"Dunce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flaw, I hold that wit a classic, good in law.' Suppose he wants a year, will you compound? And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound, Or damn to all eternity at once, At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce? 'We shall not quarrel for a year or two; By courtesy of England, he may do.' Then, by the rule that made the horse-tail bare, I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair, And melt down ancients like a heap of snow: While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe, And estimating ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... of his Jacket of Flame, The Fryer he pull'd off his Cowle; The Devil took him for a Dunce of the Game, And the Fryer took him for a Fool: He piqu'd, and repiqu'd so oft, that at last, He swore by the Jolly fat Nuns; If Cards came no better than those that are past, Oh! oh! I shall lose ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... arms from stake or stump, Or, spreading the tail of his coat for a sail, Take a soaring leap from post or rail, And wonder why he couldn't fly, And flap and flutter and wish and try,— If ever you knew a country dunce Who didn't try that as often as once, All I can say is, that's a sign He never would do for a hero ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... always brown. And in character he was the most remarkable. Though two years our senior, he deliberately lagged behind the boys of his own age, and remained the oldest member of our form. Thoughtless masters called him a dunce, but abler ones knew him to be only idle. And Pennybet cared little for either opinion. He had schemed to remain in a low form; and that was enough. It was better to be a field-marshal among the "kids" than a ranker among his peers. Like Satan, for ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... after with might and main. He had seldom attained to it because he would never "go up past" Lisbeth. If she missed a word, he, Robert, missed it too, no matter how well he knew it. It was sweet to be thought a dunce for her dear sake. It was all the reward he asked to see her holding her place at the head of the class, her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes starry with her pride of position. And how sweetly she would lecture ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... take her mother to New York shortly; but as "that dear old dunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be necessary to wait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as the largest steamers sailed from Liverpool, and Ellan was so near to that port, perhaps I ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... dunce, Rose!" exclaimed Russ, with exasperation. "You know that nice Black Bear would not hurt them. And, anyway, I guess that baby was only a doll. That is what that soldier said when you told him about it. He said it was Mr. ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... blunders, castigate his faults; it is your duty,—he himself will have reason to thank you. But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of judging, vitiate your faculty of tasting. Recognize the importance, the inestimable virtues, of that quality which you have piqued yourselves on despising,—that sympathy which is the sum of experience, the condition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... love of us and of America, but love of the little Wops and the little Greasers and the little Polaks in their own home-land. Oh, dear, such a frightful mess we have got ourselves into. And what a dunce I was to go to that silly meeting and get ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... to find herself free and unhurt that she minded neither the shaking nor the term "dunce," but instantly caught the rescuer's hand and kissed it rapturously, crying, "Oh, thank you, thank you! Grandpa would have felt so bad if I'd been hurt like that poor blind man. Oh, I wish I could do somethin' for ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... last of the crew needs especial remark, Though he looked an incredible dunce: He had just one idea—but, that one being "Snark," The good ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... of the truth that the God of truth and integrity never left Himself without a witness. Our own literature also is scattered full of the Flatterer and his too willing dupes. "Of praise a mere glutton," says Goldsmith of David Garrick, "he swallowed what came. The puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame." "Delicious essence," exclaims Sterne, "how refreshing thou art to poor human nature! How sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most difficult and tortuous passages to the heart." "He that slanders me," says Cowper, "paints me ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... for the benefit of science or literature, except that kind of literature which goes by the name of bookmaking. Its founder was a veritable dunce, but he was the cleverest of bookmakers, and made more by it in one night than all the authors of that day in their lives. One hundred thousand pounds in one night was not bad evidence of his calculation of chances and his ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... garlanded gaily with 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 ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... CHARLIE, I'm wandering. 'Oliday form is my text. Last year it was Parry and Switzerland; 'ardly know where to go next. I should much like to try Monty Carlo, and 'ave a fair flutter for once, But I fear it won't run to it, pardner; my boss is the dashdest old dunce. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... the wall with "Monday: Geography 9-10, Arithmetic 10-11," and so on. A careful graduation of punishments was instituted, copies to be written so many times, standing on a chair, three strokes on the hand with a ruler, and, worst of all, standing in the corner wearing a paper Dunce's cap. (This last she had read of in books.) At first Jeremy had every intention of behaving well, in spite of that unfortunate embrace. He was proud of his advance in life; he was no longer a baby; the nursery was now a schoolroom; he stayed up an hour ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... instead Of telling me at once That this was not the house!" he said. "There, that'll do—be off to bed! Don't gape like that, you dunce!" ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... history was so successful, that the produce enabled Jem to purchase a bat and ball, which, besides adding to his natural arrogance (for the little pedant actually began to mutter against being eclipsed by a dunce, and went so far as to challenge Joe Kirby to a trial in Practice, or the Rule of Three), gave him, when compared with the general poverty, a most unnatural preponderance in the cricket state. He had the ways and means in ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... "Dot." She was a little chubby, cheery, young wife, very fond of her husband, and very proud of her baby; a good housewife, who delighted in making the house snug and cozy for John, when he came home after his day's work. She called him "a dear old darling of a dunce," or "her little goosie." She sheltered Edward Plummer in her cottage for a time, and got into trouble; but the marriage of Edward with May Fielding cleared up the mystery, and John loved his little Dot more fondly than ever.—C. Dickens, The Cricket on ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... by his pallor and the hatred in his expression. Presently he felt a touch on his arm and heard his name pronounced by Lydia. Her voice calmed him. He tried to look at her, but his vision was disturbed; he saw double; the lights seemed to dunce before his eyes; and Lord Worthington's voice, saying to Cashel, "Rather too practical, old fellow," seemed to come from a remote corner of the room, and yet to be whispered into his ear. He was moving irresolutely in search of Lydia when his senses and ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... should be known, was one of the dullest boys in Saint Dominic's, and it was a standing marvel how he ever came to be in the Fifth, for he was both a dunce and an idiot. But he had one ambition and one idea, which was that he could write poetry; and the following touching ballad from his pen he offered to the Dominican, and the Dominican showed its appreciation of real ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... "is it possible you should do me so much unmerited honour, and I should be dunce enough not ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... many folks about me—above me and below— Might make this life more happy, if old as well as young Would bear in mind the maxim which bids them hold their tongue. Hold your tongue—hold your tongue—you'll ne'er be thought a dunce: Hold your tongue and think twice before you loose it once: Hold your tongue—for quiet folks are oft reputed wise: Hold your tongue, but open wide your ears and ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... merits of the Wise and Good Are seen, far off, and rarely understood. The world's a father to a Dunce unknown, And much he thrives, for Dulness! he's thy own. No hackney brethren e'er condemn him twice; He fears no enemies, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... post-haste to Mrs. Gurley or Mr. Strachey, complaining of their want of insight, and bringing forward a string of embarrassing proofs. So, leaving Mother to her pleasing illusions, Laura settled down again to her role of dunce, now, though, with more equanimity than before. School was really not a bad place after all—this had for some time been her growing conviction, and the visit to Godmother seemed to bring ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... her in Karl's room, a plane in her hand, working hard at the seat of a new sledge, and good-naturedly saying, "Don't take so much trouble with me, Wohlfart; I can learn nothing: I have always been a dunce." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... did you suppose I brought the sample for if I don't?" cried the woman. "You must be a dunce to ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... believe I can say my lesson, and Mr. Garland will think I'm a dunce," said he to himself, ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... impossible for a girl like Kitty Malone not to be popular; and the other girls valued her, and thought themselves highly privileged to be in the same class with her, dunce as she was. ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... they approached the Sultan, Burton began addressing him, not in Arabic, but in the Zanzibar patois. The Sultan, after some conversation, turned to Badger, who, poor man, not being conversant with the patois, could only stand still in the dunce's cap which Burton, as it were, had clapped on him and look extremely foolish; while the bystanders nodded to each other and said, "Look at that fellow. He can't say two words. He's a fraud." Burton revelled in Badger's discomfiture; ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... till they suddenly emerged on a small clearing by a river bank, in which a rough native camp had been pitched. The tents of grass occupied by the hunters being of a peculiar conical shape, like the pointed caps that used to be labeled "Dunce." ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... He would not put that in. The girl could not be so selfish as to take advantage of his over-generous impulse. She must understand that his time belonged to the ages and the race, not to the momentary perplexities of a high school dunce.... At the worst it would be only five minutes here and there—say ten minutes a week; forty minutes a month. No, no! He would not put ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and rendered the public less willing and less apt to be bullied or blackguarded out of its senses. Were Hazlitt alive now, and called, by any miserable scribbler in the "Athenaeum" or "Spectator," a dunce, he could laugh in his face; instead of retiring as he did, perhaps hunger-bitten, to bleed out his heart's blood in secret. Were Shelley now called in "Blackwood" a madman, and Keats a mannikin, they would be as much disturbed by it as the moon at the baying of a Lapland wolf. The good old ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... quite abruptly one day, "you'll have to go to Bonn. That'll be the best place for you, since Oxford is out of the question. You've got to take my place some day, and you mustn't grow up an absolute dunce. Atfield" (an old school-chum of his) "is well pleased with the place for his boy, Bill, so you may get ready to travel back with him next week, ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... powerful revulsion of feeling toward the girl, who was undeniably involved in some exceptionally deep-laid plan, crept throughout his being. Not only does a man detest being used as a tool and played upon like any common dunce, but he also feels an utter chagrin at being baffled in his labors. Apparently he had played the fool, and also he had lost the vital evidence ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... father contrived with difficulty to scrape together enough money to send his boys to Harrow, and there, luckily, Dr. Parr discerned that Richard, with all his faults, was by no means an impenetrable dunce. Both he and Sumner, the head-master of Harrow, discovered in the schoolboy Sheridan great talents which neither of them was capable ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Spider then laughed outright; "Poor fellow!" he said, "you are in a sad plight! Ha! ha! what a dunce you must be to suppose, That the heart of a ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... came, Discharged their a-b abs against the dame, Who, 'mid the volleyed learning, firm and calm, Patted the furloughed ferule on her palm, And, to our wonder, could detect at once, Who flashed the pan, and who was downright dunce. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... he clearly showed in what direction his interest lay. At school he was something of a dunce at his lessons, but let him but have a pencil and paper and his mind was wide awake at once. Every spare moment he spent making sketches on the walls of his ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... reading this a little while before you came in. If you were not a little dunce at Greek, you would be able to construe the classic ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... England. The home ties were not strong and when his brother succeeded to the title and estates in Ireland Mark, who had inherited a fortune from his mother, went to live with his powerful English relatives. For a while he thought of going into the army, but he knew he was a dunce in mathematics, so he soon gave up the idea. He tried Oxford, but failed there for the same reason. Then he just drifted. Now, still on the sunny side of thirty-five, he was knocking about, sick ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once, All at once, and nothing first, Just as bubbles do when ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... people are working together, the absurd and adventitious distinctions of society do not intrude. The capitalist and his agents are looking for the greatest amount of labor or the largest income in money from their investments, and they do not promote a dunce to a station where he will destroy raw material or slacken industry because of his name, or birth, or family connections. The obscurest and humblest person has a fair field for competition. That he proves himself capable of earning ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... my old soul of the tritical, Noting, translating, high slavish, hot critical, Quarterly-scutcheon'd, great heir to each dunce, Be Tibbald, Cook, Arnall, and Dennis ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... insupportable," cried she, stamping with her little satin-slippered foot upon the carpet. "You excuse this gray-headed dunce merely to vex me, and to remind me that I am an orphan ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the phrase. All Virgil says is they were both "in the flower of their youth," and both Arcadians, both equal in setting a theme for song or capping it epigrammatically; but as Arcadia was the least intellectual part of Greece, an "Arcadian" came to signify a dunce, and hence "Arcades ambo" received ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... melodious psalm and hymn books. Books of instruction also abounded,—books in which the notes were not printed on the staff, and books in which there were staffs but no notes, only letters or other characters (these were called "dunce notes"); books, too, in which the notes were printed so thickly that they could scarcely be distinguished one from ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... he never touch the instrument, or as one who has studied medicine is a physician, though he does not practise, so our friend here from this time forward is now and ever shall be a general, even though he does not receive a vote at the elections. But the dunce who has not the science is neither general nor doctor, no, not even if the whole world appointed him. But (he proceeded, turning to the youth), in case any of us should ever find ourselves captain or colonel (7) under you, to give us some smattering of the science of war, what ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... in finding that the edition of the "English Poets" for which he was to write prefaces and lives was not an undertaking directed by him, but that he was to furnish a preface and life to any poet the booksellers pleased. I asked him if he would do this to any dunce's works if they should ask him. Johnson: "Yes, sir, and say he was a dunce." My friend seemed now not much to relish talking of this edition; it had been arranged by the forty chief booksellers of London, and Johnson ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... on every hand. Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits. A college athlete, who remains a dunce at his books, may amaze you by his knowledge of the 'records' at various feats and games, and prove himself a walking dictionary of sporting statistics. The reason is that he is constantly going over these things in his mind, and comparing and ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... hear this; and having watered them, and shaken hands with his friend Nelly, he told her he should never again be afraid to encounter his reading; "for," said he, "the Minister has so much patience, and explains every thing to me so clearly, that I must be a dunce indeed not to understand him, and a very bad boy if I do not take pains to remember what ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... nothing very new To be writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw; You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are, But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR. Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce, I myself — you mayn't believe it — helped to run a paper once With a chap on Cambaroora, by the name of Charlie Brown, And I'll tell you all about it if you'll take ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... Galen,[22] [and whosoever with most paradox is commended.] He much pities the world that has no more insight in his parts, when he is too well discovered even to this very thought. A flatterer is a dunce to him, for he can tell him nothing but what he knows before: and yet he loves him too, because he is like himself. Men are merciful to him, and let him alone, for if he be once driven from his humour, he is like two inward friends fallen out: ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... foes, Behind, before, beneath your nose, And fellows very high in station. Of high and low denomination, Who dread you with a deadly spite For what you speak and what you write,— Where, between satire and your wit, They feel themselves most sorely bit. Ah! can a dunce in church or state So overflow with froth and hate? And can a scribbling crew so spurt On Pope and Swift, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... resembling a great rhubarb-leaf, and with his stealthy, insinuating trunk carefully picks up whatever he considers fit to eat, that is to say, pretty well everything that lies about on the stones. Great things were hoped of him, but hitherto he has disappointed all expectations: he is the dunce of the establishment. Perhaps he is too young still: his little elephant-soul no doubt resembles that of a sucking-babe which, in the place of its feet and hands, plays with the stupendous nose that must first explore and question the universe. It is impossible to grip his attention; and, ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... stolid dunces of that time: you remember the men who sat next you in the lecture-room, and never answered rightly a question that was put to them: you remember how you used to wonder if they would always be the dunces they were then. Well, I never knew a man who was a dunce at twenty, to prove what might be called a brilliant or even a clever man in after life; but we have all known such do wonderfully decently. You did not expect much of them, you see. You did not try them by an ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... marauding expeditions; the pillaging of onion beds while they were out walking; the stones thrown at windows, the correct thing being to make the breakage resemble a well-known geographical map. Also the Greek exercises, written beforehand in large characters on the blackboard, so that every dunce might easily read them though the master remained unaware of it; the wooden seats of the courtyard sawn off and carried round the basin like so many corpses, the boys marching in procession and singing funeral dirges. Yes! that had been a capital prank. Dubuche, who played the priest, had tumbled ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... that Mr. Frost was severe, or that he was partial. Some censured his old opinions, others his new studies; one had been affronted by being almost told his boy was a dunce, another hated all this new-fangled nonsense. The ladies were all, to a woman, up against his wife, her airs, her poverty, her twins, and her housekeeping; and seldom spoke of her save to contrast her with good old Mrs. Frost. And then it was plain that something was wrong between ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... carriage and horses — that she may visit her friends in comfort. I give her my family bible — that she may live above the ill tempers and sorrows of life. I give my son Peter a hornbook — for I am afraid he will always be a dunce. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... intellectual superiors; and as the virtues are solely the product of education—a rogue being only a dunce considered from another point of view—they are our moral superiors likewise. Why should they not be? It is a land not of log and pine-board schoolhouses grudgingly erected and containing schools supported by such niggardly tax levies as ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... world to the new. His own reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy was one of his first books after Robinson Crusoe and Robertson's America, an early favorite. Rousseau's Confessions had discovered to him that he was not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by the advice of a man who told him he would find in that language what ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fancy that Dick hasn't found war very much different from school, so far. He seems to recite a good deal to the mistress, and occupies the dunce's block quite regularly," Vincent retorted, with a provoking significance that set mamma in a brown study and suspended the comments on Kate's and Jack's ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... provoked, never doubles his fist, Mr. Burns, in his grate, has no fuel; Mr. Playfair won't catch me at hazard or whist, Mr. Coward was wing'd in a duel. Mr. Wise is a dunce, Mr. King is a whig, Mr. Coffin's uncommonly sprightly, And huge Mr. Little broke down in a gig, While ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... the horns of a dilemma. Either our young chieftain must be a dunce, or we are rearing the Clever ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The dunce's cap Dol-ly must wear, Her task was not learnt very well; And now lit-tle Jane, I de-clare, ...
— The Infant's Delight: Poetry • Anonymous
... him, too late to eat him, and the crowd cheered the fireman and me, I did feel warm about the waistcoat, and, for the first time this ever so long, life seemed not quite ended. I felt there was a little bit of good left, that even a poor dunce like me could do, and she could approve—if she can look down and see me, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... "Oh yes; what a dunce I am! I'm afraid I'm very ungrateful. But you see I seem to have done with such things. And yet the money is going to be of some use to ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... save. She is always taking on; and she will be glad enough to have somebody to look out for her,—why, sure enough! And there I was right at her house this very day, and never once thought of her! What an old dunce!" ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... sent to another school at Boonshill, near Rye, where the master took "infinite delight" in strapping him. "It keeps me warm and makes you grow," he used to say. And the stripes were not altogether wasted, for the dunce, though still very "raw," made progress with his studies. It was known, moreover, that he was going to sea, always a ground of pre-eminence with schoolboys; and in his case the glory was not altogether future, it wore a present form when he came driving to Rye behind four horses in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of heroes and kings, was a lone, friendless mariner on the main, only true to his origin in the sea-life that he led. But so it has been, and forever will be. What yeoman shall swear that he is not descended from Alfred? what dunce, that he is not sprung of old Homer? King Noah, God bless him! fathered us all. Then hold up your heads, oh ye Helots, blood potential flows through your veins. All of us have monarchs and sages for kinsmen; nay, angels and archangels for cousins; since in antediluvian ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and abilities to behave well, should so misuse them as to set a bad, instead of a good example to others, and by that means draw many into sin, who otherwise, perhaps, might never have acted wrong. Was this Sharply, you have been speaking of, a dunce and blockhead at his book, he would never gain the commendations that Mr. Chiron now bestows upon him; and, consequently, no boy would wish to be thought like him; his bad example, therefore, would not be of half the ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... sunk in thought as to how I should instruct you in a thing of great importance." "You were sunk quite under the seat," laughs Siegfried; "what of great importance did you discover there?" "I there learned fear for your sake, that I might teach it to you, dunce." "What about fear?" Siegfried asks. "You know nothing about it, and you are thinking of going from the woods out into the world? Of what use to you would be the strongest sword, if you had no knowledge of fear?... Into the crafty world I shall not let you fare before you have learned fear." ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... taught at Oxford and died in 1308), were Realists, and the Scotists were as Realists opposed to the Nominalists, who, as followers of Thomas Aquinas, were called Thomists. Abuse, in later time, of the followers of Duns gave its present sense to the word Dunce.] ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the parade ground, by day and by night, he was made to feel that he belonged to an inferior and despised race, and that no excellence of deportment, diligence in study, or rank in his class could entitle him to the recognition accorded to every white dunce and rowdy. Yet with rare strength of character he persevered, and when, having maintained the standing of No. fifty in a class of seventy-six, he received his well-earned diploma, there was a ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... I won't give you away," Austin assured her. "You'd better tell him what a horrid dunce I am before I come in, and then he won't be so surprised if I do put my foot in it. After all, we're not sure that he's been a traveller. He may be a painter. Lubin says that lots of painters come down here sometimes. My ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Monday, John Lefolle was good-naturedly giving a special audience to a muscular dunce, trying to explain to him the political effects of the Crusades, when there was a knock at the sitting-room door, and the scout ushered in Mrs. Glamorys. She was bewitchingly dressed in white, and stood in the open ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... all Europe at that time, and ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of poor little Oliver's face, when the child was eight years old, and left him scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman in his father's village taught him his letters, and pronounced him a dunce: Paddy Byrne, the hedge-schoolmaster, took him in hand; and from Paddy Byrne, he was transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. When a child was sent to school in those days, the classic phrase was that he was placed ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cried Jack, with eager eyes. 'I see!' cried Tom, 'I see! You go and seek another mouse, And leave this mouse to me.' 'Indeed, I won't!' cried Jack at once; 'You surely take me for a dunce! ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... to the latter object, remain ignorant on most of those subjects upon which mind grapples with mind in life, or by adopting, as Lord Byron and other distinguished persons have done, the contrary system, consent to pass for a dunce or idler in the schools, in order to afford himself even a chance of attaining ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... each sweaty Brow Is search'd.... Hence ev'ry Blockhead, Knave, and Dunce, Start into Preachers ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... trying to read in the French Telemachus: for, my lady, I'm learning French, I'll assure you! And who, do you think, is my master?—Why, the best I could have in the world, your dearest brother, who is pleased to say, I am no dunce: how inexcusable should I be, if I was, with such a master, who teaches me on his knee, and rewards me with a kiss whenever I do well, and says, I have already nearly mastered the accent and pronunciation, which he tells me is a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... into business, I couldn't make money, because I was a Bellegarde. I couldn't go into politics, because I was a Bellegarde—the Bellegardes don't recognize the Bonapartes. I couldn't go into literature, because I was a dunce. I couldn't marry a rich girl, because no Bellegarde had ever married a roturiere, and it was not proper that I should begin. We shall have to come to it, yet. Marriageable heiresses, de notre bord, are not to be had for nothing; it must be name for name, and fortune for fortune. The only ...
— The American • Henry James
... few years, except to say that I went to college, where I was shunned by all, though never alone: was a dunce, and plucked twice. Perhaps it was I who shunned others, for had I not society in the constant presence of my Familiar? I was of course a dunce, for my brain was never steady enough to carry me over the Pons Asinorum, or to make a Latin verse with even decent correctness. I went away ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I mean, I don't allow myself to be such a dunce, even in my own thoughts. I never even think ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... comes, who, without knowing why or wherefore, finds himself in possession of that office to which so many people laid claim: and here the old saying is aptly introduced, 'A pound of good luck is worth a ton of merit.' Thou, who, in comparison to me, art doubtless an ignorant dunce, without rising early or sitting up late, or, indeed, exerting the least industry: without any pretension more or less than that of being breathed upon by knight-errantry, seest thyself created governor of an island as if it was a ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... but they shall pick up the pebble, and courtesy unto you for your grace. And set your mind on a lad that you do count to have more sense than the rest, and beshrew me if he show you not in fair colours ere the week be out that he is as great a dunce as any. I reckon Jack shall be the next. Well, well!— let the world wag. 'Twill all be o'er an hundred years hence. They shall be doing it o'er again by then. Howbeit, 'tis ill work to weep o'er ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... of Leopold Eberhard of Wirtemberg, Duke of Moempelgard. This prince had been so pampered by his mother, Anne de Coligny, that he reached the age of twelve years without having learned to read or write. When the over-tender mother died, the boy's father, Duke George, took his dunce-son's education in hand; but this gentleman was peculiar in his notions of the training of young minds. French and German he deemed unnecessary trivialities, and the Christian religion a banality. Instead of these prosaic lessons the boy was instructed in the Arabic, Hebrew, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... fairy, so quick, so clever, but so fragile, into a very commonplace, merry, rosy, romping child. I may add that it is well to bear in mind the converse of this; to remember that body and mind rarely grow in equal proportion at one time; that the incorrigible little dunce, though not likely to prove a genius as he grows older, will yet very probably be found at twelve or fourteen to know as much as his playmates. A dull mind, and a sickly or ill-developed frame may make us anxious: but if the physical development is good, the ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... und vell, Britty soon mit the garbage it vent, For dose nurses dey don't like de shmell. Ven I ask for pork sausages vonce, Den dey say, (vot I tells you is true,) "Don't you know, you fat-headed old dunce, Dose vill gif you ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... are smart in anything," thought Philip; for he knew that Nick was a hopeless dunce in ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... smart as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet dunce cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke bonnet. T.B. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... he, chuckling, "hark to that lovely rascal in the cart, yonder—hark to him; Galen was an ass and Hippocrates a dunce ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... of Grimstad and of its drug-store which moulded the character of Ibsen. Skien and his father's house dropped from him like an old suit of clothes. He left his parents, whom he scarcely knew, the town which he hated, the schoolmates and schoolmasters to whom he seemed a surly dunce. We find him next, with an apron round his middle and a pestle in his hand, pounding drugs in a little apothecary's shop in Grimstad. What Blackwood's so basely insinuated of Keats—"Back to the shop, Mr. John, stick to plasters, pills and ointment-boxes," inappropriate ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... alive or dead. But his work, Howell's, and even part of Gifford's, is chiefly interesting as giving us in the very sharpest contrast the differences of the poetry before and after the melodious bursts of which Spenser, Sidney, and Watson were the first mouthpieces. Except an utter dunce (which Grove does not seem to have been by any means) no one who had before him The Shepherd's Calendar, or the Hecatompathia, or a MS. copy of Astrophel and Stella, could have written as Grove wrote. There are echoes of this earlier and woodener matter to ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... about Diddy and the Fair, but the Master saw what he had done. "Come here, Larry McQueen, and bring your slate," he said. "Sure, I'll teach you better manners. Get up on this stool now, and show yourself." He put a large paper dunce-cap on Larry's head, and made him sit up on a stool before the ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of her Shakespeare and of the Aldine Poets to a judicious catechist, and of many another book with a story besides; even of her Hume, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and Rollin, and of her Scott, perennially delightful. She was, in fact, no dunce, though she had not been disciplined in the conventional routine of education; and as for training in the higher sense, she could not have grown into a more upright or good girl under any guidance, than under that of her ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... the matter is that I'm a double-barrelled dunce," was the answer. "Look here; do you see that?" and he held ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... a refinement of barbarity, they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes, these rakers of 'Remains' come under the statute against resurrection-men. What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? is it so bad to unearth his bones as his blunders? is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath than his soul in an octavo? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we may be,' and it is to be hoped we never shall know, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... peculiarity of mine never to remember my own ties; I notice them so little, I imagine—So things are coming around, as I said. And if my big trade now succeeds, perhaps that will bring luck for us all. It would be fun to show her that I am not such a dunce, ha, ha!" ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... dunce, Morgan? Without doubt, at the end of that cave is a way up into the castle; and though the passage be too narrow for all my troop, three men and a captain will suffice to lay faggots and light them at the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... chosen the Six stoutest striplings for his troop, and, at the head of that Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School. Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels all foolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and Dux Booby—and the obscure dunce is ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... associated with the worst boys in the village. I well remember the morning he first entered our school. He was then about twelve years of age; but owing to his carelessness and inattention, he had made but slight progress in study. I learned afterward that he had so long borne the names of "dunce" and "blockhead" in the school he attended in his own village that he supposed himself to be really such, and made up his mind that it was useless for him to try to be anything else: and I think when our teacher first called him up for examination ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell |
