"Literati" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appellation of grammarian was borrowed from the Greeks; but at first, the Latins called such persons literati. Cornelius Nepos, also, in his book, where he draws a distinction between a literate and a philologist, says that in common phrase, those are properly called literati who are skilled in speaking or writing with care or accuracy, and those more especially deserve the name who translated ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the Records and the Chronicles alike. The actual words of these poems had to be preserved as well as the metre, and therefore it was necessary to indite them phonetically. For the rest, the Nihon Shoki, which resulted from the labours of these annalists and literati, was so Chinese that its authors did not hesitate to draw largely upon the cosmogonic myths of the Middle Kingdom, and to put into the mouths of Japanese monarchs, or into their decrees, quotations from Chinese literature. "As a repertory of ancient Japanese myth and legend ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... classical studies to appreciate the strength or the delicacy of a line judged for itself, quite independently of the forms represented. We must also bear in mind that all of the Chinese painters were scholars, belonging to the class of the literati.[14] Writers, poets, statesmen, soldiers, Buddhist or Taoist priests, and philosophers have all furnished the greatest names in art. Under such conditions the technical relationship between the line of the painter and that of the calligraphist was closer, since painter and calligraphist ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... of a group of Connecticut literati, who made such noise in their time as the "Hartford Wits." The other members of the group were Lemuel Hopkins, David Humphreys, Joel Barlow, Elihu Smith, Theodore Dwight, and Richard Alsop. Trumbull, Humphreys, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... by the little band I have mentioned of Northern literati, men not less tenacious, generally speaking, of their own fame and their own opinions, than the national regiments are supposed to be jealous of the high character which they have won upon service. Methinks I yet see and hear what I shall never see or hear again. In his eighty-fifth year, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the giant rat tien-shu, which is only found in the cold regions along the coast of the Polar Sea, avoids the light, and lives in dark holes in the interior of the earth. Its flesh is said to be cooling and wholesome. Some Chinese literati considered that the discovery of these immense earth rats might even explain the origin ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... THEOLOGY AND RELIGION.—Upon these subjects it is customary to find a mingling of contradictions. Leading New England literati, who inherit all the narrowness and self-sufficiency of British conservatism, are frequently impelled to utter expressions which would lead the reader to think them persons of liberal and progressive minds. Such ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... licentitate, gownsman; philosopher, master of math; scientist, clerk; sophist, sophister[obs3]; linguist; glossolinguist, philologist; philologer[obs3]; lexicographer, glossographer; grammarian; litterateur[Fr], literati, dilettanti, illuminati, cogniscenti[It]; fellow, Hebraist, lexicologist, mullah, munshi[obs3], Sanskritish; sinologist, sinologue[obs3]; Mezzofanti[obs3], admirable Crichton, Mecaenas. bookworm, helluo librorum[Lat]; bibliophile, bibliomaniac[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... instincts. Throughout the whole modern transition, beginning with ancient Greece (for M. Comte tells us that we have always been in a state of revolutionary transition since then), the intellect has been in a state of systematic insurrection against "le coeur." The metaphysicians and literati (lettres), after helping to pull down the old religion and social order, are rootedly hostile to the construction of the new, and desiring only to prolong the existing scepticism and intellectual anarchy, which secure ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... that treated him with the greatest scorn. These were the Chinese scholars. They were the literati, and were like princes in the land. They despised every one who was not a graduate of their schools, and most of all they despised this barbarian who dared to set himself up as a teacher. Mackay had now learned Chinese well ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... married Christina Ross, daughter of a legal practitioner in that city. In 1729 he had published his comic pastoral, and was then in a bookseller's shop in the Luckenbooths. Here he used to amuse Gay, famous for his Newgate pastoral, with pointing out the chief characters and literati of the city as they met daily in the forenoon at the Cross, according to custom. Here Gay first read the Gentle Shepherd, and studied the Scottish dialect, so that, on his return to England, he was able to ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... then proceeds with a variety of argument to prove that literary men are not Maecenased by either the government or aristocracy of Great Britain. He points out the advantages which the French literati have from their Institute, the ennoblements, the decorations, and pensions which they receive; and certainly makes out ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... announcing himself by the name of Von Knebel, gave me to understand in a short explanation, that being in the Prussian service, he had connected himself, during a long residence at Berlin and Potsdam, with the literati of those places; but that at present he held the appointment from the court of Weimar of travelling tutor to the Prince Constantine. This I heard with pleasure; for many of our friends had brought us the most interesting accounts from ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... all the great writers of his time, he assumed the Latin name—this Gerrit Gerritz belonged by his education, by his literary attainments, and by his convictions to the circle of the Italian humanists and literati. An elegant, learned, and indefatigable writer on literature and science, he filled all Europe with his fame between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; he was overwhelmed with favor by the popes, sought after and feted by princes. Of his innumerable works, all ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... the hands of the literati, who passed it one to another, till Adud Ad-Dawlat was at length informed of its existence. He caused it to be recited in his presence, and, struck with admiration at its beauty, he exclaimed: "O that I were the person crucified, not he! ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... used to resort to study their language and read the vedas and shasters, a new journal is called the Sairin-i Hind (The Flying Sheets of India), making the sixth in that city. It is edited by two Hindoo literati, Bhairav Pracad and Harban Lal, who had before attempted a purely scientific publication under the title of Mirat Ulalum (Mirror of the Sciences), which has been stopped. The new paper, of which only three numbers have come to our notice, is published twice a month, each number having ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Prater near Vienna—are particularly to be noticed.[14] This Edition has also another attraction, rather popular in the present day, which may add to its recommendation even with those possessed of its precursor. It contains fac-similes of the AUTOGRAPHS of several distinguished Literati and Artists upon the Continent;[15] who, looking at the text of the work through a less jaundiced medium than the Parisian translator, have continued a correspondence with the Author, upon the most friendly terms, since its publication. The accuracy of these ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... school of credulity is a very wide one. Even in these enlightened times in which we live, we hear of tables turning, spelling out words, and "prophesying" in their own way. There are even philosophers, men of science, and literati who believe in spiritualists that rise on sofas and float about in the air, who project themselves suddenly out of one window and enter by another, and do many other remarkable things. And though our spiritual table-rapping ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... western world—this oasis is a necessary resting-place. During our stop of two days, to make necessary repairs and recuperate our strength for the hardships of the desert, the usual calls were exchanged with the leading officials. In the matter of social politeness the Chinese, especially the "literati," have reason to look down upon the barbarians of the West. Politeness has been likened generally to an air-cushion. There is nothing in it, but it eases the jolts wonderfully. As a mere ritual of technicalities it has ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... when the Essay first came out, and it was not known who had written it, Johnson wondered how Sir Joshua could like it[267]. At this time Sir Joshua himself had received no information concerning the authour, except being assured by one of our most eminent literati, that it was clear its authour did not know the Greek tragedies in the original. One day at Sir Joshua's table, when it was related that Mrs. Montagu, in an excess of compliment to the authour of a modern tragedy, had exclaimed, 'I tremble for Shakspeare;' Johnson said, 'When Shakspeare has ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... gives me great pleasure, and the tracing of language through more than twenty different dialects has opened a new and before unexplored field. I have within two years past made discoveries which, if ever published, must interest the literati of all Europe, and render it necessary to revise all the lexicons—Hebrew, Greek, and Latin—now used as classical books. But what can I do? My own resources are almost exhausted, and in a few days I shall sell my house to ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... countries of Europe. Madame Suard has the remains of much beauty, a belle esprit, and aims at singularity and independence of sentiment. Would you believe it, Mr. Day paid his court to her thirty years ago? She is very civil to us, and we go to their house once a week: literati frequent it, and to each of them she has ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... understanding and just appreciation of an older writer. The new concept, which Theobald owed largely to Richard Bentley as primate of the classical scholars, was of course the narrower one—implicit in it was the idea of specialization—and Theobald's opponents among the literati were quick to assail him as a mere "Word-catcher" (cf. R.F. Jones, ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... health the admiration of a large number of literary friends, who are to build him a beautiful little cottage. His special admirers regard him as the greatest of American poets, and he has equally warm admirers among the foreign literati. A Walt Whitman club is to be established in his honor at Philadelphia. Yet it is not long since Mr. Whitman was made the target of the "prurient prudes," who carry on the Comstockian movement of the Vice Society, and was ordered to expunge some of his writings. Mr. Whitman defied ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... reproduced in the present volume. A group of precocious Eton lads, Canning, J. Hookham Frere, John Smith, and Robert (Bobus) Smith, during the years 1786-1787 produced forty octavo numbers of a weekly paper called The Microcosm. They succeeded in exciting some interest among the literati,[7] were coming out in a "Second Edition" as early as the Christmas vacation of 1786,[8] and in the end sold their copyright for fifty pounds to their publisher, Charles Knight of Windsor.[9] Canning wrote Nos. XI and XII (February 12, 1787), a critique of ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... pomposity of the 'belles-lettres' carry us any farther than the very fine 'letters' or litteral; while even Solomon So-so may take courage when he reflects (provided Solomon be ever guilty of reflecting) that the 'literati' have 'literally' nothing more profound about them than the knowledge of their 'letters.' The Latins were prolific in words of this kind; thus they had the literatus and the literator—making ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
