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More "Blockhead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affectionate tone, her eyes were so beseeching, her feeble voice was so humble and so passionate in making the request, that mademoiselle had not the courage to force her to accept an assistant. She simply called her a "blockhead," who believed, like all country-people, that a few days in bed ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... to be Baxter's style of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear people." Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late Majesty had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the old blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it?" His fury now rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it would be no more than justice to whip such a villain through ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... those cabalistic words which changed men into beasts, insects, and reptiles. But the prince having his eyes shut, and his back toward him, could not see his motions, and the enchanter being horribly affrighted, as well as naturally a great blockhead, was so long in recollecting the formula of his incantation, that the prince, seeing by a sly glance over the shoulder, that he was sufficiently near, suddenly turned round, and with one blow severed his head from his shoulders. Then catching it before it fell to the ground, he threw it into the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... customs cruiser. That's the electric light! Get up, blockhead! Why, they'll turn the light on us in a minute! You'll be the ruin of yourself ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... self-assertive reply with open-mouthed astonishment, as though quite too incredible for belief; it seems to them an act of almost criminal discourtesy, and those immediately about me seem almost inclined to take me back to the threshing-floor like a culprit. But the mudir himself is not such a blockhead but that he realizes the mistake he has made. He is too proud to acknowledge it, though; consequently his friends miss, perhaps, the only opportunity in their uneventful lives of seeing a bicycle ridden. Owing to my ignorance of the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... bestowed a shilling—poured out my money as profusely as you, Sir, have poured out my blood, every drop of which, Sir, shall cost you a slice of your estate. But even without Sturk's speaking one word, I've evidence which escaped you, conceited blockhead, and which, though the witness is as mad almost as yourself, will yet be enough to direct the hand of justice to the right man. There is a Charles, Sir, whom all suspect, who awaits trial, judgment, and death in this case, the wretched Charles Nutter of the Mills, Sir, whose ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... something in my nature which prevents me from silently displaying my sentiments, if that display can give pain, and so I answered his note, and sent him the book. He writes sonnets to Miss Seward, and Mr. Hayley; enough to stamp him 'blockhead.' ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... bodily efforts of the previous day, only slumbered, as Mrs. Mulcahy had at first anticipated; and when she had shaken and aroused him, for the twentieth time that morning, and scolded him until the spirit-broken blockhead whimpered,—nay, wept, or pretended to weep,—the dame returned to her ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... compare his blood; His blood in mud delights to run; Witness his lazy, lousy son! Puff'd up with pride and insolence, Without a grain of common sense, See with what consequence he stalks, With what pomposity he talks; See how the gaping crowd admire The stupid blockhead and the liar. How long shall vice triumphant reign? How long shall mortals bend to gain? How long shall virtue hide her face, And leave her votaries in disgrace? ——Let indignation fire my strains, Another ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... have you done!—Look up to me, my dearest life!—Sweet injured innocence, look up to me! What have you done!—Long will I not survive you!—And I was upon the point of drawing my sword to dispatch myself, when I discovered—[What an unmanly blockhead does this charming creature make me at her pleasure!] that all I apprehended was but a bloody nose, which, as far as I know (for it could not be stopped in a quarter of an hour) may have saved her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... heard what had happened, he said, 'You blockhead, you can't have done it properly; just let me have a try,' and with these words he seized his wife by the roots of her hair, cut her throat with a razor, and then took the pipe and blew into it with all his ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... and he crossed himself with great fervor. "Six thousand pounds English! why, that must be a hundred thousand—blockhead that I am!—more than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was considerably enlivened by the Squire's ale, commenced a series of gesticulations and capers, in the midst of which he stopped and cried, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... discovery of the civilized ages, by Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and Co. There is no God, but have we not invented gunpowder?—who wants a God, with that in his pocket?[68] There is no Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but have we not paper and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and the Day of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for a judge, and the flat of the universe for the throne? There is no law, but only gravitation and congelation, and we are stuck together in an everlasting hail, and melted together ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... right reason, which of necessity will give allowance to the failings of others, by considering that there is nothing perfect in mankind." In the same Essay he gives his own receipt for satire: "How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms!... This is the mystery of that noble trade.... Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive: a witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... die of cold," said the Judge. "Don't be a blockhead, Perkins, we have got to get her ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... and yet 'tis true, There are as mad, abandon'd critics too. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always listening to himself appears. All books he reads, and all he reads assails, From Dryden's Fables down to D'Urfey's Tales. With him, most authors steal their works, or ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... English one." He who honored me with this eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and good one," and of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and, finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by —— College, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... fool! you've spoiled all. There!" he shouted despairingly, as the quick clatter of hoofs rang from the arroyo behind them, "there they go! That's your work, blockhead! Out of my way, or by God—" but the sentence was left unfinished as, joined by the sheriff, who had galloped up at the sound of the robbers' flight, he darted past the unconcerned Ezekiel. Demorest would have followed, but Blandford, with ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... thyself thou art; For that by nature fit, No blockhead better suits the part, Than ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... my sole ornaments, my prettiest feature," said the Woozy, uneasily. "If I give up those three hairs I—I'm just a blockhead." ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a bit hard, and eating a cold luncheon harder still; but worst of all was having to hear him growl and snap at the clerks. Oh, he's perfectly horrid. I don't see how they stand it. Of course, I had my share. 'Miss Blockhead' was ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... coastwise blockhead that gets lost if he loses sight of land. He steers a course from headland to headland, and every little while on dark nights he stands in close and listens. Pretty soon he hears a dog barking alongshore. 'All right,' he says to the mate; 'we're off Point Montara. I know that Newfoundland ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... he stood in the center of the room and scratched his head. "Hang it, I've made an ass of myself. That blockhead will have the gendarmes about my ears. If they arrest me there will be the devil to pay. The Lord and the Baronet Fitzgerald!" he repeated. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and fell to laughing again. "Confound these picture-book kingdoms! They ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Mr. Colton, I tell you that you are all wrong. Simply because a man lives in the country it does not follow that he is a blockhead. No one in Denboro is rich, as you would count riches, but plenty of them are independent and ask no help from any one. You can't ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... has been coming over me ever since I came here; but it is greatest since yesterday. You know what sorrows I have passed through, Jemima; how unjustly I was always treated at school, the masters keeping me back and calling me a blockhead, though, as they themselves allowed, I had the best memory of any boy in the school, and could repeat whole books from beginning to end. You know how cruelly father always used me, calling me a noodle and a ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... weighs every statement, questions every fact, and corrects every inaccuracy.' The liar at any rate recognises that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilised being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company. Mr. Mahaffy, however, makes an exception in favour of the eminent specialist and tells us that intelligent questions addressed to an astronomer, or a pure mathematician, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... his course has run, How comes it that he shows his face Next morning in his former place?" "Ho! there's a pretty question, truly!" Replied our wight, with an unruly Burst of laughter and delight, So much his triumph seemed to please him: "Why, blockhead! he goes back at night, And that's the reason no one sees him!" The ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... cut short the marionette's words by taking out their handcuffs and preparing to lead him away to prison. But the innkeeper was a good-hearted man, and he was sorry for the poor blockhead. He begged them to leave ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Erizo, Erizo, this Block must be remov'd, he has stepped between you and a Command to Day, and perhaps may lye between me and my Mistress to Night.' 'By Hell (answered Erizo) thou hast raised a Fury in me, that will not be lulled asleep, but by a Potion of his Blood; let's dispatch this Blockhead first': And running at the Footman, with one Thrust killed him. Dangerfield by this time had been let out, and hearing the Noise, ran to the Place; they presently assaulted him; he defended himself very bravely the space of some Minutes, having wounded Gonzago in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... law, we may remark, takes no account of the theft of a patronymic. Worse than all is the rape of ideas which these caterers for the public mind, like the slave-merchants of Asia, tear from the paternal brain before they are well matured, and drag half-clothed before the eyes of their blockhead of a sultan, their Shahabaham, their terrible public, which, if they don't amuse it, will cut off their heads by curtailing the ingots and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... beginning of 1651. The Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio is now pleasanter reading for Milton's detractors than for those who honour his name. The unbridled insults which it heaps upon Charles I and still more upon Salmasius, for whom its least offensive titles are such as "blockhead," "liar" and "apostate," exceed even the wide limits of abuse customary in these days. Corruptio optimi pessima: such a man as Milton, if he once descends to the bandying of foul language, will beat the very bargemen themselves. But what astonished his contemporaries was not ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... found, under the rose be it spoken, even for a bishop to be a blockhead: but, if that bishop had sense enough to discern my good qualities, I ought not to be the most unrelenting of his censurers. My defence of the articles would indeed do its own business: yet to come ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... case, thought, sure the man is blind! "What sort of eyes can you have got?" said he. "Why very good ones, friend, as you may see." "Yes, I perceive the clearness of the ball. Pray let me ask you Can you read at all?" "No! you great blockhead!—If I could, what need Of paying you for any 'helps to read?'" And so he left the maker in a heat, Resolved to post him for an arrant ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... didn't carry a small figure, sir. Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises. —How long before this leg is done? Perhaps an hour, sir. Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (turns to go). Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books. I am so rich, I could have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman empire (which was ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... rug, put them in the carriage, and drove off to her own town. Grigory accepted the blow like a devoted slave, without a word, and when he escorted the old lady to her carriage he made her a low bow and pronounced impressively that, "God would repay her for the orphans." "You are a blockhead all the same," the old lady shouted to him ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... inclined to think it would be accurate and worth while. It wouldn't do not to capture it. At the same time I wouldn't have laid a finger on her, to compel her, for a million dollars. I stood and stared like a blockhead for a minute, at my wit's end, and she sat there and smiled. All of a sudden I had an idea. I caught the end of the table and tipped it up, and off slid the young lady, and I snatched at the knob of the drawer, and had ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the Siege of Carthagena will have to go on WITHOUT Engineer science henceforth. May be important, that,—who knows? Another thing was still more palpably important: Sea-General Vernon had an undisguised contempt for Land-General Wentworth. 'A mere blockhead, whose Brother has a Borough,' thinks Vernon (himself an Opposition Member, of high-sniffing, angry, not too magnanimous turn);—and withdraws now to his Ships; intimating: 'Do your Problem, then; I have set you down beside it, which was my part of the affair!'—Let us give the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... nothing more injurious to golf than serenely admiring the view. But the clerical golfer, being a man of quick temper, poured forth a torrent of abuse, exclaiming, "How could I hole the ball with that blockhead over there working his umbrella as if it were the pendulum of an eight-day clock!" When this is the kind of thing that is happening, I advise the golfer to try variations in his stance for putting, effecting the least possible amount of change at a time. There is a chance that at ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... inexpedient &c 647; frivolous &c (trivial) 643. Phr. Davus sum non [Lat.] [Oedipus]; a fool's bolt is soon shot [Henry V.] clitellae bovi sunt impositae [Lat.] [Cicero]; fools rush in where angels fear to tread [Pope]; il n' a ni bouche ni eperon [Fr.]; the bookful blockhead, ignorantly read [Pope]; to varnish nonsense with the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lost your pleasure to secure your fear. How can he show his manhood, if you bind him To box, like boys, with one hand tied behind him? This is plain levelling of wit; in which The poor has all the advantage, not the rich. The blockhead stands excused, for wanting sense; And wits turn ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... visitors, one was Ferfitchkin, a Russianised German—a little fellow with the face of a monkey, a blockhead who was always deriding everyone, a very bitter enemy of mine from our days in the lower forms—a vulgar, impudent, swaggering fellow, who affected a most sensitive feeling of personal honour, though, of course, he was a wretched little coward at heart. He was one of ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... demanded in the man's own language, "by standing in the way of the maharajah sahib's orders? Here's his highness sending a lady doctor to the princess for an excuse to confine her elsewhere and have all this trouble off our hands, and you, like a blockhead, stand in the way to ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... let off too much steam. Quite against your principles to be so violent—shame on you, man. Yet after all it was very provoking to be made such a fool of before that insolent fellow. Poor Teddy—I wish I hadn't hit you such a slap. But, after all, you deserved it, you superstitious blockhead. Well, well, it's of no use regretting. Glad I didn't hit Ladoc, though, it's too soon for that. Humph! the time has come for action, however. Things are drawing to a point. They shall culminate to-morrow. ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... farmer laughed, and thus replied: 'Thou dull important lump of pride, 30 Dar'st thou with that harsh grating tongue, Depreciate birds of warbling song? Indulge thy spleen. Know, men and fowl Regard thee, as thou art an owl. Besides, proud blockhead, be not vain, Of what thou call'st thy slaves and train. Few follow wisdom or her rules; Fools in ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... but this absurd pot of heavy-wet can and does, Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites, and this accursed dish of liquor. And thou pratest of thy 'liberty,' thou entire blockhead!"—Carlyle. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... could scold him, so I forgave him and invited him to sit down and have a smoke. He fairly jumped at the idea, and it pleased me to see him bite. I thought then how little Tescheron could know of this innocent blockhead, Jim Hosley, whose heart and brain traps were built on the open, sanitary ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... often said, that surely you must all be informed on this point), how the drawing, the placing, and the cutting of this most crucial test of a man's powers as an artist or workman, determines the extent of one or other, or both; for a man may be the one, and show himself a blockhead as to the other. You ask for originality, and you find copy, copy all over the world; yet you may suddenly pounce on a line or two not seen in combination before, most abominably in juxtaposition to ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... the cleverest, grandest old man that ever lived, wrote it!” declaimed Larry, his voice booming loudly in the room. “It’s all a great big game, fixed up to try you and Pickering,—but principally you, you blockhead! Oh, it’s grand, perfectly, deliciously grand,—and to think it should be my good luck to ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... down a bridge, and flooded heaven knows how many campi; then rain came—and it is still thawing—so that my saddle-horses have a sinecure till the roads become more practicable. Why did Lega give away the goat? a blockhead—I must have him again. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... burnt dreadeth the fire, Jack," answered the old man. "This is not the first time we have had the King's coin pulled down. I am as true a man to the King as any here; but I have taken no oath to that dotipole [blockhead] of Warwick; and if he play this game once too oft, he may find he hath ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... had gained over, came at last to meet him by appointment. When he arrived, it was only to inform him of the manner in which he had been baffled, to convince him that the game was up, and that nothing was left him but to retreat utterly foiled in his attempt, and to be stigmatized as a blockhead by his enraged sovereign. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... brief newspaper notice of a murderer's execution somewhere in France. The Procureur, who was present at the last toilet of the criminal, sees that he is putting on his shoes on his bare feet, and—the blockhead!—reminds him: 'What about the socks?' But the other gives him a look and says, sort of thoughtfully: 'Is it worth while?' Do you understand, these two remarks, so very short, struck me like a blow on the skull! At once all the horror and all the stupidity of unnatural ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... nomination to so many places, that commands the regiments and ships-of-war, and "robs the Exchequer with unwashed hands." The man who owns it, may be what he can, an honest man, or a scoundrel, a mushroom or an Howard, a scholar, or a brute, a wit or a blockhead, c'est egal. Proud, haughty, highdaring, free England, is not this true to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... "Nay, not a blockhead, Monsieur; I have good eyes, and I have seen what I have seen. But, really ill as you are, Monsieur le ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... scruples,' cried Saint-Pol, smiting the table, 'you will gain nothing else. Within your country's law, blockhead! Why, my sister is within the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... superstitious art represented finally by Perugino, and the modern scientific and anatomical art represented primarily by Michael Angelo. And the epithet bestowed on Perugino by Michael Angelo, 'goffo nell' arte,' dunce, or blockhead, in art,—being, as far as my knowledge of history extends, the most cruel, the most false, and the most foolish insult ever offered by one great man to another,—does you at least good service, in showing how trenchant the separation ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... "The blockhead doesn't seem to know yet," growled the captain, as the other turned away, "that the lead will give you deep water here until your vessel has ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... that the cords were too long," mutters the old man; "but no, 'It's not too long, Daddy.' There's no making you do anything, you will have everything your own way.... Blockhead!" ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... provisions in port. The men, of course, naturally retaliated by measuring their work according to the food they got; and then it was seen that the game was to be too costly and too perilous. The common-sense commander would find a judicious retreat from an untenable position, and the blockhead would persevere with it during a whole voyage, and boastfully retail a sickening story of meanness to an audience who, he cherished the idea, would regard him as a hero! How much bitterness and loss was caused by this parochial-minded malignity can never be estimated. It was undoubtedly a ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... failure, until his figure became a universal terror. His common method was to price a horse, and while the dealer showed Barney the animal's teeth, Haggart would slip under the uplifted arm, and ease the blockhead of his blunt. Arrogant in his skill, delighted with his manifold triumphs, Haggart led a life of unbroken prosperity under the brisk air of heaven, and, despite the risk of his profession, he remained ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... surely that terrible leader of Walter's Was not utterly void of foundation in fact. Was the Cabinet really not full of defaulters, And resolved for a time on that ruinous act?" "Cease, blockhead, to babble Your ganderlike gable: Could Repeal e'er be REASON CONTENTS ME with Graham, Could the NE NIMIUM Of good Gordon succumb, Or the Stanley's SANS CHANGER be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... "Milet-Mureau, an old blockhead. A pretty time to choose to let fools sail the ship! English rockets from all the headlands, and those cursed Chouan cockchafers in the air! You may rely upon it that some one behind those puppets pulled the wire when they saw we were getting ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... by heaven, that's too bad! My father's trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad? My father, sir, did never stoop so low— He was a ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... funds. His wife, who had by this time returned with the wives of the other officers to Russia, had actually been searched for hidden booty.[12] And now, after toils and hardships untold, only five months' provisions were left for the ships sailing from Kamchatka; and the blockhead underlings were compelling a waste of those provisions by sailing in the wrong direction. If the worst came, could Bering hold his men with those tied hands ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... that the imprudent is honoured and the wise despised. The alchemist died of poverty and distress, while the blockhead found a ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... expresses from General Howe, at New York, in North America, as late as the 19th of last February, which are, in every respect, very disagreeable indeed. He writes in severe terms against General Heister, whom he calls an old woman in the field, and a stupid and incorrigible blockhead in the cabinet; he also says, that the Hessians and other Germans are the worst troops under his command, and are not fit to be trusted in any business; he has, therefore, desired several particular English ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... had not long been in Hades, was cowering over a small fire in a distant corner, endeavoring to keep from freezing, when his Impious Majesty himself heard the youth soliloquizing: "When will LIE BIG, the editor of the Sun, keep me company?" "You blockhead!" exclaimed his Majesty, "LIE BIG, the editor of the Sun, is not coming back for some time; he is of more service to me on earth, making converts for my jurisdiction, than the public are ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... not have said so at first, you blockhead?" said the Duke, signing the paper without looking at the contents—"What other letters? And remember, I must be ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... chapel friend, an ancient virgin like herself, named Mademoiselle Vaubois, who was a positive blockhead, and beside whom Mademoiselle Gillenormand had the pleasure of being an eagle. Beyond the Agnus Dei and Ave Maria, Mademoiselle Vaubois had no knowledge of anything except of the different ways of making preserves. Mademoiselle ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... little blockhead should be allowed to do what she liked with her money and that he should not be able to forbid her! This he said to himself at intervals of five minutes through the day—which led to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are incapable of gauging power of intellect and fineness of character. But the veriest blockhead and simpleton who ever lounged in a doorway or lisped in Pall Mall can tell a fine woman when he sees her, and is probably able to find pleasure and hope in the spectacle. It is these blockheads and simpletons ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... came to the bottom of the ladder, called out that he had brought him a patient, desiring some one to bear a hand, and help him easily down. The surgeon turned about, but instead of giving any assistance, exclaimed, "You blockhead, what do you do here with a man that has lost his head?" "Lost his head!" says Benbow; "the lying fellow, why he told me it was his leg; but I never in my life believed what he said without being sorry ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to argue; it is vain to say to this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea. For, I ask of the men of knowledge of the world whether they would not hold him for a blockhead that should hope to prevail in an argument whose scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask, further, when such attempts have been made, have they not failed of success? ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... than moral character. The former naturally takes a much more outward direction, and expresses itself not only in the face and the play of feature, but also in the gait, down even to the very slightest movement. One could perhaps discriminate from behind between a blockhead, a fool and a man of genius. The blockhead would be discerned by the torpidity and sluggishness of all his movements: folly sets its mark upon every gesture, and so does intellect and a studious nature. Hence that remark of La Bruyere that ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying; and for this reason—I can never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough to ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... hand that way, and cried, 'Sir Cloudesly Shovel! a very gallant man!' As he stood before Busby's tomb, the Knight uttered himself again after the same manner, 'Dr. Busby, a great man! he whipped my grandfather; a very great man! I should have gone to him myself, if I had not been a blockhead; a ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... Junius, for blinking the whole questions B and C. He it is that has settled the question A, so that it will never be re-opened by a man of sense. A man who doubts, after really reading Mr. Taylor's work, is not only a blockhead, but an irreclaimable blockhead. It is true that several men, among them Lord Brougham, whom Schlosser (though hating him, and kicking him) cites, still profess scepticism. But the reason is evident: ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Marriage retrieves them and turns them into respectable and adoring husbands. Though rattle-brained, much given to gallantry, and somewhat lax in morality, they are not knaves or monsters; they do not inspire disgust. Even the lumpish blockhead, Squire Sullen—according to Macaulay a type of the main strength of the Tory party for half a century after the Revolution—contrasts favourably with his prototype Sir John Brute in Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife, He is a sodden sot, who always goes to bed drunk, ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... most affecting picture of my position, shewing that I should be in need of everything until my arrival at Rome, where I was going, I said, to fill the post of secretary of memorials, and my astonishment may be imagined when I saw the blockhead delighted at ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... my heart I had a conviction that one who had not studied the Talmud could not be anything but a blockhead ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... what her destiny would be, and the oracle replied that she had not yet taken the first step towards it. Esther was astonished and called her governess to see the two answers, but the good woman saw nothing wonderful in them whatever. Esther impatiently called her a blockhead, and entreated me to let her ask another question. I begged her to do so, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... me to turn my head, and I saw in a doorway that led to another room the erect figure of Major Lessard listening intently, a black frown on his eagle face. When MacRae had finished his story and the incapable blockhead behind the desk sat there regarding the two of us as though he considered that we had been the victims of a rank hallucination, Lessard slammed the door shut behind him and strode ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Weston his name is. I can give you his description in three words—an insensate, ugly, stupid blockhead. That's four, but ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... my old man—the old blockhead—off he goes: "Marry, marry," he says, "he must marry her and cover the sin," he says. "We must take the lad home," he says, "and he shall marry," he says. Well, I did my best to make him change his mind, but, dear me, no. So, all right, ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... and the same profusion. When they had taken their seats in the corner of the room, Yussuf said, "Now my guests, as you hope for pardon, tell me, do you know nothing of what has happened to me this day—and what the blockhead of a caliph has been about?" Haroun and the vizier could with difficulty restrain their laughter, as they shook their heads. "Yes," continued Yussuf, "that vicegerent of a tattered beard, and more tattered ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... physicians cannot tell what an ague is, and all our arithmetique is not able to number the days of a man'—which, God knows, is not the fault of arithmetique, but that our understandings reach not the thing." "The blockhead Albemarle hath strange luck to be loved, though he be, and every man must know it, the heaviest man in the world, but stout and honest to his country." "He advises me in what I write to him, to be as short as I can, and obscure." ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... into a loud laugh. "What a blockhead you are, to be sure!" he shouted, slapping his thighs. "Good heavens, was there ever such an idiotic person! Don't stare at me so stupidly. Come, come, you needn't begin to cry directly. Go and fetch some ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... men is allotted a complete endowment of mental faculties, of capacities of intellect and feeling; the degree to which these are energized, are injected with nervous flame, makes the difference between a genius and a blockhead. There being high vital pressure at a full, rich, interior source, and thence, strong mental currents, through what channels the currents shall flow depends on individual aptitudes, these aptitudes shaping, in the one case, a Dante, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... mean to tell to the first blockhead I meet. First of all I should like to know who you are. If you are robbers I shall defend myself against you to the best of my ability; if you are fools I shall try to enlighten you; if you are brave and honest men I ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... puppy, a fool, a blockhead, a clumsy varlet, a mere Jack Belford!—I thought myself a much cleverer fellow than I am!—Why could I not have been followed in by Dorcas, who might have taken it up, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... retorted, smiling. "He is—he is not your friend or relative, is he? He is such a blockhead, and, saving your presence, at the same time ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Wakes from his dream and labours for a joke; With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart." ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... ass I am! I remember now. I left the stick against the wall of the opera house. Blockhead! With a stick, now!... ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... not converse with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, whom he wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but like a philosopher and friend who has passed through life with thought and observation, and is willing to enable others to pass through it with pleasure and profit. A writer of this stamp, I confess, appears to me as much superior to a common bookworm, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... said he, half repenting of his anger at her blunders over the cards. "Go out before dinner; you know you don't mind this cursed weather; and see that you come home full of adventures to relate. Come, little blockhead! give me a kiss, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... because I have used from time to time the only possible phrases for the case, that I mean the Victorian Englishman to appear as a blockhead, which means an unconscious buffoon. To all this there is a final answer: that he was also a conscious buffoon—and a successful one. He was a humorist; and one of the best humorists in Europe. That which Goethe had never taught the Germans, Byron did manage to teach the ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... see, after the fever heat has subsided, what trash I have palmed upon them in the name of liberty!' Yet this is the way, Jonathan, to deal with demagogues. You make too much of yours, man. You are not the blockhead we take you for after all; but you delight to see your public men in motley, and the rogues will fool you to the top of your bent, till it is your pleasure to put down the show. So now that the piper has to be paid, and a lucid interval appears to be dawning upon you, to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... what the letter meant. It was not written by Naomi at all, and in my heart I cursed myself as a blockhead for being so easily duped. I heard the gruff voices of men, and among others I felt sure I heard that of Israel Barnicoat. For some few minutes, although my hands were pinioned, I struggled fiercely, but it was ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... poltroon, shaker, squeamer, Blockhead, sluggard, dullard, dreamer, Shirker, shuffler, crawler, creeper, Sniffler, snuffler, wailer, weeper, Earthworm, maggot, tadpole, weevil! Set upon thy course of evil, Lest the King of Spectre-land Set ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... motioning the two young men to sit down. "It was the fault of that blockhead Pastrini, that I did not sooner assist you in your distress. He did not mention a syllable of your embarrassment to me, when he knows that, alone and isolated as I am, I seek every opportunity of making the acquaintance of my neighbors. As soon as I learned I could in any way ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... very far from being the blockhead these references imply. His "Third Nights" were probably far more profitable than Dryden's.[23] By his friends he was classed with the liveliest wits of a brilliant court. Rochester ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... exemplary cheapness. For instance, at Talyllyn, in Merionethshire, or anywhere off the line of tourists, I and a lieutenant in our English navy paid sixpence uniformly for a handsome dinner; sixpence, I mean, apiece. But two months later came a golden blockhead, who instructed the people that it was "sinful" to charge less than three shillings. In Wales, meantime, I suffered grievously from want of books; and fancying, in my profound ignorance of the world, that I could borrow money upon my own expectations, or, at least, that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... "No man but a blockhead," said Johnson, "ever wrote except for money." The doctrine is, of course, perfectly outrageous, and specially calculated to shock people who like to keep it for their private use, instead of proclaiming it in public. But it is a good expression of that huge contempt for the foppery ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... an argument that the Pope should be reconciled to him, because men of his profession were commonly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise; his holiness, enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and told him, it was he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man himself would not offend: the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and Michael Angelo had the Pope's benediction, accompanied with presents. This bishop had fallen into the vulgar ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinet, A fiddler may a fortune get; A blockhead, with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice: And oft the dancing-master's art Climbs from the toe to touch the heart. In learning let a nymph delight, The pedant gets a mistress by't. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... myself, for good and all. You see I had sworn to get her from you, and I could think of nothing but that oath. So I wrote—but, oh, Macrorie, Macrorie, why, in Heaven's name, did you make that mistake about Mrs. O'Halloran, and force that infernal oath out of me? Why did that confounded old blockhead forget to introduce her to you? That's the cause of all my woes. But I won't bore you, old fellow; I'll go on. So, you see, in my determination to get her, I stuck at nothing. First of all, instead ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... medley as it was, for there went fat "King Cole" with the most ragged of the beggar-maids. "Mistress Mary," in her pretty blue dress, tripped along with "Simple Simon" staring about him like a blockhead. The fine lady left her horse to dance with "Bobby Shafto" till every bell on her slippers tinkled its tongue out. "Bo-Peep" and a jolly fiddler skipped gayly up and down. "Miss Muffet" took the big spider for her partner, and made his many legs fly about in the wildest ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... What blockhead thinks now of reading Milton, or Pope, or Gray? Paradise Lost is lost; it has gone to the devil. Pope's Epistles are returned to the dead-letter office; the age is too loyal for "ruin seize thee, ruthless king," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... half. Do you think Blondel, who is on the point, Blondel, who will and will not and on whom all must turn, Blondel the upright, the impeccable, the patriotic, without whom we can do nothing, and who, I tell you, hangs in the balance—do you think he likes it, blockhead? Or is the more inclined to trust his life with us when he sees us brawlers, toss-pots, common swillers? Do you think he on whom I am bringing to bear all the resources of this brain—this!"—and again the big man tapped his forehead with tragic earnestness—"and ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... again!—the pains I took the other night again to make you comprehend what Free Trade meant. I knew you didn't understand a word about it; and if you did understand, you wouldn't believe me. You never take any notice of anything I say; but if Mrs. Bushel or any other blockhead tells you anything, you believe ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... of inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners—and, I married her:—gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might have—But let me remember to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... week-any night: let me know. Good-bye, good-bye, Lady Angela. God bless you. Here, James, give me your arm down the steps, and whistle for my fellow to draw up. There he is, in the middle of the road, the blockhead." ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... happened, or that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives sensuous images of truth; but it is only the Philistine or the blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. This ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to understand the ordinary use of the human language. If I did not suspect that you were a genius, I should certainly know you were a blockhead. I fancy we had better be getting along ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... nothing very amusing in all this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did not deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very soon have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish creature! The men who serve under this Imperial ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... matter of fact, I don't see," said I. "You will think me an awful blockhead, but I don't perceive anything singular in a cigar manufacturer sending ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... "Blockhead, that you cannot keep your thoughts on what you are doing! One might expect as good a game from the tumbler's dog. Is it the drink that you have got into your head, or the war matters that you ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... rasping sort of creature, especially if she does not cultivate sympathy with cigarettes as she gets older. [Laughter.] Let us be fair to mere man. Mere man has always treated me with exemplary fairness, and I certainly have never maintained that the blockhead majority is entirely composed of men; neither have I ever insinuated that it is man that ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... for a Whig, or a Puritan, or any other unimaginative blockhead, to cry out against all this as nauseous flattery, and assert that after all she was rather an unpoetical personage than otherwise—a coarse-minded old maid, half prude, half coquette, whose better part was mannish, and all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... practical use of the quality of imagination is to ameliorate married life. But who in England or America (or elsewhere) thinks of it in that connection? The plain man considers that imagination is all very well for poets and novelists. Blockhead! Yes, despite my high esteem for him, I will apply to him the Johnsonian term of abuse. Blockhead! Imagination is super-eminently for himself, and was beyond doubt invented by Providence in order that the plain man might chiefly exercise it ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... State-Paper Office).]—who is not much of a support either, though a gnarled weighty old stick in his way ("Professor at Strasburg once"): not interesting to us here. The rest his Imperial Majesty considers to be of sublimated blockhead type, it appears. Prince Eugene had died lately, and with Eugene ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... or I'll throw you out, you miserable blockhead!" roared Rokoff, taking a threatening step toward ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw tolerably—should do it at least—have had good masters, and flatter myself that I am not quite a blockhead." ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... skull against a wall," he had said in those hours of confidence; "and, to be as sublime a blockhead, if you'll allow me the word, you, my dear fellow, have kept sounding the charge. We've sat prating here of 'success,' heaven help us, like chanting monks in a cloister, hugging the sweet delusion that it lies somewhere in the work itself, in the expression, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... councillor. At that time if there was a Catholic, no matter how high or great or learned he was, he could not get a place. But if a Protestant came that was a blockhead and ignorant, the place would be open to him. There was a revolution rising because of that, and O'Connell brought it into the House of Commons and got it changed. He was the greatest man ever was in Ireland. He was a very clever lawyer; he would win every ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... and almost round and blue and I got it in a tree. Now if you're not a blockhead mebbe you can guess what it is." He moved his ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... John in his enthusiasm, catching her in his arms and kissing her. "I wouldn't for the world have you any thing but the darling little Lillie you are. I love your faults more than the virtues of other women. You are a thousand times better than I am. I am a great, coarse blockhead, compared to you. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings this noon; you know, Lillie, I'm hasty, and apt to be inconsiderate. I don't really know that I ought to let you go over ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Ovid too, That man's a blockhead, have confest: Powel and Stretch[1] the hint pursue; Life is a farce, the world ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Beauties and manly Graces, and deserting him every Night for an execrable Italian Ballad, so vile that a Boy who should write such lamentable Dogrel would be turn'd out of Westminster-School for a desperate Blockhead, too stupid to be corrected and amended by the harshest ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... applied to any particular individual, it breaks down completely. It is unfortunately no rare thing to see the good man striving against fate, and the fool born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Still on a large scale no test can be conceivably more reliable; a blockhead may succeed for a time, but a succession of many generations of blockheads does not go on steadily gaining ground, adding field to field and farm to farm, and becoming year by year more capable and prosperous. Given time— of which there is no ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... there again, how a man suffers for being good-natured,' said the locksmith. 'Miss Emma was with her uncle at the masquerade at Carlisle House, where she had gone, as the people at the Warren told me, sorely against her will. What does your blockhead father when he and Mrs Rudge have laid their heads together, but goes there when he ought to be abed, makes interest with his friend the doorkeeper, slips him on a mask and domino, and mixes with ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... we say? by a light wife,—"or to serve under the haughty FONTANGE [Species of topknot; so named from Fontange, an unfortunate female of Louis Fourteenth's, who invented the ornament.] of my Spouse [as Ludwig Rudolf does, by all accounts], than to have a blockhead who would drive me mad by her ineptitudes? and whom I should be ashamed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... you not got rid of your ideas of metempsychosis yet, eh? Do you still believe that men are turned into beasts, and beasts into men?" The features of our Dchiahour relaxed into a broad grin. "Ho-le! Ho-le!" said he, slapping his forehead; "what a blockhead I am—what was I thinking about? I had forgotten the doctrine,"... and he turned off quite abashed at having given his ridiculous warning. The fish was fried in mutton ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... still more angry, and said: "What! the blockhead gave his eight krans to a beggar? Send him to me." And when Abdul Karim came before him, he said scornfully: "You must fancy yourself a big man, Abdul. I never give more than a copper coin to a beggar, but your ...
— The Cat and the Mouse - A Book of Persian Fairy Tales • Hartwell James
... mean? It means that you are a stupid, a fool, a blockhead! All the world knows that one of your daughters is the mistress of a nobleman, and you are not only content to live with her and share her shameful earnings, but you actually come here to me and make a ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... to be put aside, and most resolutely, for, whenever it occupied his mind, he soon found himself uttering contemptuous remarks upon his own thick-headed folly. He would sometimes blurt out such words as 'fool—idiot—blockhead,' as he walked along the street, astonishing passers-by who could not be supposed to know that the speaker was applying ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... governing bodies. On the public sentiment of Greece this hatred seems to have been a more powerful influence than more subtle political considerations. The detested Bulgar, the barbarian, the "kondri-cephalous" (blockhead) was advancing into eastern Macedonia, which the Greeks had gained at so much cost, and they were taking possession of that section of the country where the population really is preponderatingly Greek. In the north, in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... been shown to a genius, like him, "broken-hearted." He'd " no doubt but his friends in Parnassus must know How his fine declamation was laugh'd at below; And how Keate, like a blockhead ungifted with brains, Had neglected to grant him a prize for his pains. He was sure, if such conduct continued much longer, The school must grow weaker, and indolence stronger; That the rights of sixth form would be laid in the dust, And the school after that, he thought, tumble ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... was a blockhead, a just-qualified general practitioner, and quite ignorant of mental science. He simply said there was no moth. Had he possessed the wit, he might still, perhaps, have saved Hapley from his fate by entering into his delusion, and covering ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... impossible conditions.[895] But Charles was too impatient to await his caprice. "My dear aunt," he once said to the Queen of Navarre, a short time before her death, "I honor you more than the Pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not indeed a Huguenot, but neither am I a blockhead; and if the Pope play the fool too much, I will myself take Margot," his common nickname for his sister, "by the hand, and give her away in marriage in ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... hands trembling so that he could scarcely hold his work, he began to administer the palatable poison which every human heart is only too ready to receive. "I tell you, Bill," said he, "you are the biggest blockhead I ever saw. If you like to look at the pictures, stand at the windows as long as you please, and do not run yourself to death. Just look at the other shoemakers' boys; they hang their string of boots and shoes over their ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... so, Alexandra Pavlovna, because you don't know me. You think I am a perfect blockhead, a log; but do you know I am capable of melting like sugar, of spending whole ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... left you in the lurch; I told you he would. Lucien is a clever fellow, and you never were respectful to him. You used him as a hack. Repent, blockhead!" said Blondet. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... was prodigious; from the scheming to the executing not a moment lost.' "Monsieur le Comte," said his Secretary to him once, "what you require is impossible."—"Impossible!" answered he starting from his chair, "Ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot, Never name to me that blockhead of a word." (Dumont, p. 311.) And then the social repasts; the dinner which he gives as Commandant of National Guards, which 'costs five hundred pounds;' alas, and 'the Sirens of the Opera;' and all the ginger that is hot in the mouth:—down what a course is this man hurled! Cannot Mirabeau stop; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... you must sigh like a horse down with the colic. So—o! that's right. Thus I go, drilling myself in hypocrisy; stamp impatiently in the street when I fail to succeed; rail at myself for being such a blockhead, whilst the astonished passers-by turn round and stare ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... most ancient of the noble families in the Morea; is a well-meaning old blockhead; has a son, a good-looking youth, who commanded the Government forces against the captains in 1824; is said to be an ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... his romantic flights. The blockhead, I believe, is so attach'd, I shou'dn't wonder if he flew off at a tangent, and married the girl that ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... prove how much better Garrick, Powel, Holland, or Barry, performed the character; and as nine-tenths of your readers cannot remember those performers, you may easily persuade them that the object of your censure is a blockhead. If he has the art of rapid elocution, tell him he speaks too fast; and if he speaks slowly, and with discrimination, say that he only waits to catch applause. If his action is graceful, tell him he makes too much use of his arms and hands; and if his action ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... been in Hades, was cowering over a small fire in a distant corner, endeavoring to keep from freezing, when his Impious Majesty himself heard the youth soliloquizing: "When will LIE BIG, the editor of the Sun, keep me company?" "You blockhead!" exclaimed his Majesty, "LIE BIG, the editor of the Sun, is not coming back for some time; he is of more service to me on earth, making converts for my jurisdiction, than the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... upon the world again! Where are you, my fine EDITOR? I say Sir, I was an ass—do you hear?—an ass, premature, wise before my time, a brute, a blockhead! Did I talk of dust and ashes? Oh! Sir, I lied multitudinously. Every nerve, every muscle that didn't try to strangle me in that utterance, lied. No, Sir; let me tell you it's a great world; glorious—magnificent; a world that can't be beat! Talk of the stars and a better world, but ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the Englishman, he stood in the center of the room and scratched his head. "Hang it, I've made an ass of myself. That blockhead will have the gendarmes about my ears. If they arrest me there will be the devil to pay. The Lord and the Baronet Fitzgerald!" he repeated. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and fell to laughing again. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... is a blockhead," thought the abbe as he looked at the president, whose rumpled hair added to the ill grace of his brown countenance. "Couldn't he have found some ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... know, you blockhead! He suspected Wyndham of that boat-race business. I can't make out how, but he did. And the young fool all along thought it was Beamish's he was in a row about. But Riddell wouldn't have known it to this day if you hadn't given ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... neglected by Sheldon, as we had seen. For which he was broke, poor devil, and a better man set there to watch the red fox Tarleton, to harry Emmeriek, and to throw the fear o' God into that headlong blockhead, Simcoe, a brave man, but so possessed by hatred for "Mr." Washington that every move he made was like a goaded bull—his halts merely the bewilderment of baffled fury, his charges blind ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... As applied to any particular individual, it breaks down completely. It is unfortunately no rare thing to see the good man striving against fate, and the fool born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Still on a large scale no test can be conceivably more reliable; a blockhead may succeed for a time, but a succession of many generations of blockheads does not go on steadily gaining ground, adding field to field and farm to farm, and becoming year by year more capable and prosperous. Given time— of which there is no scant in the matter ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... is the most serious employment of your life—for as to eating, you hardly match a sparrow; but I entreat you to sleep without dreaming, or to keep your visions to yourself.—Why do you keep such fast hold of me?—What on earth can you be afraid of?—Surely you do not think the blockhead Binks, or any other of the good folks below yonder, dared to turn on me? Egad, I wish they would pluck up a little mettle, that I might have an excuse for drilling them. Gad, I would soon teach them to follow ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... faith or faith, thy, thigh, this, thistle, thou, thousand, thank, they, them, theame, thus, thunder, thine, thin, goal or goal, as afore, motion, crimson, action, Acteon, singed, hanged, changed, shepherd, Shaphat, dishonour, asham'd, bishop, mishap, character, charity, duckherd, blockhead, Dutchess, gather, success, suggest, or suggest, or suggest, or suggest, haov, rij, [w]heg and who, come, on, you know what I mean, as well as [h]orses. War rod: scepter, sceptic, syllables, bless, access, axes, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... O well married Couple, what strange tricks and actions that children will play. If yours act then the part of a liberal Son, or wanton Student, rejoice therein that you have not brought forth a dunce or blockhead; but since his Doctor saith that he is sharp-witted, and a hopefull youth; doubt not, but that you will, when he comes to his seriouser years, with delight and pleasure see him to be a ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... the Pope should be reconciled to him, because men of his profession were commonly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise; his holiness, enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and told him, it was he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man himself would not offend: the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and Michael Angelo had the Pope's benediction, accompanied with presents. This bishop had fallen into the vulgar ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of the duty of the Clerk of the Acts shows the importance of the office, and the statement that if the clerk is not fitted to act as a commissioner he is a blockhead and unfit for his employment is particularly racy, and not quite the form of expression one would expect to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... his rapidly growing wealth, excited envy; his dialect was not understood; his manners were not those of the men of fashion who had been formed at Whitehall; his abilities were therefore greatly underrated; and it was the fashion to call him a blockhead, fit only to carry messages. But, on the Continent, where he was judged without malevolence, he made a very different impression. It is a remarkable fact that this man, who in the drawingrooms and coffeehouses of London was described as an awkward, stupid, Hogan Mogan,—such ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Defoe was taunted with his want of learning, he retorted that if he was a blockhead it was not the fault of his father, who had "spared nothing in his education that might qualify him to match the accurate Dr. Browne, or the learned Observator." His father was a Nonconformist, a member of the congregation of Dr. Annesley, ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief!" The obstinacy of George III. cost England her dearest and fairest possession. It is almost impossible to picture what would be her power to-day if she had continued to ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... mean by running into me, you blockhead!" cried the purser, in a loud voice. "Why don't you look ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... am! I remember now. I left the stick against the wall of the opera house. Blockhead! With a stick, ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... is at once our duty and our inestimable privilege, if we are always looking out into the future, and vexing ourselves with endless fears as to how things are to go then. There is no divine promise, that, if a reckless blockhead leaves his children to starve, they shall not starve. And a certain inspired volume speaks with extreme severity of the man who fails to provide for them of his own house. But there is a divine promise which says to the humble Christian,—"As thy days, so shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... acted on the principle that an opponent is necessarily a blockhead or a scoundrel. But there was little or no truth in his severe arraignment. Richmond's purpose was plainly to nominate Horatio Seymour if it could be done with the consent of the Northwestern States, and his sudden affection for a two-thirds rule came from a determination to prolong the convention ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of materials that are indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to argue; it is vain to say to this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea. For, I ask of the men of knowledge of the world whether they would not hold him for a blockhead that should hope to prevail in an argument whose scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask, further, when such attempts have been made, have they not failed of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... without paying—this being, it seems, an immemorial privilege which the beaus of the town prescribe for themselves. This, however, did not suit Wild's temper, who called it a cheat, and objected against it as requiring no dexterity, but what every blockhead might put in execution. He said it was a custom very much savouring of the sneaking-budge, [Footnote: Shoplifting] but neither so honourable nor ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... Trinity College. In Trinity College he remained for thirteen years, studying, thinking, dreaming, bewildering most of the collegians, his colleagues, who seemed to have been unable to make up their minds whether he was a genius or a blockhead. Within the walls of Trinity he worked, gradually and laboriously piecing together and thoughtfully shaping out his theory of the metaphysical conception of the material world about him; poring over Locke and Plato, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... father,' he replied, 'I am quite willing to learn something—indeed, if it could but be managed, I should like to learn how to shudder. I don't understand that at all yet.' The elder brother smiled when he heard that, and thought to himself: 'Goodness, what a blockhead that brother of mine is! He will never be good for anything as long as he lives! He who wants to be a sickle must bend ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... man was not a mere clown or blockhead; but beneath his "hodden gray" often carried good feeling, intelligence, and wit. He was rather humorous than ludicrous, and had some dignity of character. Since his time, consideration for the poor has greatly increased; we see it in the large charitable gifts, which are always increasing—in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... wife,—"or to serve under the haughty FONTANGE [Species of topknot; so named from Fontange, an unfortunate female of Louis Fourteenth's, who invented the ornament.] of my Spouse [as Ludwig Rudolf does, by all accounts], than to have a blockhead who would drive me mad by her ineptitudes? and whom I should be ashamed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings from the monuments, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... blockhead! Why, the thought flashed through my head the very moment I heard the first note. But ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... does not pretend his stone is safe. All he says is, safe or not, he'll run it out. So now the question is, will you pay four shillings from your box for this blockhead's loss of time in hanging ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim—"What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... his comrades heard what had happened, he said, 'You blockhead, you can't have done it properly; just let me have a try,' and with these words he seized his wife by the roots of her hair, cut her throat with a razor, and then took the pipe and blew into it with all his might but he couldn't bring her back to life. The same thing happened ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... useless &c 645; inexpedient &c 647; frivolous &c (trivial) 643. Phr. Davus sum non [Lat.] [Oedipus]; a fool's bolt is soon shot [Henry V.] clitellae bovi sunt impositae [Lat.] [Cicero]; fools rush in where angels fear to tread [Pope]; il n' a ni bouche ni eperon [Fr.]; the bookful blockhead, ignorantly read [Pope]; to varnish nonsense with the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Protestants to an equality of rights with the Catholics, and that he had left in the middle of his empire these vigorous seeds of hatred and disaffection. But the world was never yet conquered by a blockhead. One of the very first measures we saw him recurring to was the complete establishment of religious liberty. If his subjects fought and paid as he pleased, he allowed them to believe as they pleased. The moment I saw this, my best hopes were lost. I perceived in a moment the ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... hers, that I had bruised my fists thumping against a stone wall. Had I discoursed to her in Bengalee she would have comprehended me no more imperfectly. The doom of hopelessness was upon her. She was not merely a fool, but had taken the full degree as a self-satisfied blockhead. I deserved what I got—and more of the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... the count, motioning the two young men to sit down. "It was the fault of that blockhead Pastrini, that I did not sooner assist you in your distress. He did not mention a syllable of your embarrassment to me, when he knows that, alone and isolated as I am, I seek every opportunity of making the acquaintance of my neighbors. As soon as I learned I could in any way ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... accompanied by merit, will make itself felt as fascination, and that no virtuous aspiration will be frustrated—all which, if I mistake not, are doctrines of the schools, and they imply that the Jewess I prefer will prefer me. Any blockhead can cite generalities, but the mind-master discerns ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives sensuous images of truth; but it is only the Philistine or the blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all agree to use ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and Co. There is no God, but have we not invented gunpowder?—who wants a God, with that in his pocket?[68] There is no Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but have we not paper and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and the Day of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for a judge, and the flat of the universe for the throne? There is no law, but only gravitation and congelation, and we are stuck together in an everlasting hail, and melted together in everlasting ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in meek submission to the will Parental, or in hope of a support; In a few years,—as heart and brain mature, And knowledge widens,—finds her lord and master Is a wrong-headed churl, a selfish tyrant, A miser, or a blockhead, or a brute; Her love for him, if love there ever was, Is turned to hatred or indifference: What shall she do? The world has one reply: You made your bed, and you must lie in it; True, you were heedless seventeen—no matter! True, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... Quixote bade him go on with his story, he neither looked up nor uttered a word in reply; but after some time he raised his head and said, "I cannot get rid of the idea, nor will anyone in the world remove it, or make me think otherwise—and he would be a blockhead who would hold or believe anything else than that that arrant knave Master Elisabad made free with ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "1781.—What a blockhead Dr. Burney is to be always sending for his daughter home so! what a monkey! is she not better and happier with me than she can be anywhere else? Johnson is enraged at the silliness of their family conduct, and Mrs. Byron disgusted; I confess myself provoked ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... grown insolent since I had seized the money; and being desirous to shake off the yoke of a governor, 'Do you know, Mr. Brinon,' said I, 'that I don't like a blockhead to set up for a reasoner? Do you go to supper, if you please; but take care that I have post-horses ready before daybreak.' The moment he mentioned cards and dice, I felt the money burn in my pocket. I was somewhat surprised, however, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... what have you done!—Look up to me, my dearest life!—Sweet injured innocence, look up to me! What have you done!—Long will I not survive you!—And I was upon the point of drawing my sword to dispatch myself, when I discovered—[What an unmanly blockhead does this charming creature make me at her pleasure!] that all I apprehended was but a bloody nose, which, as far as I know (for it could not be stopped in a quarter of an hour) may have saved her head and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... stupid; to these he gave the exactest and most expressive colours, and in some of them looked as if it were not in the power of human passions to alter a feature of him. A countenance of wood could not be more fixed than his, when the blockhead of a character required it; his face was full and long; from his crown to the end of his nose was the shorter half of it, so that the disproportion of his lower features, when soberly composed, threw him into the most ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... was) a land of exemplary cheapness. For instance, at Talyllyn, in Merionethshire, or anywhere off the line of tourists, I and a lieutenant in our English navy paid sixpence uniformly for a handsome dinner; sixpence, I mean, apiece. But two months later came a golden blockhead, who instructed the people that it was "sinful" to charge less than three shillings. In Wales, meantime, I suffered grievously from want of books; and fancying, in my profound ignorance of the world, that I could borrow money upon my own expectations, or, at least, that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... swindlers. And thus, if the standard of commercial morality is lower here than at home, people are not taken in so easily, or to so great an extent. Everyone is expected to be more or less of a business man, and is looked upon as a blockhead and deserving to be cheated, if he does not understand and allow for the tricks of the trade. In Melbourne the heavy protectionist tariff has brought about an almost universal practice of presenting the customs ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... beyond his day. But with the Parson 'tis another case, He, without holiness, may rise to grace. The Poet has one disadvantage more, That if his play be dull, he's damn'd all o'er, Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor. 20 But dulness well becomes the sable garment; I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a Priest's perferment: Wit's not his business, and as wit now goes, Sirs, 'tis not so much yours as you suppose, For you like nothing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... sculpture that, when wearied with painting, he would take his tools, and block out a piece of carving. A disciple one day remarking that to lay down a pencil and take up a mallet, was a strange method of repose, he replied, "Blockhead! don't you see that to create form and relief on a flat surface, is a greater labor than to fashion ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear people." Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late Majesty had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the old blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it?" His fury now rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it would be no more than justice to whip such a villain through ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... better pull back to supper, sir?" quoth Moses Yerk to the captain. We all started, the men dipped their oars, our dreams were dispelled, the charm was broken—"Confound the matter—of—fact blockhead," or something very like it, grumbled the captain—"but give way, men," fast followed, and we returned towards the ship. We had not pulled fifty yards, when we heard the distant rattle of the muskets of the sentries at the gangways, as they discharged them at sundown, and were remarking, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Anglicano Defensio is now pleasanter reading for Milton's detractors than for those who honour his name. The unbridled insults which it heaps upon Charles I and still more upon Salmasius, for whom its least offensive titles are such as "blockhead," "liar" and "apostate," exceed even the wide limits of abuse customary in these days. Corruptio optimi pessima: such a man as Milton, if he once descends to the bandying of foul language, will beat the very bargemen themselves. But what astonished his contemporaries was not his violence but ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... little from his cares aside; Pope, Milton, Dryden, with delight has seized, His soul engaged and of his trouble eased: When, with a heavy eye and ill-done sum, No part conceived, a stupid boy will come; Then Leonard first subdues the rising frown, And bids the blockhead lay his blunders down; O'er which disgusted he will turn his eye, To his sad duty his sound mind apply, And, vex'd in spirit, throw his pleasures by. Turn we to Schools which more than these afford - The sound instruction and the wholesome board; ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... governor presented himself, and the monarch, after honouring him with the title of blockhead, proceeded to scold him roundly. However, he ended by saying that there was a servant, and that the governor ought to see that he did his work properly. This disgusting scene was enough for me, and I hastened to call on Marshal Keith to announce my determination. The old soldier laughed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Woman.—Hide thy virtues as thou hidest thy faults.—A dwarf brought a complaint to his king. "No one," said the king, "would hurt such a pigmy." "But," retorted the dwarf, "my injurer is smaller than I am."—A dolt sat on a stone. "Lo, a blockhead on a block," said the passers-by.—"What prayer make you by night?" they asked a sage. "Fear God by day, and by night you will sleep, not pray."—Rather a wise enemy than a foolish friend.—Not everyone who flees escapes, not everyone who begs has need.—A ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... beauty, of course, is dismissed by the average male blockhead as no more than a feeble sentimentality. The truth is that it is precisely the opposite. It is surely not sentimentality to be moved by the stately and mysterious ceremony of the mass, or even, say, by those timid imitations ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... 'Against Hans Worst.' The Duke had taunted him with having allowed himself to call his own sovereign Hans Wurst. Luther assured him, in reply, that he had never given this name to a single man, whether friend or foe; but now applied it to the Duke, because he found it meant a stupid blockhead who wished to be thought clever and all the time spoke and acted like a simpleton. But he was not content with calling him a blockhead; he represented him as a profligate man, who, while libelling the princes and pretending to be the champion of God's ordinances, himself practised open adultery, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... idiot, imbecile, natural; simpleton, dolt, dunce, defective, witling, dotterel, driveler, blockhead, beetlehead, ninny, ignoramus, numskull, booby, clodpate, nincompoop, ass, wiseacre, dunderhead, halfwit, oaf, dullard, coot, mooncalf; zany, harlequin, buffoon, jester, merry-andrew, droll, clown, scaramouch. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... a Command to Day, and perhaps may lye between me and my Mistress to Night.' 'By Hell (answered Erizo) thou hast raised a Fury in me, that will not be lulled asleep, but by a Potion of his Blood; let's dispatch this Blockhead first': And running at the Footman, with one Thrust killed him. Dangerfield by this time had been let out, and hearing the Noise, ran to the Place; they presently assaulted him; he defended himself very bravely the space of some Minutes, having wounded ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... surgeon, and when he came to the bottom of the ladder, called out that he had brought him a patient, desiring some one to bear a hand, and help him easily down. The surgeon turned about, but instead of giving any assistance, exclaimed, "You blockhead, what do you do here with a man that has lost his head?" "Lost his head!" says Benbow; "the lying fellow, why he told me it was his leg; but I never in my life believed what he said without being ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... my prettiest feature," said the Woozy, uneasily. "If I give up those three hairs I—I'm just a blockhead." ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... England (Vol. iii., p. 60.).—This jeu-d'esprit was an after-dinner joke of a learned civilian, not less celebrated for his wit than his book-lore. Some stupid blockhead inserted it in the newspapers, and it is now unfortunately chronicled in your valuable work. It is not at all to be wondered at that "the people in the neighbourhood ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... two of his officers, and as soon as my good squire saw him—so well-bred and punctilious was my husband—he turned his mule about, as if he designed to wait upon him home. My lady, who was behind him, said to him in a low voice, 'What are you doing, blockhead? am I not here?' The Judge civilly stopped his horse and said, 'Keep on your way, Sir, for it is my business rather to wait on my lady Donna Casilda.' My husband persisted, cap in hand, in his intention to wait upon the Judge, which my lady perceiving, full of choler ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... won't do for us, you know!" said the Colonel. "Another review, and by some officer who was not a d—d lawyer blockhead, might be awkward!" Colonel Crawford either forgot, at that moment, that he had any connection with the legal profession, or he chose to ignore the fact; and it is not to be supposed that his subordinate reminded him of it. "We must have a paragraph in the to-morrow morning," he went on, naming an ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... but there is something. Why did he say bluntly, 'With her'? Why did Zametov add that I spoke artfully? Why do they speak in that tone? Yes, the tone.... Razumihin is sitting here, why does he see nothing? That innocent blockhead never does see anything! Feverish again! Did Porfiry wink at me just now? Of course it's nonsense! What could he wink for? Are they trying to upset my nerves or are they teasing me? Either it's ill fancy or they know! Even ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... think to gain your point by obstinacy," he added. "I swear that not another word shall pass between you and that blockhead of a chief—not if I have ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... ill-temper was playing a game that was tending to create a frightful amount of hot water in Burton Crescent. She was devoting herself to a flirtation with Mr Cradell, not only under the immediate eyes of Johnny Eames, but also under those of Mrs Lupex. John Eames, the blockhead, did not like it. He was above all things anxious to get rid of Amelia and her claims; so anxious, that on certain moody occasions he would threaten himself with diverse tragical terminations to his career in London. He would enlist. He would go to Australia. He would blow out his brains. He ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Baudoyer was married to Elisabeth Saillard, the cashier's only daughter, and had hired, very naturally, the apartments above those of his father-in-law. No one at the ministry had the slightest doubt that Saillard was a blockhead, but neither had any one ever found out how far his stupidity could go; it was too compact to be examined; it did not ring hollow; it absorbed everything and gave nothing out. Bixiou (a clerk of whom more anon) ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... "Wow! Wow! You blockhead! Neighboring kings, indeed, and their good-for-nothing sons! No, siree! The husband I want for my daughter is an honest farmer lad who knows how to work and how to play! That's the kind of son-in-law we ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... unless I see to it myself. Give me the lantern. Now oil the bearings thoroughly. Put the feather into the socket, and work the pin in and out, that the oil may go all round. Now pour in some oil from the lip of the flask; but not upon the treadle, you old blockhead. Now do the other end the same. Ah, now it would go with the weight of a mouse! I have a great mind to make ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... When Macaulay attacks an old non-juror or a modern Tory, we can only wonder how opinions which, on his showing, are so inconceivably absurd, could ever have been held by any human being. Men are Whigs or not-Whigs, and the not-Whig is less a heretic to be anathematised than a blockhead beneath the reach of argument. All political wisdom centres in Holland House, and the 'Edinburgh Review' is its prophet. There is something in the absolute confidence of Macaulay's political dogmatism which varies between the sublime and the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Fash. Cut his throat, or get someone to do it for me. Lory. Gad so, sir, I'm glad to find I was not so well acquainted with the strength of your conscience as with the weakness of your purse. Fash. Why, art thou so impenetrable a blockhead as to believe he'll help me with a farthing? Lory. Not if you treat him de haut en bas, as you used to do. Fash. Why, how wouldst have me treat him? Lory. Like a trout—tickle him. Fash. I can't flatter. Lory. Can you starve? ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... impertinence. He seldom indulged in harsh speech, never in personal violence—at least no instance of it was known to the students. He indulged in sneers and polished browbeating. A boy was never stupid—he lacked common intelligence; never a blockhead—his perceptions were very dull. His polite epithets were more cutting than good round ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... replied the gardener, lost in amazement. "I have been abroad for the last three years. Oh, they wrote to me, and I did not understand. I am a blockhead. Oh, my daughter, you understand me, then? Do you hear my voice? Answer me: do you hear me? Do you hear ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... one." He who honored me with this eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and good one," and of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and, finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... himself lolled about in a room,—he was idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker than ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the fire, Jack," answered the old man. "This is not the first time we have had the King's coin pulled down. I am as true a man to the King as any here; but I have taken no oath to that dotipole [blockhead] of Warwick; and if he play this game once too oft, he may find he hath ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... exclaimed Jackeymo—"miraculous thing!" and he crossed himself with great fervor. "Six thousand pounds English! why, that must be a hundred thousand—blockhead that I am!—more than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was considerably enlivened by the Squire's ale, commenced a series of gesticulations and capers, in the midst of which he stopped and cried, "But not ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... that Squire Potts had, like an old blockhead, admitted these two young men into such close terms of intimacy with his family, upon no further acquaintance than was furnished him by his having helped the one out of a lead shaft, and the other to a dry rig-out after the duckings he had encountered ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... of the softness and ease of the big divan in the back parlor, of the sense of hovering and protecting love he got from his mother's and Adelaide's anxious faces. Sorer than the really trifling wound was the deep cut into his vanity. How his fellow-workmen were pitying him!—a poor blockhead of a bungler who had thus brought to a pitiful climax his failure to learn a simple trade. And how the whole town would talk and laugh! "Hiram Ranger, he begat ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... out to the women of the house, saying, "Ho, Fatimeh! Ho, Khedijeh! Ho, Herifeh! Ho, Senineh!" Whereupon all those who were in the place of women and neighbours flocked to me and fell a-laughing at me and saying, "O blockhead, what ailed thee to meddle with gallantry?" Then one of them came and looked in my face and laughed, and another said, "By Allah, thou mightest have known that she lied, from the time she said she loved thee and was enamoured of thee? What is there in thee ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... hypothesis even in the case of a greater Aemilianus, not our African friend here, but the conqueror of Africa and Numantia, who held, moreover, the office of censor at Rome. Much less will I believe that this dull blockhead, I will not say, hates sin, but recognizes it ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... (How right the blockhead hits!) Yet more to rack thy heart, and break thy brain, Thy niece has been before ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... said he, a little nettled, "I draw tolerably—should do it at least—have had good masters, and flatter myself that I am not quite a blockhead." ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... said, pushing the servant violently away. "Come, Derrick, help me! you are worth two of that blockhead." ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... truth of this. Indeed, when he came to look carefully at the wooden head, he did not blame his daughters for not wishing to marry it. Should he force one of them to consent, it was not unlikely she would call her husband a blockhead—a term almost certain to cause ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... I was getting out of patience with this blockhead. Blind and can't see out of it! They put the blockheads in the army because there is no other place for them. I think that must be the reason why there are more synonyms for blockhead in the German language than in any other—we have ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... course; otherwise they would have thought me a blockhead. You know that he has depicted me as a rogue and fool. Since I am neither, it was not serious; therefore ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... composed thirteen volumes on the properties of the griffin, and was besides the chief theurgite, hastened away to accuse Zadig before one of the principal magi, named Yebor, the greatest blockhead and therefore the greatest fanatic among the Chaldeans. This man would have impaled Zadig to do honors to the sun, and would then have recited the breviary of Zoroaster with greater satisfaction. The friend ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... beauty it is unquestionably our own species in the animal world, and then again our own race, that appears to us the fairest. So, too, in intercourse with others, every man shows a decided preference for those who resemble him; and a blockhead will find the society of another blockhead incomparably more pleasant than that of any number of great minds put together. Every man must necessarily take his chief pleasure in his own work, because it is the mirror of his own mind, the echo of ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... best in sandy soil, I'm sure of that—but plant before you boil; Then put in strawberries; that's what I do— Confound you for a blockhead! Why don't you Get modern works and read them? No, you'd rather Go creeping on just like your stupid father. That patch is good for melons. Why the deuce Don't you convert those ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... languages: that is, every one who is fit for nothing else; philology being the last resource of dulness and ennui, I have got a little in advance of the throng, by mastering the Armenian alphabet; but I foresee the time when every unmarriageable miss, and desperate blockhead, will likewise have acquired the letters of Mesroub, and will know the term for bread, in Armenian, and perhaps that ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... easy for a Whig, or a Puritan, or any other unimaginative blockhead, to cry out against all this as nauseous flattery, and assert that after all she was rather an unpoetical personage than otherwise—a coarse-minded old maid, half prude, half coquette, whose better part was mannish, and all that belonged to her sex a ludicrous exaggeration ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... The intellectual capacities take a much more outward direction. They are expressed not only in the face and play of his features, but also in his walk, nay, in every movement, however slight it may be. One could perhaps discriminate from behind between a blockhead, a fool, and a man of genius. A clumsy awkwardness characterises every movement of the blockhead; folly imprints its mark on every gesture, and so do genius and a reflective nature. Hence the outcome of La Bruyere's remark: Il n'y a rien de si delie, de si simple, et de si imperceptible ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... himself Vast distinction betwixt devotion and conscience We have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death What did I say? that I have? no, Chremes, I had Who discern no riches but in pomp and show Whoever will be cured of ignorance must confess it Would have every one in his party blind or a blockhead Wrong the just side when they go about to assist it with fraud Yet at least for ambition's sake, let us ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... Why, sir, but that's too bad! My father's trade? Why, blockhead, art thou mad? My, father, sir, was never brought so low: He was a ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... the man whom you have chosen to play the fool with. I find him worthy of his mistress; a tame, coward-hearted, infatuated blockhead. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... contradictory propositions cannot be undeniable truths, that to beg the question is not the way to settle it, or that when an objection is raised, it ought to be met with something more convincing than "scoundrel" and "blockhead." ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 'I don't want a blockhead like you to fight for me,' answered the king. 'Besides, I haven't got a horse fit for you. But see, there is a carter on the road carting hay; you may take ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... As a man who had seen something of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine, and in his heart was furious at the whole farce, specially as he was perhaps the only one who fully comprehended the cause of Kitty's illness. "Conceited blockhead!" he thought, as he listened to the celebrated doctor's chatter about his daughter's symptoms. The doctor was meantime with difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt for this old gentleman, and with difficulty ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the wood where he had left his wife, he heard a parrot on a tree calling out his name: "Mr. Vinegar, you foolish man, you blockhead, you simpleton; you went to the fair, and laid out all your money in buying a cow. Not content with that, you changed it for bagpipes, on which you could not play, and which were not worth one- tenth of the ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... though as yet she only knew three streets—the Rue de Passy, the Rue Franklin, and the Rue Vineuse. Zephyrin, soldier though he was, remained quite a lubber. As Rosalie confided to her mistress, he became more of a blockhead every day. In the country he had been much sharper. But, added she, it was the uniform's fault; all the lads who donned the uniform became sad dolts. The fact is, his change of life had quite muddled Zephyrin, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... side of the water. The "Tail" has an individual or two of that genus,—and the rest is mainly yet undecided. For example, I knew old —- myself; and can testify, if you will believe me, that few greater blockheads (if "blockhead" may mean "exasperated imbecile" and the ninth part of a thinker) broke the world's bread in his day. Have a care of such! I say always to myself, —and to you, which ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... because the ministerial negotiations with him have been rather difficult. During this time Thuillier's chances have been making headway. Minard, on whom they counted to create a diversion, sits, the stupid fool, in his corner; the seizure of that pamphlet has given your blockhead of a protege a certain perfume of popularity. In short, the ministry are afraid he'll be elected, and nothing could be more disagreeable to them. Pompous imbeciles, like Thuillier, are horribly embarrassing in the Opposition; ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... may deny it, you may dissemble as much as you please? 'Tis very well! very well. For all that you are my dearest, my excellent young master. Good Heaven! that I, poor old man, should live to have the joy—what a stupid blockhead was I that I did not at a glance—oh, gracious powers! And you are really come back, and the dear old master is underground, and here you are again! What a purblind dolt I was, to be sure! (striking his forehead) that I did not on the instant—Oh, dear me!—-who could have dreamt it—What ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Seeing him one day returning exhausted and out of breath, his hands trembling so that he could scarcely hold his work, he began to administer the palatable poison which every human heart is only too ready to receive. "I tell you, Bill," said he, "you are the biggest blockhead I ever saw. If you like to look at the pictures, stand at the windows as long as you please, and do not run yourself to death. Just look at the other shoemakers' boys; they hang their string of boots and shoes over their shoulders, and go whistling and singing along the streets quite ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... so he adopted a more violent tone. "Ah, rascal, scoundrel, madman!" quoth he. "If we be delayed here any longer thou shalt be hanged for a false thief! To keep the king's messengers waiting thus! Canst thou not see the king's seal? Canst thou not read the address of the royal letter? Ah, blockhead, thou shalt dearly abide this delay ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Blockhead that I was, not to have let well enough alone. For I was to blame for what followed. I may have grown unconsciously rhetorical, and waved my hand in the direction of the canoes. I do not know. I do know that at the word ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... we may fill in their vivacious language, the courteous terms the people apply to each other, such as "you ass, pig, monkey, cuckoo, chump, blockhead, fungus," or, on the other side, "my honey, my heart, my dove, my life, my sparrowkin, my dainty cheese." But to go more fully into matters like these would ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... master was still more angry, and said: "What! the blockhead gave his eight krans to a beggar? Send him to me." And when Abdul Karim came before him, he said scornfully: "You must fancy yourself a big man, Abdul. I never give more than a copper coin to a beggar, but your Excellency gives ...
— The Cat and the Mouse - A Book of Persian Fairy Tales • Hartwell James
... Holzschuer, who stood so high in the esteem both of the Council and of all the burghers. At this moment Conrad struck mightier blows than ever with his mallet, so that the whole shop rang and cracked; then Master Martin's internal rage boiled over, and he shouted vehemently, "Conrad, you blockhead, what do you mean by striking so blindly and heedlessly? do you mean to break my cask in pieces?" "Ho! ho!" replied Conrad, looking round defiantly at his master, "Ho! ho! my comical little master, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... a blockhead—a great, good blockhead. That's just what you are," said Miss Butterworth, laughing in ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... enthusiasm, catching her in his arms and kissing her. "I wouldn't for the world have you any thing but the darling little Lillie you are. I love your faults more than the virtues of other women. You are a thousand times better than I am. I am a great, coarse blockhead, compared to you. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings this noon; you know, Lillie, I'm hasty, and apt to be inconsiderate. I don't really know that I ought to let you ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not to invade England any more," and kept his promise, they farther say. Essentially a truth, as we already know, though the circumstances were all different; and the promise was to a devout High Priest, not to a crowned Blockhead and cowardly Do-nothing. One other "Olaus" I find mentioned in our Books, two or three centuries before, at a time when there existed no such individual; not to speak of several Anlafs, who sometimes seem to mean Olaf and ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... under the rose be it spoken, even for a bishop to be a blockhead: but, if that bishop had sense enough to discern my good qualities, I ought not to be the most unrelenting of his censurers. My defence of the articles would indeed do its own business: yet to come forth under episcopal auspices was an advantage by ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... current notions. Friedrich, flashing like clear steel upon evildoers and mendacious unjust persons and their works, is not by nature a cruel man, then, or an unfeeling, as Rumor reports? Reader, no, far the reverse;—and public Rumor, as you may have remarked, is apt to be an extreme blockhead, full of fury and stupidity on such points, and had much better hold its tongue till it know in some measure. Extreme sensibility is not sure to be a merit; though it is sure to be reckoned one, by the greedy dim fellows looking idly on: but, in any case, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... been made, Juan was conducted to the coffin. He now first realized what he was undertaking. What if the bottle was false! What if he should fail! Would not his head be dangling from the ropes of the scaffold, to be hailed by the multitude as the remains of a blockhead, a dunce, and a fool? The coffin was opened. With these meditations in his mind, Juan tremblingly uncorked his bottle of violet liquid, and held it under the nose of the princess. He held the bottle there for some time, but she gave no signs of life. An hour longer, still no trace of life. ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... the war everyone except the soldiers at the front imagined that nothing but an extreme assertion of our most passionate prejudices, without the smallest regard to their effect on others, could win the war. Finally the British blockade won the war; but the wonder is that the British blockhead did not lose it. I suppose the enemy was no wiser. War is not a sharpener of wits; and I am afraid I gave great offence by keeping my head in this matter of Irish recruiting. What can I do but apologize, and publish the play now that it can ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... have; and yet 'tis true, There are as mad, abandon'd critics too. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always listening to himself appears. All books he reads, and all he reads assails, From Dryden's Fables down to D'Urfey's Tales. With him, most authors steal ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... a man suffers for being good-natured,' said the locksmith. 'Miss Emma was with her uncle at the masquerade at Carlisle House, where she had gone, as the people at the Warren told me, sorely against her will. What does your blockhead father when he and Mrs Rudge have laid their heads together, but goes there when he ought to be abed, makes interest with his friend the doorkeeper, slips him on a mask and domino, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... humilities of that departed time were loftier than the prides of to-day—that even the most retiring of its authors expected to be admired, not for what he had discovered, but for what he was. It did not matter in our dynasties of determined noblesse how many things an industrious blockhead knew, or how curious things a lucky booby had discovered. We claimed, and gave no honor but for real rank of human sense and wit; and although this manner of estimate led to many various collateral mischiefs—to much toleration of misconduct in persons who were amusing, and of uselessness in those ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... edition of Amelia was called for on the day of publication. Johnson, to whom we owe this story, was thoroughly captivated with the book. Notwithstanding that on another occasion he paradoxically asserted that the author was "a blockhead"—"a barren rascal," he read it through without stopping, and pronounced Mrs. Booth to be "the most pleasing heroine of all the romances." Richardson, on the other hand, found "the characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty" ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... reason of modern France for disturbing the old received spelling, is—that Jean Hordal, a descendant of La Pucelle's brother, spelled the name Darc, in 1612. But what of that? Beside the chances that M. Hordal might be a gigantic blockhead, it is notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century, was all monopolized by printers: ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... "Well, father," he replied, "I am quite willing to learn something—-indeed, if it could but be managed, I should like to learn how to shudder. I don't understand that at all yet." The elder brother smiled when he heard that, and thought to himself, "Good God, what a blockhead that brother of mine is! He will never be good for anything as long as he lives. He who wants to be a sickle must bend ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Smith says that he "was generally so drunk that he had to support himself by something to keep from falling down." J. F. Boynton and Luke Johnson, two of the Twelve, are called "a pair of young blacklegs," and Stephen Burnett, an elder, is styled "a little ignorant blockhead, whose heart was so set on money that he would at any time sell his soul for $50, and then think he had ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... one knows better than you that after the row in the street,—when Mountjoy was, I believe, the aggressor,—he was again seen by another person. I hate such deceit and scheming." Here Augustus smiled. "What are you sniggering there at, you blockhead?" ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the child as distinct from the wrong acts which the child may commit. If a child lies, that does not make of him a liar, any more than does his failure to understand what he has just been told make of him a blockhead. Yet the natural consequence of lying, for instance, is to be mistrusted in the future—to be branded a liar. This, however, is one of the worst things that can happen to a child, and one of the surest ways of making ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... repeated a quite incredible number of times. The man must have been an abject blockhead, as I believe most professional criminals are. His lack of observation was astounding. It is true that he began to be surprised and rather bewildered. He even noted that 'there seemed a bloomin' lot of 'em;' and the quality of his arithmetical feats and his verbal enrichments ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... of ridicule, which is understood but by few among the laity. To explain this a commentary would be requisite, and humour when explained is no longer humour. Whoever sets up for a commentator of smart sayings and repartees is himself a blockhead. This is the reason why the works of the ingenious Dean Swift, who has been called the English Rabelais, will never be well understood in France. This gentleman has the honour (in common with Rabelais) of being a ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... series of intervening parts; or that it is able to direct only some organs, and not others, or cannot direct even those, if by some accident they have become seriously deranged. A strong-armed blockhead is not the less obviously able to pump up water because the terms 'muscular contractility' and 'atmospheric pressure' are as heathen Greek to him; or because the pump-handle, which alone is directly moved by him, touches, not the water itself, but only the first link in a chain of mechanism ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... out; but while they did hang it out, they did shoot at us; so that it was not seen, or perhaps they would not cease upon sight of it, while they continued actually in action against us. But the main thing my Lord wonders at, and condemns the Dane for, is, that the blockhead, who is so much in debt to the Hollander, having now a treasure more by much than all his Crowne was worth, and that which would for ever have beggared the Hollander, should not take this time to break with the Hollander, and thereby pay his debt which must have been forgiven him, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... into an armchair he cried out that he was dishonoured, and wept scalding tears. Then he related to Madame de Saint-Simon, in the midst of sobs, how he had stuck fast at the Parliament, without being able to utter a word, said that he should everywhere be regarded as an ass and a blockhead, and repeated the compliments he had received from Madame de Montauban, who, he said, had laughed at and insulted him, knowing well what had happened; then, infuriated against her to the last degree, he called ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... general. He monopolized the conversation at table, voted croquet a bore, and spent most of his time lying under a tree smoking and reading a novel. He fell foul of Joe Crouch (who still came to do odd jobs in the garden) over some trifling matter, calling him an impudent blockhead, and telling Miss Fenleigh in a lofty manner that "he would never allow such a cheeky beggar to be hanging about ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... novelty, and was so much favoured by the audience that envy appeared against it in the form of criticism; and Griffin, a player, in conjunction with Mr. Theobald, a man afterwards more remarkable, produced a pamphlet called "The Key to the What D'ye Call It," "which," says Gay, "calls me a blockhead, and Mr. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
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