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Ignorant   Listen
adjective
Ignorant  adj.  
1.
Destitute of knowledge; uninstructed or uninformed; untaught; unenlightened. "He that doth not know those things which are of use for him to know, is but an ignorant man, whatever he may know besides."
2.
Unacquainted with; unconscious or unaware; used with of. "Ignorant of guilt, I fear not shame."
3.
Unknown; undiscovered. (Obs.) "Ignorant concealment." "Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?"
4.
Resulting from ignorance; foolish; silly. "His shipping, Poor ignorant baubles! on our terrible seas, Like eggshells moved."
Synonyms: Uninstructed; untaught; unenlightened; uninformed; unlearned; unlettered; illiterate. Ignorant, Illiterate. Ignorant denotes lack of knowledge, either as to single subject or information in general; illiterate refers to an ignorance of letters, or of knowledge acquired by reading and study. In the Middle Ages, a great proportion of the higher classes were illiterate, and yet were far from being ignorant, especially in regard to war and other active pursuits. "In such business Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant More learned than the ears." "In the first ages of Christianity, not only the learned and the wise, but the ignorant and illiterate, embraced torments and death."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ignorant" Quotes from Famous Books



... I should have told you," said Despard, "but other thoughts drove it from my mind, and I forgot that you might be ignorant." ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... a question of loving a miserable creature, do they use a method for that? The most ignorant in such a matter are the most skilful. It is the same, and yet very different, with divine love. Therefore, if one who has never known such religion comes to you to learn it, teach him to love ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... military figure, bearing upon his exterior nothing indicative of the ruined man. He was quite unaware of the approach of a graceful, fair girl, whose fresh English beauty already had enslaved the imaginations of some fifty lawyers' clerks returning from lunch. As ignorant of her train of conquests as Haredale was ignorant of her presence, she came up to him—and tears gleamed upon her lashes. She stood beside him, and ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... is very high indeed and apparent; and needs not to be introduced with a puff. It sits enthroned between Poetry and History. Even those who are ignorant of its laws feel its influence, and the soothing grace which it sheds, falling like the rain, equally upon the just and the unjust. Man's nature always responds to the truly high and beautiful; only the most degraded are deprived of this source of happiness. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... ignorant of what Scaliger here gravely tells us: fessi muli strigare solent, ut meiant. Vossius reads defissus, in a ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... Dr. Hill; for, in Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, which I have looked into, salt-petre and sal-prunella are spoken of as different substances, whereas sal-prunella is only salt-petre burnt on charcoal; and Hill could not be ignorant of this. However, as the greatest part of such a book is made by transcription, this mistake may have been carelessly adopted. But you shall see what a Book of Cookery I shall make! I shall agree with Mr. Dilly for the copy-right.' Miss SEWARD. 'That would ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... SORRY for me," she said. "That only makes me see the—the difference between you and me. And don't pay any attention to what these outlaws say about me. They're ignorant. They couldn't understand me. You'll hear that Bland killed men who ran after me. But that's a lie. Bland, like all the other outlaws along this river, is always looking for somebody to kill. He SWEARS not, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... place so quietly and so quickly that through the heavy glass doors no sound had penetrated, and of the fact that they had been so close to a possible tragedy those in the corridor were still ignorant. The members of the Hungarian orchestra were arranging their music; a waiter was serving two men of middle age with sherry; and two distinguished-looking elderly gentlemen seated together on a sofa were talking in ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... the mint four thousand livres in specie and one thousand livres in billets d'etat, should receive back coin to the amount of five thousand livres. D'Argenson plumed himself mightily upon thus creating five thousand new and smaller livres out of the four thousand old and larger ones, being too ignorant of the true principles of trade and credit to be aware of the immense injury he was inflicting ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... everyone. They are destined every year increasingly to manifest their transforming influence in all departments of knowledge, the more the conviction of their irrefragable truth forces its way. And it is only the ignorant or narrow-minded who can now doubt their truth. If, indeed, here and there, one of the older naturalists still disputes, the foundation on which they rest, or demands proofs which are wanting (as happened a few weeks ago on the part of a famous ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel

... her granny died, and her uncle's wife beat her, and made her carry heavy loads of seaweed when it froze her hands, besides a hundred other troubles. As to knowing any kind of feminine art, she was as ignorant as if the rough and extremely dirty woollen garment she wore, belted round with a strip of leather, had grown upon her, and though Grisell's own stock of garments was not extensive, she was obliged, for very shame, to dress this strange attendant in what she could best spare, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Mr. Foley declared, with a sudden passion in his tone. "It is their own fault, the blind prejudice of their ignorant leaders, if they ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... without some shame and confusion that she heard the ignorant coachman pass her off as his sweetheart, and ask his brother, the night-watchman, to admit her on the sly, as she was one of the girls employed in ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... through the civilized world, and especially by Americans, to whom he has rendered the most essential services. The endeavour has been to avoid panegyric; though in this case, a plain statement of facts may be construed, by those ignorant of the life of Lafayette, into a disposition ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... blade of Pomp's oar swept over the rugged horny coat of the largest alligator, which, like the rest, was sleeping in the hot sunshine perfectly ignorant of our near approach. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... he was not able to win his wife's heart. His physical unattractiveness, added to by his carelessness and grinding avarice, were complicated by a domestic tyranny which soon showed itself. Thus it was that he was only the legal father of a son named Francis, but he was ignorant of this fact, for, in the capacity of juror in the Court of Assizes dealing with the fate of Tascheron, the real father of the child, he urged but in vain the acquittal of the prisoner. Two years after the boy's birth and the execution of the mother's lover, in April, 1831, Pierre ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... deportment as hers, which of our relatives and which of our elders don't love her?' That's why my heart has been very distressed these two days! As luck would have it early this morning her brother turned up to see her, but who would have fancied him to be such a child, and so ignorant of what is proper and not proper to do? He saw well enough that his sister was not well; and what's more all these matters shouldn't have been recounted to her; for even supposing he had received the gravest offences imaginable, it behoved him anyhow not to have broached the subject ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... you are honest in what you say, and your sympathies are all with the deposed and exiled ones, the ex-Queen Karma and her children. Surely, monsieur, you who seem to know so well the history of that sad time cannot be ignorant of what has happened since to ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... by storms, just as, from the depths of the sea things are brought up by storms. To be sure it is orthodoxy that storms have little, if any, effect below the waves of the ocean—but—of course—only to have an opinion is to be ignorant of, or to disregard a contradiction, or something else that modifies an opinion out ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... "As ignorant as a horse," interrupted Dick. "It was you that first made me ambitious, Frank. I wanted to be like you, and grow ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... comparison between the two works. But if we may judge from the specimens produced, the Spanish piece seems written with far greater simplicity; and the subject owes to Corneille its rhetorical pomp of ornament. On the other hand, we are ignorant how much he has left out and sacrificed. All the French critics are agreed in thinking the part of the Infanta superfluous. They cannot see that by making a princess forget her elevated rank, and entertain a passion ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... spiritual banquet, as to gain some intelligence through him respecting Egerton's disappearance. She recognised the individuals who were in pursuit of him to be scouts from the republican leaders, with whom the divine was in constant communication. Of the real rank of Egerton she was still ignorant; but she more than suspected his disguise, and scarcely hesitated to conclude, from the anxiety shown for his apprehension, that he was of no little importance in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... unhealthy; the colonists were greedy of gold, impatient of control, and as proud, ignorant, and mutinous as Spaniards could be; and Columbus, whose inclinations drew him westward, was doubtless glad to escape the worry and anxiety of his post, and to avail himself of the instructions of his sovereigns as to further discoveries. In January, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... of the appearances with which they were conversant to the agency of invisible intelligences; sometimes under the influence of a benignant disposition, sometimes of malice, and sometimes perhaps from an inclination to make themselves sport of the wonder and astonishment of ignorant mortals. Omens and portents told these men of some piece of good or ill fortune speedily to befal them. The flight of birds was watched by them, as foretokening somewhat important. Thunder excited in them a feeling of supernatural terror. Eclipses with fear of change ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... irreflective. Even a railroad generation, that should have faith in the miracles of velocity, lifts up its hands with an 'Incredulus odi!' we know that Dr. Nichol speaks the truth; but he seems to speak falsehood. And the ignorant by-stander prays that the doctor may have grace given him and time for repentance; whilst his more liberal companion reproves his want of charity, observing that travellers into far countries have ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... I am ignorant of the accusations in that letter. There must be something terrible, some fearful wickedness against me, which you will not tell me, but which, like poison thrown into a well, will pollute each thought of me in your mind, till at length ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... in a fury of affright at the risks of time she one day forced their commander to see her heart's starvation for him the battery saw nothing, and even to him she yet appeared faultless in modesty and utterly, marvelously, splendidly ignorant of what she ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... had not pretended to be something he wasn't; and if he had not professed an enthusiastic knowledge of things of which he was ignorant, he would, in the natural course of events, have loved Myra quickly in return. In fact, he would have admitted that he had loved her first, and desperately. And there would have been no story entitled, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... each successive task undiminished vitality and unclouded attention. What the author of the "Leviathan" remarks of himself may well be repeated of Marshall—that he made more use of his brains than of his bookshelves and that, if he had read as much as most men, he would have been as ignorant as they. ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... long voyage. [5] The very voice that ye-hoed; the hoarse challenge of the sentinels on the rock; the busy hum of the town—made delicious music to my ear; and I could have stood and leaned over the bulwark for hours, to gaze at the scene. I own no higher interest invested the picture—for I was ignorant of Wolfe. I had never heard of Montcalm— the plains of "Abraham" were to me but grassy slopes, and "nothing more." It was the life and stir,—the tide of that human ocean, on which I longed myself to be a swimmer—these were what charmed me. Nor was the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... cost-per-customer-mention of Dabney and his discovery were the lowest in the history of advertising. Surveys disclosed that within three Earth-days less than 3.5 of every hundred interviews questioned were completely ignorant of Dabney and the prospect of travel to the stars through his discovery. More people knew Dabney's name than knew the name of the President of ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... maleficence, and is so yet. In downcast hours the soul thinks it always will be—but soon recovers from such sickly moods. I myself see clearly enough the crude, defective streaks in all the strata of the common people; the specimens and vast collections of the ignorant, the credulous, the unfit and uncouth, the incapable, and the very low and poor. The eminent person just mention'd sneeringly asks whether we expect to elevate and improve a nation's politics by absorbing such morbid collections ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... sign this petition, therefore it is fair to suppose that the larger part of the women of the State have consented to the present form of government. Now, this is assuredly a willful and unworthy perversion of the truth. These women are simply ignorant, simply supine. They have neither affirmed nor denied. They have not thought at all upon the subject. But there are two thousand women in Massachusetts who think and act, to say nothing of the thousands ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... your station, and however insignificant, in your eyes, my book, and however trifling the apparent labour of correcting and commenting upon that book, I implore you to do as I have said. And you too, O reader of lowly education and simple status, I beseech you not to look upon yourself as too ignorant to be able in some fashion, however small, to help me. Every man who has lived in the world and mixed with his fellow men will have remarked something which has remained hidden from the eyes of others; and therefore I beg of you not to deprive me of your comments, seeing ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... things, things that are known to be touchable as well as seeable, things that are recognized as having size and shape and position in space. And he aims a still severer blow at our respect for the infant when he goes on to inform us that the little creature is as ignorant of itself as it is of things; that in its small world of as yet unorganized experiences there is no self that is distinguished from other things; that it may cry vociferously without knowing who is uncomfortable, and may stop its noise without knowing who has ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... the Christian doctrine, after having prepared it in very brief and simple terms. Alas! what misery I beheld! The people, especially those who live in the villages, seem to have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are ignorant and incompetent teachers. And, nevertheless, they all maintain that they are Christians, that they have been baptized, and that they have received the Lord's Supper. Yet they cannot recite the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments; ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... fellow-passenger of Johnson's that he had "a hell of a voyage" because of his young wife's ignorant selfishness and his own sensitiveness; he bribed stewards for better food and accommodation for his wife and children, paid the stewardess to help with the children, got neither rest, nor peace, nor thanks for himself, and landed in Sydney a nervous wreck, ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... her father's arrival. She was therefore no impediment to the speed of their retreat. For a short distance they were unopposed. The Indians, indeed, rushed from their huts like swarms of bees disturbed by an intruder. Ignorant of the nature of the danger, and unable to see its cause, all was for a minute wild confusion; and then guided by the war-whoop of the Indian who had given the alarm, all hurried toward the spot, and as they did so, several saw the little party of whites. Loud whoops gave the intimation ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... reward, - without a morsel of myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet amber, letting alone the honeycomb, - all the learning that could be crammed into him. Has it brought him into our temple, in the spirit? No. Have we had any ignorant brothers and sisters that didn't know round O from crooked S, come in among us meanwhile? Many. Then the angels are NOT learned; then they don't so much as know their alphabet. And now, my friends and fellow-sinners, ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens

... of philosophy. If books abounding with moral instructions, conveyed in a proper manner, were given in their stead, the frequent reading of them would implant in their mind such ideas and sentiments, as would enable them to guard against those prejudices so frequently met with amongst the ignorant. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... "I did not guess amiss, for at first sight I took him for a seaman." "But you are much mistaken," said he, "for he has not sailed as a seaman, but as a traveller, or rather a philosopher. This Raphael, who from his family carries the name of Hythloday, is not ignorant of the Latin tongue, but is eminently learned in the Greek, having applied himself more particularly to that than to the former, because he had given himself much to philosophy, in which he knew that the Romans ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... like that, and we've been entirely away from our race. If we had anybody to think about us—although we haven't—they'd be sure that we are dead. We're just as ignorant of what is happening in the world, and I want to go on a skirmishing trip over the mountains. You keep ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... of August I met repeatedly the author of the article. He told me that the Duc de Cadore had appeared in Copenhagen on a very indefinite errand, but without achieving the slightest result. Topsoee, for that matter, was extraordinarily ignorant of French affairs, had only been four weeks in France altogether, and openly admitted that he had touched up his correspondence as well as he could. He had never yet been admitted to the Corps legislatif, nevertheless he had related how the tears had come into the eyes of ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... of the Savoyard favorites; and to a nation prejudiced against them, all their measures appeared exceptionable and criminal. Violations of the Great Charter were frequently mentioned; and it is indeed more than probable, that foreigners, ignorant of the laws, and relying on the boundless affections of a weak prince, would, in an age when a regular administration was not any where known, pay more attention to their present interest than to the liberties of the people. It is reported that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... submit to anything for a salary; therefore, keep to yourself, and don't venture on generalities of which you are intensely ignorant. However, I mentally shake hands with you for your answer, despite its inaccuracy; and as much for the manner in which it was said, as for the substance of the speech; the manner was frank and sincere; one does ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... block was found, weighing 87 pounds, of horn silver, with specimens nearly 75 per cent. silver. The strike was kept a secret for a few days. Said a mining man: "I went up to help bring the big lump down. We took it by a camp of prospectors who were lying about entirely ignorant of any find. When they saw it they instantly saddled their horses, galloped off, and I believe they prospected all night." A like excitement was created when the news of this and one or two similar finds ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... style of architecture, over the portals of which, upon a deep blue board, in very, very bright gold letters, flashed forth that word so awful to little boys, so big with associations of long tasks and wide-spreading birch, the Greek-derived polysyllable, ACADEMY! Ignorant as I was, I understood it all in a moment. I was struck cold as the dew-damp grave-stone. I almost grew sick with terror. I was kidnapped, entrapped, betrayed. I had before hated school, my horror now was intense of "Academy." I looked piteously into the face of my persecutor, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... was dirty and filthy, particularly the portion occupied by the provincials, for our officers were ignorant ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan

... asked them and they replied thus: "We, indeed, are more certain that such a very learned man has the knowledge of governing, than you who place ignorant persons in authority, and consider them suitable merely because they have sprung from rulers or have been chosen by a powerful faction. But our Hoh, a man really the most capable to rule, is for all that never cruel nor wicked, nor a tyrant, inasmuch as he possesses so ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells

... the Cossacks gone?" asked the young man, coolly picking up his pistol from the floor and nonchalantly sitting upon the nearest table in a careless way which certainly belied the beating of his heart. He took careful notice of the men. They were ignorant fellows of the baser sort, half-mad, starving, ferocious peasants, little better than brute beasts, ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... father-in-law,' answered the prince, 'I am ignorant of all spells and arts. But somehow I have always managed to escape the death which has threatened me.' And he told the king how he had been forced to run away from his stepfather, and how he had spared the three ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... how they could please and assist one another; for of all other things they were ignorant, and indeed could neither read nor write. They were never disturbed by inquiries about past times, nor did their curiosity extend beyond the bounds of their mountain. They believed the world ended ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... borrow their books, and sit down and read till they returned. By this means she soon got more learning than any of her playmates, and laid the following scheme for instructing those who were more ignorant than herself. She found that only the following letters were required to spell all the words in the world; but as some of these letters are large and some small, she with her knife cut out of several pieces of wood ten sets of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... pass;(733) of sounding how the Gauls stood affected to the Romans; of winning over their chiefs, whom he knew to be very greedy of gold, by his bounty to them;(734) and of securing to himself the affection and fidelity of one part of the nations through whose country his march lay. He was not ignorant that the passage of the Alps would be attended with great difficulties; but he knew they were not unsurmountable, and that was enough for ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... return immediately to your apartment ... in fact, I have given the necessary orders and in a few moments ... the time to get a carriage ... I can, of course, rely upon the discretion of my men who, besides, are ignorant of ..." ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre

... and power, adults seem to lack important pieces of knowledge which children possess; they seem to forget, and to fail to profit by, their infantile experience. Else why should adults in general be so extraordinarily ignorant of the great truth that the secret of goodwill lies in the sympathetic exercise of the imagination? Since goodwill is the secret of human happiness, it follows that the secret of goodwill must be one of the most precious aids to sensible living; and yet adults, though they once knew ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett

... this collection into classes, and show how some pieces are gross, and some are trifling, would be to tell the reader what he knows already, and to find faults of which the author could not be ignorant, who certainly wrote often not to his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... southerly winds, which came in (as I expected they would) while I was here: these daunted my ship's company very much, though I had told them they were to look for them: but they being ignorant as to what I told them farther, that these were only coasting winds, sweeping the shore to about 40 or 50 leagues in breadth from it, and imagining that they had blown so all the sea over, between America and Africa; and being confirmed in this their opinion by ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... it better to tarry here till the crowd is entirely dispersed; for if they were to see me, in their present excitement, they might insist on some rash and hasty enterprise. Besides, my Lord," added Rienzi, "with an ignorant people, however honest and enthusiastic, this rule must be rigidly observed—stale not your presence by custom. Never may men like me, who have no external rank, appear amongst the crowd, save on those occasions when the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... what that has to do with his son. It's not fair to judge a young man by his father—or by anything but what he is himself—you yourself are always saying that, if the trouble is that the father is poor or ignorant or ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... applicant, charge the applicant with being a party to a gigantic land fraud conspiracy and threaten him with a Federal Grand Jury investigation in case he did not at once abandon his filing! The poor and the ignorant are easily intimidated, and Bob McGraw had figured on this. In the event of "cold feet" on the part of his applicant, the applicant would come to him, to abandon, as per the terms of the contract, but by that time Bob would have a man with nerve to take his place, and ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... autosuggestions are far more potent than in the normal course of life. But, happily, induced autosuggestions are aided by the same conditions, so that the mother awake to her powers and duties can do as much good as the ignorant may do harm. ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... for you to hear what I have come to say," observed Grand, ignorant of the peril that lay behind him. He resumed his progress up the steps, Roberta following ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... learning all about a creature was to dig up its home, and frighten it out of its wits, and kill it; and after a few moons of that sort of foolery they claimed to know all about us. Us! whose ancestors knew the world millions of years before the ignorant Humans came on the earth at all." The Platypus spluttered out more dirty water, ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... all enraged. He gazed at the brat with the amiable smile of a good man who is flattered by the calumny, and said in an aside: "Well, what now? What's the matter? You are finely taken aback, and really, you are excessively ignorant. M. le Duc d'Angouleme, the bastard of his Majesty Charles IX., married a silly jade of fifteen when he was eighty-five; M. Virginal, Marquis d'Alluye, brother to the Cardinal de Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux, had, at the age ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... nevertheless usually at the mercy of the nearest preacher who has a pleasant voice and ingenious fancy; receiving from him thankfully, and often reverently, whatever interpretation of texts the agreeable voice or ready wit may recommend: while, in the meantime, he remains entirely ignorant of, and if left to his own will, invariably destroys as injurious, the deeply meditated interpretations of Scripture which, in their matter, have been sanctioned by the consent of all the Christian Church for a thousand years; and in their treatment, have been exalted by the trained skill ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... cheeks and haggard eyes, like an animal that has been hunted into lone places, terrified and looking for a way of escape, or like a dog that has lost its master. He tried every method known to him to gain information of her directly or indirectly, but Mr. Dundas, ignorant himself, had only to guard that ignorance from breaking out. As for knowledge, he could not give what he did not possess, and the terrible thing that he did know he was not likely to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... by these words to answer. They revealed a mental power which he had not even suspected her of possessing. He discovered that while she was as ignorant as a child in the realms of thought to which she had been unaccustomed, in her sphere of experience and reflection she was ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... bores are amusing to meet on a journey; rather well informed, they quote their favorite authors very neatly in order to display the extent of their information; they also have a happy way of imposing on the ignorant people, who sit around with wide-stretched mouths, listening to the string of celebrated names so familiarly repeated as to indicate a personal intimacy with each and all of them; in a word, it is a way of making the most of your acquaintance, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... soul kept her vigils, and chanted prayers for them and all the world besides; and they slept the sounder for it thereafter. I confess that, if one is helped by vicarious prayer, I would rather trust a convent of devoted women (though many of them are ignorant, and some of them are worldly, and none are fair to see) to pray for me, than some of the houses of coarse ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... train rolled out into the starlit night the old nabob, in a paroxysm of delight, read in the marble house words telegraphed by the happy-hearted Douglas Fraser, now taking up his endless deck tramp on the Brindisi bound steamer. The young Scotsman, ignorant of all intrigue, was relieved to know that he had laid the firm foundation of his future fortunes. His last shore duty was done when he had wired to his urgent relative in Delhi the glad tidings: "All right. Coomassie Castle. Orders ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand—notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood—that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without collision, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... intrigue or on private interest,[3322] the motion is always put by one of the members of the Revolutionary Committee of the section, or by one of those fanatical patriots who join in with the Committee, and otherwise act as its spies. Immediately the ignorant men, to whom Danton has allowed forty sous for each meeting, and who, from now on crowd an assembly, where they never came before, welcome the proposition with loud applause, shouting and demanding a vote, and the act is passed unanimously, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... kiss Petit-Pierre, who had one arm about Marie's neck, and made such a mistake that Marie felt a breath, hot as fire, cross her lips, and awaking, looked about her with a bewildered expression, totally ignorant of all that was passing within ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... faithfully described the Malay and Hindu therapeutics of the present day, enriching his description by observations founded on a long practice in Paris and in his own native Luzon. From this potpourri of scientific therapeutics and ignorant, superstitious drugging the interested physician will elicit not a few useful data concerning the treatment of disease in the tropics, and at the same time gain a more intimate knowledge of both the people and plants of our ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... arch, half cruel, out of her large eyes—a glance of which the Winnie of the Belgravian mansion days would have been incapable, because of her respectability and her ignorance. But the man was her husband now, and she was no longer ignorant. She kept it on him for a whole second, with her grave face motionless like a mask, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... rejected by men, one who was no scholar either, who very probably could neither read nor write, and knew neither sciences nor arts, save how to play, in some simple way, upon his harp—this man found out that, however oppressed, miserable, ignorant he was in many respects, he had a right to speak face to face with the Almighty and Infinite God, who had made heaven and earth. He found out that that great God cared for him, protected him, and would be true to him, if only he would be true to God and to himself. What a discovery ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... my father was an object of suspicion to the frontiersmen. Even as a child I knew this, and resented it. He had brought me up in solitude, and I was old for my age, learned in some things far beyond my years, and ignorant of others I should have known. I loved the man passionately. In the long winter evenings, when the howl of wolves and "painters" rose as the wind lulled, he taught me to read from the Bible and the "Pilgrim's Progress." I can see his long, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... add that the experiments had hitherto been made in anima vili. Whatever its scientific accuracy was, they were at present ignorant how it would answer with human beings. The honor of putting it to the proof was energetically claimed by ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... willingness to add our co-operative push in the direction toward which its manifestations seem to be drifting. The unknowable may be unfathomed, but if it make such distinct demands upon our activity we surely are not ignorant of its ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... of Andre, the nobles of that region met in a public assembly to organize some form of confederate government. One of the speakers rose and said, "No one is ignorant of the manner in which we have lost our king. He has left but one son, who reigns at Novgorod. The brothers of Andre are in southern Russia. Who then shall we choose for our sovereign? Let us elect Michel, of Tchernigof. He ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... an indolent, a reckless, an ignorant being, she would take a pen at such moments, or at least while the recollection of such moments was yet fresh on her spirit. She would seize, she would fix the apparition, tell the vision revealed. Had she a little more of the organ of acquisitiveness in ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... his brother to the command of his troop, whilst Captain Shaftoe was under Mr. Radcliffe. This, in some respects, was an unfortunate step: the young and brave commander had never even seen an army before: he was inexperienced, and ignorant of all military discipline: what he wanted in knowledge, he is said, however, to have made up for by the influence he acquired over his men, and by the power he had of inciting them ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... Too ignorant of the arts of war to undertake a siege in the regular way, they usually contented themselves with levying ransoms on fortified towns; occasionally, however, when the wealth accumulated behind the walls held out a prospect of ample booty, they blockaded the place until famine compelled ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... at first I thought he might have been a model. Not a bit of it! Books mean nothing to him. What that chap has studied is the pornographic book of life, my girl. He has no imagination. His feeling runs straight in the direction of sensuality. He's as ignorant and as clever as they're made. He's never done a stroke of honest work in his life, and despises all those who are fools enough to toil, me among them. He is as acquisitive as a monkey and a magpie rolled into one. His constitution is made of iron, and I dare say his nerves ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... imagination over the simple movement of the French. To which the Marchesa of Amaesguy consented for the honour of Spain, and also for the pleasure of knowing of what paste God made Kings, a matter in which she was ignorant, having experience only of the princes of the Church. Then she became passionate as a lion that has broken out of his cage, and made the bones of the king crack in a manner that would have killed any other man. But the above-named lord was so well ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... contrast of the mighty but conquered Douvres and the comparatively insignificant rocklet—there are hundreds like it on every granite coast—where Death the Consoler sets on Gilliatt's head the only crown possible for his impossible feat, and where the dislike of the ignorant peasantry, the brute resistance of machinery and material, the violence of the storm, the devilish ambush of the pieuvre, and all other evils are terminated and evaded and sanctified by the embrace and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... that the good friend could be the good enemy. Late that night, as he sat alone in front of the Caffe Turco smoking innumerable cigarettes, he resolved to show these foreigners the stuff a Neapolitan was made of. They did not know. Poor, ignorant beings from cold England, drowned forever in perpetual yellow fogs, and from France, country of volatility but not of passion, they did not know what the men of the South, of a volcanic soil, were capable of, once they were ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... to great skill in entomology, yet I cannot say that I am ignorant of that kind of knowledge: I may now and then, perhaps, be able to furnish you ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... in which all this had come upon her that affected her so greatly. While staying in Arundel Street she had been altogether ignorant that the story of the Lion and the Lamb had become public, or that her name had been frequent in men's mouths. When Mrs Buggins had once told her that she was thus becoming famous, she had ridiculed Mrs Buggins' statement. Mrs Buggins had brought home word from some tea-party that the story had ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... It will be noted that, like many things that practical men make a great point of, they miss the point. What I had commended as new and national was a bathroom in every bedroom. Even feudal and moss-grown England is not entirely ignorant of an occasional bath-tub in the home. But what gave me great joy was what followed. I discovered with delight that many people, glancing rapidly at my portrait with its prodigious legend, imagined that it was ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... free and independent, but, oh, how ignorant it was about the science of government! The author does not wish to be personal when he states that the country at that time did not know enough about affairs to carry water for a ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... men now living, who knew him well. That he was a man of great force and high character it seems to be impossible to doubt. It has often been reported that he was tyrannical and self-seeking; and that he chose his people from among the most ignorant, in order to rule them. But the present members of the Harmony Society cannot be called ignorant: they are a simple and pious people, but not incapable of taking care of their own interests; and their opinion of their ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... sweetness is more pleasing than those charms which endeavour to captivate us by the brilliant embellishments of a refined cultivation, so in these two youths, to whom the chase has given vigour and hardihood, but who are ignorant of their high destination, and have been brought up apart from human society, we are equally enchanted by a nave heroism which leads them to anticipate and to dream of deeds of valour, till an occasion is offered which ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... novelty, they will have something to look back upon through life. As to the dangers, they are always magnified, and, in general, peril is discovered soon enough for escape. But, in all probability, if any discovery is made, it will be made by the Padres. As for ourselves, to attempt it alone, ignorant of the language, and with the mozos who were a constant annoyance to us, was out of the question. The most we thought of, was to climb to the top of the sierra, thence to look down upon the mysterious city; but we had difficulties ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... you presume to comprehend, to exactly understand, the sublime, inconceivable divine essence when you are wholly ignorant of your own body and life? You cannot explain the action of your laughter, nor how your eyes give you knowledge of a castle or mountain ten miles away. You cannot tell how in sleep one, dead to the external world, is yet alive. If we are unable to understand the least detail of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... never discussed Natalie's attitude toward the war with Audrey. He rather thought she was entirely ignorant of it. But her little article, glowing with patriotism, frank, simple, and convincing, might have been written ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... discipline imposed, in 1652, for "disobedience to the Vice-Master, and contumacy in taking his punishment, inflicted by him." Whether this punishment was corporeal, as Johnson insinuates in the similar case of Milton, we are ignorant. He certainly retained no very fond recollection of his Alma Mater, for in his "Prologue to the University of Oxford," ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... was easier to fool a man about a woman than it was to fool a woman. How tragically true that was! While trying to learn to be a lady by working in smart shops, she had learned that the occasional man who had ventured in after woman's gear was hopelessly ignorant and bought whatever was skillfully thrust upon him, but that it was impossible to slip an inferior or unsuitable or out-dated article over on the woman ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... the inhabitants of your earth. Each of those tubes, which appears like the trunk of an elephant, is an organ of peculiar motion or sensation. They have many modes of perception of which you are wholly ignorant, at the same time that their sphere of vision is infinitely more extended than yours, and their organs of touch far more ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... that for the beginning he should do as he had been accustomed; to the end he might understand by what means, for so long a time, his old masters had made him so foolish, simple, and ignorant. He disposed, therefore, of his time in such fashion that ordinarily he did awake between eight and nine o'clock, whether it was day or not; for so had his ancient governors ordained, alleging that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... board to stop the initiation of new members came too late. The undesirable and radical element in many communities gained control of local assemblies, and the conservatism and intelligence of the national leaders became merely a shield for the rowdy and the ignorant who brought the entire ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... stalked the principles of the steam engine, of the printing-press, of scientific agriculture and mechanical industry in general. Look about the room in which you sit as you read this; even to the door-knobs every single item depends upon fire, directly or indirectly! But Corrus and Dulnop were as ignorant of this as their teeth were ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... Ignorant of those rules that made her act a trespass, Mary wandered on, gathering up the hyacinths, violets and golden crocuses to which the night had given birth. Down to the water's edge she rambled, carefully gathering up each bud in ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... blending, and of bringing into simultaneous use the tonal resources from all parts of the instrument. In this case, as in so many others of remarkable invention, the improvements seem to have been made by several independent investigators acting simultaneously, each one ignorant of the work of the others. The impulse in the direction of greater freedom had already found expression in the pianoforte pieces of the great master, Von Weber, whose sonatas and caprices had been published between 1810 and 1820. (See pp. 410 and 411.) These ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... modern Greeks denominate it "the fish of St. Christopher," from a legend which relates that it was trodden on by that saint, when he bore his divine burden across an arm of the sea. Some species of Echini, fossilized, and seen frequently in Norfolk, are termed by the ignorant peasantry, and considered, Fairy Loaves, to take which, when found, is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office. These cuts are deep, and you must know my resolve: this deep, and no deeper. To do less would be insensible to progress, but to do more would be ignorant of history. We must not go back to the days of "the hollow army". We cannot repeat the mistakes made twice in this century when armistice was followed by recklessness and defense was purged as if the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the precedent would be followed. Gladstone, when Prime Minister, once said to a Harrovian colleague, "What sort of Bishop would your old master, Dr. Butler, make?" "The very worst," was the reply. "He is quite ignorant of the Church, and would try to discipline his clergy like school-boys. But there is one place for which he is peculiarly qualified—the Mastership of Trinity." And the Prime Minister concurred. In June, 1885, Gladstone was driven from office, and ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... failed to impress the girls, who returned them. At the fire they proved to be fireproof, and fell through the floor. The sneaking detectives found them and brought them to me. Jim is now at my room, completely ignorant of the charges against him, ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... that, peradventure, the six dollars paid at Quang-shi was only a small advance on the cost of my passage up, and that Yung Po is now piloting me to an official to establish his just claims upon pretty much all the money I have with me. Ignorant of the proper rate of boat-hire, disquieting visions of having to retreat to Canton for the lack of money to pay the expenses of the journey through to Kui-kiang are flitting through my mind as I follow the pendulous motions of Yung Po's ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... the work of a clever man and no ordinary man. I do not quite know, though, whether it is what I saw of the author or of the piece that made me think so. He is complimentary without being polite, or at least without having the air of it. He seems to be ignorant of the usages of society, but it is easy to see that he has infinite wit. He has a brown complexion, and eyes full of fire light up his face. When he has been speaking and you watch him, you think him good-looking; but when you recall him to memory, it is always as a plain man. He is said to be ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... been in Bainbridge a month now. People had called. And she was still as ignorant as ever. She had been so sure that someone would mention Mary almost at once. She had felt that people would simply not be able to refrain from hinting to the bride a knowledge of her husband's unhappy past. There were so many ways in which ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... very intelligent with respect to a great many subjects-commerce, mechanics, manufactures, politics. But with regard to medicine it is hopelessly ignorant and never finds it out. I do not know that it is any worse in this country than in Great Britain, where Mr. Huxley speaks very freely of "the utter ignorance of the simplest laws of their own animal life, which prevails among even the most highly educated persons." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... bread, others busied themselves with the rest of the provisions. Elliott rummaged about, and set the rough table with the battered service. Only Curtis, seated with his back against a tree, appeared too utterly exhausted or ignorant to take hold at anything. Indeed, he hardly spoke to his companions, ate hastily, and disappeared into his own quarters without offering ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... them, my child," his gaze still riveted on the doves; "that is all. He has given them beautiful parks, he has made them a beautiful city. A king who thinks of his people's welfare is never understood. And ignorant and ungrateful people always hate those to whom they are under obligations. It is the way ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... two kinds of dullness—learned dullness and ignorant dullness. We think the latter preferable, for it is apt to be more spicy. You cannot measure the length of a man's brain, nor the width of his heart, nor the extent of his usefulness by the size ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... have found some ignorant woman who really was a relative of Peter Blayne, and who may have a small claim on the property. It is enough to invalidate the deed Mrs. Carringford has and yet she will be unable to prove that Strout and his man Jamison knew about ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... redeemed; and I have never been able to regret a momentary vexation which obtained for me many friends, and made known to me the sterling good feeling existing in Albany, of which I might otherwise have remained ignorant. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power



Words linked to "Ignorant" :   unlettered, ignorantness, uneducated, uninformed, illiterate



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