"Thick-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Sea "Ten Paces Off" The Fields of Coleraine The Last Leap "The Old Leaven" The Rhyme of Joyous Garde The Roll of the Kettledrum; or, The Lay of the Last Charger The Romance of Britomarte The Sick Stockrider The Song of the Surf The Swimmer The Three Friends Thick-headed Thoughts Thora's Song To a Proud Beauty To My Sister "Two Exhortations" Unshriven Visions in the Smoke Whisperings in Wattle-Boughs Wolf and Hound Wormwood and Nightshade Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... sad and stern in its expression, and when Marian asked, "Papa, is it so bad as the papers say?" he replied: "God only knows how bad it is. For a large part of our army it is as bad as it can be. The most terrible feature of it all to me is that thick-headed, blundering men are holding in their irresolute hands the destinies of just such brave young fellows as Mr. Lane here. It is not so dreadful for a man to die if his death furthers a cause which he believes to be sacred, but to die from the sheer stupidity and weakness of his leaders is a bitter ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... thick-headed man this is!" she said, pleasantly. "Must I put it more plainly still? Engage in what your English prudery calls a 'flirtation,' with some woman here—the lower in degree the better, or the Princess might be jealous—and let the affair be seen and known by everybody about ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... on you to write such a letter! Haven't you been in my house, and seen what an honourable Jew I am? Shame on you! To such men as you one can't do a favour. Do you think there are a sea of Kazelias in the world? You are all thick-headed. You can't read a letter. I only took fifty-four roubles on the luggage; I had to recoup myself because I lost money through sending you to London. I calculated my loss, and only took what was due to me.' I showed ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... a puzzled air. "A battalion of thick-headed niggers with some slight knowledge of civilized drill, and, perhaps, a few stockades blown up in ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... "Am I so thick-headed?" Brown asked the question seriously. His eyes, keen, yet full of sympathetic interest, rested ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... the burden of the flesh intensified many times, burdened with the affliction of the spirit, raised to a pitch abnormal, the unhappy man of genius is stoned because he staggers beneath the load of his sensitive temperament or wavers from the straight and narrow path usually blocked by bores too thick-headed and too obese to realise the flower-fringed abysses on either side of the road. And having sent genius in general among the goats, let us turn ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of one," said John Minute, looking at the other steadily. "Your constable, as you call him, is, I presume, that thick-headed jackass, Wiseman!" ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... is gone" mused the stout-hearted, thick-headed old Commander, as he read, over and over, the Viceroy's cipher dispatch to ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the director, is exceedingly short, thick-headed (in appearance), and, like many of the English, thick-tongued. While I was looking at the instruments, Mrs. Airy came into the equatorial house, bringing Mr. Adams, the rival of Leverrier, [Footnote: See Chapter VII.]—another short man, but bright-looking, with dark hair and eyes, and again the ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... says, 'an' I'm undher ordhers to be polite with citizens I stop,' he says; 'but, if ye don't duck up that road in half a minyit, ye poy-faced, red-eyed, lop-eared, thick-headed ol' bosthoon,' he says, 'I'll take ye be th' scruff iv th' neck an' thrun ye into th' ga-as-house tank,' he says, 'if I'm coort-martialed ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... Probably the rule that obtains of men and women holds good of children also: the less brain power the more happiness. Intellect—especially a growing intellect—will give a child lightning flashes of joy denied to his more thick-headed brother; but much sorrow must also result from his extra intelligence. If he rises higher, he will sink far lower, too. The placid, ordinary youth thinks less, and digests his food better, and has a pleasanter time, on ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... had no notion; and as for sending a boy to Paris, it was sending him, they thought to certain ruin. Such sagacity will give a sufficient idea of the old-world manners and customs of this society, suffering from thick-headed Royalism, infected with bigotry rather than zeal, all stagnating together, motionless as their town founded upon a rock. Yet Angouleme enjoyed a great reputation in the provinces round about for its educational advantages, and neighboring towns sent their daughters to its boarding schools ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... that Bulgaria cannot engage to intervene without a formal treaty, a policy, it believes, that says but one thing, namely: "You Russians tricked us Bulgarians once; you shall not trick us again." This attitude of Bulgaria shows, the Novoye Vremya thinks, "how thick-headed and insensate its people are." The Birjevaja Viedomosti, a standpat Russian daily of Petrograd, on May 23 warned Serbia that, whereas the war began in her behalf and on her account rivers of blood are flowing, her complaints of the allotment of Dalmatia to Italy should not "assert ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... the larger part of chapter eight of Scott's Ivanhoe. The hero of the novel is a Saxon knight, Wilfred of Ivanhoe, son of Cedric. Ivanhoe is in love with his father's ward, Rowena, but Cedric wishes her to marry a thick-headed Saxon thane, or lord, called Athelstane. According to Scott, the period was one of unrest. England had come into the possession of the Normans, and the native Saxons hated their new masters. Richard was king. But since he had gone to the Holy Land as ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... said, "you have made yourself a notorious person in this country by dint of incessant bullying and bribing and corruption of every sort. You may possess all the powers you claim. Your only mistake seems to be that you are too thick-headed to know when you are overmatched. I have been a diplomatist all my life," Mr. Sabin said, rising slowly to his feet, and with a sudden intent look upon his face, "and if I were to be outwitted by such a novice as you I should deserve to end my ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thick guttural tones a thick-headed Dutchman, who had manifested towards me particular dislike, "in one or TWO days more, at farthest, we shall help to carry him ashore in a wooden box." And a pleasant smile for a moment lighted up ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... in an indecisive attitude.... "You're really a fool," she said, turning away. "I thought you were clever, but you're simply thick-headed!..." ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... I get is just the business, and I'm to carry the John Burnit Store on from its present blue-ribbon standing to still more dazzling heights, I suppose. Well, I'd like to do it. The governor deserves it. But, you see, I'm so beastly thick-headed. Now, Agnes, you have perfectly stunning judgment and all that, so if you would just——" and he came to ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... intense; but I have got a projick in my head, which is to get back to England as fast as rale and steme can possibly carry me'! It wasn't often that bad; but there was always something wrong. I can't think how it is, for he had no end of tutors and masters, except that he certainly was a very thick-headed fellow." She laughed merrily over the epistolary deficiencies of her late lord as she spoke, and every one joined her except Mrs. Ketchum, who was too shocked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... the very best mistress that ever I see!" Oh this was poor, and showed a pitiful ambition in the man that did it! I will swear, my lord, that the nobleman who could thus have been betrayed, must have been a thick-headed fellow, and fit for no one public office, not even for that of turnspit of ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... the country suddenly placed in a state of siege. One morning M. Milsand came to them in anxious haste, and insisted on their starting that very day. An order, he said, had been issued that no native should leave the country, and it only needed some unusually thick-headed Maire for Mr. Browning to be arrested as a runaway Frenchman or a Prussian spy. The usual passenger boats from Calais and Boulogne no longer ran; but there was, he believed, a chance of their finding one at Havre. They acted on this warning, and discovered its wisdom in the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Gorilla Dave was thick-headed, but he was open to persuasion. Eyes hard as diamonds bored into his, searched him, dominated him. The barrel of the revolver did not waver a hair-breadth. His fingers opened and the blackjack dropped from ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... we changed places. The ladies gave an involuntary sigh of relief when they saw me go, and quite brightened up for a moment. Poor girls! they had better have put up with me. The man they had got now was a jolly, light-hearted, thick-headed sort of a chap, with about as much sensitiveness in him as there might be in a Newfoundland puppy. You might look daggers at him for an hour and he would not notice it, and it would not trouble him if he did. He set a good, rollicking, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... thick-headed fool! I'll time you by hanging you to your own front door. There has been time for me to send my men out into the country; time for a farmer to come in with a cartload of produce, and be robbed here under your very nose! Maledictions ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... invoices that I don't understand; but I suppose it must be because I am so thick-headed," I replied, with ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... the preceding couple, protege of Vinet the elder, honest and thick-headed. He was, in 1839, examining magistrate at Arcis-sur-Aube and caucused, during the election season in the spring of this same year, with the officers, Michu, Goulard, O. Vinet and ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... covering the basket, and looking within it.] I'd best have gone myself. Of all the thick-headed men I ever did see, you're the thickest. Upon ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... so absent-minded had been his last glance at the watch. "Nine-fifteen. Why didn't I telephone to Rogers and ask him to find out which way they were coming? Sometimes I'm mighty thick-headed." ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... thick-headed, John Chitling," remarked the fish dealer, with contempt, "but I never believed you were such a plum fool as not to know a tramp when you ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... "Thick-headed old idiot," muttered Chivey; then calling in pantomime to aid his lack of French, he produced the first letter Jack ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... made the poorest marriage of anybody that I have ever had to do with, though I have always understood that he was not a bad sort, beyond being as thick-headed as his brother the squire or an officer of dragoons. He get on at the bar! I dare say not. And he was no quicker-witted or longer-sighted in Australia. You must have heard me say how grieved I was once when I came across a fellow from Sydney who had been up the country, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... was released from confinement, it was not probable that the lusty winter of his life would be shortened by what had happened. Unfortunately, the accident threatened to have evil consequences in another quarter. Immediately after it occurred, one Matthews, a busy, thick-headed lout of a butcher, rode furiously off to Elm Park with the news. Mrs Arbuthnot, who daily looked to be confined, was walking with her husband upon the lawn in front of the house, when the great burly blockhead rode up, and blurted out that the rector had been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... what it is," he said, the third time he came over, which was well within a week—for nothing breeds impatience faster than retirement from work—"you are so thick-headed in your farmhouse ways, sometimes I am worn out with you. I do not expect to be thought of any higher because I have left off working for myself; and Deborah is satisfied to be called 'Debby,' and walks no prouder than if she had got to clean her own steps ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... down, sir!" shouted the Major. "I have no dirty linen to wash, no skeletons in the cupboard or piffle of that kind. I simply want something explained which I am too thick-headed—too ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... library, Hardin's clear head unravels this intrigue. The Paris police know not the past history of the actors in this drama. Jules is simply greedy and thick-headed. Leroyne & ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... meekly, and before I knew what I was doing I had been presented to three or four solid-thighed, thick-headed, stout-legginged farmers as "Our Lottie's intended." They laughed, and came near to shaking my hand off. I felt that if I backed out after that, I never could show my face in ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... ugly, most men are conceited, and all men are thick-headed, and you're a man. Think of what ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... price," said he. "Lose not a moment! Where is this friend? Who is he? If he resist you, you must slay him, so as you get it back. If it fall into the hands of an enemy, you and I, ay and your master, and all that belongs to you will perish. Ah, the folly of the man to trust such a missive to this thick-headed blunderer! What time lost, what labour wasted, what peril run, what ruin ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... this evident invitation to a duel, Kremer avowed his authorship and his readiness to prove his charges. If Clay had known the identity of his traducer, he would hardly have summoned him to the field of honor, for Kremer was a well-meaning but credulous and thick-headed rustic noted solely for his leopard-skin overcoat. The speaker, therefore, abandoned his first idea, and asked of the House an investigation of the charges, which Kremer reiterated his readiness to prove. But when the investigating committee was ready to take testimony, ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... pretty sick now to dress up for parties, but I know a thing or two that the rest don't know. Wouldn't Alice be hopping! She always thinks she's wise to everything, and to have a thick-headed boy-person know a whacking secret that they'd all be excited about would make her mad enough to burst. She thinks she can read my ingrown soul too—but I rather think I have my own interior thoughts that Miss Alice doesn't tumble to. For ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... James was very thick-headed, and hardly knew the meaning of these long words, bat he did not like Mrs. Bullen, and he resented her talking to him, a servant, in ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... piece of the map for yourselves, trying all the time to be dishonest under the shadow of what is called diplomacy. That is what brought the war about. It was never the will of the people. It was the Hohenzollerns and the Romanoffs, the firebrands of the French Cabinet, and your own clumsy, thick-headed efforts to get the best of everybody and yet keep your Nonconformist conscience. The people did not make this war, but it is the people who are going to ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to be so thick-headed," rousing herself, and staring sleepily at the rain-washed window and the crackling fire. She sang a little hymn to herself, that simplest of all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... sense ought to be able to regulate a private establishment at least as well as a board of thick-headed guardians can ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... lass," said Martin Lorimer, "many a time, and we had words upon it. We're a thick-headed people, Ralph, except for our womenkind, and if we're slow to think evil we're slow to change. The Lord forgive ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... we hardly understand on this thick-headed side of the water. But demagogues, democrats, demonstrations, and Demosthenic oratory are all equally odious to John Eustace. For a young man he's about ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... of hostilities, I tell myself that the trade of fighting is a trade to be learned by slow and laborious degrees, and even then may be learned with thoroughness only by one who has a natural aptitude for it. Either that, or else I am most extraordinarily thick-headed, for I own that I am still as complete a greenhorn now as I was at ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... of the four-wheeler was 872, it was not a difficult matter to begin the inquiry. But to secure any real information—that was different. The driver, a respectable albeit somewhat thick-headed Irishman, could offer only vague recollections of his business for the night of November 16th. He had been lucky enough to secure several fares, but there had been nothing in the appearance of any of his passengers to attract his attention. A gentleman in evening ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... "the Father" should decree, he thought she had never seemed more glorious than she did now, sitting with her children about her, almost unmoved by the excitement. For Mrs. Wehle had come to take everything as from the Heavenly Father. She had even received honest but thick-headed Gottlieb in this spirit, when he had fallen to her by the Moravian lot, a husband chosen for her by the Lord, whose will was not to ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... the lawyer understood his instructions, that his impression was the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter, and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed notary right. The discussion which followed took up a ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... feathers, such as I wear and you will wear too? But ours are finer. Still, I should like to have them up in the nest, for they keep one warm. I am very curious to know what the ducks were so startled about; not about us, certainly, although I did say 'peep' to you pretty loudly. The thick-headed roses ought to know why, but they know nothing at all; they only look at themselves and smell. I am heartily tired of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... "Very true, O Queen! Horribly true! But I am, you know, a positive genius in that respect. So I'm going to pretend I'm an Englishman—of the worthy, thick-headed, bulldog breed. (I am sure you admire it; you wouldn't be an Englishwoman if you didn't). And you are my devoted and adorable wife. You needn't look shocked. It's all for the sake of that chap's morals. Do you think I can ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... "That cayuse will keep on until something hits him—hits him hard. I reckon I begin to smell a mouse, and I think Mrs. Gray does, too. Hope she didn't hear me shooting back there. But none of that outfit is so sleepy or thick-headed that they don't see or hear pretty much everything ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... mossbacks in the lot that are honest," cut in Welton, "but it's because they're too damn thick-headed to be anything else. Don't get kiddish enough to do the picturesque mountaineer act, Bobby. I can dig you up four hundred of that stripe anywhere—and holding down just about as valuable jobs. Don't get too thick with that kind. In the city you'll find them holding ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... couldn't make a pal of him. He was fairly good at police work, but a proper cad, in my opinion. Always swanking about the palatial residence he'd left behind in the Old Country. He called it ''is 'ome' at that. Typical specimen of the middle-class snob. Followed Taylor. Thick-headed, serious-minded sort of fool. Had great veneration for 'his juty.' No real knowledge of the Criminal Code, and minus common sense, yet begad! the silly beggar tried to be more regimental that the blooming Force ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... no patience to go on with my cross-questioning. I don't think she's good enough for John, I must confess; but he is easily imposed on by young ladies—as indeed, for that matter, are the rest of his great thick-headed sex. When breakfast was over and Cousin Amelia went off as usual to practise her music for an hour or two, I thought I might steal away for a visit to my favourites in the stable; indeed I saw John ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... "Now look here, you—you thick-headed beast," replied the Rat, really angry, "this must stop. Not another word, but scrape—scrape and scratch and dig and hunt round, especially on the sides of the hummocks, if you want to sleep dry and warm to-night, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... got Man rounded up yit?" she demanded of her husband. "And how is he, anyhow? That girl ain't got the first idea of what ails him—how anybody with the brains and education she's got can be so thick-headed gits me. Jim told me Man's been packing a bottle or two home with him every trip he's made for the last month—and she don't know a thing about it. I'd like to know what 'n time they learn folks back East, anyhow; to put their eyes and their sense ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... hound, had read Nature's voucher instead of Napoleon's, and being thus deceived, would ever snarl at the Colonel of Dragoons. Maximilian of course knew better. What looked like toadying was only profound deference for himself. The royal favorite could discriminate. He could also be the thick-headed, intolerable martinet. The sandy lashes bristled as the American inquired a second time if he were to ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... to me. "What about Balkan article?" it asked, and finished with a studied insult, after the manner of the editor-kind, whose assurance that the function of the universe is only fulfilled when they have published the fact makes them behave as would Jove with a thick-headed immortal. "These Balkan atrocities will never cease," I said, dropping the telegram ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... was not only familiar, but even friendly; and this, on the part of one who had so long detested me, I found the more insidious. He went little abroad; sometimes even refusing invitations. "No," he would say, "what do I care for these thick-headed bonnet-lairds? I will stay at home, Mackellar; and we shall share a bottle quietly, and have one of our good talks." And, indeed, meal-time at Durrisdeer must have been a delight to any one, by reason of the brilliancy of the discourse. He would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intrust the firing of that gun to a bungling, thick-headed, stupid idiot of a fellow, who don't know muzzle from vent; and the wonder is that he didn't blow one of his majesty's ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... all the talk I jest wasted on you, it signifies that you're too thick-headed, Buddy, to waste any more on. I can learn you to spell ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Of course there are prettier, and Mrs. Winscombe has more air; but none has Caroline's charming manner. Of course, you have noticed it. Even a thick-headed brother couldn't miss that. We have plans for you, too. And it's no good your ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... carts, as for several marches they had caused great delay and inconvenience. Although Theodori had deceived me by agreeing to conduct us direct to Cape St. Andrea I did not like to discharge the thick-headed but innocent Georgi, therefore I offered to pay them a certain sum which they themselves named, per day, for the keep of their oxen, provided they should return with their empty carts to Lithrankomi (one march) and await my return there; after which, we would resume ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... somewhat muddy and uncomfortable for walking, I was put into an ox-cart, to be jolted over the unequal road; saluting impartially all the stumps and stones that lay in our way, the only means of avoiding which seemed to be when the little, thick-headed Frenchman, our conductor, bethought him of suddenly guiding his cattle into a projecting tree or thorn-bush, to the great detriment not only of my straw bonnet, but of my ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... to stay around here you got to cut out firing stones at that colt. You'll never get 'im tame that way—you thick-headed fool!" ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... didn't know. He hadn't guessed what that "little tiger who would have liked to have bit open his throat" had been to him. The thick-headed old hero, loyal to the bottom of his soul, hadn't guessed. And it came to Keith then that he would never tell him. He would keep that secret. He would bury it in his burned-out soul, and he would be "joyful" if he could. Duggan's blazing, happy face, half ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... I crept right to the edge of the bank an' layin' down lest some fool who didn't know the manners of our war take a pot shot at me, I called out, 'Bill Brayton, you thick-headed rebel, are ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was the first man at the table, and two families came in and were waited on before the Senegambian would look at me, and after an hour and thirty minutes I got a chance to order some roast beef and baked potatoes, but the perspiring, thick-headed pirate brought me some boiled mutton and potatoes that looked as though they had been put in a wash-tub and mashed by treading on them barefooted. I paid twenty-five cents for a lemonade made of water and vinegar, with a piece of something on top that might be lemon peel, and ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... you—more, of course, than one would wish—the gifted young captain conductor speaks English one minute, French or Italian the next, gets you up in the morning, to bed at night, past countless sentries and thick-headed guards demanding an Ausweis, contrives never to cease looking as if he had stepped from the bandbox, and presently pops you into your hotel in Berlin with the curious feeling of never ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... I see now. You ain't a candidate for the grammar school, after all. You want to see Mrs. Twiddler. Maria, come down here a minute. There's a thick-headed immigrant here ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... adversaries had called him sentimental, and assuredly so he was, but he was aware of it, and because he was French he could laugh at it, and at himself. It is all very well for sentimental Germans to have a thick-headed belief in themselves; deep down in an eloquent and sensitive creature like Clerambault, the vision of the Gaul—always alert in his thick woods—observes, lets nothing escape, and is ready for a laugh at everything. The surprising thing is that this under-spirit will emerge ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... twelve lessons, for I have not enough money." This is a noble proceeding! She then gave me three louis-d'or, adding, "I hope you are satisfied; if not, I beg you will say so." M. le Duc can have no sense of honor, or probably thinks that I am only a young man and a thick-headed German, (for this is the way in which the French always speak of us,) and that I shall be quite contented. The thick-headed German, however, was very far from being contented, so he declined receiving the sum offered. The Duke intended to pay me for one hour instead of two, ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... inescapable climax, the khaki-clad American raised his pistol, covering Hero Paul, the speaker. "Silence!" he rasped. "You're a thick-headed idiot not to see the truth. Can this priest save Altara? No! You know damned well he can't! And yet you'd ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... still stood pondering. She was thick-headed and that was why she took so long. But, in the evening, a hare ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... the house right after dawn," he was saying, "because that's the time when most men are so thick-headed with sleep that—" ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... treated him as though it was unnecessary for him to give any praise or commendation. When Brennan disappointed him, which was seldom, P. Q. would berate him with the same caustic fervor that lashed a stupid, thick-headed reporter to a point of self-abnegation that gave him thoughts of suicide as the only way out of ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... hand had fallen upon the other's breast and pushed him backward so that he was forced to catch at the chair-arm to save himself from falling. "Never get afraid about that," he sneered. "Since we slept in one cradle, I have been a thick-headed Thrym and your Loke's wit has fooled me into doing your bidding and fighting your battles and giving you my toil and my limbs and my faith, but wisdom has grown in me at last. You undertake too steep a climb when you try to make me believe in your love while before my eyes you ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... thick-headed mule,' he says, 'this war ain't any more than just started! Do you mean to tell me you're going to ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... violence, even ruthless vengeance upon a cruel parent, are constantly practised by the characters which they hold up to favor. Such humor as they have, too, is of the coarsest kind, and is expressed chiefly in rude practical jokes, or the bloody overreaching of the poor thick-headed Trolls, who are the butts of the stories and the victims of their heroes. There is good ethnological and mythological reason why the Trolls should be butts and victims, it is true; but that is not to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... "come round to breakfast to-morrow and we will settle the terms, and you can commence your duties at once. And now let us light our pipes and finish our yarns as though agitated clients and thick-headed solicitors had no existence." ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... English front, and learned it through bitter experience. If the Hun doesn't know right now where we are going, he will know of our arrival twenty-four hours after we get there. If he fails to foresee our concentration at this point, he is thick-headed and slow-witted indeed. I, for one, do not consider him slow-witted. About the only secret we keep from him is the order ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... of her life, and prophesied evil of him, because, as she averred, if she combed his hair a hundred times a day, it would never be fit to be seen; besides this, she declared "there was no managing to keep him out of mischief," and he was so "thick-headed at his book," that Mrs. Grace, on whom the task of teaching him his alphabet had, during the negligent reign of the late governess, devolved, affirmed that he never would learn to read like any other young gentleman. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the remaining verses slowly by himself, but he shook his head in a dissatisfied way as he closed the book. "That's easier than the names to read, but I don't seem to get much out of it. Guess I'm too thick-headed," he said, in a ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... said, leaning down to press the intercommute. Freeda is a thick-ankled, thick-headed telepath. But stupid or not, she is telepathic, and is an ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... would read his interminable list of German Lutheran papers. It grieved the old man that Vesta should not be allowed to go to a German Lutheran parochial school, but Lester would listen to nothing of the sort. "We'll not have any thick-headed German training in this," he said to Jennie, when she suggested that Gerhardt had complained. "The public schools are good enough for any child. You tell ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... is extraordinary," said Lady Keith, "how after living among a parcel of thick-headed, and thicker-tongued Yankees, she could come out and speak pure English in a clear voice; it is an enigma ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in his ear. "Thick-headed fool! Have you learned no wisdom yet? I would smite you, Pigot, but that I have need of you. Listen! I and only I can save France! I demand that you take ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... enjoy the play anyway," observed William. "She's a good girl, but she's a little thick-headed. Don't ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... he said. "This is the first time we have had any bother, and I don't see why we should give such a jolly place up just because that thick-headed old Lobster ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... compound a woman is! It won't do for you to go West. You will set the prairies on fire. There, there, now don't be afraid. If you think I can say anything to my nephew—the thick-headed blunderbuss—which will prevent his getting down on his knees to ask for what he'll never deserve, you don't know the Dimmerly blood. Trust to the wisdom of my gray hairs and go ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... 'sow his wild oats' and have done with it; in the nether, 'to have your fling' is almost necessarily to fall among criminals. The death was sudden; it affected the lad profoundly, and filled him with a remorse which was to influence the whole of his life. Mr. Roach, a thick-skinned and rather thick-headed person, did not spare to remind his apprentice of the most painful things wherewith the latter had to reproach himself. Sidney bore it, from this day beginning a course of self-discipline of which not many are capable at any age, and very ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... most deeply was the maddening fact that these Swiss, who were made the ministers of vengeance, were part of that accursed, detested, hated, shunned, despised, abhorred, loathed, execrated, contemptible, stupid, thick-headed, brutal, gross, cruel, bestial, demoniacal, fiendish, and utterly abominable race—I Tedeschi —whose very name, when hissed from an Italian month, expresses unutterable scorn and ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... little ivories of mine, the thick-headed fellows who paid for them knew my touch in them, and once spotted it instantly when I tried to slip in another chap's who was hard up. Benlian used to say that a man went about spreading himself over everything he came in contact with—diffusing some sort ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... to be provoked. Indeed, there is some parallel between the American man of action, however vulgar his aims, and the old feudal idea of the gentleman with a sword at his side. The gentleman may have been proud of being strong or sturdy; he may too often have been proud of being thick-headed; but he was not proud of being thick-skinned. On the contrary, he was proud of being thin-skinned. He also seriously thought that sensitiveness was a part of masculinity. It may be very absurd to read of two Irish gentlemen trying to kill each other for trifles, or of two Irish-American millionaires ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... ain't got the land-grabber's point of view! Nor the canting hypocrite's point of view! Nor a thick-headed forest-runner's point of view!" he loudly stormed, ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... them earlier in the spring. Of course he should want potatoes, and it was high time they were planted. A boy arrived from the back country who had lived at the farm the summer before,—a willing, thick-headed young person in process of growth,—and Israel Haydon took great exception to his laziness and inordinate appetite, and threatened so often to send him back where he came from that only William's insistence that they had entered into an engagement with ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Pat," said a schoolmistress to a thick-headed urchin into whose muddy brain she was attempting to beat the alphabet—"I'm afraid you'll never learn anything. ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... respect as I could assume. He made no reply whatever. 'Don't you know me?' I asked. His answer was not reassuring: 'I know you well enough; you are the old fool Van Helsing. I wish you would take yourself and your idiotic brain theories somewhere else. Damn all thick-headed Dutchmen!' Not a word more would he say, but sat in his implacable sullenness as indifferent to me as though I had not been in the room at all. Thus departed for this time my chance of much learning from ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... doors and windows, suggesting cocked-hats of the largest size on the heads of dwarfs of no size at all; the same heavy scroll-work, reminding one of the work of a playful giant of a green-grocer who has made a bouquet of sausages and cabbages, egg-plants and legs of mutton, and exhibits it to a thick-headed public as a—work of art. O Roman Plebs! lay this nattering unction to your soul—we did not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... work he ever did, and he showed it. Some of the cast had to be changed. Two dropped out—allured by a better wage—and all the work on their characterizations had to be done over. Others were always late or sick, and Royleston was generally thick-headed from carousal at his club. Then there were innumerable details of printing and scenery to be decided upon, and certain overzealous minor actors came to him to ask about their wigs and their ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him "poor Richard," been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... not wonder if he banged them yet. To be beat by men would be something; but by three stupid, legitimate-old-dynasty boobies of regular-bred sovereigns—O-hone-a-rie!—O-hone-a-rie! It must be, as Cobbett says, his marriage with the thick-lipped and thick-headed Autrichienne brood. He had better have kept to her who was kept by Barras. I never knew any good come of your young wife, and legal espousals, to any but your 'sober-blooded boy' who 'eats fish' and drinketh 'no sack.' Had he not the whole opera? all Paris? all France? But ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... your opinions matter? You are a thick-headed boor of the veld ... Not but what,' he added, 'there is metal in you slow Dutchmen once we Germans have ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... the idiots," said the boy—"of all the miserable, shortsighted, thick-headed, addle-pated duffers and asses we are the worst! We took pains to find a way into a fiendish maze of tunnels, pits, and caverns, occupied by vampires and enveloped in darkness, in search of a thing that was ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... first person, he loathed himself as a thick-headed ass for talking to Betty as he had done; as well put a burr under one's saddle and then feel surprise because the horse bucks. He passed on to the others with equal precision. Captain Lorrimer was as dirty as a greaser; ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... with the spirits of schoolboys and the grit of heroes. The fifth was a Pathan from Desmond's regiment, told off to act as orderly and surveyor; a man of immovable gravity, who shared but two qualities with the thick-headed, stout-hearted little soldiers from Nepal:—courage of the first order, and devotion to the British officer, for whom any one of them would have laid down his life, if need be; not as a matter of sentiment or ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... who in a tremendous and absorbing adventure like real business is so thin-blooded or thick-headed that all he can get work out of himself for is money, will only be able to get the plodding kind of second-rate workers to work for him, i.e., he will be able to get only plodders who merely work for money, by paying higher wages than other people have to—by paying higher ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... "This fellow Creede wears a heavy belt of gold. Blicky never makes a mistake. Creede's partner left on yesterday's stage for Bannack. He'll be gone a few days. Creede is a hard worker-one of the hardest. Sometimes he goes to sleep at his supper. He's not the drinking kind. He's slow, thick-headed. The best time for this job will be early in the evening—just as soon as his lights are out. Locate the tent. It stands at the head of a little wash and there's a bleached pine-tree right by the tent. To-morrow night as soon as it gets dark crawl up this wash—be careful—wait till the right ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... things, such as the varying distances from place to place, how many basins of rice each man could eat, and other Chinese commonplaces, to things military. Everybody warmed to the subject. My military bodyguard were the chief speakers, and cleverly brought round the smoky fire, for the benefit of the thick-headed rustics who made up the fascinated audience, a modern battlefield, and made their description ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... turn fool an' treat me dat 'ere way. I'd swar at ye ef yer wuz in de pulpit an' dat come ober me, jes at de fust. Yer knows Nimbus better ner dat. Now see heah, 'Liab Hill, yer's gwine ter go an' be registered termorrer, jes ez sure ez termorrer comes. Here we thick-headed dunces hez been up dar to-day a-takin' de oath an' makin' bleve we's full grown men, an' here's you, dat knows more nor a ten-acre lot full on us, a lyin' here an' habin' no ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... also thought it necessary to get a maid for her, and a particularly suitable person was recommended me by Mme. Herold. I had also engaged a man-servant as soon as I arrived, and although he was rather a thick-headed Swiss from Valais, who had at one time belonged to the Pope's bodyguard, he soon became quite devoted to me. In addition to these two servants there was my wife's former cook, whom she had taken with her from Zurich, and by whom she ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... in. Looking at the mark, which was now swollen, and feeling all round it, Mrs Simmins declared there was no fracture of the skull and that the blow had only stunned him. 'Well for him that he is a thick-headed Scotchman or he would have been killed,' she remarked. Taking a fleam from her pocket, she lanced the lump and let it bleed freely. 'If bruised blood is left to get into the system, there will be a fever, in which many a man has died.' Allan fell asleep and when he ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... shall have more to say hereafter. Then came two or three Americans, who had been the common run of European and South American voyages, and one who had been in a "spouter,'' and, of course, had all the whaling stories to himself. Last of all was a broad-backed, thick-headed, Cape Cod[1] boy, who had been in mackerel schooners, and was making his first voyage in a square-rigged vessel. He was born in Hingham, and of course was called "Bucket-maker.'' The other watch was composed of about the same number. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... fabliaux of the minstrels (the Trouveres) of Northern France know that those light-hearted gentry very often launched their satirical shafts at the churchmen of their day. One of the fabliaux in Barbazan's collection relates how a doltish, thick-headed priest was officiating in his church on Good Friday, and when about to read the service for that day he discovered that he had lost his book-mark ("mais il ot perdu ses festuz.")[154] Then he began to go back and turn over the leaves, but until ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Helen severely. "With all his thick-headed cleverness, he had yet insight enough to know that you would be taken with that creature. Probably he knew already how your letter had impressed her and that she was curious about you. And so he reckoned to play on your temperament, hoping that might prove an easy method of ending his connection ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... I don't believe I should feel about her as I do if I wasn't going to meet her. Look here, Joan, you've as good as told me—and if you hadn't, I'd be pretty thick-headed not to have put two and two together—that the Luke of her letters is Sir Luke Tallant, our new Governor. Well, if she was staying with him in London, and his wife is a friend of hers, why shouldn't she come and stay ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... up your mind to say what you want in plain words," interrupted Mat. "I'm one of your rough-handed, thick-headed sort, I am. I'm not gentleman enough to understand parlarver. It don't do me no good: it only worrits me into a perspiration." And Mat, shaking down his shirt-sleeve, drew it several times across his forehead, as a proof of the truth of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... appear to you almost incredible, almost infamous that we—you and I, mother—should have done this thing? The price we offered seemed sufficient to some of her people—not to all, I have learned that past forgetting to-day, thanks to Lord Fallowfeild's thick-headed, blundering veracity. But, thank heaven, she had more heart, more sensibility, more self-respect, more decency, than we allowed for. She plucked up spirit enough to refuse to be bought and sold like a pedigree filly or heifer. I think that was rather heroic, considering her ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... found her friend in a high state of indignation; for no officer there would touch her trunk because some American Express had put little leaden stamps here and there for some unknown purpose. Not even in her best French could the irate lady make the thick-headed men understand that it was not a high crime against the nation to undo a strap till some superior officer arrived to take the responsibility of ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... weeks in London and then went to Germany. He was accompanied by Tom Thumb, and they went by the way of Paris, Strasburg, and Baden-Baden. At the frontier they had a terrible time with the thick-headed customs-inspector. This was at Kehl, near Strasburg. "I knew," said Barnum in telling the story, "that I had no baggage which was rightfully subject to duty, as I had nothing but my necessary clothing, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... insane," he said, "but the truth is you are hoodwinked by official stupidity. That man," pointing at Professor Pludder, "who knows me well, and who has had all my proofs laid before him, is either too thick-headed to understand a demonstration or too pig-headed to ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... window as the train moved away from the station. "Henri, you're a wizard, a conjuror, a most mysterious and clever individual. 'Pon my word, I looked at you as you boarded the train, and if I'd been a German official, one of these thick-headed, beer-drinking tubs of fellows, always on the look-out for aliens and enemies, I'd have failed to ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... that gentleman had a particular wish to see Vivian out of his house. In allowing the Prince of Little Lilliput to be attended during the interview by a friend, Beckendorff had prepared himself for the reception of some brawny Jagd Junker, or some thick-headed chamberlain, who he reckoned would act rather as an incumbrance than an aid to his opponent. It was with great mortification therefore, that he found him accompanied by a shrewd, experienced, wary, and educated Englishman. A man like Beckendorff soon discovered that Vivian Grey's was ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Babington House for the two days previous to his Cambridge career was in itself most indiscreet. The angry father would not take upon himself to forbid it, but was worked up by it to perilous jealousy. He did not scruple to declare aloud that old Humphrey Babington was a thick-headed fool; nor did Humphrey Babington, who, with his ten or twelve thousand a-year, was considerably involved, scruple to say that he hated such cheese-paring ways. John Caldigate felt more distaste to the cheese-paring ways than he did to his uncle's ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... for a friend," said Dudley, a little crossly; "he's twice as old as you are, to begin with, and he's an awfully stupid, thick-headed fellow." ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... governing themselves, to ape the forms of real republics, and mix them with such childish clauses as come into their infantile minds. The chief newspaper of the republic resembles a high-school periodical, concocted by particularly thick-headed students without faculty assistance or editing. A history of their childish governmental activities would fill volumes. In 1910 all the copper one-centavo coins were called in and crudely changed to two-centavo pieces by surcharging the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... monosyllables with any hope of imparting ideas, but always faithful, frank and wise; Kewashawkonce, the guide, a man of push and a genuine wag; Kawaybawgo, a huge hunter, whose old long shot-gun has banged over almost every acre of these wilds; Metagooe, a sleepy, thick-headed fellow; and Waisonbekton, young and active, always ready for work or burden and constantly alert for new and interesting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... period of years I have heard it applied only to the discharged invalided pensioners of the army. On a late Queen's birthday review on the Green, the boys and girls were in ecstasies at seeing the "old fogies" dressed out in new suits. It is very often spoken derisively to a thick-headed stupid person, but which cannot determine accurately ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... for the typical genus of Pachycephalinae, founded in 1826 by Vigors and Horsfield. It is an extensive group of thick-headed shrikes, containing about fifty species, ranging in the Indian and Australian region, but not in New Zealand. The type is P. gutturalis, Lath., of Australia. ('Century.') They are singing-birds, and are called Thickheads (q.v.), and often Thrushes (q.v.). The name ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... sombre suit of leaden gray, somewhat relieved by the blackish shade of the wings and tail, with their silvery or frosted lustre. He is certainly not an attractive bird, either in dress or in form, for he appears very "thick-headed" and lumpish, as if he scarcely knew enough to seek shelter in a time of storm; but, of course, a bird that contrives to coax a livelihood out of such unpromising surroundings must possess a fine degree of intelligence, and, therefore, cannot ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... cried, as they entered, "come here, lass, and mount guard. I've almost broke my heart in trying to convince that thick-headed goose that he can't set the table properly. Take it off my hands, like a good girl.—Charley, my boy, you'll be pleased to hear that your old friend Redfeather ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... "My dear Lucius, you are a thick-headed, old-fashioned, superstitious Roman, whom I, in my superior wisdom, utterly despise," he would have produced about the same ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... shoulders same as I had at your age, I'd be Prime Minister an' Lord Mayor of Lunnon rolled into one, by crum!" He reached across for Captain Branscome's sextant, and held it between his shaking hands. "He can do it; hundreds o' men—thick-headed men in the ord'nary way—can do it; take a vessel out o' Falmouth here, as you might say, and hold her 'crost the Atlantic, as you might put it; whip her along for thirty days, we'll say; an' then, 'To-morrow, if the wind holds, an' about six in the mornin',' they'll say, 'there'll ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... time comes—and it's a-coming, my friends—the corporations and the syndicates will read the handwriting on the wall; don't you be afraid of that. If they should be a little grain thick-headed and sort o' blind at first, as old King Belshazzar was, it may be that the sovereign State will have to give 'em an object-lesson—lawfully, always lawfully, you understand. But when they see, through the medium of such an object-lesson or otherwise, as the case may ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... singularly thick-headed and ridiculous, loved to construct crimes where the law made none. Thus he declares, "in cases of high treason, if any one do any thing by which he showeth his liking and approbation to the Traitorous Design, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... plan, knowing very well that you have one in mind. If they haven't killed him, my Hippy will yet beat those scoundrels at their own game. Any man who has fought duels with the Germans above the clouds, and won, surely will be able to outwit a whole army of these thick-headed mountaineers. What do you ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... to believe in the light of such figures that the large wealth accumulated by his employer represents over and above a fair profit the increased wages out of which he naturally regards himself as being mulcted. He may be thick-headed, but he can see that in such a see-saw of profits versus wages the superior power of capital has the odds all in its favor. He learns to regard the whole state of the industrial world as one in which might makes right, and feebleness is ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... he thus pleaded against himself, he knew that the two men of whom he was speaking were thick-headed dolts who were always tipsy on Saturday nights, and who came to church perhaps once in ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... upon men who were bad enough without that. I allow a certain latitude; don't want to swim in hot water by quarreling with every madman or every dunce, but I do doubt any man's right to combine contradictory vices. Now these worthies are stupid yet wild, thick-headed yet ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... stranger assented. "Then I didn't know what to do, for a minute. The porter was a pretty thick-headed darky, but he was lion-hearted; and his idea was to lay hold of a burglar wherever he could find him. There were plenty of burglars in the aisle there, or people that were afraid of burglars, and they seemed to think the porter had ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... was she, and, as it happened, she was right. Imagine any one thinking Alice Paul needed to be 'under observation!' The thick-headed idiots!" ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Asiatic. The tapir, like the condor, for an unknown reason, is not found north of 8 deg. N., though it wanders as far south as 40 deg.. We met but one species of peccari, the white-lipped (D. labiatus). It is much larger than the "Mexican hog," and, too thick-headed to understand danger, is a formidable antagonist. The raposa is seen only on the Middle Amazon, and very rarely there. It has a long tapering muzzle, small ears, bushy tail, and grayish hair. It takes to the water, for the one we saw at Tabatinga was caught while crossing ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Norman genius, talent for affairs as its main basis, with strenuousness and clear rapidity for its excellence, hardness and insolence for its defect.' The Germanic (Anglo-Saxon and 'Danish') element explains, then, why uneducated Englishmen of all times have been thick-headed, unpleasantly self-assertive, and unimaginative, but sturdy fighters; and the Norman strain why upper-class Englishmen have been self-contained, inclined to snobbishness, but vigorously aggressive and persevering, among the best conquerors, organizers, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... name, could she possibly have gone to? She might have been to Cape Horn and back before this. Miserable fool that I was to trust the craft with that thirsty, thick-headed Gibbs! Diavolo! he may have been captured, and if he has, I hope his neck has been stretched like ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... after what I have done with the scissors. That hair ought to have been cut close off first thing, so as to afford a place for decent bandages, and I feel quite astounded to see how kindly Nature has treated you. It must have been an awful blow, my boy, and if you hadn't been of the stupid, thick-headed breed, you would have suffered from a comminuted fracture of the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... much sense as accuracy." (Raskolnikoff had made no statement of the kind.) "One gets confused, one loses the thread of the investigation. Yet, as far as our judicial customs go, I agree with you fully. Where, for instance, is there a man under suspicion of some kind or other, were it even the most thick-headed moujik, who does not know that the magistrate will commence by putting all sorts of out-of-the-way questions to take him off the scent (if I may be allowed to use your happy simile), and that then he suddenly gives him one between the eyes? A blow of the ax on his ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... tried to get taken into his house after being rejected even less politely by that eminent scoundrel Shanghai Brown. Besides myself there were a sturdy blue-nose or Nova-Scotian; a long-limbed, slab-sided herring-back or native of New Brunswick, a big thick-headed ass of an Englishman and a smart thief of a Cockney, known to us all as Ginger. We lived together without quarrelling more than three times a day. This we thought was peace. It was certainly more peaceful than my last boarding-house at Williamstown, where we had a little bloodshed every night. But ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... too strongly against you, my friend. The law is 'a hass,' as doubtless you have heard before; and when it comes in the shape of a blue-coated, helmeted and thick-headed policeman, whose word do you think would be believed, yours or mine?—to say nothing of this evidence." Stooping, he picked up Leroy's gold watch and chain, which had fallen from his pocket during his struggle with Wilfer. "I found this is your hand. A clear case of assault and robbery, with ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice |
