"Polyglot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surprising variety of notes resembling the song of several other birds; but then it also has an hurrying mariner, not at all to its advantage; it is notwithstanding a delicate polyglot. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the place assumed a still more primeval character when the Indian Reservation was formed near by. When French Canadian settlers arrived, however, the place became less discordant to the life of a new democracy, though they did little to make it modern in the sense that Lebanon, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stairs," said Lady Mabel, "has been amusing us at dinner with his version of our adventure at the ford of the Cayo; and a very good story he makes of it, giving some rich samples of Captain Hatton's polyglot eloquence. He, alone, seems not to have been in the dark; and saw all, and more than all, that occurred—nor does he forget you in the picture. But, papa cannot see the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with bright images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a picture-gallery of the human requirements. The chosen people ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... perceives the advancing P. & O., now not much more than a mile away. He draws the distracted officer's attention to the phenomenon and leads him to understand that to start now would lead to an inevitable collision and a watery grave. The polyglot argument waxes furious, the men taking it up in their turn, when their leader falls out exhausted, and the Arab is still keeping up his end triumphantly when the great ship reaches us and slowly steams by, while ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... Archives, and published by M. Saint Rene Taillandier, one wonders how this friend of Mme. de Stael, of Sismondi, of Mme. de Souza, this hostess of Moore, of Lamartine, of Lady Morgan, of every sort of French, English, German, Russian, or polyglot creature of distinction that travelled through Italy in the early part of this century, could ever have been the beloved of Alfieri, the misanthropic correspondent of a lot of Sienese professors, priests, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... got over and his comrades realized that he was a polyglot. Then in a joyous spirit of over-confidence, he waved the oriflamme of speech ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... remarked one of the augurs of Red Dog, French Pete, a polyglot jester, "that while every fool went to taking up claims where the gold had already been found no one thought of stepping into the old man's old choux in the cabbage-garden!" Any doubt, however, of the alliance of the families was dissipated by the intimacy that sprang ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... of the Government out of all proportion to the probable loss by failure. So when Napoleon least expected it they determined to act, and caught him napping. The defences of Antwerp had been left incomplete. There was no army to meet the blow—nothing but a polyglot rabble without staff or even officers. For a week at least success was in our hands. Napoleon's fleet only escaped by twenty-four hours, and yet the failure was not only complete but disastrous. Still so entirely were the causes ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... great comfort had stolen over him the two or three times when she had sunk back in the carriage cushions and let her eyes dwell upon him contemplatively for a moment. He was beginning to hate Mrs. Denham, and he thoroughly loathed Bonneville, where a polyglot crowd of tourists came flocking into the small waiting-room just as Miss Ruth was putting up her hair and unconsciously framing for Lynde a never-to-be-forgotten picture ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dripping diamonds, and on some of the trees was the delicate green of a second blossoming, like hope in the heart of age. They could scarcely refrain from betraying their exultation to the Hotel des Tourterelles, from which they had concealed their sufferings. But the polyglot population seething round its malodorous stairs and tortuous corridors remained ignorant that anything was passing in the life of these faded old creatures, and even on the day of drawing lots for the Wig the exuberant hotel ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... maelstrom of human activity and dynamic energy—the city which above all others is characteristic of the genius and virility of the American people—New York, with its congested polyglot population and teeming millions, is assuredly one of the busiest, as it is one of the most strenuous and most noisy places on earth. Yet, despite its swarming streets and crowded shops, ceaselessly thronged with men and women eagerly hurrying here and there in the pursuit of business or elusive ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... hundred voices mingle with thy clamor; Bird, beast, and reptile take part in thy drama; Out-speak they all in turn without a stammer,— Brisk Polyglot! Voices of Killdeer, Plover, Duck, and Dotterel; Notes bubbling, hissing, mellow, sharp, and guttural; Of Cat-Bird, Cat, or Cart-Wheel, thou ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... case they agreed with those he had given me. He used to sing a Hebrew drinking-song, which he had learned from some Jews with whom he had once travelled and astonished by joining in their conversation." {23} Borrow's colloquial gift was, to all appearance, closely allied to that of this polyglot Fleming. ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... customers of the brasserie were a mixed lot of women and men, the latter comprising' numerous nationalities, and all drawn to Paris by the wiles of the Goddess of Art. Topical songs of the day succeeded one another rapidly. A group of long-haired, polyglot students hung around the piano, while others played on violins or guitars, which they had brought to contribute to the evening's enjoyment. At intervals, when there was a lull, the click of billiard balls came from an adjoining apartment. Out on the boulevard, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... them my said legatees. Also I give and bequeath to Sir John Hawkins, one of my Executors, the Annales Ecclesiastici of Baronius, and Holinshed's and Stowe's Chronicles, and also an octavo Common Prayer-Book. To Bennet Langton, Esq. I give and bequeath my Polyglot Bible. To Sir Joshua Reynolds, my great French Dictionary, by Martiniere, and my own copy of my folio English Dictionary, of the last revision. To Dr. William Scott, one of my Executors, the Dictionnaire de Commerce, and Lectius's edition of the Greek poets. To Mr. Windham ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... knowledge of the sacred writings has been diffused, will be observed from the catalogue of the various editions of the Bible, from the first impression by Fust, in 1462, to the present time; in which will be contained the polyglot editions of Spain, France, and England, those of the original Hebrew, the Greek Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate; with the versions which are now used in the remotest parts of Europe, in the country of the Grisons, in Lithuania, Bohemia, Finland, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... expression of rude Mahometan metaphysics. Her answer to this, if there were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shattering as it was rapid. Another thought to entrap her by asking what language the angelic visitors of her solitude had talked—as though heavenly counsels could want polyglot interpreters for every word, or that God needed language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. Then came a worse devil, who asked her whether the Archangel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehending the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... a cook, and a dragoman. Thus my impedimenta were not numerous. The firman was an order to all Egyptian officials for assistance; the cook was dirty and incapable; and the interpreter was nearly ignorant of English, although a professed polyglot. With this small beginning, Africa was before me, and thus I commenced the search for the Nile sources. Absurd as this may appear, it was a correct commencement. Ignorant of Arabic, I could not have commanded ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... lyceum in connection with his church, and he wished to know if there would be a chance for some of the young men who belonged to that lyceum. The Methodist clergyman came from a little patch of old native America which by a recent extension had been taken within the limits of the huge, polyglot, pleasure-loving city. His was a small church, most of the members being shipwrights, mechanics, and sailormen from the local coasters. In each case I assured my visitor that we wanted on the force men of the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... topical a phrase once used, not unhappily, by Mr Cecil Raleigh concerning the qualifications of the dramatic critic. After listening to a somewhat extravagant speech about the duties of the critic, he said that the dramatic critic ought, apparently, to be a "polyglot archangel." During the last few years we have had plays in Russian, Japanese, Bavarian patois, Dutch, German, French and Italian, to say nothing of East End performances in Hebrew and Yiddish, which we neglect. Latin drama we hear at Westminster; a Greek company ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... all through the noon-hour to cook himself an unsanitary lunch. We jotted them down at express speed, with changes of tongue so abrupt that our heads were soon reeling, and in the place where our minds should have been sounded only a confused chaotic uproar like a wrangling within the covers of a polyglot dictionary. Then suddenly I landed a Russian! It was the final straw. I like to speak Spanish, I can endure the creaking of Turks attempting to talk Italian, I can bend an ear to the excruciating ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... the East Indian. To complete the catalogue, there is the native Indian, with his guttural vocabulary of twenty words! When I hear these sounds, so strangely different, and look at the speakers, I fancy them a living polyglot of the languages, a perambulating picture-gallery illustrative of national variety in ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... started. The gentleman who had spoken was a recent arrival. She only knew him as Colonel Estcourt. He was a singularly interesting-looking man, home from India on sick leave, and the maidens, and wives, and widows, of this polyglot assemblage at the Hotel were all inclined to admiration of his physical perfections, and to dissatisfaction at a certain coldness and disdainfulness of themselves, which, to use their mildest form of reproach, was "odd ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... people who were sitting on the bench outside the door—came and listened, and then looked at me, most of them pityingly. I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd, so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... arabesques are deeply struck by it: Duerer, defying and playing with it alternately, is almost beaten down again and again in the distorted faces, hewing halberts, and suspended satyrs of his arabesques round the polyglot Lord's Prayer; it takes entire possession of Balzac in the "Contes Drolatiques"; it struck Scott in the earliest days of his childish "visions" intensified by the ax-stroke murder of his grand aunt (L. i. 142, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... never find their way to these isles, for which you must consult the pages of Mr. Gould or Mr. Bree—and chief among them the dark Orpheus, and the yellow Hippolais, surpassing the black-cap, and almost equalling the nightingale, for richness and variety of song—the polyglot warbler which penetrates, in summer, as far north as the shores of the British Channel, and there stops short, scared by the twenty miles of sea, after a land journey—and by night, too, as ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... centuries of printing were given up to folios, the eighteenth century to quartos and octavos, and that only the present period has been characterized by twelvemos and sixteenmos. We think of the Gutenberg Bible, the Nuremberg Chronicle, the mighty editions of the Fathers, the polyglot Bibles of Paris, London, and Antwerp,—fairly to be called limp teachers' Bibles,—the 1611 Bible, the Shakespeare folios; then of the quarto editions of Addison, Pope, Walpole, and their contemporaries, and the stately ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... haltingly and stumblingly upward to become builders of cities and to form stable governments. The kingdoms of Charlemagne and Alfred were "new," compared to the empire on the Bosphorus; they were also in every way different; their lines of ancestral descent had nothing in common with that of the polyglot realm which paid tribute to the Caesars of Byzantium; their social problems and after-time history were totally different. This is not true of those "new" nations which spring direct from old nations. Brazil, the Argentine, the United States, are all "new" nations, ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... house, followed by the polyglot curses of Barlasch, who was now endeavouring to find his bayonet amidst his ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... impression that the distinctly British settlements, like those of Massachusetts and Virginia, were far more powerful and promising than my own polyglot province. No doubt from his point of view this notion was natural, but it nettled me. To this day I cannot read or listen to the inflated accounts this New England and this Southern State combine to give of their own greatness, of their ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... fate was not so tragic, was the learned Arias Montanus, a Spaniard, who produced at the command of King Philip II. the famous Polyglot Bible printed at Antwerp in nine tomes. He possessed a wonderful knowledge of several languages, and devoted immense labour to his great work. But in spite of the royal approval of his work his book met ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... o'clock at night the polyglot confusion of tongues would have ceased, the gaudily-uniformed swaggerers, the velveteen-coated, wide-awaked loafers, the filthy tatterdemalions of all nations and their womenkind would have turned in. Then Lady Hannah, attended by the unwilling Trudi, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... we are to receive the Constitution as the text, and then to lay down in its margin the contradictory commentaries which have been, and which maybe, made by different States, the whole page would be a polyglot indeed. It would speak with as many tongues as the builders of Babel, and in dialects as much confused, and mutually as unintelligible. The very instance now before us presents a practical illustration. The law of the last ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... literature, or even to have enquired whether it contains any thing worth knowing? Are there a dozen literary men or women amongst us who could read a Russian romance, or understand a Russian drama? Dr Bowring was regarded as a prodigy of polyglot learning, because he gave us some very imperfect versions of Russian ballads; and we were thankful even for that contribution, from which, we doubt not, many worthy and well-informed people learned for the first time that Russia produced poets ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... English.—Several ludicrous examples have of late been communicated (see Vol. ii., pp. 57. 138.), but none, perhaps, comparable with the following, which I copied about two years since at Havre, from a Polyglot advertisement of various Local Regulations, for the convenience of persons visiting that favourite watering-place. Amongst these it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... a-praying as they went in more tongues than were babbled at Babel Tower; in other words, on the day when the never-to-be-broken Hindenburg line was broken through and through, a battalion of one of the infantry regiments of this same polyglot division formed a little individual ground swell in ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... obtained (and some of the parties were very fortunate in the weather) but from the character of the expedition. It was a wonderful combination of the astronomers of Europe, who were all received on board the 'Himalaya,' and were conveyed together to the coast of Spain. The polyglot of languages was most remarkable, but the utmost harmony and enthusiasm prevailed from first to last, and this had much to do with the general success of the expedition. Those who landed at Bilbao were received in the kindest and most ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... practically dead and buried. The Roman populace had by that period lost all taste for the highest and most refined forms of art. The races in the circus, the variety entertainments and bloodshed of the amphitheatre had captured the favour of the polyglot, pampered multitude that must have formed such a large ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... advantage that decided his destiny. His new friend did help him, and it was very much through his urgent recommendation that the foreman of the printing office gave him a chance. The foreman did not in the least believe that the green-looking young fellow before him could set in type one page of the polyglot Testament for which ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... hard, rough labor of the country was being done, from building railroads to getting out the timber from the forests or making shoes and blankets in the factories. Hard physical labor was no longer performed to any extent by native Americans. Contractors everywhere recruited their polyglot companies in the great cities and shipped them out into the country where there was a demand. The men employed at Highcourt were thus obtained in San Francisco by the head contractor and merely boarded in the town of Bellevue. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... being amused and sometimes annoyed by the yellow-breasted chat. This bird also has something of the manners and build of the catbird, yet he is truly an original. The catbird is mild and feminine compared with this rollicking polyglot. His voice is very loud and strong and quite uncanny. No sooner have you penetrated his retreat, which is usually a thick undergrowth in low, wet localities, near the woods or in old fields, than he begins ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... filled in a short time, and the audience was treated to a polyglot entertainment of the most remarkable character. Nibsinsky's Eyetalian selections were listened to with some degree of attention and a considerable measure of perplexity. He could not be considered a success and no inducements could compel him to repeat the performance. But these things ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about 10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband sophistries and parables ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... Voelkerstreit im Habsburgerstaat (Leipzig, 1910), may be taken as representative of the German of the German Empire. T. von Sosnosky's Die Politik im Habsburgerreiche (Berlin, 1912-13, 2 vols.) is the work of an Austrophil, as is also W. von Schierbrand's Austria-Hungary: The Polyglot Empire (New York, 1917); H. W. Steed's The Habsburg Monarchy (London, 1914, 2d ed.) is one of the ablest surveys in the English language. It is thoroughly worked out in the general features, but slights many of the national and provincial aspects of the Austrian question. V. Gayda's ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... feet long, low, and rather narrow. It is absolutely crammed with books, in the most shameful state of confusion. I saw, for the first time in Normandy, and with absolute gladness of heart, a copy of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible; of which the four latter volumes, in vellum binding, were tall and good: the earlier ones, in calf, not so desirable. For the first time too, since treading Norman soil, I saw a tolerably good ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed during World War I. The country fell under communist rule following World War II. In 1956, a revolt and announced withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact were met with a massive military intervention by Moscow. In the more open GORBACHEV years, Hungary ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the rendezvous was well chosen to repress any revival of old emotions. The varnished furniture, the sham mahogany, the purple plush upholstery, the gilt French clock, the dirty bust of Abraham Lincoln and the polyglot law library checked the tender word and the generous impulse. The Japanese have an instinctive knowledge of the influence of inanimate things, and use this knowledge with an unscrupulousness, which the crude foreigner only realises—if ever—after ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... to be polyglot services here. I saw books of prayer, or Scripture, in Hebrew, Greek, and German: in which latter language Dr. Alexander preaches every Sunday. A gentleman who sat near me at church used all these books indifferently; ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... young housemaid, in love with Robin. She hates Polyglot, the tutor of "Master Charles," but is very fond of Charles. Molly tries to get "the tuterer Polypot" into a scrape, but finds, to her consternation, that Master Charles is in reality the party to be blamed.—J. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... and every line Thy grand conception traces is sublime: No language doth thy god-like works confine; Thy voice is earth's grand polyglot, O Time! Known of all tongues, and read in every clime, Changes of language make no change in thee: Thy works have worsted centuries of their prime, Yet new editions every day we see— Ruin thy moral ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... winding and mountainous streets and its polyglot population, Matadi is a picturesque spot. It is the goal of every official through the long years of his service in the bush for at this place he boards the steamer that takes him to Europe. This ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson |
