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Well-read   Listen
adjective
Well-read  adj.  Of extensive reading; deeply versed; often followed by in.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Well-read" Quotes from Famous Books



... you to say so, Howard," said Mr. Sandys delightedly. "Really quite a compliment! And I assure you, you don't know what a pleasure it is to have a talk like this with a man like yourself, so well-read, so full of ideas. I envy Jack his privileges. I do indeed. Now dear old Pembroke was not like that in my days. There was no one I could talk to, as Jack tells me he talks to you. A man like yourself is a vast improvement ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... excellent-hearted and clever fellow, with a world of agreeable talents, a good tenor in a parlor duet, a good actor at a charade, a lively, off-hand conversationist, well up in all the current literature of the day, and what is more, in my eyes, a well-read lawyer, just admitted to the bar, and with as fair business prospects as usually fall to the lot of young aspirants in ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... were much addicted to blue and pink ginghams,—they had that indefinable look of blood which belonged to their kin, which is sometimes, to be sure, to be found in families that have no great-grandfathers, after they have been well-fed, well-read, and well-bred for a generation or two, but to which they had an uncommonly good right, as their pedigree—so I afterwards found—ran straight back to the Norman Conquest, without a single "probably" in it. They ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... "correct," and delivered a judgment that commended itself on the instant; it was given with such weight and persuasion. This correctness of judgment extended to most things, politics, character, literature, and was pleasant to listen to. He was one of the old well-read school, and was never without his edition of Shakespeare, the Globe one, which he took with him on his journeys. He had a way of lightly emphasising the beauty of a special ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... people blessed, or cursed, with psychic gifts "to give no occasion to the enemy" by exaggeration or inexact memory of details. So, with the wholesome dread of a well-read reviewer before my eyes, I determined to go to the fountain-head, and ask Colonel Jones himself to supply me with the true incidents which make the Agra episode a moving picture before our eyes. He has kindly consented to do this, and I give the narrative ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... name is Gabriel Armstrong, age 24. Occupation, expert electrical and chemical worker. A Socialist and labor agitator, of the most dangerous type, because intellectual and well-read. A man of considerable power and influence in Socialist and labor circles. Has been something of a wanderer. Is well known to union men and Socialists, all over the country. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... most part, keep no servants, but perform all the household work themselves, with no end of spinning and sewing besides. It is the true Arcadia, where you find cultivated and refined people busying themselves with the simplest toils. For these people are well-read and well-bred, and truly ladies in all things. And so my little Marie and I, we feed the hens and chickens together, and we search for eggs in the hay in the barn. And they have taught me to spin at their great wheel, and at a little one too, which makes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... had taken his moustache to foreign parts, and done the Continent sophisticatedly. He was well-read in cities, and had brought home a budget of light, popular, and profusely illustrated articles of talk on an equivocal variety of urban life, which he prettily distributed among clovery pastorals, Wordsworthian ballads, De Coverly entertainments, Crayon sketches, and Sparrowgrass ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... "They must go somewhere for their outings. They can't be everlastingly nosing shop windows in all weathers; so why not go in and have a look at your pictures? Besides, Miss Rosemary is a young lady of parts. Sir Deryck assures me she is a gentlewoman by birth, well-read and intelligent.—Now, laddie, what is ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... might be well to display a little originality at times by substituting pertinent verses of your own in place of the conventional quotations. For example—"This is the forest primeval, I regret your last evening's upheaval," shows the young lady in question that not only are you well-read in classic poetry, but also you have no mean talent of your own. Too much originality, however, is dangerous, especially in polite social intercourse, and I need hardly remind you that the floors of the social ocean are watered with the tears of ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... Tonking on the S.S. Sung-kiang, commanded by Harry Trowbridge, a congenial and well-read gentleman whose delightful personality contributed much toward making our week's stay on his ship most pleasant. On our way to Haiphong the vessel stopped at the island of Hainan and anchored about three miles off the town of Hoi-hau. This island is 90 by 150 miles long, is mountainous ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... retractation of errors, upon his making amends and upon his doing penance; not by a young Ultramontane of the new school, against whom M. de Talleyrand would at once have been very prejudiced, but by a priest who was a man of the world, well-read, very little of a philosopher, and nothing of a theologian, and upon those terms with the ancient classes which alone give the Gospel occasional access to circles for which it is not suited. Abbe Dupanloup, already well known for his success at the Catechism of the Assumption among a public ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... Sentners would run down," she said aloud. "If David hadn't been so ridiculous I'd have got him to stay the evening. He can be good company when he likes—he's real well-read and intelligent. And he must have dismal times at home there with nobody ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... would not have earned his rations as first. So well was he assured of this peculiarity in his moral composition, that he did not wish to be the first lieutenant of anything in which he sailed. A respectable seaman, a well-read and intelligent man, a capital deck officer, or watch officer, he was too indolent to desire to be anything more, and was as happy as the day was long, in the easy berth he filled. The first lieutenant had been his messmate as a midshipman, and ranked him but two on the list in his present ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... be nearly eight, I think,' said Rowland, turning over the small, well-read Testament that had once been ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... English, from Greek and Latin, and also from Persian, for he had learned the French of the East when he was at Haileybury studying for the Civil Service of the Honourable East India Company. Also he was fairly well-read in some branches of French literature and knew enough Italian to translate a quotation from Dante or from Tasso. He was also deeply read and deeply interested in Biblical criticism and in the statecraft ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... he was a well-read man. His Sermons are as full of classical and patristic allusions and pat sayings from the most occult literatures as even ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... dragged his fellow-man to evil. Mr Winter, on the other hand, was as short as his friend was tall. His rather handsome features were of the Grecian type, and he had the power of infusing into them at will a look of the most touching child-like innocence. He spoke five, languages, and was a well-read ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... grave man," Talk'd of the Ghost in Hamlet, "sheath'd in steel:"— His well-read friend, who next to speak began, Said, "That was Poetry, and nothing real;" A third, of more extensive learning, ran To Sir George Villiers' Ghost, and Mrs. Veal; Of sheeted Specters spoke with shorten'd breath, And thrice he quoted "Drelincourt ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... the work led to a little conversation; and that, in due course, expanded into a variety of subjects; and the young lady, to her surprise, found her carver well-read in History and Sciences, and severely accurate in his information, whereas her own, though abundant, was ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... constructive skill and tact in managing men; but in 1893, at the height of his success and popularity, he died at Wellington of an intestinal disease after a severe surgical operation. Quiet and unassuming in manner, Ballance, who was a well-read man, always seemed fonder of his books and his chessboard than of public bustle; yet his loss to New Zealand political life was great. A statue was erected to his memory in front of Parliament ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... process), Pearson, Hooker, Blunt on the Reformation (a mere sketch which I read in a day or two at odd times), Commentaries, Trench's Books on Parables and Miracles, which are in my room at home, and would in parts interest you; he is a writer of good common sense, and a well-read man). But I of course want to be reading history as well, and that involves a good deal; physical geography, geology, &c., yet one things helps another very much. I don't work quite as methodically as I ought; and I much want some one to discuss matters with relating ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... classified this form of self-indulgence with dancing, card-playing, hard drinking, and loose living of every description. It is true that the intellectuals and worldly folk in general did not share this prejudice. Walter Scott had made novel-reading common among the well-read; but the narrower sectarians in England, the people of the back country and the small towns in America, learned to regard the novel as unprofitable, if not positively leading toward ungodliness, and their unnumbered descendants make up the vast army of uncritical ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... tremendous doctrines of absolute predestination which, in his theological despotism, he afterwards assumed. De Bure describes this first protestant Bible not only as rare, but, when found, as usually imperfect, much soiled and dog-eared, as the well-read first edition of Shakspeare, by the perpetual use of the multitude. But a curious fact has escaped the detection both of De Bure and Beloe; at the end of the volume are found ten verses, which, in a concealed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... far better—many romances of a very marvellous sort, and plentiful interruption they gave to the formation of the catalogue. I likewise came upon a whole nest of the German classics which seemed to have kept their places undisturbed, in virtue of their unintelligibility. There must have been some well-read scholar in the family, and that not long before, to judge by the near approach of the line of this literature; happening to be a tolerable reader of German, I found in these volumes a mine of wealth inexhaustible. I learned from Mrs. Wilson that this scholar ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... life had left their impress upon his pensive features. He was well-read, very decided in his views that the people were made to be governed, not to govern. He was energetic, but possessed of so little worldly wisdom that he thought that the people, however much exasperated, could be easily ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... is preparing a paper on the subject," said Leopold, who, as remarked, is a very well-read chap and a student. He named five or six emperors and kings, Catholics, some of them members of the Austrian Imperial family, who obtained divorces, or married divorced women. I jotted ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... moment, when new ideas were budding, there entered the service of the Church a young man who is known as Luke of Prague. He was born about 1460, was a Bachelor of Prague University, was a well-read theological scholar, and for fifty years was the trusted leader of the Brethren. Forthwith he read the signs of the times, and took the tide at the flood. In Procop of Neuhaus, another graduate, he found a warm supporter. The two scholars led the van of the new ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... his work in the world if he could find it. I grew, in a way, very fond of him. He was gentle, well-bred, happy-tempered, extremely careful of my welfare and pleasure, and regardful of my opinions, which I suppose flattered my vanity; well-read and sensible; and it seemed to me that he ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... a very determined man," he said; "he will carry out any scheme in which he is interested. Had he consulted me about this, I would have been glad to have aided him with money or advice. My son-in-law is an extremely well-read, refined, well-bred man. He does not court publicity. While he was staying in my house he spent nearly all the time in the library translating an Indian book on Buddhism. My daughter has no ambition to be a queen or anything ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... that she said about poets in general, and was delighted by her warm championship of his special vocation. As they went on talking for another quarter of an hour he recognized, without framing the admission in words, that Miss Campion was an exceedingly well-read person, and that she knew many authors—even poets—with whom he had the slightest acquaintance. Most of the people whom he met talked idle nonsense to him, as though their main object was to pass the ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... of Nirukta; those again that were conversant with astrology and learned in the properties of matter and the fruits of sacrificial rites, possessing a knowledge of causes and effects, capable of understanding the cries of birds and monkeys, well-read in large treatises, and skilled in various sciences. And the king, as he proceeded, heard their voices. And the retreat resounded also with voice of men capable of charming human hearts. And the slayer of hostile ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... another, not only the wealthy, but the thoughtful and cultivated among us, go less each year to the theatre. The abstinence of this class is the most significant, for well-read, refined, fastidious citizens are the pride of a community, and their influence for good is far-reaching. Of this élite New York has more than its share, but you will not meet them at the play, unless Duse or Jefferson, Bernhardt or Coquelin is performing. The best only ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... ignorance is confirmed by her other school- fellows. But Miss W—- was a lady of remarkable intelligence and of delicate tender sympathy. She gave a proof of this in her first treatment of Charlotte. The little girl was well-read, but not well-grounded. Miss W—- took her aside and told her she was afraid that she must place her in the second class for some time till she could overtake the girls of her own age in the knowledge of grammar, &c.; but poor Charlotte received this announcement with so sad ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... might have seemed assured to him, of dealing with these subjects in a large and dispassionate way. Scholar, thinker, student as he is, conversant with all literature, familiar with books and names which many well-read persons have never heard of, he has his bitter prejudices, like the rest of us, Protestants or Catholics; and what he hates is continually forcing itself into his mind. He tells, with great and pathetic force, the terrible story of the judicial murder of Calas at ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... a vigorous intellect, great energy of thought and action, overbearing-purpose, and unflinching courage. His information was not extensive, nor his judgment profound, and yet he was a well-educated, well-read, and very thoughtful, reflective man. He was adapted to be the sole leader of an insurrection where the object might be clear, the undertaking desperate, and the work short. His nature was not adapted either to lay an extensive plan, or co-operate with other men of mental power in the execution ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Yankees with political beards." "I am not expecting to fall in love with any of them. I merely discovered some time since that I had a brain, and they happen to be the impulse that possesses it. You always have prided yourself that I am intellectual, and so I am in the flabby 'well-read' fashion. I feel as if my brain had been a mausoleum for skeletons and mummies; it felt alive for the first time when I began to read the newspapers in England. I want no more memoirs and letters and biographies, nor even of the history that is shut up in calf-skin. I want the life of to-day. I want ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... and delighted to find that Michael could speak Arabic. He was an intelligent, well-read man and something of a politician, an ardent supporter of the British rule in Egypt. He was greatly interested in all that Michael could tell him relating to the news from ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... means. I have begun to practice Greek declamation with Cassius, and wish to have a Latin course with Bruttius. My friends and daily companions are the pupils whom Cratippus brought with him from Mitylene, well-read men, of whom he highly approves. I also see much of Epicrates, who is the first man at Athens." After some pleasant words to Tiro, who had bought a farm, and whom he expects to find turned into a farmer, bringing stores, holding consultations with his bailiff, ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church

... say about politics, or robust business, or literature, and they are joined by women (whose company is always welcome), the conversation is pretty sure to take a lower mental plane, to become more personal, more frivolous, accommodating itself to quite a different range? Do the well-read, thoughtful women, however beautiful and brilliant and capable of the gayest persiflage, prefer to talk with men, to listen to the conversation of men, rather than to converse with or listen to their own sex? If this is true, why is it? Women, as a rule, in "society" at ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... you are discussing conditions in Europe. You must speak in one way to the man who has traveled and in an entirely different way to the man who has never gone abroad—in one way to the well-read man, in an entirely different way to the ignoramus. Let us say you are discussing urban life, urban problems. You must speak in one way to the man who lives in the city, in another to the man who lives in the country. Let us say you are discussing the labor problem. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... preaching with more and more power, because with more and more knowledge and "pureness;" and, as you say, there were probably nowhere in Britain such lectures delivered at that time to such an audience, consisting of country people, sound, devout, well-read in their Bibles and in the native divinity, but quite unused to persistent, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... generosity and greatness of mind whilst living with her; how a Royal Duchess had stopped and admired him in Kensington Gardens; how splendidly he was cared for now, and how he had a groom and a pony; what quickness and cleverness he had, and what a prodigiously well-read and delightful person the Reverend Lawrence Veal was, George's master. "He knows EVERYTHING," Amelia said. "He has the most delightful parties. You who are so learned yourself, and have read so ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... at all a bookworm," said Suzette quickly, "though he's tremendously well-read. He's quite the man ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... of literary men in Sydney. Michael, a London solicitor, had been a friend of some of the Pre-Raphaelite group of artists, and was much more interested in literature than in the law when the lure of gold brought him to Australia in 1853. Himself a well-read man and a writer of very fair verse, he recognized the decided promise of Kendall's work and gave him a place in his office. In spite of their disparity in years they became friends, and Kendall undoubtedly ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... to Greenock, I had the ex-secretary of the E.U. Conservative Club, Murdoch. At Greenock I spent a dismal evening, though I found a pretty walk. Next day on board the Iona, I had Maggie Thomson to Tarbet; Craig, a well-read, pleasant medical, to Ardrishaig; and Professor, Mrs., and all the little ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... motto," she said. "She believes that a burning, golden plowshare was dropped from heaven ages ago, in the beginning of Sweden's history, as a symbol of what the gods expected of the people; and she says that a well-kept farm and a well-read book are the most beautiful things in ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald

... you in, my dear," said the Archdeacon. "And he seems a very clever, well-read man, I am sure you will find ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall

... and men of religion," "men who pray over what they do." With similar men, men who feared God and were devoted to public liberty, Cromwell won at Marston Moor; and so striking was the analogy, that at this hour it virtually forced itself on the well-read Hutchinson: for men of this stamp had once made a revolution in Boston, and as he looked out on this scene, perhaps scanned the concourse who passed from Faneuil Hall to the Old South, and read in their faces the sign of resolute ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... lived in the north, his blood was southern by extraction. His family, originally from Aix, in Provence, evinced itself in the light, warmth, and sensibility of his nature; there was perceptible the same sky that had rendered so prolific the genius of Mirabeau. His father, a military and well-read man, educated him equally for war and literature. One of his uncles, employed in the foreign office, made him early a diplomatist. A mind equally powerful and supple, he lent himself equally to all—as fitted ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... well-read man by any means; his scholarship was that of an idle French boy who leaves school at seventeen, after having been plucked for a cheap French degree, and goes straightway into ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... that he was an extremely able and agreeable man. It was he and no other who had painted the water-colours that adorned her room, and he could play and sing as well as he painted. Also, as Robert had told her, Mr. Meyer was very well-read in subjects that are not usually studied on the veld of South Africa; indeed, he had quite a library of books, most of them histories or philosophical and scientific works, of which he would lend her volumes. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... represented every Lancashire type, from the master builder to the barrister's clerk, from the wheelwright to the calico printer, from the railway carter to the commercial traveller. You would find together in one traverse Sergeant J.V.H. Hogan, a well-read ex-Socialist devotee of Union Chapel debates and old political opponent of my own, and another sergeant, whose name I cannot now recall, but who had been the petty officer of a South American liner sunk by the Karlsruhe in the early days of the War. Then we had famous ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... "Well-read, Frank, and say, when you hear the contents, whether you would be particularly sorry to learn that the old lady had, as sailors say, her hands well greased, and a fast hold upon the moon? Read, d——n it, man! there's no trouble in deciphering my aunt Catharine's penmanship. Hers is ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... future than a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have had no delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew no romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have any more definite idea of her probable future than ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... nearly always a man with a hobby, and usually a good scientific or literary hobby at that. He writes many of our best books demanding research. He takes an active part in public work which requires statistical study. He is always a travelled man, and nearly always a well-read man. The broadest and the most complete questioning and turning and returning of the most fundamental subjects—religion, foreign policy, and domestic economics—are quite familiar to him. But the editor ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... years 1809 or 1810. No one will ever dispute these dates, as was the case with Chopin, for Old Fogy will be soon forgotten. It is due to the pious friendship of the publisher that these opinions are bound between covers. They are the record of a stubborn, prejudiced, well-trained musician and well-read man, one who was not devoid of irony. Indeed, I believe he wrote much with his tongue in his cheek. But he was a stimulating companion, boasted a perverse funny-bone and a profound sense of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... these one requisite to pleasant dining which some more pretentious societies are without: they have leisure. Nothing is done in haste in Honolulu, where they have long ago convinced themselves that "to-morrow is another day." Moreover, you find them well-read, without being blue; they have not muddled their history by contradictory telegraphic reports of matters of no consequence; in fact, so far as recent events are concerned, they stand on tolerably firm ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... but "in all senses of that deep-reaching word." Mr. Norton restored the true reading, which was "marked veracity," though, on the other hand, he replaced the statement, omitted by Froude, that Taylor, who had died between the two editions, was "not a well-read or wide-minded man." It must be admitted that in this instance Froude allowed a proof which made nonsense to pass, and that Mr. Norton did a public service by correcting the phrase. Froude's occasional carelessness in revision is a common failing enough. What ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... as I have said, a clever, attractive girl, handsome, well-read, able to hold her own with the old as well as with the young, capable of hiding her vanity if she had any, mild and gentle to girls less gifted, animated in conversation, and yet possessing an eye that ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... lightly touched upon, for two of the gentlemen present are Spaniards, and for obvious reasons a Cuban usually avoids all topics which concern the government of his country. Occasionally someone who is well-read in the day's newspaper, essays a mild discussion with somebody else who has not seen the paper for a week; but as Cuban periodicals are under official control, they are not remarkable for their political veracity, and the well-read ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... conversations. Political subjects were forbidden to her, and her great charm in Napoleon's eyes was that she did not interfere in such matters. She never tried to pass for a witty woman. Although she was well-read, she lacked the delicate observation, the ingenious comparisons, the jingling of brilliant phrases or words which compose what in France is called wit. She had no confidence in the character of the prominent Frenchwomen, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... gradually to lose the sense of larger and wider interests; they have little time to keep pace with the general questions of the day, and anything like sympathy or intellectual appreciation is very rare. I meet accomplished people, but seldom well-read ones; there is also too much talk about money: "where the treasure is, there will the heart be also;" and the incessant financial discussions are wearisome, at least ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... the personal reminiscences of their aunt. She was the niece to whom Jane in her last illness sent a recommendation to read more and write less during the years of girlhood. Caroline obeyed the injunction; she became a very well-read woman, and never wrote stories for publication. She was, however, an admirable talker: able to invest common things with a point and spirit peculiarly her own. She was also an ideal aunt, both to nieces and nephews, who all owe a great deal to her ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... Russians in Constantinople belong mostly to the upper classes. Very many belong to Petrograd society, and are people who fled to the Crimea and the Caucasus, were caught up in the Deniken or Wrangel panic, and transported hither. They are well-educated people, speaking English and French, and well-read and accomplished. But how little are those modern accomplishments when it comes to the elemental realities of life. A beautiful young countess is employed in a bakery to sell bread, and is lucky. An erstwhile lion and ex-general has a job in a laundry. Pride intervenes only to ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... is as foreign to me as Lhasa. It is the Baghdad of my dreams and its streets are strange. Perhaps they are full of adventure for me. I hope so. Anything exciting can happen in a town where one has neither friends nor acquaintances, eh? You are a well-read man, I take it." ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... learned in the walks, and giving his advice to statesmen who required it, insomuch that his house was altogether a home, and in a manner a Greek prytaneum for those that visited Rome. He was fond of all sorts of philosophy, and was well-read and expert in them all. But he always from the first specially favored and valued the Academy; not the New one which at that time under Philo flourished with the precepts of Carneades, but the Old one, then sustained ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... conditions. To ensure the acquirement of this taste by the child, good reading must be made as accessible as the bad, the librarian and the teacher must conspire to put good reading, interesting reading, elevating reading in his way. The well-read person is an educated person. The taste for good reading once acquired is permanent. There is little danger of backsliding. It grows with indulgence. One writer says: No man having once tasted good food or good wine, or even good tobacco, ever voluntarily turns to an inferior article. So with our ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... well-read people, while admitting that Lutherans are Protestants, suspect that their system is still imbued with the leaven of Romanism. In their classification of churches they are disposed to place us among Ritualists, Sacerdotalists ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner

... all manner of abuse. They seemed to be animated by no understanding of a life hereafter, and were concerned only in their animal instinct to hold on to this one as long as they might. Yet Stinson, of a good Indiana family, was a bright and studious and well-read boy, of whom many good things ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... not just such a letter as is most often found in biographies,—yet such as may be found—'out of print.' A bright medley of description and fancy—mountains and legends and scraps of song forming a mosaic of no set pattern. And well-read as the writer was in other respects, it was plain that she was also learned in both the books Faith had had at Neanticut. The quick flow of the letter was only checked now and then by a little word-gesture of affection,—if that could be called a check, which gave to the written ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... the all-night lunchroom without much trouble, and entering, he sat down at one of the numerous tables. He was a well-read boy, and therefore did not appear as "green" as he might ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield

... M. de Toulon, Father Bourdaloue, a comrade of his, Desprdaux, and Corbinelli. The talk was of ancient and modern works. Despreaux supported the ancient, with the exception of one single modern, which surpassed, in his opinion, both old and new. Bourdaloue's comrade, who assumed the well-read air, and who had fastened on to Despreaux and Corbinelli, asked him what in the world this book could be that was so remarkably clever. Despreaux would not give the name. Corbinelli said to him, 'Sir, I conjure you to tell me, that I may read ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of Mobile is one of the many American dilutions,—that quality by which any sort of masculine wickedness and brutality short of refusing ladies seats in horse-cars is made lovely and attractive to the well-read and well-bred of the sex,—is very pleasantly derided, while the tropical luxuriance of general information characteristic of "St. Elmo" is unsparingly ridiculed, with the help of frequent extracts from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... that of the flatteringly eager enquirer. Needless to say, his learning had been acquired by diligent application within the last week, and that it had a very definite object behind it. The laird had but a smattering of the subject, but being an intelligent, well-read man, he was quite able to discuss Mr. Hobhouse's favourite pursuit, so that when his daughter entered the room she found herself in an atmosphere as little reminiscent of the mysterious stranger as it was possible to create ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... seat in a good position for viewing the audience. He was immediately struck by the fact that here was no thoughtless, irresponsible crowd; rather one largely made up of men of grim determination and iron will. They were intelligent, well-read men too. They knew the history of their country, knew its weakness, and realised its faults. Nevertheless they ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... are for the first time brought in contract with these men, whether socially or on matters of business, invariably detect the strong points of conservatism which each exhibits. Mr. Lee gives one the impression of being a well-read man, as, in fact, he is. The faculty which he possesses of curiously gleaning the salient bits of knowledge out of current thought and expression, is something remarkable. The by-paths of literature are peculiarly his stamping-ground; and yet, upon almost every subject of important character, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... of Cassiodorus is derived from his position rather than from his character. He was a statesman of considerable sagacity and of unblemished honour, a well-read scholar, and a devout Christian; but he was apt to crouch before the possessors of power however unworthy, and in the whole of his long and eventful life we never find him playing a part which can be ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... occupy the attention of the men and myself, and so keep us from thinking of the sharks and our painful position, he proceeded to narrate all he knew about this curious marine fungus. He had a good deal to say, too, for Mr Marline was a well-read man and took a great interest in all ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... despatched his new partner, Mr. Sereno Newton, to England to examine all the improvements in machinery there, and bring home samples of such as he thought might be advantageously adopted in this country. Mr. Newton, besides being an ingenious mechanic, was well-read in books, and was considered one of the first mathematicians in New York. Returning from his mission, he constructed a new two-cylinder press, which soon superseded all others then in use." Mr. Hoe's health failed, compelling him, in 1832, to retire ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... agreed, that no one would quote if he could think; and it is not imagined that the well-read may quote from the delicacy of their taste, and the fulness of their knowledge. Whatever is felicitously expressed risks being worse expressed: it is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us. We quote to save proving what has been demonstrated, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... value is it to a community to contain—still more to be composed of—well-read people? We can best answer this question by picturing its opposite, a community without readers; this we are unfortunately able to do without drawing upon our imaginations, for we have only to turn ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... accepted it, the beginning of an acquaintance was formed between the rectory at Sutton and the family at Boughton which grew into an intimacy as time went on. Campbell was a gentleman, a travelled man, of clear head and ardent mind, candid, well-read in English divinity, a devoted Anglican, and the incumbent of a living so well endowed as almost to be a dignity. Mary was pleased at the introduction, as bringing her brother under the influence of ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... scarcely ever refers to his love affairs. At my time of life, now nearing my alloted span, I have little sympathy with the great mass of fiction which exploits the world-old passion. In no sense of the word am I a well-read man, yet I am conscious of the fact that during my younger days the love story interested me; but when compared with the real thing, the transcript is usually a poor one. My wife and I have now walked up and down the paths ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... more of Strangwise or of Nur-el-Din. The rest of dinner was passed in conversation of a general order in which Mr. Mortimer showed himself to great advantage. He appeared to be a widely traveled, well-read man, with a fund of dry, often rather grim humor. And all the time Desmond watched, watched, unobtrusively but unceasingly, looking out for something he was confident of detecting through the suave, immobile ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... and I were both to go, while Mr. Sollitt was to be represented by a substitute, a relative whose name was also John Sollitt, and who had been a farmer and butcher and was supposed to know all about oxen. Mr. Stubbs was a good mechanic, an intelligent, well-read man, and ten years before had been to California in ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton

... audience which has grown up. He has to throw aside all the panoply of scholastic logic, the vast apparatus of professional learning, and the complex Latinised constructions, which, however admirable some of the effects produced, shows that the writer is thinking of well-read scholars, not of the ordinary man of the world. He has learned from Bacon and Descartes, perhaps, that his supposed science was useless lumber; and he has to speak to men who not only want plain language but are quite convinced that ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... wit and learning, will ever bear a conspicuous place in the literary history of the seventeenth century. The arguments of Dr. Bentley were yet further defended a few years later by Mr. Thomas Tyrwhitt, a well-read scholar, who gave up high civil distinctions that he might devote himself the more unreservedly to literary pursuits. Mr. Tyrwhitt published, A.D. 1776, a Dissertation on Babrias, and a collection of his fables in choliambic meter found in a MS. ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... of Crabbe reminds me of meeting two American Gentlemen at an Inn in Lichfield, some thirty years ago. One of them was unwell, or feeble, and the other tended him very tenderly: and both were very gentlemanly and well-read. They had come to see the English Cathedrals, and spoke together (it was in the common Room) of Places and Names I knew very well. So that I took the Liberty of telling them something of some matters they were speaking of. Among others, this very ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... interested him so profoundly. 'He was much more learned, much better read, and had a much more massive mind than most of us, and our ways and talks must have seemed petty and trivial to him.' Though there were 'some well-read men and good scholars among us, even they had little taste for the ponderous reading in which Fitzjames delighted.' Wills remembers his bringing Hobbes' 'Leviathan' with him, and recreating himself with studying it after his day's work. To such studies ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... it, and he did not deny it; only put it from him, laughing. What's the harm? Poor Jack was always a good-natured, honourable fellow, uncommonly clever and amusing—a well-read man, too; and Owen is safe enough—no one could try to borrow ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the county gentry have different tastes, habits and modes of thought from men who have worked their way up from the counting-room, and do not, as the phrase goes, "get on" with them, any more than a Wall street broker ordinarily gets on with a well-read, accomplished member of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... J.B.S. Carwithen, B.D. This work was very highly spoken of, at the time of its first appearance, for fidelity of narrative, accuracy of judgement, and soundness of principle; and its author was pronounced, by one well qualified to give an opinion, "a well-read historian, a sound divine, a charitable Christian." As the original edition, in three volumes, has long been out of print, we think Mr. Parker has shown great judgment in bringing it out, in a cheaper form, for the use of students in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various

... ask them to name five or six texts which have most stimulated their thought. It comes as a surprising discovery that some of the titles which are recommended with the greatest enthusiasm are not among the so-called classics on war. The well-read man need not have more than a dozen books in his home, provided that they all count with him, and he continues to pore over them and to ponder the weight of what is said. On the other hand, the ignorant man is frequently marked by his bookshelf stocked with titles, not ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... got out of bed to superintend, and felt tragically tender as I watched the things laid in. A fresh suit of clothes, some personal and bed linen, towels, shoes, family photographs, flea powder, ginger-snaps, beef essence, soap, my little down pillow, and his beloved and well-read Shakespeare. I was able to sit up for an hour this afternoon to receive Sir Sydney Shippard, Mr. ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond

... there had been a dreamer in this family, a well-read man whose acres and interests had got away from him, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... not a man of high and original genius, at least very superior to the generality of patrician authors. In retiring, himself, from frequent exercise in the arena, he gave up his mind with renewed zest to the thoughts and masterpieces of others. From a well-read man, he became a deeply instructed one. Metaphysics, and some of the material sciences, added new treasures to information more light and miscellaneous, and contributed to impart weight and dignity ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is full of inarticulate pain, And beats laboriously. Ungenial looks Invade my sanctuary. Men of gain, Wise in success, well-read in feeble books, Do not come near me now, your air is drear; 'Tis winter and low skies ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... had badgered and baffled him with their book-knowledge, and how, when at last they thought they had smothered the irrepressible prophecy of his genius in the quaking depths of Chatmoss, he had exclaimed, "Did ye ever see a boat float on water? I will make my road float upon Chatmoss!" The well-read Parliament men (some of whom, perhaps, wished for no railways near their parks and pleasure-grounds) could not believe the miracle, but the shrewd Liverpool merchants, helped to their faith by a great vision of immense gain, did; and so the railroad was made, and I took this memorable ride ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... though that heart were the coldest and the least susceptible that ever beat. The scenes through which they passed were of themselves calculated in the highest degree to excite a communion of soul. Hilda was clever and well-read, with a deep love for the beautiful, and a familiar acquaintance with all modern literature. There was not a beautiful spot on the road which had been sung by poets or celebrated in fiction of which she was ignorant. Ferney, sacred to Voltaire; Geneva, the birth-place ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... barbarous feudal codes of the Middle Ages,—as the Salic, Burgundian, and Ripuarian,—before the time of Charlemagne. The common historians, even Hallam, gave no very satisfactory information and referred to no very available books; and supposing it to be a matter of which every well-read lawyer would at least know something, I asked help of the most scholarly member of that profession within my reach. He regretted his inability to give me any aid, but referred me to a friend of his, who was soon to visit him, a young man, who was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... innuendoes. A third quotation has been trained into a likeness of the "Hymn of Life," despite the commonplace and the navrante vulgarite which characterize the pseudo-Schiller-Anglo-American School. The same has been done to the words of Isa (Jesus); for the author, who is well-read in the Ingil (Evangel), evidently intended the allusion. Mansur el-Hallaj (the Cotton-Cleaner) was stoned for crudely uttering the Pantheistic dogma Ana 'l Hakk (I am the Truth, i.e., God), wa laysa fi-jubbati il' Allah (and within my coat is nought but God). His ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... churches, schools, hotels, banks and printing-offices. Several new buildings are now being erected which will rank high in architecture and add new features of elegance to the place. The population is a vigorous, intelligent, highly moral and well-read community, as I could not fail to notice on attending service on the Sabbath at different places of worship. Wick is honored with this distinction—it assembles a larger congregation of men to listen to the glad Evangel on Sunday than any city ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... takest hearts by storm, And chills them into sorrow with a look! Some minds are open as a well-read book; But here the leaves are still uncut—unscanned, The volume clasped and sealed, and all the warm And passionate exuberance of love Held in submission to these threadbare flaws And creeds of weaknesses, poor human laws. Stand up erect—nay ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... her a pleasant woman, well-read, well-educated and widely travelled. She was, too, an excellent conversationalist. And yet, all the time we were talking, I could not help thinking of Lola, and wondering why Duperre's wife should be in such evidence at Overstow Hall, indeed, ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... shore; the young people landed, and entered the arch of the desolate palace. They gazed on the great hall and the presence-chamber, and the long suite of rooms with faded portraits; Vance as an artist, Lionel as an enthusiastic, well-read boy, Sophy as a wondering, bewildered, ignorant child. And then they emerged into the noble garden, with its regal trees. Groups were there of well dressed persons. Vance heard himself called by ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... have so much power over men. Perhaps, as I am speaking of Monna Vittoria, I should add the Aspasias to my short catalogue of she-gallants, for Vittoria was a woman well accomplished in the arts, well-lettered, speaking several tongues with ease, well-read, too, and one that could talk to her lovers, when they had the time or the inclination for talking, of the ancient authors of Rome, and of Greece, too, for that matter—did I not say her mother was a Greek?—and could say you or sing ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... confusion and individual distress as may be. America he considers as the type of what Europe is to become; though he has grievous misgivings as to the final result of such a prostration of the great interests of society as has there taken place, and is too well-read a scholar not to know that it was in the institutions of the Byzantine empire that a similar levelling resulted in ancient times. But being thus a devout believer, if not in the doctrine of perfectibility, at least in that of ceaseless progress towards democracy, his opinions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... fully understood that the nobility of England are not necessarily either cultured or well-read. Literature to most of the titled gentry is a blank, my lord—it is so now and always has been so. Burke's brilliant books were not sufficient to make him famous except among the Elect Few; but the episode with Lord Hamilton ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... been polytheistic as any other well-read pagan of my day, and changed the heads and the labels of the fetiches on my altar almost as often as my ball wardrobe. I aspired to 'culture' in all the 'cults', and I improved diligently my opportunities. One year the stylish craze was sesthetics, and I fought my way to the front of the bedlamites ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... old. Of medium build, he wears a shock of long, curly, upstanding hair, which rather accentuates his "agitator" type of countenance, and is a skilful and eloquent debater. A university graduate and well-read thinker and student, he turned out to be the one consistent Social Democratic politician in Germany on the question of the war. When the war began the Socialist Party was effectually and willingly tied to the Government's chariot—including, ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... in the laborious unreadable, well-read style—the book about the book. You are as one (when you are in the book about the book) thrust into the shadow of the endless aisles of Other Books—not that they are referred to baldly, or vulgarly, or in the text. It is worse than this (for this could be skipped). But ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... Back home books as well bound as these would have carried a personal bookplate or at least the written name of the owner, but the fly leaf was bare. They had the look of well-read, cherished volumes but no ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... looked on, amused at their wordy conflicts; he knew that nothing does a boy so much good and so softens his manner as friendly intercourse with a well-read girl of about his own age, and undoubtedly Alice did almost as much towards preparing Jack's manner for his future career as her father had done ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... am sure," Mr. Dunster continued, "a person of intelligence, a well-read person, a person of perceptions. Surely you can see and appreciate the danger with which your country ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... forward; and, with a grandeur of air, a dignified step, which caught the eye, but could not shake the doubts of the well-read Catherine, he led the way across the hall, through the common drawing-room and one useless antechamber, into a room magnificent both in size and furniture—the real drawing-room, used only with company of consequence. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... really well-read and agreeable man he is, all the while! What a mine of quaint learning, and beautiful old legend!—If he would but bring it into the common stock for every one's amusement, instead of hoarding it up for himself!" ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... ever to her that she was peering through iron bars into the playground of a school to which she didn't belong. She was Joan-all-alone, she told herself, and added, with that touch of picturesque phrasing inherited from her well-read mother, that she was more like a racing motorboat tied to a crumbling wharf in a deserted harbor than anything else ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... Francis, the husband of King Isabella, but had been separated from her after, as he declared, she had tried to cut his throat. As witness to his connubial difficulties, he showed a large scar across his throat. He was well-read and, amongst other things, enthusiastically admired Scandinavian literature because it had produced the world's greatest poet, Ossian, with whom he had become acquainted in Cesarotti's Italian translation. It was ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... I remember having exactly the same experience the only time I ever talked to Swinburne. I had regarded (and resisted) him in my boyhood as a sort of Antichrist in purple, like Nero holding his lyre, and I found him more like a very well-read Victorian old maid, almost entirely a laudator temporis acti disposed to say that none of the young men would ever come up to Tennyson—which may be quite true for all I know. I fancy it has something to do with the very fact that their revolt was pagan, and being ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... The people are very good. The Fors, or original natives of the land, are the only people partially in revolt. Dar For is the land of Fors, as Dar Fertit is the land of the Fertits. You would find much to interest you here, for the Ulemas are well-read people, and know the old history. I found a lot of chain armour here, just like the armour of Saladin's people, time of the Crusades, with old helmets, some embossed with gold. They were taken from the Sultan Ibrahim's bodyguard when he was killed. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... Fiske is, as is well known, an author who unites in himself the qualities of a well-read student of philosophy, a clear and accurate thinker, a thorough master of the principles which in his recent work he undertakes to explain and to extend, and a writer gifted in a remarkable degree with the ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... was that he had shaped himself into something like an old-fashioned country clergyman, without his education, his manners, his religion, or his clothes. Imperfect similitudes of these Stephen Petter had acquired, but this was as far as he had gone. A well-read man who happened also to be a good judge of human nature could have traced back every obvious point of Stephen Petter's character to some English author of the last century or the first half ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... incidentally wrote on the technic of their art or in defence of its value. Sidney, the poet, courtier, and soldier, wrote not from the musty alcoves of libraries. Webbe, it is true, was a pedant, but certainly not a scholar. Puttenham was a bad poet, a well-read man, and a courtier. Jonson's scholarship was thorough, but sweetened and ventilated by his activities as poet and dramatist. Bacon was a scholar, but even more a philosopher and a statesman. Milton, our most scholarly poet, during most of his life could not keep his mind and pen from ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... Light the Noble Actions of Sir John! It will not then be long before we see him on the Stage. Sir John Falstaffe then will be a Shrimp to Sir John Pudding, when rais'd from Oblivion and reanimated by the All-Invigorating Pen of the Well-Fed, Well-Read, Well-Pay'd C— J—— Esq; Nor wou'd this be all; for the Pastry-Cooks wou'd from the Hands of an eminent Physician and Poet receive whole Loads of Memorandums, to remind 'em of the Gratitude due to Sir ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous

... saint, well-read in holy lore, Pondered awhile his answer o'er, And thus again addressed the King, His wandering thoughts regathering:— "Another rite will I begin Which shall the sons thou cravest win, Where all things shall be duly sped And ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... months previously, on my first coming to St. Albans, I had been introduced to him, I had been rather favourably impressed. He was a tall dark man of thirty-five, with more than the average endowment of good looks. He could tell a good story, had shot big game in most parts of the world, was well-read, intelligent, possessed unexceptionable manners, and yet—— Well, Winter had none of his various qualifications, but I would at any time far rather have had one friend like Winter than a hundred ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... beaten King Janus, who ruled over it, and had carried him beyond seas in triumph to Old Cairo, a prisoner and loaded with chains. Hereupon we were instructed by that learned man, Master Eberhard Windecke, who was well-read in the history of all the world—he had come to Nuremberg as a commissioner of finance from his Majesty, and Uncle Tucher had brought him forth to the Forest—he, I say, instructed us that the forefather of this ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Eveleigh, his cousin and housekeeper. It seemed strange that the father and daughter were so companionable, for superficially they were entirely unlike. Mr. Royal was considered stern and shrewd, and, though a well-read man, eminently practical, more inclined to business than scholarship, while Elizabeth was dreamy, generous, wholly unacquainted with business of any kind, and it seemed too much uninterested in it ever to be acquainted. To most people the ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various

... of the inscription is depicted the figure of an Indian warrior with a conspicuous scalp-lock. On the left is the figure of a veteran of the Queen's Rangers. To the well-read spectator, the portrait stands confessed as the likeness of the first Governor of Upper Canada, and the founder of the ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... know who wrote that, but you have no tears for others' woes, merely greeting them with ribald laughter," for Dorothy, with the well-read letter in her hand, was making the rafters ring with her merriment, something that had never before happened during her long tenancy of that room. Kate turned her head slowly round, and the expression ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... of my evenings with a Spanish lady, named Sabatini, who gave 'tertullas' or assemblies, frequented chiefly by fifth-rate literary men. I also visited the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, a well-read and intelligent man, to whom I had been presented by Don Domingo Varnier, one of the gentlemen of the king's chamber, whom I had met at Mengs's house. I paid a good many visits to Donna Ignazia, but as I was never left alone with her these ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Darmesteter points out, the true source of inspiration was a passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy—"the book," as Byron maintained, "in my opinion most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the reputation of being well-read with the least trouble" (Life, p. 48). Burton is discoursing on injury and long-suffering. "'Tis a Hydra's head contention; the more they strive, the more they may; and as Praxiteles did by his glass [see Cardan, De Consolatione, lib. iii.], when he saw a scurvy face in it, break it in pieces; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... their Presbyterian minister with them, having organized a special party to bring in the books he had left in his cabin; they joined in prayer and thanksgiving for their successes; but this did not hinder them from scalping the men they killed. They were too well-read in the merciless wars of the Chosen People to feel the need of sparing the fallen; indeed they would have been most foolish had they done so; for they were battling with a heathen enemy more ruthless and terrible than ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... its own accord at Samuel's childhood and Hannah's solemn dedication of her first-born; no passages in the well-read book had been more ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... further prolegomena are necessary to the understanding of the pages which follow. Before I touched the Italian soil I was, in the eyes of our law, a grown man, sufficiently robust and moderately well-read. I was able to converse adequately in French, tolerably in Italian, had a fair acquaintance with the literatures of those countries, some Latin, a poor stock of Greek. I believe that I looked younger than my age, stronger than my forces, better than my virtues warranted. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... refer to some event preserved in history,—may indeed be well known to well-read antiquaries, though so totally unknown to men whose general pursuits (like my own) have lain in other directions. The present, however, is an age for "popularising" knowledge; and your work has assumed that task ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various

... the taste of Mr. Moore for music. "Nor has he neglected those more solid attainments which should ever distinguish the well-bred gentleman, for he is an excellent general scholar, and particularly well-read in the literature of the middle ages. His conversational powers are great, and his modest and unassuming manners have placed him in the highest rank of cultivated society." Although his reputation is so well established, he speaks of himself with his wonted modesty. "Whatever ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various

... distinguished of whom are also either colonial Dutchmen or of British origin, are the most cultivated and (except as regards political power) the leading section of society. It is a real pleasure to the European traveller to meet so many able and well-read men as the bench and bar of Pretoria contain; and he finds it odd that many of them should be excluded from the franchise and most of them regarded with suspicion by the ruling powers. Johannesburg (with its mining environs) has nearly all the industry ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... Hoeflinger. They had been married ten years and had become resigned and accustomed to their solitude. The husband turned the sentiment, which no offspring of his could claim, toward the hopes and the aims of his class. He was known as a well-read, serious and reliable man, whose political activity was founded upon practical reality rather than theory and who was hostile to the exploitation of principles popular with the ordinary run of Socialist party leaders, but ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... studiously subdued his tones to mildness, when it became necessary, in the course of the evening meal, that he should address him. Few words, however, were exchanged between the parties. If Hinkley beheld an enemy to his heart's hopes in Stevens, the latter was sufficiently well-read in the human heart to discover quite as soon, that the rustic was prepared to see in himself any character but that of a friend. The unwillingness with which Hinkley heard his suggestions—the absence of all freedom and ease in his deportment, toward himself, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... reason, among others, not much has been said in this sketch about Wesley's opinions, because they were different at different stages of his life. Moreover, though Wesley was an able man and a well-read man, and could write in admirably lucid and racy language, he can by no means be ranked among theologians of the first order. He could never, for instance, have met Dr. Clarke, as Waterland did; or, to compare him with ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... show. We get tired of the awful poor shows to the Opera House." Maude Adams was a favourite. Rejane had been seen. Of course, the vital American interest—money—is touched upon, let me say lightly, and passed. The packer at Rigger's, intelligent and well-informed and well-read, discoursed in good French about English and French politics and on the pleasure it would be to travel and ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... learned in the law; they may be versed in statistics; they are most useful in their own place; I should shrink from speaking disrespectfully of them; still, there is nothing in such attainments to guarantee the absence of narrowness of mind. If they are nothing more than well-read men, or men of information, they have not what specially deserves the name of culture of mind, or fulfils the type ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... do we turn the pages of the well-read essays, with their pictures of good Sir Roger de Coverley, Will Honeycomb, and the rest of that happy crew. And over what portrait do we linger more lovingly than that of the Spectator himself, wherein there is many a stroke of the pen that brings Addison in view. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... horrors. In one chapter he buried a nobleman alive in the family vault, and described his sensations in his coffin so poignantly that for weeks I was afraid to go to sleep lest I should dream about him. My father was an uncommonly well-read man; but he made no attempt to regulate my studies, except that now and then he would suggest to me that I was wasting time in the perusal of rubbish; and I do suppose that, as a boy, I read as much actually worthless stuff as anybody ever did within ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... little inconsistency in a commonly-received tradition has led me, at the request of a large party of well-read and literary friends, to request your solution of the difficulty in an early ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... this good knight Henry grew up devoid of the vices of his father, with more of the Southern troubadour than of the Northern warrior in his composition, gentle in temper, devout of spirit, tender of heart, well-read in history and romance, skilled in music and poetry, and of exquisite taste in sculpture, painting, and architecture, Hubert must have watched his orphan charge with ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... that are asked concerning Bucarest, even by persons who believe themselves well-informed, are highly amusing. One friend, who is really a well-read man, asked us shortly after our visit whether it was not a great continuous 'Mabille,' and he looked very incredulous when we told him that, although we had walked through and through it, and had carefully looked at all the posters announcing amusements in ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... understand or enjoy new music because it differs from "une musique" i.e., from a conventional and unvarying type which they have in their mind. The real effect of Berlioz's "Carnaval Romain" Overture, to take a simple example, is to complement and intensify the mental picture which any well-read person—or better still, any one who has actually visited Rome—will have of this characteristic incident in Italian life. If the work be considered merely as abstract music, notwithstanding the stimulation and delight caused by the rhythmic vitality ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... Being a very well-read man himself, he had been the first to learn from the newspapers of the approach of that dangerous contagious sickness, the antidotes against which were ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... inability or carelessness in plays attempting to reproduce literary works upon the stage that annoys so many intelligent, well-read people who attend theatrical productions of material which they already know. When Vanity Fair was dramatised and acted as Becky Sharp, the general comment was that the characters did not seem like Thackeray's creations. This was even more ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... find him one of the most witty, well-informed, and agreeable young men I have ever seen. Gay without levity, well-read without pedantry, and good-looking without vanity. Of how few young men of fashion could this be said! But I am persuaded that Count Charles de Mornay is made to be something better than a mere ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... As for Milverton, we should judge that in him the author of the work has unconsciously shown us himself; for assuredly the great characteristics of the author of Friends in Council must be that he is laborious, thoughtful, generous, well-read, much in earnest, eager for the welfare of his fellow-men, deeply interested in politics and in history, impatient of puritanical restraints, convinced of the substantial importance of amusement. Milverton, we gather, still lives ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... his sense of humor as vivid as when, a youth of nineteen, he left for good, Maryland, his native state. Few men in the San Francisco bay region are more widely known than he. His ready wit, cheery laugh and fund of information—for he is extremely well-read—always insure for him an attentive and ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... deal, himself. Books and magazines furnished the only mental stimulants in the valley and it was a surprisingly well-read community. But Douglas, caring for Judith as he did, found it impossible to become fully absorbed in his old pastimes. He was restless, moody and lonely as ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... rich, deep, mellow, liquid and sonorous, and capable of any inflections. It could preserve its melody in an unruffled flow, at a pitch far beyond the highest point reached by the best-cultivated voice. His fancy naturally capricious, was indulged without restraint; yet not being a learned or well-read man, he mistook words for ideas, and hence employed without stint all the terms in his vocabulary for the commonest thoughts. He believed, too, like most of his brotherhood, that excitement and agitation were necessary to conversion and of the essence of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... a whale. Would some reader of better opportunities favour us with a record of these two matters of natural history, not as connected with the death of this remarkable man, but as mere events? Your well-read readers will remember some similar tales relative to the death of Cardinal Mazarine. These exuberances of vulgar minds may partly be attributed to the credulity of the age, but more probably ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various

... sense of duty, imbued with deep religious feeling, Miss Milbanke lived to impress F. W. Robertson as "the noblest woman he ever knew" ('Diary of Crabb Robinson' (1852), vol. iii. p. 405). She was also a clever, well-read girl, fond of mathematics, a student of theology and of Greek, a writer of meritorious verse, which, however, Byron only allowed to be "good by accident" (Medwin, p. 60). Among her mother's friends were Mrs. Siddons, Joanna Baillie, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... and the minister of Mansoul were well-read men also; so, indeed, in as many words, their fine biographies assure us. But that is just another way of saying what has been said about those two ministers over and over again already. William Law never was a parish ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte



Words linked to "Well-read" :   informed, lettered, educated, knowledgeable, well-educated, learned, knowing



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