"Readable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Descartes; the other nothing but the literary life of Newton. The preface indicates more: and Watt mentions three volumes.[362] I dare say the first two contain all that is valuable. On looking more attentively at the two volumes, I find them both readable and instructive; the account of Newton is far above that of Voltaire, but not so popular. But he should not have said that Newton's family came from Newton in Ireland. Sir Rowland Hill gives fourteen Newtons in Ireland;[363] twice the number of the cities that contended for the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... are personally gentle and temperamentally averse from violence. But the general tone of the Anarchist press and public is bitter to a degree that seems scarcely sane, and the appeal, especially in Latin countries, is rather to envy of the fortunate than to pity for the unfortunate. A vivid and readable, though not wholly reliable, account, from a hostile point of view, is given in a book called "Le Peril Anarchiste,'' by Felix Dubois,[17] which incidentally reproduces a number of cartoons from ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... the spring, Mr. Williams——But no more! Haven't we already prolonged our sketch to an intolerable length, considering the subject of it? Not a lover in it! and, of course, it is preposterous to think of making a readable story without one. Why didn't we make young Gingerford in love with—let's see—Miss Frisbie? and Miss Frisbie's brother (it would have required but a stroke of the pen to give her one) in love with—Creshy Williams? What melodramatic difficulties might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... that I employed in preparing this material did not lend themselves satisfactorily to preservation of the original pagination or of numbering and cross reference of pages. However, as the product is machine readable, search is easier than working from an index, and I tried to support the use of such facilities. Anyone who feels strongly that an index remains necessary, is welcome to add an index to the version that I have presented ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... at another plunge into the gulf, this Curtius of history would not immolate himself for his country! He wrote a civil letter to the librarian for his "supernumerary kindness," but insinuated that he could write a very readable history without any further aid of such paperasses or "paper-rubbish." Pere Daniel, therefore, "quietly sat down to his history," copying others—a compliment which was never returned by any one: but there was this striking novelty in his "readable history," ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... B.M. Bower will stand for something readable in the estimation of every man, and most every woman, who reads this fine new story of Montana ranch and its dwellers."—Publisher ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... of a continent within the limits of a summer's ride; in the eloquence which rises to sublimity over mining stock, and dwindles to the verge of commonplace before unmarketable natural beauties. Of course, it is the best book on the theme it handles, for it is the latest; it is lively, readable, instructive; but no descriptions of those changing regions can last much longer than an almanac, and this will retain its place only until the coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... basis of all moral judgment and criticism of the characters they portray, even when their genius forces them to represent their most attractive heroes and heroines as violating the readymade code in all directions. Far be it from me to pretend that the first order is more readable than the second! Shakespear, Scott, Dickens, Dumas pere are not, to say the least, less readable than Euripides and Ibsen. Nor is the first order always more constructive; for Byron, Oscar Wilde, and Larochefoucauld did not get further in positive philosophy than Ruskin and Carlyle, though ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... wretched French novels, the meager sum of fifty dollars. I sold some of my wife's trinkets to purchase paper and ink, and worked diligently, you can guess how many weeks, until they were in English as readable as the French of their author. The task accomplished, I went to my patron, expecting of course to have the pittance counted down in current notes or gold; but——the market for such literature was by this time over stocked; he had supplied ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... also a real person. At least an artillery chaplain of that name distinguished himself at Saratoga by reading the burial service over Major Fraser under fire, and by a quite readable adventure, chronicled by Burgoyne, with Lady Harriet Ackland. Lady Harriet's husband achieved the remarkable feat of killing himself, instead of his adversary, in a duel. He overbalanced himself in the heat of his swordsmanship, and fell with his head against ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... authoritative exposition of a leader in his "Fach,'' and is the more acceptable for purposes of translation, in that the wide interests of the writer and his sympathetic handling of his material impart an unusually readable quality to his pages. JOSEPH JASTROW. MADISON, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... friends, were anxious that his biography should be written by those best qualified to do so. It is therefore a source of gratification to us of his own race to have an account of Dr. Washington's career set forth in a form at once accurate and readable, such as will inspire unborn generations of Negroes and others to love and appreciate all mankind of whatever race or color. It is especially gratifying that this biography has been prepared by the two people in all America best fitted, by antecedents and by intimate ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... present. He thought that his friend should have welcomed him with an open hand into the realms of literature; and, perhaps, it was the case that Quaverdale attributed too much weight to the knack of turning readable paragraphs on any subject at ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... came regularly to Louis through the winter evenings, and in a little time he could send a readable letter to the friends down South. Newbern was a nice place, had nice people, he told us, and he had been well treated and permitted to learn to read, but the writing he could not find time to master; he was skilful in figures, and Louis was ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... energy. Of course a reporter is not made in a day. It takes many months of drudgery to obtain such skill in shorthand as shall enable the pen of the ready-writer to keep up with the winged words of speech, and make dots and lines that shall be readable. Dickens laboured hard to acquire the art. In the intervals of his work he made it a kind of holiday task to attend the Reading-room of the British Museum, and so remedy the defects in the literary part of his education. But ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... book for boys. It is bright and readable, and full of good sense and manliness. It teaches pluck and patience in adversity, and shows that right ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... intended that the man shall be depicted as he moved and lived and had his being, and that the scope and gist of his work, as well as the steps by which he reached his results, shall be set forth in a clear, readable style. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... porter and the grand lady can both read. I have taken the Gospel and the Catechism, two books that sell well, and so I have made mine. I have laid the scene in a village, and the whole of the story will be readable, which is rare with me." How high his hopes of its quality and saleableness were (the two things were oddly mixed up in his mind), he imparted to Zulma Carraud. "The Country Doctor has cost me ten times more labour than Louis Lambert," he informed her. "There is not a sentence ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... frozen. I am all right. We are all all right. Fog in the horizon, with little rounded cirrus. We are ascending. Croce pants; he inhales oxygen. Sivel closes his eyes. Croce also closes his eyes.... Sivel throws out ballast'—these last words are hardly readable. Sivel seized his knife and cut successively three cords, and the three bags emptied themselves and we ascended rapidly. The last remembrance of this ascent which remains clear to me relates to a moment earlier. Croce-Spinelli was seated, holding in one ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the novelties, peculiarities, individual standards and ideals of other peoples and races. Mark Twain spoke his mind with utter disregard for other people's opinions, the dicta of criticism or the authoritative judgment of the schools. 'The Innocents Abroad' is eminently readable, not alone for its humour, its clever journalism, its remarkably accurate and detailed information, and its fine descriptions. The rare quality, which made it "sell right along—like the Bible," is that ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... of Antarctic exploration has been reduced to a minimum, as the subject has been ably dealt with by previous writers. This, and several other aspects of our subject, have been relegated to special appendices in order to make the story more readable ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the review which is to crush him. An exuberant Jones has been known before now to declare aloud that he would crush a man, and a self-confident Jones has been known to declare that he has accomplished the deed. Of all reviews, the crushing review is the most popular, as being the most readable. When the rumour goes abroad that some notable man has been actually crushed,—been positively driven over by an entire Juggernaut's car of criticism till his literary body be a mere amorphous mass,—then a real success has been achieved, and the Alf of the day has done a great thing; but even ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... rational education of both women and men with reference to sex and marriage. Let me quote C. Gasquoine Hartley, whose suggestive Chapters VIII and IX in her "Truth About Woman" (Dodd, Mead) deserve to live long after the readable but unscientifically applied earlier chapters are ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... While the children read these verses, they will not only become acquainted with the principal events in the lives of our Blessed Saviour and His Apostles—their travels, their sufferings and their death,—but they will see that the Bible is a readable book, and a book that may be read every day, without any fear of becoming the unhappy being that some persons suppose; and besides this, the tone which is given to the affections, the minds, and the morals of children by such reading, is of almost ...
— The Parables Of The Saviour - The Good Child's Library, Tenth Book • Anonymous
... endeavored to provide a readable account of the entire history of the art of music, within the compass of a single small volume, and to treat the luxuriant and many-sided later development with the particularity proportionate to its importance, and the greater interest appertaining to it from its proximity to the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... a meaning into that miracle of agglutinative ingenuity, an Hungarian sentence, will be able to appreciate the immense labour of rendering some four hundred pages of a Magyar masterpiece of peculiarly idiomatic difficulty into fairly readable English. But my profound admiration for the illustrious Hungarian romancer, and my intimate conviction that, of all continental novelists, he is most likely to appeal to healthy English taste, which has ever preferred ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... old idea of preserving public records in a concentrated form on microscopic negatives ever be adopted, the immediate positive reproduction on an enlarged readable scale, without the possibility of injury to the plate, will ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... to the old external division of books established by Leunclavius. (Boissevain's changes are, however, indicated.) The Tauchnitz text with all its inaccuracies endeavors to present a coherent and readable narrative, and this is something which the exactitude of Boissevain does not at all times permit. In the translation I have striven to follow a conservative course, and at some points a straightforward narrative interlarded with brackets will give evidence of its origin in Tauchnitz, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... author depends, not upon this party, nor upon that party, but upon the general public. The public took to Froude's History from the first. They took to it because it interested them, and carried them on. Paradoxical it might be. Partial it might be. Readable it undoubtedly was. Parker's confidence was more than justified. The book sold as no history had sold except Gibbon's and Macaulay's. There were no obscure, no ugly sentences. The reader was carried down the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... book fills a gap about just how boy seamen were trained at the end of the nineteenth century. From first to last it is very credible, and also very readable. It was not very easy to transcribe, because the boys we meet come from a variety of country places, and hence have a variety of dialects. In particular one of the boys has a strong Irish brogue, and another has an equally strong west ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... understood all the legitimate devices by which he persuaded from them their best effort, yet these devices never failed, and the city room agreed that Chillingworth's fashion of giving an assignment to a new man would force him to write a readable account of his own entertainment in the dark meadows. Largely by personal magnetism he had fought his way upward, and this quality was not less ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... interesting book gives us some very readable stories anent the ability of animals seeing imaginary objects. I myself have seen a parrot with a marked case of delirium tremens, due to excessive use of alcoholic stimulants (Vid. Author: The ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... Elizabeth's Grammar School, Wimborne, Dorset, are laying by 10l. a year towards the purchase of books for that purpose: that having no library at present, there now is a favourable opportunity for either a gift or a bequest: but I should in any case prefer a selection of works likely to prove readable for young people, as history, biography, travels, and the popular works ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... the author has aimed first to present in readable form the main facts about the geographical environment of American history. Many important facts have been omitted or have been touched upon only lightly because they are generally familiar. On the other hand, special stress has been laid on certain broad phases of geography ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... "Leasts and Mosts" for the "Atlantic." You have made me so popular by your brilliant advertising and arrangements (I will say, not knowing how to qualify your social skill) that I am daily receiving invitations to read lectures far and near, and some of these I accept, and must therefore keep the readable lectures by me for a time, though I doubt not that this mite, like the mountain, will fall ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... difficulties, in part at least, and present a translation both accurate and readable, the present group of translators have not simply distributed the work among themselves, but have together revised each translation as it was made. The original translator, at a meeting of the group, has submitted his work to the rest for criticism and correction, amounting at times to retranslation. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... taken, is done so to the life, that it seems almost like some sea-monster, crawled out of the neighbouring slime, and harbouring a breed of strange vermin, with a strong local scent of tar and bulge-water. Mr. Crabbe's Tales are more readable than his Poems; but in proportion as the interest increases, they become more oppressive. They turn, one and all, upon the same sort of teazing, helpless, mechanical, unimaginative distress;—and though it is not easy to lay them down, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... much patience, upon the hearer's part, it must have required to corroborate these traditions by comparing one account with another and noting their remarkable similarity! These sketches are real native stories put into readable English, without any attempt at embellishment ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... peeped into the other strange-looking book. There were single words here of the same kind as in the other, but the most part was in ordinary type, though in a language of which she could make nothing. The note-book was a resource. It was at least readable, and Winsome Charteris began expectantly to turn it over. But something stirred reprovingly in her heart. It seemed as if she were listening to a conversation not meant for her. So she kept her finger on the leaf, but did ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... (in 1872) to promote the diffusion of valuable scientific knowledge, in a readable and attractive form, among all classes of the community, and has thus far met a want supplied by no other magazine in ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... twopenny newspaper, in which local news, local politics, and local talent, would have fair play; while large papers, like the Manchester Guardian or the Leeds Mercury, would be greatly improved by the change. They would be enabled to substitute good readable matter, literary or political, of which there is always abundance, for the very dull stuff which they are now obliged to give under the head of "District News." By this improvement in character, and by the reduction of price, in such ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... A readable volume about authors and books.... Like Mr. Andrews' other works, the book shews wide, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... depicted the interests and excitements, the gossip and the scandals, in a way which impresses the reader as being faithful and without exaggeration. The story is interesting, and the book is thoroughly readable and enjoyable. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... phrase-book ever conceived: it is well worth reading as a piece of entertaining literature. His other books are translations of Norse and Welsh poetry, and a book of travels in 'Wild Wales,' published in 1862. All these works are more than readable: the translations, though rugged and unmusical, have about them a frank sensuousness and a primitive force that are amusing and attractive. But after all, Borrow is never thoroughly himself in literature unless the gipsies are close at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... molten gold from the oblique rays of the setting sun, but here the night-dews were beginning to fall and the chirping insects of the dark were waking. In the marshy spots frogs were croaking and snarling, and fireflies were cutting, to their kind perhaps readable, hieroglyphics on the leafy background. Presently she wiped her eyes, and ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... well turned periods, flowing periods; the right word in the right place; antithesis &c 577. purist [Slang]. V. point an antithesis, round a period. Adj. elegant, polished, classical, Attic, correct, Ciceronian, artistic; chaste, pure, Saxon, academical^. graceful, easy, readable, fluent, flowing, tripping; unaffected, natural, unlabored^; mellifluous; euphonious, euphemism, euphemistic; numerose^, rhythmical. felicitous, happy, neat; well put, neatly put, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... crushed the letter in her palm, clenching her fingers over it till the nails wounded the delicate flesh; and then she opened her hand, and employed herself in smoothing out the crumpled paper, as if her life depended on making the letter readable again. But her pains could not undo what her passion had done; and finding this, she tossed the ragged paper into the flames, and began to walk about the room in a distracted fashion, giving a little hysterical ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... and experiences. The Smollett of Count Fathom, on the contrary, is rather a forerunner of the romantic school, who has created a tolerably organic tale of adventure out of his own brain. Though this is notably less readable than the author's earlier works, still the wonder is that when the man is so far "off his beat," he should yet know so well how to meet the strange conditions which confront him. To one whose idea of Smollett's genius is formed entirely by ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the second and third editions of a sermon preached by William Leechman before the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and editions of Cicero and Phaedrus. All these were in duodecimo or small octavo, printed in a clear readable type, that probably came from Urie's foundry. On the 31st March 1743, Robert Foulis was appointed printer to the University of Glasgow, and published Demetrius Phalerus de Elocutione in two sizes, quarto and ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... and council chamber of the "Young Ireland" party was the editor's room of The Nation newspaper. There it found its inspiration, and there its plans were matured—so far, that is, as they can be said to have been ever matured. For an eminently readable and all things considered a wonderfully impartial account of this movement, the reader cannot do better than consult Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's "Four Years of Irish History," which has the immense advantage of being history taken at first hand, written that ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... books were written for a juvenile readership. This book is notable because it is not in Marryat's earlier style, in that the narrative flows forward in a steady style, without the introduction of the usual asides which make his nautical books so readable. The subject material, set in the Canadian wilderness, is very well treated: in fact one might almost say that he had read the works of the later masters of Canadian wilderness writing, Ballantyne or Egerton Ryerson ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... more of flirtation, love and courtship than of fighting or history. The tale is thoroughly readable and takes its readers again into golden Tennessee, into the atmosphere which has distinguished all ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Introduction to Beppo, p. 156) a series of translations of selected passages of the poem. There is no resemblance whatever between Byron's laboured and faithful rendering of the text, and Merivale's far more readable paraphrase, and it is evident that if these selections ever passed before his eyes, they had left no impression on his memory. He was drawn to the task partly on account of its difficulty, but chiefly because ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... volume has but one purpose—to give an authentic, useful, and readable account of the Pony Express. This wonderful enterprise played an important part in history, and demonstrated what American spirit can accomplish. It showed that the "heroes of sixty-one" were not all south of Mason and Dixon's line fighting each other. And, strange to say, little ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... got us dare, I neber see him no more 'cause he went back up in Early County an' atta I work dere at de plantation a long time den I come ta de city whyah my sister be wid one ob my master's oldest daughters—a Mrs. Dunwodies[TR: ?? first letter of name not readable], who she wuz ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... Sir Walter Scott, Robert Browning, all the typical writers of English, have been many-worded. They have been men who said everything that came into their heads, and trusted to their genius to make their writings readable. The eighteenth century in England, with all its striving after classical precision, has left behind it no great laconic English classic who stands in the first rank. Our own Emerson is concise enough, but he is disconnected and prophetic. Dante ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... with the last half of the last question unanswered, and fled from the room with unseeing eyes. And in the instant when George was trying to tell Migwan the answer, Abraham, who had also forgotten the name of Sargon, glanced over toward George's paper and saw it written out in his easily readable hand. Without a qualm he wrote it down on his own paper with a ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... anything original except the very interesting and rather brilliant last branches of the Chevalier au Cygne—Baudouin de Seboure, and the Bastart de Bouillon; Hugues Capet, a very lively and readable but slightly vulgar thing, exhibiting an almost undisguised tone of parody; and some fragments known by the names of Hernaut de Beaulande, Renier de Gennes, &c. As for fifteenth and sixteenth century work, though some pieces of it, especially the very long and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... importance. If the plot chosen requires the passage of ten years' time, if it involves a shift of scene from New York to Timbuctoo, or if it introduces two or three sets of characters, it may by some miracle of ingenuity make a readable story, but it will never be a model one. In "The Ambitious Guest" the time is less than three hours, the place is a single room, and the action is the development ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... new volume, 'Sirdar and Khalifa,' comes just in the nick of time. Its object is to recount the story of the reconquest of the Soudan up to the Battle of Atbara.... A very readable book." ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... and colleges for supplementary reading. It is issued in attractive 16mo shape, paper covers, printed from clear, readable type, on good paper. Many of the volumes are illustrated. They are published at the low price of TEN CENTS each, or 12 books for one dollar. Postage paid. Special prices quoted to schools ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... likeness is to be found between the present volume and a document produced (also in the neighbourhood of Paris) by the late Prince BISMARCK in 1871. On your return home, if the fancy appeals to you, you might, out of these two publications, construct a very readable romance and call it Two Tales of One City. I think this would be a better name for it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... service; and this test, too, has never yet been thoroughly employed. Foreign critics have indeed occasionally hazarded the idea that in English poetry there is a Celtic element traceable; and Mr. Morley, in his very readable as well as very useful book on the English writers before Chaucer, has a sentence which struck my attention when I read it, because it expresses an opinion which I, too, have long held. Mr. Morley says: —'The main current of English literature cannot be ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... actual mechanical preparation of the three or four parts of the script has been approved by editors in general; nevertheless, it is here offered as a suggestion, not laid down as a rule. To follow it, however, insures your having a neat, readable script, one which will catch the editor's attention as soon ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... nation that has no history,—still happier the international language; for a policy of "pacific penetration" offers few picturesque incidents to furnish forth a readable narrative. In the case of Esperanto there have been no splits or factions; no narrow ring of oligarchs has cornered the language for its own purposes, or insisted upon its aristocratic and non-popular ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... specimens may be traced on all the adjacent mountains. The sculpture, too, of all the ridges and summits of this section of the range is recognized at once as glacial, some of the larger characters being still easily readable from the plains at a distance of fifteen or ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... such a date, or to be sold for such a price? What would be the use of apologizing to the public for his many weak points, when he thought that he knew more than they? On the contrary, he very naturally determined that if his Poem, wasn't readable, it would not be read, and a Preface of ignorance would make the matter no better.—He kept clear of the folly of an Introduction-a something which a writer gets up just to keep his hand in, perhaps, or to tell the reader that he knows ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... the most readable and interesting books of travel I have ever read. Its chief charm is the fresh breath it gives you ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of interesting information upon the plant life of the seashore, and the life of marine animals; but it is also a bright and readable story, with all the hints of character and the vicissitudes of human life, in depicting which the ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... sign of the horse, but a branch here and there had been pulled out of place, the scars of their removal readable when one knew where to look. Odd, Travis began to puzzle over what he saw. It was almost as if whatever pursuit the stranger feared would come not at ground level but from above; the precautions the stranger had taken were to veil his retreat ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... seller" therefore may be great but does not need to be. It is usually a weak book, no matter how readable, because ordinarily it has only the elements of popularity to go on, and succeeds by their number and timeliness instead of by fineness and truth. A second-rate man can compound a best seller if his sense for the popular is first-rate. In his books the instinctive ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... have pointed out before, might almost be defined as the discoverer of a method combining English and American humour. But he never takes either his subject or himself too seriously, and the result is a book which is as readable as ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... go down to breakfast—a miserable, uncomfortable meal of hollow civility or sullen silence. After breakfast she would go into the library and hunt among the old, musty, worm-eaten books for something readable, but ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... my letter must be literary; for we have no news. Boswell's book is gossiping;(797) but, having numbers of proper names, would be more readable, at least by me, were it reduced from two volumes to one; but there are woful longueurs, both about his hero and himself; thefidus Achates; about whom one has not the smallest curiosity. But I wrong the original Achates: one is satisfied with his fidelity in keeping his master's secrets and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... treating them as all in the day's work and eliminating all that is picturesque from their narratives. Sergeant James R. McConnell, one of the Americans in the French flying corps, afterwards killed, tells of a day's service in his most readable book, Flying for France, in a way that gives some idea of the daily routine of an operator of an avion de chasse. He is starting just as the sky at dawn is showing a faint pink toward the eastern horizon, for the aviator's work is best done in early morning when, as a rule, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... arguments; but with the wild and furious abstractions of bigotry were often blended various illustrations from history, art, and science, and a tone of keen and delicate satire, which at once refined and made them readable. It is remarkable that almost the whole of the Latin writings of this period abound in good taste, while those written in the vulgar tongue are chiefly coarse and trivial. Vondel and Hooft, the great poets of the time, wrote with genius ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... bound volume, on the best paper, with two fine illustrations,—one by HOPPIN, setting forth Miss Kilmansegg and her golden leg with truly Teutonic grotesquerie. It contains Hood's Poems, never made more attractively readable than in this edition. As a gift it would be difficult to find a work which would be more generally acceptable ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... A bright, readable story, full of action; the dialects true to life and the climax artistically managed.—[Toledo ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... in a letter to Dr. Munro, on December 7, 1901, about some one else: a person designated as "—-," and described as "a merely literary man, who cannot understand that to practised people the antiquities are as readable as print, and a good deal more accurate." {7} But though "merely literary," like Mr. "—-," I have spent much time in the study of comparative anthropology; of the manners, ideas, customs, implements, and sacred ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... only as a document on Smollett and his times, not only as being in a sense the raison d'etre of the Sentimental Journey, and the precursor in a very special sense of Humphry Clinker, but also as being intrinsically an uncommonly readable book, and even, I venture to assert, in many respects one of Smollett's best. Portions of the work exhibit literary quality of a high order: as a whole it represents a valuable because a rather uncommon view, and as a literary record of travel it ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... impossible to find it anywhere else." Schopenhauer was so well read in European literature, he had such natural alertness of mind, and his style is so pointed, direct, and wide-awake, that these detached discussions are interesting and most readable; but for the most part discussions they are, and not aphorisms. Thus, in the saying that "The perfect man of the world should be he who never sticks fast in indecision, nor ever falls into overhaste," the force of it lies in what goes before and what follows after. The whole ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... concerning his early life and his experience as tiller of virgin soil. That is a pity; for he had an interesting and varied career from first to last. What he did and what he saw others do during these troublous years would make a readable chronicle of adventure, perseverance, and ultimate achievement. As it is, we must merely glean what we can from stray allusions to him in the general narratives of early colonial life. These tell us not a tithe of what we should ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... keep it in the vein of farce. To Thyrsis this mockery came like a blast of fire in the face; he did not know that it was the regular method of the newspaper—a method by means of which it had made itself known as the cleverest and most readable paper in the country. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... that expressive compound word. Almost every one might, like Grace Greenwood and Gautier, write a History of my Pets and make a readable book. Carlyle, the grand old growler, was actually attached to a little white dog—his wife's special delight, for whom she used to write cute little notes to the master. And when he met with a fatal accident, he was tenderly nursed by both for months, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... proved to be a writer of no low order, and his autobiography is a very readable book. On July 23rd, 1885, the General surrendered to a loathsome cancer, and the testimonials of devotion shown the honored dead; and the bereaved family throughout the civilized world, indicated the stronghold upon the hearts of the people held by ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... and bringing into prominence those who would endeavor in any way to put the people in Dutch. We shall detect the wrongdoer, and hand him such a series of resentful wallops that he will abandon his little games and become a model citizen. In this way we shall produce a bright, readable little sheet which will make our city sit up and take notice. I think so. I think so. And now I must be hustling about and seeing our new contributors. There is no time ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... written are pages of exciting, stimulating narrative; yet one must read so many pages of heavy matter to find the interesting things that it is not worth the time and exertion a young person would need to give. On the other hand, there are writers like Parkman and Prescott who are always readable and entertaining. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Intensely readable for the dramatic force with which the story is told, the absolute originality of the underlying creative thought, and the strength of all the men and women ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... 'Tracker' was again down; this time creeping along upon the sand on his hands and knees, and deliberately and carefully examining the marks left on its impressible surface, which, to his practiced eye, were in reality letters, nay, even readable words and sentences. As we watched this tardy progress in impatient silence, suddenly, as if stung by some poisonous reptile, the Indian sprang upon his legs, and, making eager signs for us to approach, pointing at the same time eagerly to something a short distance beyond ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... manners, and to have a sufficient acquaintance with the religious, domestic, and social customs of Bengali homes. Possessing these, Mrs. Knight has now presented us with a modern Hindu novelette, smoothly readable throughout, perfectly well transferred from its vernacular (with such omissions as were necessary), and valuable, as I venture to affirm, to English readers as well from its skill in construction and intrinsic interest ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... established reputation as book-makers are rarely made and even more rarely refused. Therefore, Sir Critic! whose dog-eared manuscript has circulated from one publisher's drawer to another until its initial pages are scarcely readable, while the ample residue retain all their pristine freshness of hue, you are welcome to your revenge! Your novel may be tedious beyond endurance; your epic a preposterous waste of once valuable foolscap; but your slashing review is sure to be widely ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... hundredth, AND EIGHT-TIMES-ONE, and thereafter the eighth year." What business has this cardinal number octiesque uno in a row of ordinals? If it were translatable, which it is not, it would give us 1,000 400 8 8 1416, an absurd date. The most obvious way to make the passage readable is to insert the ordinal octogesimo primo instead of the incongruous octiesque uno; then it will read "in the year of our Lord the one-thousand-four-hundred-and-eighty-first, and thereafter the eighth year," that is to say 1489. Now translate old style into new ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... for household and general reading; in the belief that the best literature contains enough that is pure and elevating and at the same time readable, to satisfy any taste that should be encouraged. Of course selection implies choice and exclusion. It is hoped that what is given will be generally approved; yet it may well happen that some readers will miss the names of authors whom they desire ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... some of them were fond of applying themselves to their lessons. Sara, who snatched her lessons at all sorts of untimely hours from tattered and discarded books, and who had a hungry craving for everything readable, was often severe upon them in her small mind. They had books they never read; she had no books at all. If she had always had something to read, she would not have been so lonely. She liked romances and ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the very fatuity of the clenched hand so ineffectual at that time and place—no, it wasn't worth much. And then, for him, an accomplished craftsman in his trade, thinking was distinctly 'bad business.' His business was to write a readable account. But I who had nothing to write, I permitted myself to use my mind as we sat before our still untouched glasses. And the disclosure which so often rewards a moment of detachment from mere visual impressions gave me a thrill very ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... observer printing seems the simplest of arts or crafts. The small boy who has been taught to spell can readily arrange lettered blocks of wood in readable words, and that arrangement is rated by many as the great feature of printing. With his toy printing-press he can stamp paper upon inked type in so deft a manner that admiring friends may say the print is good enough for anybody. ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... is the poverty of the book-shops. Your true creole is not a reading character, though, on the other hand, he has a great and natural taste for music. I miss the one or even two excellent book shops where one could get, at quite reasonable prices too, most of the new and readable books which I have always found in the chief town of every English colony. At Cape Town, Christchurch, New Zealand, Maritzburg, D'Urban, there are far better booksellers than in most English country towns. Here it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... magazine per head weekly is amply sufficient for all reasonable requirements. The attention of the public is further called to the need of making the fullest and most economical use of the allowance, and not wasting the advertisement pages, which contain much readable and stimulating matter, the patent medicine paragraphs especially being rich in the finest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... the always desirable group of volumes which deal with entertaining fiction. But the converse also holds, at least to the extent of permitting us to insist upon what would seem to be the elementary fact that a book which is written to be read should be readable. This rather obvious truth seems to have been forgotten by some of the more zealous scientific historians, who apparently hold that the worth of a historical book is directly in proportion to the impossibility of reading ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... to properly evaluate Mundy's importance in the stream of literature. His style of writing, choice of language, is smoothly readable. One "fault," if such it be, is a sometimes too carefully contrived buildup to plot situations. This careful skill did result in ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor |
