|
|
|
More "Ignoramus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what it is," he said, "there would be trembling in the heart of a very great man when the nine cravens returned without me. For I am no shaveling ignoramus, but a gentleman of birth; aye, and one who, though poor, is a near cousin of the marshal himself. I warrant the rascals who ran away would smart right soundly for leaving me behind. For Gilles de Sille is no simpleton. He knows more than is written down in the catechism ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Court nodded and sighed. "Monseigneur Giron of Laval, the greatest scholar in Quebec, he said to me once that M'sieu' Jean Jacques missed being a genius by an inch. But, monsieur le juge, not to have that inch is worse than to be an ignoramus." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you understand it, Colonel, and so there's not a bit of harm done, after all. I'm an ignoramus about guard duty, anyway, and I'll wager the guard got on better without me, after all. And now, Colonel, since I've given you a wholly satisfactory explanation as to why I simply couldn't be here to-day, if you've nothing more to say to me, sir, I'll go to my quarters, get into ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... least, in England, which is, that unbelievers in revelation generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and providence of God so as to become properly Atheists." So that, according to you, I am a Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of no sincerity; whose writings are full of nothing but gross mistakes and misrepresentations. Now I ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the main question? What has my book in common with my person? And how can you hold any converse with a man of such bad connexions? ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... confess that I find the air of this region of speculation too rarefied for my constitution, and I am disposed to take refuge in 'ignoramus ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... before her as an ignoramus or a rebel, whichever she likes best to take in leading-strings. I remember her. I was greatly struck ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... interest in the work, but, strange to relate, the superintendent appointed, a certain Spanish officer named Alcubier, was so ignorant and careless that half the objects found under his supervision were broken or lost before they reached Naples; this ignoramus, it was said, even went so far as to order whole architraves to be smashed up and their bronze lettering to be picked out before making a copy of the original inscription! Under these circumstances the marvel is that anything ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... man who has got into an argument with the ignorant can have no hopes of supporting his own dignity; and if an ignoramus by his loquacity gets the upper hand it should not surprise us, for he is a stone and can bruise a gem:—No wonder if his spirit flag; the nightingale is cooped up in the same cage with the crow:—If the man of sense is coarsely treated by the vulgar, let it not excite our ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... An ignoramus believes the Bible because of the miracles, and because of the miracles an Ingersoll disbelieves it—and both are equally blind . A cult is simply an expression, more or less crude, of the religious sentiment of a people, the poor garment with which finite ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a leisurely way along George Street the other day, towards Strunalls, where I get my cigars, and had arrived opposite No. —, when I suddenly noticed, just ahead of me, a tall lady of remarkably graceful figure, clad in a costume which, even to an ignoramus in fashions like myself, seemed extraordinarily out of date. In my untechnical language it consisted of a dark blue coat and skirt, trimmed with black braid. The coat had a very high collar, turned over to show a facing of blue velvet, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... "nick-nacks." He has "sowens and milk,' (oatmeal flummery) every night for his supper. His friend having asked his opinion of politics, he says he really knows nothing about them; he had been so completely engrossed by his own business that he has not had time to read even a newspaper. But, though an ignoramus in politics, he has been studying lime, which is more to his purpose. If his friend can give him any information about that, he will promise to read a newspaper now and then in the ensuing session of Parliament, for the purpose of forming some ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... course, like the average country gentleman of his time, was a profound ignoramus. What knowledge had been drilled into him in boyhood, he had since taken pains to forget. He was familiar with the punctilio of duelling, the code of regulations for fencing, the rules of athletic sports, and the intricacies of the gaming-table; but anything which he ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... lie, I am no rascal; and as for quibbling with words—suppose I did! What then? All the first people does it! The newspapers does it! The gentlefolks that calls themselves the guides of the popular mind does it! I'm no ignoramus. I reads the newspapers, and knows what's what.' 'You read them to some purpose,' said I. 'Well, if you are lamed for life, and unfitted for any active line—turn newspaper editor; I should say you are perfectly qualified, and this day's ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... has hardly been seen by the people within their gates. Consequently their ideas of robbing the stranger are faint and barbarous; here, as throughout Dalmatia, should you give a man money, and the sum be not even more than twice the value of the obligation, the poor ignoramus is delighted, and thanks and blesses you most fervently. The climate of Cattaro is not considered healthy. The inhabitants die of consumption in the winter, and fever in the summer, and they generally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... subsilit, nec regulariter continuoque movetur, sed nunc semel aut bis, nunc minime intra idem tempus subsilit; an causa irritans in sensorio communi, an in musculo ipse palpitante Quaerenda sit, ignoramus. Nosologiae Methodicae, Vol. ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... exultation and heightened color, "but it seems absurd to suppose that such a little ignoramus as I am ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... he is unchanged. His grade of morality is neither better nor worse. His tolerance or narrowness remains what it previously was. If he was bigoted while here he is still bigoted there. If he was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely that in the astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development, but in a world where emotion is ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... must not only learn to read and write, he must learn to draw. We cannot afford to let our young folks grow up without this power. A new French book is just now much talked about, with this droll title, "The Life of a Wise Man, by an Ignoramus." It is the story of the great Pasteur, whose discoveries in respect to life have made him world renowned. I turned to the book, eager to find out the key to such success, and I found the old story—"the child was father of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... effectually ruin the dramatic art than to have you write a play. People, seeing your work, would say, here, this will never do. The stage must be discouraged at all costs. A hypocrite throws the ministry into disgrace, an ignoramus brings shame upon education, and an unpopular lawyer gives the bar a bad name. I think you are just the ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... to make invocation, he did so; nothing appeared, or would: three or four times in my company he was put upon to do the work, but could not; at last he said he could do nothing as long as I was in presence. I at last shewed him his error, but left him as I found him, a pretending ignoramus. ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... "He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stept unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... with and assist those that advanced them in their impious practices. The names of these high priests, or rather ridiculous and profane persons, were Jesus the son of Damneus, Jesus the son of Gamaliel, Matthias the son of Theophilus, and that prodigious ignoramus Phannias, the son of Samuel; all whom we shall meet with in Josephus's future history of this war; nor do we meet with any other so much as pretended high priest after Phannias, till Jerusalem was taken ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... any one among the leaders who took a more sober, prosaic view of things he was denounced as an ignoramus and a reactionary. Willingly or unwillingly, everybody had to swim with the current. Roads and bridges were not entirely neglected, but the efforts in that direction were confined to the absolutely indispensable. For such prosaic concerns there was no ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... that as Lord Umfraville's host," young Calverley at once began, "you cannot with decorum convey to the ignoramus my opinion as to his ability to conjugate ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... [Footnote 2: For "Ignoramus" (we ignore), the word by which a grand jury indicated its refusal to prosecute an indictment. We here find the Superior Court, the highest common-law court of Massachusetts under the second charter, taking cognizance of a case of piracy. Governor Phips had a ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... said he, cheerfully, "I want you to show me a thorough-going hot corner. You know I am an ignoramus of ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... "Lincoln is an ignoramus, a filthy story-teller, a monster. Seward is the brains of the administration. Without Seward, Lincoln would ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... no slouch at finding things. He is no ignoramus, either, for he must be able to read and write and understand geography to get any good out of that memorandum. Does it give the exact details of the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... so far as they are permitted) and nothing but the truth? What could be finer and better than all this?—what could more certainly assure justice? How close the resemblance is between this ideal picture and what actually occurs all know, or should know. The judge is commonly an ignoramus incapable of logical thought and with little sense of the dread and awful nature of his responsibility. The prosecuting attorney thinks it due to his reputation to "make a record" and tries to convict by hook or crook, even when he is himself persuaded ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... was better situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen of foreman ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... not have appeared possible to any but the most superficial sciolist. He also speaks of an electroscope that will telegraph rays of light (!) and enable us thereby to see our most distant friends, and of stowing in a small compass electricity enough to exterminate an army. This imaginative ignoramus adds, "Give to our present biped acquaintance the ability to exterminate armies with a lightning flash, added to the power of sailing at will through the air or of passing at will and in safety beneath the ocean waves, and he would depopulate ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... angry because I left them'. He said that after he took me, a stupid little country ignoramus, and made something out of me, my desertion was nothing short of rank ingratitude and religious hypocrisy and treason to the land of my birth. One might have inferred that he picked me out of the gutter, brushed the dirt off, smoothed ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... trying to be soothing, as he believed it was always best to be with women,—to tell the truth he was an ignoramus where women were concerned,—"I think it would be better if you didn't look at them. There are reasons why—" he ambled on like this, stupid man that he was, till the lady naturally insisted upon seeing the ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... not have selected the name, or the nearest possible approach to the name, of an ignorant unread actor. As he was never suspected of not being the author of the plays and poems, Will cannot have been a country ignoramus, manifestly incapable of poetry, wit, and such learning as the plays exhibit. Every one must judge for himself. Mr. Greenwood fervently believes in what I ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... this process. I think a man may praise Pindar without knowing the top of a Greek letter from the bottom. But I think that if a man is going to abuse Pindar, if he is going to denounce, refute, and utterly expose Pindar, if he is going to show Pindar up as the utter ignoramus and outrageous impostor that he is, then I think it will be just as well perhaps—I think, at any rate, it would do no harm—if he did know a little Greek, and even had read a little Pindar. And I think the same ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... per Dei potentiam facta sunt: imo quia naturae potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia. Certum est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non intelligere, quatenus causas naturales ignoramus; adeoque stulte ad eandem Dei potentiam recurritur, quando rei alicuius causam naturalem, sive est, ipsam Dei potantiam ignoramus.— Spinosa, "Tract. Theologico-Pol." chapter 1, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... feeling that you haven't learned anything delights me, too. It proves that you have learned a great deal. It is only the ignoramus who thinks he is wise; the wise man knows that he is an ignoramus. That's a platitude, but it is none the less true. I have cold comfort for you: the more you learn, the less confident you will be of your own learning, the more utterly ignorant you will feel. I have ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... Nicolas de la Salle, whom he had supplanted as intendant, wrote to Ponchartrain that D'Artaguette had deceived him, being no better than Bienville himself. La Salle further declared that Barrot, the surgeon of the colony, was an ignoramus, and that he made money by selling the medicines supplied by the King to cure his Louisianian subjects. Such were the transatlantic workings of the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... educated? I heard that. But I'm getting tired of 'highly educated'; I see so many of them. I've been making them now for years. Perhaps I'm one of them. And where am I? Don't interrupt. I tell you it is a relief to come across a sweet, womanly ignoramus. What church does she ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... night you tossed us from one side of the bed to the other; no sleep, no rest. The poor Crippled wrist, too, never left one moment in the same position; now up, now down, now here, now there; was it to be wondered at, if its pains returned? The surgeon then was to be called, and to be rated as an ignoramus, because he could not divine the cause of this extraordinary change. In fine, my friend, you must mend your manners. This is not a world to live at random in, as you do. To avoid those eternal distresses, to which you are for ever exposing us, you must ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... exerted by gods, devils, and the stars. Each member and principal organ of the human body was supposed to correspond with some planet or constellation. Similar foolish ideas were widely prevalent, especially in Germany. Paracelsus was an ignoramus, who affected to despise all the sciences, because of his lack of knowledge of them. While prating much about divine light as the source of all learning and culture, his boorish mien and rude manners afforded evidence that he did not profit much ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... a country boy but I'm as smart as the next man. Just because some of you eggheads spend half your life in college don't mean you've got any monopoly on good common sense. I went to the school of hard knocks, understand, and I got plenty of diplomas to prove it. Take it easy on that ignoramus talk." ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... sir, that my name will have other and more personal claims upon posterity," said Challenger, severely. "Any ignoramus can hand down his worthless memory by imposing it upon a mountain or a river. I need no ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stimulated by personal rivalries and national jealousy, immediately arose. Du Perron was denounced as an impostor or an ignoramus, and his publication stigmatized as a wretched forgery of his own, or a gross imposition palmed upon him by some lying pundit. Sir William Jones and John Richardson, both distinguished English Orientalists, and Meiners in Germany, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to the average bourgeois mind, socialism is merely a menace, vague and formless. The average member of the capitalist class, when he discusses socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its politics. He wags his head sagely and rattles the dry bones of dead and buried ideas. His lips mumble mouldy phrases, such as, "Men are not born equal and never can be;" "It is Utopian and impossible;" ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... force of the artistic passion behind it; its coherent statement had to wait for other and more reflective days. The thing began as a vision, not as a syllogism. Here the name of Franz Schubert inevitably comes up. Schubert was an ignoramus, even in music; he knew less about polyphony, which is the mother of harmony, which is the mother of music, than the average conservatory professor. But nevertheless he had such a vast instinctive sensitiveness to musical values, such a profound and accurate feeling for beauty ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... was almost more than he could bear. Then memory added fuel to the present. It was that man who had conjured up some kind of opposition to his mother—had made living problems harder for her until she had won the confidence of others. The man must be, Travers concluded, a fanatic and an ignoramus, and to think of him holding power over ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... only fault is that you know them badly; mob-leadership has nothing to do with a man refined or of good character, rather with an ignoramus and ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... said he, "to teach that preposterous ignoramus something worth knowing about Sennacherib. Besides I am a bachelor and would sooner spend Christmas, as to whose irritating and meaningless annoyance I cordially agree with you, among strangers than among my married sisters' numerous ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... are scholars as well as artists; but they are concerned chiefly with the mechanics and not with the metaphysics of their art, and moreover, they are not bound by that rigid rule which should govern the librarian—namely—to have no ignoramus about ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... "Look, you star-spangled ignoramus, look," he yelled. "You own a horse that's fit to win the Melbourne Cup or the American Derby, and you don't know it. What do you want for him? Give you ten thousand for him this minute—and I am not so certain that race ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... could not be that. There was not one of them such a nautical ignoramus as to believe ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Cardellino of Raffaelle: what heavenly grace, what simplicity, what saint-like purity, in the expression of that face, and that exquisite mouth! And from these must I turn back, on pain of being thought an ignoramus, to admire the coarse perpetration of Michel Angelo—because it is Michel Angelo's? ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Time and time again you read or hear the indignant denunciation of some artist whose canvas has been ripped-up in print. If the offender happens to be a man who doesn't paint, then he is called an ignoramus; if he paints or etches, or even sketches in crayon, he is well within the Balzac definition—poor, miserable imbecile, he is only jealous of work that he could never have achieved. As for literary critics, it may be set down once and for all that they are "suspect." They write; ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... laughed Don Luis. "True, he is not a skilled mining man, yet he knows so much on the subject that, compared with him, I am an ignoramus. But that is what you are here for, you two. You are the experts. Investigate, and ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... before any others. Afterwards we will study together the MSS. of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemy, of Olympiodorus and Stephanus, which I discovered at Ravenna, in a vault where they have been locked up since the reign of that ignoramus Theodosius who has been ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... surely does mull over them without end. I can forgive his being a shiftless farmer so long as he really does his literary chores up to the hilt. A man can be slack in everything else, if he does one thing as well as he possibly can. And I guess it won't matter my being an ignoramus in literature so long as I'm rated A-1 in the kitchen. That's what I used to think as I polished and scoured and scrubbed and dusted and swept and then set about getting dinner. If I ever sat down to read for ten minutes the cat would get into the custard. No woman in the country sits down ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... travel brought him where The tide had left the oysters bare. Since here our traveller saw the sea, He thought these shells the ships must be. 'My father was, in truth,' said he, 'A coward, and an ignoramus; He dared not travel: as for me, I've seen the ships and ocean famous; Have cross'd the deserts without drinking, And many dangerous streams unshrinking; Such things I know from having seen and felt them.' And, as he went, in tales he proudly dealt them, Not ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... to the Duke of Mayenne. Great was the wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths. He forthwith fulminated a scathing reply, addressed to Philip II., in which he denounced the Duke of Feria as "a dirty ignoramus, an impudent coward, an impostor, and a blind thief;" adding, after many other unsavoury epithets, "but I will do him an honour which he has not merited, proving him a liar with my sword; and I humbly pray your Majesty to grant me this favour and to pardon my just grief, which causes me to depart ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... entering his library in the vital centre of a delectable refutation of an ignoramus—"I suppose it's no use looking to you for sympathy in a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... angry, Viktor Nikolaitch," she said, clinking glasses with the lawyer. "It seems to me you give advice and know nothing of life yourself. According to you, if a man be a mechanic or a draughtsman, he is bound to be a peasant and an ignoramus! But they are ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... something to bring him fame; every scientist or scholar (if there are any) who fakes a fact in the interest of his theory; every fool who talks through his hat without knowing; every sentimentalist who plays up to the sentimentalism in himself and other people; every second-hand ignoramus who takes over a view or a prejudice wholesale, without investigating the facts it's based on for himself. You find it everywhere, the taint; you can't get away from it. Except by keeping quiet and learning, and wanting truth more ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... of the narrowing, cramping influence of avarice; that he will not be a slave of the dollar or stoop to a greedy, grasping career: that he will be free from the sordidness which often characterizes the rich ignoramus. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... receipt; the trough, cost and damages; the hole for the vice-pin, state; the side-boards, money paid into the office; the great beam, respite of homage; the branches, radietur; the side-beams, recuperetur; the fats, ignoramus; the two-handled basket, the rolls; the treading-place, acquittance; the dossers, validation; the panniers, authentic decrees; the pailes, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... that, much as Harmon had felt disposed, at first, to sport with his ignorance, he could not refrain from giving him a true answer. Still, his contempt for the ignorant apprentice was not to be concealed, and he replied, "Ninety-five millions of miles, you ignoramus!" James did not retort; but, repeating over in his mind the distance named, fixed ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... awoke in a bad temper, notwithstanding the fact that sweet little gentle Agnes was lying close to her, with her pretty head of fair hair pressed against the elder girl's shoulder. But when she went downstairs, and took her place in the class, and found that, after all, she was not such an ignoramus as her companions evidently expected to find her, her spirits rose, and for the first time in her existence a sense of ambition awoke within her. It would be something to conquer Lucy Merriman—the ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... week given seriously to the latter, will leave an ample margin of time for recreation and amusement; and who knows what he may need, until the need is there to test what he knows? To be great on sport, and a "stick" at one's business; to be an authority on amusements, and an ignoramus about almost everything else that is anything, is the surrender of manhood, and that in a day which has no need comparable with its ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... mastered the tides, therefore I may well content myself with my inability to comprehend what relates to them. But instead of plaguing you with an endless enumeration of my difficulties, I had better tell you some of the passages which gave me, ignoramus as I am, peculiar pleasure.... I am afraid I shall transcribe your whole book if I go on to tell you all that has struck me, and you would not thank me for that—you, who have so little vanity, and so much to do better with your time than ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... attendant in the court is to maintain order and preserve dignity. They are almost avid in their pursuit of the ignoramus who comes in with his hat on his head or covers himself on going out before he reaches the door. Their salaries are not large but their duties are not arduous. They may seem solicitous to the judge and sometimes ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... the estrangement so much to heart that she eased her feelings by abusing Pin in thought; Pin was a pig-headed little ignoramus, as timid as ever of setting one foot before the other. And the rest of them would be just the same—old stick-in-the muds, unchanged by a hair, or, if they HAD changed, then changed for the worse. Laura had somehow never foreseen the day on which she would find herself out of tune with her home ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Party, Resolve to hiss, as late did Popish Crew, | By Yea and Nay, she'll throw her self on you, | The grand Inquest of Whigs, to whom she's true. | Then let 'em rail and hiss, and damn their fill, Your Verdict will be Ignoramus still. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... transformation and yet who has no desire to give them better homes, better cities, better family relationships, better health, better economic resources, better recreations, better books and better schools, is either an ignoramus who does not see what these things mean in the growth of souls, or else an unconscious hypocrite who does not really care so much about the souls of men as ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... reader may as well face the fact that many of them will not spend eternity in the same place with the Saviour and Paul. With many the question as to whether the Saviour, when He said, "Ye are of your father the devil," told the truth, or was a wilful liar and deceiver, or a deluded fanatic and ignoramus, is merely a matter of taste, or preference, or opinion. It may be claimed by some that "Ye are of your father the devil," grates on refined ears and finer sensibilities. But it is more than a question ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... like the Hamburg Botanical Gardens would let a man of your worth perish rather than pay his ransom of L600? Happy young man! You now see the value of a sound, scientific education. Had you been an utter ignoramus as I am, I wouldn't have asked the ransom of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... accomplishment!" observed Sir Francis, with his under-glance and covert smile, as they all three wended their way out of the library. "I regret I have never had time to devote myself to acquiring some knowledge of the arts. In music I am a positive ignoramus! I can hold my ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... me feeling for an unhealthy spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I was not a spiritual hypochondriac any more than a bodily one, and would not trouble myself about that either; so they called me Atheist and went their way. After them came the politician, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... still, could not help yelling out his entreaties and indignations at times. .. Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle. Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... of her bed. During one of these weary watches, it came into his head to kill time by scribbling some dramatic scenes on loose sheets of paper, which he hid during the intervals of his visits under the cushion of an arm-chair. A Piedmontese and a thorough ignoramus, he had scarcely ever attempted to write even so much as a letter in Italian; and as to a literary composition in any language, such a thing had never occurred to him. The Cleopatra thus written in his lady's bed-room and secreted under the chair ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... having the power to let loose against it thousands of idiots whom they have trained into a docile pack of hounds!—Christophe was not the sort of man to let himself be schooled and disciplined. It seemed to him a very bad thing that an ignoramus should take upon himself to tell him what he ought and ought not to do in music: and he gave him to understand that art needed a much more severe training than politics. Also, without any sort of polite circumlocution, he declined a proposal that he should set to music a libretto, which the author, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... relaxation of taking a hair of the same dog that bit them, after a liberal compotation on the preceding night. Third place, as a scholar! Well! who may he thank for that, I interrogate. Not one Denis O'Donegan!—O no; the said Denis is an ignoramus, and knows nothing of the classics. Well, be it so. All I say is, that I wish I had one classical lick at their provost, I would let him know what the master of a plantation seminary (*—a periphrasis for hedge-school) could do when brought ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... robbery that can be perpetrated in the face of heaven and earth. (Murmurs from the crowd.) Alone and unprotected I have risked my life on this enterprise. I was the first who pledged its accomplishment to the king, and unaided I have kept my pledge, and yet here in my place I find Don Ramon—an ignoramus. ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... they "did not understand it." It was to them an aggravating farrago of filth and oddity, under which they suspected some formal allegory or meaning which had perished, or was impenetrable. Learn this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet demoralised a dolt or ignoramus. Even the Old Testament, with all its stores of the "shocking," really does very little harm. It requires mind for mind in reading, and vice becomes unattractive even to the vicious when they cannot understand it. I did understand Rabelais, and the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... officers, especially of Bourlamaque, Malartic, and La Pause, the last "un homme divin." Some of the Canadian officers, praised by Vaudreuil, he had tried and found wanting. "Don't forget," he wrote to Levis, "that Mercier is a feeble ignoramus, Saint Luc a prattling boaster, Montigny excellent but a drunkard. The others are not worth speaking of, including my first lieutenant-general Rigaud." This Rigaud was the brother of Vaudreuil. When the Governor wrote to the minister, he, for his part, said that the ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... language. The rascal knows it better than I do. The worst of it is, that with his modern reading he is forgetting it; and some fine day, without ever having suspected it, he will find out that he is an ignoramus. For, Senor Don Jose, my nephew has taken to studying the newest books and the most extravagant theories, and it is Flammarion here and Flammarion there, and nothing will do him but that the stars are full of people. Come, I fancy that you two are going to be very good friends. Jacinto, beg this ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... contest of embattled intellectuals from ten nations, in the great amphitheatre of the Sorbonne—"an imprecatory meeting," he called it. Perrotin promptly accepted, and professed himself overcome by the honour. His servile tone before this licensed government ignoramus made a striking contrast with his bold statements a few moments before, and Clerambault, somewhat taken aback, thought of ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... G. Ruggle (1575-1622). Ignoramus. Com[oe]dia [in five acts and in prose] coram Regie Jacobo et totius Angli magnatibus per Academicos Cantabrigienses habita. Editio quarta. Londini, ex officina ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... {230} In a master's workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin— An indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, {240} Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure—and I ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... never asked me anything about it. You told me what you wanted done, and I did it. How could I believe you were such an ignoramus as not to know the a b c of the thing you were talking about?" He added, in cynical contempt, "But you needn't worry. You can make it right with the managers by spending a little more money ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there was to know about my little journalistic and debating experience at Cambridge, and the general trend of my views and purposes. I do not think he particularly desired my services; but, on the other hand, I was not an absolute ignoramus. I had written for publication; I had enthusiasm; and there ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Later, the Pope keeps silent about his interviews with Napoleon. "He simply lets it be understood that the emperor spoke to him haughtily and contemptuously, even treating him as an ignoramus in ecclesiastical matters."—Napoleon met him with open arms and embraced him, calling him his father. (Thiers, XV., 295.)—It is probable that the best literary portrayal of these tete-a-tete conversations is the imaginary scene in "Grandeurs et Servitudes ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... shook his head in mock dismay. "So now, I'm married to an ignoramus." He spread his hands. "She doesn't know what's going on in the great, big world." He shook a ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... can do nothing alone. Of course, ignorance must be natural and not acquired in order to have the true ring and afford the most relief in the world; but every wide-awake village that has thoughtful people enough—people who are educated up to it—ought to organise an Ignoramus Club to defend the town from ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... of that is the post-script. It will be just fine to have those dogs along. I suppose Mrs. Calvert sent them up from Baltimore to Deerhurst. But if I were you, Dolly Doodles, I wouldn't let that ignoramus preach to me like he does to you in that letter. He's a prig, that's what he is, and I hate a prig. ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... recall that Entedius prefaced his narrative with an oath to its veracity. I am ready to believe all this if he reaffirms it. But I have a horrible feeling that you farmers think you have caught a city ignoramus and that it is your duty to stuff me with the tallest stories you can invent. Please set me right. If you are stuffing me the joke is certainly on me, for these incredible tales seem true: if they are true the joke is doubly on me. As I am the butt, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... newspaper where he was sure to please by insulting me, and the very first thing he did was to give me a kick, such a kick as twenty horses covered with sleigh-bells could not give. He called me "ignoramus," and wondered what "this fellow" meant by his literary drivelling. The most curious part of the whole business is, that he did not write the article, all he did was to sign it! Four years, and a scratch given his vanity, had proved enough to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... this self-dubbed ignoramus making all this pother about being deprived of the classics? Surely he cannot have failed to realise that it is impossible to understand and appreciate the classics properly without having learnt Latin and Greek? But you cannot learn Latin and Greek without learning the grammar. He ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... in the establishment to remain a passive spectator of the actions of others, and began pushing right and left. "Get along, get away ye vagabonds!" he politely cried: "you little shrimps! what business have you to stop the way?—Alfred, you ignoramus! Alfred, why ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... being in jail. She told him Stan hadn't written to Cousin Oscar about no jail, and that I wasn't to tell him either. Now goes Cousin Oscar on a beeline to tell Uncle how dreadful Stanley has went and disgraced the family; and Uncle will want to know how he heard of it. 'Why,' says Oscar, 'an old ignoramus from Arizona, named Johnson—friend of Stanley's—he told me about it. He came up here to get me to help Stanley out; wanted me to go ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... absolutely false information," he thought. "Perhaps he's trying to throw me off the scent. I'll put a few questions that no one but an ignoramus would ask in good faith. If he's trying to bluff me, I'll beat ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... does not marry the young ignoramus who, to be sure, knows neither how to read nor write—she marries the King of Naples; and surely if any thing can gracefully conceal a man's faults, it is ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... his name. I have no desire to be seigneur of Roche-Mauprat; it is enough to have been a slave there. You are most kind, and on my honour I love you; but I have very little love for conditions. I have never done anything from interested motives. I would rather remain an ignoramus than develop a pretty wit for another's dole. Moreover, I could never consent to make such a hole in my cousin's fortune; though I know perfectly well that she would willingly sacrifice a part of her dowry to obtain ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... wanted no further encouragement to meditate the ruin of the high-crowned hat. I went nearer to him, in order to take a closer survey; never was such a bungler; he made blots upon blots; God knows, I began to feel some remorse at winning of such an ignoramus, who knew so little of the game. He lost his reckoning; supper was served up; and I desired him to sit next me. It was a long table, and there were at least five-and-twenty in company, notwithstanding the landlord's promise. The most execrable repast that ever was begun being finished, all the crowd ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... words." "Rascal!" said the fellow, "you lie, I am no rascal; and as for quibbling with words—suppose I did! What then? All the first people does it! The newspapers does it! the gentlefolks that calls themselves the guides of the popular mind does it! I'm no ignoramus. I read the newspapers, and knows what's what." "You read them to some purpose," said I. "Well, if you are lamed for life, and unfitted for any active line—turn newspaper editor; I should say you ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... performers, "you weren't within ten bars of each other!" And Edwin wondered how Charlie could tell that. As for him, he did not know enough of music to be able to turn over the pages for others. He felt himself to be an ignoramus among a company ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... compassionately. Poor Ben had so little opportunity for schooling! He was not to blame for his want of knowledge; but could she throw herself away upon an ignoramus? "It's still there, but has gone out ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the head porter, who came out of the hotel in a fine flare of sarcasm. "You call yourself a Sheffield man and not know where the Old Manor is!" he began, and presently reduced that proud ignoramus of a driver to such a willingness to learn that we thought it at least safe to set out with him, and so started for the long climb up the hills that hold Sheffield in their hollow. When we reached their crest, we looked down and back ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... formed a puzzle that, had the British not been too gravely interested, would have afforded them entertainment. The rules of no known military war game could be applied to the situation, and its uniqueness was a matter as incomprehensible to the tactician as to the ignoramus. For instance, from Maritzburg to Ladysmith one side alternated with the other at intervals along the line. There were British troops at Maritzburg, Boers at Balgowan; British at Mooi River, Boers at Willow Grange; British at Estcourt, Boers at Ennersdale; British within ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... must," said the friar, clutching Adam's robe, and concealing his resentment by an affected grin. "Thou thinkest me a mere ignoramus—ha! ha!—I think the same of thee. Why, man, thou hast never studied the parts of the human ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (Azhakta ruhi thou scatterest my wits, in the Calc. Edit. Saghgharta ruhi thou belittles" my mind). But even Lane never wrote "I only required thee to shave my head"—the adverb thus qualifying, as the ignoramus loves to do, the wrong verb—for "I required thee only to shave my head." In the second echantillon we have "a piece of gold" as equivalent of a quarter-diner and "for God's sake" which certainly does not preserve local colour. In No. 3 we find "'May God,' said I," etc.; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... equality with those who once owned them. These indentured slaves and their descendants were always considered with contempt by the upper classes. The advance of American civilization, the tide of progress has arisen and swept over this indolent creature who remains the same stupid, lazy, ignoramus. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... the teacher be thinking of, to keep such an ignoramus in the class?" thought Hector. "He doesn't know enough to join a class in the ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... Boniface. Oh, I know my brother the generalissimo; I see all the little threads which he is spinning around me, and which, as soon as they are strong enough, he will convert into a net, in which he will catch me, in order to exhibit me to the world as an ignoramus and dreamer, destitute both of ability and luck as a general. Do not tell me that I am mistaken, my friend; I have hitherto observed every thing with close attention, and my observations unfortunately ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... only interesting part of that is the post-script. It will be just fine to have those dogs along. I suppose Mrs. Calvert sent them up from Baltimore to Deerhurst. But if I were you, Dolly Doodles, I wouldn't let that ignoramus preach to me like he does to you in that letter. He's a prig, that's what he is, and I hate a ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... you what it is," he said, "there would be trembling in the heart of a very great man when the nine cravens returned without me. For I am no shaveling ignoramus, but a gentleman of birth; aye, and one who, though poor, is a near cousin of the marshal himself. I warrant the rascals who ran away would smart right soundly for leaving me behind. For Gilles de Sille is no simpleton. He knows more than is written down in the catechism of Holy ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the man as harmless as a lamb: Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin— An indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240 Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure—and I must ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... information," he thought. "Perhaps he's trying to throw me off the scent. I'll put a few questions that no one but an ignoramus would ask in good faith. If he's trying to bluff me, I'll beat him ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... "that a great institution like the Hamburg Botanical Gardens would let a man of your worth perish rather than pay his ransom of L600? Happy young man! You now see the value of a sound, scientific education. Had you been an utter ignoramus as I am, I wouldn't have asked the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... leisurely way along George Street the other day, towards Strunalls, where I get my cigars, and had arrived opposite No. —, when I suddenly noticed, just ahead of me, a tall lady of remarkably graceful figure, clad in a costume which, even to an ignoramus in fashions like myself, seemed extraordinarily out of date. In my untechnical language it consisted of a dark blue coat and skirt, trimmed with black braid. The coat had a very high collar, turned over to show a facing of blue velvet, its sleeves were very full at the shoulders, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... tyrant, God appointed Deborah and her husband Barak. Barak was an ignoramus, like most of his contemporaries. It was a time singularly deficient to scholars. (73) In order to do something meritorious in connection with the Divine service, he carried candles, at his wife's instance, to the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Magdalene!"—"What a to-do you make! Come, tell me, in good faith, what I must do!" David has now the chance he loves. Here is one who knows nothing whatever of the things it is his pride to have learned at least the names of, the things to a Nuremberger worth knowing among all. The ignoramus shall be properly dazzled. David strikes an attitude. "Myself," he informs Walther, "I am learning the Art from the greatest master in Nuremberg, Hans Sachs. For a full year I have received his instructions. Shoe-making and poetry I learn simultaneously. When ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... can the teacher be thinking of, to keep such an ignoramus in the class?" thought Hector. "He doesn't know enough to join a class in ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... instincts were not awakened. You were all good fellows together until you drifted, blindfolded, into the trap poor Morrell set for you. You thought I was ill-treating Con—disregarding his best interests—starving his soul! Oh! you poor little ignoramus; the boy never had a soul worth mentioning until it got awakened, in self-defense, and grew its own limit. What did you and Brace know of the past—the past that went into Con's making? You were free enough with your young condemnation and misplaced ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... He couldn't interest me. He would be an ignoramus in such things—he would bore me, and ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... social aspects of these Scientific Congresses, they were becoming every year more festive, and, at all events to the ignoramus outsiders who joined them, more pleasant. My good cousin and old friend, then Colonel, now General, Sir Charles Trollope, was at Venice that autumn. I said on meeting him, "Now the first thing is to, make you a member." "Me! a member ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Former times when the papers had in 'em straight murders and bank robberies from the inside or out, Mawruss, and you sat opposite somebody in the Subway who had to move his lips while he was reading, you took it for granted that he was an ignoramus which had to hear them simple words pronounced, even if it was by his own lips, before he could understand them, Mawruss, but you take this here letter of the 20th inst., Mawruss, and when you read where President Wilson says with reference to telephone and telegraph ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... though perhaps he could not lend much aid to Lady Adela, who was understood to be getting on very well with her new novel. But, at all events, he would be in his own element; he would be among things that he understood; he would be no trembling ignoramus adventuring forth into the unknown. And yet when, early in the morning, the old and sturdy pony was brought round to the door, and when the brown-bearded Roderick had shouldered the rifle and was ready to set forth, Lionel had little thought of surrendering ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... back of the book on one end of the shelf, it would fly to the other end, equally grazing all the bindings. It is ten years since John Milton, or Robert Southey, or Sir William Hamilton have been out of their places, and that was when an ignoramus broke into the study. The volumes of the encyclopedias never change places. Manuscripts unblotted, and free from interlineation, and labeled. The spittoon knows its place in the corner, as if treated by tobacco chewers ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... but correspondingly bitter and distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a secret sin—the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and Harry to inspect your stable: such conduct is to ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... attitude with which she bends over her infant! Beyond it hangs the Madonna del Cardellino of Raffaelle: what heavenly grace, what simplicity, what saint-like purity, in the expression of that face, and that exquisite mouth! And from these must I turn back, on pain of being thought an ignoramus, to admire the coarse perpetration of Michel Angelo—because it is Michel Angelo's? ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... ignoramus, look," he yelled. "You own a horse that's fit to win the Melbourne Cup or the American Derby, and you don't know it. What do you want for him? Give you ten thousand for him this minute—and I am not so certain that ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... metaphysics from an author I never heard of, with great encomiums on my taste and knowledge. To be sure, I am warranted to insert this certificate among the testimonia authorum, before my next edition of the Painters. Now, I assure you, I am much more just—I have sent the gentleman word what a perfect ignoramus I am, and did not treat my vanity with a moment's respite. Your brother has laughed at me, or rather at the poor man who has so mistaken me, as much as ever I did at his absence and flinging down every thing at breakfast. Tom, your ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... passive spectator of the actions of others, and began pushing right and left. "Get along, get away ye vagabonds!" he politely cried: "you little shrimps! what business have you to stop the way?—Alfred, you ignoramus! ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... speak again, and I ventured upon a low whistle, to inform him of my presence, but he did not respond. The other horse was a good beast, and worked intelligently by Firefly's side at the plough and the wagon: but he was an ignoramus compared with his mate, and ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... musculi unius lacertus subito subsilit, nec regulariter continuoque movetur, sed nunc semel aut bis, nunc minime intra idem tempus subsilit; an causa irritans in sensorio communi, an in musculo ipse palpitante Quaerenda sit, ignoramus. Nosologiae Methodicae, Vol. I. ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... objected to cheeks "scarred" by tears, to "dauntless" statues, and to "terror-stricken" wagons. The very touches of poetic impressionism that largely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an ignoramus. There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions subtly conveyed by Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as deliberate with him as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an imagist before ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... and yet she delights in wrong-doing, [12] it may be that the wife is justly held to blame; but supposing he has never tried to teach her the first principles of "fair and noble" conduct, [13] and finds her quite an ignoramus [14] in these matters, surely the husband will be justly held to blame. But come now (he added), we are all friends here; make a clean breast of it, and tell us, Critobulus, the plain unvarnished truth: Is there an one to whom you are more in the habit of entrusting matters of importance ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... seigneur of Roche-Mauprat; it is enough to have been a slave there. You are most kind, and on my honour I love you; but I have very little love for conditions. I have never done anything from interested motives. I would rather remain an ignoramus than develop a pretty wit for another's dole. Moreover, I could never consent to make such a hole in my cousin's fortune; though I know perfectly well that she would willingly sacrifice a part of her dowry to obtain release from . ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... anything to do with him. Play grandly, honourably. Be not, of course, cast down at losing; but above all, be not eager at winning, as mean souls are. And, indeed, with all one's skill and advantages, winning is often problematical; I have seen a sheer ignoramus that knows no more of play than of Hebrew, blunder you out of five thousand pounds in a few turns of the cards. I have seen a gentleman and his confederate play against another and HIS confederate. One never is secure in these cases: ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so terribly abused by the leading counsel for the opposition in the course of the proceedings before the Committee—stigmatised by them as an ignoramus, a fool, and a maniac—that even his friends seem for a time to have lost faith in him and in the locomotive system, whose efficiency he nevertheless continued to uphold. Things never looked blacker for the success of the railway system than at the close of this great parliamentary struggle. And ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... its revenge; Bonaparte, in his dawn, had met it in Italy, and superbly defeated it—the old owl fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only overthrown, but scandalized. Who was this Corsican of six-and-twenty years of age? What meant this splendid ignoramus, who, having everything against him, nothing for him, without provisions, ammunition, guns, shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men against masses, dashed at allied Europe, and absurdly gained impossible victories? ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... halves; we should not be long without our money.' I wanted no further encouragement to meditate the ruin of the high-crowned hat. I went nearer to him, in order to take a closer survey; never was such a bungler; he made blots upon blots; God knows, I began to feel some remorse at winning of such an ignoramus, who knew so little of the game. He lost his reckoning; supper was served up; and I desired him to sit next me. It was a long table, and there were at least five-and-twenty in company, notwithstanding the landlord's promise. The most execrable repast that ever ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... secret from her sisters, however, and she hugged it to her with much glee. She realized that Helen was by no means the ignoramus Belle and ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... that can be perpetrated in the face of heaven and earth. (Murmurs from the crowd.) Alone and unprotected I have risked my life on this enterprise. I was the first who pledged its accomplishment to the king, and unaided I have kept my pledge, and yet here in my place I find Don Ramon—an ignoramus. ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... fatal than this vague general possibility of error be pleaded against the record. Science meanwhile needs something more than bare possibilities to build upon; so your genuinely scientific inquirer—I don't mean your ignoramus "scientist"—has to remain unsatisfied. It is hard to believe, however, that the Creator has really put any big array of phenomena into the world merely to defy and mock our scientific tendencies; so my deeper belief is that we psychical researchers have been too precipitate with our hopes, and ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... the attendant in the court is to maintain order and preserve dignity. They are almost avid in their pursuit of the ignoramus who comes in with his hat on his head or covers himself on going out before he reaches the door. Their salaries are not large but their duties are not arduous. They may seem solicitous to the judge and sometimes overbearing ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... quibbling at words.' 'Rascal!' said the fellow, 'you lie, I am no rascal; and as for quibbling with words—suppose I did! What then? All the first people does it! The newspapers does it! The gentlefolks that calls themselves the guides of the popular mind does it! I'm no ignoramus. I reads the newspapers, and knows what's what.' 'You read them to some purpose,' said I. 'Well, if you are lamed for life, and unfitted for any active line—turn newspaper editor; I should say you are perfectly qualified, and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... good instance of one of his minor peculiarities. He was utterly without that didactic pedantry which yachting has a fatal tendency to engender In men who profess it. He had tossed me the chart without a thought that I was an ignoramus, to whom it would be Greek, and who would provide him with an admirable subject to drill and lecture, just as his neglect of me throughout the morning had been merely habitual and unconscious independence. In the second place, master of his mtier, as I knew him afterwards to be, resourceful, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... during a long while the instructor of my tender age; my good mother, to whom I owe everything, and who set so great store on my good deportment, and did not want me to be (that is what she used to say) an illustrious ignoramus, put that book into my hands, though I was then little more than a child at the breast. It has been like my conscience to me, and has whispered into my ear many good hints and excellent maxims for my behavior and for the government of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... people are expected to do now-a-days. I never wear long trains, (talking of trains, that's the Charing Cross Metropolitan Station—I've something to tell you about that), and I never play lawn-tennis. I can't cook an omelette. I can't even set a broken limb! There's an ignoramus for you!" ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... easy matter to appoint responsible and learned scholars to the post. The inefficient censors proceeded with their work of destruction and suppression. A commentator on a Greek Father, or the Psalms, was corrected by an ignoramus who knew neither Greek nor Hebrew, anxious to discover petty collisions with the Vulgate, and eager to create annoyances for the author. Latino Latini, one of the students employed by the Vatican, refused his name to an edition of Cyprian which ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... company he was put upon to do the work, but could not; at last he said he could do nothing as long as I was in presence. I at last shewed him his error, but left him as I found him, a pretending ignoramus. ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... on foot, in cabs and carriages. Evidently Mr. Harding had attractive powers, and Malling began to wonder whether he would have any difficulty in obtaining the seat he wanted, in some corner from which he could get a good view both of the chancel and the pulpit. Were vergers "bribable"? What an ignoramus he was about ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... murder him, and the deliberate, persistent manner in which that object was being pursued points to a very strong and definite motive. Then the tactics adopted point to considerable forethought and judgment. They are not the tactics of a fool or an ignoramus. We may criticize the closed carriage as a tactical mistake, calculated to arouse suspicion, but we have to weigh it ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... He suffered just as Dormy does. You'd tell him a thing in his left ear and the first thing you'd know, pop! it would all come out of the other ear and be lost. The poor fellow was growing up to be an ignoramus. Couldn't keep a thing in his head, until one night I overheard his father and mother talking about it in the library. The boy's father wanted to punish him for not remembering what he learned at school, when his mother ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... known since the beginning of the world, that it was quite impossible to converse with a friend at a distance beyond the carrying power of a speaking trumpet. To-day, a boy who does not know that one may talk very agreeably with a friend a thousand miles away is an ignoramus; and experimenters whisper among themselves that, if the undulatory theory of light have any foundation, there is no real reason why we may not see that same friend at that same distance, as well as talk with him. Ten years ago ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... pipe, and I mused upon the ironic fate which had compelled a mathematical genius to make his sole confidant of a philistine lawyer, and induced that lawyer to repeat it confusedly to an ignoramus at twilight on a Scotch hill. As told by Leithen it ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... whole, however, I think we have been most successful in imbibing sherry cobbler, which you get here in great perfection. By the way, tell Cooke [his brother-in-law], with my kindest regards, that — is a lying old thief, many of the things he told me about Macgillivray, e.g., being an ignoramus in natural history, etc. etc., having proved to be lies. He is at any rate a very good ornithologist, and, I can testify, is exceedingly zealous in his vocation as a collector. As in these (points) Mr. —'s statements are unquestionably false, I must confess I feel greatly inclined ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... inexorable equality of the camp. Eating, sleeping, standing guard, tugging at the wheel or defending life and property,— there was no rank between captain and cook, employer and employed, savant and ignoramus, but the distribution of duty and the assignment of responsibility. Toil and exposure, hunger and thirst, wind and storm, danger in camp quarrel or Indian ambush, were the familiar and ordinary vicissitudes of a three months' journey in a caravan of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... unconditionally, of seizing naval stores in American ships, and condemning them as contraband. It makes also a concession to England to seize provisions and other articles in American ships. Other articles are all other articles, and none but an ignoramus, or something worse, would have put such a phrase into a treaty. The condition annexed in this case is, that the provisions and other articles so seized, are to be paid for at a price to be agreed upon. Mr. Washington, as President, ratified this treaty after he knew the British ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... was, as I have indicated, a serious family man. The problem of educating his children could appear to him in no light except a sober one. "Bear Creek," he said, "don't want the experience they had over at Calef. We must not hire an ignoramus." ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... Madam, we never accuse one another; 'tis the poor Rogues, the Tory Rascals we always hang. Let 'em accuse me if they please; alas, I come off hand-smooth with Ignoramus. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... Cynthia from that hidden evil the nature of which he could only guess at. Her world was the artificial one of hotels, and shops, and numbered streets—in the real world, of which the lonely wastes of the Mendips provided no meager sample, she was a profound ignoramus, a fat little automaton equipped with atrophied senses. But she blundered badly in composing herself so cozily for the remainder of the run to Bristol. Medenham had dwelt many months at a time in lands where just such simple indications of mood on the part of man or beast had meant to him ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Lavender, oddly enough, knew little about sailing, and Johnny was pleased to assume the airs of an instructor on this point; his only difficulty being that his pupil had more than the ordinary hardihood of an ignoramus, and was rather inclined to do reckless things even after he had sufficient skill to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... exercitus ordinari. [Sidenote: Interitus.] Post hoc ab ictu tonitrui esc occisus, peractis suis ordinationibus and statutis. Hic autem habuit quatuor filios: Vnus vocabatur Occoday, secundus Tossuch can, tertius Thaaday et nomen quarti ignoramus. [Sidenote: Liberi.] Isti quatuor filij cum alijs maioribus qui tunc erant, primum filium videlicet Occoday elegerunt imperatorem, filij autem istius Occoday Cuyne, qui nunc est imperator, Cocthen et Cyrenen. [Sidenote: Nepotes.] Et si plures habuerit filios ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... published, the Medal, a Satire, was likewise given to the public. This piece is aimed against sedition, and was occasioned by the striking of a medal, on account of the indictment against the earl of Shaftsbury for high treason being found ignoramus by the grand jury, at the Old Bailey, November 1681: For which the Whig party made great rejoicings by ringing of bells, bonfires, &c. in all parts of London. The poem is introduced with a very satirical epistle to the Whigs, in which the author says, 'I have one favour to desire ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... come to my knowledge) and "thou hast dissipated[FN458] my mind" (Azhakta ruhi thou scatterest my wits, in the Calc. Edit. Saghgharta ruhi thou belittles" my mind). But even Lane never wrote "I only required thee to shave my head"—the adverb thus qualifying, as the ignoramus loves to do, the wrong verb—for "I required thee only to shave my head." In the second echantillon we have "a piece of gold" as equivalent of a quarter-diner and "for God's sake" which certainly does not preserve local colour. In No. 3 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the performers, "you weren't within ten bars of each other!" And Edwin wondered how Charlie could tell that. As for him, he did not know enough of music to be able to turn over the pages for others. He felt himself to be an ignoramus among a company ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... and that I wasn't to tell him either. Now goes Cousin Oscar on a beeline to tell Uncle how dreadful Stanley has went and disgraced the family; and Uncle will want to know how he heard of it. 'Why,' says Oscar, 'an old ignoramus from Arizona, named Johnson—friend of Stanley's—he told me about it. He came up here to get me to help Stanley out; wanted me to go ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Well, old hunter, what do you say to that?" said the doctor, stroking his disagreeable pet: "that dirty-faced, uncombed, ill-dressed ignoramus of a boy claims you for a relative. Do you ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... Ignoramus. Com[oe]dia [in five acts and in prose] coram Regie Jacobo et totius Angli magnatibus per Academicos Cantabrigienses habita. Editio quarta. Londini, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... Dolly Fayre," and Alicia's eyes flashed, "I won't be dictated to by a little country ignoramus! I've had experience in the ways of the world, and you haven't. Now suppose you let me alone. It's none of your business, as you ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... problems. It simply got itself there by the force of the artistic passion behind it; its coherent statement had to wait for other and more reflective days. The thing began as a vision, not as a syllogism. Here the name of Franz Schubert inevitably comes up. Schubert was an ignoramus, even in music; he knew less about polyphony, which is the mother of harmony, which is the mother of music, than the average conservatory professor. But nevertheless he had such a vast instinctive sensitiveness to musical values, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... the greater part of the theoretical wisdom of the world comes to us in the shape of legacies bequeathed by fools. A fool is not a person without knowledge or understanding—that is an ignoramus. The true fool—the only fool worthy of a wise man's contemplation—is the man who knows and understands, and habitually refrains from acting according to knowledge and understanding. It is the record of ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... may well content myself with my inability to comprehend what relates to them. But instead of plaguing you with an endless enumeration of my difficulties, I had better tell you some of the passages which gave me, ignoramus as I am, peculiar pleasure.... I am afraid I shall transcribe your whole book if I go on to tell you all that has struck me, and you would not thank me for that—you, who have so little vanity, and so much to do better with your time than to read my ignorant ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... scientist or scholar (if there are any) who fakes a fact in the interest of his theory; every fool who talks through his hat without knowing; every sentimentalist who plays up to the sentimentalism in himself and other people; every second-hand ignoramus who takes over a view or a prejudice wholesale, without investigating the facts it's based on for himself. You find it everywhere, the taint; you can't get away from it. Except by keeping quiet and learning, and wanting ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... "Few human creatures," says John Stuart Mill, "would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though he should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they with theirs.... It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... keep his eyes off this girl who had already completed the high school course which he had not yet begun; besides, she had learned a lot of other things which would be beyond him to ever reach. Even though he were an ignoramus, he could bask in the light of her greater learning. She did not ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... permitted) and nothing but the truth? What could be finer and better than all this?—what could more certainly assure justice? How close the resemblance is between this ideal picture and what actually occurs all know, or should know. The judge is commonly an ignoramus incapable of logical thought and with little sense of the dread and awful nature of his responsibility. The prosecuting attorney thinks it due to his reputation to "make a record" and tries to convict by hook or crook, even when he is himself persuaded of the defendant's innocence. Counsel ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... mountains and wage war with human nature at large.'' He removed to Burlington, Vermont, in 1787, and died there on the 11th of February 1789. He was, says Tyler, "a blustering frontier hero—an able-minded ignoramus of rough and ready humour, of boundless self-confidence, and of a shrewdness in thought and action equal to almost any emergency.'' Allen wrote a Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity (1779), the most celebrated book in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Perhaps such an ignoramus might prefer them; for they are always more open, more free from weeds, rushes and flags, and less dark; and at the hour of la chasse au poste, the hour of twilight, they are as solitary as the Mare No. 1. But the savage beasts of the forest are not to be deceived; ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... he read the letters first, and then heard their tale and expressed his wonder that men so wise and mannerly should take such pains to court an ignoramus and recluse, to undertake such unwonted and uncongenial cares, but they must be well aware that he was a monk and under authority. He had to deal not with the primate and chief of the English Church in this matter, ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... Latin word, and literally translated means, "we do not know." In former days when a grand jury considered that a bill or indictment was not supported by sufficient evidence to prove the need for a trial, they wrote the word "ignoramus" on the back of it, signifying that they rejected it. The words used in present practice are simply "not a true bill," or "not found." But in course of time the old Latin term was made serviceable, as we have ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... its nature? any chemist shown its composition? Is luck that strange, nondescript fairy, that does all things among men that they cannot account for? If so, why does not luck make a fool speak words of wisdom; an ignoramus utter lectures ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... de nobis, duo Graeci et tres Hispani, semetipsos ab alijs segregantes, visi sunt alium requirere introitum nos praecedere cupientes, et certe nos illos exinde non vidimus, et quid eis acciderit an periculum subierint, velne ignoramus. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. Believe nothing you hear, and only one-half that you see. Now about our Maisons de Sante, it is clear that some ignoramus has misled you. After dinner, however, when you have sufficiently recovered from the fatigue of your ride, I will be happy to take you over the house, and introduce to you a system which, in my opinion, and in that of every one who has witnessed its operation, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... peoples, or by the ignorant and uncultured among our own race—persons who are obviously quite undeveloped, from whatever point of view one regards them. No doubt this does appear remarkable at first sight but the fact is that the sensitiveness of the savage or of the coarse and vulgar European ignoramus is not really at all the same thing as the faculty of his properly trained brother, nor is it arrived at in ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... I'm rather a sceptic, and entirely an ignoramus. But I met a man the other day who would have laughed at us for doubting. He was an awfully strange fellow. His name is Marr. I ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of Love," since they know it all in advance; remarks that three-quarters of female authors are no better than they should be; maintains that Madame Guion would have been far more useful, had she been merely pretty and an ignoramus, such as Nature made her,—that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz probably would never have married into the family, had they possessed that accomplishment,—that the Spartan women did not know the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... through the senses, but by his consciousness. So there is a mental science that looks inward, and a physical science that looks outward. Break down consciousness and philosophy is ruined. But some ignoramus is ready to say: What care I for philosophy? Poor fellow! He does not know what philosophy is; his ignorance is his trouble. Philosophy simply tells us how things are; it answers the question, how is it? There is nothing in which we are more interested than we are in the how ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... to the other; no sleep, no rest. The poor Crippled wrist, too, never left one moment in the same position; now up, now down, now here, now there; was it to be wondered at, if its pains returned? The surgeon then was to be called, and to be rated as an ignoramus, because he could not divine the cause of this extraordinary change. In fine, my friend, you must mend your manners. This is not a world to live at random in, as you do. To avoid those eternal distresses, to which you are for ever exposing us, you must ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the situation thinks the "companion" is right, and so he becomes a convinced and devoted Anarchist! What would happen, if pursuing his studies of the social question further, he had understood that the "companion" was a pretentious ignoramus, that he talked twaddle, that his "Ideal" is a delusion and a snare, that outside bourgeois politics there is, opposed to these, the political action of the proletariat, which will put an end to the very existence of capitalist society? He would ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... and was now earning only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen of foreman the better I liked ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... The countryman in the city, the city man in the country, is in a comic situation. Here is a coward named Falstaff, and Shakespeare puts him into battle. Here is a vain person, and Malvolio is imprisoned and twitted by a clown. Here is an ignoramus, and Dogberry is placed on the judge's bench. These contrasts might, indeed, be tragic enough, but they are actually comic. Such characters are not ruled by fate but by a sportive chance. The gods connive at them. They are ruled, like tragic characters, by necessity and blindness; ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... induce the grand jury to indict Warren for libel on account of this intemperate attack. The jury, however, returned "ignoramus," and the Governor had to bear the affront, which was but one of a series directed against him during his remaining ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Maybe I'm just a country boy but I'm as smart as the next man. Just because some of you eggheads spend half your life in college don't mean you've got any monopoly on good common sense. I went to the school of hard knocks, understand, and I got plenty of diplomas to prove it. Take it easy on that ignoramus talk." ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... Africa, or in the icy regions of the Pole if I knew it were there. But I do not know where it is. I do not know if it be guarded in a triple- locked iron case by some jealous biblomaniac. I do not know if it be growing mouldy in the attic of some ignoramus. I shudder at the thought that perhaps its tore-out leaves may have been used to cover the pickle-jars of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... not saying we are not going to find plenty of stumps and roots and a tough sod in this furrow we are going to plow. It's only the fool or the ignoramus who underrates the strength of his opponent. It is going to be just plain, honest justice and the will of the people against the money of the Harrimans and the Goulds and the Vanderbilts and all the rest of 'em. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... "I might of been a good 'eal better off. If you hadn't of took me in the Alexanderses would of, and then I wouldn't of been kep' out of school and growed up a ignoramus ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... a hair of the same dog that bit them, after a liberal compotation on the preceding night. Third place, as a scholar! Well! who may he thank for that, I interrogate. Not one Denis O'Donegan!—O no; the said Denis is an ignoramus, and knows nothing of the classics. Well, be it so. All I say is, that I wish I had one classical lick at their provost, I would let him know what the master of a plantation seminary (*—a periphrasis for hedge-school) could do when brought to the ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... morning seated at the foot of her bed. During one of these weary watches, it came into his head to kill time by scribbling some dramatic scenes on loose sheets of paper, which he hid during the intervals of his visits under the cushion of an arm-chair. A Piedmontese and a thorough ignoramus, he had scarcely ever attempted to write even so much as a letter in Italian; and as to a literary composition in any language, such a thing had never occurred to him. The Cleopatra thus written in his lady's bed-room and secreted ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... emotionally he is unchanged. His grade of morality is neither better nor worse. His tolerance or narrowness remains what it previously was. If he was bigoted while here he is still bigoted there. If he was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely that in the astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development, but in a world where emotion ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... to the head porter, who came out of the hotel in a fine flare of sarcasm. "You call yourself a Sheffield man and not know where the Old Manor is!" he began, and presently reduced that proud ignoramus of a driver to such a willingness to learn that we thought it at least safe to set out with him, and so started for the long climb up the hills that hold Sheffield in their hollow. When we reached their crest, we looked down and back through the clearer air upon as strange ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... dawning, had encountered him in Italy, and beaten him superbly. The old owl had fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only struck as by lightning, but disgraced. Who was that Corsican of six and twenty? What signified that splendid ignoramus, who, with everything against him, nothing in his favor, without provisions, without ammunition, without cannon, without shoes, almost without an army, with a mere handful of men against masses, hurled himself on Europe combined, and absurdly ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... without knowing the top of a Greek letter from the bottom. But I think that if a man is going to abuse Pindar, if he is going to denounce, refute, and utterly expose Pindar, if he is going to show Pindar up as the utter ignoramus and outrageous impostor that he is, then I think it will be just as well perhaps—I think, at any rate, it would do no harm—if he did know a little Greek, and even had read a little Pindar. And I think the same situation would be involved if the critic were concerned to point out that Pindar ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... by instance on instance from history, is—I cannot get a just hearing, because I have failed in opening this mine. So it is always. Glory covers the multitude of sins. But a man who has failed is a fair mark for every slanderer, puppy, ignoramus, discontented mutineer; as I am now. What else, in the name of common sense, could have been his argument? Does Mr. Napier really think that Raleigh, even if, in the face of all the noble and pious words which he had written, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... them. These indentured slaves and their descendants were always considered with contempt by the upper classes. The advance of American civilization, the tide of progress has arisen and swept over this indolent creature who remains the same stupid, lazy, ignoramus. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... some good pictures in the palace, too, but not so extraordinarily good as the guide-books and the guide would have us to think. The latter, like most men of his class, is an ignoramus, who showed us an Andrea del Sarto (copy or original), and called it a Correggio, and made other blunders of a like nature. As is the case in England, you are hurried through the rooms without being allowed time to look at the pictures, ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... butt of all the ridicule and contumely which could be heaped upon her head. What could you expect of a woman who meddled with things outside her province? Since she had asserted the grass would absorb everything, its failure to absorb the salt proved beyond all doubt she was an ignoramus, a dangerous charlatan, and a crazy woman, better locked up, who had destroyed Southern California to her own obscure benefit. The victory over the grass became a victory over Miss Francis; of the ordinary gumchewing moviegoing maninthestreet over the pretentious highbrow. She was ignominiously ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... superintendent appointed, a certain Spanish officer named Alcubier, was so ignorant and careless that half the objects found under his supervision were broken or lost before they reached Naples; this ignoramus, it was said, even went so far as to order whole architraves to be smashed up and their bronze lettering to be picked out before making a copy of the original inscription! Under these circumstances the marvel ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... was he, you ignoramus. All right, Tom, have your own way about it. Only someone ought to warn the principal about him. Why, he might run off with a couple of the buildings ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... with exultation and heightened color, "but it seems absurd to suppose that such a little ignoramus as I ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... by the uneducated classes of our own country, and by foreigners. Its plot is either very slight or hopelessly hackneyed, and it is redeemed from sheer commonplace only by its picturesque language. It is usually told in the first person by some English-murdering ignoramus. It is simple, and sometimes has a homely pathos. It may present character as either active or inactive, though usually the former. Its excuse for existence is that it gives truthful expression, in their ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... silly child; do you imagine that a contract is like a house of cards which you can blow down at will? Dear little ignoramus, you don't know what trouble we have had to found an entail for the benefit of your eldest son. Don't cast us back into the discussions from ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... you would occupy yourselves with these works before any others. Afterwards we will study together the MSS. of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemy, of Olympiodorus and Stephanus, which I discovered at Ravenna, in a vault where they have been locked up since the reign of that ignoramus Theodosius who ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... Russian underling officers kept up a constant brawl of duels and gaming and drink. No wonder the bluff Dane sailed out from the snow-rimmed peaks of Avacha Bay with dark forebodings. He had carried a load of petty instructions issued by ignoramus savants for eight years. He had borne eight years of nagging from court and senate and academy. He had been criticised for blunders of others' making. He had been set to accomplish a Herculean task with tied hands. He had been threatened with fines and court martial for the delay ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... little surprised, therefore, to find occasion to suspect that one of my principal subordinates was trying to impose on me as though I were an ignoramus. For when any important crime of a certain kind occurred, and I set myself to investigate it a la Sherlock Holmes, he used to listen to me in the way that so many people listen to sermons in church; ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... of a child. What can an ignorant man do with knowledge? He is as likely to use it wrong end uppermost as in any other manner. Learning is a ticklish thing; it was said by Festus to have maddened even the wise and experienced Paul and what may we not expect it to do with your downright ignoramus? ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... "O ignoramus! Thy name is Bob, and thou art not worth a 'bob'— miserable snob! Don't you know that Cyrus Field is the man who brought about the laying of the great Atlantic ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... hiss, as late did Popish Crew, | By Yea and Nay, she'll throw her self on you, | The grand Inquest of Whigs, to whom she's true. | Then let 'em rail and hiss, and damn their fill, Your Verdict will be Ignoramus still. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... close to Him. Ye ha' muckle need o' His care. An' dinna trust your life to the dochtering o' a sullen ignoramus like the captain,—an obstinate, self-willed brute, that, right or wrang, will ha' his ain way. Dinna tak' ony medicine ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I was not a spiritual hypochondriac any more than a bodily one, and would not trouble myself about that either; so ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... "How many dollars or cents is it?" together with my offering dirty crumpled pieces of paper bearing such names as Troy, Palmyra, and Geneva, which were in fact notes of American banks which might have suspended payment, I was constantly taken, not for an ignoramus from the "Old Country," but for a "genuine Down-Easter." Canadian credit is excellent; but the banking system of the States is on a very insecure footing; some bank or other "breaks" every day, and lists of the defaulters are posted up in ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... three words with an air of pride, which indeed seemed to say "please bear in mind that I am no ignoramus." ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... applied by the field attendant to check the flow of blood, which was simply a cord passed around the leg outside the trousers and twisted tight with the assistance of a bayonet sheath, with a growling request to be informed what infernal ignoramus had done that. Then suddenly he saw how matters were and was silent; while they were bringing him in from the field in the overcrowded landau the improvised tourniquet had become loosened and slipped down, thus giving rise to an extensive hemorrhage. He relieved his feelings by storming ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... scalene triangles, the oddity of its plan makes Washington a succession of surprises which never fail to vex and astonish the stranger, be he ever so highly endowed as to the phrenological bump of locality. Depending upon the hap-hazard start the ignoramus may chance to make, any particular house or street is either nearer at hand or farther off than the ordinary human mind finds it agreeable to believe. The first duty of the new-comer is to teach his nether extremities to avoid instinctively the hypothenuse of the street-triangulation, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... got into an argument with the ignorant can have no hopes of supporting his own dignity; and if an ignoramus by his loquacity gets the upper hand it should not surprise us, for he is a stone and can bruise a gem:—No wonder if his spirit flag; the nightingale is cooped up in the same cage with the crow:—If ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... as Lord Umfraville's host," young Calverley at once began, "you cannot with decorum convey to the ignoramus my opinion as to his ability to conjugate the verb ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... delight. Presently they swung along, hand in hand, laughing, quoting, reminding each other of this fine thing, and that. Newbury was a considerable musician; Marcia was accustomed to be thought so. There was a new and singular joy in feeling herself but a novice and ignoramus beside him. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to school. Oh, the number of foreign schools I have been at in my life! And yet I am quite an ignoramus. I know nothing— nothing in the world—I assure you; except that I play and dance beautifully,—and French and German of course I know, to speak; but I can't read or write them very well. Do you know they wanted ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... that winter. How nobody knew, and I least of all. Looking backward, I seem to have gone to sleep one night, an ignoramus, and awakened next morning knowing ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... whose more candid opinions the writer of this is more frequently favored nowadays than of old has said: "Every time I hear of somebody who has wanted one of these books without being able to get it, or who, having got it, has conceded it nothing better than the disdain of an ignoramus, I feel as if I must forthwith get out the copy and read it through again and again, until I have read it once for every person who has rejected it or been denied it." One may feel reasonably sure ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... progress in the domain of law and a falling back in the domain of art. And meanwhile the artists see multiplying before them their bete-noire, the bourgeois, the Philistine, the presumptuous ignoramus, the quack who plays at science, and the feather-brain who thinks himself ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that he had made a speech which sent cold shivers down the spine of our young Apollo; that, in a fine rhetorical flourish—dear old fox-hunting ignoramus—he declared that the winner of the Newdigate carried the bays of the Laureate in his knapsack; that Randall, white-lipped with horror, murmured to Betty Fairfax, his neighbour at the table: "My God! The Poet-Laureate's unhallowed grave! I must burn the knapsack and take to a hod!" It was ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... librarian to the Emperor Francis the First, often used to reply to questions that were put to him, "I do not know." An ignoramus one day said to him, "But the emperor pays you for knowing." "The emperor," he replied, "pays me for what I know; if he were to pay me for what I am ignorant of, all the treasures of his empire would not ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... one thing he came as near getting me fired from this job as I ever got. He snarled and growled at me. He told the managing editor that he was an ignoramus and the M.E., believe it or not, took it, took it like a little lamb, Jimmy. Dije ever hear anybody call the M.E. an idiot and get away ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... his eyes dull; he would launch into discourses upon his talent, his success, his development, the advance he was making.... It turned out in actual fact that he had barely talent enough to produce passable portraits. He was a perfect ignoramus, had read nothing; why should an artist read, indeed? Nature, freedom, poetry were his fitting elements; he need do nothing but shake his curls, talk, and suck away at his eternal cigarette! Russian audacity is a fine thing, but it doesn't ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
