"Unedifying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been said, one may clearly perceive the absurdity of the doctrine of this seditious, discontented, hot-headed, ungifted, unedifying preacher, asserting 'that the grand security of the matrimonial state, and the pillar upon which it stands, is founded upon the wife's belief of an absolute unconditional fidelity to the husband;' by which bold assertion he strikes at the root, digs the foundation, and removes the basis upon which ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... two philosophers engaged in a very unedifying game of cross questions and crooked answers. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'here is one man milking a billy-goat, and another catching the proceeds ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... over a snail which they had unearthed in the act of laying her eggs. There they were, still adhering to her—a cluster of little opaque white spheres, like soapy bubbles. He and John-Willy had used the occasion to try and add to their store of knowledge, and the memory of that unedifying discussion made Ishmael burn now. That time, too, when he stole his mother's Bible from her room that he might puzzle over portions of it which he had better have left unread. True, it had been John-Willy—whose household did not include a Bible and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... and composed demeanour. The gladiatorial conflicts in which these two combatants took part were often a source of rare amusement even outside the pale of the Presbytery, and, inasmuch as they were both well fortified with weighty and telling arguments, the spectacle was not always unedifying. On the question of Union, as is well known, they took diametrically opposite views. Many a passage of arms passed between them on this questio vexata, while the younger and less athletic backers surrounded the arena, waiting the shock with eager ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... of this unedifying character the dinner progressed to an end; through selle d'agneau, floated in '84 champagne, terrapin convoyed by a special Madeira of 1850, and canvas-back duck with Romanee Conti, 1865, to a triumphant finale of Turkish coffee and ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... available and of assistance in this task. However, some Chinese writers still imagine that they are serving their country by yet again dishing up the old fables for the foreigner as history; and some Europeans, knowing no better or aiming at setting alongside the unedifying history of Europe the shining example of the conventional story of China, continue in the old groove. To this day, of course, we are far from having really worked through every period of Chinese history; there are long periods on which scarcely any work has yet been done. Thus the picture ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... the four walls of Mrs Gowler's nursing home much as anywhere else, although in each twenty-four hours there usually occurred what were to Mavis's sensitive eyes and ears unedifying sights, agonised cries of women in torment. All day and night, with scarcely any intermission, could be heard the wailing of one or more babies in different rooms in the house. Mrs Gowler's nursing home attracted numberless girls from all parts of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... one else from being or seeming wiser than themselves; in other words, their infallible tendency is in the end to suppress inquiry and darken knowledge, by setting limits to the mind of man, and saying to his proud spirit, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther! It would not be an unedifying experiment to make a collection of the titles of works published in the course of the year by Members of the Universities. If any attempt is to be made to patch up an idle system in policy or legislation, or church government, it is by a member of the University: if any hashed-up speculation ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... warranted to bewilder everybody. Labours in connection with Russia and Roumania were by that time, however, virtually at an end, the importance of the branch had to a great extent lapsed, and it was afforded a not unedifying experience. For it became possible to compare the working of the military departments within the War Office with that of a department set up within that institution and run on the lines of the Man of Business, just as it had been possible before to compare the working ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... good-natured, and had a number of pensionnaires who seemed to have all run wild together in the corridors and gardens, and played all sorts of tricks on the nuns. Sometimes Cecile told me some of these, and very unedifying they were,—acting ghosts in the passages, fastening up the cell doors, ringing the bells at unearthly hours, putting brushes or shoes in the beds, and ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... us is William IX, Count of Poitiers (1071-1127) who led an army of thirty thousand men to the unfortunate crusade of 1101. He lived an adventurous and often an unedifying life, and seems to have been a jovial sensualist caring little what kind of reputation he might obtain in the eyes of the world about him. William of Malmesbury gives an account of him which is the reverse of respectable. His poems, ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor |
