"Bookish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... novel devourer, they will surely be condemned, and the condemnation will reach and have its effect upon many who should legitimately have bought the book. On the other hand, a novel of no literary quality thrust into the hands of a person of bookish tastes will make an influential enemy, who will doubtless have among his followers many persons to whom the book would appeal. It is best to find out what people will take the book, and advertise it to them. ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... library, and he was certainly a sedentary, reading man. There was already a report in the town that he was engaged in some stupendous literary work, and the men and women generally looked upon him as a disagreeable marvel of learning. Dillsborough of itself was not bookish, and would have regarded any one known to have written an article in a magazine almost ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... will remember Robert Baillie's description of Dr. Twiss, the Prolocutor of the Westminister Assembly: "The man, as the world knows, is very learned in the questions he has studied, and very good—beloved of all, and highly esteemed—but merely bookish ... and among the unfittest of all the company for any action." In this respect Dr. Owen was a great contrast to his studious contemporary; for he was as eminent for business talent as most ministers are conspicuous for the want of it. It was on ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... there I would distinguish," answered Gotthold, leaning back and joining the tips of his fingers. "There are various kinds of popularity: the bookish, which is perfectly impersonal, as unreal as the nightmare; the politician's, a mixed variety; and yours, which is the most personal of all. Women take to you; footmen adore you; it is as natural to like you as to pat a dog; and were you a saw-miller ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her husband's bookish friend, "you should be thankful you did not find him with his nose in 'The Inside ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... fortune ever befell a bookish man, I should choose this lodge for my own residence, with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and all the seclusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ramble in. There being no such possibility, we drove on, catching glimpses of the palace ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from deterioration, all who wish to retain some savour of sincerity and manhood among us, should set themselves resolutely to talk on all occasions, great or trivial, in simple, direct, refined English. There is no need to be bookish; there is much need for being natural and sincere—and nature and sincerity are assassinated ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... me as we pulled down the volumes. My heart beat wildly as she sat by my side, while I mechanically turned the pages. The brush of her garments against my sleeve quite maddened me. I had not dared to look into her eyes, as I talked meaningless, bookish words. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... everything that has been written, also she is very keen about poetry and has my gift—or is it a vice?—of being able to say great pieces by heart, so between us G. is sometimes just a little bored. You see, G. hasn't been brought up in a bookish atmosphere and that makes such a difference. The other night she was brushing her hair, unusually silent and evidently thinking deeply. At last she looked up at me in my bunk, with the brush in her hand and all her hair swept ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... those who by some means or other escape from the masses bowed down by labor, are inevitably caught and held from substantial service to their fellows." The academic teaching which is accessible to workingmen through University Extension lectures and classes at settlements, is usually bookish and remote, and concerning subjects completely divorced from their actual experiences. The men come to think of learning as something to be added to the end of a hard day's work, and to be gained at the cost of toilsome mental exertion. There are, of course, exceptions, but many men who persist ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... continue at no woman's apron-strings longer; and perhaps had cast about how he should distinguish himself, and make himself a name, which his singular fortune had denied him. A discontent with his former bookish life and quietude,—a bitter feeling of revolt at that slavery in which he had chosen to confine himself for the sake of those whose hardness towards him made his heart bleed,—a restless wish to see men and the world,—led him to think ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so beautiful . . . and story bookish . . . and romantic . . . and sad," said Anne, winking the tears out of her eyes. "It's all perfectly lovely . . . but there's a little sadness mixed up in it ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fostered a linguistic fad, all danger of awkward silence or significant pauses was eliminated. He found that Briscoe could furnish him with some fresh points in comparative philology, to his surprise and gratification, for he never expected aught bookish of his host. But like men of his type, Briscoe was a close observer and learned of the passing phase of life. He took issue again and again with the deductions of ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... retort often expressed itself by accepting a verbal attack as justified, and elaborating it in a way to throw into shadow the assault of the critic. At a small and familiar supper of bookish men, when there was general dissatisfaction over an expensive but ill-made salad, he alone ate with apparent relish. The host, who was of like mind with his guests, said, 'The Bibliotaph doesn't care for the quality of his food, if it has filling power.' To which ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Robbers' to depict human beings before he had seen any.[28] Aside from his acquaintance with Franziska von Hohenheim, and an occasional nearer view of the coy maidens of the ecole des demoiselles, the female sex and the grand passion were for him only bookish mysteries. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... latter, if they were in the library of Dr. Bryant, do not appear to have impressed his son at this time; nor, indeed, does any English poet except Pope, so far as we can judge from his contributions to the Hampshire Gazette, which were continued from time to time. They were bookish and patriotic; one, which was written at Cummington on the 8th of January, 1810, being "The Genius of Columbia;" and another, "An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1812," to the tune of "Ye Gentlemen of England." These productions are undeniably ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... enthusiasm of a Southerner with the independence and self-reliance which life in a new and only partially civilised country breeds. She was an orphan and penniless, but our father fell in love with her, attracted doubtless by her beauty and vivaciousness in such striking contrast with his bookish way of life, and he married her and brought her home to London. He truly loved her and was a good husband in all essential respects, but the uncongenial climate and monotonous life told on her health, and she died three years after my birth, much mourned by her husband, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... queasiness, such as we elder, bookish men are apt to get by ower-much application. Your Royal Highness is gracious to note my little ailments," said he ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... his mother died in the seventh year after the reconciliation between the brothers, and Richard Waverley himself, who, after this event, resided more constantly in London, was too much interested in his own plans of wealth and ambition to notice more respecting Edward than that he was of a very bookish turn, and probably destined to be a bishop. If he could have discovered and analysed his son's waking dreams, he would have formed a ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the daytime Mr. Norman was an innocent bookseller, but after seven he retired to the cellar and became as genuine a pawnbroker as could be found in London. Touching books he was easy enough to deal with, but a Shylock as regards jewels and money lent. With his bookish clients he passed for a dull shopkeeper who knew little about literature; but in the underground establishment he was spoken of, by those who came to pawn, as a usurer of the worst. In an underhand way he did ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... not a faultless or steadfast character. No gross or enormous vices were ascribed to him. His habits, as far as appearances enabled one to judge, were temperate and chaste. He was contemplative and bookish, and was vaguely described as being somewhat ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... so deadly belying of them, or worse handled if worse could be deuised. But will ye see how God raised a revenger for the silly innocent women, for about the same ryming age came an honest civill Courtier somewhat bookish, and wrate these verses against the whole rable of Monkes. O Monachi vestri stomachi sunt amphor a Bacchi Vos estos Deis ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... rate of wages and support my demands with logic. My midnight studies had not been in vain. It all came back in cash to the working man; and yet it was my own pals who had rebuked me for being too bookish. This did not make me sour. I loved the fellows just the same, and when they showed their faith in me, it more than paid ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... resides in the family place in Cornwall, of course; 'Papa is in business,' Mary informs me; He's a good sensible man, whatever his trade is. The mother Is—shall I call it fine?—herself she would tell you refined, and Greatly, I fear me, looks down on my bookish and maladroit manners; Somewhat affecteth the blue; would talk to me often of poets; Quotes, which I hate, Childe Harold; but also appreciates Wordsworth; Sometimes adventures on Schiller; and then to religion diverges; Questions me much about Oxford; and yet, in her ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... through the glass doors at the volumes within. The sight of some of those books awoke disagreeable memories. When he was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, it used to make him bitterly jealous to hear his mother coaxing Claude to read aloud to her. Bayliss had never been bookish. Even before he could read, when his mother told him stories, he at once began to prove to her how they could not possibly be true. Later he found arithmetic and geography more interesting than "Robinson Crusoe." If he sat down with a book, he wanted to feel ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... publication of a house-organ called The Book Buyer, and, given a chance to help in this, Bok felt he was getting back into the periodical field, especially since, under Mr. Doubleday's guidance, the little monthly soon developed into a literary magazine of very respectable size and generally bookish contents. ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... (which when they themselves are out of Italy and amongst strangers, who they think hath learnt a little Italian out of Castilions courtier, or Guazzo his dialogues, they will endevour to forget or neglect and speake bookish, and not as they wil doe amongst themselves because they know their proverbs never came over the Alpes) no lesse than with the conceipted apothegmes, or Impreses, which never fall within the reach of a barren or vulgar head. What decorum I have observed in ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... but the next moment his face resumed its usual pallor. He was tall for his fourteen years, but evidently not particularly strong. He had, in truth, somewhat of a bookish look, and his rounded shoulders already told of much poring over a student's tasks. Fairburn, on the other hand, though less tall, carried in his face and form all the evidence ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... blood, they say, are much the same thing. We are not about to start on a squirrel hunt, or to drive a deer into the Horican, but to outlie for days and nights, and to stretch across a wilderness where the feet of men seldom go, and where no bookish knowledge would carry you through harmless. An Indian never starts on such an expedition without smoking over his council-fire; and, though a man of white blood, I honor their customs in this particular, seeing that they are deliberate ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... The solemn, bookish phraseology came smoothly from his tongue. He knew no other. It drew a murmur of amusement from the room and ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... sheets inlaid in hand-made paper and neatly bound. This was accomplished with the sage advice of my old playmate, Frank M. Morris, the bookman of Chicago. One of these volumes was made for Mr. Allison, (so that he would surely have at least one copy of his own poem), a second was for my bookish friend, James F. Joseph, then of Chicago and now of Indianapolis, and a third was for my own library. The mere fact that Allison was five years autographing my particular copy has no bearing whatever in this discussion, but leads me to say that I felt amply ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... must tell me if you like it weak, dear Lady Harriet, and I shall remember the next time you come. Yes, you find me all alone this afternoon. My eldest daughter, Edna, has gone to a lecture at her Mutual Improvement Society, on a German Philosopher called Nitchy, or some such name. She's so bookish and well-read, takes such an interest in all the latest movements—runs up to town for matinees of intellectual dramas—quite the modern type of girl. But not a blue-stocking—she's joined ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey |
