"Encyclopaedic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... creator of philosophy; and it is an immense advance he makes, from the crude or turbid beginnings of scientific enquiry with the Ionians or the Eleatics, to that wide range of perfectly finished philosophical literature. His encyclopaedic view of the whole domain of knowledge is more than a mere step in a progress. Nothing that went before it, for compass and power and charm, had been really comparable to it. Plato's achievement may well seem an absolutely fresh thing in the morning of the mind's ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... only admired my pictures,—they did not buy them; they only wondered at my polyglot accomplishment, and were content with ringing silly-kind changes on an Encyclopaedic compliment about the Admirable Crichton, and other well-educated personages, to be found alphabetically embalmed in Conversations-Lexicons,—they did not inquire into my system of teaching, or have quarterly knowledge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... informant was evidently one of those transies who spent long hours in the libraries. They were ready at the slightest chance to offer their encyclopaedic but often useless knowledge. Jack himself had abandoned his childhood bookwormishness. For the last three years his days and evenings had worn themselves out on the streets, passed in a parade of faces, flickered by in plate-glass ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... that this talented and beautiful princess had a jay,[FN74] whose name was Madan-manjari or Love-garland. She also possessed encyclopaedic knowledge after her degree, and, like the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... pause came the salutation. I was assisted from my litter, and stood awkwardly while a number of curious and no doubt deeply symbolical gestures were vicariously performed for me by two slender officials. The encyclopaedic galaxy of the learned that had accompanied me to the entrance of the last hall appeared two steps above me and left and right of me, in readiness for the Grand Lunar's need, and Phi-oo's pale brain placed itself about half-way up to the throne in such a position as to communicate ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... together into one work short chapters by many hands have not been altogether happy; the results have usually been encyclopaedic, uneven, and abounding in gaps. Hence in this series the whole work is divided into twenty-six volumes, in each of which the writer is free to develop a period for himself. It is the editor's function to see that the links of the chain ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... many people not to know when his own end was nigh; and his notary, finding him on his death-bed, draped as it were, in the mantle of encyclopaedic philosophy, pressed him to make a provision in favor of the young ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... of observation and verification of real facts has landed us in this, and much else of the same kind, is extremely hard to guess. Seriously to examine an encyclopaedic system, that touches life, society, and knowledge at every point, is evidently beyond the compass of such an article as this. There is in every chapter a whole group of speculative suggestions, each of which would need a long chapter ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... stole away. Trundled and bundled out, with ostentatious indifference to great orator, the fund of information he had garnered, the counsel with which he was charged. CHAPLIN had brought statesmanship and literature of Europe into review, picking out from encyclopaedic stores testimony to destruction of Mr. G.'s pet scheme. The very names quoted were a liberal education—Mr. LECKY, Count BEUST, CAVOUR, Dr. GEFFCKEN, M. DE MOLINARIS. And then interposes the SAGE OF QUEEN ANNE'S GATE with bland ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... rash and quixotic course in respect to his physico-chemical vagaries is that he had great mental activity. Lamarck was a synthetic philosopher. He had been brought up in the encyclopaedic period of learning. He had from his early manhood been deeply interested in physical subjects. In middle age he probably lived a very retired life, did not mingle with his compeers or discuss his views with them. So that when he came to publish ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... a love deserved any punishment at all. But that was theology, and he had no taste for theological dissertations. So he dipped into the pages where the quincunx is "naturally" considered, and here he admired the encyclopaedic learning of the author, which appeared to have been as wide as that attributed to Solomon; then glanced at the "mystic" part, which he reserved for later study. But one paragraph riveted his attention, as he turned over the leaves. Here ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... momentous results of our own practice, so familiar to us, seem still unfamiliar across the water. This gives our nation a great advantage, and renders it impossible to produce, at present, in Europe, a work so encyclopaedic as this. It is not merely the best book, but the only book, on the theme it treats: there is no other account of the structure and results of modern standard ordnance. That it is the work of a civil engineer, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... much effort about it, too much definite intention. His style lacks the charm of chance. Mr. Symonds is right also in the stress he lays on the extraordinary combination in Jonson's work of the most concentrated realism with encyclopaedic erudition. In Jonson's comedies London slang and learned scholarship go hand in hand. Literature was as living a thing to him as life itself. He used his classical lore not merely to give form to his verse, but to give flesh and blood to the persons of his plays. He could ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of his famous contemporary, Montesquieu, that humanity had lost its title-deeds, and he had recovered them. The fourscore volumes which he wrote are the monument, as they were in some sort the instrument, of a new renaissance. They are the fruit and representation of a spirit of encyclopaedic curiosity and productiveness. Hardly a page of all these countless leaves is common form. Hardly a sentence is there which did not come forth alive from Voltaire's own mind or which was said because someone else had said it before. His works as much as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... of the two great epic poems of ancient India, a work of slow growth, extending through ages, and of an essentially encyclopaedic character; one of the main sources of our knowledge of the ancient Indian religions and their mythologies; it is said to consist ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... them had hailed the new philosophy. No one remembers them to-day, but they were in their time intellectual oracles. The scholar Parr was called by flatterers the Whig Johnson, and Mackintosh enjoyed in Whig society a reputation as a brilliant talker, and an encyclopaedic mind which reminds us of Macaulay's later fame. They had both to make their peace with the world and to bury their compromised past; the easiest way was to fall ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... preferred to leave such matters to the imagination of the reader; it was Balzac's great object to leave nothing to the imagination of the reader. By ceaseless effort, by infinite care, by elaborate attention to the minutest details, he would describe all. He brought an encyclopaedic knowledge to bear upon his task; he can give an exact account of the machinery of a provincial printing-press; he can write a dissertation on the methods of military organization; he can reveal the secret springs in the mechanism of Paris journalism; he is absolutely ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... to professions and to learning, and that Comenius had his justification for introducing a mass of vocables now wholly useless to the student of Latin. But even for his own time, Comenius, under the influence of his encyclopaedic passion, overdid his task. His real merits in language-teaching lie in the introduction of the principle of graduated reading-books, in the simplification of Latin grammar, in his founding instruction in foreign tongues on the vernacular, and in his insisting on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... whole of each hot season out of town, sometimes in the hills, sometimes by the sea, sometimes in Europe. Their acquaintance with either form of sojourn, if not exhaustive, is so comprehensive that it might be cited as encyclopaedic. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Meanwhile I have to rely on my own efforts. It's wonderful, by the way, how much a person can pick up of odds and ends of information when forced, by a hobby of this kind, to delve into recondite departments of knowledge which he would otherwise not have dreamt of exploring. One grows quite encyclopaedic! Minerals, medicine, strategy, heraldry, navigation, palaeography, statistics, politics, botany—what did I know or care about all these things before I stumbled on old Perrelli? Have you ever tried to annotate a classic, Mr. Heard? I assure you it opens up new vistas, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... always endeavoured to establish some principle which would capture the attention of the student and might be of interest to the statesman. He held that "history faded into mere literature when it lost sight of its relation to practical politics." Acton, who brought his encyclopaedic learning to bear on the defence of liberty in all its forms, "believed that historical study was not merely the basis of all real insight into the present, but a school of virtue and a guide ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... denial of miracles, the supernatural efficacy of prayer, and the immortality of the soul earned for him the undying enmity of the clergy. Condorcet, another deist, was the successor of Voltaire in the Encyclopaedic warfare. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and after publishing thirty-nine numbers of the paper sold it for a small sum to Franklin and Meredith, and himself moved to the Barbadoes. Number 40, October 2, 1729, under the simple title of "The Pennsylvania Gazette," came from Franklin's press. The encyclopaedic extracts were cut short, and in their stead appeared what news could be gathered, with occasional clever essays such as only Franklin could write. It was for the times a good paper, and the printing ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... book, and depends also whatever addition to knowledge or pleasure it may afford; Were I desirous of giving a complete, clear notion of the very complex civilization of the Renaissance, a kind of encyclopaedic atlas of that period, where (by a double power which history alone possesses) you could see at once the whole extent and shape of this historical territory, and at the same time, with all its bosses of mountain and furrows of valley, the exact composition of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... series Punch for a long while dropped the word "cartoon," but the public remembered it, and has clung to it ever since. It is a remarkable thing that while the "Encyclopaedic Dictionary" entirely ignores the word in its modern application to satirical prints, Dr. Murray's monumental lexicon has as its earliest use of the word a reference made by Miss Braddon to Leech's cartoons in the year 1863—or twenty years after it ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... for his scholars, Baeda threw together all that the world had then accumulated in astronomy and meteorology, in physics and music, in philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, medicine. But the encyclopaedic character of his researches left him in heart a simple Englishman. He loved his own English tongue, he was skilled in English song, his last work was a translation into English of the Gospel of St. John, and almost the last words that broke from ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... the Abbess Herrard, of the convent of Hohenburg, in Alsace, was a famous illustration of artistic workmanship. This was an attempt to embody, in encyclopaedic form, the knowledge of her time. The manuscript was embellished with hundreds of beautiful pictures, and was long preserved as a wonderful exhibition of mediaeval skill. It was lost to civilization, along with many other treasures, when the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... regularly garnering a single detail of like brilliance, has made it the well-spring for a day's reflection. As the result he now has by heart upwards of twenty-five thousand useful facts, all serviceable for original proverbs, and an encyclopaedic mind which would enable him to take a high place in a popular competition unassisted by a single work of reference." Much impressed by the adventure the charitably-inclined emperor presented Wei Chung with an onyx crown (which the philosopher at once threw into an adjacent ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... the same section (April) he has a verse about stone-picking which will show his encyclopaedic grip ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... not of the outworn, commonplace sort, but the profound, accurate, ancient Greek and Latin learning, that I now scarcely miss Italy, but for the sight of it. When I listen to my friend Colet, I seem to hear Plato himself. Who would not marvel at the perfection of encyclopaedic learning in Grocyn?[26] What could be keener or nobler or nicer than Linacre's[27] judgement? What has Nature ever fashioned gentler or sweeter or happier than the character of Thomas More? But why should I catalogue the rest? It is marvellous how thick upon the ground the harvest of ancient literature ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... idealism we shall meet with many instances; there was not a trade, and scarce an accomplishment, but he thought it should form part of the outfit of an engineer; and not content with keeping an encyclopaedic diary himself, he would fain have set all his sons to work continuing and extending it. They were more happily inspired. My father's engineering pocket-book was not a bulky volume; with its store of pregnant notes and vital formulas, it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... threatened to set aside. We may correct and improve from the stores which have been opened since Gibbon's time; we may write again large parts of his story from other and often truer and more wholesome points of view, but the work of Gibbon as a whole, as the encyclopaedic history of 1300 years, as the grandest of historical designs, carried out alike with wonderful power and with wonderful accuracy, must ever keep its place. Whatever else is read, Gibbon must ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... of the Wolffian philosophy to the theology of one century ago, and of its general Rationalistic bearing, Mr. Farrar says, "The system soon became universally dominant. Its orderly method possessed the fascination which belongs to any encyclopaedic view of human knowledge. It coincided, too, with the tone of the age. Really opposed, as Cartesianism has been in France, to the scholasticism which still reigned, its dogmatic form nevertheless bore such external similarity to it that it fell ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... here." Assuredly I would not advocate quite so rigid an exclusion as that, nor, if limited to only two studies, would it be those. But I have often thought Mr. Ross's advertisement suggestive. Better even that extreme than the encyclopaedic system which figures so largely on some circulars. Mr. Ross indeed taught nothing but Latin and Greek. But he taught these languages better probably than they have ever been taught on this continent; and any ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... false idea to suppose that everybody is competent to learn or to teach everything. Would our great artists have succeeded equally well in Greek or calculus? A smattering of everything is worth little. It is a fallacy to suppose that an encyclopaedic knowledge is desirable. The mind is made strong, not through much learning, but by ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... on an encyclopaedic scale. His point of view was unique. Natural history in its widest sense, he tells us, embraces every object in the visible universe. The obvious divisions of the subject, therefore, are, first, the earth, the air, and the water; then the animals—quadrupeds, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... encyclopaedic and almost inexhaustible treasury of reference for all Furniture Designers, Painters, Interior Decorators, Cabinet-makers, &c., since no artist of importance is unrepresented, and a fair selection is in every case ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... level of absolute equality. The library has the Koran, and the Book of Mormon, as well as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and one is to be as freely supplied as the other. A library is an institution of universal range—of encyclopaedic knowledge, which gathers in and dispenses to all comers, the various and conflicting opinions of all writers upon religion, science, politics, philosophy, and sociology. The librarian may chance to be an ardent Republican or a zealous Democrat; but in either case, he should show as much ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... up a perfect young prig. I'll have to change governesses. Heaven knows what I'll draw next time! The last one had charm, but no learning, and mighty little intelligence. This one has no manner at all, and is of encyclopaedic information. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... encyclopaedic work on agriculture, medicine, war, rhetoric, and philosophy, but only the section on ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... which embraces nearly every branch of science, leaves far behind it all that had ever before been published on South America. History, archaeology, zoology, and botany all hold honoured positions in it; but the most important part of this encyclopaedic work is that relating to American man. In it the author embodies all the documents he himself collected, and analyzes and criticizes those which came to him at second hand, on physiological types, and on the manners, languages, and religions of South America. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... grocer's, but returned empty-handed owing to the absence of Theodore, whose dual profession of choirman, with a part in the maintenance of the fabric, and of grocer's assistant gave him not only relations with all sections of society, but an encyclopaedic ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... "to promise that you will be so kind as to give Mrs. Flushing the benefit of your experience. I'm sure no one here knows the country as well as you do. No one takes such wonderful long walks. No one, I'm sure, has your encyclopaedic knowledge upon every subject. Mr. Wilfrid Flushing is a collector. He has discovered really beautiful things already. I had no notion that the peasants were so artistic—though of ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Apuleius was sent to school at Carthage (Florida 18), whence on attaining to manhood he proceeded to complete his education at Athens (Florida loc. cit.). There he studied philosophy, rhetoric, geometry, music, and poetry (Florida 20), and laid the foundations of that encyclopaedic, if superficial knowledge, which in after years he so delighted to parade. On leaving Athens he set forth on lengthy travels, in the course of which he spent a large portion of his patrimony (Apol. 23). He speaks of ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... the most encyclopaedic all-round scholar now living. His new volume on the Origin of the Aryans is a first-rate example of the excellent account to which he can turn his exceptionally wide and varied information.... ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... the great crusade against the Church. In truth, as we have seen, it was a strictly private performance, and could be no signal for a public movement. La Religieuse was undoubtedly an expression of the strong feeling of the Encyclopaedic school about celibacy, renunciation of the world, and the burial of men and women alive ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... Cambridge Press, is to say little. It is hardly too much to say that it is one of the most important contributions to the social and intellectual history of England which has ever been made by a Cambridge man. The title of the work conveys but a very inadequate notion of its wide scope, of the encyclopaedic learning and originality of treatment which it displays, and, least of all, of the abundance of human interest which characterizes it so markedly. It is because of this wealth of human interest that the book must needs exercise a powerful fascination upon those who have a craving ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp |
