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Belles-lettres   Listen
noun
Belles-lettres  n. pl.  Polite or elegant literature; the humanities; used somewhat vaguely for literary works in which imagination and taste are predominant.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Belles-lettres" Quotes from Famous Books



... task of the artist and the man of letters to assist and celebrate this establishment. There was to be much editing of Shakespear and Charles Lamb, much delightful humour and costume romance, and an Academy of refined Fine Writers would presently establish belles-lettres on the reputable official basis, write finis to creative force and undertake the task of stereotyping the language. Literature was to have its once terrible ferments reduced to the quality of a helpful pepsin. Ideas were dead—or domesticated. The last wild idea, in an impoverished ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... said that "she must have been possessed of uncommon talents for education, as all her young ladies were, in after-life, fond of reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well acquainted with history and the belles-lettres, without neglecting the more homely duties of the needle and accompt book; and perfectly well-bred in society." Mr. Chambers adds: "Sir W. further communicated that his mother, and many others of Mrs. Sinclair's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... was or how literature should be created. The other men of his epoch, and among whom he lived, believed that literature was a very desirable article, a thing you could create if you were only smart enough. But Emerson had no literary ambition. He cared nothing for belles-lettres. The consequence is that he stands above his age like a colossus. While he lived his figure could be seen from Europe towering like Atlas over the culture ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... consists of translations from text-books and lessons in composition. This work brings some pleasure to the child, as it is a little less mechanical. The third stage consists of belles-lettres and essay writing. Only a few ever reach this stage, and the purpose of this advanced work is not intellectual development, or even the accumulation of knowledge, but to prepare for a position under the government, which can ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... arts, especially for the belles-lettres, he entertained a profound contempt. Thus my own inkling for the Muses had excited his entire displeasure. He assured me one day, when I asked him for a new copy of Horace, that the translation of "Poeta nascitur, non fit"[456-1] was "a nasty poet for nothing fit"—a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... on every subject. One gentleman was a deep philologist—he talked with him on the origin of the alphabet as if he had been coeval with Cadmus; another a celebrated critic,—you would have said the old man had studied political economy and belles-lettres all his life,—of science it is unnecessary to speak, it was his own distinguished walk. And yet, Captain Clutterbuck, when he spoke with your countryman Jedediah Cleishbotham, you would have sworn he had been ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... repaired to Cologne, where his son, Peter Paul Rubens, was born. He died soon after his return to Antwerp, and left his property much diminished from losses occasioned by the civil war. The mother of Rubens put him early to the best schools, where he was initiated in learning and discovered a taste for belles-lettres; but all the intervals of necessary study were devoted to drawing. His mother perceiving it, determined to indulge his inclination, and placed him in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... was Nicodemus Frischlin, a German poet and philosopher, born in the duchy of Wuertemberg in 1547. At an early age he showed great talents; honours clustered thickly on his brow. At the age of twenty years he was made Professor of Belles-Lettres at Tubingen; he received from the Emperor Rudolph the poetic crown with the title of chevalier, and was made Count Palatin as a reward for his three panegyrics composed in honour of the emperors of the House of Austria. Certainly Fortune ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... hundred years time. For the day is not we may be sure, very far distant when man will cease to attach much interest to his past. I am very much afraid that our minute contributions to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, which are intended to assist to an accurate comprehension of history, will crumble to dust before they have been read. It is by chemistry at one end and by astronomy at the other, and especially by general physiology, that we really ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... Italy unless we reduce all causes of friction to a minimum," said M. Vesni['c], the Yugoslav Prime Minister, who during his long tenure of the Paris Legation was an active member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and other learned societies; he excelled in getting at the root of the worst difficulties in international law, and he was particularly admired for his ability to combine legal and historic knowledge. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... lending-library statistics at hand, but judging by the reading of young people, or of those who read merely for their amusement, the authors they patronise are nearly all living or very recent. What we old stagers esteemed as classical in fiction and BELLES-LETTRES are sealed books to the present generation. It is an exception, for instance, to meet with a young man or young woman who has read Walter Scott. Perhaps Balzac's reason is the true one. Scott, says he, 'est sans passion; il l'ignore, ou peut-etre lui etait-elle ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... pleasure to satisfy him on this point by referring him to Bochart's Geographia Sacra, lib. I. c. xxxix. In that great storehouse of historical information, the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, there are some profound researches by Melot and others, in which may be found answers to all the Queries ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various

... English language and literature. The talents of Clementi made him almost an Admirable Crichton, for it is asserted that, in addition to the most severe musical studies, he made himself in a few years a proficient in the principal modern languages, in Greek and Latin, and in the whole circle of the belles-lettres. His studies in his own art were principally based on the works of Corelli, Alexander Scarlatti, Handel's harpsichord and organ music, and on the sonatas of Paradies, a Neapolitan composer and teacher, who enjoyed high repute in London for many years. Until ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... well pleased with the conversation of our young barrister, that, at parting, he gave Alfred an invitation to his house. The conversation had been very different from what might have been expected: metaphysics, belles-lettres, poetry, plays, criticism—what a range of ideas, far from Coke and Selden, was gone over this evening in the course of a few hours! Alfred had reason to be more and more convinced of the truth of his father's favourite doctrine, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... compete with it; in short, it may be said to embrace a very fair college education. Read the following list of professors: the Principal, who is also Professor of Moral, Mental, and Political Science; Professor of Practical Mathematics; of Theoretical Science and Astronomy; of History and Belles-Lettres; of Natural History; of Latin and Greek; of French and Spanish; of Drawing, Writing, and Book-keeping; of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy; and three assistants. The highest salary received by these professors is 270l. a-year, except that of ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray



Words linked to "Belles-lettres" :   literary composition, literary work, belles lettres



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