Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Man of the world   /mæn əv ðə wərld/   Listen
Man of the world

noun
1.
A worldly-wise person.  Synonym: sophisticate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Man of the world" Quotes from Famous Books



... does the man of the world reveal himself with more strangely comical effect under the gown of the divine than in the sermon on "The Prodigal Son." The repentant spendthrift has returned to his father's house, and is about to confess his ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... A man of the world and a gentleman, Mr. Effingham had looked forward to this passage with a good deal of concern, on account of his daughter, while he shrank with the sensitiveness of his habits from the necessity of exposing one of her delicacy ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... brilliant passages, indicative of the delights of his boyhood and youth. Like him, we linger over a period still fresh, still hopeful, still generous in impulse— still strong in faith in the world's worth—before we hasten on to portray the man of the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont to check all feeling till it was well-nigh quenched; little minded; bitter, if not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce one friend—the Horace Walpole of Berkeley ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... at the moment that Maule had been described by her own relatives as a person of neither birth nor breeding—a fortune-hunter—not by any means a modern Bayard. He at least was a man of the world, she thought, and would appreciate the situation. He had lost that touch of unaccustomedness—she hardly knew how to describe it—which had often irritated her in their former relation. In their talk that day he seemed much more at home than she was in the world ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... so,' Berkeley replied quietly, 'if you'd seen more of him, Lancaster.' But being a man of the world, and having come mainly on Ernest's account, he didn't care to press the abstract question of Herr Max's political ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... controvertists, on their side, as able and as learned, and perhaps as well-intentioned, as those are who fight the battle on the other part. To them I would leave those controversies. I would turn my mind to what is more within its competence, and has been more my study, (though, for a man of the world, I have thought of those things,)—I mean, the moral, civil, and political good of the countries we belong to, and in which God has appointed your station and mine. Let every man be as pious as he pleases, and in the way that he pleases; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... less grave. Along with the court noblesse and great ecclesiastical property, we see the prelate of the old regime disappearing by degrees, the younger son of a noble family, promoted by favor and very young, endowed with a large income and much more a man of the world than of the Church. In 1789, out of 134 bishops or archbishops, only 5 were of plebeian origin; in 1889, out of 90 bishops or archbishops there are only 4 of them nobles;[5221] previous to the Revolution, the titular of an Episcopal ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... alteration of the tone in Frederick's correspondence during the few months which followed his accession: the voice of the raw and inexperienced youth is heard no more, and its place is taken—at once and for ever—by the self-contained caustic utterance of an embittered man of the world. In this transformation it was only natural that the wondrous figure of Voltaire should lose some of its glitter—especially since Frederick now began to have the opportunity of inspecting that figure in the flesh with his own sharp ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... woods. He says, "The deeper you penetrate into the woods, the more intelligent, and, in one sense, less countrified, do you find the inhabitants; for always the pioneer has been a traveller, and to some extent a man of the world; and, as the distances with which he is familiar are greater, so is his ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... presented in the Paston Letters, though of a different order. This book was, as we know, written for the instruction of his daughters by a Knight who seems to have been a fairly average man of his time in his beliefs, and in character, as he has been described, probably above it, "a man of the world, a Christian, a parent, and a gentleman." His book is full of interesting light on the customs and manners of his day, though it is mainly a picture of what the writer thought ought to be rather than what always was. Herein the Knight is sagacious and moderate, much of his advice is admirably sound ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... talents upon subjects eminently worthy of their attention; to the illiterate, because it offers them important instruction; to the young, because it presents them with salutary precepts and good examples, and accustoms them to reflect on the proper mode of living; to the man of the world, whom it furnishes with noble and useful recreation; to the traveller, whom it enables to find friends and brothers in countries where else he would be isolated and solitary; to the worthy man in misfortune, to whom it gives assistance; to the afflicted, on whom it lavishes consolation; ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... (of a man that hath no need of being so to me) that ever I knew in my life. He dined with me, and then after dinner to my closet, where abundance of mighty pretty discourse, wherein, in a word, I find him the man of the world that hath of his own ingenuity obtained the most in most things, being withall no scholler. He gone, I took boat and down to Woolwich and Deptford, and made it late home, and so to supper and to bed. Thus I end this month in great content as to my estate and gettings: in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... had not been able to induce any one to bring them an easy chair from the town,) looked as neat and elegant as if he had been dressed by the valet of a duke. He was of northern blood, with clear full blue eyes, calm features, a tempering of the soldier, scholar, and man of the world, in his aspect; whether that various intercourses had given himself that thorough-bred look never seen in Americans, or that it was inherited from a race who had known all these disciplines. He formed a great but pleasing contrast to his wife, whose glowing complexion and dark mellow eye bespoke ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... the people, as they were very different from the friends with whom he had grown up. Yet his loneliness only added to his zeal for study. He had left school when still very young, and he now found himself ignorant of much that he wished to know. As a man of the world he had found plenty of gaps in his general knowledge. Writing to his friend Captain Rickson, he says: 'When a man leaves his studies at fifteen, he will never be justly called a man of letters. I am endeavouring to repair the damages of my education, ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood

... strongly upon him. It was no wonder. More brilliant, more versatile talent I never saw. He turned "from grave to gay, from lively to severe"—appearing in all phases like the gentleman, the scholar, and the man of the world. And neither John nor I had ever met any one of these characters, all so ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... a man of the world than Henry Stevens, he read the other's face and voice. He was perturbed. Had it occurred two years before, he might have settled the matter easily by a duel, for instance. And even now his passion got the better for a while of all his good feelings and Christian ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... drinks in new inspirations with which to feed that girlish friendship, while he, gazing down into her soft, brown, dreamy eyes, feels more and more how necessary to his happiness is her daily presence there. And if sometimes the man of the world asks himself "where all this will end?" his conscience is quieted by the answer that Maggie Lee merely feels toward him as she would toward any person who had done her a like favor. So all through the ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes

... miserable anxiety might have been spared to all who were interested—had the guardians and executors of my father's will thought fit to "let well alone"! But, "per star meglio" [2] they chose to remove my brother from this gentle recluse to an active, bustling man of the world, the very anti-pole in character. What might be the pretensions of this gentleman to scholarship, I never had any means of judging; and, considering that he must now, (if living at all,) at a distance of thirty-six years, be gray headed, I shall respect his age so far as to suppress ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... me. But he wants me now. This place happened to fall in just at the very moment when he had need of me; and he hopes to gain over my family through me. He told me as much as we drove down. 'You are a man of the world, Titmarsh,' said he; 'you know that I don't give you this place because you are an honest fellow, and write a good hand. If I had a lesser bribe to offer you at the moment, I should only have given you that; but I had no choice, and gave you what ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... so many of you are interested, worthily wearing the laurels won in many fields, and enjoying the association, esteem, and trust of a great master whose fame the world holds precious, when the most of us were fledglings. We all know him as a wit, a man of letters, and a man of the world. Some of us have known him also in that pleasanter character of all clubmen described in the old phrase, 'a jolly good fellow.' On the other side of the Atlantic the grasp he gives an American hand is ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... paid by France, actually styled the Due de Broglie "his grace," like a Grub Street cockney,—a mode of address that would astonish that respectable statesman, quite as much as it must have amused every man of the world who saw it. I have been much puzzled to account for this peculiarity—unquestionably one that exists in the country—but have supposed it must be owing to the diffusion of information which carries intelligence sufficiently far to acquaint the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... truth probably is, that he was not more envious, but merely less prudent, than his neighbours. His heart was on his lips. All those small jealousies, which are but too common among men of letters, but which a man of letters who is also a man of the world does his best to conceal, Goldsmith avowed with the simplicity of a child. When he was envious, instead of affecting indifference, instead of damning with faint praise, instead of doing injuries slily and in the dark, he told ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... him to have the impression— the judgement, he might also say—of another person. "I mean of the average intelligent man, but you see I take what I can get." There would be the technical, the strictly legal view; then there would be the way the question would strike a man of the world. He had lighted another cigarette while he talked, and I saw he was glad to have it to handle when he brought out at last, with a laugh slightly artificial: "In fact it's a subject on which Miss Anvoy and I are pulling ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... 1791, and acquaintance with Reinhold, familiarized him with the Kantian philosophy, but he only appreciated it by halves. The bare and bald dealing with fundamental principles was at this time equally repulsive to Goethe and Schiller, the man of the world and the man of life. But Schiller did not find anywhere at that time justice done to the dignity of art, or honor to the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... in answer that a polished man of the world could write—not in the least like the bear I had imagined him to be, but courteous and even merry. In it he said he should feel honoured if I would visit his poor abode, and he seemed to have read my books and knew all about me, so with very mixed feelings Jimmie and I called ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... comfortable, well-to-do gentleman, with rather a handsome face, and a manner by no means disheartening. Mr Medlock in turn indulged in a careful survey of the boy as he sat shyly before him trying to look self-possessed, but not man of the world enough to conceal his ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... you ain't. [And do I blame you? Not me.] But, speaking as one man of the world to another, you naturally see a ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... stories with imperturbable sang froid, in a dry manner, and with perfect naturalness and simplicity. He spoke as a man of the world, without circumlocution; his adventures were numerous and perhaps singular, but only such as might have been expected to happen to a man of so much experience. A smile never traversed his face as he related the least credible of his tales, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... young man fell into dissipated habits and he died in early manhood. There remained only John. When he came of age in 1829 he too travelled in Europe; in April he was at Rome and there saw the newly-elected Pope, Pius VIII. He returned to Canada quite a man of the world and for a time lived in Quebec, engaged in business. But in 1834 when his father Peter McNicol died[25] John's prospects changed. The seigniory belonged to his mother, during her lifetime, but he was the heir. It seemed desirable that the name of the first seigneur should be continued and, in ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... his home, drawing him out by questions, and throwing in bits of anecdote, jest, and apt remark, that made his conversation a pleasure and an education. Cuthbert forgot his anxieties and vague suspicions in his enjoyment of the conversation of an accomplished man of the world; and there was a subtle flattery in the sense that this man, scholar and gentleman as he was, had condescended to a liking for and an interest in his insignificant self, and was of his own accord ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... if, in a case of shipwreck, he saw a weaker man than himself get possession of a plank? Would he not thrust him off, get hold of the timber himself, and escape by his exertions, especially as no human witness could be present in the mid-sea? If he acted like a wise man of the world, he would certainly do so, for to act in any other way would cost him his life. If, on the other hand, he prefers death to inflicting unjustifiable injury on his neighbor, he will be an eminently honorable and ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... anything! I'm a man of the world! nobody can accuse me of being strait-laced, and therefore I suppose you think you can come here and set at defiance all ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones

... reenter the egg-shells from which they have escaped." He next showed me two religious pictures; the first representing the meeting of Jesus and Pilate, when the latter asked, "What is truth?" Pilate was depicted as a rotund, jocose, cynical man of the world; Jesus, as a street preacher in sordid garments, with unkempt hair flowing over his haggard face,—a peasant fanatic brought in by the police. Tolstoi showed an especial interest in this picture; it seemed to reveal to him the real secret of that famous question and its answer; the question coming ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... looking up, saw Mistress Jean standing in the doorway. A beautiful picture it was, like some old portrait of Lely's, the maid standing there framed in the old oak. And I, though I had been to the balls at the Governor's house the winter before, and was therefore a man of the world, sat staring for a moment. But she advanced, and I was on my feet with a ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... my life it was shelved and buried under the pressure of my pursuits. And, as I say, to-day in particular, an incident in the law- report of a somewhat similar kind has brought it back again vividly. However, what it was I can tell you in a few words, though no doubt you, as a man of the world, will smile at the thinness of my skin when you hear it . . . I came up to town at one-and-twenty, from Toneborough, in Outer Wessex, where I was born, and where, before I left, I had won the heart of a young woman of my own age. I promised ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... weight of his personal influence; all this in the very face of his own habits and susceptibilities. He has resolved that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, nor the tenderness and sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world were a place for angels. I shall love him dearly and gratefully to my last ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... probable that De Beauharnais was at all aware of the real state of Josephine's feelings. He was proud of her, and loved her as truly as a fashionable man of the world could love. It is also to be remembered that at that time in France it was not customary for young ladies to have much influence in the choice of their husbands. It was supposed that their parents could ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... describes,—namely, THE IDEA OF BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER'S OWN MIND; and that in every art, whether its plastic expression be found in words or marble, colours or sounds, the servile imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros,—so in conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold enthusiasm of loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of whatever is generous and trustful to all that is trite and coarse. A great German poet has well defined the distinction between discretion and the larger wisdom. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... He did not introduce into his sermon the Scripture phraseology, such as Harry had been accustomed to hear it from those somewhat Calvinistic preachers whom his mother loved to frequent, but rather spoke as one man of the world to other sinful people, who might be likely to profit by good advice. The unhappy man just gone, had begun as a farmer of good prospects; he had taken to drinking, card-playing, horse-racing, cock-fighting, the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... day the king of pianists, a composer whose compositions still glow and burn with the fire he breathed into them; Liszt the diplomat, courtier, man of the world—always a conqueror! How difficult to tell, in a few pages, the story of a ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... that Browning should supersede the Bible, in which it is asserted that a set of his volumes will teach religion better than all the theologies in the world. Well, I did not know that holy monster.... What I saw was an unostentatious, keen, active man of the world, one who never failed to give good practical advice in matters of business and conduct, one who loved his friends and certainly hated his enemies; a man alive in every eager passionate nerve of him; a man who loved to discuss people and affairs, and a bit of a gossip; a bit of a partisan, too, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... morning, at the Consulate, from Dr. Bowrug, who is British minister, or something of the kind, in China, and now absent on a twelvemonth's leave. The Doctor is a brisk person, with the address of a man of the world,—free, quick to smile, and of agreeable manners. He has a good face, rather American than English in aspect, and does not look much above fifty, though he says he is between sixty and seventy. I should take him rather for an active lawyer or ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... man of the world believes all he sees in the newspapers, and no journalist believes a quarter of it. We should therefore be quite ready in the ordinary way to take a great deal off the tales of German atrocities; to doubt this story or deny that. But there is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny—the seal and ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then Winifred. There was hardly room for four, and the man of the world could feel Irene's arm crushed against his own; he knew that she could not withdraw it without seeming rude, and this amused him; he devised every now and again a movement that would bring her closer still. He thought: 'That Buccaneer ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... does seem absurd. Sometimes when I pass him jogging along to town in his rickety old cart, and look at his pale, cruel face, and know that he is a broken-down gambler and man of the world, and yet considers himself infinitely superior to me—a young man in the prime of life, with a good constitution and happy prospects, it makes me turn away to ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... effect of predisposing him to make the best of the situation. Being to a degree a man of the world and of a somewhat large experience, he began to argue within himself that he could scarcely have expected a different reception in these conditions. The great river being at the stage known as "dead low water," steamboat travel ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... heights of her joy, calling the one morbid and the other hysterical? For what does the world know of such passions as these? What, after all, can the sensualist know of joy, or the ruined financier of sorrow? And what can the moderate, self-controlled, self-respecting man of the world know ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... had kept to his course and made port, wrote to his father of his success, praising his master "as being of as good character, both for accuracy in his business, and good morals, as any of his way in London." The order in which this aspiring young man of the world records the virtues will not be overlooked. He then adds, "If it had not been for Mr. Short, I could not have got a man in London that would have undertaken to teach me, as I now find there are not above five or six who could have ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... of a man of the world, Prince Saradine radiated to such sensitive observers as the priest, a certain atmosphere of the restless and even the unreliable. His face was fastidious, but his eye was wild; he had little nervous tricks, like a man shaken by drink or drugs, and he neither had, nor professed to have, his hand ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... his hand generously. 'I'm awfully glad to see you,' he began, and then, feeling that he must be a man of the world: 'Come and have a drink. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... in the militia, to influence his Council and Assembly to do his will. His abilities were beyond question, and his manners easy and graceful; but his instincts were arbitrary. He stood fast for prerogative, and even his hereditary Calvinism had strong Episcopal leanings. He was a man of the world in the better as well as the worse sense of the term; was loved and admired by some as much as he was hated by others; and in the words of one of his successors, "had as many virtues as can consist with so great a thirst for ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... uncompromising foe for many years had been the Rev. Bernard M'Carthy, the parish priest for the same parish of Drumbarrow. Father Bernard, as he was called by his own flock, or Father Barney, as the Protestants in derision were delighted to name him, was much more a man of the world than his Protestant colleague. He did not do half so many absurd things as did Mr. Townsend, and professed to laugh at what he called the Protestant madness of the rector. But he also had been an eager, I may also say, a malicious antagonist. What he called the "souping" system of the Protestant ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... draw down from certain slender witlings, from the young gentlemen, or even the young ladies, of Copenhagen, may have, in part, deterred him from a faithful portraiture. To people of reflection, who have learned to estimate at its true value the laugh of coxcombs, and the wisdom of the so-called man of the world—the shallowest bird of passage that we know of—such a portrait would have been attractive for the genuine truth it contains. It would require, indeed, a master's hand to deal both ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... through it all," Mrs. Kendal assured me, "and though I did not go on again, he proved his thoughtfulness a little later on by sending for me to play Lady Teazle. I played the leading parts during the three nights Phelps remained in Hull in 'The Man of the World,' 'Richelieu,' and 'Macbeth.' On July 29th, 1865, I made my debut in London, at the Haymarket, as Ophelia to the Hamlet of Walter Montgomery. Poor Montgomery! He was what you would call a 'lady-killer'—very conceited, but, withal, very kind. He once wrote a letter to my father, and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... wait—there's more." In his earnestness Strang sat up, adding, "Then Gargoyle got up and stretched out his hands, not to the sky, but to the air all around him. It was as if—" Here Strang, the normal, healthy man of the world, hesitated; it was only the father of the little boy who had died who admitted in low tones: "You would have said—At least even I could imagine that Gargoyle—well—that he saw something like a released principle of life fly happily ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... his back and peas in his shoes. Nobody would say that Macaulay had a superficial knowledge of the things best worth knowing in ancient literature, yet we have his own confession that when he became a busy man—as you are all busy—then he read his classics, not like a collegian, but like a man of the world; if he did not know a word, he passed it over, and if a passage refused to give up its meaning at the second reading, then he let it alone. Now the aims of academic education and those of popular education are—it is obvious if you come to think of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley

... his undoing. For at a few minutes to three Sir Tancred proposed a stroll along the shore. They went slowly, Mr. Biggleswade rising to the great social occasion for which he had so long hankered, and proving himself, in his talk, a thorough man of the world. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... pleasing to God were generally thought to be taking the Cross and endowing a Cistercian monastery. Again, though many of the Welsh chiefs were mere creatures of impulse, there were others who looked to the future. The Lord Rhys was an acute man of the world, who was not averse to improving his property. He possessed great tracts of mountain land, which was practically worthless; he saw Cistercian monks elsewhere, not exactly making such tracts blossom like the rose, but, at any rate, utilising them for pasture land, keeping flocks of sheep, becoming ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... best to behave as a man of the world should. He made intelligent replies about the sand, he threw out obvious but serviceable advice upon travel upon the continent of Europe, and he tried not to think that this was the way of living into which ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... good, inherited directness of aim, purity of ideals, and narrowness of vision, from the simple working stock from which he had sprung, and it would have been easy for a man of the world to foresee the limitations existing in such a nature. When mademoiselle therefore began the Clairville history by relating some circumstances in the flighty career of the Sieur De Clairville, hinting at certain deflections and ridiculing ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... cynic, which means a sly dog, was indeed absurd; but it is fair to say that in comparison with Dickens he felt himself a man of the world. Nevertheless, that world of which he was a man is coming to an end before our eyes; its aristocracy has grown corrupt, its middle class insecure, and things that he never thought of are walking about the drawing-rooms of both. Thackeray has described ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... how over-brimming she was with all manner of fascinating devices until the last few days. If his mother could realize that under this courteous and attentive exterior, the breeding of the polished man of the world, he is thinking only of Violet in white wrappers, with a cluster of flowers at her throat, she would be more than ever amazed at ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... St. Gre glanced at me, and an enigmatical smile spread over his face. I knew then that the ice was cracked between us. Yet he was too much a man of the world not to make one ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of a faint shriek, the rustle of a skirt, and the swift vanishing of a woman's figure from the doorway. Mr. Leyton turned red. Rushbrook lived en garcon, with feminine possibilities; Leyton was a married man and a deacon. The incident which, to a man of the world, would have brought only a smile, fired the inexperienced Leyton with those exaggerated ideas and intense credulity regarding vice common to some very good men. He walked on tip-toe to the door, and peered into the passage. At that ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... had rustled away, Sir William moved his seat beside Randolph. His manner seemed to combine Mr. Dingwall's restraint with a certain assumption of the man of the world, more notable for its ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... him the beautiful piano papa had given her; and old John, blessing her, lurched for the sofa, buried his hot head in a pillow, and was asleep in ten seconds. Major Burleigh was alone with the lovely daughter of the veteran trader. He was a man of the world; she an unsophisticated girl just out of school—so said Burleigh, albeit a most charming one; and he, who had monopolized her time the entire morning, bore down once ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... not a speech-maker who cannot do; the knowledge that comes of books, widened and freshened by the knowledge that comes of experience; the literary sense fortified by common sense; the bashfulness and delicacy of the scholar hovering as a finer presence above the forceful audacity of the man of the world; at once bookman, penman, swordsman, diplomat, sailor, courtier, orator. Of this type of manhood, spacious, strong, refined and sane, were the best men of the Elizabethan time, George Gascoigne, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, and, in a modified sense, Hakluyt, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... in a poor justice to myself, that I wrote what I wrote so unfortunately, through reverence for you, and not at all from vanity in my own account ... although I do feel palpably while I write these words here and now, that I might as well leave them unwritten; for that no man of the world who ever lived in the world (not even you) could be expected to believe them, though said, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... Christianity, so severe that only a few saints could hope to live up to it, or so much concerned with personal salvation as to be incompatible with political institutions. It was not difficult for a man of the world to live up to the more imperative parts of the Confucian teaching. But in order to do this he must exercise at all times a certain kind of self-control—an extension of the kind which children learn when they are taught to "behave." He must not break into violent ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... that ride. Pere Francois is thoughtful, as he spends his evening hour at dominoes with Aristide Dauvray. His eyes stray to fair Louise, busied with her needie. At last, he has a man of the world to lean on, in tracing up this child's parentage. Raoul and Armand are deep in schemes to enrich Joe's queer collection, the nucleus of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... denomination at a protracted meeting, at which some of my friends of my own age became seriously inclined, and we drifted together into the profession of Christian faith. But here there was nothing of the ghastly terrors of the great revival agitations. My uncle was a man of the world, had been all his early life a sailor, and had taken late to what, in his experiences of men and the vicissitudes of life, he considered the only reality, the duty of making known to his fellows the importance of the spiritual life. To fit himself for the ministry, he taught himself ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... Queen's Bench, is now a Privy Councillor, and may be regarded almost as the lay head of the High Church party in England. Sharing Keble's opinions, and entering into all his feelings, he is at the same time himself always a man of the world and a man of sense. Add to these qualifications his intimate and lifelong friendship with the subject of his work, and we have reason to expect a biography at once appreciative and judicial. Such a biography, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... his "rare talents as a scholar;" and Trelawny has recorded his opinion that Hogg's portrait of their friend was faithful, in spite of a total want of sympathy with his poetic genius. This testimony is extremely valuable.) Hogg had much of the cynic in his nature; he was a shrewd man of the world, and a caustic humorist. Positive and practical, he chose the beaten path of life, rose to eminence as a lawyer, and cherished the Church and State opinions of a staunch Tory. Yet, though he differed ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... even in her tenderest inclinings towards her guardian, had at times thought him a little too talkative—a little too much of the brilliant man of the world. Now, in her bitterness against him, his gaiety was positively offensive to her. She rose, and proposed that they should quit her own private room for the general drawing-room of ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... Huddlestone!" said he. "You do yourself injustice. You are a man of the world inside and out, and were up to all kinds of mischief before I was born. Your conscience is tanned like South American leather—only you forgot to tan your liver, and that, if you will believe me, is ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... ill-spelled words without taking them one by one. But he had to go slowly, for Miranda had not written with as much plainness as haste. He fairly held his breath when he thought of the gentle girl in the hands of the unscrupulous man of the world. A terrible fear gripped his heart, Marcia, little Marcia, so sweet and pure and good. A vision of her face as she lay asleep in the woods came between him and the paper. Why had he left her unprotected all these ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... what I don't forget," said Mrs. Snow. "I see a Christian pastor afraid of a man of the world, who cares no more about Christianity than he does about a pair of old shoes, and who patronizes it for the sake of shutting its mouth against him. It makes me angry, and makes me wish I were a man; and you ought to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... been so much engrossed with the conversation as to have at all the air of being 'surprised,' or he was too good a man of the world to shew it. He had sprung up instantly as Wych Hazel came in, and now he came round to where she stood to shake hands, looking very bright, but as if her appearance was the simplest thing in ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... marriage has been anything but graceful, when looked at in the common-sense way in which most people, of necessity, look at it. Lord Fallowfeild appealed to me against myself—which appeared to me slightly humorous—as one man of the world to another. That was an eye-opener. It was likewise a profitable lesson. I promptly laid it to heart. And it is exclusively from the point of view of the man of the world that I propose to regard myself, and my circumstances, and my ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... And you, Rolfe, as a man of the world, know that a married woman would not like the police to get possession of letters she had written to a man of the reputation ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... of whom were now in the service of Prince Juan as pages. Ferdinand and Isabella seem to have received Bartholomew kindly. They liked this capable navigator, who had much of Christopher's charm of manner, and was more a man of the world than he. Much more practical also; Ferdinand would be sure to like him better than he liked Christopher, whose pompous manner and long-winded speeches bored him. Bartholomew was quick, alert, decisive and practical; he was an accomplished navigator—almost ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... seat, a buzz begins behind the curtain. What the players are saying is not distinguishable, but a merry girlish laugh rings out now and then, followed by the short sardonic chuckle of an obvious man of the world. Then the curtain rises, and it is apparent that we are assisting at an At Home of considerable splendour. Most of the characters seem to be on the stage, and for once we do not ask how they got there. We presume they have all been invited. Thus you have had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... to have been written by a literary man—it is the babble of a thoughtless wit and a man of the world. But it is worthy of him whose contracted heart could never open to patronage or friendship. From such we might expect the unfeeling observation in the "Anecdotes of Painting," that "want of patronage is ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... was, better dressed, handsomer, more consummately the finished man of the world, than ever. He was conversing with a stout, elderly lady with gray puffs stiffly fixed on her temples and white feathers in her braids, who was discoursing fluently to him on some subject in which he seemed profoundly interested. Suddenly, however, his eyes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... currents of thought, even then he is in the midst of shadows, the illusory shadows cast by unseen realities. This world is full of forms that are illusory, and the values are all wrong, the proportions are out of focus. The things which a man of the world thinks valuable, a spiritual man must cast aside as worthless. The diamonds of the world, with their glare and glitter in the rays of the outside sun, are mere fragments of broken glass to the man of knowledge. The crown of the king, the sceptre of the emperor, the ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant

... not; but Mr. Lanniere is not a monster or a decrepit centenarian. He is still in his prime, and is a very agreeable and accomplished man of the world. He is well-connected, moves in the best society, and could ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... the noble character of Sir Thomas More stand out the best production of his time. The strong religious bias of the man made it inevitable that he should remain considerably under the influence of the old theological teachings, but in the intelligent man of the world, in the large-hearted philanthropist, in the honest patriot, appear the new and beneficent tendencies which were at work. Like all men who have been in advance of their time, More was looked upon as a dreamer. A dreamer he might naturally seem, who, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... in clothes borrowed from his new tailor, and he showed not the slightest signs of strangeness or gaucherie amongst his unfamiliar surroundings. He looked about him always, with the cold, easy nonchalance of the man of the world. Of being recognized he had not the slightest fear. His frame and bearing, and the brightness of his deep, strong eyes, still belonged to early middle age, but his face itself, worn and hardened, was the face of an elderly ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... I can find out about it, anyway?" Mr. May used his most affable, man of the world manner. But the policeman continued to stare him up and down, as if he were some marvellous specimen unknown ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... question of Mammon here, she evaded him, as she always did on such occasions, either by a real or simulated deficiency of consequent intelligence. She regarded John Caldigate as being altogether unregenerate, and therefore a man of the world,—and therefore a disciple of Mammon. She asked him whether he wanted her to do what she thought to be sinful. 'It is very sinful hating people as you hate my sons' families,' he said in his wrath. 'No, Nicholas, I do not hate their families. I certainly ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... these petty recitals. He ate in silence, and when he had finished the simple meal he begged to be excused. He begged this in a lofty, detached, somewhat weary manner, as a man of the world, excessively bored at the dull chatter but still the fastidious gentleman, might have begged it, breaking into one of the many repetitions by his hostess of just what she had said to Mrs. Judge Ellis. He was again Clifford Armytage, enacting a polished society man among ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... of Shaftesbury's writings can hardly fail to lead us to the same conclusion. He writes, indeed, as an easy, well-bred man of the world, and was no doubt perfectly sincere in his constantly repeated disavowal of any wish to disturb the existing state of things. But his reason obviously is that 'the game would not be worth the candle.' No one ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... with whom he preferred to associate, characterised by any nobler sentiment than self- indulgence; he was attached, more from the pleasure he himself received in their society, than from any reciprocal enjoyment they had with him. As he became a man of the world, his early friends dropped from him; although it is evident, by all the contemporary records of his feelings, that he cherished for them a kind, and even brotherly, affection. This secession, the common effect of the new cares, hopes, interests, and wishes, which young men ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... Estenega, being a man of the world and having consequently outgrown the cynicism of youth, also knowing women better than this fair Minerva would know them in twenty lifetimes, thought ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... for us to compare our philosophical notes, I see plainly enough," Wilton responded. "We shall never view things in the same light. You are not the man of the world you should be, Walter. Men of half your merit will eclipse you, winning opulence and distinction—while you, with your common sense notions, will be plodding on at a snail's pace. You are behind the age, and a stranger to its powerful, ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... He wanted four to make up the sufficient number of votes. St. Carlo had to begin again; and again, strange to say, the Cardinal Alessandrino still was not his choice. He chose Cardinal Sirleto, a man most opposite in character and history to Morone. He was not nobly born, he was no man of the world, he had ever been urgent with the late Pope not to make him Cardinal. He was a first-rate scholar in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; versed in the Scriptures, ready as a theologian. Moreover, he was of a character ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... gracious equality of attention to her companions; showed no keener interest in her new visitor than she had found in the conversation of her old acquaintance, and thus made both men very happily at their ease. Indeed, Halfman was at his best that afternoon, playing the genial, ripe, mellow man of the world to perfection, so that Evander found ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... who pensioned him; served in an expedition to France; was made prisoner, but ransomed by the king; was often employed on royal embassies, in particular to Italy; held responsible posts at home; was thus a man of the world as well as a man of letters; he comes first before us as a poet in 1369; his poetic powers developed gradually, and his best and ripest work, which occupied him at intervals from 1373 to 1400, is his "CANTERBURY TALES" (q. v.), characterised by Stopford Brooke as "the best ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... mean, certainly," said Mr. Vawdrey; "but I daresay to Captain Winstanley, as a man of the world, it might seem a foolish thing to keep a horse nobody rode; especially such a valuable horse as Bullfinch. Your father gave two hundred and fifty for him at Andover, I remember. And you really have too many ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... at the Country Club with papa," said Miss Felton. "The prisoner engaged in an altercation with my male parent on the subject of religion, said parent being a man of strong views and short temper. Said parent, however, being a man of the world as well, tried to evade an argument and escape, but was penned up in a corner for ten purple minutes. Said afterward that he had never been so affronted in all his life; explodes even now at the recollection; calls the ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... so profoundy distrustful of my own judgment in delicate matters that I determined to find out if I could what Dodds thought of Lalage's opinions. Dodds is preeminently a man of the world, very sound, unemotional and full of common sense. I did not produce the Gazette or mention Lalage's name, for Dodds has had a prejudice against her since the evening on which he played bridge with Miss Battersby. Nor did I make a special business of asking his advice. ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham

... grown of late far more thoughtful than before; under Edwin's influence he had been laying aside, one by one, the careless sins of school life, and his tone was nobler and manlier than it had ever been. Montagu had never known or heard much about godliness; his father, a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of the world, had trained him in the principles of refinement and good taste, and given him a high standard of conventional honor; but he passed through life lightly, and had taught his son to do the same. Possessed of an ample fortune, which Montagu was to inherit, he troubled himself ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... the likeness of the sneering accusing Satan, who asks in the book of Job—"Doth Job serve God for nought?" When the greatest poet of our days tried to picture his idea of a fiend tempting a man to his ruin, he gave his fiend just such a character as this; a very clever, courteous, agreeable man of the world, and yet a being who could not love any one, could not believe in any one; who mocked not only at man but at God and tempted and ruined man, not out of hatred to him, hardly out of envy; but in mere sport, as a cruel child may torment an insect;—in one word, a scorner. ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... to be inevitable, especially in Paris; for, by establishing himself in a family, a convict multiplies tenfold the perils of such a substitution. And to be safe from all investigation, must not a man assume a position far above the ordinary interests of life. A man of the world is subject to risks such as rarely trouble those who have no contact with the world; hence the priest's gown is the safest disguise when it can be authenticated by an exemplary life ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... it as far as L40, against my late opponent for the Drake Map, but he secured it at L40 10s., remarking that 'Mr. Panizzi will not thank you for, thus running the British Museum.' 'That remark,' I replied, 'is apparently one of your gratuities. Mr. Panizzi is, I think, too much a man of the world to grumble at a fair fight. He has won this time, though at considerable cost, and I am sure Mr. Lenox will be the first to congratulate him on securing such a prize for the British Museum.' 'I did not know you were bidding for Mr. Lenox.' ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... God send his beloved Son, this great Man, to earth? When a great man of the world comes into prominence he expects others to minister unto him, and they do minister unto him. But Jesus, the greatest man who has ever lived on earth, and the only perfect One aside from Adam, came to earth and became ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... man of the world, I know. You have a grudge against him who once was Jean de Mauprat, and who to-day is the humble Brother Jean Nepomucene. But if the precepts of our divine Master, Jesus Christ, cannot persuade you to pity, there are considerations of public propriety ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... subject-matter—the ethical system of the Jesuits of the time—is remote from modern interests; yet such is the brilliance of Pascal's art that every page of them is fascinating to-day. The vivacity of the opening letters is astonishing; the tone is the gay, easy tone of a man of the world; the attack is delivered in a rushing onslaught of raillery. Gradually, as the book proceeds, there are signs of a growing seriousness; we have a sense of graver issues, and round the small question of the Jesuits' morality we discern ranged all the vast forces ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... from the litter-bearers. The bravest and best men dread to die, and the halo that surrounds death upon the battlefield is but scant consolation to the wounded soldier, and he clings to life with that same tenacity after he has fallen, as the man of the world in "piping times ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... he might have betrayed his real feelings in the matter; but Caffyn was too much a man of the world to believe him: he only thought that the other either had independent means of proving his claim when he chose, or felt convinced that it would be proved for him without the necessity of committing himself to any alliance ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... passage to the Camaroon river, to purchase slaves. He induced the Captain to come on board, but the appearance of a schooner, with so large a boat and so many hands, evidently created some suspicion in his mind. He was too much a man of the world, however, not to affect a confidence, which we were all persuaded he did not feel:—he drank some rum, and carried himself with consummate self-possession; gave us all the Calabar news he could recollect, and demanded our latest intelligence ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... studies a system of transcendent spiritualism. From his aggregation of cold and apparently lifeless practical facts beautiful and wonderful abstractions start forth like blossoms on the rod of the Levite. A politician and a courtier, a man of the world, a mathematician engaged in the soberest details of the science, he has given to the world, in the simplest and most natural language, a series of speculations upon the great mystery of being: detailed, matter-of-fact narratives ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... more sanguine temperament than Erasmus might have seen no hope for the future, except in gradually freeing the ubiquitous organisation of the Church from the corruptions which alone, as he imagined, prevented it from being as beneficent as it was powerful. The broad tolerance of the scholar and man of the world might well be revolted by the ruffianism, however genial, of one great light of Protestantism, and the narrow fanaticism, however learned and logical, of others, and to a cautious thinker, by whom, whatever his short-comings, the ethical ideal of the Christian evangel was sincerely prized, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... no occasion to think so. He is mending fast, sir; and if you have any doubt about it, and cannot trust in the opinion of a man of the world, go and watch him, and see how interested he seems in all that is going on. Why, a fortnight ago he lay back in his chair dreaming and thinking of nothing but himself. Now he is beginning to forget that there is such a person. He's better, ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... omnipotent instructions, in my pocket and am actually moving towards the sea. The youngest and keenest schoolboy returning home for his holidays is a calm, collected, impassionate and even dismal man of the world compared to me. I see little and am impressed by nothing; all things and men are assumed to be good, and none of them is given the opportunity of proving itself to be the contrary. As for the A.M.L.O. at any other port but this one, I remark nothing about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

... rhetorician; though upon discovering his natural bent, turned to poetical satire. With a fierceness and moral seriousness unprecedented in literature, Juvenal attacked the darkest vices of his age; writing as a relentless enemy rather than as a man of the world like Horace, or as a detached spectator like Persius. The oft repeated accusation that his minute descriptions of vice shew a morbid interest therein, may fairly be refuted when one considers the almost unthinkable depths to which the republic had fallen. Only a tolerant or a secluded observer ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... character is a delicate and a difficult one, and Mr. Hogg and Mr. Trelawny, especially, show their inability to understand it, by the way in which they put forward and dwell upon the poet's peculiarities. Trelawny, a hard-minded, thorough-paced man of the world, publishing garrulously in his old age what he was silent about in his better period, talks of the poet's oddity, awkwardness, and want of punctuality,—as if Percy were some clerkly man on 'Change; ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... the long frock-coat with the bunch of violets, and felt abashed by his own short jacket and indifferent shoes. He noted too the assumption of ease and suavity with which the other was entertaining a little knot of ladies. It was this person, then, an out-and-out man of the world, against whom he, uncouth and unpractised boy, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... and a strange reunion; but the world is full of such. O'Hana, it comes in most befitting that opportunity is afforded to favour the rescuer with something of greater value than thanks. Pray serve him with wine." Then did Kwaiba take the matter as a man of the world. But he was no fool, "this old tanuki (badger) of a thousand autumns' experience on hill and in dale." He understood very well that between Iemon and O'Hana there had been a closer connection than that ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... battle against realities, but not against ghosts. Do you suppose I cannot forgive, cannot excuse, cannot blot out a past mistake? Do you imagine my love so poor a thing as that? Do not wrong me so. I am a man of the world, and comprehend fully those temptations which come to all of us. I can let the dead past bury its dead, satisfied with the present and the future. Only tell me the truth, the naked truth, and let me combat in the open against whatever it is that stands between ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... it, a gift from benign heaven, surely a cause for happiness! And yet—he did not feel so jolly! He was surprised, he was even a little hurt, to discover by introspection that monetary gain was not necessarily accompanied by felicity. Nevertheless, this very successful man of the world of the Five Towns, having been born on the 27th of May 1867, had reached the age of forty-three ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... and a half with Woodruff, at and after dinner, served to reinforce my first impression. I saw that he was a thorough man of the world, that he knew politics from end to end, and that he understood the main weaknesses of human nature and how to play upon them for the advantage of his employers and for his own huge amusement. He gave a small exhibition of that skill at the expense of Roebuck. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... best, are the most capricious things in the world. D-n it, you have gone through enough of this kind of life to be accustomed to it. We think nothing of these things, in Charleston-bless you, nothing! Keep the Judge your friend-his position may give him a means to serve you. A man of the world ought at all times to have the private friendship of as ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... about them now, and Roger met them with the ease of a man of the world. Even Barry had to admit that his manners were irreproachable, and his clothes. As for his looks, he was not to be matched with Mary's auburn Apollo—one cannot compare a royal stag and a ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... what concerned her son; she was hazy about the characters and needs of young men, not knowing how they should be treated or what appealed to them. Amid her haziness, one fact only stood out clear. To deal with a young man, you wanted a man of the world. In this capacity Mr. Vansittart had now been sent for to the Court, the object of his visit being nothing less than the arrangement and satisfactory settlement of ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... if the whole truth were told we fell out mainly because I was a bit of a puppy. You're an older man of the world than I am, sir, and I dare say you can't have failed to notice that some men who think they are insiders are outsiders, and that some of the fellows they despise ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... way, excited more the attention of the Parisians than the national contest in which we were engaged,) the public had adopted the plan of never commencing operations until half-price, to the injury of the manager's purse. It was during the earlier acts of "The Man of the World," that Cooke, in performing to "a beggarly account of empty boxes," was addressed by one of the actors, in accordance with the scene, in a whisper; when the elevated comedian, casting a glance around, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various

... this delightful invitation, and went back to Mrs Nash's feeling myself a good deal more a "man of the world," and a good deal less of a hero, than I had left ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... a superior example, an officer of the major-general's staff, and a man of the best society besides. He was powerfully built, and thoroughly masculine, though he was as carefully groomed as a woman. He had the courteous self-possession of a man of the world. His forehead, white as alabaster, contrasted impressively with the healthy colour of ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... not? I did not know!—I remember now they do teach that with you. It is a great mistake—one of the greatest ever wiseacre made! No man of the universe, only a man of the world could have said so!" ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... examining his belongings I was fortunate enough to discover not only the method of the crime, but even its motives. As a man of the world, Colonel, you know that men do not carry other people's bills about in their pockets. We have most of us quite enough to do to settle our own. I at once concluded that Straker was leading a double life, and keeping a second establishment. The nature of the bill showed that there was ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... did not stay with Lady Caroline, as most of the men she had known would, she was afraid, have wanted to—he asked to be permitted to go and stroll with her; so that he evidently definitely preferred conversation to faces. A sensible, companionable man. A clever, well-read man. A man of the world. A man. She was very glad indeed she had not written to Kate the other day. What did she want with Kate? She had found a ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... stumbling-block and a rock of offence. For setting aside the mere beauty of form, outline and mass, the grace and loveliness of design and the delicacy of technical treatment, here we have shown to us what the Greeks and Romans thought about death; and the philosopher, the preacher, the practical man of the world, and even the Philistine himself, cannot fail to be touched by these 'sermons in stones,' with their deep significance, their fertile suggestion, their plain humanity. Common tombstones they are, most of them, the work not of ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... was exactly six feet high, with the form of an Apollo, and a head which was the very counterpart of the bust of Byron. A few years later N. P. Willis described him in the Home Journal as the handsomest man in America. He had been from boyhood as precociously a man of the world as I was the opposite. He was par eminence the poet of our college, and in a quiet, gentlemanly way its "swell." I passed a great deal of my time in his rooms reading Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... architecture, music and everything else, the path was easy. Like his father, he knew the value of money, but he was at once more ostentatious and less liberal than his father; while yet a boy he was a thorough little man of the world, and did well rather upon principles which he had tested by personal experiment, and recognised as principles, than from those profounder convictions which in his father were so instinctive that he could give no account ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... understanding of the situation. "We men have to be careful what we say to women," he replied, with an air of caution and comradeship that made his young guest feel like a full-fledged man of the world. ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... circumstances—the private marriage, you know, and all that—besides telling her of certain restrictions in reference to the marriage, if it came off, which I should feel it my duty as a father to impose; and which I shall proceed, in short, to explain to you. As a man of the world, my dear Sir, you know as well as I do, that young ladies don't give very straightforward answers on the subject of their prepossessions in favour of young gentlemen. But I got enough out of her to show me that you had made pretty good use of your time—no occasion to despond, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... shook hands with great warmth. Here was one who received the Secretary without reserve. Miss Harley, watching, saw how her brother hung upon the words of this accomplished man of the world; how he listened with a pleased air to his praise and how he saw in the Secretary a great man and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... not misinformed, pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company. The language of the market would be in the schools as pedantic, though it might not be reprobated by that name, as the language of the schools in the market. The mere man of the world, who insists that no other terms but such as occur in common conversation should be employed in a scientific disquisition, and with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant as the man of letters, who either over-rating the acquirements of his auditors, or misled by ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... few years before the opening of the late civil war, was the most successful man with juries who ever plead in Louisiana courts. We must meet him in the court-room by and by, and may as well make his acquaintance now. He was emphatically a man of the world. Many anecdotes of him remain, illustrative rather of intrepid shrewdness than of chivalry. He had been counsel for the pirate brothers Lafitte in their entanglements with the custom-house and courts, and was believed to have received a hundred thousand ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... so changed as scarcely to be recognizable. He was no longer the happy man of the world, with smiling face, firm look, the pride of which betrayed plainly his self-importance and prosperity. In a few hours he had grown twenty years older. He was broken, overwhelmed; his thoughts wandered in a sea of bitterness. He could only repeat, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... after, came a long remonstrance from Lord Palmerston, which Lord Bloomfield was desired to read to Nesselrode, and leave with him. A man of the world, seeing that the thing was done, would have withheld an irritating document. But Bloomfield went with it to Nesselrode. Nesselrode would have nothing to say to it. "Mon Dieu!" he said, "we have given up all our demands; why tease us ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... was, Stanley Lake was an old man of the world, not to be disconcerted, and never saw more than exactly suited him. Waiting in the drawing-room, I had some entertaining talk with Miss Lake. Her conversation was lively, and rather bold, not ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... story is very slight, but sufficient for the effective presentation of the author's opinions. The best characters are an Irish parson, a fox-hunting squire and his commonplace worldly wife, and a thoughtless and reckless but not unkind man of the world. Here is a sketch of a commonplace old English vicar, such as has been familiar in the pages of novels and essays time out ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... usual morning service, sat Sir Arthur Maxwell. A year ago he would have been inclined to laugh at the idea of his son sacrificing all his brilliant worldly prospects to enter the Church. He was, as has already been said, a deeply religious man himself, but still, he was a man of the world, a man who had made his own way through the world, and won by sheer hard work some of the prizes which it has to give, and, like many others of his class, he had come to look upon the clerical profession somewhat as the refuge of ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... continued Monsignor Saracinesca, 'I am a man of the world in the sense of having belonged to it, and I now live less apart from it than I could wish, though it is not such a thoroughly bad place as those say who do not know it. I do not feel that I got rid of all obligations ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... sat more comfortably, or one whom it was so little likely to spoil. Half of my time was spent in the house of M. Artaria, because there I found the kind of society which I preferred—and which contained a mixture of the antiquary and collector, with the merchant and man of the world. After this, who shall say that a fac-simile of his Autograph (now that he is NO MORE!) can be unacceptable ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... rising with that blase air which distinguishes the matured man of the world from the enthusiastic tyro,-"done! and we will adjourn ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... moralities was that a man who did not love his mistress was a beast, and that a man who loved a woman who wasn't, was a fool. Another was that although every man of the world knew a liaison would not last for ever, he should not begin one unless it seemed as if it were going to. In other words, you should not be able to see the end before you began. But he had never even kissed Evelyn, and it was impossible even to guess, even approximately, if you were going to like ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... He is frankness itself. What was he going to make of himself? Well, he "'lowed" he wanted to be either a locomotive engineer or a steamboat captain—hadn't made up his mind which. "But whatever a boy wants to be, he will be!" said Sam, with the decided tone of a man of the world, who had seen things. I asked Sam what the attractions were in the life of an engine driver. He "'lowed" they went so fast through the world, and saw so many different people; and in their lifetime served on different roads, maybe, and surely ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... crowning scientific achievement of the nineteenth century, the kinetoscope." McTeague was excited, dazzled. In five years he had not been twice to the theatre. Now he beheld himself inviting his "girl" and her mother to accompany him. He began to feel that he was a man of the world. He ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... have seen brother's face at being thus addressed; for I knew that there was a pint, at least, of the best old Virginia blood in his cheeks and forehead. The moment that he turned round, there was something in his air which showed the man of the world his mistake. ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill

... Evangelical; and he commends public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual religion. Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable. His exposition of social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, and the urbanity of a man of the world. Of his motives for publication and method of ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett



Words linked to "Man of the world" :   grownup, cosmopolitan, cosmopolite, slicker, adult



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com