"Ignorance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the name we gave him); he did not know anything, and his mind was not a mind capable of absorbing any solid learning; but he was very fond of his mother. We took very good care never to utter a hint of the ignorance of so perfect a son; and, thanks, to our forbearance, little Raymond made his way to the highest positions. He had lost his mother then; but honours of all kinds were showered upon him. He became omnipotent—to the grievous injury of his colleagues and of science.... But here comes my young ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... a severe but grossly indelicate satire upon the profligacy of Brahmans assuming the character of religious mendicants. It satirizes also the encouragement given to vice by princes, the inefficacy of ministers, and the ignorance of physicians ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... narrow range of high-peaked hills to the Tomahawk's farthest range on Big Creek was a tedious affair to Buddy. A man had been sent on a fast horse to warn the nearest neighbor, who in turn would warn the next,—until no settler would be left in ignorance of his danger. Ezra was already on the trail to Laramie, with mother and Dulcie and the cats and a slat box full of chickens, and a ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... juniors was a surprise. No one imagined that their threats at revolt were anything more than the ordinary bluster in which these young braves notoriously dealt. Had they sinned in ignorance it would have mattered less. But they had gone to the meeting in deliberate defiance of their captain's order, and in the face of his warning as to what the ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... unbearable than the complacent type of scientist who knows very exactly all that he does know, but has not imagination enough to understand what a speck his little accumulation of doubtful erudition is when compared with the immensity of our ignorance. He is the person who thinks that the universe can be explained by laws, as if a law did not require construction as well as a world! The motion of the engine can be explained by the laws of physics, but that has not made the foregoing presence of an engineer less obvious. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Through ignorance which might have cost me dear but for my friend Larking's weight with the local authorities, I had neglected to provide myself with a passport in England; and it was not without difficulty, involving much unclean dressing and an unlimited expenditure of broken ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... carried out, and for two weeks he rowed as a galley slave. His lot was as hard as that of the others, for, as he had reason to believe that some of the officials were concerned in the plot, it was necessary that all should be kept in ignorance that he was other than he seemed to be. Thanks to his perfect knowledge of Turkish, he was able to carry his mission through with complete success, and to obtain full particulars of the plot we have tonight crushed. The knight who has performed this inestimable service ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... have not got the stout fellows, Edgar; and for myself, even if we had them, I would prefer to set these poor knaves running without doing harm to them rather than to slay and maim, for their attack would be made in their ignorance, and in their hatred of those above them. They have been goaded by oppression into taking up arms, and the fault rests upon others rather ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... work, even for the passengers, who remained in blissful ignorance of the danger of their situation. By rights the ship should have been in dock before breakfast; they had planned the night before that an early dawn should see them awake and preparing to land; yet here was eleven o'clock, and from what the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... has recorded (in Trigautius) of the dense ignorance of the Chinese literati in astronomical matters is entirely ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... him in former days, M. Lacheneur had become unrecognizable. He had adapted himself to his lofty station. Blushing at his own ignorance; he had found the courage—wonderful in one of his age—to acquire the education ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... original draft of Francoise's "Voyage," because it was "in the way and smelt bad." Neither could Francoise have written it. Her awkward handwriting, her sparkling flood of words and details, and her ignorance of the simplest rules of spelling, make it impossible. Nor could Suzanne have done it. She wrote and spelled no better at fifty-nine than Francoise at forty-three. Nor could any one have imposed it on either of the sisters. So, then, we find no intention to ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... mile—two miles—three miles nearly; and there by the road-side we halted. Was the enemy in pursuit? Were we falling back to Harrisburg? Or what was the matter? Whether the halt was for five minutes or for all day every one was in blissful ignorance, including, very likely, our commanding officer ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... he betrayed his ignorance. True woman, though she may have ceased to love her husband, or may never have loved him, will cover his weakness. "We have our ambitions, Jack, although to you they seem petty enough. You must make William's ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... come unheralded. A blinding flash of lightning illuminated miles of the surrounding country, showing Hollis the naked peaks of ridges and hills around him; gullies, draws, barrancas, the levels, lava beds, fantastic rock shapes—mocking his ignorance of the country. He saw them all for an instant and then they were gone and darkness—blacker than before—succeeded. It was as though a huge map had suddenly been thrust before his eyes by some giant hand, an intense light thrown upon it, and the light suddenly turned off. ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... say, that Arts and Science fail, And Ignorance and Folly have weigh'd down the Scale: In England they have given new Arts a Rise, And what in Science wants, increase in Vice, And to be great as Angels when they fell, (If not exceed) at least they ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... is true. The more cups you drink and the more undiluted the draught the better it will be for your soul's good. The first cup is given by the master that teaches you to read and write and redeems you from ignorance[63], the second is given by the teacher of literature and equips you with learning, the third arms you with the eloquence of the rhetorician. Of these three cups most men drink. I, however, have drunk yet other cups at Athens—the imaginative draught of poetry, the clear draught of geometry, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... daughter, arrived at the gate, and on seeing the statue, exclaimed, "Alas! alas! how like my poor, lost child!" He was immediately carried to the palace, lodged in a magnificent apartment, treated with the highest respect; but kept in complete ignorance as to the cause of his confinement and his future fate. Not long after this, his disconsolate nephew, who, on the departure of the treacherous captain, had wandered from city to city in hopes of finding his mistress, arrived, and repaired ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... hazardous to the good repute of the men who are responsible and the country in which they are possible, must be treated with great reserve. Prompted by motives of private revenge or public ambition, they disclose only half the truth, and a portion of the truth is often more misleading than complete ignorance. ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... Brunow?" I responded, little guessing what it meant, and feeling in my blind ignorance quite friendly towards Brunow for having done anything to give the sad exile so much pleasure. "And I needn't ask you if the news ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... quite overpowering, and for some minutes he could only gasp out his joy and thankfulness. He could hope now that when better times came he might be able to steal away some night and meet her, and that some day or other, though how he could not see, they might be reunited. The Jacksons remained in ignorance that their former slave was ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... entire descent the Professor was in blissful ignorance of the loss of control. To him the hill was like many another that we had taken at top speed; but when he saw the rear wheel far out from the carriage with only about twelve inches of axle holding in the sleeve, and understood the loss of control through ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... might just as well have set me down at the foot of the Rocky Mountains with a wheelbarrow and told me to carry them away to the Atlantic coast on that vehicle, as to have asked me to do an example in interest, and I was too ashamed of my ignorance to allow him to know that such a thing was beyond my powers, so I managed to get around the matter in some way, but I made up my mind then and there that I would at the first opportunity learn at best enough to take care of my own business. That winter I spent with my wife ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... such as brings tears to the eyes of many a wanderer, who, hearing a similar sound when far away from home, straightway thinks of the village church of his earlier years, . . those years of the best happiness we ever know on earth, because we enjoy in them the bliss of ignorance, the glory of youth! A curious stifling sensation began to oppress Theos's heart as he listened to those bells, . . they reminded him of such strange things, ... things to which he could not give a name,—things foolish, yet sweet, . . odd suggestions of fair women who were wont to pray ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... assemble at the Minster gate, and soon the long bridal procession begins to issue from the Kemenate. But before Elsa has had time to set foot upon the Minster steps, Ortrud dashes forward and claims precedence, taunting the hapless bride with ignorance of her bridegroom's name and rank. Elsa has scarcely time to reply in passionate vindication of her love, when the King and Lohengrin approach from the Pallas, the quarters of the knights. Lohengrin soothes the terror of his bride, and the procession starts once more. Once ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... joined in calling out for a war with Spain; but they now had their war. Hatred of Walpole was almost the only feeling which was common to them. On this one point, therefore, they concentrated their whole strength. With gross ignorance, or gross dishonesty, they represented the Minister as the main grievance of the State. His dismissal, his punishment, would prove the certain cure for all the evils which the nation suffered. What was to be done after his fall, how ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... we find, so far back as the year 1755, Cadwallader Calden express himself much to the same effect. "The Five Nations," he says, "are a poor and generally called barbarous people, bred under the darkest ignorance; and yet a bright and noble genius shines through these black clouds. None of the greatest Roman heroes have discovered a greater love of country, or contempt of death, than these people, called barbarous, have shown when liberty came in competition. Indeed I think our Indians have outdone the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... spot of terror gathered in his middle, spreading outward through his smarting body. For he was certain that the Throgs would not believe that. They would consider his protestations of ignorance as a stubborn refusal to co-operate. And what would happen to him then would be beyond human endurance. Could he bluff—play for time? But what would that time buy him except to delay the inevitable? In the end, that small hope based on his ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... the offspring of imagination and of ignorance. Where science throws her calm, clear light there is happily ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... constable, "I have brought back your man—not without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty! He is inside this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful aid, considering their ignorance of Crown work. Men, bring forward your prisoner!" And the third stranger was led to ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... belying himself, to change the order of things which he established when he created the universe. We consider that faith in miracles is a superstition which we must leave to the monks of the Churches of Rome and of Russia, and also to your Mussulmans who live in ignorance of the truth. And it is in order to teach you this truth that I have come here to your country, and at the same time to fight against the pernicious political influence exerted by these same Romish and Greek monks of whom I have just ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... where Olivia was standing between the portieres of the doorway. Davenant yielded, partly because of his ignorance of the small arts of graceful refusal, but more because of his curiosity concerning the man Olivia Guion was to marry. He had some interest, too, in observing one who was chosen where he himself had been rejected. It would afford an answer to the question, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... these melancholy effusions, and guess that, fatigued by the vivacity, which has all the bustling folly of childhood, without the innocence which renders ignorance charming, I am too severe in my strictures. It may be so; and I am aware that the good effects of the revolution will be last felt at Paris; where surely the soul of Epicurus has long been at work to root out the simple emotions of the heart, which, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... change in attitude there has been much justification, for in my country, as elsewhere, the people do not always select their best men as representatives, and, with the imperfections of human nature, there has been so much of ignorance and, at times, venality, that the instinct of the people is to take the conduct of affairs into their own hands. On the other hand, this change of attitude has led, in many instances, to government ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... are all his seers. The King impatient eyed them all with scorn, And hid his thoughts by wildest passions born; And then at last contemptuous to them said, "So all my seers of trouble are afraid? Or else in ignorance you turn away; 'Tis well! I sorely need a seer this day." And they now prostrate fall before his throne, "Forgive thy seers!" one cries, "O mighty One! For we this dreadful dream do fear portends Thy harm! a god some message to thee ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... naturalist's adopting the conclusions of another without independent observation, this is not the place to consider. It is our impression that species of animals are more definitely marked than those of plants; this may arise from our somewhat extended acquaintance with the latter, and our ignorance of the former. But we are constrained by our experience to admit the strong likelihood, in botany, that varieties on the one hand, and what are called closely-related species on the other, do not differ except in degree. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Lord French. I have no right to blame him, as I am not a soldier nor a military expert. He did his best, with the highest motives. The blunders he made were due to ignorance of modern battles. Many other generals made many other blunders, and our men paid with their lives. Our High Command had to learn by mistakes, by ghastly mistakes, repeated often, until they became ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... fact that Stonehenge exhibits marks of the chisel in different parts, while the former does not. The ancient British documents give us the founder of the latter, namely, Emrys, or Ambrosius, while we are left in ignorance as to who raised the pile ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... such persons, if under the observation of a physician, could be fed forcibly, but through the ignorance of friends or relatives it not unfrequently happens that medical aid is not invoked in time, and serious symptoms, or even death itself, may result. The time at which this last termination ensues varies according to the kind of insanity with which the ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... it was checked by the cries of Pippo, had been gradually lessening under a sense of distrust, and she now entered the square with a secret and mysterious dread at the heart, which her inexperience and great ignorance of life served fearfully to increase. Her imagination magnified the causes of alarm into some prepared and designed insult. Christine, fully aware of the obloquy that pressed upon her race, had only consented ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... and Marjory's heart was beating quickly as they neared Braeside. This day of days, so eagerly longed for, had come at last; but what would it bring with it? This feeling of apprehension grew into an acute pain at last. Her ignorance of the things which most girls of her age were well up in assumed the most alarming proportions to poor Marjory, and she almost wished that her heart's desire had not been granted, that she could have been content with things as they ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... the door by which Messrs. Scotcher's resident employees entered at night. Monica had taken out her latchkey. But Miss Eade could not endure the thought of being left in torturing ignorance. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... contents concern and belong to her alone, and are of no use to any person in the world apart from herself: in case of her being already dead before me, the box and all its contents should be burnt without opening or disturbing anything. And lest anyone should plead ignorance of the contents, I swear by the God I worship and by all that is most sacred that no untruth is here asserted. If anyone should contravene my wishes that are just and reasonable in this matter, I charge their conscience therewith in discharging my own in this world and the next, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... discovering that he was on the wrong side, Mr. MOSLEY has made the same discovery after an experience of barely as many weeks. From his new perch he inquired this afternoon if Government cement was being sent abroad, to the detriment of British builders. Dr. ADDISON contented himself with professing ignorance of any such transaction. A less serious Minister might have replied that the Government needed all their cement to mend the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... thousand pities that the difficulties of Chatterton's language and the peculiar charm and invention of his metrical technique cannot be appreciated till the boyish love of adventure, delight in imagined bloodshed, and ignorance of sentimental love, have generally been left behind. Nothing—to give an example—could be more frigid than the description ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... ugliness." "Why," he added, in relating the circumstance, "the cross old rascal pretended not to understand his own language, though I said as plainly as possible, 'Senor, sabe mi horso vamos poco tiempo?' which, perhaps you don't know," he proceeded to say, in a benevolent desire to enlighten our ignorance and teach us a little Castilian, "means, 'Sir, I have lost my horse; have you seen it?'" I am ashamed to acknowledge that we did not know the above-written Anglo-Spanish meant that! The honest fellow concluded his story by declaring (and it ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... that military law to which they voluntarily put themselves in subjection. Marion's modes of punishment happily reached all such cases without making the unhappy offender pay too dearly for the sin of ignorance. On one occasion, Horry tells us that he carried before him a prisoner charged with desertion to the enemy. "Marion released him, saying to me, 'let him go, he is too worthless to deserve the consideration of a court martial.'" Such a decision in such a case, would have shocked a military ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... with Solar Guardsmen once they discover I'm lost," said Astro. "Who are you and what are you holding me prisoner for?" The big cadet decided it would be better to feign ignorance of the existence ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... they have given me cognisance of certain names . . . certain movements . . . enough, I think, to thwart their projected COUP for the moment, it would only be for the moment, and still leaves me in ignorance of the identity ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... proved that a large proportion of the clergy were both wofully ignorant and morally unworthy. Besides the priests who had concubines, there were many given to drink and some who kept taverns, gaming rooms and worse places. Plunged in gross ignorance and superstition, those blind leaders of the blind, who won great reputations as exorcists or as wizards, were unable to understand the Latin service, and sometimes to repeat even the Lord's prayer ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... took a fresh chew while cogitating on my alarming ignorance of Point Sandy affairs: "Why, ain' ye heared? I thote ev'ry feller on th' river knew thet yere—why, ol' Hawkins, his wife's brother's buried in Alton to-day, 'n' th' neighbors done gwine t' th' fun'ral. Whar your shanty-boat been beached, thet ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor allowed to become so. The whites could ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... subordinate agents in England are quite unmanageable in these respects. If they get [matters] into their hands neither the Deity nor the Devil, nor both together, can make them agree. Lord Melbourne writes this in ignorance of the actual facts of the case, and therefore it ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... people I don't," she thought, but she said nothing. No one noticed her silence—or Maurice's, either! The doctor, and Morton, and the handsome bride, were listening to Edith, amused, apparently, at her crudity and ignorance. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the marvelous, may be accounted for from our tendency to exaggerate all effects that seem disproportionate to their visible cause, and all circumstances that are in any way strongly contrasted with our notions of the persons under them. Secondly, it arises from the safety and success which an ignorance of danger and difficulty sometimes actually assists in procuring; inasmuch as it precludes the despondence which might have kept the more foresighted from undertaking the enterprise, the depression which would retard its progress, and those overwhelming influences of terror in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... subjects'—which brings Mr Feeder down a peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he don't know what right Blimber had to notice his being in Miss Dombey's company, and that if he thought he meant impudence by it, he'd have him out, Doctor or no Doctor; but he supposes its only his ignorance. Mr Feeder says he has no doubt ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... grove, near St. Cross, was an every-day deed, done for the most pitiful and sordid motives that can tempt a man to shed his brother's blood, never for a moment entered into her thoughts. Other people might think this in their ignorance of the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... appearances only, without at the same time conceiving a reality of which they are appearances, for appearance without reality is unthinkable." (p. 88). So far we can go. There is a reality which is the cause of phenomena. Further than that, in that direction, our ignorance is profound. He proves that space cannot be an entity, an attribute, or a category of thought, or a nonentity. The same is true of time, of motion, of matter, of electricity, light, magnetism, etc., etc. They all resolve themselves into appearances ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... the Folly. He had never imagined anything so wide and grand as this great flowing river, lined with its stately buildings, and bearing on its bosom more vessels than he imagined that the world held! Had it not been for his fear of betraying undue ignorance, he would have broken into a torrent of questions; as it was, he sat in wide-eyed silence, gazing about him like a savage suddenly transported into the world of civilization—not a little to the amusement ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... "Behold the harvest that we reap From popular government and equality," I clearly saw that neither these nor aught Of wild belief engrafted on their views By false philosophy had caused the woe, But a terrific reservoir of guilt And ignorance filled up from age to age. That would no longer hold its loathsome charge, But burst and spread in ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... working man?" echoed Mr. Godall. "Suppose a rural dean to be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? suppose a captain were cashiered, would he fall to be a puisne judge? The ignorance of your middle class surprises me. Outside itself, it thinks the world to lie quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation; but to the eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in ordered hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular aptitudes and knowledge. By the defects of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you were right, Gerald, and that it was, as you say, the kindest thing to leave them in ignorance ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... affliction, as it was in holy Job's experience: but in due time God "brought forth their righteousness as the light, and their judgment as the noonday." Their "good conversation put to silence the ignorance of foolish men." The power of the Lord's Christ was made manifest through the instrumentality of his servants, by producing conviction in many hearts that the cause for which they suffered was from God, and ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... of these and many similar ceremonies is that they are, or were in their origin, magical rites intended to ensure the revival of nature in spring. The means by which they were supposed to effect this end were imitation and sympathy. Led astray by his ignorance of the true causes of things, primitive man believed that in order to produce the great phenomena of nature on which his life depended he had only to imitate them, and that immediately by a secret sympathy or mystic influence the little drama which he acted in forest glade or mountain dell, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of us acknowledge that the educated man who breaks the laws is justly liable to a heavier punishment than he who has been born in ignorance, and bred, as it were, in the lap of sin; but we hardly realize how much greater is the punishment which, when he be punished, the educated man is forced to undergo. Confinement to the man whose mind has never been lifted above vacancy is simply remission from labour. Confinement, with ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... enterprise, and daring, and hardihood, they knew little about "crowning cables," "carrick-bends," and all the mysteries of "knotting," "graffing," and "splicing." A regular Delaware-bay seaman would have turned up his nose in contempt at many of their ways, and at much of their real ignorance; but, when it came to the drag, or to the oar, or to holding out in bad weather, or to any of the more manly qualities of the business, he would be certain to yield his respect to those at whom it had originally been his disposition to laugh. It might best describe these ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... state what I think I have witnessed, and trust to Mr. Waterton's forbearance if I am in error; yet I cannot help suspecting that Mr. Waterton's queries are (like those of Charles the Second to the Royal Society) more for the purpose of laughing at our ignorance than from any wish he has to obtain information, for I can scarcely suppose that so acute an observer can have failed to perceive everything perceptible on the point ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... agricultural, a certain familiarity with their tools and methods. Our schools are constantly visiting our workshops, and often are taken on long excursions to inspect particular industrial enterprises. In your day a man was not ashamed to be grossly ignorant of all trades except his own, but such ignorance would not be consistent with our idea of placing every one in a position to select intelligently the occupation for which he has most taste. Usually long before he is mustered into service a young man has found out the pursuit ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... told himself, where men won things by their brains, he had failed like any pitiable weakling; that he had been handicapped by unpreparedness was no palliation of the crime of failure. Ignorance was no excuse. In humiliation and chagrin he attributed the mistakes of inexperience to lack of intelligence. His mother had over-estimated him, he had over-estimated himself. It was presumption to have supposed he was fitted for anything but manual labor. Sprudell had been right, he ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... solidarity union—they called it the W.S.S.U. The idea was that if women would stand together against men they could get anything in the world they wanted—equal rights and privileges, equal wages, fair treatment in every department of life; and do away with evils of ignorance and poverty, child labor evils, prostitution evils. We could have an ideal world if women, using their sex power, would ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... ignorance as to the details of the conquests and the generals who served under Rameses. There is doubtless some exaggeration in the statements of the Greek historian, but there is no doubt that this monarch was among the first ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... perceaue the foppery of the Church of Rome, who hould such toyes as authenticall, and also there knauery to make the people beleeue, lies for truth, and falshod for honestie, Bearing them in hand, as in this, so in all the rest, with blindenes, and ignorance but hereof ynoughe. ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... Gard briskly, "it is understood. You also know and realize why I have kept the whole matter under seal. Why I have secreted this poor demented creature, have kept even you in ignorance of her whereabouts. Oh, I know I have had your consent all along; I know you have given me your complete trust long before this; but to-night I wanted your final cooperation in the hardest task of all—to acquiesce, while in ignorance, to permit matters that concern ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... country, of consuls putting their sons to death to preserve discipline—are not disinterested acts of sacrifice, but the choice of a present pain in order to procure a future pleasure. Vice is but ignorance of real enjoyment. Temperance alone can bring peace of mind; and the wicked, even if they escape public censure, 'are racked night and day by the anxieties sent upon them by the immortal gods'. We do not, in this, contradict ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... Friend waits and watches, while we, in ignorance and unbelief, pay no heed. Stranger far, He waits and watches when we know, but yet, unrelenting, ignore ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... into replenishing his larder, by making me believe our destination is yet farther upstream, he now turns round and tells me that we have already arrived. The neat little advantage he has just been taking of my ignorance with such brilliant results to the larder of the boat, has visibly stimulated his cupidity, and he now brazenly demands the payment of filthy lucre, making a circular hole with his thumb and finger to intimate big rounds in ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... I will inquire of the maids at the house. We will not, however, make too much talk about it, and send out an alarm until we are certain there is a real tragedy. If I can keep Mr. Crowninshield in ignorance of the matter until our guests have gone I shall be glad. He will be dreadfully upset for he took great pride in his possession of Lola and has declined numberless offers to ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... attainments. Perhaps none of them can be classed among the first order of divines; but those who assert that the Wesleys, Romaine, Newton, Scott, Cecil, and the Milners were fools and ignoramuses, only show their own folly and ignorance. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... is an affair of yesterday, and may be called the invention of Robinson; and Jebel Katerina, to the south, is the property of Ruppell. Thus the oft-quoted legends of the Sinaitic Arabs are mere monkish traditions, adopted by Ishmaelitic ignorance. The great Lawgiver probably led his horde of fugitive slaves over the plains of El-Negeb and El-Tih, north of the so-called Sinaitic mountain-blocks, marching in small divisions like those of a modern Bedawi tribe; and we know from the latest surveys that the land, now alternately a fiery ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... of fact, he never realised Charles Darwin's utter lack of sympathetic understanding of the work of his French precursors, let alone his own grandfather, Erasmus. Yet this practical ignorance, which to Butler was so strange as to transcend belief, was altogether genuine, and easy to realise when we recall the position of Natural Science in the early thirties in Darwin's student days at Cambridge, and for a decade or two later. Catastropharianism was ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... of the city? What a stock of such things, as could neither be used nor transported, was maliciously or wantonly destroyed! How much treasure was idly wasted in gaming, debauchery, and riot! And what precious objects were bartered for a vile price by the impatience or ignorance of the soldiers, whose reward was stolen by the base industry of the last of the Greeks! These alone, who had nothing to lose, might derive some profit from the revolution; but the misery of the upper ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... imagine your trying to weigh up Helen; starting a subtle conversation to elucidate her character, and showing what you were after and your profound ignorance with every word; though you mustn't suppose I'd be afraid of submitting her to the severest test. Why, you wouldn't even know when a girl was in love with you, unless she told you so. Perhaps it's some excuse that your mind's ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... concerned, I know that in almost every one of them species inhabit such countries as Florida, North Africa, New Holland, etc. Therefore these, genera seem to me almost mundane, and their presence in the Sandwich Islands will not, as I suspect in my ignorance, show any relation to the Arctic regions. The Sandwich Islands, though I have never considered them much, have long been a sore perplexity to me: they are eminently oceanic in position and productions; they have long been separated from each other; and ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... 'Mere ignorance must be pardoned, sir Rowland,' returned Richard: 'I was unaware of your dignity. But think you, sir Rowland, you do well to ride on such rough errands, while yet not recovered, as is but too plain to ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... timid by nature or not sure of the course, would steer a long way round. They would be reminded of wastage and also of the fact that in rescue work, minutes, even seconds, might mean everything. If, under the test, a cadet showed ignorance of his duties, then he ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... said: but if I really saw nothing exceptionable to a virtuous mind, in that young person's behaviour, my ignorance of better behaviour was, she must needs tell me, as pitiable as hers: and it were to be wished, that minds so paired, for their own sakes ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Browning tells us what happened, and the old legend, Childe Roland, is the incarnation of the Greek spirit, the young, light-hearted master of the modern world, at whose trumpet blast the dark towers of ignorance, superstition and deceit have vanished into thin air, as the baseless fabric of a dream. Not that the jeering phantoms have flown! They still beset, in varied form, the path of each generation; but the Achaian Childe Roland gave to man self-confidence, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... when a young woman who had witnessed his labors kindly undertook to make inquiries for him, and began to hail her friends for that purpose. "Oi say, Bullyed, does thee know a man named Adam Green?" The bull-head was shaken in sign of ignorance. "Loy-a-bed, does thee?" Lie-a-bed's opportunities of making acquaintance had been rather limited, and she could not resolve the difficulty. Stumpy (a man with a wooden leg), Cowskin, Spindleshanks, Corkeye, Pigtail, and Yellowbelly were severally invoked, but in ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... is, how should one educate them. The present method seems to me abominable. This girl, though twenty-four, had never heard that men desired women, and, until I explained it, did not know how children were born. Her ignorance upon other matters as important" (here Mrs. Ambrose's letter may not be quoted) . . . "was complete. It seems to me not merely foolish but criminal to bring people up like that. Let alone the suffering to them, it explains why women are ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... more than a very few minutes; and he felt assured that nothing fatal had transpired. All this time Ferdinand was reviewing his painful situation with desperate rapidity and prescience. All that he aspired to now was that Henrietta should quit Armine in as happy ignorance as she had arrived: as for Glastonbury, Ferdinand cared not what he might suspect, or ultimately discover. These were future evils that subsided into insignificance compared with any discovery on the part ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... face with you alone after all I have suffered at your hands! There, set aside this miserable show of not knowing me! You recognised me that night of the ball. You knew me directly, though you tried hard to assume ignorance. Now, then, I don't want to be hard upon you. I have held back from going to lawyers, for I have felt that it would be better if we settled the matter ourselves. Do you dare to tell me that you do ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... the natives gathered round me, and said they wanted to talk. Two of the best Malay scholars helped each other, the rest putting in hints and ideas in their own language. They told me a long rambling story; but, partly owing to their imperfect knowledge of Malay, partly through my ignorance of local terms, and partly through the incoherence of their narrative, I could not make it out very clearly. It was, however, a tradition, and I was glad to find they had anything of the kind. A long time ago, they said, some strangers came to ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... husband, I remember him, but me thou hast utterly forgotten, thy true and only wife. Ah! foolish one, thou hast forgotten. And thou resemblest one, who casts away a costly jewel, for the sake of a bit of glass, shining only in the sunlight of thy ignorance, and trodden by the foot of every passing stranger. What! can I do nothing to rouse thy recollection? Look at me well! look hard, and it may be, something of me will touch as it were a chord ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... printed words he had read. Then he stumbled upon Gayley's "Classic Myths" and Bulfinch's "Age of Fable," side by side on a library shelf. It was illumination, a great light in the darkness of his ignorance, and he read poetry ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Pythagorean notions.[746] Now a reaction seems to set in against the flowing tide of admiration for everything Greek;[747] but it was too late to arrest the flood. All that could be hoped for was that in the lives and minds of the wiser Romans the new Greek civilisation might so leaven the old Roman ignorance that no permanent harm should be done to the instincts of virtus and pietas: and to some extent this hope was realised. But for the masses there was no such hope. What Greek teaching reached their minds ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... and Ygerne Bellaire. Behind him were George and Ernestine with their warped lives, Sothern and Max with their souls upon the verge of convulsion. Max, young and straightforward, his sky clear to the star of his duty, was sleeping in ignorance, while if he but knew he would be torn a thousand ways. And it seemed to Drennen that the restless thing in each of these lives, behind him and in front of him, raised its hissing head to dart venom into his own breast, to make for unrest and ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... arms. Yet it appears to me that some parts of the country will be compelled by starvation to give up the struggle. It is well that those who represent these parts have spoken openly, and not left this meeting in ignorance of the state of affairs only to go ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... cheering to the philanthropist is this extravagance than the miserable frugality of want, and the barbarous virtues of ignorance, which at that time oppressed nearly the whole of Europe! The Burgundian era shines pleasingly forth from those dark ages, like a lovely spring day amid the showers of February. But this flourishing condition ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... below, 5. That travelers are so frequently taken advantage of in effecting changes of money is explainable partly by their urgent wants, which are well known to the opposite party, and partly by their supposed ignorance in the matter. And so, at auction sales, out-bidding one another has something very seductive in it for ignorant ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... experience it is difficult not to be impressed by the modernist flavour of Wallace's attack. He insists upon the capacity of men and the disproportion between their potential achievement and that which is secured by actual society. Men are in the mass condemned to ignorance and toil; and the lust of power sets man against his neighbor to the profit of the rich. Wallace traces these evils to private property and the individualistic organization of work, and he sees no remedy save community of possessions ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... Carry Brattle? It is not long since,—it is well within the memory of the author,—that the very existence of such a condition of life, as was hers, was supposed to be unknown to our sisters and daughters, and was, in truth, unknown to many of them. Whether that ignorance was good may be questioned; but that it exists no longer is beyond question. Then arises that further question,—how far the condition of such unfortunates should be made a matter of concern to the sweet young hearts of ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... returns the paper, saying the President intends to have an organized brigade of cavalry from the Army of Northern Virginia on duty here, and there will be no vacancy in it. From this it seems that the Secretary is not only not to be gratified by the appointment, but is really kept in ignorance of army ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... lose respect with the ignorant who would appear to know. But there is a worse thing than to lose the respect even of the wise—to deserve to lose it; and that he does who would gain a respect that does not belong to him. But a confession of ignorance is a ground of respect with a well-bred child, and even with many ordinary boys will raise a man's influence: they recognize his loyalty to the truth. Act-truth is infinitely more than fact-truth; the love of the truth ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald |
