"Dullard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Darning-Needle Delaying is not Forgetting The Drop of Water The Dryad Jack the Dullard The ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... representation of the scenes that were once enacted in these places; the more imaginative feel the very air vibrating with the unseen spirits of men and women famous in the world's history. He must be indeed a Philistine or a dullard who cannot contrive to arouse a passing exaltation at the thought of treading in the footsteps of Cicero and the Caesars in Rome, of Pericles and Socrates in Athens, for the very soil of the Forum and the stones ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke's First in Mods oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had scraped a Second) more than all the other differences between them. But the dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... clever man of five-and-thirty, already bald and corpulent; he works from morning to night, reads a lot, remembers well everything he has read—and in that way he is not a man, but pure gold; in all else he is a carthorse or, in other words, a learned dullard. The carthorse characteristics that show his lack of talent are these: his outlook is narrow and sharply limited by his specialty; outside his special branch he is ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of appearing otherwise.—Hunger may be said to be a moral Mechi, which invents a strop upon which the bluntest wits are sharpened to admiration. Believe me, by industry and perseverance—which necessity will inevitably superinduce—the most dreary dullard that ever carried timber between his shoulders in the shape of a head, may speedily convert himself into a seeming Sheridan—a substitutional Sydney Smith—a second Sam Rogers, without the drawback ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... came too late," he said. "O lady, you who are so good and pitiful, let my mother get back her true Peregrine—a straight-limbed, comely dullard, such as would be welcome to her. She would bless and thank you, and for me, to be a Will-of-the-wisp, or what not, would be far better than the life I lead. Never did I know what my mother calls peace till ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is that on books which are living things: 'Marlowe and Shakespeare, AEschylus and Sappho, do not for us live only on the dusty shelves of libraries.' To Swinburne, as he says, the distinction between books and life is but a 'dullard's distinction,' and it may justly be said of him that it is with an equal instinct and an equal enthusiasm that he is drawn to whatever in nature, in men, in books, or in ideas is great, noble, and heroic. The old name of Laudi, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Take away from human society God as mediator, and the hopes founded in God as a source of consolation, and what would you have remaining? The struggle of the poor against the rich, the envy of the ignorant directed against the man who has knowledge, the dullard's low jealousy of superior intelligence, hatred of all superiority, and, by an almost inevitable reaction, the obstinate defence of all abuses,—in one word, war—war admitting neither of remedy nor truce. Such is the most apparent danger which ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... evil a wish," chided Francis, but there was a merry twinkle in her eye that softened the harshness of her tone. "Wouldst have me beheaded? Yet it may be that I am such a dullard that thou dost wish that I should ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... enough to seek shelter in a time of storm; but, of course, a bird that contrives to coax a livelihood out of such unpromising surroundings must possess a fine degree of intelligence, and, therefore, cannot be so much of a dullard ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... have permitted my uncle to consent that M. le Marquis shall make his court to me. I like the look of the gentleman. I am flattered by his preference when I consider his eminence. It is an eminence that I may find it desirable to share. M. le Marquis does not look as if he were a dullard. It should be interesting to be wooed by him. It may be more interesting still to marry him, and I think, when all is considered, that I shall probably—very probably—decide ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and genuine respect are for those of the race "that is the aristocracy of nature, the purest race, the chosen people." He sends all his heroes to Palestine for inspiration; wisdom dwells in her gates. Another aristocracy, that of talent, he recognizes and applauds. No dullard ever succeeds, no genius ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... say that,' Ida answered indignantly. 'I have a right to say what I think to my wife. I have not forgotten what you said to me at the hotel that day. You told me to my face that you loved another man. Do you think I was such a dullard as not to guess that man's name? You fell in love with Wendover of the Abbey, before you saw him; and your innocent love for the shadow grew into guilty love for the man, after you were my wife. I knew all about it; but I was ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... which he gathered from his perusals was that the author was a pretentious dullard, an absolute criminal, a genius; that the actors and actresses were all splendid and worked hard, though conceivably one or two of them had been set impossible tasks—to wit, tasks unsuited to their personalities; that ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... Apollo concerning this prodigy. With these two princes, Titus and Aruns by name, went their cousin, Lucius Junius, a youth who seemed so lacking in wit that men called him Brutus,—that is, the "Dullard." One evidence of his lack of wit was that he would eat wild figs with honey. Just in what way this was an evidence of want of good sense we do not know, though doubtless the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... neighbors on the street and never knew them, forgot he had given the picture and believed he had only loaned it. This is made still more apparent by the fact that, when he sent for the engraving in question, he administered a rebuke to the man for keeping it so long. The poor dullard who received the note flew into a rage—returned the picture—sent his compliments and begged the great artist to "take your picture and go to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... appeared at his bridle rein, and solemnly warned him "that, if he crossed that water, he would never return alive." He was struck by the apparition, and bade one of his knights to inquire of her what she meant; but the knight must have been a dullard or a traitor, for he told the king that the woman was either mad or drunk, and no notice ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... with all mankind, because so narrow and so selfish is our outlook upon life that one single man or woman—a dullard neighbour or a silly girl—who may interfere with us, throws into turmoil our whole existence. Walls of impenetrable blackness shut out. all life save only this intruder and ourself; that other person becomes our world— engaging our ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... no doubt that they found her charming. As for Alfred, he was notably fine-looking in his evening-clothes—infinitely more like the son of a nobleman, the gratified uncle kept saying to himself, than that big dullard, the Honourable Balder. It filled him with a new pleasure to remember that Alfred had visiting cards presenting his name as D'Aubigny, which everybody of education knew was what the degenerate Dabney really stood for. The lad and his sister had united upon this ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... be discounting ordinary intelligence to say that I sought with unwearying assiduity to figure my way into the stern father's good-will; that never did dullard apply himself to mathematics more patiently than I; that never did faithfulness achieve such meagre reward. Then I engaged a private tutor. His instructions met ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... rooms are full: we can but get An attic-crib. Such lovers will not fret At that, it is half-said. The great carouse Knocks hard upon the midnight's hollow door, But when I knock at hers, I see the pit. Why did I come here in that dullard fit? I enter, and lie couched upon the floor. Passing, I caught the coverlet's quick beat:- Come, Shame, burn to my soul! and Pride, and Pain - Foul demons that have tortured me, enchain! Out in the freezing darkness the lambs bleat. The small bird stiffens ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sooner said it than I was convicted of being a dullard. 'God forgive me, dear!' I made haste to reply. 'I never saw before that there were two sides to this!' And I told her my tale as briefly as I could, and rose to seek Ronald. 'You see, my dear, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I kept on singing. I nodded at Labarthe, and sang, I think, of spring and running brooks. Then I flung a jeer at him and ate my breakfast. I ate it systematically and stolidly, though it would not have tempted any but a starving man. I was a fool and a dullard. I had slept away my opportunities, and I could not see that my strength was important to any one. But ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... a self-seeker, Nobility has shone in you alone. Your error grew of over-generous dreams, And misbeliefs by dullard ministers. By treating personally we speed affairs More in an hour than they in blundering months. Between us two, henceforth, must stand no third. There's peril in it, while England's mean ambition Still works to get us skewered by the ears; And in ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... ... true-blue friends, who will excuse all other shortcomings because of his honesty. It gives him the unadulterated trust of his employer and it arouses a certain admiration among his narrow circle of acquaintances. If this is true with the dullard, the weakling, then what must it mean when possessed by the great? We know, for instance, how the nation instinctively turned to General Washington when it came to choosing their President after the Revolutionary War. He may have been gifted, he may have been one of the ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... "What a dullard you are to ask about such simple things! Were you never given any sort of an education? Surely by this time you ought to ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... some: and that, as a man of genius, he is superior to any single person named and known in earlier French literature, can hardly be contested by any one who is neither a silly paradoxer nor a mere dullard, nor affected by some extra-literary prejudice—religious, moral, or whatever it may be. But perhaps not every one who would admit the greatness of Master Francis as a man of letters, his possession not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... English. Fancy my calling you, upon a fitting occasion,—Fool, sot, silly, simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead, clumsy-pate, dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numpskull, ass, owl, loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, addle-head, tony, zany, fop, fop-doodle; a maggot-pated, hare-brained, muddle-pated, muddle-headed, Jackan-apes! Why I could go on for a ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... no dullard and he purposed to make short work of these vile pirates. Otherwise his crippled ship might not survive the wind and weather. He conferred with his gunner who had bethought himself, by force of habit, to fetch ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... my Flesh? my Childe? What, mak'st thou me a dullard in this Act? Wilt thou not speake to me? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... doubts, of course. I can readily believe that he did. Doctor St. Jean is not a very bad man, but he is a charlatan and a dullard; he received the story of my reported insanity as he received me, as an advantage to his institution, and he never gave himself the unprofitable trouble to investigate the circumstances. I told him the truth about myself as calmly as I now speak ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... was still under promise to marry another man. There had been no opportunity for any confidential talk. The name of William Pressley had never been mentioned between them. The thought of him was like a touch of fire to Paul Colbert, so burning was the contempt which he felt for this conceited dullard whose blundering had nearly been his own death. But he could not say anything of this to her—the fact that she had once been engaged to be married to the man held him silent. It might be that she was still bound, and yet there was something ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... a full heart must the inspired painter have had as in his mind's eye he purely shadowed forth this most perfect conception of one of those who hold companionship with God! It was made up of all the rarest traits of beauty, yet its loveliness was not of the world: the veriest dullard looking on it would have paused in admiration; the most brutal have gazed into those pure eyes, untainted by one earthly feeling, one sinful thought, or impure desire. On my mind the effect was thrilling: ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... have been better for me," he said. "I have no place here among men with decently shaped bodies and clear heads. I'm a great clumsy fool, and there's no help for it. If I'd had more brain, I might have managed the rest; but I'm a dullard too. They may well sneer at me. I think I will go away and bury myself somewhere among the people I ought to have lived among by rights. In some simple country place I might find those who know ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... or volunteered to read a trifle thrown off of late by 'Faith, a learned gentleman, a very worthy friend,' though if we were to enquire, this varlet poet might turn out, after all, to be the mere decoy duck of the hostess, paid to draw gulls and fools thither. The mere dullard sat silent, playing with his glove or discussing at what apothecary's the best ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the absolute confidence of a man, obey him. Only thus do you get him to lay aside his weapons, be he friend or enemy. Any dullard can be waited on and served, but to serve requires judgment, skill, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... man was floundering in a morass of wrath and amazement it was this loud-voiced youngster. He was a slow-witted lout, but the veriest dullard must have perceived that the disappearance of the weapon which presumably killed his father was a serious ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... to account for this disfavour. The popular tradition was pleased to explain it by making Burghley the ideal dullard who has no soul for poetry—to whom one copy of verses is very much as good as another, and no copy good for anything. It delighted to bring this commonplace gross-minded person into opposition with one of the most spiritual of geniuses. In this myth Spenser represents mind, Burghley ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... though its trunk is riven and seems to implore the axe, you will have an idea of the old post master, with his white hair,—broken, emaciated, in whom the elders of the town can see no trace of the jovial dullard whom you first saw watching for his son at the beginning of this history; he does not even take his snuff as he once did; he carries something more now than the weight of his body. Beholding him, we feel that the hand ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... which Buchanan inserted so much which he had already spoken out in his Detection of Mary. In that book also liberavit animam suam; he spoke his mind fearless of consequences, in the face of a king who he must have known—for Buchanan was no dullard—regarded him with deep dislike, who might in a few years be able to ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... man thoughtfully, and bit a curl of Tamerlane's vast periwig. "'Tis true I esteem her no dullard," he at last vouchsafed; "true also that she hath beauty. In fine, solely to give thee pleasure, my Millamant, I will give the girl a trial no ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... been a dullard; he had lain prostrate in the wretchedness of his loss. "A girl you could put in your hat—and there you have a strong man prone." He had been a sluggard, weary of himself, unfit to fight, a failure in life and a failure in love. That was ended; ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Spectator, "Mr. Saintsbury in his new book has given to the world a singularly delightful gift. The Peace of the Augustans is in no sense written down. Yet every page is so subtly seasoned with amusing comment, and the whole book is so charmingly garnished that none but a dullard could fail to find delight in its perusal, however little he knew of the spirit which animated the eighteenth century. One can hardly imagine better reading after a day of ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the soldier the latter stood looking after him, and as the sound of the man's steps died away he gave a sigh, muttering to himself, "It may be a good thing after all to be such a dullard as I am. God's thunder! if I meet the Gars I'll fight him hand to hand, or my name's not Hulot; for if that fox brings him before me in any of their new-fangled councils of war, my honor will be as soiled as the shirt of a young trooper who is under ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... while I think a moment," he urged. "Surely it can be arranged without hurt to the fair name of—of any. Riatas—ah, now I have it, Senor! Dullard, not to have thought of it at once! Truly must I be in my dotage!" He did not mean that, of course, and he was quite openly pleased when Jack smiled and shook ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... of the brute dullard who thinks shame," came the resonant voice of the reader. The words rang in her ears. Sandro was greater than the mere flesh—she would be, too. She would pose for him, and thus give her beautiful body ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... worships while you are idly striking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed. Pray, why is it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in the days of yore? Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard, jolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose cockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool. Now would I know whether you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically may, that formerly men were fools and in this generation ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... mission, lord Basil,' he pursued, with bluff good-humour. 'Dullard that I was, the talk of a fair lady travelling in Marcian's charge never brought to my mind that old story of Surrentum. Here is our royal Totila all eagerness to see this maiden—if maiden still she be. What say you on that point, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... came to see that speaking record of a city's sorry plight, and at last we all understood. Not to understand after one look at the poverty and disease maps that hung on the wall was to declare oneself a dullard. The tenements were all down in them, with the size of them and the air space within, if there was any. Black dots upon the poverty maps showed that for each one five families in that house had applied for ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... and showed his ignorance many a time. It did not increase the respect which the child had for his senior. A quick brain and a better education elsewhere showed the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and he began accordingly to command him and to look down upon him; for his previous education, humble and contracted as it had been, had made a much better gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather could make him. He had been brought up by a kind, weak, and tender woman, who ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... certainly was a perfect one; while, on the other hand, if a preceptor like Count Vavel took it upon himself to instruct a forsaken lad, then one might certainly expect a genius to evolve from the little dullard growing up in ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... mournful Ruskin Popish Apennines, Dirty Stones of Venice And his Gas-lamps Seven— We've the stones of Snowdon And the lamps of heaven. Where's the mighty credit In admiring Alps? Any goose sees 'glory' In their 'snowy scalps.' Leave such signs and wonders For the dullard brain, As aesthetic brandy, Opium and cayenne. Give me Bramshill common (St. John's harriers by), Or the vale of Windsor, England's golden eye. Show me life and progress, Beauty, health, and man; Houses fair, trim gardens, Turn where'er ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest; And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame, 'Tis but my Bay-State dialect,—our ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... or birth or like causes). In some instances, Wealth acquired has been productive of evil. Other things again than Wealth (such as fasts and vows) have led to the acquisition of Virtue. As regards this topic, therefore, a dullard whose understanding has been debased by ignorance, never succeeds in acquiring the highest aim of Virtue and Wealth, viz., Emancipation. Virtue's dross consists in the desire of reward; the dross of Wealth consists in hoarding it; when purged of these impurities, they are productive ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... vine, E'en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin, E'en in the people itself? Is it illusion or not? Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim Transalpine, Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare? Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger, Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... The O'Wilde.—The play? Oh, the play be zephyr'd! The play is not the thing. In other words, the play is nothing. Point is to prepare immense assortment of entirely irrelevant epigrams. "Epigram, my dear Duke, is the refuge of the dullard, who imagines that he obtains truth by inverting a truism." That sounds well; must lay it by for use. Take "Virtue," for instance. "Virtue" offers a fine field for paradox, brought strictly up to date. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... measuring the print left by the queen's foot as she walks, and priding himself on its beauty. It is so natural to wish to find what is fair and precious in high places,—so astonishing to find the Bourbon a glutton, or the Guelph a dullard or gossip. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... prejudice, and his sublime patience all worked to burst the tough husk, and develop that shy and sensitive, yet uncouth and silent youth, bringing out the best that was in him. A wrong environment in those early years might easily have shaped Rembrandt into a morose and resentful dullard: the good in his nature, thrown back upon itself, would have been turned ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... surmise that about this time, perhaps as early as 1490, Vicente became goldsmith to Queen Lianor. The events of this wonderful decade must have moved him profoundly, events sufficient to stir even a dullard's imagination as new world after new world swept into his ken: the conquest of Granada from the Moors in 1492, the arrival of Columbus at Lisbon from America in 1493, the similar return of Vasco da Gama six years later from India, the ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... intrigue afoot this night; and you must be a greater dullard than I think you if you cannot ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... still bear love? Ay, passionate love. The heart which truly loves Puts not its love aside for ends of State, Or marriage bonds, or what the dullard law Suffers or does not suffer, but grows stronger For that which seeks to ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... out of use; I refer to that group of which 'dotard', 'laggard', 'braggard', now spelt 'braggart', 'sluggard', 'buzzard', 'bastard', 'wizard', may be taken as surviving specimens; 'blinkard' (Homilies), 'dizzard' (Burton), 'dullard' (Udal), 'musard' (Chaucer), 'trichard' (Political Songs), 'shreward' (Robert of Gloucester), 'ballard' (a bald-headed man, Wiclif); 'puggard', 'stinkard' (Ben Jonson), 'haggard', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... a fool or a dullard," retorted the young captain. "Rich men's sons aren't as often fools as they're suspected of being. Some of them are mighty clever. The number of great American fortunes that are doubled, or trebled, in the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... is my booby! he sees not, he hears naught. Who himself is, or whether he be or be not, he also knows not. Now I wish to chuck him head first from thy bridge, so as to suddenly rouse (if possible) this droning dullard and to leave behind in the sticky slush his sluggish spirit, as a mule casts its iron ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... the mental condition of Honore at the time when he was regarded by his masters as a dullard, a mediocre pupil who might as well be left to reap the consequences of his own laziness. Clad in his grey uniform, ill shod and with hands red and swollen from chilblains, he held aloof from his comrades, indifferent ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... sagacity of their Master; nor do I see any way of getting it to harmonise with the orthodox postulate; namely, that Matthew was the author of the first gospel and John of the fourth. If that is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was no dullard; and as for the fourth gospel—a theosophic romance of the first order—it could have been written by none but a man of remarkable literary capacity, who had drunk deep of Alexandrian philosophy. Moreover, the doctrine of the writer of the fourth gospel is more remote from that of the "sect ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... that is, if another from his affection should infuse something into his mind when he himself felt no affection for knowing or grasping it, would he receive it? Indeed, could he receive it? Would he not be like one called a dullard ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... merchant Been wooing the mill, But I'm not such a dullard. Five times have I been here To ask if there would be A second day's bidding, They answered, 'There will.' You know that the peasant Won't carry his money All over the by-ways 440 Without a good reason, So I have none with me; And look—now they tell me There's no second bidding And ask ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... "O thou dullard and mad man, wherefore hast thou exchanged thine honour for shame, and thy glorious estate for this unseemly show? To what end hath the president of my kingdom, and chief commander of my realm made himself the laughingstock of boys, and not only forgotten utterly our friendship and ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... prince, would never have occurred; for, being a wise man, he would not have failed to propitiate Kotsuke no Suke by sending him suitable presents; while the councillor who was in attendance on the prince at Yedo was a dullard, who neglected this precaution, and so caused the death of his master and the ruin ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... not pleasant; but neither is this the point. It may be the critic is right, and the author wrong. It may be that the archbishop's sermon is not so fine as some of those discourses twenty years ago which used to delight the faithful in Granada. Or it may be (pleasing thought!) that the critic is a dullard, and does not understand what he is writing about. Everybody who has been to an exhibition has heard visitors discoursing about the pictures before their faces. One says, "This is very well;" another says, "This is stuff ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a daub it looks! what a clumsy effigy! How many men and wives come to this knowledge, think you? And if it be painful to a woman to find herself mated for life to a boor, and ordered to love and honour a dullard; it is worse still for the man himself perhaps, whenever in his dim comprehension the idea dawns that his slave and drudge yonder is, in truth, his superior; that the woman who does his bidding, and submits to his humour, should be his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... glandular preponderances are at the basis of personality, creating genius and dullard, weakling and giant, Cavalier and Puritan. All human traits may be analyzed in terms of them because they are ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... commoner,' said Edith, 'you may rely upon it. The only man I really know with a broken heart is Lord Fitz-Booby. I do think that paying Mount-Dullard's debts has broken his heart. He takes on so; 'tis piteous. "My dear Mrs. Coningsby," he said to me last night, "only think what that young man might have been; he might have been a lord of the treasury in '35; why, if he had ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... black lava and glittering ice, gloomy and unknown but to the fleet rein-deer, who seeks for shelter in a region at whose horrors the hardy natives tremble; and last, but not least, the ruins of the Scandinavian inhabitants, and the present fast disappearing race of "the Innuit," or Esquimaux. Dullard must he be who sees not abundance here ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... her? There is a quality in certain people which is above all advice, exposure, or correction. Only let a man or woman have DULNESS sufficient, and they need bow to no extant authority. A dullard recognises no betters; a dullard can't see that he is in the wrong; a dullard has no scruples of conscience, no doubts of pleasing, or succeeding, or doing right; no qualms for other people's feelings, no respect but for the fool himself. How can you make a fool perceive he is a fool? Such a personage ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the irreligious, than thus to clip the wings of faith, to throw her into a dungeon, to keep her from the light of day, to make her read through. Hebrew spectacles, and to force her to be a laggard and dullard, instead of a bright and volatile spirit, forward and foremost ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... he should be read with understanding; what author should not? I would no more think of putting my Boccaccio into the hands of a dullard than I would think of leaving a bright and beautiful woman at the mercy of a ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... partly because they indicate the sweep and reach of his first orient eagle-flight through new morning-skies, and mainly because in them we already find Browning at his best and at his weakest, because in them we hear not only the rush of his sunlit pinions, but also the low earthward surge of dullard wings. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... object of their suit; while another comes, and without knowing why or wherefore, finds himself invested with the place or office so many have sued for; and here it is that the common saying, 'There is good luck as well as bad luck in suits,' applies. Thou, who, to my thinking, art beyond all doubt a dullard, without early rising or night watching or taking any trouble, with the mere breath of knight-errantry that has breathed upon thee, seest thyself without more ado governor of an island, as though it were a mere matter of course. This I say, Sancho, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the dullard. He felt an extra quiver of repugnance for Rosie, but said nothing, while Mary Ann briskly lit the gas and threw some coals on the decaying fire. He was pleased she was going down; he was suffocating; he did not know what to say to her. And yet, as she was disappearing ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... dolt, booby, Tom Noddy, looby^, hoddy-doddy^, noddy, nonny, noodle, nizy^, owl; goose, goosecap^; imbecile; gaby^; radoteur^, nincompoop, badaud^, zany; trifler, babbler; pretty fellow; natural, niais^. child, baby, infant, innocent, milksop, sop. oaf, lout, loon, lown^, dullard, doodle, calf, colt, buzzard, block, put, stick, stock, numps^, tony. bull head, dunderhead, addlehead^, blockhead, dullhead^, loggerhead, jolthead^, jolterhead^, beetlehead^, beetlebrain, grosshead^, muttonhead, noodlehead, giddyhead^; numbskull, thickskull^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... intellectual, and he certainly is not a dullard. He rather fills the average of the youth of modern times, with an extreme fondness for modern activities, which include golfing, running and walking; jazz music and jazz dancing (when the prettiness ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... bread; and yet even of him it is true that "the life is more than meat." He has his inward joys, his affectionate delights, which no outward infelicity can touch. A bird who thinks nothing of staying by his nest and his mate at the sacrifice of his life is not to be written down a dullard or a drudge, merely because his dress is plain and his occupation unromantic. He has a right to sing, for he has something within ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... the cool gray flags of the purlieus of the Temple. Comedy and tragedy have been enacted within its walls; penury and prodigality have dwelt beneath the same rafters; the versatile genius and the plodding dullard have taken their maiden flights toward fame in its halls. Soldiers and statesmen, poets and playwrights, courtiers, wits, and adventurers, have herein acted their various parts. Yet, despite the checkered lives that have run their course within its pale, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... one else outshine This dullard head of mine, Should I be sad? I will be glad. To do my ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... that can bring the dead to life again.' Such was your message, Sir! You are no dullard, But one that strips ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their horses; and just by chance the third son came up. For the proprietor had really three sons, though nobody counted the third with his brothers, because he was not so learned as they, and indeed he was generally known as "Jack the Dullard." ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... any trust, virtue, or worth in thee Make thy words faith'd? No: what I should deny As this I would; ay, though thou didst produce My very character, I'd turn it all To thy suggestion, plot, and damned practice: And thou must make a dullard of the world, If they not thought the profits of my death Were very pregnant and potential spurs To make ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... is not a dullard, or a man stupefied by some predominant vice, has guessed or even perhaps discovered with some certainty, that there are subtle senses lying within the physical senses. There is nothing at all extraordinary in this; ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... confuse folly and wit, though they may exist in the same person and in close relationship. The latter requires intelligence and intention. If a humorous man ever purposely enacts the dullard, the impersonation is always modified—he is like Snug, the joiner, who does not "fright the ladies." There is always some peculiar point in his blunders; if he acted the fool to the life we should not laugh with him. We always see something clever and admirable ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... and plain. The first to open the door of war was the rider outrageous and the lion rageous, King Gharib, who crave his steed between the two hosts and wheeled and careered over the field, crying, "Who is for fray, who is for fight? Let no sluggard come out to me this day nor dullard!" Before he had made an end of speaking, out rushed Ra'ad Shah, riding on an elephant, as he were a vast tower, in a eat girthed with silken bands; and between the elephant's ears at the driver, bearing in hand ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... one that may seem to you a strange one. It is even strange to myself! But it has flashed into my brain suddenly,—and even so inspiration may affect the dullard. It is this: Suppose the Parson fell in love with the Lady, or the Lady fell in love with the Parson? Either, neither, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... a dullard without a spark of imagination could have witnessed the scene presented at that moment without experiencing a thrill which he would have found it difficult to describe. The sunshine, sending a beam through the stained ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... imagination the answer, of course, is obvious. The better tales all had the exaltation of the chivalric spirit in view, and sought to achieve this end by allegory as well as by parable. He must be a dullard indeed who fails to understand their symbolism. Malory, describing the entry of Tristram into the field, wishes to impress upon us the fact that he was indeed a 'preux chevalier, sans peur et sans reproche,' the ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... request to make of her. The reports he received of the boy Johnny, now a pupil at the Geelong Grammar School, grew worse from term to term. It had become clear to him that he was unfortunate enough to possess an out-and-out dullard for a son. Regretfully giving up, therefore, the design he had cherished of educating Johnny for the law, he had resolved to waste no more good money on the boy, but to take him, once he was turned ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Friedrich, except sometimes in Luther's Bible, never read any German Book. What, if we will think of it, could he know of his first mother-tongue! German, to this day, is a frightful dialect for the stupid, the pedant and dullard sort! Only in the hands of the gifted does it become supremely good. It had not yet been the language of any Goethe, any Lessing; though it stood on the eve of becoming such. It had already been the language of Luther, of Ulrich Hutten, Friedrich Barbarossa, Charlemagne and others. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... What a dullard I was. Those great flaring dockweeds do not grow about here. But something ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... dullard!" and forthwith smote Beltane upon the leg. "Now thine arm, slothful boy—thy left arm!" and he smote Beltane upon the arm. "Now thy sconce, boy, thy mazzard, thy sleepy, golden head!" and straightway ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... this straight from the alderman's newspaper, but it is not to be depended on." From "Jack the Dullard," Hans Christian Andersen. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... "intolerably dull. And Dal always says 'only a dullard is dull.' But I diagnosed my dulness in the train just now and found it was largely his fault. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... ceased to be overpowered. When the day began, eye and soul were filled with the light that never was on sea or shore. We spoke low and little, gazing with throbbing hearts, breathless, receptive, solemn, and before twelve o'clock we flatted out and made jests. This is humiliation,—that our dullard souls cannot keep up to the pitch of sublimity for two hours; that we could sail through Glory and Beauty, through Past and Present, and laugh. Low as I sank with the rest, though, I do believe I held out the longest: but what can one frail pebble do against a river? "How pretty cows look in a ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... mayor, "they are caught at last. By my life, a scholar, too. If he smart not for this, and something else, call me a dullard." ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... was not altogether a dullard, and my professors were able to teach me almost everything they wanted, namely, a little Greek and a great deal of Latin. My acquaintances were confined to the ancients. I learned to esteem Miltiades, and to admire Themistocles. I became familiar with ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... sister; you are so impulsive, so prone to hearken to evil dictates rather than good ones, that I dread the thought of seeing you launched into the dangerous career you contemplate, without some surer, safer, more infallible pilot than your proud, passionate heart. If you were homely, and a dullard, I should entertain less apprehension about ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... swore he had rather go on the treadmill than stay there. He was not much beloved by the inhabitants. Lord Erith, Lord Rosherville's heir, considered his cousin a low person, of deplorably vulgar habits and manners; while Foker, and with equal reason, voted Erith a prig and a dullard, the nightcap of the House of Commons, the Speaker's opprobrium, the dreariest of philanthropic spouters. Nor could George Robert, Earl of Gravesend and Rosherville, ever forget that on one evening when he condescended to play at billiards with his nephew, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gladly fights and would as gladly die in noble causes. The words pronounced of old times on the dubbing of a knight, "Be gentle, valiant, and fortunate," are not words which could realise themselves in the dullard or the churl. To the good knight, the ardent love of beauty, in all its aspects is indispensable. The fair lady of his dreams is the spiritual bright-shining of goodness, which expresses itself to him fitly and sweetly in material and visible things. Hence he is always ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... If I talk all day to Hui,[14] like a dullard, he never differs from me. But when he is gone, if I watch him when alone, he can carry out what I taught. No, ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... dullard dunderheads as women are pleased to imagine. I have the most crystalline perception of what Mrs. Willoughby's invitation means to Judith. Women appear to find a morbid satisfaction in the fiction that their sex is actuated by a mysterious nexus of emotions and ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... at times, and a dullard under the influence of the baby god will turn shrewd and exert rare wiles in the conduct of his wooing. Giovanni, by some intuition usually foreign to his dull nature, seemed to divine what manner of ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... but the tent vibrated with the passionate words. "Are you such a coward that you run away at the first hurt? When the ball struck you in the face at Lords, did you retire—hurt? No; you stuck it, and scored a century! Are you such a dullard that you cannot read beneath a woman's yes and no? Love! Do you know what love means? What would you do for love? Could you forgive ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... Cy. Oh, dullard! And you complain of Carion's pulling your hair! Wait till you get a taste of this stick; you shall know what it ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... thought such a blow as this could come from a man! Dullard and fool you must be, Dwight Pollard, or else you have never known me. Why should he risk his honor and his safety in an action as dangerous to him as ungrateful to you? Because he admires her? Guy Pollard is not so loving. But I—I whom ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... that had cost the painter four guineas each. The eight 'Rake's Progress' pictures had fetched but twenty-two guineas each. The six 'Harlot's Progress,' fourteen guineas each. The 'Strolling Players' had gone for twenty-six guineas! O purblind connoisseurs! Dullard dillettanti! Still there was something for the widow; not her wedding portion—that seems to have long before melted away. Sir James Thornhill had been forgiving, kind, and generous after a time—two years—and opened to the runaway lovers his heart and his purse. But there was little ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... average person gives no particular attention, and yet which invariably lead to the very heart of this Castle Delectable. The whimsical chatelaine of this enchanted keep is a shy goddess. Circumspection has no part in her affairs, nor caution, nor practicality; nor does her eye linger upon the dullard and the blunderer. Imagination solves the secret riddle, and wit is the guide that leads the seeker through ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... afraid of being laughed at, and free of that fear he was a better speaker. He was driven to drink, then, by every weakness of his character. As nervous hypochondriac, as would-be swaggerer, as a dullard requiring stimulus, he found that drink, to use his own language, gave ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... she never used his big-sounding title of Principal. This little habit of hers, differently read before, seemed now like a clue to guide him to the meaning of her last remark, partly wrapped as it was in her politeness. He was no dullard; once on the track of her thought, he soon came up with her. In surprise he faced ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... useless prating!" he said imperatively yet good-naturedly—"In everything ye showed your dullard ignorance and lack of discernment. For, concerning the matter of attire, are not the fashions of Al-Kyris copied more or less badly in every quarter of the habitable globe?—even as our language and literature ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... defendant—DEAD!" and the Story Girl was wont to render it with such dramatic intensity and power that the veriest dullard among her listeners could not have missed ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... most noteworthy suitors. But these the proud beauty found not half good enough. "What, men like those! You propose them for me! Why they are pitiable! Look at them—fine types, indeed!" According to her one was a dullard; another's nose was impossible. With this it was one thing; with that it was another; for superior people are disdainful ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... be remarkable is to be overlooked; and nothing less vivid than the white-hot blaze of a Shelley will bring with it even a distinguished martyrdom. But Beddoes was an exception, though he was not a martyr. On the contrary, he dominated his fellows as absolutely as if he had been a dullard and a dunce. He was at Charterhouse; and an entertaining account of his existence there has been preserved to us in a paper of school reminiscences, written by Mr. C.D. Bevan, who had been his fag. Though his place in the school was high, Beddoes' interests ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... conceive how anyone dare take so gross a liberty with a Hanway-Harley; one, too, whose future held tremendous chances of a White House. Being satisfied of Richard's seriousness, and concluding privily that he was only a dullard whom the honor of her notice had confused, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... will leave the rest to your own thoughts. Meanwhile I will say thus much: The man who refuses consideration and weight to a Plenary Council, brought to a conclusion in due and orderly fashion, seems to me witless, brainless, a dullard in theology, and a fool in politics. If ever the Spirit of God has shone upon the Church, then surely is the time for the sending of divine aid, when the most manifest religiousness, ripeness of judgment, science, wisdom, dignity of all the Churches on earth have flocked ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... yards, but the blow fell short, and he was fairly staggered by two in succession ("the tree-climbing rabbit," and "the Marquis of DULLFIELD'S gaiters"), delivered straight on the mouth. First blood for the Dullard. After some hard exchanges they closed, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... me more already," said Tom, "than any dullard like me could ever learn from a book. To think it's a beetle! But I might have known from looking at it. Are all ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... Paul, 'I find it a masterstroke of genius.' Their tones were ice on both sides, but their words were fire. The maid most probably thought her mistress bored, and the guest a dullard. She had seemed at first interested in the new arrival, but she lapsed now into an attitude of indifference, and the dangerous pretence went on. In this intoxicating whirl of passion, when interchange of vows was offered under the necessity ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... about in buggies, Tom sometimes takes a 'bus; Ah, cruel fate, why made you My children differ thus? Why make of Tom a DULLARD, And ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... with a low forehead and a weakly receding chin, Kerry classified as a dullard, a witling, unaware that if the brow were but low enough and the chin virtually absent altogether he might stand in the presence of a second Daniel. Physiognomy is a subtle science, and the exceptions to its ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... know what would have become of me? Shall I take you into the recesses of my soul? I should have gone to my father and said, "Bring me the son-in-law whom you desire; my will abdicates,—marry me to whom you please." And the man might have been a notary, banker, miser, fool, dullard, wearisome as a rainy day, common as the usher of a school, a manufacturer, or some brave soldier without two ideas,—he would have had a resigned and attentive servant in me. But what an awful suicide! never could my soul have expanded in the life-giving rays of a beloved sun. No murmur ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... deliver his sentiments, not his words: for who would read, or who would listen to me, if such fell from me as from him? Poetry has its probabilities, so has prose: when people cry out against the representation of a dullard, Could he have spoken all that? 'Certainly no,' is the reply: neither did Priam implore, in harmonious verse, the pity of Achilles. We say only what might be said, when ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor |
