"Boorish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cover the whole ground. I want to get people to understand that in the future we shall not divide water, in this petty way, into potty little ponds and lakes and rivers: it will be one big satisfying thing, the same everywhere. Apres moi le Deluge. Belloc in his boorish boozy way may question my knowledge of French; but I fancy that quotation will ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... He winced and felt boorish. He had never liked and disapproved of Lady Sunderbund so much as he did at that moment. And he ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... flourished. It is never religious, and it is often immoral, but it is always suffused with a certain hue of courtliness, even gentleness. The language is of the most refined delicacy, the thought is never boorish or rude; there is the self-collectedness which we find in the poetry of France and Italy during the Renaissance, and in England during the reign of Queen Anne. It exhibits the most exquisite polish, allied with an avoidance of every shocking ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... boorish, but Tudor was gracefully easy in everything he did, or looked, or said. His blue eyes sparkled and flashed, his clean-cut mobile features were an index to his slightest shades of feeling and expression. He bubbled with enthusiasms, and his faintest smile ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... So this was what you wished to speak to me about. This was why you were so—so boorish and disagreeable in that shop. Tell me—was that the reason? Was that why you followed me there? Did you think—did you presume to think of preventing my buying what I pleased ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to be consistent, elucidate sceptically and explain naturally all the rest in the same way.... But even if such a labour could be accomplished, it would in any case be no proof of superior talents in the one carrying it out, but only of superficial wit, boorish wisdom, and ridiculous haste.... Therefore I leave on one side all such enquiries, and believe what is generally thought about the myths. I do not examine them, as I have just said, but I examine myself to see whether I too may perhaps be a monster, more ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... Nothing escaped his blighting censure. At every sentence he overthrew an idol, or lowered my estimation of a friend. I saw everything with new eyes, and could only marvel at my former blindness. How was it possible that I had not before observed A's false hair, B's selfishness, or C's boorish manners? I and my companion, methought, walked the streets like a couple of gods among a swarm of vermin; for every one we saw seemed to bear openly upon his brow the mark of the apocalyptic beast. I half expected that these miserable beings, like the people of Lystra, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the strong fighter, the rugged accomplisher the boisterous enthusiast, among their men. Whether these are atheistic, immoral, boorish, cruel, are considerations of secondary importance. The daughters marry them with little hesitation. Men are men, supreme, to be adored. Women are to be tolerated, stepped on, sat upon. Man is the master, woman is the ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... of the war, The help of England and the aide of Fraance, I only can call mine: and shall I then, Now in the sun-set of my daie of honour, When I should passe with glory to my rest And raise my Monument from my Cuntries praises, Sitt downe and with a boorish patience suffer The harvest that I labourd for to be Anothers spoile? the peoples thancks and praises, Which should make faire way for me to my grave, To have another object? the choice fruites Of my deepe projects grace anothers Banquet? No; this ungratefull Cuntry, this base people, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... of the last years thinly and rarely is. It is not Oscar Wilde's wax flowers of speech, nor the excessively stiff and conventionalized action of "Salome," that bores one with the Strauss opera of that name. It is not even the libretto of "Der Rosenkavalier," essentially coarse and boorish and insensitive as it is beneath all its powdered preciosity, that wearies one with Strauss's "Musical Comedy"; or the hybrid, lame, tasteless form of "Ariadne auf Naxos" that turns one against that little monstrosity. It is the generally inexpressive and insufficient music in which ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... truth of this final assertion, I call you to witness the sticks at the door, Where they make it a daily, a 'manly' diversion, To ogle each woman, and sometimes do more, Who passes the hotel that's named by a saint, Where boorish bad manners ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... Wheeler family were no less anxious to act as audience for the occasion. Mr. Bob Wheeler had departed to his work that morning in a condition which his family, who were fond of homely similes, had likened to a bear with a sore head. The sisterly attentions of Emma Wheeler were met with a boorish request to keep her paws off; and a young Wheeler, rash and inexperienced in the way of this weary world, who publicly asked what Bob had "got the hump about," was sternly ordered to finish his breakfast in the washhouse. Consequently there ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... by the intense bitterness in his tone. Truly this man, with his lightning changes from boorish incivility to whole-hearted hospitality, from apparently impenetrable reserve to an almost desperate outspokenness, was as ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Bellevale has ever received on a dark past," said Miss Finch, "if it is light. And how strangely he acts! Everybody notices it. Always so chatty and almost voluble before, and now—why, he's dreadfully boorish. You know how ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... boot-buttons on, and mended her stockings, as some small return for the lessons in crochet and fancy knitting that she had received from the skilful white fingers which were a perpetual marvel to her. But Simon Hartley remained what she had at first thought him,—a sullen, boorish churl. He was a malevolent churl too, Hildegarde thought; indeed she was sure of it. She had several times seen his eyes fixed on his uncle with a look of positive hatred; and though Farmer Hartley was persistently kind and patient ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... in their scanning. It was probably scarcely pronounced at all by the less educated Romans, since it is often wholly omitted in inscriptions, and has been lost in modern Italian. Cicero, Orator 161, says that the neglect to pronounce final s is 'somewhat boorish' (subrusticum), though formerly thought 'very refined' (politius). Even Lucretius sometimes disregards it in his scanning. In the ordinary literary Latin a large number of words has lost an original s; e.g. all the nouns of the -a declension. ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... remember," continued Eleanor, "that first sight of the great Earl. My brothers had teased me for going so far north, and told me the English were mere rude islanders—boorish, and unlettered; but, child as I was, scarce eleven years old, I could perceive the nobleness of the Earl. 'If all thy new subjects be like him,' said my brother to me, 'thou wilt reign over a race of kings.' And how good he was to me when I wept at leaving my home ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... everywhere?" she asked, fanning herself lazily. His rough, almost boorish, manner amused her always. She felt as if she were playing with a ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... throne was undeniable, and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, by far the greater part of the English people would have preferred, to the having a petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty, rapacity, boorish manners, and odious foreign ways, a thousand stories were current. It wounded our English pride to think, that a shabby High-Dutch duke, whose revenues were not a tithe as great as those of many of the princes of our ancient English nobility, who could not speak ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Austrian noble prided himself in dressing as he pleased, and looked with contempt upon the studied attitudes and foppish attire of the French. The Parisian courtier, on the other hand, rejoicing in his ruffles, and ribbons, and practiced movements, despised the boorish manners, as he deemed them, of ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... with the art with which he forced salads from the boorish soils, found him favour and earned privileges ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... noxious or loathsome to those who were uncomfortable enough already, unless he was very sure it would do good,—in which case, he never played with drugs, but gave good, honest, efficient doses. Sometimes he lost a family of the more boorish sort, because they did not think they got their money's worth out of him, unless they had something more than a taste of everything he ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... boorish mind! Grammar teaches us the laws of the verb and nominative case, as well as ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... do consent that ipse is he; now, are you not ipse, for I am he?' "'Which he, sir?' "'He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you clown, abandon—which is, in the vulgar, leave the society—which, in the boorish, is company of this female—which, in the common, is woman—which together is, abandon the society of this female; or clown.... I will o'errun thee with policy; therefore tremble, and depart.'" —As You ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... into Brittany, commencing with Rennes, where they had an appointment with Larsoneur, with a view of studying that urn mentioned in the Memorials of the Celtic Academy, which appeared to have contained the ashes of Queen Artimesia, when the mayor entered unceremoniously with his hat on, like the boorish individual ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... our citizens, is so unlike the narrow prejudices of the French and English travellers preceding you, who, considering each the manners and habits of their own people as the only orthodox, have viewed every thing differing from that test as boorish and barbarous, that your work will be read here ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... without knowing it, began to be thawed into a father. But the fear of a rival in the King's favour—some gallant soldier—and dozens of them were reported every week—made him resolve once more to bring his daughter's beauties into play. The king had seen her, and, in his boorish way, had expressed his admiration; and Gyllenborg felt assured, that if he should marry his daughter according to the King's wishes, his influence would be greater than ever; and, in fact, that the premiership would be his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... ill-mannered, insulting, uncouth, bluff, coarse, impertinent, raw, unmannerly, blunt, discourteous, impolite, rude, unpolished, boorish, ill-behaved, impudent, rustic, untaught, brusk, ill-bred, insolent, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... that the wrong was all on one side. There were employers who were unjust and cruel when they had the power, unreasonable in argument, and boorish and exasperating in their manners. Many seemed to think they were a different class of beings because they had more money than their workmen, and they resented the idea of the latter rising above the station in which they ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Custom-house above all others would do well to take example from the United States and render itself somewhat less odious and offensive to foreigners. The servile rapacity of the French officials is sufficiently contemptible; but there is a surly boorish incivility about our men, alike disgusting to all persons who fall into their hands, and discreditable to the nation that keeps such ill-conditioned curs snarling ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... Then and there he is full of fun, bright and cheerful; when alone with his wife he has scarcely a word to say; he moves about the house with the lofty indifference of a lord, and with a heartless disregard of every member of the household. At home he is cold and cross and boorish, in other women's parlors he is polite and considerate and engaging. He has a smile and a compliment for other women, none for his wife. If they attend an evening reception, he brings his wife there, and he takes her home; during the interval she has little, if any, of his company. ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... distinctly heard sounds of hissing. My niece De Nevers was greatly upset; she would eat no supper, but began to cry. "What are you worrying about?" quoth I to this excitable young person. "Don't you see that we are stopping the night on the estates of the Princess Palatine,—[The boorish Bavarian princess, the Duc d'Orleans's second wife. EDITOR'S NOTE.]—and that it is to her exquisite breeding that we ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of Marcus's was Bassaeus Rufus, a good man on the whole, but uneducated and boorish, having been brought up in poverty in his early youth. [Wherefore he had been disinclined to go on the campaign, and what Marcus said was incomprehensible to him.] Once some one had interrupted him in ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... is a very boorish way of thanking you for the premiere representation of your little poem. "To Delia in Girton" you call it, "recommending her to avoid the Muses, and seek the society of the Graces and Loves." An old-fashioned preamble, and of the lengthiest, and ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... silence, Slowly, and making no noise: but then the father in dudgeon After him shouted:—"Be off! I know you're an obstinate fellow! Go and look after the business; else I shall scold you severely; But don't fancy I'll ever allow you to bring home in triumph As my daughter-in-law any boorish impudent hussy. Long have I lived in the world, and know how to manage most people, Know how to entertain ladies and gentlemen, so that they leave me In good humour, and know how to flatter a stranger discreetly. But my daughter-in-law must have useful qualities also, And be able to soften ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... mention one more, called Flemengs, infidels, dun, heavy, and boorish; who are amongst the Franks what the Armenians are amongst us,—having no ideas beyond those of thrift, and no ambition beyond that of riches. They used to send us a sleepy ambassador to negotiate the introduction ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... men of the lowest class emigrate to more favoured provinces, since their own is too poor to support them; they work hard, and return with their savings to their native hills. Their fellow-countrymen consider them boorish in manners, uneducated, and of a low class; but they are good-natured and docile, hard-working, temperate, and honest. "In your life," wrote the Duke of Wellington, "you never saw anything so bad as the Galicians; and yet they are the finest body of men and ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... the artist, rather glad to see his adversary's fury exhaust itself in words, and his attitude assume a less threatening character; "pick up your compass and return to your work. Here," he added, taking two five-franc pieces from his pocket. "You were a little boorish and I a little hasty. Go and bathe your eyes ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Christianization mellows those in manner whom it cannot mend in mind, much the same will it prove with the progress of genialization. And so, thanks to geniality, the misanthrope, reclaimed from his boorish address, will take on refinement and softness—to so genial a degree, indeed, that it may possibly fall out that the misanthrope of the coming century will be almost as popular as, I am sincerely sorry to say, some philanthropists of the present time would ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... of the same person. The man who falls into the most graceful operatic poses, as he pours sweet nothings into your ear by the fire at night, may be entirely destitute of those more intimate charms which a woman values. On the other hand, an ugly, boorish, badly-dressed figure may mark a man endowed with the very genius of love, and who has a perfect mastery over situations which might baffle us with our superficial graces. A man whose conventional aspect accords with his real nature, who, in ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... you did not think the thing too boorish to be pardoned. On the face of it it was rude ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... Sir, that must marry the woman. Therefore, you Tory, abandon—which is, in the vulgar, leave—the society, which in the boorish is, company—of this female,—which in the common is, woman; which together is, abandon the society of this female, or Tory, thou vanishest; or, to thy better understanding, skedaddlest; or, to wit, I defeat thee, make thee away, translate thy majority into minority, thine Office into Opposition; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... sitting down the young man had shown his churlishness. Beginning by viewing the Colonel in sulky silence, he had answered his kinsman's overtures only by a rude stare or a boorish word. His companions, two squireens of his own age, and much of his own kidney, nudged him from time to time, and then the three would laugh in such a way as to make it plain that the stranger was the butt of the jest. Presently, overcoming the reluctant impression which Colonel John's manners ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Christian knight, Or basely born and boorish, Or yet that thing I still more slight— The spawn of some ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... back to England a renewed infusion of continental ideals. France was more than ever the arbiter for the "gentry and civiller sort of mankind." Travellers such as Evelyn, who deplored the English gentry's "solitary and unactive lives in the country," the "haughty and boorish Englishman," and the "constrained address of our sullen Nation,"[301] made an impression. It was generally acknowledged that comity and affability had to be fetched from beyond the Seas, for the "meer Englishman" was defective in those qualities. ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... no means to be confounded with the obstreperous conceit of ages of mannerism, who, out of vanity, introduce the fleeting modes and fashion of the day into art, because to them everything like noble simplicity seems boorish and rude. The latter impropriety is now abolished: but, on the other hand, our poets and artists, if they would hope for our approbation, must, like servants, wear the livery of distant centuries and foreign nations. We are everywhere at home except at home. We do ourselves ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... was an occasion when it would have been boorish in me to refuse to meet them halfway. I even told them an excellent wheeze I had long known, which I thought they might not, have heard. It runs: "Why is Charing Cross? Because the Strand runs into it." I mean to say, this is comic providing ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... dialect of the English tongue, or the country way of expressing themselves, is not easily understood—it is so strangely altered. It is true that it is so in many parts of England besides, but in none in so gross a degree as in this part. This way of boorish country speech, as in Ireland it is called the "brogue" upon the tongue, so here it is called "jouring;" and it is certain that though the tongue be all mere natural English, yet those that are but a little acquainted with them cannot understand one-half of what they say. It is not possible to ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... want a bullet through our skulls," he answered in boorish derision; and the man between them ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... of her, though she did not happen to perceive him. He called a sleigh and drove to the barracks for his own skates. Then to the Kuh-brucke, where a reach of the Mottlau was cleared and kept in order for skating. He overpaid the sleigh-driver and laughed aloud at the man's boorish surprise. There was no one so happy as Charles Darragon in all the world. He was going to tell Desiree that he ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... you do not miss. That was a fine answer of Sophocles to a man who asked him, when in extreme old age, whether he was still a lover. "Heaven forbid!" he replied; "I was only too glad to escape from that, as though from a boorish and insane master." To men indeed who are keen after such things it may possibly appear disagreeable and uncomfortable to be without them; but to jaded appetites it is pleasanter to lack than to enjoy. However, he cannot be said to lack who does ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... she knew how to take care of herself, although her only protectress was a perfectly inoffensive mother. On the occasion of the Prince of Wales's visit to Lahore, had she not boxed the ears of a burly and somewhat boorish swain, who had chosen the outside of an elephant as an eligible locale for a proposal, the uncouth abruptness of which did not accord with her notion of the fitness ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... of the opponents of the Anglo-Norman civil and ecclesiastical institutions, and he brings all Scotland under the same condemnation when he tells us how David "did his utmost to draw on that rough and boorish people towards quiet and chastened manners".[15] The reference to "their own nation" shows, too, that Fordun did not understand that the Highlanders were a different people; and when he called them hostile to the English, he was evidently unaware that their custom was "out ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... de Conde, gentleman of France, and these be my sisters and servants," lied the outlaw, "and were it not that the ladies be with me, your answer would be couched in steel, as you deserve for your boorish insolence." ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he turned about, showing to the merchant a ruddy, sea-tanned skin, light brown hair, gray eyes, and a chin and mouth hidden by a two months' beard, still too bristly to give him other than an unkempt, boorish look. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... splendour of an imperial court, the luxuries of enormous wealth, the refined society of statesmen, and the ennobling intercourse of philosophers for the savage wastes of a rocky island and the society of boorish illiterate islanders, or at the best, of a few other political exiles, all of whom would be as miserable as himself, and some of whom would probably have deserved ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... have thee let me hear the couplets thou recitedst at the gate anon." The Porter was abashed and replied, "Allah upon thee! Excuse me, for toil and travail and lack of luck when the hand is empty, teach a man ill manners and boorish ways." Said the host, "Be not ashamed; thou art become my brother; but repeat to me the verses, for they pleased me whenas I heard thee recite them at the gate. Hereupon the Porter repeated the couplets and they delighted the merchant, who said to him, "Know, O Hammal, that my story ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... A. 1] pertains to virtue. Now the style of outward movements pertains to the beauty of honesty. For Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 18): "The sound of the voice and the gesture of the body are distasteful to me, whether they be unduly soft and nerveless, or coarse and boorish. Let nature be our model; her reflection is gracefulness of conduct and beauty of honesty." Therefore there is a virtue about ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the centuries that had elapsed since the days of Vergil the term 'pastoral' had gained a new meaning and new associations. In the days of Augustus Pan was a boorish anachronism; it was left to medieval Christianity to create a god who was in fact a shepherd of men[24] and so to render possible a pastoral allegory that should embody the dearest hopes and aspirations of the human heart. That Christian pastoralists ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... again in her relief, and a sigh of content escaped her. Word was sent at once to the bride, and all was enthusiasm again. Then followed a terrible shock. Peter Furrer, more long-sighted than the rest, delivered it in a boorish fashion all his own. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... are fair-haired, slow, but exceedingly tenacious, and also somewhat boorish. Here the principal towns, manufactures, etc., are to be found. Many of the inhabitants speak Swedish, and all ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... is well spoken, correct, and beautiful, so will our language be; if it is vulgar, or incorrect, or slangy, our speech will be of this kind. If the first manners which serve us as models are coarse and boorish, ours will resemble them; if they are cultivated and refined, ours will be like them. If our models of conduct and morals are questionable, our conduct and morals will be of like type. Our manner of walking, of dressing, of thinking, of saying our prayers, even, originates ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... Moliere, a Racine, a Rousseau, a Voltaire, a Massillon, a Beaumarchais, or a Diderot, people must make up their minds to it, and accept the fact that great men had upholsterers and clockmakers and cutlers for their fathers. She said that genius was always noble. She railed at boorish squires for understanding their real interests so imperfectly. In short, she talked a good deal of nonsense, which would have let the light into heads less dense, but left her audience agape at her eccentricity. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... his hand and burst into his noisy, boyish laughter, so reminiscent of things rural and boorish, of the coarse, strong spirits of the happy-go-lucky, irresponsibles that work as field hands and wood-haulers. "By cracky, Grant, I just got sight of the remnants of that dig I gave you. It was a ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... any woman might feel proud; for he combines intelligence with courteous manners and a fine person: while this Hambleton is, to me, insufferably stupid. And no one, I am sure, can call his address and manners any thing like polished. Indeed, I should pronounce him downright boorish and awkward. Who would want a man for a husband of whom she would be ashamed? Not ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... touched her on the shoulder—the left shoulder. It was an ill-bred and thoughtless act, but as I knew, when I had pondered the matter more calmly, Miss Harding has too much sense and poise to exhibit such anger at what at its worst was merely a boorish indiscretion. It was the only straw on which I could float an apology for a concrete act, but I thought later on I did not help my case ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... manners be neither boorish nor blunt, but even these are preferable to simpering and crawling. I wish every English youth could see those of the United States of America; always civil, never servile. Be obedient, where obedience is due; for, it ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... the end with a neat, precise stroke of his penknife, lit the cigar and blew a cloud of blue smoke out of his mouth. All the time I was staring at him I could feel Moira's eyes on me, and I knew that she was wondering what made me so boorish and morose. Or, perhaps, with a woman's keen instinct for ferreting out the things she shouldn't know anything about, she guessed just what was the matter. To tell the truth I was just beginning to feel a little jealous. Frankly I considered ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... a piqued curiosity. For a moment, forgetting that here was a man who had rescued her from insult at considerable bodily risk, she saw him only as a man of curious, almost boorish brusqueness. Why this ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... clearest invalidation of marriage, the frustration of the noblest and most divine ends of the institution; an essentially worse frustration, he dares to say in one place, than even that conjugal infidelity which "a gross and boorish opinion, how common soever," would alone resent or recognise. It is marvellous with what richness of varying language he paints to the reader the horrible condition of a man tied for life to a woman with whom he can hold no rational or worthy conversation. "A familiar and co- inhabiting ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... state of pregnancy, until the time when I should disgust every man. Oh! do not deny it! I did not understand it for some time, but then I guessed it. You even boasted about it to your sister, who told me of it, for she is fond of me and was disgusted at your boorish coarseness. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... a behaviour much more courteous and genteel than is usual among persons of ordinary condition in a county so remote from London. He was extremely desirous that his son should be like him in this respect, and therefore he continually cautioned him against falling into that rough boorish manner of behaving which is natural to uneducated clowns, and makes them shocking to everybody but themselves. In this respect John was very compliant with his father's temper, and being put out apprentice to a peruke-maker, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Then he kept Mrs. Barry's accounts; copied my own interminable correspondence with my lawyers and the agents of all my various property; took a hand at piquet or backgammon of evenings with me and my mother; or, being an ingenious lad enough (though of a mean boorish spirit, as became the son of such a father), accompanied my Lady Lyndon's spinet with his flageolet; or read French and Italian with her: in both of which languages her Ladyship was a fine scholar, and with which he also ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... townsman of our day. Further, there was a community of interests, and many people collected together in the fortified villages, with the result that little by little they attained to an importance never acquired by the boorish French peasants or the German serfs; they bore arms, they had a common treasury, they elected their own magistrates, and whenever they went out to fight, it was to save their ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a peasant city without much fashion or style then, and this aspect has intensified itself. The peasant is the born enemy of the town, and whilst he may be perfect in the country he is a boorish and non-comprehending fellow when he comes to the capital to rule. The peasant in power has very little use for the brighter side of civilization. The more the latter is cut down the better for him. He has, unfortunately, grasped the truism that "without the peasant nothing can exist," and he is ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... veriest chance,' the adventurer answered with some little confusion of manner. 'It was the fortuna belli, or more properly pacis. I had asked my brothers to put into Portsmouth that I might get rid of these letters, on which they replied in a boorish and unmannerly fashion that they were still waiting for the thousand guineas which represented my share of the venture. To this I answered with brotherly familiarity that it was a small thing, and should be paid for out of the profits of our enterprise. Their reply ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it hez become a fixed fact that the boorish tailor, who now by accident okkepies the place uv the marter Linkin, made vacant by his untimely death by the hand uv a vile assassin (whose only redeemin trait wuz that he wuz a stanch, uncompromisin Dimocrat),—now, I say, that it's plain that ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... chamber where he could put away, in long-coveted articles of furniture, the clothing he had little by little got together. Dressed like other young men of an epoch when fashion required the assumption of boorish manners, the gentle and modest peasant had an air and manner which rendered him at least their equal; and he thus passed the barriers which in other times ordinary life would have placed between himself and the bourgeoisie. Towards the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... well up the next morning when the procession of buckboards was ready to start for Gold City. Andrew Malden and the shrewd fellow had gone an hour before, the rest were off, and only the boorish Devonshire was left to ride down with Tony. Job stood, with heart palpitating and conscience goading him, down by the big pasture gate to let them through. All his peace of mind was gone. A few moments and the crime would be carried out to its end, and he would be equally ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... their quite unconscious tendency to represent a point of of view. They were once called by a malign reviewer "the most detestable kind of tract," and though this is what the French call a saugrenu criticism, which implies something dull, boorish, and provincial, yet it is easy to recognise what is meant. It is not unjust to resent the appearance of the cultivated and sensitive Anglican, highly bred and graceful, who is sure to turn out hard and hollow-hearted, or the shabby, trotting, tobacco-scented ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... churlishness or rudeness by an official of any sort, in his relations to the public, not one among minor offenses is more sure of a prompt penalty than this. Not only justice but civility is enforced by our judges in all sorts of intercourse. No value of service is accepted as a set-off to boorish ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... suspected; quiet men, and men of opinionated perversity; quick-witted men, and men whose profound stupidity makes them continual butts for all kinds of practical jokes; refined, educated, poetical men, and men of boorish habits. In short, any camp presents such specimens of humanity as would be furnished if all the ingredients of character and experience that compose the world had been collected in a huge pepper box and sprinkled miscellaneously throughout ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of Bach's compositions, such as the "Well Tempered Clavicord," with his young assistant, Hans Richter, who had been recommended to him from Vienna as a copyist. What cared he for all this wild whirl of silly fancies and boorish conceit, so long as he, a genuine Prometheus, could create something new after the grandest models! In speaking of "Tannhaeuser" he tells us how supremely happy he was when occupied with the delightful work of real creation. "Before I undertake to write ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... farthings. They have a far larger share than their brothers of that best of all practical and moral educations, that of family life. Any one who has had experience of the families of farmers and small tradesmen, knows how boorish the lads are, beside the intelligence, and often the refinement, of their sisters. The same rule holds (I am told) in the manufacturing districts. Even in the families of employers, the young ladies are, and have been for a generation or two, far more highly cultivated ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... will generally heed such hints, which a moment's reflection will teach him are meant to preserve the library book clean and presentable for his own use, as well as for that of others. But there will always be some rude, boorish people who will persist in their brutal and destructive treatment of books, in the face of whatever warnings. How to deal with such unwelcome persons is an ever-present problem with the librarian. If ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... all have the Spanish cortesia," says Frederick A. Ober, in the Century Magazine, when commenting upon the above opinions, "and are more like the polite Andalusians of the south of Spain than the boorish Catalans of the northeast. Even the lowliest laborer, unless he be one of the four hundred thousand illiterates, signs his name with a rubrica, or elaborate flourish and styles himself 'Don,' after the manner ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... burning in the various places, just seized the opportunity to run out and hide himself, when he unawares rushed, head foremost, into lady Feng's arms. Lady Feng speedily raised her hand and gave him such a slap on the face that she made the young fellow reel over and perform a somersault. "You boorish young bastard!" she shouted, "where are you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Gusinje was perhaps the most inaccessible spot in Europe—it was rarely possible for anyone to obtain permission to approach it. Even to Miss Durham, friend of the Albanians, this people sent a decided refusal. But now, under the guidance of the Yugoslav authorities, they have abandoned these boorish ways; Miss Durham could go there at any time, but maybe the village ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... classes already mentioned, there is another exceedingly large class of society, which, far from being boorish by nature, yet from circumstances lacks the cultivation which alone will bring the conduct into such training as will fit it practically for exhibition in society. To the persons comprising this class, it is not only a source of regret, but of absolute ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... energy; while agreeable manners win in spite of other defects. Take two men possessing equal advantages in every other respect; if one be gentlemanly, kind, obliging, and conciliating, and the other disobliging, rude, harsh, and insolent, the former will become rich while the boorish ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... shows them he can glory in the very things wherein they glory, and in even more. At the same time he declares himself a fool for glorying. He might have said: "Foolish, indeed, are they, and boorish creatures, who glory in themselves. They should feel shame to the very depth of their heart. No true, sane man boasts of what he is. The wicked and the frivolous do that." But the apostle's attack is not quite so severe and harsh. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... as was evident on the screen, still as attractive as ever and still besieged by the greatest variety of suitors. Nobles and commoners, peasants and financiers, men of all kinds fell swooning at her feet; and prominent among them was a sort of boorish solitary, a shaggy, half-wild woodcutter, whom she met whenever she went out for a walk. Armed with his axe, a formidable, crafty being, he prowled around the cottage; and the spectators felt with a sense of dismay that a peril was hanging over the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... gone with the army into Germany it is impossible to say when the war will end." Then he made a silly, boorish observation which was, "I hope for your sake ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... occupied by Mdlle. Tirard and the other ladies of the Socialist party; but the mass of the guests were men, and they were almost all smoking, in utter indifference to the scanty presence of the fair sex. Not that they were intentionally rude or boorish; that they never were; except where an emperor or an aristocrat is concerned, there is no being on earth more courteous, kindly, and considerate for the feelings of others than your exiled Socialist. He has suffered much himself in his ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... not consider that men of coarse and boorish habits and of slender parts deserve so fine an instrument nor such a complicated mechanism as men of contemplation and high culture. They merely need a sack in which their food may be held and whence it may issue, since verily they ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... long separation, Rodd delighted with his companion, and disposed to feel disappointed in himself lest the refined, polished young officer—one, evidently, of the haute noblesse—should look down upon him as a rough, rather boorish young Englishman. ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... my words with a cooing laugh, and taking my consent for granted, curled herself up in a corner of the sofa. I resumed my seat with a sigh. It would have been boorish ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... steeds out, and prepared to return, the whole personnel of the convent came to assist, with the inhabitants of a little village adjoining, which finds protection and Christian charity from the convent. The monks, excepting two or three, seemed of an ignorant and boorish quality, but hard-working and kind-hearted. Here, evidently, a certain kind of bliss was in ignorance, and the most learned were not wise enough to be accused of much folly. The Hegoumenos, in bidding us good by, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... By Respiration, and Chaos, and Air, I have not seen any man so boorish, nor so impracticable, nor so stupid, nor so forgetful; who, while learning some little petty quibbles, forgets them before he has learned them. Nevertheless I will certainly call him out here to the light. Where is Strepsiades? Come forth with ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... them against our mariners. I found him and the president of their factory very impatient, calling us insolent English, threatening that our pride would have a fall, with many other disgraceful and opprobrious words.[134] Such was the entertainment we received from that boorish general, named Garrat Reynes, in his own house. He had formerly shewn the like or worse to Mr Ball, on going aboard his ship at Banda: And four of our men, who took passage with him from thence to Cambello, were brought all the way ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... land. In the first place Egypt had settled down to her sluggish Nile like calm and cholera had quarantined the ship I wanted to take to Algiers, shutting off Algiers and what was more important Tunis. The Governor was ill shutting off things I wanted and his adjutant was boorish and proud and haughty. Then I determined to go to Spain but found I had arrived just one day too late for the last of the three days of the Mardi Gras and too early for bull fights. Had I taken Saavedra's letters ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... was the ungracious response, delivered in a gruff tone of voice. Old Stolliver was a boorish, cross-grained customer, who paid slight regard to the amenities, and did not ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... resoundingly through the streets, his legs thrust into Lasse's old boots—this was the essence of manliness. But he was man enough to abstain from so doing—for here such conduct would be regarded as boorish. It was harder for him to suppress his past; it was so inseparable from Father Lasse that he was obsessed by a sense of unfaithfulness. But there was no alternative; if he wanted to get on he must ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... flitting could be accomplished without drawing down either notice or remark. To please Jacob, Keziah would have done much, even to running the risk of a scolding from her aunt. She had none of saucy Cherry's scorn of the big boorish fellow with the red face and hairy hands. She looked below the surface, and knew that a kindly heart beat beneath the ungainly habit; and being but plain herself, Keziah would have taken shame to herself for thinking scorn of another for a ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... strain of pulpit eloquence, inspired by indignation, on this topic: "He affected German downrightness, to which he was a stranger; and followed, under a deceitful show of piety, all the principles of Machiavel. With the most sordid love of money he combined boorish manners. Lies [of the distilled kind chiefly] had so become a habit with him, that he had altogether lost notion of employing truth in speech. It was the soul of a usurer, inhabiting now the body of a war-captain, now transmigrating into that of a huckster. False oaths, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... really of moment. His manners were conciliatory and paved the way for his intrigues. Catharine was the more friendly both to him and to Santa Croce, because of the contrast between their deportment and that of Gualtieri, whom she hated for his sour disposition and boorish ways.[1205] Navarre and the princes suspected of a leaning toward Protestantism were plied with other arts. In fact, so well did the legate counterfeit liberality of sentiment, that even the Pope and his brethren of the Roman consistory seem to have become a little alarmed. For he ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... this strange character was that of an overgrown country lout with boorish manners and silly mind. He did not and would not go to school, and he asserts now that if he had done so he "would have become as big a fool as other people." A shiftless fellow, left to his own devices, he performed some wonderful ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Clo. He sir, that must marrie this woman: Therefore you Clowne, abandon: which is in the vulgar, leaue the societie: which in the boorish, is companie, of this female: which in the common, is woman: which together, is, abandon the society of this Female, or Clowne thou perishest: or to thy better vnderstanding, dyest; or (to wit) I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death, thy libertie into bondage: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... manners were ignored, even in well-to-do families. Children were left without control, and by excessive indulgence allowed to do just as they pleased; hence they became ill-behaved and boorish. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... returned, gazing hard into her smiling face. As her smile grew brighter, his own face darkened, until she began to look embarrassed at his boorish temper. "I want you to tell me, once for all, Miss Sheldon, that you are here of your own choice and free will," he blurted out. "If I'm uncivil or rude, excuse me. I can't feel any other way until I know this. Ever since you were reported missing, I pictured you in trouble, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Clarus, and with this end in view threatened to exclude her sons, whose guardian he was, from the possession of any of their father's property, if she married elsewhere. She therefore suffered herself to be betrothed to Sicinius Clarus, 'a boorish and decrepit old man,' but put off the marriage, until her father-in-law's death released her from all embarrassment. Pontianus and Pudens succeeded to the property, and Pudentilla felt herself free ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... such a rowdy, and will endeavor to change your ways once you come under my jurisdiction. We have a reputation to sustain in this establishment, young man. You would have to try and be a gentleman here. Take a lesson from my son, who so nobly forgave your boorish actions, and hearing that you and your mother were in want kindly interceded with me to forget the past. I cannot disappoint such a charitable spirit, and I am about to take you into my employ at the advice of Ferdinand. Can you start to work at ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... betrothed to the eldest son of a neighbouring lord. When I say betrothed, I mean that her parents had arranged the marriage. She herself—her name was Elisinde—had had no voice in the matter, and she disliked, or rather loathed, her future husband, who was boorish, sullen, and ill-tempered; he cared for nothing except hunting and deep drinking, and had nothing to recommend him but his ducats and his land. But it was quite useless for Elisinde to cry or protest. Her parents had settled the marriage and it was to ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... awakened curiosity in the placid breast of this Desdemona of the mesas. It required no sophistication on her part to realize that this caballero was not as the vaqueros she had heretofore known. He made no boorish jests; his eyes were not as the eyes of many that had gazed at her in a way that had tinged her dusky cheeks with warm resentment. She felt that he was endeavoring to interest her, to please her rather than to woo. And more ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... occupation.[8] Slavery fixed a brutalising mark on generation after generation that is not yet entirely erased. In the first half of the nineteenth century the knights of the shuttle—intellectual, disputatious, and lyrical—looked down with infinite contempt on the ignorant and boorish slaves of the pick. Poetry has, in consequence, little to say about the digger for coal. The song of "The Collier Laddie," attributed to Burns, is one of the very few pleasant pieces of verse associated with ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the acquisition of this spirit of respect, military training is superior to civil. One officer salutes another, the private salutes his officer, simply because the person saluted is an officer. It may be that he is disagreeable or boorish in manners, or even notoriously incompetent. This matters not: so long as he wears the epaulettes he is entitled to an officer's salute. Honor is shown, not to the transient owner of the title, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... dispirited and hungry, and hunger alone makes a man angry. He looked at the girl for whose sake he had raced all these miles of wild-goose chase, and a boorish longing to hurt her, to let her suffer rose in ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... There is needed a certain tactful considerateness. In all such questions the grace of the act depends as much on the manner of it, as on the act itself. The grace of the fairest act may be hurt by a boorish blemish of manner. Many a graceful act is spoiled by a graceless touch, as a generous deed can be ruined by a grudging manner. An air of condescension will destroy the value of the finest charity. There is a forgiveness which is no forgiveness—formal, constrained, from the teeth ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... with a more boorish air than he had before manifested, and muttered something about a cow that needed his attention, and that he could not spare the time from his herd for all that the Prioress was like to ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... precisely you," I continued. "You persist, in a rude and boorish manner, in interrupting my conversation with the other guests in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the cicada will then give place to the din of battle. Even in times of peace you would hardly have a quiet hour here: for great herds of cattle come crowding down every day to my lake for water; the noisy ploughman, driving his team afield, disturbs the morning hour with his boorish shouts; and boys and dogs keep up a constant din, and make life in this ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... intrusion on the scene, his judgment of the situation, is proof of the variety of the life from which the Saga is drawn. More than that, there is here a rather cruel test of the heroics of Laxdla, of the story itself; the notable thing about this spectator and critic is that his boorish judgment is partly right, as the judgment of Thersites is partly right—"too much blood and too little brains." He is vulgar common sense in the presence of heroism. In his own way a critic of the heroic ideals, his appearance in Svinadal as a negative and depreciatory chorus in the tragedy ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. Bombastic, sophomoric, turgid, tumid, grandiose, grandiloquent, magniloquent. Boorish, churlish, loutish, clownish, rustic, ill-bred. Booty, plunder, loot, spoil. Brittle, frangible, friable, fragile, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... indiscriminately. They know, as the Chinese have it, that rotten wood cannot be carved. "It is our opinion," we quote from another manager, "that courtesy cannot be pounded into a person who lacks proper social basis. In other words, there are some people who would be boorish under any circumstances. Our first and chief step toward courtesy is to exercise care in selecting our employees. We weigh carefully each applicant for a sales position and try to visualize his probable ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... something so precious as a word; and when we receive one from another people, gratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself, should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices. We therefore protest against a useful and tuneful noun-substantive, a native of France, the word bouquet, being maimed into boquet, a corruption as dissonant to the ear as were to the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... affection. His hair, worn in ailes de pigeon, and duly powdered every morning by the barber from the Ecole Polytechnique, described five points on his low forehead, and made an elegant setting to his face. Though his manners were somewhat boorish, he was always as neat as a new pin and he took his snuff in a lordly way, like a man who knows that his snuff-box is always likely to be filled with maccaboy, so that when Mme. Vauquer lay down to rest on the day of M. Goriot's installation, her heart, like a larded partridge, sweltered ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Poor Mr. Arabin—untaught, illiterate, boorish, ignorant man! That at forty years of age you should know so little of the workings of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Court the day after, but to me and some others not a syllable of any description was uttered, and when some more English were shewn in who were, I presume, as respectable as myself, his behaviour was quite boorish, he did not condescend to look towards the door. These things went on till a throng of Spaniards with Stars and orders came in; with these he appeared tolerably intimate, and also with three Englishmen who afterwards appeared. We were about 24 in number, and all I ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... besides he knows that, of all his errors, he only finds out a small per-centage. Where can he take refuge? If Robinson Crusoe had been a social Duffer, he and Friday would not have been on speaking terms in a week. People think the poor Duffer malignant, boorish, haughty, unkind; he is only a Duffer, an irreclaimable, sad, pitiful creature, quite beyond the reach of philanthropy. On my grave write, not MISERRIMUS (though that would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... nothing. No Englishman will tolerate another in his house, from whom he does not expect advantage of some kind, and to those from whom he does, he can be civil enough. An Englishman thinks that, because he is in his own house, he has a right to be boorish and brutal to any one who is disagreeable to him, as all those are who are really in want of assistance. Should a hunted fugitive rush into an Englishman's house, beseeching protection, and appealing to the master's feelings of hospitality, the Englishman would knock him ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... needeth; and now, hang me, if I don't think I have uttered more in her favor than her commander would say to help me to a recruit, though no lad in the three kingdoms should appear willing to try how a scarlet coat would suit his boorish figure." ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... pretty muddle! Barney Custer swore at himself inwardly for a boorish fool. What in the world had ever prompted him to speak those ridiculous words! And now how was he to unsay them without mortifying this beautiful girl who ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... meekness of the saint. The mischief is that we like anything from a man of power. If he is insolent, we think it grand; if he is stupid, we think it a sort of condescension; if he is mild and polite, we think it marvellous; if he is boorish, we think it is simple-minded. It is power that we admire, or rather success, and both can be inherited. If a man gets a big position in England, he is always said to grow into it; but that is because we care about the position more than we care ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... happy augury he gave that name at baptism, than he insisted that this his only child—and he had no more afterwards—should be suckled by his own mother, and that in his tender years he should have his character formed in the house of his parents, rather than learn less gentle or even boorish ways and habits in the houses of peasants or common people. When he was well grown, he began to exercise him in painting, seeing him much inclined to such an art, and possessed of a very beautiful genius: wherefore not many years passed before Raffaello, still a boy, became a great help ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... pulled his coat closer. Two young men, countrymen, who had entered from the New Sanderson car, and sat next the German woman, eyed him at the gesture, and their eyes fell with a sort of dull dissent upon his handsome coat. One said something to the other, and both laughed with boorish malice. Then one, after glancing at the conductor, whose back was turned as he talked to one of the pretty girls with pompadours, bent his head hastily to the floor. Then he scraped his foot, and looked aloft ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... wanderings. Scarcely had he gone when there came to the hut of the witch a broommaker and a woodchopper, guided by a wandering minstrel. They were ambassadors from the city of Hellabrunn, which had been so long without a king that its boorish burghers themselves felt the need of a ruler in spite of their boorishness. To the wise woman the ambassadors put the questions: Who shall be this ruler and by what sign shall they recognize him? The witch tells them that their sovereign shall be the first ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... The presence of women always disconcerted him, and made him feel awkward and boorish. He had been too much of a student in higher art to acquire the smaller art of the drawing-room. He felt ill at ease in society, and seemed to have a fatal predilection for saying the wrong thing, and suffered the torture afterwards ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... and awkward; in manner, boorish and overbearing; but his learning and his great powers caused his company to be ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey |
