the system is raised, the particular difficulty will disappear, and she will no longer follow blindly rules she has learned by rote. Yet people learn more by practice than by theory, and it is probable that the fascinating study of Physiology is of more use intellectually than physically to most school-girls. If they are allowed to dwell much on diseases of the body instead of on its normal action, ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... brothers, Jacob and Ezra, four hundred dollars each," continued Hiram, in his same voice of repeating by rote, "and to my sister Prudence, five thousand dollars—so fixed that ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... make his bed in mese: He that had y-had knightes of priis, Bifore him kneland and leuedis, Now seth he no thing that him liketh, Bot wild wormes bi him striketh: He that had y-had plente Of mete and drinke, of ich deynte, Now may he al daye digge and wrote, Er he find his fille of rote. In sorner he liveth bi wild fruit, And verien hot gode lite. In winter may he no thing find, Bot rotes, grases, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... equipment, have produced, by dint of skill and patience, work that is very passable. The women weave their own cloth on the native looms, and practice various other industries. The children are well trained in hospitality and public manners, which they learn by rote. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... life was to be given. It was to teach its pupils to read and write the mother tongue; enough arithmetic for the ordinary business of life, and the commonly used measures; to sing, and to know certain songs by rote; to know about the real things of life; the Catechism and the Bible; a general knowledge of history, and especially the creation, fall, and redemption of man; the elements of geography and astronomy; and a knowledge of the trades and occupations of life; all ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... rehearse this song by rote; To each word a warbling note, Hand in hand with fairy grace Will we sing ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... you giv a pore old feller ane noos ov that godfussakn sun ov mine hopn they ma find you as they leave me at present wich i av the lumbeigo vere Bad and no Go the doctor ses bob wot you no was in the ninth lansers he dide comen home so ive only fred left out of the ate. I rote to im fore munths agorne, but no anser, no doubt becos i cum to london soon arter, so no more at ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... beauty to the stews For lack of eyes that see, And stifle joy with deadly rote As empty as the texts ye quote, The while forgiveness ye refuse Lest wrath dishonored be. Gray are your days, drab are your ways, Strong are your fashioned bars, But, ye who ask if service pays - ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... priests, and his prophets. They do not suffer themselves to be shaken out of their ordinary routine by the gravity of such a crisis as this; the living work of Jehovah is to them a sealed book; their piety does not extend beyond the respect they show for certain human precepts learnt by rote. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... not do it. Either his interest was aroused, and then he absorbed the matter at hand in the way he breathed, without the least conscious effort; or his interest remained unstirred, in which case no amount of mechanical application would help. Learning by rote offered no escape in the latter case, for his memory operated in the same way as the rest of his mind, sucking up what fitted it as a blotter sucks the ink, and presenting a surface of polished marble to any matter not germane according to its own ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... "Simple, says ye!" remarked Mr. Dooley. "Simple like th' air or th' deep sea. Not complicated like a watch that stops whin th' shoot iv clothes ye got it with wears out. Whin Father Butler wr-rote a book he niver finished, he said simplicity was not wearin' all ye had on ye'er shirt-front, like a tin-horn gambler with his di'mon' stud. An' ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... will wunder Why I ever rote you this; I am sorry I am leevin Daddie needs me in his biz. I don't reely like this quiet Kind of sober farmer life; I like something allus doin, But for this, I'd be your wife. I got two of old Jim's bullets, ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... mind to do so. So he stood still over her, and she smiled at him. Such a smile! It was cold as death, flattering no one, saying nothing, hideous in its unmeaning, unreal grace. Ah! how I hate the smile of a woman who smiles by rote! It made Mr Palliser feel very uncomfortable,—but he did not ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Germans who cracked open John Bull Chatwood's strong-box at the Fair the other day, while the three Englishmen hammered away in vain at Brother Jonathan Herring's. The Englishmen represented brute force. The Germans had been trained to appreciate principle. The Englishman "knows his business by rote and rule of thumb"—science, which would "teach him to do in an hour what has hitherto occupied him two hours," "is in a manner forbidden to him." To this cause the "Times" attributes the falling off of English workmen in comparison with those of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of cultivating the sentiment of gratitude, as is the case in all other departments of moral training, can not be taught by definite lessons or learned by rote. It demands tact and skill, and, above all, an honest and guileless sincerity. The mother must really look to, and aim for the actual moral effect in the heart of the child, and not merely make formal efforts ostensibly for this ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... this goodly fair fress[h] of hue Humble and benygne of trout[h] crop & rote Conceyued had how venus gan to rewe On her prayer plainly to do bote To chaunge her bitter attones in to sote She fyl on knees of hig[h] deuocion And in ...
— The Temple of Glass • John Lydgate
... button and—presto—the magic harmonics appear! They are a simple and natural result of the proper application of scientific principles; and the sooner the student learns to form and combine harmonics himself instead of learning them by rote, the better will he play them. Too often a student can give the fingering of certain double harmonics and cannot use it. Of course, harmonics are only a detail of the complete mastery of the violin; but mastery of all details leads ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... to form your heart habitually to virtue and honor, before your understanding was capable of showing you their beauty and utility. Those principles, which you then got, like your grammar rules, only by rote, are now, I am persuaded, fixed and confirmed by reason. And indeed they are so plain and clear, that they require but a very moderate degree of understanding, either to comprehend or practice them. Lord Shaftesbury says, very prettily, that he would be virtuous for his own sake, though nobody were ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... only the sensor wont let me tell where I am an I couldnt think of nothin else to say. This is the third letter Ive rote since we landed. Im a little worried about the other two cause the Captin said we couldnt menshun the names of no places. So I just addressed them to ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... done living Things grow familiar to men's minds by being often seen To condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption To contemn what we do not comprehend To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word To know by rote, is no knowledge Tongue will grow too stiff to bend Totally brutified by an immoderate thirst after knowledge Unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything Unjust to exact from me what I do not owe Where their profit is, let them there have their ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... 'heard you yesterday before the court,' no doubt," he interrupted, "and I remember perfectly that you were 'awakened only.' I could repeat the most of it by rote, indeed. But do you suppose that I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the Peninsula, as other mediaeval landmarks become effaced. These people are simply the wandering bards and minstrels, who find their place in an Independent Malay State as naturally as did their prototypes in the countries of Europe during the Middle Ages. They learn by rote some old-world tale, which has been transmitted by word of mouth through countless generations, and they wander from village to village, singing it for pay to the unlettered people, to whom these songs and stories represent the only ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... gone. And now, by your good leave, I'll repeat old Bardianna's Will. It's worth all Mardi's hearing; and I have so studied it, by rote I know it." ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... hope," he said by rote, "you're well, and your parents also in good health. May I have the pleasure of dancing the cotillon as ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... bearing great resemblance to them, may be added logicians and sophisters, fellows that talk as much by rote as a parrot; who shall run down a whole gossiping of old women, nay, silence the very noise of a belfry, with louder clappers than those of the steeple; and if their unappeasable clamorousness were their only fault it would admit of some excuse; but ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... populists, you'll note, Of views enthusiastic, He'd learned by heart, and said by rote A creed iconoclastic; And in his dim, uncertain sight Whatever wasn't must be right, From which it follows he had strong Convictions that what ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... promised. I mene about not showing this. And don't tell Lilly I rote. If you do, she'll be as mad as hops. I haven't been doing much since you went away. School begun yesterday, and I am glad; for it's awfully dull now that you girls have gone. Mother says Guest has got flees on him, so she won't let him come into the house any more. I stay ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... beholdynge than the ayre Alas he sayth / what nedeth to deuyse Ony suche pastyme / here for to repayre Where is my conforte / where is my lady fayre Where is my Ioye / where is now all my boote Where is she nowe / that persed my herte rote ...
— The coforte of louers - The Comfort of Lovers • Stephen Hawes
... satisfaction, a sensation entirely my own. This was peculiarly so. It wrought strangely upon my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was replete with tenderness and with the most lively affection. I read and re-read till afraid I should get it by rote, and mingle ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... him, As blustering bullies, to defend him. 100 At once the ravens were discarded, And magpies with their posts rewarded. 'Those fowls of omen I detest, That pry into another's nest, State-lies must lose all good intent; For they foresee and croak the event. My friends ne'er think, but talk by rote, Speak what they're taught, and so to vote.' 'When rogues like these,' a sparrow cries, 'To honours and employments rise, 110 I court no favour, ask no place; For such preferment is disgrace. Within my thatched retreat I find (What these ne'er ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... fabulous ancient kings running up to Adam, or found but mythology in some old tale, was as hated as if he had doubted the authority of Scripture. Above all no man was so ignorant, that he had not by rote familiar arguments and statistics to drive away amid familiar applause, all those had they but found strange truth in the world or in their mind, whose knowledge has passed out of memory and become an instinct ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... or a blind, the one to beg, The other to make music; hither, too, From far, with basket, slung upon her arm, Of hawker's wares—books, pictures, combs, and pins— Some aged woman finds her way again, 30 Year after year, a punctual visitant! There also stands a speech-maker by rote, Pulling the strings of his boxed raree-show; And in the lapse of many years may come [7] Prouder itinerant, mountebank, or he 35 Whose wonders in a covered wain lie hid. But one there is, [8] the loveliest of them all, Some sweet lass of the valley, looking ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... four I learned to read by a simple process. I had heard the elegy of Cock Robin till I knew it by rote, and I picked out the letters and words which compose that classic till I could read it for myself. Earlier than that, "Robinson Crusoe" had been read aloud to me, in an abbreviated form, no doubt. I remember the pictures of Robinson finding the footstep in the sand, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... very smallest marks of favor are construed as more significant than open encouragement would be by a less poetic temperament. I have no doubt the poor fellow wears over his heart every rose-bud you ever gave him, and knows by rote every word of sympathy you ever said to him. And then that portrait,—what volumes it tells of itself! Fancy that ardent soul toiling over the canvas to reproduce from memory your image (you tell me you did not sit to him), and when the masterpiece of his life ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... I rote a letter to Mr. Durion, & prepared Some Commissions & a meadel & Sent to Captain Lewis- at 2 oClock Capt Lewis retuned with 4 chiefs & a Brave man named War-cha pa- after a delay of half an hour I went with them on ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... child it needs first the "milk of the Word." It is not desirable, neither is it necessary, to try to teach the very young child doctrines and abstract truths. Neither ought the child to be required to learn by rote long passages from the Scriptures. In this way some well-meaning, but mistaken parents make the Word a burden to their children, and it becomes odious in their eyes. There are other and better ways. Begin by showing the child Bible pictures, even if it should soil the book a little. Better a ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... from each remote, The world that works, the heaven that waits, Con our brief pleasures o'er by rote, The ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... Philipot's ward (Cornhill); but in the following year, when Brembre succeeded to his mayoralty, and the so-called "king's party" was again in the ascendant, Philipot again appears as alderman of his old ward, continuing in office until his death (12 Sept., 1384), when he was succeeded by John Rote.—Letter ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... King reached the pavilion of his Queen he found it guarded by those unhappy officials whom Eastern jealousy places around the zenana. Blondel was walking before the door, and touched his rote from time to time in a manner which made the Africans show their ivory teeth, and bear burden with their strange gestures ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... which I entered there was an examination going on. The subject was astronomy, and it was the first class. I was particularly struck with the very clear manner in which the lad under examination replied to the questions put to him, and I began to suspect it was merely something he had learnt by rote; but the professor dodged him about in such a heartless manner with his "whys" and his "wherefores," his "how do you knows" and "how do you proves," that I quite trembled for the victim. Vain fears on my part; nothing could put him out; he seemed as much at home as the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... distinguished rank, to set him off; and as for his fibre, there was nothing advantageous in it. He was little: his head was large and his legs small; his features were not disagreeable, but he was affected in his carriage and behaviour. All his wit consisted in expressions learnt by rote, which he occasionally employed either in raillery, or in love. This was the whole foundation of the merit of a man so formidable ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... whither, but methinks he walked hastilie to and fro. Thus I remained, agonized in Tears, unable to recal one Word of the humble Appeal I had pondered on my Journey, or to have spoken it, though I had known everie Syllable by Rote; yet not wishing myself, even in that Suspense, Shame, and Anguish, elsewhere than where I was cast, at ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... and air. Brooklyn, admirable borough of homes and hearty breakfasts, attacks the morning hours in cheery, smiling spirit. Bock sniffed and rooted about the small back yard as though the earth (every cubic inch of which he already knew by rote) held some new entrancing flavour. Roger watched him with the amused and tender condescension one always feels toward a happy dog—perhaps the same mood of tolerant paternalism that Gott is said to have felt in ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... use it freely if thou art led to think that there are evil presences near, and in such lonely places as this cave.' I humoured him by doing as he desired; and that the rather because I hoped his thoughts would thus be turned away from the writing; but as soon as I had the spell by rote he turned back to the parchment, saying, 'He was but a poor divine who wrote this, for beside choosing ill-fitting verses, he cannot even give right numbers to them. For see here, "The days of our age are three-score years and ten; ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... a perfect morning, clear and crisp, and the long sunlit vista of Van Diemen's Avenue tempted us sorely. We went through our daily struggle. Those people who work by rote, who are herded in offices and factories, and who are compelled by the laws of their industries to remain at their posts whether the sun shines or not, often regard the lives of free lances like us as merely agreeable holidays; they would certainly be somewhat staggered to find the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... defence of Protestantism. It was the cry of the soul to know God, and not merely to assent to what the Church taught concerning him; it was the longing to know Christ, and not to repeat by rote the creeds of the first centuries, and the definitions of mediaeval doctors in regard to him. In a subsequent chapter we shall consider the truth and error in the Protestant principle of justification by faith. Our purpose here is to show that the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... 9), 'The Lord's voice crieth to the city,' and to the country also, with an unusual and amazing loudness. Surely, it warns us to awaken out of all sleep, of security or stupidity, to arise, and take our Bibles, turn to, and learn that lesson, not by rote only, but by heart. 1 Pet. v. 8: 'Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom amongst you he may distress, delude, and devour.'... Awake, awake then, I beseech you, and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... steals and imitates, with wiry note The critics squeak, from Keats, and Tennyson, Shelly, and Hunt, and Wordsworth, every one, And many more whose works we know—by rote! But how, good sirs, if God created him Like unto these, though in their radiance dim? Nothing in Nature's round is infinite; The moulds of every kind are similar: A flower is like a flower; a star a star; And ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... with the minstrel's demand. Tristrem, who had been away hunting, returned immediately after the adventurous earl had departed with his fair prize. He upbraided the King for his extravagant sense of honour, and, snatching up his rote, or harp, hastened to the seashore, where Ysonde had already embarked. There he sat down and played, and the sound so deeply affected Ysonde that she became seriously ill, so that the earl was induced to return with her to land. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... him. 100 At once the ravens were discarded, And magpies with their posts rewarded. 'Those fowls of omen I detest, That pry into another's nest, State-lies must lose all good intent; For they foresee and croak the event. My friends ne'er think, but talk by rote, Speak what they're taught, and so to vote.' 'When rogues like these,' a sparrow cries, 'To honours and employments rise, 110 I court no favour, ask no place; For such preferment is disgrace. Within my thatched retreat I find (What these ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... did not glance. Take no notice. She took no notice while he read by rote a solfa ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Schorne, that blessed man born, For the ague to him we apply, Which judgeth with a bote; I beshrew his heart's rote That will trust him, and it ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the crabbed'st author hath, He understood b' implicit faith: Whatever Skeptic could inquire for; For every WHY he had a WHEREFORE: Knew more than forty of them do, As far as words and terms could go. All which he understood by rote, And, as occasion serv'd, would quote; No matter whether right or wrong, They might be either said or sung. His notions fitted things so well, That which was which he could not tell, But oftentimes mistook the one For th' ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... more capable, less restrained. He is rising against his tradition, and almost against his will. The serf still bulks large in him. The whole trend of circumstance is to substitute science for mere rote skill in him, to demand initiative and an intelligent self-adaptation to new discoveries and new methods, to make him a professional man and a job and pieceworker after the fashion of the great majority of professional men. Against all these things ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... not thought of for girls. To give some idea of the educational meagreness alluded to above, I may mention the fact that during my schooldays I never remember to have seen a map, while all my knowledge of geography was derived from passages learnt by rote." I quote this from one of the most delightful memoirs I have come across for a long time: Anna Swanwick; a Memoir and Recollections, by Miss Mary Brace. [Footnote: Published ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... her large letters up to N, and making her say them by rote, and with that end in view have divided them into three portions—ABCD—EFG—ILMN. She manages all right, except that she always jumps E and L. Lesson closed: "Were you at church to-day, Filomena?" ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... child in all respects, but in being what moderns call an infant prodigy. Infant prodigies in ancient times displayed their unusual powers chiefly by recitations, mostly of poems, which they learned by rote and repeated with very little understanding of what they rehearsed. More than most of her kind Terentia comprehended what she declaimed, but she knew by heart many poems entirely beyond her childish grasp. At barely eight years of age she was able to reel ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives.[214] We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men and talents and characters they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered those saying, they understand them, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Wanless went on its diurnal course. Luncheon was served at two by a trembling parlour-maid; the coffee was set in the hall, the cigar-box, the spirit-flame. Frodsham came for orders, Mr. Menzies reported Glyde absent without leave. These things were done by rote: yet the whole house knew the facts. Sanchia, dining in the middle of the day, plied her knife and fork with composure. It was her way to face facts once for all, tussle with them, gain or lose, and be done with ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Province, showed me a petition from certain schoolmasters, which had come into his hands; and the majority of the signatures were those of marks-men. These ignorant teachers could convey no useful instruction to their pupils; the utmost amount which they taught them was to say the Catechism by rote. Even within seven miles of Montreal, there was a schoolmistress thus unqualified. These appointments were, as might have been expected, jobbed by the members among the political partisans; nor were the funds very honestly managed. In many cases the members were suspected, or accused, of misapplying ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... is ever lenger the wers Till it be rote in mullok or in stree— We olde men, I drede, so fare we, Till we be roten, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... years Darwin got through his appointed tasks; construed without cribs, learned by rote whatever was demanded, and concocted his verses in approved schoolboy fashion. And the result, as it appeared to his mature judgment, was simply negative. "The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank." (I. p. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... disagreeable, and then a mate comes looming up through the haze of pieces. So he goes away awestricken but unharmed, secretly believing that all chess-players are humbugs, and that intelligent chess, which is neither chancy nor rote-learned, is beyond the wit of man. But clearly this is an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the beginner can understand the beginning of the game he must surely understand the end; how can he commence playing until he knows what he is playing for? It is like starting athletes ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... deadlock,' and so forth; and in what particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in conversation. Failing these, he would adorn it with puns and other 'plays upon words' which he had learned by rote. As for the names of strangers which were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat them to himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would suffice to furnish him with explanations for which he would not ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... must serve his time to every trade, Save censure.—Critics all are ready made. Take hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A mind well skill'd to find or forge a fault, A turn for punning—call it Attic salt: Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a lucky hit, Shrink not from blasphemy, 'twill pass for wit, Care not for feeling,—pass your proper jest, And stand ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of self-importance at medical school, where they proudly endured the high pressure weeding out of any free spirit unwilling to grind away into the night for seven or more years. Anyone incapable of absorbing and regurgitating huge amounts of rote information; anyone with a disrespectful or irreverent attitude toward the senior doctor-gods who arrogantly serve as med school professors, anyone like this was eliminated with especial rapidity. When the thoroughly submissive, homogenized survivors are finally licensed, they assume ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... half-hour devoted to it was regarded as more or less of a penance. In the very middle of the fifth proposition, when Miss Rowe had changed the letters on the blackboard, and was endeavouring to make Vera Clifford grasp the principle of the reasoning, instead of merely repeating the problem by rote, Enid's head was bent low over her desk, and her fingers appeared ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... with his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote. 104 CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales, Prologue, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... credit, which, though important to our ancestors, relate to times and circumstances so different from our own, that we cannot be expected to take any great concern in them? We hear of them therefore with apparent indifference; we repeat them almost as it were by rote, assuming by turns the language of the deepest humiliation and of the warmest thankfulness, with a calm unaltered composure; and when the service of the day is ended, they are dismissed altogether from our thoughts, till on the return of another ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... known, and the 'cute lad becomes a dummer Junge. Mrs. Melville thus describes her small servant-girl from one of these schools: 'She looks almost nine years old; and, as far as reading goes, she knows nothing more than her alphabet; can repeat the Prayer-Book Catechism by rote, and one or two hymns, utterly ignorant all the while of the import of a single word.' Even in Europe education, till lately, exercised the judgment too little, the memory too much; consequently there were more ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... children were put to school; at least it was what passed for a school in those days: a place where tender young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books and reciting it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education consisted simply of a permanent headache and the ability to read without stopping to spell the words or take breath. Hawkins bought out the village store for a song and proceeded to reap the profits, which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... His successors, Cummings, Worcester, and others abandoned that scientific arrangement and introduced the learners to political and descriptive geography. Moreover, their teaching of physical geography was devoted to definitions to be learned by rote. Many of the text-books in use in the schools were framed upon similar erroneous ideas. The first sentence in Murray's Grammar was a definition of the science, and was in fact, the conclusion deduced from a full knowledge of ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... demon, unless indeed he had forgotten it. This idea met with such general applause that Barre was forced to command the possessed nun to say aqua in Hebrew. The poor woman, who found it difficult enough to repeat correctly the few Latin words she had learned by rote, made ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... clef, C major, 2/2 time. Doctor sperrt das Thor dem Todt: Rote hilft auch aus der Roth. Doctor sperrt das Thor dem Todt: Rote hilft auch aus ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of address, which is here distinguished by the name of gallantry: it is no more than ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... arts had rendered scarcely worth defending, could death have come unaccompanied by disgrace. With a manner betraying suppressed, but ill-concealed eagerness, and in language prompt and fluent, as if reciting by rote a carefully kept journal, she went on to detail every fault or neglect or impatient act of her relative, not sparing exposure of the most delicate domestic events, at the same time carefully suppressing all mention of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... change that note To which fond love hath charm'd me, Long, long to sing by rote Fancying that that harm'd me: Yet when this thought doth come, 'Love is the perfect sum Of all delight!' I have no other choice Either for pen or voice To ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... upon shelfe, in leues all torne With Letters, dymme, almost defaced cleane Thy hyllynge rote, with wormes all to worne Thou lay, that pyte it was to sene Bounde with olde quayres, for ages all hoorse and grene Thy mater endormed, for lacke of thy presence But nowe arte losed, go ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... proceeded. Elfride played by rote; Stephen by thought. It was the cruellest thing to checkmate him after so much labour, she considered. What was she dishonest enough to do in her compassion? To let him checkmate her. A second game followed; and being herself absolutely indifferent as to the result (her playing ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... made no difference to scholarship. His moral earnestness has made no difference to morality. He acquired scholarship by rote, politics by association, and morality by tradition. To none of these things did he bring the fire of original passion. The force in his youth was ambition, and the goal of his energy was success. No man ever laboured harder to judge between the thoughts of conflicting schools; few men so earnest ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... the young men boast their knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks, I speak of pilots, who knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its taste, and could have steered blindfold to any port between Boston and Mount Desert, guided only by the rote of the shore; the peculiar sound of the surf on each island, beach, and line of rocks, along the coast. Thus do I talk, and all my auditors grow wise, while they ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and threw himself upon the bed without undressing. He had no inclination to sleep, but his fatigue, bodily and mental, overcame him unawares as he lay listening to the wind which swept through the mountain-gorges, and rose and fell monotonously with a sound like the rote of the sea. It was a vision of the sea that filled his unrestful slumber: Ruth was dead, she had died in his arms, and he was standing woe-begone, like a ghost, on the deck of a homeward bound ship, with the gray, illimitable ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... cannot consider words picked up at random and learned by rote speech. The Fuzzies have merely learned to associate that sound with a specific human, and use it as a signal, ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... the death of a sinner, but would rather that he should be converted and live. The beautiful prayers in the Liturgy, were explained to them in a manner suitable to their different capacities; consequently, they were not repeated by rote, as is too frequently the case, where the same attention is not paid. Mr. and Mrs. Bernard took unremitted pains with their children, and felt themselves amply rewarded by their conduct; for though, like ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... hours in making our toilette; but in order that the time may not be entirely lost, we learn French proverbs by rote, or madame reads aloud a new work, which is very moral and quite amusing: 'The Child's Magazine,' by Madame de Beaumont. I cannot express how charming I find these tales, narrated by a governess to her pupils. At noon the Angelus is rung, and we go down to dinner, which usually lasts ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... philosophy by rote, and play at heroism. But the wiser God says, Take the shame, the poverty, and the penal solitude that belong to truth-speaking. Try the rough water, as well as the smooth. Rough water can teach lessons worth knowing. When the state is unquiet, personal qualities are more than ever decisive. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... was one of signal and disgraceful defeat. In any case that sequence of second prizes must have filled him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah! The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came he would ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... probably remind the reader of Ensign Northerton's remarks, "D—n Homo," etc.;[Sec.] but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... society? Did he begin to think that, after all, savage freedom was to be preferred to dull, systematic civilization? Had he come to the conclusion that much learning is, at best, but vanity? Did he want to go babbling again in chaotic gibberish rather than to talk smoothly by rote? ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... (Bob's) cookery language, and Madame Le Roi's: What with fillets of roses, and fillets of veal, Things garni with lace, and things garni with eel, One's hair, and one's cutlets both en papillote, And a thousand more things I shall ne'er have by rote, I can scarce tell the difference, at least as to phrase, Between beef a la Psyche and curls a la braise.— But, in short, dear, I'm trick'd out quite a la Francaise, With my bonnet—so beautiful!—high up and poking, Like things ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... laugh at, you young rascal," he said to Bob. "I'm sure I've given you quite as good a definition as you would find in any of those 'catechisms of common things'—catechisms of conundrums, I call them—which boys and girls are made to learn by rote, like parrots, without really acquiring any sensible knowledge of the subjects they are supposed to teach! I might tell you, as these works do, that 'steam was an elastic fluid generated by water when in a boiling ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Islands the landing of illegal immigrants from Indonesia's Rote Island has become ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... their ordinary routine by the gravity of such a crisis as this; the living work of Jehovah is to them a sealed book; their piety does not extend beyond the respect they show for certain human precepts learnt by rote. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the Rig Veda) where his worship was extended more broadly. He seems to have become the special war-god of this family, and is consequently invoked with Indra and the Maruts (though this may have been merely in his rote as sun). The goats, his steeds, are also an attribute of the Scandinavian war-god Thor (Kaegi, Rig Veda, note 210), so that his bucolic character rests more in his goad, food, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... was no noise in the town, every one slept,—every one, except they watched like me, on that terrible night. No noise in the town, did I say? Ah, but there was! It came creeping round the corners, it poured rushing up the street, it rose from everywhere,—a voice, a voice of woe, the heavy booming rote of the sea. I looked out, but it was pitch-dark, light had forsaken the world, we were beleaguered by blackness. It grew colder, as if one felt a fog fall, and the wind, mounting slowly, now blew a gale. It eddied in clouds of dead and whirling leaves, and sent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... those who use language correctly, who never saw the inside of a grammar book, and who never examined the principles on which it depends. But this, by no means, proves that it is better to sing by rote, than "with the understanding." These rudiments, however, should form the business of the nursery, rather than the grammar school. Every mother should labor to give distinct and forcible impressions of such things as she learns her children to name. ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... a very fine speech, Andy," said Niederkircher, shaking hands with him, and gazing tenderly into his flushed face. "It was evident that your words were not learned by rote, but came from your heart, and hence they could not but make a profound impression. But now, commander-in-chief of the Tyrol, dinner is ready. The soup is already on the table, and I myself shall have the honor of ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... you perhaps? 130 Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote Parricide with his alphabet? Nor Giacomo? Nor those two most unnatural sons, who stirred Enmity up against me with the Pope? Whom in one night merciful God cut off: 135 Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill. You were not here conspiring? You said nothing Of how I might be dungeoned ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... had y-had knightes of priis, Bifore him kneland and leuedis, Now seth he no thing that him liketh, Bot wild wormes bi him striketh: He that had y-had plente Of mete and drinke, of ich deynte, Now may he al daye digge and wrote, Er he find his fille of rote. In sorner he liveth bi wild fruit, And verien hot gode lite. In winter may he no thing find, Bot rotes, grases, and ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... "plug." In fact, he could not do it. Either his interest was aroused, and then he absorbed the matter at hand in the way he breathed, without the least conscious effort; or his interest remained unstirred, in which case no amount of mechanical application would help. Learning by rote offered no escape in the latter case, for his memory operated in the same way as the rest of his mind, sucking up what fitted it as a blotter sucks the ink, and presenting a surface of polished marble to any matter not germane according ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... in disparting Poland? We have seen, say, a million of Frenchmen, and nearly the same of Italians, since then, with a dozen or so of kings and emperors,—but never the faintest likeness to those deluding pictures. We learned at the same time, by painful rote, the population of various capital cities; but we cannot find in any statistic-book gazetteer, neither in McCulloch nor in Worcester, any of the old, familiar numbers. Also in that same Wonder-Book of Malte-Brun, edited by Pietro il Parlatore, we recall a sketch of a boy running for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I indulged myself, without reluctance, in these gloomy thoughts; but at length, the dejection which they produced became insupportably painful. I endeavoured to dissipate it with music. I had all my grand-father's melody as well as poetry by rote. I now lighted by chance on a ballad, which commemorated the fate of a German Cavalier, who fell at the siege of Nice under Godfrey of Bouillon. My choice was unfortunate, for the scenes of violence and carnage ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... rode. Raep, a rope. Ragweed, ragwort. Raibles, recites by rote. Rair, to roar. Rairin, roaring. Rair't, roared. Raise, rase, rose. Raize, to excite, anger. Ramfeezl'd, exhausted. Ramgunshoch, surly. Ram-stam, headlong. Randie, lawless, obstreperous. Randie, randy, a scoundrel, a rascal. Rant, to rollick, to roister. Rants, merry ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... mine, sitting down on the blessings of Providence—turning my back upon them, so to speak," he remarked, after the first hunger was over, "reminds me of a man who took the gold medal in natural science. He had got his botany off by rote, so, when he was travelling between Toronto and Hamilton, a friend that was sitting beside him said, 'Johnson, what's in that field out there?' Johnson looked a bit put out, but said boldly, 'It's turnips.' There was an old farmer in the seat behind ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the point of contrast between the must and no must, the compulsion and no compulsion. In fact, the whole of it is usually mouthed out, without much reference to Shylock or the play, as if it had been learned by rote from a school speech-book. Hazlitt says, in his Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, 'The speech about mercy is very well, but there are a thousand finer ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... yawns; history no glorious epic revealing as it unrolls the Meaning of Things, no revelation of that wondrous distillation of the Spirit of man, but an endless marching and counter-marching up and down the map, weary columns of figures to be learned by rote instantly to be forgotten again. "On June the 7th General So-and-so proceeded with his whole army—" where? What does it matter? One little chapter of Carlyle, illuminated by a teacher of understanding, were worth a million such text-books. Alas, for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... them. Do you hear the falls at my lake? the west wind brings that to us. When I am there and the rote is on the beach, it tells me it is the voice of the south wind giving notice of rain. All nature warns me. The swallow, the pig, the goose, the fire on the hearth, the soot in the flue, the smoke of the chimney, the rising and setting sun, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Rote, Note, Syllable: Singing by rote means that the singer sings something learned by ear without regard to notes. Singing by note means that the singer is guided to the correct pitch by visible notes. Singing by syllable means that the singer sings the tones of a song or part to the sol-fa syllables instead of to words, ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... summer, and the cold days of winter), when we had to sit for hours on hard wooden benches, before uncomfortable desks, bending over grimy slates and ink-besprinkled "copy books," and poring over studies in which we took no interest—geography, which we learned by rote; arithmetic, which always evaded us, and grammar, which we never could master. We could repeat the "rules," but we could not "parse;" we could cipher, but our sums would not "prove;" we could rattle off the productions of Italy—"corn, wine, silk and oil"—but we could not "bound" the State ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... strongly the administration of the Spirit in directing the worship of God's house. The use of liturgical forms is a relapse into legalism, a consent to be taught to pray as "John taught his disciples." True, there may be extemporaneous forms as well as written forms, praying by rote as well as praying by the book. Against both habits we simply interpose the higher teaching of the Spirit, as belonging especially to this dispensation, in which the Father seeketh worshipers who "worship in Spirit and ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... my Wife Abigiel hes under Rote me by saying it is veri Disagria bell to Hur to Expose to the World the miseris & Calamatis of a Distractid famely, and I think as much for hur Father & mother to Witt Stephen deming & his wife acts very much like Distractid or BeWicht & I believe both, for the truth ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... who seems preternaturally keen, swears that on Thirteenth Street between Fifth Avenue and University Place the woman stopped and spoke to him; and he tells his story as though it were learned by rote. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... has one more word which seems to me quite as good a candidate as any of the others, viz. roteur, a player on the rote, i.e. the fiddle used by the medieval minstrels, Chaucer says ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... my pen; I hate my stool; What am I but a nerveless tool? But we did not work by rote or rule When ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... should unwarrantably take upon him even to suppose that Johnson's fondness for her was dissembled (meaning simulated or assumed,) and to assert, that if it was not the case, 'it was a lesson he had learned by rote[688],' I cannot conceive; unless it proceeded from a want of similar feelings in his own breast. To argue from her being much older than Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not really love her, is absurd; for love is not a subject of reasoning, but of feeling, and therefore ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... missive till he had it by rote. At each repetition it struck him as more cutting, more cruel, more unjust. His aunt had certainly intended a rebuke; but she hardly realized either the over-sensitiveness of Ivan's nature or the extent of his boyish feeling for his cousin, whom he concluded to be responsible, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... No one else has the power; and no one else, if he had such power, would dare to knock so loudly against the iron portals. Up! up! a man like him is worth a thousand of the scoundrels who come down hither every day by rote." Then, turning to the devil Leviathan, his favourite, he added, "I choose thee, the subtlest seducer, the deadliest hater of the human race, to ascend and purchase for me, by thy dangerous services, the soul of this desperado. Only thou canst chain, satiate, and then, drive ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... Asia's not price enough! bid the world for him. And shall this man, this Hermes, this Apollo, Sit lag of Ajax' table, almost minstrel, And with his presence grace a brainless feast? Why they con sense from him, grow wits by rote, And yet, by ill repeating, libel him, Making his wit their nonsense: nay, they scorn him; Call him bought railer, mercenary tongue! Play him for sport at meals, and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... explanation. Taking the country by and large it is claimed that only one male in ten and only one female out of a hundred and forty-four, can read and write; and it is said by British residents in the land that the native knows no such thing as scholarship—he learns everything by rote, even to the extent of perfect recitation, without comprehending the meaning of the wards he is uttering. It is the nature of illiterate Hindus to resort to the extremest extravagance in nearly every statement, and it is not uncommon for report to ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... which is fast dying out in the Peninsula, as other mediaeval landmarks become effaced. These people are simply the wandering bards and minstrels, who find their place in an Independent Malay State as naturally as did their prototypes in the countries of Europe during the Middle Ages. They learn by rote some old-world tale, which has been transmitted by word of mouth through countless generations, and they wander from village to village, singing it for pay to the unlettered people, to whom these songs and stories ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... science must be sternly limited, his sight of nature gets limited accordingly. I observed that all our young figure-painters were rendered, to all intents and purposes, blind by their knowledge of anatomy. They saw only certain muscles and bones, of which they had learned the positions by rote, but could not, on account of the very prominence in their minds of these bits of fragmentary knowledge, see the real movement, color, rounding, or any other subtle quality of the human form. And I was quite ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... succession, she bade them not think that they had needed this desire, if she had seen a time so fit; and it so ripe to be denounced. That the greatness of the cause, and the need of their return, made her say that a short time for so long a continuance ought not to pass by rote. That as cause by conference with the learned should show her matter worth utterance for their behoof, so she would more gladly pursue their good after her days, than with all her prayers while she lived be a means to linger out her living thread. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... studious provider for widows, orphanes, and poore people, most perfect in Saxon poetrie, most liberall endowed with wisdome, fortitude, justice, and temperance, departed this life;"[243] and right well did he deserve this eulogy, for as an old chronicle says, he was "a goode clerke and rote many bokes, and a boke he made in Englysshe, of adventures of kynges and bataylles that had bene wne in the lande; and other bokes of gestes he them wryte, that were of greate wisdome, and of good learnynge, thrugh whych bokes ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... course logic, morals and metaphysics were taught. Here the young persons handled, adjusted, and knocked about more or less adroitly the formula on God, nature, the soul and science they had learned by rote. Less scholastic, abridged, and made easy, this verbal exercise has been maintained in the lycees.[6219] Under the new regime, as well as under the old one, a string of abstract terms, which the professor thought he could explain and which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "Don Fernando—Majesty?" Yet a third time she repeated it, as by rote; and, very slowly, understanding grew into the words, and with understanding, terror. The dark innocent eyes went appealingly from one to the other, and the lids began to flutter wildly in a kind of spasm. "Majesty? Majesty?" Then, suddenly, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... swords, as though we had fallen into an ambuscade of savages in some Paynim country. They were, as I surmise, of the same breed as those of whom the excellent John Milton wrote: "The sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." Alas! my memory is not what it was, for at one time I could say by rote whole books of that noble and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... judgments, and the arbitrators of rewards or punishments. The immunity which they enjoyed from war, allured many young men to enrol themselves in this order. Their education was a poetical one, for it was necessary to learn by rote several thousand verses, in which all the knowledge then ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... potentate or Brummagem magnate. The word occurs in S. Foote's farrago of nonsense, which he wrote to test the memory of old Macklin, who said in a lecture "he had brought his own memory to such perfection that he could learn anything by rote on once ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... collective folly. Leaving his intellectual throne as the spokesman of a practical liberty, Emerson's wisdom was justified by the fact that he was always at first on the unpopular, and ultimately on the winning, side. Casting his rote for the diffusion of popular literature, a wide suffrage, a mild penal code, he yet endorsed the saying of an old American author, "A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft that ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... disadvantage of this method is that it does not give the student the best kind of training. What he needs most in life is the ability to arrange and present ideas rapidly, not to speak a part by rote. ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... I change that note To which fond love hath charm'd me, Long, long to sing by rote, Fancying that that harm'd me: Yet when this thought doth come, "Love is the perfect sum Of all delight," I have no other choice Either for pen or ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... Ecclesiastical School under the New—it has been taken for granted that he can neither discern what is true, nor desire what is good. The truth of things has therefore been formulated for him, and he has been required to learn it by rote and profess his belief in it, clause by clause. His duty has also been formulated for him, and he has been required to perform it, detail by detail, in obedience to the commandments of an all-embracing Code, or to the direction ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... ritual of our feastings and mournings; and often it rehearsed for us the tales of many lands, or, best of all, the legends of our own. I see him, a silver-haired minstrel, touching melodious keys, playing and singing in the twilight, within sound of the rote of the sea. There he lingers late; the curfew-bell has tolled and the darkness closes round, till at last that tender voice is silent, and he softly ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... habits could be pointed out. As in repeating a well-known song, so in instincts, one action follows another by a sort of rhythm; if a person be interrupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is generally forced to go back to recover the habitual train of thought: so P. Huber found it was with a caterpillar, which makes a very complicated hammock; for if he took a caterpillar which had completed its hammock up to, say, the sixth stage of construction, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... shores the distant rote. Oh, could we float forever, little boat, Under the blissful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the scanty stock of tunes should be enlarged. Learning a tune by note, without having previously heard it, was almost a mortal offence, and at last something like a compromise was effected in some of the churches, where alternate singing by rote and rule satisfied both parties. The ministers added to the general confusion with a flood of circulars on the subject. Several of them issued a tract entitled "Cases of Conscience about singing ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... that signifie nothing; but are taken up, and learned by rote from the Schooles, as Hypostatical, Transubstantiate, Consubstantiate, Eternal-now, and the like ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... him: remember that though he cannot see through a milestone yet, he can see farther into one than his neighbours. Indeed his neighbours cannot see into a milestone at all, but only see the outside of it, and know things only by rote, like parrots, without understanding what they mean and how they ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... from the deepest foundations of his being. If, later on, he attempts to criticise his action by the light of hard and fast ideas of what is right in the abstract—those unprofitable ideas which are learnt by rote, or, it may be, borrowed from other people; if he begins to apply general rules, the principles which have guided others, to his own case, without sufficiently weighing the maxim that one man's meat is another's poison, then he will run great ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... take time, of course, for people to grow accustomed to the change in him—that was only natural. In a few days, now, when the shock of the sensation had worn off, things would be different. They would forgive him for breaking a sort of unuttered communal law, but one hallowed, as it were, by rote and custom. He vaguely comprehended that there might be such a law for his case—a canon of procedure which, unnatural in itself, had come with the passage of the passing years to be quite ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... I found a school of dirty ragged children reading the Psalms from the small English printed edition; not, however, learning to read by means of the alphabet or spelling, but learning to know the forms of words by rote; boys and girls together, all very slightly dressed, and one of the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... and young Octavius, come! Revenge yourself alone on Cassius, For Cassius is a-weary of the world— Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother; Check'd like a bondman; all his faults observed, Set in a note-book, learn'd and conn'd by rote, To cast into my teeth. Oh, I could weep My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger, And here my naked breast—within, a heart Dearer than Plutus' mine, richer than gold: If that thou need'st a Roman's, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His manner was too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep are without a shepherd," he said. "The young men marry among the Gorgios, or they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and the fields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among the Romanys. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sound, we are told by the best authority, by an enlightened yet strictly orthodox Parsi, that there is hardly a man or a woman who could give an account of the faith that is in them. 'The whole religious education of a Parsi child consists in preparing by rote a certain number of prayers in Zend, without understanding a word of them; the knowledge of the doctrines of their religion being left to be picked up from casual conversation.' A Parsi, in fact, hardly knows what his faith is. The Zend-Avesta is to him a sealed book; and though there ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... sew tear buy lone hare night clime sight tolled site knights maid cede beech waste bred piece sum plum e'er cent son weight tier rein weigh heart wood paws through fur fare main pare beech meet wrest led bow seen earn plate wear rote peel you berry flew know dough groan links see lye bell great aught foul mean seam moan knot rap bee wrap not loan told cite hair seed night knit made peace in waist bread climb heard sent sun some air tares rain way wait threw fir hart ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... had so far advanced in the soil of Miss Melbury's mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that she knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing—that is ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... ragged memory — a room; Air foul with wine; a shouting, reeling crowd Of friends who dragged him, dazed and blind with drink Out to the street; a crazy rout of cabs; The steady mutter of his neighbor's voice, Mumbling out dull obscenity by rote; And then... well, they had brought him home it seemed, Since he awoke in bed — oh, damn the business! He had not wanted it — the silly jokes, "One last, great night of freedom ere you're married!" "You'll get no ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... fashion; they can mispronounce a few French words, without being able to construct a single grammatical sentence or understand a syllable that is said to them; they know enough shorthand to write down simple words at one half the speed of ordinary handwriting; and they have acquired by rote a few dry facts from history and geography, all of which will be totally obliterated from their memories within a space of ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... in his tone! I could scarcely interpret it. Was he talking by rote, or was he utterly done with life and all its interests? No one besides myself seemed to note this strange passivity. To the masses he was no longer a suffering man, but an individual from whom information was to be got. The next question was ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... bullet-shaped, British head was agitated in vigorous negation, and "Card for Mister Kirkwood!" was mumbled in dispassionate accents appropriate to a recitation by rote. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... reasoning from cause to effect; I doubt if it dawned upon one of them that there was such an unheard-of accomplishment to be acquired. They were trying—if they were trying anything at all—to pick up modern science in the folk manner, by rote, as though it were a thing to be handed down by tradition. So at least I infer, not only from watching this particular class then and on other occasions, but also from ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... couldn't read all the books and find out about everything right off. But you bet he found out a lot, and he believes that after a fellow gets some rudiments of education he can learn more by studying in his own way and experimenting than by just learning by rote and rule. Maybe he's not altogether right about that, for education is mighty fine and I'd like to go to a technical school; Gus and I both are aiming for that, but we're going to read and study a lot our own way, too, and experiment; aren't we, Gus? Nobody can throw Edison's ideas ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... red paper, and with that world of which he had once formed a part. Nearly always, in answer to my inquiries about his life, the man began, not only willingly, but eagerly, to relate the story of the misfortunes which he had undergone,—which he had learned by rote like a prayer,—and particularly of his former position, in which he ought still to be ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... deep underground, Hid in your bed from sight and sound, Without a turn in temperature, With weather life can scarce endure, That light has won a fraction's strength, And day put on some moments' length, Whereof in merest rote will come, Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb; O crocus root, how do you know, How do ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... experienced. Your letters always afford me a singular satisfaction;—a sensation entirely my own; this was peculiarly so. It wrought strangely on my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was replete with tenderness! with the most lively affection. I read and re-read, till afraid I should get it by rote, and mingle it with common ideas; profane the sacred pledge. No; it shall not be. I will economize the boon. I will limit the recreation to those moments of retirement devoted to thee. Of a sudden I found myself unusually ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... perfect in Saxon poetrie, most liberall endowed with wisdome, fortitude, justice, and temperance, departed this life;"[243] and right well did he deserve this eulogy, for as an old chronicle says, he was "a goode clerke and rote many bokes, and a boke he made in Englysshe, of adventures of kynges and bataylles that had bene wne in the lande; and other bokes of gestes he them wryte, that were of greate wisdome, and of good learnynge, thrugh whych bokes many a man may him amende, that well ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... gentleman, to speak honestly, and as handsome, as well dressed, and as pleasant to listen to, with that sweet low voice and piquant smile, as any. Besides he could draw, and had more yards of French and English verses by rote than Aunt Becky owned of Venetian lace and satin ribbons, and was more of a scholar than he. He? He!—why—'he?' what the deuce had Devereux to do with it—was he vexed?—A fiddle-stick! He began to flag with Miss Ward, the dowager's niece, and was glad when the refined Beauchamp, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 17th of March, O.S., his wife died. Why Sir John Hawkins should unwarrantably take upon him even to suppose that Johnson's fondness for her was dissembled (meaning simulated or assumed,) and to assert, that if it was not the case, 'it was a lesson he had learned by rote[688],' I cannot conceive; unless it proceeded from a want of similar feelings in his own breast. To argue from her being much older than Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not really love her, is absurd; for love is not a subject ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... i.e., made more and more holy "through the truth." As a child it needs first the "milk of the Word." It is not desirable, neither is it necessary, to try to teach the very young child doctrines and abstract truths. Neither ought the child to be required to learn by rote long passages from the Scriptures. In this way some well-meaning, but mistaken parents make the Word a burden to their children, and it becomes odious in their eyes. There are other and better ways. Begin by showing the child Bible ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... how he surmounted these difficulties: sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it some of the main Church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote; sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of various dialects, and even by signs. On one occasion he tells us that a very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to China was delayed because, among other things, the interpreter he had ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... ov th time, naimd Max Beerbohm, hoo woz stil alive in th twentieth senchri, rote a stauri in wich e pautraid an immajnari karrakter kauld "Enoch Soames"—a thurd-rait poit hoo beleevz imself a grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th Devvl in auder ter no wot posterriti thinx ov im! It iz a sumwot labud sattire but not without ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... impossible to overestimate the excitement, the animosity, and the contention which arose in the New England colonies from these discussions over "singing by rule" or "singing by rote." Many prominent clergymen wrote essays and tracts upon the subject; of these essays "The Reasonableness of Regular Singing," also a "Joco-serious Dialogue on Singing," by Reverend Mr. Symmes; "Cases of Conscience," compiled by several ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... window-seats with greasy curl-papers, reading greasy novels. An infernal pianna was jingling from morning till night—two eldest Miss Buckmasters, "Battle of Prag"—six youngest Miss Shums, "In my Cottage," till I knew every note in the "Battle of Prag," and cussed the day when "In my Cottage" was rote. The younger girls, too, were always bouncing and thumping about the house, with torn pinnyfores, and dogs-eard grammars, and large pieces of bread and treacle. I never see such ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... see Rousseau, who took a good deal of notice of Edgeworth's son; he judged him to be a boy of abilities, and he thought from his answers that 'history can be advantageously learned by children, if it be taught reasonably and not merely by rote.' 'But,' said Rousseau, 'I remark in your son a propensity to party prejudice, which will be a great ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... instinct—proceeding from the deepest foundations of his being. If, later on, he attempts to criticise his action by the light of hard and fast ideas of what is right in the abstract—those unprofitable ideas which are learnt by rote, or, it may be, borrowed from other people; if he begins to apply general rules, the principles which have guided others, to his own case, without sufficiently weighing the maxim that one man's meat is another's poison, then he will run great risk of doing himself an injustice. ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of the Church Catechism, learned by rote, parrot fashion, had not awakened in the laundress's boy any keen sense of honour. He had a dim feeling that it was a shabby service which he was called upon to perform; but then of course Miss Pillby, who taught the young ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... smallest marks of favor are construed as more significant than open encouragement would be by a less poetic temperament. I have no doubt the poor fellow wears over his heart every rose-bud you ever gave him, and knows by rote every word of sympathy you ever said to him. And then that portrait,—what volumes it tells of itself! Fancy that ardent soul toiling over the canvas to reproduce from memory your image (you tell me you did not sit to him), and when the masterpiece of his life was finished, inviting you to his ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... with the passion of an angry grief: Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, 155 And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: 160 For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 165 How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... had? It's only one card for me," and with a most satisfied expression 'Lina presented the rote to her mother, whose pale face flushed at the insult thus offered her son—an insult which even 'Lina felt, but would not acknowledge, lest it ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... I might be good once. I used to say my own prayers then. Now I speak them but by rote, and feel ashamed—yes, ashamed to speak them. Is it not horrid to say them, and next morning to be no better than you were last night? Often I revolt at these as at other things, and am dumb. The Vicar comes to see us at Newcome, and eats so much dinner, and pays us such court, and "Sir Brians" ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 2/2 time. Doctor sperrt das Thor dem Todt: Rote hilft auch aus der Roth. Doctor sperrt das Thor dem Todt: Rote ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... French has one more word which seems to me quite as good a candidate as any of the others, viz. roteur, a player on the rote, i.e. the fiddle used by the medieval minstrels, Chaucer says of ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of address, which is here distinguished by the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... man lying on his wretched pallet with the whites of his eyes turned up to the sky? These charitable visits had the same conventional stage-setting and accent. The machine-like gestures of the little preachers with arms too short for the work, were answered by words learned by rote, so false as to set one's teeth on edge. The comical words of encouragement, the "consolation lavishly poured forth" in prize-book phrases by voices suggestive of young roosters with the influenza, called forth emotional blessings, the whining, sickening mummery of a church porch after vespers. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and Belvidera scarcely anybody can do ill, but Euphrasia I thought few people could do well, and I feared I was not one of them. Moreover, the language is at once so poor and so bombastic that I took double the time in getting the part by rote I should have taken for any part of Shakespeare's. My dress was beautiful; I think I will tell it you. You know you told me even an account of hat and feathers would interest you. My skirt was made immensely full and with a long train; it was of white merino, almost ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... history of a too brief sojourn in the paradise of the blacks the old man took but little part, for his English was NIL. The members of the party knew it by rote, and some of them could make themselves understood. Pieced together—for the story came out bit ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... which was that of my life for so many years is so no longer, I wonder what the devil the refrain is now? Ha!" he exclaimed clapping his hand on my shoulder in his old violent way, "I have it! also Villon. Guess. Didn't I teach you all the ballades by rote as we ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Dorothy his words appeared good, and true, and affecting. All their friends did wish it. There were many reasons why it should be done. If talking could have done it, his talking was good enough. Though his words were in truth cold, and affected, and learned by rote, they did not offend her; but his face offended her; and the feeling was strong within her that if she yielded, it would soon be close to her own. She couldn't do it. She didn't love him, and she wouldn't do it. Priscilla would not grudge her her share out of that meagre meal-tub. Had ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... his eighteenth or nineteenth year, was the common school of the district. He made good proficiency, but nothing worthy of note occurred in relation to his studies till he was about fifteen years of age. He then began to think, as he says. Before that time, he had repeated by rote whatever he had been taught. The first impulse to reflection was a new discovery. He had been taught from childhood that accent is a stress of voice laid on some syllable or letter of a word. But this ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... for him, the one she had learned by rote in early childhood: "All life moves in cycles. Creation and progress must be preceded by destruction. In ancient times that meant we had to destroy each other; but for the past century our inherent need for negative moments has been sublimated—that's the word the news broadcasts use—into ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... he was past all reason. Luckily, having written it, I had his part by rote; and so, snatching his Menelaus' wig and beard, I ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... went down along The leaene a-whisslen ov a zong, The saucy Daw cried out by rote "Girt Soft-poll!" lik' to split his droat. Jim stopp'd an' grabbled up a clot, An' zent en at en lik' a shot; An' down went Daw an' cage avore The clot, up thump ageaen the door. Zoo out run Poll an' Tom, to zee What all the meaenen o't mid be; "Now who did that?" zaid Poll. ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... by and large it is claimed that only one male in ten and only one female out of a hundred and forty-four, can read and write; and it is said by British residents in the land that the native knows no such thing as scholarship—he learns everything by rote, even to the extent of perfect recitation, without comprehending the meaning of the wards he is uttering. It is the nature of illiterate Hindus to resort to the extremest extravagance in nearly every statement, and it is not uncommon for report to have it that an Englishman has ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... it the basis of an education for life was to be given. It was to teach its pupils to read and write the mother tongue; enough arithmetic for the ordinary business of life, and the commonly used measures; to sing, and to know certain songs by rote; to know about the real things of life; the Catechism and the Bible; a general knowledge of history, and especially the creation, fall, and redemption of man; the elements of geography and astronomy; ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... he liked botany; I like flowers, herbs, and trees, but know nothing of their pedigrees: he wrote music; I limit my knowledge of it to what I catch by ear—I never could learn any thing by study, not even a language—it was all by rote and ear, and memory: he had a bad memory; I had, at least, an excellent one (ask Hodgson the poet—a good judge, for he has an astonishing one): he wrote with hesitation and care; I with rapidity, and rarely with pains: he could never ride, nor swim, nor 'was ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... After some time his blurred mind stumbled back To its last ragged memory — a room; Air foul with wine; a shouting, reeling crowd Of friends who dragged him, dazed and blind with drink Out to the street; a crazy rout of cabs; The steady mutter of his neighbor's voice, Mumbling out dull obscenity by rote; And then... well, they had brought him home it seemed, Since he awoke in bed — oh, damn the business! He had not wanted it — the silly jokes, "One last, great night of freedom ere you're married!" "You'll get ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... him most exquisitely all their shape, colour, bigness, and particular marks? or of a gorgeous palace, an architect, who, declaring the full beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it were, by rote, all he had heard, yet should never satisfy his inward conceit, with being witness to itself of a true living knowledge; but the same man, as soon as he might see those beasts well painted, or that house well in ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... in leues all torne With Letters, dymme, almost defaced cleane Thy hyllynge rote, with wormes all to worne Thou lay, that pyte it was to sene Bounde with olde quayres, for ages all hoorse and grene Thy mater endormed, for lacke of thy presence But nowe arte losed, go shewe forth ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... such a society, and the fruits will be without flavor. Art will not submit to be so lowered," will say some travelled dilettante, who, with book in hand, has looked by rote on the wonders of the Louvre and the Vatican; but the Creator of the universe teaches a different lesson from this observer. Not the rare lightning merely, but the daily sunlight, too; not merely the distant star-studded canopy of the earth, but also our near earth itself, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... doing, ye shall find that He beareth the heavier end. At the least, He shall bear you, and He must needs bear your burden with you. Yet in very sooth there is some gear we must needs get by rote ere we be witful enough to conceive the use thereof. The littlemaster [a schoolmaster] witteth what he doth in setting the task to his scholar. How much rather the ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... how one organ acts with another, then, in case of any local disturbance, she will probably be capable of seeing how, if the general tone of the system is raised, the particular difficulty will disappear, and she will no longer follow blindly rules she has learned by rote. Yet people learn more by practice than by theory, and it is probable that the fascinating study of Physiology is of more use intellectually than physically to most school-girls. If they are allowed ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... shortly after Jenny's birth, and she had leaned forward with her chin on her palm and a look in her face as if she were listening for a cry which never came from the nursery. Her praise had had the sound of being recited by rote, and had aroused in him a sense of exasperation which returned even now whenever she mentioned his work. In the days of his courtship the memory of her simplicities clung like an exquisite bouquet to the intoxicating image of her; but in eight years of daily intimacy ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... It went by rote, as they had learned in childhood. It was the tiresome repetition of going over and over and over the lines of a poem or the numbers of the multiplication table until the pathway was a deeply trodden furrow in the brain. Forever ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... public solemn ceremony, when in presence of the Kings the preceptor is appointed to his responsible duties, one of the obligations to which he is required to subscribe is, that he will teach the pupil to understand thoroughly, and not merely by rote,—"monkey-like," or as you would probably say, "parrot-like," were the same obligation imposed ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... tissues and the bones. Thus, unversed in the deeper phases of causation, men are hurried unprepared into ranks of a noble profession to struggle as best they may, through lack of deeper knowledge, with the serious symptoms of disease—at first by rote but later, are tempted to tamper ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... patience, work that is very passable. The women weave their own cloth on the native looms, and practice various other industries. The children are well trained in hospitality and public manners, which they learn by rote. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... bad for dates, and for learning by rote; but good in retaining a general or vague recollection of many facts. R.D.—Wonderful memory for dates. In old age he told a person, reading aloud to him a book only read in youth, the passages which were coming— knew the birthdays and death, etc., of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... with a note is not a fighting man at all! He has shaved his beard, and has cut his hair, but I spotted him at a look; He is Tom Devine, who has worked for years for Saltbush Bill as cook. Bill coached him up in the fighting yarn, and taught him the tale by rote, And they shammed to fight, and they got your grass and divided your five-pound note. 'Twas a clean take-in, and you'll find it wise — 'twill save you a lot of pelf — When next you're hiring a fighting man, just ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... to cause education to be concerned with any but one or two of the subjects which are included by Western peoples under that designation. It became at an early age, and remained for many centuries, a rote-learning of the elementary text-books, followed by a similar acquisition by heart of the texts of the works of Confucius and other classical writers. And so it remained until the abolition, in 1905, of the old competitive ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... you will wunder Why I ever rote you this; I am sorry I am leevin Daddie needs me in his biz. I don't reely like this quiet Kind of sober farmer life; I like something allus doin, But for this, I'd be your wife. I got two of old Jim's bullets, Didn't like to let you know, Cause the one that you was luggin' Seemed to fret ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... really a going forward. The philosophy is true, but it belonged to those older souls who were ready for it, and the younger souls now being born into the people are not ready for that philosophy. They repeat it by rote, they are hypnotised by it, and they sink down into inertia, because there is nothing they desire enough to force them to exertion. The consequence is that the nation as a whole is going downhill. The old lesson of putting different objects ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... murmur in the forest, was in tune with the silence of all the rest. El Safy stood up, and was rigid. There ensued a passionless flow of question and answer. The Old Man murmured to the roof, scarcely moving his lips; El Safy answered by rote, not moving any other muscles but his jaw's. As for the Assassins, they stayed squat against the walls, as if they had been dead ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the noblesse, fifty-two of the third estate. The king opened the assembly on the 4th of November, 1596, with these words, full of dignity, and powerful in their vivid simplicity: "If I desired to win the title of orator, I would have learned by rote some fine, long speech, and would deliver it to you with proper gravity. But, gentlemen, my desire prompts me towards two more glorious titles, the names of deliverer and restorer of this kingdom. In order to attain whereto I have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... oracles declared that people attached crude or arbitrary meanings; and now she hardly knew what they conveyed to her, and longed, as for something far away, for the reality of those simple teachings—once realities, now all by rote! Saved by faith! What was faith? Could all depend on a last sensation? And as to her life. Failure, failure through headstrong blindness and self-will, resulting in the agony of the innocent. Was this ground of hope? She tried to think of progress ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will never go to England." Lucia repeated the words slowly like a lesson learned by rote; and as she did so, an old question rose again in ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... that April with his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour Of which vertue engendred is the flour; When Zephyrus eke with his sote brethe Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppes—and the yonge Sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne; * * * * Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... salt, sugar, or sweet wine, and so keeping all the yeare long; any hearbes, fruit, or flowers in pickle; also pickle it selfe. Fr. compote, stewed fruit. The Recipe for Compost in the Forme of Cury, Recipe 100 (C), p.49-50, is "Take rote of p{er}sel. pasternak of rases. scrape hem and waische he{m} clene. take rap{is} & caboch{is} ypared and icorne. take an erthen pa{n}ne w{i}t{h} clene wat{er}, & set it on the fire. cast all ise {er}inne. whan ey buth boiled, cast {er}to peer{is}, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... to dull, systematic civilization? Had he come to the conclusion that much learning is, at best, but vanity? Did he want to go babbling again in chaotic gibberish rather than to talk smoothly by rote? ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... it now," exclaimed Jonas. "It is the ROTE of the breakers dashing against the rocks, and we must be lively, or we shall soon be in kingdom come. Boatswain!" shouted he, "Breakers! Breakers ahead! Call up the captain!" and hastening forward he made such a noise on the forecastle as to rouse out all hands, who rushed on ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Earth-norm." Haines began checking off the control panel by rote. "Composition: oxygen, nitrogen, ...
— An Empty Bottle • Mari Wolf
... cannot live by rote and rule; I was not born a slave To narrow fancies; I must feel, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... you tell me, friend, You've read my books from end to end. Perhaps not all my myriad rhymes, But all my rhythmics sixty times. Yes, friend, for I have heard you quote My old Proverbials by rote Page after page, and anywhere Have heard you spout them then and there, Though I myself had quite forgot What I had writ, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... can express. I can hardly believe—writing now long afterwards—but that I was actually present in those scenes; they are impressed upon me with such an astonishing air of fidelity." While, on the one hand, he never repeated the words that had to be delivered phlegmatically, or as by rote; on the other hand, he never permitted voice, look, gesture, to pass the limits of discretion, even at moments the most impassioned; as, for example, where Nancy, in the famous murder-scene, shrieked forth her last gasping and ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... mission seemed almost to override that of the Governor himself, yielded so far as to allow the father to see his daughter, on condition that he spoke to no other English prisoner. He spoke to her for an hour, exhorting her never to forget her catechism, which she had learned by rote. The Governor and his wife afterwards did all in their power to procure her ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... once with me in a very hopeful way, but during his illness I could not obtain from him any distinct profession of faith, anything to make me feel pretty sure that some conviction of the truth of what he he hd been taught, and not mere learning by rote, was the occasion of his saying what he did say. I did wish much that I might talk again with the Bishop about it, but his death took us by surprise. I pray God that all my omission and neglect of duty may be repaired, and that his very imperfect and unconscious yearnings after the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the old traditional curriculum, the learning by rote of the classics without explanation in early youth, followed by a more intelligent study in later years. This is exactly like the traditional study of the classics in this country, as it existed, for example, in the eighteenth century. Men over thirty, even if, in the ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... interrupted with a grimace. "You are about to say I repent of folly—or the enticing of a virgin—or that I fell victim to the blandishments of some tricky dame—I know all that cant by rote!—a man always repents until his broken head is mended, but all that is apart from the real thing—which is this:—In what way does my moment with a lady in the dark affect the Viceroy of the Indies? Why should his Excellency ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... pityingly at her, and the judge had put his questions kindly; but for all that, she was no match for the bright intellects of the law. Lawyers are great men to simple folk; they can quote paragraph this and section that; they have learned such things by rote, ready to bring out at any moment. Oh, they are great men indeed. And apart from all this knowledge, they are not always devoid of sense; sometimes even not altogether heartless. Inger had no cause to complain of the court; she made no ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... never revisited it since I was ten years old. I was sent, at five years old, or earlier, to a school kept by a Mr. Bowers, who was called 'Bodsy Bowers,' by reason of his dapperness. It was a school for both sexes. I learned little there except to repeat by rote the first lesson of monosyllables ('God made man'—'Let us love him'), by hearing it often repeated, without acquiring a letter. Whenever proof was made of my progress, at home, I repeated these words with the most rapid fluency; but on turning ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... The gretest trees that ony man may fynde In forest to shade the dere for her comforte. He breketh he{m} aso{n}der or rendith he rote & ri{n}de Out of the erthe this is his dysporte. So that the deere shall haue noo resorte. Wythin shorte tyme to noo maner shade Where thorough the game ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... growth and behavior, for she was a complete child in all respects, but in being what moderns call an infant prodigy. Infant prodigies in ancient times displayed their unusual powers chiefly by recitations, mostly of poems, which they learned by rote and repeated with very little understanding of what they rehearsed. More than most of her kind Terentia comprehended what she declaimed, but she knew by heart many poems entirely beyond her childish grasp. At barely eight years of age she was able to reel off without hesitation or effort anyone ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... doubt that gout is due to inheritance as much as eyes and noses? In what respects do the two things differ so that we should refer the inheritance of eyes and noses to memory, while denying any connection between memory and gout? We may have a ghost of a pretence for saying that a man grew a nose by rote, or even that he catches the measles or whooping-cough by rote during his boyhood; but do we mean to say that he develops the gout by rote in his old age if he comes of a gouty family? If, then, rote and red-tape have nothing to do with the one, why should they ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... the reply, and Bessy, profiting by an embarrassment which she had perhaps consciously provoked, went on hastily, and as if by rote: "I have left you perfectly free to do as you think best at the mills, but this perpetual discussion of my personal expenses is very unpleasant to me, as I am sure it must be to you, and in future I think it would be much better for us ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... suspect that they do NOT believe it. I am very much afraid that a great many have got into the trick of saying that it was God's mercy that they were cured, and that it pleased the Lord to raise them up from a sick bed, very much as a piece of cant. They say the words by rote, because they have been accustomed to hear them said by others, without thinking of the meaning of them; just as, on the other hand, a great many people curse and swear without thinking of the awful oaths they use. Ay, and often enough ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... fruyt is ever lenger the wers Till it be rote in mullok or in stree— We olde men, I drede, so fare we, Till we be roten, can we ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... night we were distant, as we supposed, about fifteen miles from Cape Povorotnoi (po-vo-rote'-noi) and as the fog had closed in again denser than ever, the captain dared not venture any nearer. The ship was accordingly put about, and we stood off and on all night, waiting for sunrise and a clear atmosphere, to enable us to approach the coast in ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... this wonderful power became impaired so far that getting by rote the compositions of others was no longer an involuntary process. He has noted in his Lucan the several occasions on which he committed to memory his favourite passages of an author whom he regarded as unrivalled among rhetoricians; ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... become her, and those affectations which in another woman would be odious serve but to make her more agreeable. I'll tell thee, Fainall, she once used me with that insolence that in revenge I took her to pieces, sifted her, and separated her failings: I studied 'em and got 'em by rote. The catalogue was so large that I was not without hopes, one day or other, to hate her heartily. To which end I so used myself to think of 'em, that at length, contrary to my design and expectation, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... days of winter), when we had to sit for hours on hard wooden benches, before uncomfortable desks, bending over grimy slates and ink-besprinkled "copy books," and poring over studies in which we took no interest—geography, which we learned by rote; arithmetic, which always evaded us, and grammar, which we never could master. We could repeat the "rules," but we could not "parse;" we could cipher, but our sums would not "prove;" we could rattle off the productions of Italy—"corn, ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... in making our toilette; but in order that the time may not be entirely lost, we learn French proverbs by rote, or madame reads aloud a new work, which is very moral and quite amusing: 'The Child's Magazine,' by Madame de Beaumont. I cannot express how charming I find these tales, narrated by a governess to her pupils. At noon the Angelus is rung, and we go down to dinner, which usually lasts about ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... blessing. By all the others it was mentioned with regret; and his merits honoured with due gradation of feeling—from the sincerity of Edmund's too partial regard, to the unconcern of his mother speaking entirely by rote. Mrs. Norris began to look about her, and wonder that his falling in love with Julia had come to nothing; and could almost fear that she had been remiss herself in forwarding it; but with so many to care for, how was it possible for even her activity ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... homeward slow returning To slumbers deep I fare, Filled with an infinite yearning, With thoughts that rise and fall To the sound of the sea's hollow call, Breathed now from white-lit waves that reach Cold fingers o'er the damp, dark beach, To scatter a spray on my dreams; Till the slow and measured rote Brings a drowsy ease To my spirit, and seems To set it soothingly afloat On broad and buoyant seas Of endless rest, lulled by the dirge Of the ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... the nineteenth century is enter'd upon, and will soon be waning. Now, and for a long time to come, what the United States most need, to give purport, definiteness, reason why, to their unprecedented material wealth, industrial products, education by rote merely, great populousness and intellectual activity, is the central, spinal reality, (or even the idea of it,) of such a democratic band of-native-born-and-bred teachers, artists, litterateurs, tolerant and receptive of importations, but entirely adjusted to the West, to ourselves, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... times, in reading him, in the closing pages of the fifth book of The Republic for instance, the strange accumulation of terms derivative from the abstract verb "To be." As some more modern metaphysicians have done, even Plato seems to pack such terms together almost by rote. Certainly something of paradox may always be felt even in his [33] exposition of "Being," or perhaps a ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... It lies rather in a knowledge of life based on the experience of mankind. Hence our study of history. But a study of history in the abstract is valueless. It must be concrete, real and living to have any significance for us. The schoolboy who learns by rote imagines the Greeks as outline figures of one dimension, clad in helmets and tunics, and brandishing little swords. That is like thinking of Jeanne d'Arc as a suit of armor or of Theodore Roosevelt as ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... dying out in the Peninsula, as other mediaeval landmarks become effaced. These people are simply the wandering bards and minstrels, who find their place in an Independent Malay State as naturally as did their prototypes in the countries of Europe during the Middle Ages. They learn by rote some old-world tale, which has been transmitted by word of mouth through countless generations, and they wander from village to village, singing it for pay to the unlettered people, to whom these songs and stories represent the only literature which comes within their ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... him sore smerte. Therfore in stede of weping and praieres, Men mote[85] give silver to the poure freres. His tippet was ay farsed[86] ful of knives, And pinnes, for to given fayre wives. And certainly he hadde a mery note. Wel coude he singe and plaien on a rote.[87] Of yeddinges[88] he bar utterly the pris. His nekke was white as the flour de lis. Therto he strong was as a champioun, And knew wel the tavernes in every toun, And every hosteler and tappestere, Better than a lazar or a beggestere, For ...
— English Satires • Various
... various of the larger boys arose to spout at full gallop and the distinct enunciation of an "El" train, the biblical account of the creation of the world, the legends of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah's travels with a menagerie, all learned by rote. The entire school then arose and ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss Melbury's mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that she knew well, and had the greatest interest in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... husband back again and changed her notion so i don't think it right to pay for a range for the other man. let him pay it out if she will live up to her bargin i will pay and could have paid at the time but was afraid this would happen as it has she has never rote or communicated with me since i left there dont think it right or justice that i pay for it and perhaps never see her again had they of rote to me i would have kept up the payments can first see the parties what they expect to ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... disgraceful defeat. In any case that sequence of second prizes must have filled him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah! The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came he would show what was really in him. Too late he recognised his error, though he tried not ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... fire, where I am burned, Yet dying bless the flame that is my bane!" With which to clasp her closer was he fain, To touch in love, and feast his eyes to see Her quiver at his touch, and laugh to be The plucker of such chords of such a rote; And laughing stoop and kiss her milky throat, Then see her shut eyes hide what he had done. "Nay, shut them not upon me, nay, nor shun My worship!" So he said; but she, "They fade, But are not yet so old as thou hast made The soul thou pinnest here beneath my breasts Which you have loved ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... clear and crisp, and the long sunlit vista of Van Diemen's Avenue tempted us sorely. We went through our daily struggle. Those people who work by rote, who are herded in offices and factories, and who are compelled by the laws of their industries to remain at their posts whether the sun shines or not, often regard the lives of free lances like us as merely agreeable holidays; ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of her mother's coquetry, and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I know she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a cunning grace. After the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the art to talk by rote: At Nando's 'twill but cost you half a groat; The Redford school at three-pence is not dear, Sir; At White's—the stars instruct you for a tester. 21 But he, whom nature never meant to share One spark of taste, ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... wonder-word and the wedded note Are flowing out of your beautiful throat With a liquid charm for every ear: And they talk of your art,—but for you alone The song is a thing, unheard, unknown; You only have learned it by rote. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... been inclined to think that, if this fondness of Johnson for his wife was not dissembled, it was a lesson that he had learned by rote, and that, when he practised it, he knew not where to stop till he became ridiculous.' Hawkins's Johnson, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... one word of it could be extracted from her, even by the cowskin; nothing but piercing shrieks, enough to make my heart bleed, could the poor victim utter. Irritated at the child's want of capacity to repeat by rote what she could not understand, the old man darted from his seat, and struck her senseless to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... danger to any religious organisation is that a body of men should arise in its ranks, and hold its positions of trust, who have learned its great fundamental doctrines by rote out of the catechism, but have no experimental knowledge of their truth inwrought by the mighty anointing of the Holy Ghost, and who are destitute of "an unction from the Holy One," by which, says John, "ye know all things" (1 ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... lead the way into the dining-room. There, after we had partaken of the national "zakuska" preceded by a nip of vodka, he presided, sitting in the centre of the long table with General Pau, the senior foreign officer, generally on his right, and one of the other foreign officers taken by rote, or else a visitor, on his left. I understood that General Alexeieff had excused himself from these somewhat protracted repasts, on the ground that he really had not the time to devote to them; but one or two others of the Headquarters Staff were ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... were discarded, And magpies with their posts rewarded. 'Those fowls of omen I detest, That pry into another's nest, State-lies must lose all good intent; For they foresee and croak the event. My friends ne'er think, but talk by rote, Speak what they're taught, and so to vote.' 'When rogues like these,' a sparrow cries, 'To honours and employments rise, 110 I court no favour, ask no place; For such preferment is disgrace. Within my thatched retreat ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... story I have had a paragram about another parrot; one that lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, five years ago. This one could laugh, weep, sing songs, make a noise like "smacking the lips," and talk. His talking was not merely by rote; he would speak at the right times, and say what was just right to be said then and there. He spoke the words plainly, bowed, nodded, shook his head, winked, rolled from side to side, or made other motions suited to the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... Boston harber & I says to a fello what is in them boxes & he says T. & I says well why are they throwing it away & he says because they do not want to pay the tacks which is about as sensable Ethen if I was to rite a lot of letters & then as fast as I rote I would tare it up because I did not want to pay for a stamp. Well I says somebody ought to catch he—ll for this & he says are you a torie & I seen he was trying to kid me & I says no I am a congregationalis & a loyal subject of king Geo. Rex & he ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... orator. Indeed, it might be hard to find a man, who had for years been conversant with public life, less able to string a few words together for immediate use. Nor could he learn half-a-dozen sentences by rote. But he could stand up with unabashed brow and repeat with enduring audacity the same words a dozen times over—"The prosperity of England depends on the Church of her people." Had he been asked whether the prosperity which he promised was temporal or spiritual in ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... each remote, The world that works, the heaven that waits, Con our brief pleasures o'er by rote, The favourite pastime ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... urged in these chapters cannot be learned by rote. What can be taught by rule of thumb is the administration of precedents. That is at once the easiest and the most fruitless form of public activity. Only a low degree of intelligence is required and of effort merely a ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... my brothers, Jacob and Ezra, four hundred dollars each," continued Hiram, in his same voice of repeating by rote, "and to my sister Prudence, five thousand dollars—so fixed that her husband can't ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... offered his master a chance to leave his post for a few minutes. For strain on the memory, his education is comparable only to the Chinese system of liberal culture, which comprehends learning by rote some tens of thousands of verses from the works of Confucius and other philosophers of the far East. Beginning at New Orleans, he had to commit to memory the name and appearance of every point of land, inlet, river or bayou mouth, "cut-off," light, plantation and hamlet ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... by describing the town, with every part of which he was particularly acquainted. He could repeat all the observations that were retailed in the atmosphere of the playhouses, and had all the good things of the high wits by rote long before they made way into the jest-books. The intervals between conversation were employed in teaching my daughters piquet, or sometimes in setting my two little ones to box to make them sharp, as he ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... him most exquisitely all their shapes, colour, bigness, and particular marks; or of a gorgeous palace, the architecture; with declaring the full beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it were by rote, all he had heard, yet should never satisfy his inward conceits, with being witness to itself of a true lively knowledge: but the same man, as soon as he might see those beasts well painted, or the house well ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... pleasure of," she picked up the lines which she already knew by rote; and then, "Miss Dryad Anderson's company," in the heavy sprawling scrawl which she knew must have come from the Judge's ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... the child has indeed improved, but it has become somewhat fastidious. Only that which seems interesting and intelligible to the child impresses itself permanently; on the other hand, useless and unintelligible verses learned by rote, that persons have taught him, though seldom, for fun, are forgotten after ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... declared that people attached crude or arbitrary meanings; and now she hardly knew what they conveyed to her, and longed, as for something far away, for the reality of those simple teachings—once realities, now all by rote! Saved by faith! What was faith? Could all depend on a last sensation? And as to her life. Failure, failure through headstrong blindness and self-will, resulting in the agony of the innocent. Was this ground of hope? She tried ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fiddle, he is altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of address, which is here distinguished by the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... angry grief: Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... not trouble you with mysteries or personal experiences. You would write as your Southern mockingbird sings his "green-tree ballad"; the thought of that bird mewed in a city cage and taught to perform by rote and not for spontaneous joy, troubled me not a little. I am sending ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... and does constantly assume, on a scale involving millions of children, from year to year, that all is well if the girl be taken from home and put into a school and made to learn by heart, or at any rate by rote, the rubbish with which our youth is fed even yet in the great name of education: though perchance whilst she is thus being injured in body and mind and character, she might at home be playing the little mother, helping to make the home a ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... tear buy lone hare night clime sight tolled site knights maid cede beech waste bred piece sum plum e'er cent son weight tier rein weigh heart wood paws through fur fare main pare beech meet wrest led bow seen earn plate wear rote peel you berry flew know dough groan links see lye bell great aught foul mean seam moan knot rap bee wrap not loan told cite hair seed night knit made peace in waist bread climb heard sent sun some air tares rain way wait threw fir hart pause would pear fair mane lead meat rest ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... they frightened me into it," she said, laughing. "They were written by Carlyle; you will know something of his works some day, I hope. This is what he says: 'Not one in a thousand has the smallest turn for thinking; only for passive dreaming, and hearsaying, and active babbling by rote. Of the eyes that men do glare withal, so few can see.' It sounds rather like a scolding, doesn't it? Well, I don't want you to be like that; I want you both to think and to see, and you will find much happiness to think about and ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... times ago A woman lyred here In the evenfall; one who fain did so From year to year; And, in loneliness bending wistfully, Would wake each note In sick sad rote, None to listen ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... botany; I like flowers, herbs, and trees, but know nothing of their pedigrees: he wrote music; I limit my knowledge of it to what I catch by ear—I never could learn any thing by study, not even a language—it was all by rote and ear, and memory: he had a bad memory; I had, at least, an excellent one (ask Hodgson the poet—a good judge, for he has an astonishing one): he wrote with hesitation and care; I with rapidity, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... in a strange, semi-mechanical manner; very much as if she had learned the sentence by rote, and were repeating it without ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... tide rote rite fade core gore lute five trade glide tone pole live plate wore cope lobe tore crave drive tube lane hive spore pride wipe bide save globe stove slate pore rave snipe snore mere flake cove stone spine store stole cave flame blade ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... they are buried in classical frivolities, languages which they never master, and manners and races which they cannot appreciate. Instead of being disciplined to think exactly, to speak and write accurately, they are crammed with rules and taught to repeat forms by rote. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... skill and patience, work that is very passable. The women weave their own cloth on the native looms, and practice various other industries. The children are well trained in hospitality and public manners, which they learn by rote. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... accommodation of these little unfortunates. Here they were housed in the most costly manner, the whole work of the establishment being carried on by a highly paid staff of servants and officials. The children were not allowed to do anything at all, beyond the learning by rote of various theories which there was no likelihood of their ever being able to apply to any reality of life with which they ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... not yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... me. Haven't you never turned and asked yourself what the devil you were doin' here? And that reminds me.... There was a line we used to have drummed into us at school—it's often come back to me since. COELUM, NON ANIMUM, MUTANT, QUI TRANS MARE CURRUNT. In our green days we gabbled that off by rote; then, it seemed just one more o' the eel-sleek phrases the classics are full of. Now, I take off my hat to the man who wrote it. He knew what he was talkin' about—by the Lord Harry, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... savages in some Paynim country. They were, as I surmise, of the same breed as those of whom the excellent John Milton wrote: "The sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." Alas! my memory is not what it was, for at one time I could say by rote whole books of that noble and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... prophet (Mic. vi. 9), 'The Lord's voice crieth to the city,' and to the country also, with an unusual and amazing loudness. Surely, it warns us to awaken out of all sleep, of security or stupidity, to arise, and take our Bibles, turn to, and learn that lesson, not by rote only, but by heart. 1 Pet. v. 8: 'Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom amongst you he may distress, delude, and devour.'... Awake, awake then, I beseech you, and remain no longer ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Edinburgh criticaster. The golden is truth and honour incarnate: it possesses outsight and insight: it either teaches and inspires or it comforts and consoles, save when a strict sense of duty compels it to severity: briefly, it is keen and guiding and creative. Let the young beginner learn by rote what one master says of another:—"He was never provoked into coarseness: his thrusts were made with the rapier according to the received rules of fence, he firmly upheld the honour of his calling, and in the exercise of it was uniformly ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... their unemployed hours. They collected colored mosses, star-fish, and other marine curiosities; they sailed, fished, scampered over the rocks, drove over the beach at twilight, sang, danced, and bowled. And when weary of active amusement, they reclined on the grass and listened to the melancholy rote of the sea,—the steady pulsations of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... importance. He further taught him curious correspondences between Sound and Number, and the attribution to these again of certain colors. The vibrations of sound and light, as air and ether, had intrinsic importance, it seemed, in the uttering of certain names; all of which, however, Spinrobin learnt by rote, making neither head ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... force to depress it. For this reason Flyblow (who is received in all the families in town through the degeneracy and iniquity of their manners) is to be treated like a knave, though he is one of the weakest of fools: he has by rote, and at second-hand, all that can be said of any man of figure, wit, and virtue in town. Name a man of worth, and this creature tells you the worst passage of his life. Speak of a beautiful woman, and this puppy will whisper the next man to him, though ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... strictly so. It is said, to be sure, that the Greeks borrowed the names of their gods from Egypt, but the gods themselves were entirely different ones. It is also true that some of the gods of the Romans were borrowed from the Greeks, but their life was left behind. They merely repeated by rote the Greek mythology, having no power to invent one for themselves. But the Greek religion they never received. For instead of its fair humanities, the Roman gods were only servants of the state,—a higher kind of consuls, tribunes, and lictors. The real Olympus ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... army of infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced, should have produced this order and beauty, without a divine marshal. The Scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so as he rather saith it, by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it. For none deny, there is a God, but those, for whom it maketh that there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... said the Captain in a fatherly tone, "lemme tell you something. While I've been a-roostin' up here in my perch, I've been a-watchin' you boys; a-watchin' an' a-worryin'. What have you been a-doin'? You've been a-raisin' hell, you have. Son, you ain't a rote a word, have yer? An' you, Whinney—boy, you ain't ketched a bug nor a beetle, have yer? And you, ole Swanko-panko, you ain't drawed a line, ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... people, most perfect in Saxon poetrie, most liberall endowed with wisdome, fortitude, justice, and temperance, departed this life;"[243] and right well did he deserve this eulogy, for as an old chronicle says, he was "a goode clerke and rote many bokes, and a boke he made in Englysshe, of adventures of kynges and bataylles that had bene wne in the lande; and other bokes of gestes he them wryte, that were of greate wisdome, and of good learnynge, thrugh whych bokes many a man may him amende, ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... describes her small servant-girl from one of these schools: 'She looks almost nine years old; and, as far as reading goes, she knows nothing more than her alphabet; can repeat the Prayer-Book Catechism by rote, and one or two hymns, utterly ignorant all the while of the import of a single word.' Even in Europe education, till lately, exercised the judgment too little, the memory too much; consequently there were more learned men than wise men. The system is now changing, and due attention ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... sociable, much noisier, relatively shameless, more intelligent, more capable, less restrained. He is rising against his tradition, and almost against his will. The serf still bulks large in him. The whole trend of circumstance is to substitute science for mere rote skill in him, to demand initiative and an intelligent self-adaptation to new discoveries and new methods, to make him a professional man and a job and pieceworker after the fashion of the great majority ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... limited, his sight of nature gets limited accordingly. I observed that all our young figure-painters were rendered, to all intents and purposes, blind by their knowledge of anatomy. They saw only certain muscles and bones, of which they had learned the positions by rote, but could not, on account of the very prominence in their minds of these bits of fragmentary knowledge, see the real movement, color, rounding, or any other subtle quality of the human form. And I was quite ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... witness requires except wickedness. There was nothing plausible about him. His voice was harsh. Treachery was written in all the lines of his yellow face. He had no invention, no presence of mind, and could do little more than repeat by rote the lies taught ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pleasant. He seldom had to punish a boy for bad conduct or neglect in getting his lessons. He always encouraged them to ask questions about their studies, and told them never to learn anything by rote, like a parrot, but to come to him when they did not understand a lesson; and he always made it so clear that it was a pleasure to learn. Sometimes a boy would ask a foolish question, which would make the rest laugh; but then Mr. Harrison would say ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... Sir William de Pakington, the prince's own herald and scrivener," whispered Sir Nigel, as they pulled up amid the line of knights who waited admission. "Ill fares it with the man who would venture to deceive him. He hath by rote the name of every knight of France or of England; and all the tree of his family, with his kinships, coat-armor, marriages, augmentations, abatements, and I know not what beside. We may leave our horses here with the varlets, and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the deeper phases of causation, men are hurried unprepared into ranks of a noble profession to struggle as best they may, through lack of deeper knowledge, with the serious symptoms of disease—at first by rote but later, are tempted to ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story, learnt by rote. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... methinks he walked hastilie to and fro. Thus I remained, agonized in Tears, unable to recal one Word of the humble Appeal I had pondered on my Journey, or to have spoken it, though I had known everie Syllable by Rote; yet not wishing myself, even in that Suspense, Shame, and Anguish, elsewhere than where I was cast, at ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... and he sez, I received the kit you sent me and It is a great comfort (the kit is not a cat but a assortment of handkerchiefs and tooth brushes and everything a soldier gets and Mother sent him his and so he rote to thank her) an he sez if I go over the top with the best of luck and get enuf leave to come home I will give Myself the pleasure of calling on you, and showin you what a Greenville soldier looks like. My reciprocity shall never end. And he goes on tellin how french ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... flowers, condited in vinegar, salt, sugar, or sweet wine, and so keeping all the yeare long; any hearbes, fruit, or flowers in pickle; also pickle it selfe. Fr. compote, stewed fruit. The Recipe for Compost in the Forme of Cury, Recipe 100 (C), p.49-50, is "Take rote of p{er}sel. pasternak of rases. scrape hem and waische he{m} clene. take rap{is} & caboch{is} ypared and icorne. take an erthen pa{n}ne w{i}t{h} clene wat{er}, & set it on the fire. cast all ise {er}inne. whan ey buth boiled, cast {er}to peer{is}, & p{ar}boile ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... experienced worker who gets to know the instruction by rote is not bothered by extreme detail. On the contrary, he grasps it at a glance, and focuses his mind upon any new feature and upon the speed and exactness of muscular action needed for ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... O she knew well, Thy Loue did read by rote, that could not spell: But come young wauerer, come goe with me, In one respect, Ile thy assistant be: For this alliance may so happy proue, To turne your houshould rancor to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... death of a sinner, but would rather that he should be converted and live. The beautiful prayers in the Liturgy, were explained to them in a manner suitable to their different capacities; consequently, they were not repeated by rote, as is too frequently the case, where the same attention is not paid. Mr. and Mrs. Bernard took unremitted pains with their children, and felt themselves amply rewarded by their conduct; for though, like other human beings, they were fallible, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... dame did not affect to make theologians, or logicians, but she taught to read, and she practised the memory, often no doubt by rote; but still the faculty was improved. Something perhaps she explained, and left the rest to parents, to masters, and to the pastor of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... poemes vttered pretie merry conceits, and these men were called Epigrammatistes. There were others that for the peoples good instruction, and triall of their owne witts vsed in places of great assembly, to say by rote nombers of short and sententious meetres, very pithie and of good edification, and thereupon were called Poets Mimistes: as who would say, imitable and meet to be followed for their wise and graue lessons. There was another kind of poeme, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... ilke fruyt is ever lenger the wers Till it be rote in mullok or in stree— We olde men, I drede, so fare we, Till we be roten, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... nay; but I would that I had more learning for your sake, and I shall be jealous of them, that I shall, when I find that you can read off out of any book you have got as smoothly as you do the verses you have learned by rote. Oh, you will be ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... is, madam," said I, and that answer proves how much you say these fundamental precepts by rote, and without any consideration. Ineffectual Calling is the outward call of the gospel without any effect on the hearts of unregenerated and impenitent sinners. Have not all these the same calls, warnings, doctrines, and reproofs, that we have? And is not this ineffectual Calling? ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... scarlet Chinese shawls of silk tied about their hips, moved stiffly, without interest or spontaneous spirit, as though constrained and indifferent. Though the dances were licentious, they conveyed no meaning and expressed no emotion. The men gestured by rote, appealing mutely to the spectators, so that one might fancy them orators whose voices failed to reach one. There was no laughter, not even ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... work; and seeing that science, when most rightly applied and best understood, can do no more but teach us prudence, moral honesty, and resolution, they thought fit, at first hand, to initiate their children with the knowledge of effects, and to instruct them, not by hearsay and rote, but by the experiment of action, in lively forming and moulding them; not only by words and precepts, but chiefly by works and examples; to the end it might not be a knowledge in the mind only, but ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the succession, she bade them not think that they had needed this desire, if she had seen a time so fit; and it so ripe to be denounced. That the greatness of the cause, and the need of their return, made her say that a short time for so long a continuance ought not to pass by rote. That as cause by conference with the learned should show her matter worth utterance for their behoof, so she would more gladly pursue their good after her days, than with all her prayers while she lived be a means to linger out her living thread. That for their ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... very decided views on the training and education of children, and his wife also, as her English Social Life shows, had thought much on the subject. One of the Archbishop's rules was that children should never learn anything by rote. "When Mrs. Whately and I first married," he observed on one occasion, "one of the first things we agreed on was, that should Providence send us children, we would never teach them anything they did not understand. 'Not even ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... and the blessed sign No more to keep me wond'ring and suspense, Replied: "I see that thou believ'st these things, Because I tell them, but discern'st not how; So that thy knowledge waits not on thy faith: As one who knows the name of thing by rote, But is a stranger to its properties, Till other's tongue reveal them. Fervent love And lively hope with violence assail The kingdom of the heavens, and overcome The will of the Most high; not ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and—presto—the magic harmonics appear! They are a simple and natural result of the proper application of scientific principles; and the sooner the student learns to form and combine harmonics himself instead of learning them by rote, the better will he play them. Too often a student can give the fingering of certain double harmonics and cannot use it. Of course, harmonics are only a detail of the complete mastery of the violin; but mastery of all details leads ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... will take the upper hand in the confusion will arrange life wisely, after their own fashion. Then things won't go at random, but as if by rote. It's a pity that we shall not live to ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... learnt the art to talk by rote: At Nando's 'twill but cost you half a groat; The Redford school at three-pence is not dear, Sir; At White's—the stars instruct you for a tester. 21 But he, whom nature never meant to share One spark of taste, will never catch it there:— Nor no where else; ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... "Tell me, Rote, continual derider of cowards, thinkest thou that we have avenged Frode enough, when we have spent seven deaths on the vengeance of one? Lo, those are borne out dead who paid homage not to thy sway in deed, but only in show, and ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... winter), when we had to sit for hours on hard wooden benches, before uncomfortable desks, bending over grimy slates and ink-besprinkled "copy books," and poring over studies in which we took no interest—geography, which we learned by rote; arithmetic, which always evaded us, and grammar, which we never could master. We could repeat the "rules," but we could not "parse;" we could cipher, but our sums would not "prove;" we could rattle off the productions of Italy—"corn, wine, silk and oil"—but ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... a modest, blooming Peer, Who bow'd with easy grace, and offer'd there Some fine-spun Verses which he never wrote, Some worthy Speeches which he spoke by rote: For thus I heard surrounding tongues rehearse, "H—— wrote the Speeches, H—— composed the Verse." And soon amid the mingled heap there lay The blasted wishes for Hibernian sway. And here he sigh'd, and, as ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... hints like these, I garner them up for my own future use. I have pored over every known text-book on the subject, from MATTHEWS and HOYLE to CAVENDISH. I once went so far as to learn the proper leads by rote, forgetting them all within a week; and owing to my inveterate habit of endeavouring to justify the most flagitious acts by a supposed reference to authority, have earned for myself the name ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... to read; yet the children of this large parish attend school regularly, and make use of books. They hold the catechism-book in their hands as if they were reading, while they only repeat its contents, which they know by rote." The only exception to this state of things made by Lord Durham was in favour of the Catholic clergy, who were represented by him as a respectable and well-conducted class of men, and well-disposed towards the government. The report further stated that there was no combination ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... I 'heard you yesterday before the court,' no doubt," he interrupted, "and I remember perfectly that you were 'awakened only.' I could repeat the most of it by rote, indeed. But do you suppose that I believed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seem to feel, the point of contrast between the must and no must, the compulsion and no compulsion. In fact, the whole of it is usually mouthed out, without much reference to Shylock or the play, as if it had been learned by rote from a school speech-book. Hazlitt says, in his Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, 'The speech about mercy is very well, but there are a thousand finer ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... me, friend, You've read my books from end to end. Perhaps not all my myriad rhymes, But all my rhythmics sixty times. Yes, friend, for I have heard you quote My old Proverbials by rote Page after page, and anywhere Have heard you spout them then and there, Though I myself had quite forgot What I had writ, and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... or less of a penance. In the very middle of the fifth proposition, when Miss Rowe had changed the letters on the blackboard, and was endeavouring to make Vera Clifford grasp the principle of the reasoning, instead of merely repeating the problem by rote, Enid's head was bent low over her desk, and her fingers appeared to be busy ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... not practise beating and correcting their Children, as we do. A general Complaint is, that it seems impossible to convert these People to Christianity, as, at first sight, it does; and as for those in New Spain, they have the Prayer of that Church in Latin by Rote, and know the external Behaviour at Mass and Sermons; yet scarce any of them are steady and abide with constancy in good Works, and the Duties of the Christian Church. We find that the Fuentes and several other of the noted ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... and the romping plays must be alternated with quiet employments, of course, but still active. They will sing at their plays by rote; and also should be taught other songs by rote. But there can be introduced a regular drill on the scale, which should never last more than ten minutes at a time. This, if well managed, will cultivate their ears ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... as I said before." The worthy man seemed to have learned this formula by rote. "First of all, our wants must be made known. In some provinces there have been attempts to do this by means of provincial assemblies of the clergy, but these efforts have always been strenuously ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Dispensation, the Ecclesiastical School under the New—it has been taken for granted that he can neither discern what is true, nor desire what is good. The truth of things has therefore been formulated for him, and he has been required to learn it by rote and profess his belief in it, clause by clause. His duty has also been formulated for him, and he has been required to perform it, detail by detail, in obedience to the commandments of an all-embracing Code, or to the direction ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... In dreams of haste, That only sleep, No rest I taste— With stiflings, rimes of rote, And fingers ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... men have been killed—Englishmen I mean; almost all the men I went to school with." He started to count as if by rote: "Don and Robert, and Fred Sands, and Steve, and Philip and Sandy." His voice was muffled in the sand. "Benjamin Robb and Cyril and Eustis, Rupert and ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... Jacob and Ezra, four hundred dollars each," continued Hiram, in his same voice of repeating by rote, "and to my sister Prudence, five thousand dollars—so fixed that her ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... advise a diet sutable to diseases; a thing most necessary, as well in curing diseases as in preserving of health, and which requires a great insight into the nature of things; nor the true grounds and reasons of compounding, practising their way rather by rote then by rule; with better reason may a Brick-layer or Carpenter pretend to be a Mathematical, or a Common Fidler to be a Musick Reader in the Universities, or Gresham-College, since both these have the practical part ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... the Negro to work by rule and rote but not by principle and method. It did not and, perhaps, could not teach him to love and respect labor, but left him, on the contrary, with the idea that manual industry was a thing to be despised and gotten rid of, if possible; that to work with one's hands was a badge of inferiority. A tropical ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... had been learning them all the summer, but the autumn was on them before they had got it by rote, and a wind came and blew down ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... of Philipot's ward (Cornhill); but in the following year, when Brembre succeeded to his mayoralty, and the so-called "king's party" was again in the ascendant, Philipot again appears as alderman of his old ward, continuing in office until his death (12 Sept., 1384), when he was succeeded by John Rote.—Letter ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... mostly disagreeable, and then a mate comes looming up through the haze of pieces. So he goes away awestricken but unharmed, secretly believing that all chess-players are humbugs, and that intelligent chess, which is neither chancy nor rote-learned, is beyond the wit of man. But clearly this is an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the beginner can understand the beginning of the game he must surely understand the end; how can ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... make us have a mind to't To fret and vex at folly, as I do, is folly itself To give a currency to his little pittance of learning To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word To keep me from dying is not in your power To kill men, a clear and strong light is required To know by rote, is no knowledge To make little things appear great was his profession To make their private advantage at the public expense To smell, though well, is to stink To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... Christ whom thou hast sent." In these words is the sufficient defence of Protestantism. It was the cry of the soul to know God, and not merely to assent to what the Church taught concerning him; it was the longing to know Christ, and not to repeat by rote the creeds of the first centuries, and the definitions of mediaeval doctors in regard to him. In a subsequent chapter we shall consider the truth and error in the Protestant principle of justification by faith. Our purpose here is to show that the truth in ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... yet had no such end in view, but already she understood that her education, in the serious sense, was only now beginning. As a girl, her fate had been that of girls in general; when she could write without orthographical errors, and could play by rote a few pieces of pianoforte music, her education had been pronounced completed. In the profound moral revolution which her nature had recently undergone her intellect also shared; when the first numbing ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... scoffed away the main-togallants'l, an' she's to work on the foretops'l now. Guess you'd better look in the alminick agin, and fin' out when this moon sets.' So the cappen thought 'twas 'bout time to go on deck. Dreadful slow them Dutch cappens be." And X. walked away, rumbling inwardly, like the rote ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... ideas. But tormenting visions of Mara and her admirer pursued him, and he discoursed mechanically, his reasoning on the woman question having become a matter of rote to him. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the B.A. Examination, it was...necessary to get up Paley's 'Evidences of Christianity,' and his 'Moral Philosophy'... The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the academical course which...was of the least use to me in ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... characters of men. While you were a child, I endeavored to form your heart habitually to virtue and honor, before your understanding was capable of showing you their beauty and utility. Those principles, which you then got, like your grammar rules, only by rote, are now, I am persuaded, fixed and confirmed by reason. And indeed they are so plain and clear, that they require but a very moderate degree of understanding, either to comprehend or practice them. Lord Shaftesbury says, very prettily, that he would be virtuous ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... my bedroom. The doctor's counsels were all forgotten, of course, or remembered only in odd moments, as when going to bed, or shaving in the morning. Then I would promise myself reformation when the book was finished. That done I would live by rote and acquire ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... reached the pavilion of his Queen he found it guarded by those unhappy officials whom Eastern jealousy places around the zenana. Blondel was walking before the door, and touched his rote from time to time in a manner which made the Africans show their ivory teeth, and bear burden with their strange ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... to think for himself and voiced his thought—the emancipated man—has been as one in a million. What usually passes for thought is only the repetition of things we have heard or been told. We memorize, repeat by rote and call it thought. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Wife Abigiel hes under Rote me by saying it is veri Disagria bell to Hur to Expose to the World the miseris & Calamatis of a Distractid famely, and I think as much for hur Father & mother to Witt Stephen deming & his wife acts very much ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of wode, hard and strong: who so coverethe the coles of that wode undir the assches there offe, the coles wil duellen and abyden alle quyk, a zere or more. And that tre hathe many leves, as the gynypre hathe. And there ben also many trees, that of nature thei wole never brenne ne rote in no manere. And there ben note trees, that beren notes, als grete as a mannes hed. There also ben many bestes, that ben clept orafles. [Footnote: Giraffes.] In Arabye, thei ben clept gerfauntz; that is a best ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... stoic lesson, got by rote, The pomp of words, and pedant dissertation, That can support us in the hour of terror. Books have taught cowards to talk nobly of it: But when the trial comes, they start, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... never forget that such a truth as this cannot be learned by rote as one would learn the facts of physical science. They must be experienced before we can really know them. We must in our hearts live through Abraham's harsh and bitter experiences if we would know the blessedness which follows them. ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... Monday into the House of Lords a bill for reforming our present Calendar and taking the New Style. Upon which occasion I was obliged to talk some astronomical jargon, of which I did not understand one word, but got it by heart, and spoke it by rote from a master. I wished that I had known a little more of it myself; and so much I would have you know. But the great and necessary knowledge of all is, to know, yourself and others: this knowledge requires great attention and long experience; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and of the canopy to shade the fauteuil which aped a throne, made me smile. All the world is a stage, thought I; and few are there in it who do not play the part they have learnt by rote; and those who do not, seem marks set up to be pelted at by fortune, or rather as sign-posts which point out the road to others, whilst forced to stand still themselves amidst the ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... portent of a puggaree which, perhaps, he wears on a grey day, adds that of ungovernable rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is made to understand him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, uninterruptedly, without a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, thinking of something else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent to the violence of ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... the romping plays must be alternated with quiet employments, of course, but still active. They will sing at their plays by rote; and also should be taught other songs by rote. But there can be introduced a regular drill on the scale, which should never last more than ten minutes at a time. This, if well managed, will cultivate their ears and voices, so that in the course of a year they will become very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Gassen vermeiden, in welchen es noch etwas zu zahlen[2-4] gab, ging zu London in Regentstreet Nr.[2-5] 86 ein groer hagerer Herr, dem man den Englnder auf tausend Schritt ansah, in seiner Stube auf und ab. Auf dem Tische lagen der rote Bdeker,[2-6] der auf englisch {{Murray}} heit, und Landkarten. Er hatte offenbar Reisegedanken. Und niemand hinderte ihn daran,[2-7] weder sein Weib noch sein Geld. Denn das erste besa er nicht, desto mehr aber vom zweiten. Ob ihn am Fu das Zipperlein plagte oder im oberen Stockwerke ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... ever lenger the wers Till it be rote in mullok or in stree— We olde men, I drede, so fare we, Till we be roten, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... love to hear your voice. An Esquimaux would feel himself getting civilized under it for there's sense in the very sound. A man's character speaks in his voice, even more than in his words. These he may utter by rote, but his 'voice is the man for a' that,' and betrays or divulges his peculiar nature. Do you like my voice, James? I ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... knowledge in the making." All opinions, properly so called, are stages on the road to truth. It does not follow that a man will travel any further; but if he has really considered the world and drawn a conclusion, he has travelled as far. This does not apply to formulae got by rote, which are stages on the road to nowhere but second childhood and the grave. To have a catchword in your mouth is not the same thing as to hold an opinion; still less is it the same thing as to have made one for yourself. There are too many of these catchwords in the world for people to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... year, was the common school of the district. He made good proficiency, but nothing worthy of note occurred in relation to his studies till he was about fifteen years of age. He then began to think, as he says. Before that time, he had repeated by rote whatever he had been taught. The first impulse to reflection was a new discovery. He had been taught from childhood that accent is a stress of voice laid on some syllable or letter of a word. But this definition had not ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... people attached crude or arbitrary meanings; and now she hardly knew what they conveyed to her, and longed, as for something far away, for the reality of those simple teachings—once realities, now all by rote! Saved by faith! What was faith? Could all depend on a last sensation? And as to her life. Failure, failure through headstrong blindness and self-will, resulting in the agony of the innocent. Was this ground of hope? She tried to think of progress and purification beyond the grave; but this ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the minstrel art I know, I the viol well can play; I the pipe and syrinx blow; Harp and geige my hand obey; Psaltery, symphony, and rote Help to charm the listening throng; And Armonia lends its note While I warble forth ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... That blessed man borne; For the ague to him we apply, Whiche jugeleth with a bote I beschrewe his herte rote That will truste ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... understand, savvy [Slang], appreciate; fathom, make out; recognize, discern, perceive, see, get a sight-of, experience. know full well; have some knowledge of, possess some knowledge of; be au courant &c adj.; have in one's head, have at one' fingers ends; know by heart, know by rote; be master of; connaitre le dessous des cartes [Fr.], know what's what &c 698. see one's way; discover &c 480.1. come to one's knowledge &c (information) 527. Adj. knowing &c v.; cognitive; acroamatic^. aware of, cognizant of, conscious of; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sympathy with that revered Antiquity by his fundamental conviction that it is the practice of life which matters. Not he is the great philosopher who knows the tenets of the Stoics or Peripatetics by rote—but he who expresses the meaning of philosophy by his life and his morals, for that is its purpose. He is truly a divine who teaches, not by artful syllogisms, but by his disposition, by his face and his eyes, by his life ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... passed through his mind, he heard the warders at the entrance of his tent challenge some one whose footsteps were heard approaching it. The person stopped on their challenge, and presently after was heard the sound of a rote, (a small species of lute,) the strings of which were managed by means of a small wheel. After a short prelude, a manly voice, of good compass, sung verses, which, translated into modern ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... my life for so many years is so no longer, I wonder what the devil the refrain is now? Ha!" he exclaimed clapping his hand on my shoulder in his old violent way, "I have it! also Villon. Guess. Didn't I teach you all the ballades by rote as we wandered ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... most rightly applied and best understood, can do no more but teach us prudence, moral honesty, and resolution, they thought fit, at first hand, to initiate their children with the knowledge of effects, and to instruct them, not by hearsay and rote, but by the experiment of action, in lively forming and moulding them; not only by words and precepts, but chiefly by works and examples; to the end it might not be a knowledge in the mind only, but its complexion and habit: not an acquisition, but a natural possession. One asking to this ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... nervous system, afterwards the tissues and the bones. Thus, unversed in the deeper phases of causation, men are hurried unprepared into ranks of a noble profession to struggle as best they may, through lack of deeper knowledge, with the serious symptoms of disease—at first by rote but later, are tempted to ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... "It is Faustus who calls there. No one else has the power; and no one else, if he had such power, would dare to knock so loudly against the iron portals. Up! up! a man like him is worth a thousand of the scoundrels who come down hither every day by rote." Then, turning to the devil Leviathan, his favourite, he added, "I choose thee, the subtlest seducer, the deadliest hater of the human race, to ascend and purchase for me, by thy dangerous services, the soul of this desperado. Only thou canst chain, satiate, and ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... for eloquence, for the workmen had chosen him for their orator, and he had a right to speak. As he spoke, it could be seen by his sparkling eyes, and by his fiery enthusiasm, that his words had not been learned by rote, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... different tribes among whom he went. He tells us how he surmounted these difficulties: sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it some of the main Church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote; sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of various dialects, and even by signs. On one occasion he tells us that a very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to China was delayed because, among other things, the interpreter he had engaged ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... many such verses, were repeated, but by rote, and unconnectedly. There were also, occasionally, I believe, a Saint George. In all, there was a confused resemblance of the ancient mysteries, in which the characters of Scripture, the Nine Worthies, and other popular personages, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... masters in French and German, as also in drawing, music, and embroidery. We learn music on a fine piano of five octaves and a half. What an improvement on that of Maleszow! Some of the scholars play polonaises very well, but not by rote; they read them from the notes. My master tells me that in six months I will have reached this perfection; but then I already had some ideas of music when ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... people, sir, are partial in the rest: Foes to all living worth except your own, And advocates for folly dead and gone. Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is the rust we value, not the gold. Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learned by rote, And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote: One likes no language but the Faery Queen; A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green: And each true Briton is to Ben so civil, He swears the Muses met him at the devil. Though justly Greece ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... upward—whither a modest novelist, who writes for the family circle, dare not follow. Yet I may tell you that he knelt down at his bedside, happy and drowsy, and said, "Our Father 'chartin' heaven," even as he had learnt it by rote from his mother nearly twenty years ago. And anon when his breathing had become deep and regular, we may creep into his bedroom and catch him at his dreams. He is lying upon his left side, with his arm under the pillow. It is dark, and he is hidden; but if you could have seen ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... should tell him most exquisitely all their shape, colour, bigness, and particular marks? or of a gorgeous palace, an architect, who, declaring the full beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it were, by rote, all he had heard, yet should never satisfy his inward conceit, with being witness to itself of a true living knowledge; but the same man, as soon as he might see those beasts well painted, or that house well in model, should straightway grow, without need of any description, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... girl. "Don Fernando—Majesty?" Yet a third time she repeated it, as by rote; and, very slowly, understanding grew into the words, and with understanding, terror. The dark innocent eyes went appealingly from one to the other, and the lids began to flutter wildly in a kind of spasm. "Majesty? Majesty?" Then, suddenly, she flung both hands ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... for improving the trade of this kingdom, which doth not manifestly shew the stupidity and ignorance of the proposer; and I laugh with contempt at those weak wise heads, who proceed upon general maxims, or advise us to follow the examples of Holland and England. These empirics talk by rote, without understanding the constitution of the kingdom: as if a physician, knowing that exercise contributed much to health, should prescribe to his patient under a severe fit of the gout, to walk ten miles every morning. The directions ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the idea that you press down the string as you press a button and—presto—the magic harmonics appear! They are a simple and natural result of the proper application of scientific principles; and the sooner the student learns to form and combine harmonics himself instead of learning them by rote, the better will he play them. Too often a student can give the fingering of certain double harmonics and cannot use it. Of course, harmonics are only a detail of the complete mastery of the violin; but mastery of all details leads to mastery ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... youth, who seems preternaturally keen, swears that on Thirteenth Street between Fifth Avenue and University Place the woman stopped and spoke to him; and he tells his story as though it were learned by rote. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... for children. He knew "How doth the little busy bee" so well as to be able to repeat it without a mistake, for his mother had taught it him, and he had understood it. You see, he was not like a child of five, taught to repeat by rote lines which could give him no notions but mistaken ones. Besides, he had a good knowledge of words, and could use them well in talk, although he could not read; and it is a great thing if a child can talk well before he ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... said by rote, "you're well, and your parents also in good health. May I have the pleasure of dancing the cotillon as your ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... schewed thanne in the visage; The word was lich to the conceite Withoute semblant of deceite: Tho was ther unenvied love, Tho was the vertu sett above And vice was put under fote. Now stant the crop under the rote, The world is changed overal, And therof most in special 120 That love is falle into discord. And that I take to record Of every lond for his partie The comun vois, which mai noght lie; Noght upon on, bot upon alle It is that men now clepe ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... plain maxim of republican economy will make again fast enough when the maxim has prevailed. The weaver of Lancashire, who plays out his hunger in London streets, and our seamen who make the weaver wait while they watch three thousand miles of seaboard, are both listening to the rote of the same great truth, as it dashes on the shores of Time, and brings bracing air to the people who are sick with waiting. If we are gaining battles because we love the rights of the common people, our success will include the English weaver, Dissenters will build churches ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... a prince. As to the succession, she bade them not think that they had needed this desire, if she had seen a time so fit; and it so ripe to be denounced. That the greatness of the cause, and the need of their return, made her say that a short time for so long a continuance ought not to pass by rote. That as cause by conference with the learned should show her matter worth utterance for their behoof, so she would more gladly pursue their good after her days, than with all her prayers while she lived be a means to linger out her living thread. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... grief; Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: For him her Old World molds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... about human bones by a pupil of the Campbell Medical School, for which purpose a skeleton, with the bones fastened together by wires was hung up in our schoolroom. And finally, time was also found for Pandit Heramba Tatwaratna to come and get us to learn by rote rules of Sanscrit grammar. I am not sure which of them, the names of the bones or the sutras of the grammarian, were the more jaw-breaking. I think the latter ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... within their mission seemed almost to override that of the Governor himself, yielded so far as to allow the father to see his daughter, on condition that he spoke to no other English prisoner. He spoke to her for an hour, exhorting her never to forget her catechism, which she had learned by rote. The Governor and his wife afterwards did all in their power to procure her ransom, ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... meaning, and by which the analytic faculty of the pupil is exercised in tracing the transition from the primary meaning to the secondary and figurative meanings,—thus converting what is ordinarily a matter of rote into an agreeable exercise of the thinking faculty. Another point of novelty in the method of treatment is presented in the copious practical exercises on the use of words. The experienced instructor very well ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his Natural Theology, gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the academical course which, as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself about Paley's premises, and taking these on trust ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... take the upper hand in the confusion will arrange life wisely, after their own fashion. Then things won't go at random, but as if by rote. It's a pity that we shall not live ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... made school-time very pleasant. He seldom had to punish a boy for bad conduct or neglect in getting his lessons. He always encouraged them to ask questions about their studies, and told them never to learn any thing by rote, like a parrot, but to come to him when they did not understand a lesson; and he always made it so clear that it was a pleasure to learn. Sometimes a boy would ask a foolish question, which would make the ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... those attendant upon the repetition of some performance by one who has done it very often before, but who requires just a little prompting to set him off, on getting which, the whole familiar routine presents itself before him, and he repeats his task by rote. Surely then we are justified in suspecting that there must have been more bona fide personal recollection and experience, with more effort and failure on the part of the infant itself, than ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... him off; and as for his fibre, there was nothing advantageous in it. He was little: his head was large and his legs small; his features were not disagreeable, but he was affected in his carriage and behaviour. All his wit consisted in expressions learnt by rote, which he occasionally employed either in raillery, or in love. This was the whole foundation of the merit of a man ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... dared to think for himself and voiced his thought—the emancipated man—has been as one in a million. What usually passes for thought is only the repetition of things we have heard or been told. We memorize, repeat by rote and call ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... civilization, house-building, warm apartments and kitchen fires, well-stored larders, and especially exemption from rude toil, abolish these extreme caricatures; and keeping appetite down to a middling level by the rote of meals, and thus taking away the incentives to ravenous haste, they allow the mind to tutor and variegate the tongue, and to substitute the harmonies and melodies of deliberate gustation for such unseemly bolting. Under this direction, hunger ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Note, Syllable: Singing by rote means that the singer sings something learned by ear without regard to notes. Singing by note means that the singer is guided to the correct pitch by visible notes. Singing by syllable means that the singer sings the tones of a song or part to the sol-fa syllables ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... cause for such regrets, for he never says a useless word, and does not exhaust himself by chattering when he knows there is no one to listen to him. His ideas are few but precise, he knows nothing by rote but much by experience. If he reads our books worse than other children, he reads far better in the book of nature; his thoughts are not in his tongue but in his brain; he has less memory and more judgment; ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... he, "it ain't them. Do you hear the falls at my lake? the west wind brings that to us. When I am there and the rote is on the beach, it tells me it is the voice of the south wind giving notice of rain. All nature warns me. The swallow, the pig, the goose, the fire on the hearth, the soot in the flue, the smoke of the chimney, the rising and setting sun, the white frost, the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... going as far as the Square, Mr. Starr," she replied, as if she were repeating by rote a phrase in a ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... forget what you promised. I mene about not showing this. And don't tell Lilly I rote. If you do, she'll be as mad as hops. I haven't been doing much since you went away. School begun yesterday, and I am glad; for it's awfully dull now that you girls have gone. Mother says Guest has got flees on him, so she won't let him come into the house any more. ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... to any religious organisation is that a body of men should arise in its ranks, and hold its positions of trust, who have learned its great fundamental doctrines by rote out of the catechism, but have no experimental knowledge of their truth inwrought by the mighty anointing of the Holy Ghost, and who are destitute of "an unction from the Holy One," by which, says John, "ye know all things" ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... of. We read in their writings a great number of high and glorious principles and acts, and our first thought thereupon is, "All this must have had an existence somewhere or other in those times. These very men, indeed, may be merely speaking by rote, and not understand what they say; but it matters not to the profit of their writings what they were themselves." It matters not to the profit of their writings, nor again to the authority resulting from ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... brawling, champion of the Church, Vain as a parrot screaming on her perch; And like that parrot screaming out by rote, The same stale, flat, unprofitable note; Still interrupting all debate With one eternal cry of "Church and State!" With all the High Tory's ignorance increased, By all the arrogance that makes the priest; One who declares upon his solemn word The Voluntary system is absurd; He well may ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... is hardly possible, at least not near so easy as in Logic, to present the semblance of preparation by learning questions and answers by rote:—in the cant phrase of undergraduates, by getting crammed.—Whalely's ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... rather that he should be converted and live. The beautiful prayers in the Liturgy, were explained to them in a manner suitable to their different capacities; consequently, they were not repeated by rote, as is too frequently the case, where the same attention is not paid. Mr. and Mrs. Bernard took unremitted pains with their children, and felt themselves amply rewarded by their conduct; for though, like other human beings, they were ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... as eyes and noses? In what respects do the two things differ so that we should refer the inheritance of eyes and noses to memory, while denying any connection between memory and gout? We may have a ghost of a pretence for saying that a man grew a nose by rote, or even that he catches the measles or whooping-cough by rote during his boyhood; but do we mean to say that he develops the gout by rote in his old age if he comes of a gouty family? If, then, rote and red-tape have nothing ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... that are to be met with nowhere else, and which occasionally would not disgrace a Berkeley. A dextrous plagiarist might get himself an immense reputation by putting them in a popular dress. Oh! how little do they know, who have never done anything but repeat after others by rote, the pangs, the labour, the yearnings and misgivings of mind it costs to get at the germ of an original idea—to dig it out of the hidden recesses of thought and nature, and bring it half-ashamed, struggling, and deformed into the day—to give words and intelligible symbols to that which ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... managed by bright-eyed tots just out of the kindergarten, but how can commercial fertilizers be carefully analyzed by a boy who has made no study of general chemistry? and how can a balanced ration be adjusted by an illiterate person? Similarly, the girl in the laundry does not make soap by rote, but by principle; and the girl in the dressmaking-shop does not cut out her pattern by luck, or guess, or instinct, or rule of thumb, but by geometry. And so the successful teaching of the industries demands no mean amount of academic preparation. In this lies the technical ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... his lights, he had bled the patient, as he would have bled, by rote, to recall to life one actually cut down from the beam. But, although the young blood did flow, bearing testimony to the fact that the heart still beat in that deathlike frame, the vitality left seemed so faint as to defy the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... "Public Baptism of Infants": "So soon as he can say the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar (i.e. his native) tongue, and be further instructed, etc." Here, the words "can say" obviously mean can say intelligently. The mere saying of the words by rote is comparatively unimportant, though it has its use; but if this were all, it would degrade the Candidate's intellectual status to the capacities of a parrot. But, "as soon as" he can intelligently comply with the Church's ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... for us to do. We ourselves must seek the solution, seek it all through life if needs must, seek it with untiring patience. A half truth which we have won for ourselves is worth more than a whole truth learned from others, learned by rote as a parrot learns. A truth which we accept with closed eyes, submissively, deferentially, servilely—such a truth ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... is me opinyon: I don't think Cap. Dhryfuss wr-rote th' borderoo. I think he was th' on'y man in Fr-rance that didn't. But I ain't got as high an opinyon iv th' Cap as I had. I ain't no purity brigade; but, th' older I get, th' more I think wan wife's enough f'r anny man, an' too manny f'r some. They was a time, Cap, ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... wine; a shouting, reeling crowd Of friends who dragged him, dazed and blind with drink Out to the street; a crazy rout of cabs; The steady mutter of his neighbor's voice, Mumbling out dull obscenity by rote; And then... well, they had brought him home it seemed, Since he awoke in bed — oh, damn the business! He had not wanted it — the silly jokes, "One last, great night of freedom ere you're married!" "You'll get no fun then!" ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... thou art led to think that there are evil presences near, and in such lonely places as this cave.' I humoured him by doing as he desired; and that the rather because I hoped his thoughts would thus be turned away from the writing; but as soon as I had the spell by rote he turned back to the parchment, saying, 'He was but a poor divine who wrote this, for beside choosing ill-fitting verses, he cannot even give right numbers to them. For see here, "The days of our age are three-score years and ten; ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... suited for it. To attempt to cultivate such minds for eminent purposes would be folly. Even supposing they could be educated—which is scarcely supposable, for it would seem a contravention of Heaven's fiat—they could no more apply this learning, which would simply be by rote, than they could go to the moon. Such men are not unfrequently met with, and are designated, by common consent, learned fools. Nature points out the education they should receive. In like manner with those of higher and nobler ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... so far advanced in the soil of Miss Melbury's mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that she knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing—that is ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... of four I learned to read by a simple process. I had heard the elegy of Cock Robin till I knew it by rote, and I picked out the letters and words which compose that classic till I could read it for myself. Earlier than that, "Robinson Crusoe" had been read aloud to me, in an abbreviated form, no doubt. I remember the pictures of Robinson ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... an arrogant commender of his own things; for whatsoever he shews you is the best in the town, though the worst in his shop. His conscience was a thing that would have laid upon his hands, and he was forced to put it off, and makes great use of honesty to profess upon. He tells you lies by rote, and not minding, as the phrase to sell in, and the language he spent most of his years to learn. He never speaks so truely as when he says he would use you as his brother; for he would abuse his brother, and in his shop thinks it lawful. His religion is much in the nature of his customers, and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Pease of Painted Glass In Chakers of yoler & Green & blew 10 yong Hedge frougs Two Pikse of Armse on Each Side W.B. there was in this Rote on y' Glass Lyfford but there is only now ford y' 3 fust Leters ar Broken & Lost oute One Pecs of y' Painted Glass in y' frount Chamber window as foloweth In a Surkel 6 flours of Luse 6 Red Lyans Traveling 4 Rede ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... was aroused, and then he absorbed the matter at hand in the way he breathed, without the least conscious effort; or his interest remained unstirred, in which case no amount of mechanical application would help. Learning by rote offered no escape in the latter case, for his memory operated in the same way as the rest of his mind, sucking up what fitted it as a blotter sucks the ink, and presenting a surface of polished marble to any matter not germane according to its ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... gefrbtes Bild des Spaltes, weil sich im Prisma die Strahlen von grsserer Wellenlnge rascher fortpflanzen als die von kleinerer. Ein solches farbiges Spaltbild nennt man Spektrum. Das weisse Licht besteht aus einem Gemisch von unendlich vielen Strahlen verschiedener Farbe. Das rote Licht ist am wenigsten, ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... clown, Devereux thought; but as fine a gentleman, to speak honestly, and as handsome, as well dressed, and as pleasant to listen to, with that sweet low voice and piquant smile, as any. Besides he could draw, and had more yards of French and English verses by rote than Aunt Becky owned of Venetian lace and satin ribbons, and was more of a scholar than he. He? He!—why—'he?' what the deuce had Devereux to do with it—was he vexed?—A fiddle-stick! He began to flag with Miss Ward, the dowager's ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... In the midst of cities and affairs they are like landsmen at sea, incapable of an intellectual conception of their position: nor have they any complete confidence in their principles of navigation. They know the logarithms by rote merely, and if they reflect are reduced to a stupid wonder and only half believe they are in a known universe or will ever reach an earthly port. It would not require superhuman eloquence in some prophetic passenger to persuade them ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... life based on the experience of mankind. Hence our study of history. But a study of history in the abstract is valueless. It must be concrete, real and living to have any significance for us. The schoolboy who learns by rote imagines the Greeks as outline figures of one dimension, clad in helmets and tunics, and brandishing little swords. That is like thinking of Jeanne d'Arc as a suit of armor or of Theodore Roosevelt ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... alike from each remote, The world that works, the heaven that waits, Con our brief pleasures o'er by rote, The favourite pastime ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives.[214] We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men and talents and characters they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I am so ignorant, replied Campuzano, as not to know that brutes cannot talk unless by a miracle. I well know that if starlings, jays, and parrots talk, it is only such words as they have learned by rote, and because they have tongues adapted to pronounce them; but they cannot, for all that, speak and reply with deliberate discourse as those dogs did. Many times, indeed, since I heard them I have been disposed ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... terrible night. No noise in the town, did I say? Ah, but there was! It came creeping round the corners, it poured rushing up the street, it rose from everywhere,—a voice, a voice of woe, the heavy booming rote of the sea. I looked out, but it was pitch-dark, light had forsaken the world, we were beleaguered by blackness. It grew colder, as if one felt a fog fall, and the wind, mounting slowly, now blew a gale. It eddied in clouds of dead and whirling leaves, and sent big torn branches ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... let us say, and of a faithful man of the world. But this is a mystery, and I will not trouble you with mysteries or personal experiences. You would write as your Southern mockingbird sings his "green-tree ballad"; the thought of that bird mewed in a city cage and taught to perform by rote and not for spontaneous joy, troubled me not a little. I am sending ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... a grimace. "You are about to say I repent of folly—or the enticing of a virgin—or that I fell victim to the blandishments of some tricky dame—I know all that cant by rote!—a man always repents until his broken head is mended, but all that is apart from the real thing—which is this:—In what way does my moment with a lady in the dark affect the Viceroy of the Indies? Why should his Excellency trouble himself that ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... end in view, but already she understood that her education, in the serious sense, was only now beginning. As a girl, her fate had been that of girls in general; when she could write without orthographical errors, and could play by rote a few pieces of pianoforte music, her education had been pronounced completed. In the profound moral revolution which her nature had recently undergone her intellect also shared; when the first numbing shock had spent ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... which they never master, and manners and races which they cannot appreciate. Instead of being disciplined to think exactly, to speak and write accurately, they are crammed with rules and taught to repeat forms by rote. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... death, that I may despatch him the speedilier for thee." Quoth Sasan, "And welcome to thee!"; and gave her a hanger that would devance man's destiny. Now this slave women had heard stories and verses and had learned by rote great store of strange sayings and anecdotes: so she took the dagger and went out of the room, considering how she could compass his doom. Then she repaired to Kanmakan, who was sitting and awaiting news of tryst with the daughter of his uncle, Kuzia Fakan; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... grades ought not to permit such pupils to graduate into the high school. Indeed, algebra, Caesar, and Greek history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor memory. It was much the same, however, with English literature or social science or French, subjects that might be expected to awaken some response in the mind of a girl. The only subject that she really liked was dancing, which the gymnasium instructor taught. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... had huddled a friar's frock over his green cassock, and now summoning together whatever scraps of learning he had acquired by rote in former days, "Holy father," said he, "'Deus faciat salvam benignitatem vestram'—You are welcome to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... fashion his visage and frame his phrases to this or that woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him: "Shopmen quite ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones can sell ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... learn philosophy by rote, and play at heroism. But the wiser God says, Take the shame, the poverty, and the penal solitude that belong to truth-speaking. Try the rough water, as well as the smooth. Rough water can teach lessons worth knowing. When the state is unquiet, personal qualities are more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... historians of our century survive—Carlyle and Macaulay. They may be read with care. We may do as Cassius said Brutus did to him, observe all their faults, set them in a note-book, learn and con them by rote; nevertheless we shall get good from them. Oscar Browning said—I am quoting H. Morse Stephens again—of Carlyle's description of the flight of the king to Varennes, that in every one of his details where a writer could go wrong, Carlyle ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... hesitation in his speech, and when he paused an instant after the second word, my impatience and jealousy impelled me to continue the speech for him, as if it were something we had both learned by rote. He coloured and looked astonished, as well as annoyed; and the words had no sooner escaped my lips than I felt a shock of alarm lest such an anticipation of words—very far from being words of course, easy to divine—should have betrayed me as an exceptional being, a sort of quiet energumen, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... O.S., his wife died. Why Sir John Hawkins should unwarrantably take upon him even to suppose that Johnson's fondness for her was dissembled (meaning simulated or assumed,) and to assert, that if it was not the case, 'it was a lesson he had learned by rote[688],' I cannot conceive; unless it proceeded from a want of similar feelings in his own breast. To argue from her being much older than Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not really love her, is absurd; for love is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the modern dockyards in the making of metal ships. The man who doubted, let us say, our fabulous ancient kings running up to Adam, or found but mythology in some old tale, was as hated as if he had doubted the authority of Scripture. Above all no man was so ignorant, that he had not by rote familiar arguments and statistics to drive away amid familiar applause, all those had they but found strange truth in the world or in their mind, whose knowledge has passed out of memory and become an instinct of hand ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... shade, engaged in disparting Poland? We have seen, say, a million of Frenchmen, and nearly the same of Italians, since then, with a dozen or so of kings and emperors,—but never the faintest likeness to those deluding pictures. We learned at the same time, by painful rote, the population of various capital cities; but we cannot find in any statistic-book gazetteer, neither in McCulloch nor in Worcester, any of the old, familiar numbers. Also in that same Wonder-Book of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of God's house. The use of liturgical forms is a relapse into legalism, a consent to be taught to pray as "John taught his disciples." True, there may be extemporaneous forms as well as written forms, praying by rote as well as praying by the book. Against both habits we simply interpose the higher teaching of the Spirit, as belonging especially to this dispensation, in which the Father seeketh worshipers who "worship in Spirit and in truth." To pray rightly is the highest of all attainments. ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... and humane, but not very enlightened, because it derived its light from the heart and not from, his understanding. Egmont possessed more of conscience than of fixed principles; his head had not given him a code of its own, but had merely learnt it by rote; the mere name of any action, therefore, was often with him sufficient for its condemnation. In his judgment men were wholly bad or wholly good, and had not something bad or something good; in this system of morals there was no middle term between vice and virtue; and consequently a single ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... other day, while the three Englishmen hammered away in vain at Brother Jonathan Herring's. The Englishmen represented brute force. The Germans had been trained to appreciate principle. The Englishman "knows his business by rote and rule of thumb"—science, which would "teach him to do in an hour what has hitherto occupied him two hours," "is in a manner forbidden to him." To this cause the "Times" attributes the falling off of English workmen in comparison ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... porch I found a school of dirty ragged children reading the Psalms from the small English printed edition; not, however, learning to read by means of the alphabet or spelling, but learning to know the forms of words by rote; boys and girls together, all very slightly dressed, and one of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... fare, Filled with an infinite yearning, With thoughts that rise and fall To the sound of the sea's hollow call, Breathed now from white-lit waves that reach Cold fingers o'er the damp, dark beach, To scatter a spray on my dreams; Till the slow and measured rote Brings a drowsy ease To my spirit, and seems To set it soothingly afloat On broad and buoyant seas Of endless rest, lulled by the dirge ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... negative, sanctity is a positive state, and is acquired as the result of active correspondence with the will of God. In order that there may be this correspondence the will of God must be known, not merely as we know the things that we have learned by rote, but known in the sense of understood and appreciated. The will of God is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but it needs to be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be convinced ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... several instances of habits, which may be revived by one single word; as when a person, who has by rote any periods of a discourse, or any number of verses, will be put in remembrance of the whole, which he is at a loss to recollect, by that single word or ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." In these words is the sufficient defence of Protestantism. It was the cry of the soul to know God, and not merely to assent to what the Church taught concerning him; it was the longing to know Christ, and not to repeat by rote the creeds of the first centuries, and the definitions of mediaeval doctors in regard to him. In a subsequent chapter we shall consider the truth and error in the Protestant principle of justification by faith. Our ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... lot of things happen, mostly disagreeable, and then a mate comes looming up through the haze of pieces. So he goes away awestricken but unharmed, secretly believing that all chess-players are humbugs, and that intelligent chess, which is neither chancy nor rote-learned, is beyond the wit of man. But clearly this is an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the beginner can understand the beginning of the game he must surely understand the end; how can he commence playing until he knows what he is playing for? It is like starting ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... one tune to another in the same line or improvising as he went on. Finally, in 1721, the Rev. Thomas Walter of Roxbury, Mass., published a treatise, upon the grounds or rules of music or an introduction to the art of singing by rote, containing twenty-four tunes harmonized into three parts. The attempt to supersede the old Puritan tunes and restrict the liberty of the individual singers met with the greatest opposition and was long successfully ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... think, and act by rote; who have a phrase, or a maxim, or a formula ready for every ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... gaged, When blest with that release desired, First doubts if truly she is free, Then pauses, restlessly retired, Alarm'd at too much liberty; But soon, remembering all her debt To plighted passion, gets by rote Her duty; says, 'I love him!' yet The thought half chokes her in her throat; And, like that fatal 'I am thine,' Comes with alternate gush and check And joltings of the heart, as wine Pour'd from a flask of narrow neck. Is ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... hear the fellow's words who handed it? I asked from whom it came, he spoke by rote, "The pepper bites, the corn is ripe for harvest, I come from Eisenach." 'T is ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... doldrum." Ladies and gentlemen, I confess, also, that I don't like those schools, even though the instruction given in them be gratuitous, where those sweet little voices which ought to be heard speaking in very different accents, anathematise by rote any human being who does not hold what is taught there. Lastly, I do not like, and I did not like some years ago, cheap distant schools, where neglected children pine from year to year under an amount of neglect, want, and youthful misery far too sad ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... cause of the great neglect and scorn of preaching, ariseth from the practice of men who set up to decry and disparage religion; these, being zealous to promote infidelity and vice, learn a rote of buffoonery that serveth all occasions, and refutes the strongest arguments for piety and good manners. These have a set of ridicule calculated for all sermons, and all preachers, and can be extreme witty as often as they please upon ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... the structure and relations of these five genera, he will have no difficulty in attaching to them, in a satellitic or subordinate manner, such inferior groups as that of the Silver-weed, or the Tormentilla; but all he will have to learn by heart and rote, will be these six names; the Greek Master-name, Charites, and the five generic names, in each case belonging to plants, as he will soon find, of ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... a fashion; they can mispronounce a few French words, without being able to construct a single grammatical sentence or understand a syllable that is said to them; they know enough shorthand to write down simple words at one half the speed of ordinary handwriting; and they have acquired by rote a few dry facts from history and geography, all of which will be totally obliterated from their memories within a space ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... her with a touch like a mother's, in its grateful coolness. The air seemed full of half-vibrations, sub-noises, that crowded it as completely as do the insect sounds of midsummer; yet she could only distinguish the ripple beneath her feet, and the rote on the distant beach, and the busy wash of waters against every shore and islet of the bay. The mist was thick around her, but she knew that above it hung the sleepless stars, and the fancy came over her that perhaps the whole vast interval, from ocean up to sky, might ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... like going back, but it is really a going forward. The philosophy is true, but it belonged to those older souls who were ready for it, and the younger souls now being born into the people are not ready for that philosophy. They repeat it by rote, they are hypnotised by it, and they sink down into inertia, because there is nothing they desire enough to force them to exertion. The consequence is that the nation as a whole is going downhill. The old lesson of putting different objects before souls of different ages, is forgotten, ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... so as to be as near the text as possible. These questions furnish an excellent topical analysis of the text.[3] In a certain sense they ask "what the book says," but the teacher is advised emphatically to discourage any such thing as committing the text to memory. The tendency to rote-learning is very strong. I had to contend with it in teaching history to seniors at Harvard twenty years ago, but much has since been done to check it through the development of the modern German seminary methods. ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... a great many of us often have expectations fainter than desires; and that we should be very much surprised if the thing that we ask for, in the prayers that we so often repeat by rote, were granted to us. You will hear men praying for holiness, for clean hearts, for progress in the Christian life, for a hundred other such blessings. They do not expect that anything is going to come in consequence, and they would be mightily at a loss what to do with the gift ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... will never so far forsake the traditions of his tribe as to stay long in any one place. His mind is not as ours. A little of our civilisation we can teach him, and he will learn it, as he may learn to repeat by rote the signs of the zodiac or the multiplication table, or to use a table napkin, or to decorously dispose of the stones in a cherry tart. But the lesson sits lightly on him, and he remains in heart as irreclaimable as ever. Already, indeed, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... system of extended rhyming, coupled with a noticeable lack of metrical harmony. Mr. Baxley's technique is such that we believe his improvement would be best effected by a repeated perusal of the older poets, whose classical exactitude of form would teach him rhythm by rote, so to speak. Let him cultivate his ear for metre, even though forced to acquire it through nonsensical jingles. We believe that many a child has obtained from his "Mother Goose" a love of correct rhythm which has later helped ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour Of which vertue engendred is the flour; When Zephyrus eke with his sote brethe Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppes—and the yonge Sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne; * * * * Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages— * * * * ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... own. This was peculiarly so. It wrought strangely upon my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was replete with tenderness and with the most lively affection. I read and re-read till afraid I should get it by rote, and mingle ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... cookery language, and Madame Le Roi's: What with fillets of roses, and fillets of veal, Things garni with lace, and things garni with eel, One's hair, and one's cutlets both en papillote, And a thousand more things I shall ne'er have by rote, I can scarce tell the difference, at least as to phrase, Between beef a la Psyche and curls a la braise.— But, in short, dear, I'm trick'd out quite a la Francaise, With my bonnet—so beautiful!—high ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... exhilaration, followed by a gnawing sense of failure and uselessness, were known to her mother only as "wildness" and "low spirits," to be combated by needlework as a sedative, or beef tea as a stimulant. Mrs. Wylie had learnt by rote that the whole duty of a lady is to be graceful, charitable, helpful, modest, and disinterested whilst awaiting passively whatever lot these virtues may induce. But she had learnt by experience that a lady's business in society ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... as Jim went down along The leaene a-whisslen ov a zong, The saucy Daw cried out by rote "Girt Soft-poll!" lik' to split his droat. Jim stopp'd an' grabbled up a clot, An' zent en at en lik' a shot; An' down went Daw an' cage avore The clot, up thump ageaen the door. Zoo out run Poll an' Tom, to zee What all the meaenen o't mid be; "Now who did that?" zaid ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... hour teaching Filomena her large letters up to N, and making her say them by rote, and with that end in view have divided them into three portions—ABCD—EFG—ILMN. She manages all right, except that she always jumps E and L. Lesson closed: "Were you at church to-day, Filomena?" "No, I have nothing to confess." "Did you go to church last Sunday?" "No, I have ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Tristrem, who had been away hunting, returned immediately after the adventurous earl had departed with his fair prize. He upbraided the King for his extravagant sense of honour, and, snatching up his rote, or harp, hastened to the seashore, where Ysonde had already embarked. There he sat down and played, and the sound so deeply affected Ysonde that she became seriously ill, so that the earl was induced to return with her to land. Ysonde pretended that ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
