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Rote   Listen
verb
Rote  v. t.  (past & past part. roted; pres. part. roting)  To learn or repeat by rote. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rote" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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

... 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 ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... 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

... 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, but ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... 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

... 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, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... 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

... 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 to ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... 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 ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... 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

... 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 not been for six ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... 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

... 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 hearing it." ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... 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

... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... 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

... 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, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... 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 mud ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... 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

... 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



Words linked to "Rote" :   memorization, rote learning



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