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Self-taught   Listen
adjective
Self-taught  adj.  Taught by one's own efforts.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Self-taught" Quotes from Famous Books



... years old, and, being the youngest of the family, which consisted of three daughters and himself, his early training devolved upon his mother, who contrived to obtain for her children the advantage of an ordinary education. James Ballantine must, however, be considered as a self-taught man. Beyond the training which he received in early life, he owes his present position to his own ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the curator of the Museum, Mr. Soden Smith, shared my feelings with reference to the celestial loveliness of this figure. Which is best, to live in a country where such a work of art is taken for a horse-trough, or in a country where the products from the studio of a self-taught handicraftsman, equal to the shaping of a horse-trough and not much more, are put forward ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... their reality; for even familiar expressions can become unfamiliar and convey no ideas, if the utterance is forced or affected. Philip was somewhat of a pedant; yet there was a simplicity in his pedantry not always to be met with in those who are self-taught, and which might have interested any one who cared to know with what labour and difficulty he had acquired the knowledge which now he prized so highly; reading out Latin quotations as easily as if they ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... and care, I know, to make this lecturer my friend. He was what is called born a gentleman; and he began by treating me as a low-born upstart, who, being perfectly ignorant, wanted to pass for a self-taught genius. That I was low-born, I did not attempt to conceal; nor did I perceive that I had any reason to be ashamed of my birth, or of having raised myself by honest means to a station above that in which I was born. I was proud of this circumstance, and therefore it was no ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... society without obliterating its distinctive peculiarities. Song and ballad and local legends were still alive, and not merely objects of literary curiosity. It was under such conditions that Burns appeared, the greatest beyond compare of all the self-taught poets. Now there can be no explanation whatever of the occurrence of a man of genius at a given time and place. For anything we can say, Burns was an accident; but given the genius, his relation was clear, and the genius enabled him to recognise ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... entertained. Your lordship therefore is to be presumed competently versed in the rudiments of ethics. You have read Grotius, Puffendorf, and Cumberland. For my part I never opened a volume of any one of them. I am self-taught. My science originates entirely in my unbounded penetration, and a sort of divine and supernatural afflatus. With all this your lordship knows I am a modest man. I have never presumed to entrench upon the province of others. Let the professors of ethics talk their nonsense. I will not interrupt ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... Traveller came there who had gained renown at college, Whose abstruse research had won him even European fame, Questioned Philip, praised his genius, marvelled at his self-taught knowledge, Could she murmur if he called him up to ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... perhaps too daring speculations, there is another, and more human, source of interest about the animal who is writhing feebly in the glass jar of salt water; for he is one of the many curiosities which have been added to our fauna by that humble hero Mr. Charles Peach, the self-taught naturalist, of whom, as we walk on toward the rocks, something should be said, or rather read; for Mr. Chambers, in an often-quoted passage from his Edinburgh Journal, which I must have the pleasure of quoting once again, has told the story ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... self-taught, in the little cottage alone; for, though scarcely past the hour in which great folks dine, it is the hour in which small folks go to bed, and Mrs. Fairfield has retired to rest, while Leonard has settled ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... have expected to find the birthplace of the builder of the Menai Bridge and other great national works in so obscure a corner of the kingdom. Possibly it may already have struck the reader with surprise, that not only were all the early engineers self-taught in their profession, but they were brought up mostly in remote country places, far from the active life of great towns and cities. But genius is of no locality, and springs alike from the farmhouse, the peasant's hut, or the herd's shieling. Strange, indeed, it is that the men who have built our ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... year. Xenocrates was then teaching at {212} the Academy, Aristotle at the Lyceum, but Epicurus heard neither the one nor the other. After some wanderings he returned to Athens and set up on his [366] own account as a teacher of philosophy. He made it a matter of boasting that he was a self-taught philosopher; and Cicero (De Nat. Deor. i. 26) sarcastically remarks that one could have guessed as much, even if Epicurus had not stated it himself; as one might of the proprietor of an ugly house, who should boast that he had employed no architect. The style of Epicurus was, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... spoke up Weil briskly. "I've got no lawyer, commissioner." His speech was the elaborated and painfully emphasized English of the self-taught East Sider. It carried in it just the bare suggestion of the racial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to the menacing Hibernian purr of Donohue's heavier voice. "I kind of thought I'd ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... welcome, and listened to with an eagerness that showed a marked result at the spring elections. The interest of the working-men who heard these addresses was equaled, perhaps excelled, by the pleased surprise of college professors and men of letters when they found that the style and method of this self-taught popular Western orator would stand the test of ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... of marked attention to every one present; the other manifests an habitual air of abstraction and absence of mind. The one is not an upstart with all the self-important airs of the founder of his own fortune; nor the other a self-taught man, with the repulsive self-sufficiency which arises from an ignorance of what hundreds have known before him. We must excuse perhaps a little conscious family-pride in the one, and a little harmless pedantry in the other.—As there is a class of the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... the greatest modern astronomer, died at Slough in England. Herschel was born in 1738 at Hanover. He was a musician of rare skill and a self-taught mathematician of great ability. In 1757, he deserted the band of Hanoverian Guards in which he played the oboe, although a mere boy, and fled to England, where he taught music and achieved success as a violinist and ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... Government work to be done excites among us in these days. And of engravers there were but four between Maine and Georgia. Of these four, one was Paul Revere of the midnight ride, the Boston boy of Huguenot blood whose self-taught graver had celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act, condemned to perpetual derision the rescinders of 1768, and told the story of the Boston Massacre,—who, when the first grand jury under the new organization was drawn, had met the judge with, "I refuse to sarve,"—a scientific ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... to be away two years. I am sweer' (i.e., loath) 'to part with him, but canna stem the 'current which flows from the advice of his patrons and his own inclinations.' This letter was addressed to one John Smybert, also a self-taught artist. He had commenced in Edinburgh as a house-painter, and, growing ambitious, found himself after a time in London, choosing between starvation and the decoration of grand coach-panels in Long Acre factories. In 1728 he settled in Boston, and shares with ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... French self-taught poet, boasts of his inventions; among other singularities, one has at least the merit of la difficulte vaincue. He asserts this novelty to be entirely his own; the last word of every verse forms the first word ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... miles through this pretty, green retreat, and spent Sunday with Mr. Homer W. Styron, who keeps a small store about two miles from the inlet. He is a self-taught astronomer, and used an ingeniously constructed telescope of his own ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... tinsel and spangles; the white plumes looked beautiful; Mr. Evans had practised falling until he was bruised from head to foot and quite perfect; Iago was sure that, in the stabbing-scene, he should make 'a decided hit.' A self-taught deaf gentleman, who had kindly offered to bring his flute, would be a most valuable addition to the orchestra; Miss Jenkins's talent for the piano was too well known to be doubted for an instant; Mr. Cape had practised ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... these battles, is the circumstance of his having taken, in both, the commanders of the enemy. Indeed, the war in general may be distinguished by the singular success of this gentleman and the celebrated lord Clive, two self-taught generals; who, by a series of shining actions, have demonstrated that uninstructed genius can, by its own internal light and efficacy, rival, if not eclipse, the acquired art of discipline and experience. Sir William Johnston was not more serviceable to his country by his valour and conduct ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... misconception yet lingering among sciolists and pretenders to criticism, which regards a writer than whom no man was ever born with a finer or a stronger instinct for perfection of excellence in execution as a mere noble savage of letters, a rough self-taught sketcher or scribbler of crude and rude genius, whose unhewn blocks of verse had in them some veins of rare enough metal to be quarried and polished by Shakespeare. What most impressed the author of "Faust" in the work of Marlowe was a quality ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... pretty large circle this evening. Dr. Johnson was in very good humour, lively, and ready to talk upon all subjects. Mr. Fergusson, the self-taught philosopher, told him of a new-invented machine which went without horses: a man who sat in it turned a handle, which worked a spring that drove it forward. 'Then, Sir, (said Johnson,) what is gained is, the man has his choice ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... young, not much older than Jerome, and had a keen, thin face, with nervous red spots coming and going in his cheeks, and fiery, deep-set eyes. He had the reputation of being very smart and energetic, and having considerable self-taught book-knowledge. He had a wife and two babies, and was, if the truth were told, staying away from home that day that his wife, who was a delicate, anxious young thing, might think he was at work. He had ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... pictures, and there introduced him again to his old friend Mr. Page. The artist, to whom Mr. Moring had already showed the painting of the dog running off with the dinner, was exceedingly surprised that a boy so entirely self-taught should have made such progress, and was pleased indeed to see him again. His judgment of the merits of Robbie's work was such that Mr. Moring undertook to have the boy instructed by one of the best ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... have done without you, said she, letting go one hand, with self-taught politeness, leading me up ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... provocation he receives, of the first whim he takes in his head: he sees things through the medium of heat and passion, not with reference to any general principles, and his whole system of thinking is deranged by the first object that strikes his fancy or sours his temper education. He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well as excellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaring excess. It must be acknowledged that the editor of the Political Register (the twopenny trash, as it was called, till ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... communication with nature. We know too that Crome was a house-painter, and practised painting from nature when his daily work was done. Nevertheless he attained as perfect a technique as any painter that ever lived. Morland, too, was self-taught: he practised painting in the fields and farmyards and the country inns where he lived, oftentimes paying for board and lodging with a picture. Did his art suffer from want of education? Is there any one who believes that Morland would have done better work if he had spent three or four years ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... mighty process is maintained, Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight Slow-circling ages are as transient days; Whose work is without labour, whose designs No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts, And whose beneficence no charge exhausts. Him blind antiquity profaned, not served, With self-taught rites and under various names Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan, And Flora and Vertumnus; peopling earth With tutelary goddesses and gods That were not, and commending as they would To each some province, garden, field, or grove. But all are under One. One spirit—His Who bore the platted thorns ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... skeptic; on the contrary, he was the most imperious dogmatist. No man ever showed so little respect for the opinions of his predecessors, or so much confidence in his own. He was fond of boasting that he had made his own philosophy—he was a "self-taught" man! Now "Epicurus might be perfectly honest in saying he had read very little, and had worked out the conclusions in his own mind, but he was a copyist, nevertheless; few men more entirely so."[766] His psychology was certainly borrowed ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it would have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... as it was in the days of the apostles, when a few poor fishermen from an obscure lake in Palestine assumed, under the divine mission, the spiritual authority over mankind, so, in the days of our own Elizabeth, the seamen from the banks of the Thames and the Avon, the Plym and the Dart, self-taught and self-directed, with no impulse but what was beating in their own royal hearts, went out across the unknown seas fighting, discovering, colonizing, and grayed out the channels, and at last paved them with their bones, through which the commerce ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... geography and navigation. Besides a crew of about fifty, including marines and mechanics; he was accompanied by Mr. Smith, an eminent botanist, who likewise possessed some knowledge of geology; Mr. Cranck, a self-taught, but able zoologist; Mr. Tudor, a good comparative-anatomist; Mr. Lock-hart, a gardener from Kew; and Mr. Galwey, an intelligent person, who ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... transliteration, carefully transcribe every word of Russian in my text-book into the Latin characters, and learn the elements of the language from my manuscript. A year or so ago I made a brief visit to Russia with a "Russian Self-Taught" in my pocket. Nothing sticks, nothing ever did stick of that self-taught Russian except the words that I learnt in Latin type. Those I remember as I remember all words, as groups of Latin letters. I learnt to count, for example, up to a hundred. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... Watson, Balfour, and other British officers, professing to know the laws of war and nations, burnt houses and hanged those citizens who had taken deceptive paroles upon their authority, certainly it may be affirmed that Marion, who was self-taught, and had no book of the law of nations, or perhaps any other book in his camp, was justifiable as a matter of retaliation, to shoot down their pickets and cut off their sentinels wherever he could find them; and always to fight such invaders ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... whose value depended on their finding a market at the neighbouring town of Manchester; and it was to bring his coal to this market that he resolved to drive a canal from the mine to the river Irwell. With singular good luck he found the means of carrying out his design in a self-taught mechanic, James Brindley. But in Brindley's mind the scheme widened far beyond the plans of the duke. Canals, as he conceived them, were no longer to serve as mere adjuncts to rivers; on the contrary, "rivers were only meant," he ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... 1910, when already the exploits of flying men were the theme of all the world. By the 1st of November in the same year the Royal Aero Club had issued twenty-two certificates; that is to say, twenty-two pilots, some of them self-taught, and some trained in France, were licensed by the sole British authority as competent to handle a machine in the air. Eight years later, in November 1918, when the armistice put an end to the active operations of the war, the Royal ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... instance of a self-taught man, without scientific or academic training, producing a work that marks an epoch in historical literature. With a wonderful memory, he had, like Macaulay, the gift of getting the meaning and value of a book by simply glancing over the pages. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... the rear of the Casino, is a fine group of figures in sandstone, called "Auld Lang Syne," the work of Robert Thomson, the self-taught sculptor, and a little to the southeast of this is a bronze statue of Professor Morse, erected by the Telegraph Operators' Association, and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... of responsibility to God, the Judge of all. These, though wrapped in seeming rustic garb, were found in Abraham Lincoln. He had mental breadth and clearness. In spite of a defective early education, he became a self-taught thinker, and later in life he read widely and meditated profoundly, until he acquired a thorough mental discipline. He possessed the power to comprehend a subject at once in the aggregate and in its details. His eye swept a wide horizon and descried clearly all within ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy

... his two first years; some arts are borrowed from the beavers of a neighbouring lake; some truths are revealed in supernatural visions. With these helps, and his own industry, Automathes becomes a self-taught though speechless philosopher, who had investigated with success his own mind, the natural world, the abstract sciences, and the great principles of morality and religion. The author is not entitled to the merit of invention, since he has blended the English story ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... travelling. 'You can recommend some other fit person?' asked the Duke. 'No,' said Smeaton, 'I'm sorry I can't.' 'What!' cried the Duke, 'a profession with only one man in it! Pray, who taught you?' 'Why,' said Smeaton, 'I believe I may say I was self-taught, an't please your grace.' Smeaton, at the date of Thomas Smith's third marriage, was yet living; and as the one had grown to the new profession from his place at the instrument-maker's, the other was beginning to enter it by the way of his trade. The engineer of to- day ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Preserver, and Governor of the universe at large, and every thing contained in it. It shows both the nature and tendency of the true knowledge of the Creator—that this is not learned in the schools, but that every man from his birth is self-taught it—Yet that the depravity of men is so great as to corrupt and extinguish this knowledge, partly by ignorance, partly by wickedness; so that it neither leads him to glorify God as he ought, nor conducts him to the attainment of happiness—And though ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... no opportunity of doing justice to our hero, it will be proper to observe, that, howsoever unapt his understanding might be to receive and retain the usual culture of the schools, he was naturally a genius self-taught, in point of sagacity and invention.—He dived into the characters of mankind, with a penetration peculiar to himself, and, had he been admitted as a pupil in any political academy, would have certainly become one of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... if a man was poor and self-taught, but in these days of competition it's different. A boy must have chances if he's going to fight the battle on equal terms. Of course, some boys ain't worth botherin' about. But my boy—well, he seems to ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... could be corrected it was necessary that a man should appear who could see without prejudice, and apply sound common-sense to what he saw. And such a man did appear towards the close of the century, in the person of William Smith, the English surveyor. He was a self-taught man, and perhaps the more independent for that, and he had the gift, besides his sharp eyes and receptive mind, of a most tenacious memory. By exercising these faculties, rare as they are homely, he led the way to a science which was destined, in its later developments, to shake the structure of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... arrived he looked up also, and seeing Sidonia, exclaimed, with surprise, "Beautiful Sidonia, how have you learned the lute?" At which she blushed and answered modestly, "Gracious Prince, I am only self-taught. No one here understands the lute except ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... shoulders, and departed, knowing two things: first, that to move Drake was to move mountains; and next, that when the self-taught hero did bestir himself, he would do more work in an hour than any one else in a day. So he departed, followed hastily by most of the captains; and Drake said in a low voice ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Leonardo was self-taught and gathered knowledge as a bee gathers honey, although honey isn't honey until the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... Very unlike was he at that time to the gentlemanly youth who had held forth from the pulpit. Oliver had a long chat with him, and found that he aspired to enter the ministry, and had already passed some severe examinations. He was self-taught, having procured the loan of books from his minister and some friends who were interested in him. His language and manners were those of a gentleman, yet he had had no ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... born in St. Louis, May 4, 1855, and music has been his livelihood. He is largely self-taught, and has composed some fifty pieces for the piano, a hundred and fifty songs, a few works for violin, viola, and 'cello, and two ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... lectures in which Mr. Harris expounded Hegel. But there were many other lecturers. Mrs. Edna Cheney talked to us about art; though all that I recall of her conversation is the fact that she pronounced always olways, and I wondered if that was the regular Boston pronunciation. Dr. Jones, the self-taught Platonist of Jacksonville, Illinois, interpreted Plato. Quite a throng of his disciples, mostly women, had followed him from Illinois and swelled the numbers of the Summer School. Once Professor Benjamin Peirce, the great Harvard mathematician, came over from ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers

... character with its varied impulses, its capricious appetites, its unregulated forces, its impatient grasp for all kinds of knowledge. With all his university experiences at home and abroad, it might be said with a large measure of truth that he was a self-educated man, as he had been a self-taught boy. His instincts were too powerful to let him work quietly in the common round of school and college training. Looking at him as his companions describe him, as he delineates himself 'mutato nomine,' the chances of success would have seemed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of Sebastian Castellio, the French Humanist, first an admirer and then opponent of Calvin, pioneer defender of freedom of thought, and exponent of inward and spiritual religion of the type of the German Spiritual Reformers,[6] and it is unmistakable that we have, in this Dutch self-taught scholar, a virile interpreter of this same type of Christianity, marked with his own peculiar variation, and penetrated with the living convictions of his personal faith and first-hand experience. ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... the pure and gentle. Newton was a plain, downright sailor, with nerves of iron, and a mind and spirit as robust as his frame. He had little inclination for the minor elegancies of life. He was almost entirely self-taught. What could there be in common between two ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... or ostentation, suggest views or cautions, which might indeed be useful to the University Student generally, by a relation of some of my own endeavours to improve my own mind, and to increase my own knowledge in my early life. I am no great admirer of self-taught geniuses; to be self-taught is a misfortune, except in the case of those extraordinary minds, to whom the title of genius justly belongs; for in most cases, to be self-taught is to be badly grounded, to be slovenly finished, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... I mean morally, intellectually. I've had scores of people pass through my hands in the last fifteen years—Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Americans, men of so-called high family, men of humble birth, men from a dozen universities, self-taught men, young men, old men, and, my God! what have I found? Arrogance, stupidity, ingratitude, loose thinking, conceit, ignorance, laziness, indifference; absence of tact, discretion, courtesy, manners, consideration, sympathy, devotion; no knowledge, no wisdom, ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... by chance. He was a self-taught man, having but little education so far as books go; but in the great school of actual business he received a diploma, and to this was afterwards added several complimentary degrees earned after his graduation. He never ceased to be a ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... cut-and-dried tone" of the leathery professors. Humboldt was feeble as a child and "had less facility in his studies than most children." "Until I reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I showed little inclination for scientific pursuits." He was essentially self-taught, and acquired most of his knowledge rather late in life. At nineteen he had never heard of botany. Sheridan was called inferior to many of his schoolfellows. He was remarkable for nothing but idleness and winning manners, and was "not only slovenly in construing, but unusually ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... a romantic character. He had been self-taught; and his studies, irregular though often deep, had given directions to his intellect frequently enthusiastic and unsound. His imagination preponderated over his judgment; and any pursuit that attracted his imagination won his entire devotion, until ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more ...
— The Republic • Plato

... there is little to admire. If the public buildings fail in this respect, the private houses have at least the advantage over them, that for the most part they do not pretend to any architecture at all. Many of the architects are self-taught, and have served little or no apprenticeship to the profession. Indeed, it should rather be called a trade, since they often are merely successful builders, who have taken to planning and superintending ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... it is that he never went there after his seafaring life began, for from then on his doings are quite clearly known; so we must admit that while he may have had some teaching in childhood, what little knowledge he possessed of geography and science were self-taught in later years. The belief in a sphere-world was already very ancient, but people who accepted it were generally pronounced either mad or wicked. Long before, in the Greek and Roman days, certain teachers had believed ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... gate. Other fires there were, of smaller dimensions, on which sundry steaming pots were placed, and various joints of wild horse, bear, and venison roasted, and sent forth a savoury odour as well as a pleasant hissing noise. The inhabitants of the block-house were self-taught brewers, and the result of their recent labours now stood displayed in a row of goodly casks of beer—the only beverage with which the dwellers in these far-off regions were ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... unprofaned. High o'er the rest, by nature rear'd, The oak's majestic boughs appear'd; Beneath, a copse of various hue In barbarous luxuriance grew. 90 No knife had curb'd the rambling sprays, No hand had wove the implicit maze. The flowering thorn, self-taught to wind, The hazel's stubborn stem entwined, And bramble twigs were wreathed around, And rough furze crept along the ground. Here sheltering from the sons of murther, The hares their tired limbs drag ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... hero. His name is known throughout the whole world wherever books are read. He was born in the lowest condition of life, and raised himself to the highest point of fame. He was a self-taught man too. No large sums of money or long years of time were spent upon his schooling. No college education made him what he was. An old woman taught him his letters, but he was not sent to school till he was thirteen years of age. He remained only four years at the village school, ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne

... time, hostile armies set in battle array against each other. This year is memorable in the life of Frederic as the date at which his novitiate in the art of war may be said to have terminated. There have been great captains whose precocious and self-taught military skill resembled intuition. Conde, Clive, and Napoleon are examples. But Frederic was not one of these brilliant portents. His proficiency in military science was simply the proficiency which a man of vigorous faculties makes in any science to which he applies ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... (which was bigger than the point of a bayonet) to the physical instruction of the army and the recuperation of battle-worn men. I liked him better in that job, and saw the real imagination of the man at work, and his amazing, self-taught knowledge of psychology. When men came down from the trenches, dazed, sullen, stupid, dismal, broken, he set to work to build up their vitality again, to get them interested in life again, and to make them keen and alert. As they had been dehumanized by war, so he rehumanized ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... in Mr. Longstaffe's Annals and Characteristics of Darlington, that the spinning of flax by machinery was first begun by one John Kendrew, an ingenious self-taught mechanic of that town, who invented a machine for the purpose, for which he took out a patent in 1787. Mr. Marshall went over from Leeds to see his machine, and agreed to give him so much per spindle for the right to use it. But ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... writer of the article from which we have quoted would seem to have read what Mr. Hodder has told us respecting his friend Kenny Meadows, for the following is certainly not new to us: "He was not a self-taught artist, for he was trained by one who had a genius kin to his own, but he was an artist who had never forced himself into the observance of those mechanical rules and canons which to ordinary men are necessary to their correct painting (just ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... hackers past their teens are either college-degreed or self-educated to an equivalent level. The self-taught hacker is often considered (at least by other hackers) to be better-motivated, and may be more respected, than his school-shaped counterpart. Academic areas from which people often gravitate into hackerdom ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... continental languages, as well as Persian, Syriac, Arabic, Sanscrit, and other tongues. In 1819 he wrote a letter to the Persian ambassador in that magnate's own language. After these linguistic contests, he early turned to mathematics, in which he was apparently self-taught; yet, in his seventeenth year he discovered an error in Laplace's Mecanique Celeste. He entered Trinity College where he won all kinds of distinctions, being famous not merely as a mathematician, but as a poet, a scholar, and a metaphysician. He was appointed ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... steamers and railways. While at Birnam, near Dunkeld, I was reminded of some remarkable characters in the neighbourhood. After the publication of the 'Scotch Naturalist' and 'Robert Dick,' I received numerous letters informing me of many self-taught botanists and students of nature, quite as interesting as the subjects of my memoirs. Among others, there was John Duncan, the botanist weaver of Aberdeen, whose interesting life has since been ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... qualifications of any man for a situation of trust and responsibility, that he had never been TAUGHT how to perform its duties. They are not guilty of the contradiction of elevating men BECAUSE they are self-taught, while they expend millions on schools. Doubtless they have, after a fashion of their own, demagogues and Caesars, but they are usually kept within moderate limits; and in rare instances, indeed, do either ever seriously trespass on the rights of the tribe. As human nature ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... stood before the Committee to prove what the public opinion of that day held to be impossible. The self-taught mechanic had to demonstrate the practicability of accomplishing that which the most distinguished engineers of the time regarded as impracticable. Clear though the subject was to himself, and familiar as he was with the powers of the locomotive, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... in the service was a better navigator. He was a self-taught genius, for he had gone to sea originally before the mast, and even in that capacity had found time to gain instructions in navigation, geography, history, and many other sciences. He was for some ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... carpet if they got ninety cents for their wheat. Leo, with a good deal of fussing, got out his violin. It was old Mr. Shimerda's instrument, which Antonia had always kept, and it was too big for him. But he played very well for a self-taught boy. Poor Yulka's efforts were not so successful. While they were playing, little Nina got up from her corner, came out into the middle of the floor, and began to do a pretty little dance on the boards ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... across the Rocky Mountains and spread it along the shores of the Pacific, as it already animated the shores of the Atlantic. As Mr. Astor, by the magnitude of his commercial and financial relations, and the vigor and scope of his self-taught mind, had elevated himself into the consideration of government and the communion and correspondence with leading statesmen, he, at an early period, communicated his schemes to President Jefferson, soliciting the countenance of government. How highly they were esteemed by that ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... found a new republic in this untrodden wilderness; of that ardent and intrepid Otis, who first struck out the spark of American independence; of that noble Adams, its most eloquent champion on the floor of Congress; of that martyr Warren, who laid down his life in its defense; of that self-taught Bowditch, who, without a guide, threaded the starry mazes of the heavens; of that Story, honored at home and abroad as one of the brightest luminaries of the law, and, by a felicity of which I believe there is no ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... metaphysicians that the West can boast, I cannot state. But this at least is clear; his interest in them was real and lasting. And in his conversation he showed keen appreciation of philosophical problems. It is to be noted also that he was a self-taught philosopher—for he had attended no school since he studied elementary English, ten years before, while a ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... &c., for a further course of study in the Gymnasium of Belgrade, the germ of a future university. A proof of the taste now spreading for general literature was afforded by the library of the Archpriest, "Jowan Paulovich, a self-taught ecclesiastic: the room in which he received us was filled with books, mostly Servian, but among them I perceived German translations of Shakspeare, Young's Night Thoughts, and a novel of Bulwer's." The son of this priest was studying mining engineering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... stroke that a self-taught small boy learns is what is called "dog fashioned." This name accurately describes the stroke, as it is in reality very similar to the motions by which a dog swims. No amount of book instruction can teach a person ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... daughters, a point of propriety in male and female acquaintanceship which amused us not a little. His business was of a most multifarious description, and besides the trades of bookseller, stationer, and druggist, he had a printing-office, and was, moreover, a self-taught printer, He was post-master and stamp sub-distributor, receiver of bail, and agent for insurances—little official appointments which would have made him mayor in a corporate town. Of late years, he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various

... highest intellectual qualities are brought into play, most of the great discoverers have owed their entire scientific knowledge to self-taught methods of investigation. And it is the same thing in every field of research where the thinking faculties must reach the supreme limit of development—namely, that nothing is traceable to academic learning, and that everything is owing to the ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... instructed, leaned, lettered, educated; well conned, well informed, well read, well grounded, well educated; enlightened, shrewd, savant, blue, bookish, scholastic, solid, profound, deep-read, book- learned; accomplished &c (skillful) 698; omniscient; self-taught. known &c. v.; ascertained, well-known, recognized, received, notorious, noted; proverbial; familiar, familiar as household words, familiar to every schoolboy; hackneyed, trite, trivial, commonplace. cognoscible[obs3], cognizable. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Smibert; or Mr Adam Dickson, a young genius nipt in the bud—whose appearance would be the welcome signal for the 'tinkling' of Peter's hammer to know a brief respite. And I could mention others of his acquaintance, almost self-taught like himself, whose intelligence might enable them ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... a self-taught painter. He had been tossed about the world in a variety of characters—errand-boy, brickmakers' boy, potter, shipwright, sailor, sawyer, strolling player; and here he finally settled down as painter, and, having achieved a trade, he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... the work of a self-taught artist," said Lawrence D'Arcy. "But, really, there is little to boast of in having put together a few rough poles. The plan is the only thing to ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston

... setting of his most dramatic career was not the best preparation for knowledge of the man, but it was the best I had, and now I can only look back at my struggle with him and wonder that I came off alive. It is the hard fate of the self-taught that their learning must cost them twice as much labor as it would if they were taught by others; the very books they study are grudging friends if not insidious foes. Long afterward when I came to Italy, and began to make the past part of my present, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... order, founded in the soundest personal and professional integrity. He was a great favorite among the young engineers and students; not a few of them yet remaining in Kings and Queens counties, and New York city, will remember "Jeff," with old-time good-will and affection. He was mostly self-taught, and was a ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... and I shall say, nothing. Of the certainty with which the man who grasps it under difficulties rises in his own respect and in usefulness to the community, I have said, and I shall say, nothing. In the city of Manchester, in the county of Lancaster, both of them remarkable for self-taught men, that were superfluous indeed. For the same reason I rigidly abstain from putting together any of the shattered fragments of that poor clay image of a parrot, which was once always saying, without knowing why, or what it meant, that ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... among the caves, where the workmen live. It contains a beautiful little Theatre, newly built; and it is an interesting custom there, to form the chorus of labourers in the marble quarries, who are self-taught and sing by ear. I heard them in a comic opera, and in an act of 'Norma;' and they acquitted themselves very well; unlike the common people of Italy generally, who (with some exceptions among the Neapolitans) sing vilely out of tune, and have ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... knowledge of whether, while in Norwich, Borrow made the acquaintance of Old Crome. We know, however, that he was an enthusiastic admirer of the self-taught master of the Old Norwich School of artists. Still, he may never have been brought into immediate contact with him; for Crome was in his forty-sixth year when Borrow's family first appeared in Norwich, and George was then but a young lad. But before 1821, ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... the old Church as before. Another great road was made at the same time—that which crosses Golden Common and leads ultimately to Portsmouth. It used to be called Cobbett's Road, because William Cobbett, a clever, self-taught man, had much to do with laying it out. Cobbett had a good many theories which he tried to put into practice, some sensible, others mistaken. The principal traces we see of him now are in the trees that he planted, chiefly introduced ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge

... appeared in the "Philosophical Transactions." Cook was not long in receiving a due reward for so much, and such successful labour, and for his patient studies, the more meritorious, as he had had few opportunities, and was self-taught. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... but short-sighted inhabitants thought so much; and hence their Magna Charta, as they were wont to call their book of "Dennis," was rather a mischief than a benefit. Their general feelings are characteristically described in the following lines from the pen of worthy Kitty Drew, the self-taught Forest poetess, in her poem on the Forest ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... upon some confirmation of his own philosophy, he would crow: "There you got it, Dannie! Right under the thumb o' me! Them ol' bullies was wise as owls." 'Twas largely a matter of words, no doubt (my uncle being self-taught in all things); and 'tis possible that the virtue of standing by, indirectly commended, to be sure, is not specifically and in terms enjoined ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... no school as yet; its methods are tentative, and its few masters have been pretty much self-taught. But I think that a method and a school will evolve themselves by degrees—are ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier

... books, and I hope that we shall soon have finished Godwin, that he may set out for Black Castle. There are some parts of his book [Footnote: Essays, by the author of Caleb Williams.] that I think you will like much—"On Frankness," and "Self-taught Genius;" but you will find much to blame in his style, and you will be surprised that he should have written a dissertation upon English style. I think his essay on Avarice and Profusion will please you, even after Smith: he has gone a step farther. I am ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... and the mahogany cupboard here were made for my father by a self-taught cabinet-maker—Glyeb Butyga, a serf of General Zhukov's. Yes... a great ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... (1810-1880), Norwegian violinist, was born in Bergen, Norway, on the 5th of February 1810. At first a pupil of the violinist Paulsen, and subsequently self-taught, he was intended for the church, but failed in his examinations in 1828 and became a musician, directing the philharmonic and dramatic societies at Bergen. In 1829 he went to Cassel, on a visit to Spohr, who gave him no encouragement. He now began to study law, but on going to Paris ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Oliver Holden, a self-taught musician, born in Shirley, Mass., 1765, and bred to the carpenter's trade. The little pipe organ on which tradition says he struck the first notes of the famous tune is now in the Historical rooms of the Old State House, Boston, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... of lighter twigs, and considerable pains must be taken in their selection, for they all have an inward curve, which in some "runs" cause the sides almost to meet at the top. The degree of forethought that these self-taught architects possess is strikingly exemplified in the fact that, whilst building the walls, any forks or inequalities are turned 'outwards', so as to offer no impediment to their free passage when skylarking (if it is not an Irishism, using such an expression with regard to a ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... originally bred to some handicraft: he afterwards contrived to learn Latin, and was for some time an usher in a school, till he became a tutor in a nobleman's family. The low-bred, self-taught man, the pedant, and the dependant on the great contribute to form the Editor of the Quarterly Review. He is admirably qualified for this situation, which he has held for some years, by a happy combination ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... locked up in separate rooms, and sentries placed beneath their windows—this in addition to the security of hand-cuffs and roped arms. Then breakfast was prepared for the entire company, and those who had been wounded in the fight were attended to by Hunky Ben—a self-taught surgeon—with Mary and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... nature had uncommonly endowed him for the reception of those instructions. Of such means of improvement Master Payne was wholly destitute, for there was not a man that we could hear of in America who was at once capable and willing to instruct him. Self-dependent and self-taught as he must be, we could see no feasible means by which he could evolve his powers, be they what they might, to adequate effect for the stage. We deemed it scarcely possible that he could have got rid of the innumerable provincialisms which must cling to his youth: and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... of the evening commenced with a hymn. An orphan boy, fourteen years of age, a self-taught musician, placed himself before a small organ, provided by Mr. Winfield, and played the evening hymn. All the boys accompanied him with their voices, and sang very creditably; after this they were formed into their ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... say that they are wrong. The man who has taught himself is apt to be a vain, conceited fellow who takes pleasure in thinking for himself, and has an absolute delight in despising the thoughts of others. It is, however, no less the fact, that it is among these self-taught men that we find those vigorous spirits who venture boldly beyond the domain of human science and extend its frontier. The question then is which is best, to favour all these troublesome self-taught people in the hope of finding some ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... help it. I love the place—although I know how it hates all men like me—the so-called self-taught—how it scorns our laboured acquisitions, when it should be the first to respect them; how it sneers at our false quantities and mispronunciations, when it should say, I see you want help, my poor friend! ... Nevertheless, it is the centre of the universe ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... Rousseau's importance in the history of music is not sufficient to justify an account of his early days. With a great fondness for music, he found it extremely difficult to read by note, as he was almost entirely self-taught. This led him to devise a simpler notation, which he did about 1740, publishing an account of it in 1743. His system was substantially that of the tonic sol fa, except that he used figures in place of letters. He presented a memorial to the Academy of Sciences upon this subject in 1742, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... evidently an excellent one. He informed me that most of his reading was done in the early morning, and that he found five hours' sleep quite adequate. I have a most agreeable recollection of my interview with this self-taught scholar. I believe there are many like him in not a few outlandish nooks of Scotland,—men who read books not for any material advantages that result from their studies, but simply and solely for the intense pleasure that comes from communion with the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... of Germany has given the literary men of that country an advantage over the literary men of England. "It has saved a great number of our German learned men," he says, "from the danger of becoming autodidactoi—self-taught. I think that is one essential point of difference that is visible in comparing the general character of the instruction in this country with that on the continent: there are in this country a great number of self-taught people, who think according ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... silence; an active tenderness and charity to the poor, with whom he was always ready to share his own scanty means; an apparent disregard for money, except when employed in the purchase of books; an utter indifference to the ambition usually accompanying self-taught talent, whether to better the condition or to increase the repute: these, and other traits of the character portrayed in the novel, are, as far as I can rely on my information, faithful to the features ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... fatherless at the age of six years,— by the care of a pious mother and competent guardians, young Leibnitz enjoyed such means of education as Germany afforded at that time, but declares himself, for the most part, self-taught [6]. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... style was never professionalized. Neither did it have anything of that frontier glibness and banality which was the curse of popular oratory in the West and South. Words were weapons in the hands of this self-taught fighter for ideas: he kept their edges sharp, and could if necessary use them with deadly accuracy. He framed the "Freeport dilemma" for the unwary feet of Douglas as cunningly as a fox-hunter lays his trap. "Gentlemen," he had said ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... most popular of the living national song-writers, Alexander Laing, was born at Brechin on the 14th May 1787. His father, James Laing, was an agricultural labourer. With the exception of two winters' schooling, he was wholly self-taught. Sent to tend cattle so early as his eighth year, he regularly carried books and writing-materials with him to the fields. His books were procured by the careful accumulation of the halfpence bestowed on him by the admirers of his juvenile tastes. In his sixteenth year, he entered on the business ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... enough back to be out of reach of the long blow-pipe if Zorzi should unexpectedly swing it to its full length. Zorzi was confident and unconcerned, though he was fully aware that the men were watching every movement he made, while pretending not to see. He knew also that owing to his being partly self-taught he did certain things in ways of his own. They should see that his ways were as good as theirs, and what was more, that he needed no help, while none of them could ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... paintings, representing some of the principal ancient Buildings of the city of Exeter. 13th—Connected with the organ there is a Bird Organ, which plays when required. This unrivaled piece of mechanism was perfectly cleaned and repaired by W. Frost, of Exeter, a self-taught artist. Jacob Lovelace, the maker, ended his days in great poverty in Exeter, at the age of sixty years, having been thirty-four years in completing it. This museum also contains glass of the Roman period—A.D. 100-500. ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... necessary funds. The little "Telephone," the organ of the W.C.T.U. of the Maritime Provinces, which has recently made its appearance, is a credit to that society, as well as to its editor and publisher, Mrs. Cowil, a woman self-taught in the art of printing, and full of faith and courage in their new enterprise. All over our land there are women ready with their pen, whose message has been long delayed, and whose thoughts we need. While, as yet, we have no paper of our own, the best papers ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... general, unacquainted with the public character and literary reputation of Colonel Torrens. He is, we believe, a self-taught political economist; and, like Colonel Thompson, early achieved distinction in a branch of moral science not considered particularly akin to military pursuits. But in his recent labours, he has very seriously damaged his reputation, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... true-blue, Yankee ship-master. Though his short black curls are thickly sprinkled with gray, he has not yet seen forty years; but the winds and suns of every zone have left their indelible traces upon him. He is an intelligent, well-informed man, though self-taught, well versed in the science of trade, and is a very energetic ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... that malodorous neighbourhood. This resort, which, like Bagnigge Wells, owed its creation to the discovery of a chalybeate spring, is bound up with the life-story of a somewhat remarkable man, Thomas Keyse by name. Born in 1722, he became a self-taught artist of such skill that several of his still-life paintings were deemed worthy of exhibition at the Royal Academy. He was also awarded a premium of thirty guineas by the Society of Arts for a new method ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... theories,[4] and refused to believe any ballad to be of earlier origin than the reign of Elizabeth. Sir Walter Scott was quite ready to accept the ballads as the productions of the minstrels, either as 'the occasional effusions of some self-taught bard,' or as abridged from the tales of tradition after the days when, as Alfred de Musset says, 'our old romances spread their wings of gold towards ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick

... science, and has, with the general inheritance of acquisition, been handed over to a special department, creates externally a beneficial composure which is very favorable to internal progress. We must distinguish from the professional the amateur and the self-taught man. The amateur busies himself with an art, a science, or a trade, without having gone through any strict training in it. As a rule, he dispenses with elementary thoroughness, and hastens towards the pleasure which the joy of production gives. The conscious ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... too strong. The solitary and absorbing passion of his life, a pure and honest love for that beautiful girl, surged in his soul, and his face betrayed the curb he was putting on himself. He had had but a poor upbringing, and his code of honour had been self-taught, but he was manly enough to be above making love ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan



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