"Blockhead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... materials that are indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to say to this mountain, be thou cast into the sea. For I ask of the men of knowledge of the world, whether they would not hold him for a blockhead, that should hope to prevail in an argument, whose scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask further, when such attempts have been made, whether they have not failed of success? The indignant heart repels the conviction that is believed to debase it.... ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... appreciated academic honors more than the musician did, urged him to accept the degree of Doctor of Music, for which he would have to pay a small fee. The characteristic reply was a Parthian arrow: "Vat te tevil I trow my money away for dat vich the blockhead vish'? ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... quoth he. "If we be delayed here any longer thou shalt be hanged for a false thief! To keep the king's messengers waiting thus! Canst thou not see the king's seal? Canst thou not read the address of the royal letter? Ah, blockhead, thou shalt dearly abide this delay when my lord ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... The clergy are there made the principal object of ridicule, which is understood but by few among the laity. To explain this a commentary would be requisite, and humour when explained is no longer humour. Whoever sets up for a commentator of smart sayings and repartees is himself a blockhead. This is the reason why the works of the ingenious Dean Swift, who has been called the English Rabelais, will never be well understood in France. This gentleman has the honour (in common with Rabelais) of being a priest, and, like him, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... would have thought me a blockhead. You know that he has depicted me as a rogue and fool. Since I am neither, it was not serious; ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... affectionate tone, her eyes were so beseeching, her feeble voice was so humble and so passionate in making the request, that mademoiselle had not the courage to force her to accept an assistant. She simply called her a "blockhead," who believed, like all country-people, that a few days in bed ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... to be Baxter's style of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear people." Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late Majesty had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the old blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it?" His fury now rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it would be no more than justice to whip such a villain through ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... those cabalistic words which changed men into beasts, insects, and reptiles. But the prince having his eyes shut, and his back toward him, could not see his motions, and the enchanter being horribly affrighted, as well as naturally a great blockhead, was so long in recollecting the formula of his incantation, that the prince, seeing by a sly glance over the shoulder, that he was sufficiently near, suddenly turned round, and with one blow severed his head from his shoulders. Then catching it before it fell to the ground, he threw it into the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... customs cruiser. That's the electric light! Get up, blockhead! Why, they'll turn the light on us in a minute! You'll be the ruin of yourself ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... self-assertive reply with open-mouthed astonishment, as though quite too incredible for belief; it seems to them an act of almost criminal discourtesy, and those immediately about me seem almost inclined to take me back to the threshing-floor like a culprit. But the mudir himself is not such a blockhead but that he realizes the mistake he has made. He is too proud to acknowledge it, though; consequently his friends miss, perhaps, the only opportunity in their uneventful lives of seeing a bicycle ridden. Owing to my ignorance of the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... bestowed a shilling—poured out my money as profusely as you, Sir, have poured out my blood, every drop of which, Sir, shall cost you a slice of your estate. But even without Sturk's speaking one word, I've evidence which escaped you, conceited blockhead, and which, though the witness is as mad almost as yourself, will yet be enough to direct the hand of justice to the right man. There is a Charles, Sir, whom all suspect, who awaits trial, judgment, and death in this case, the wretched Charles Nutter of the Mills, Sir, whose ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... something in my nature which prevents me from silently displaying my sentiments, if that display can give pain, and so I answered his note, and sent him the book. He writes sonnets to Miss Seward, and Mr. Hayley; enough to stamp him 'blockhead.' ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... bodily efforts of the previous day, only slumbered, as Mrs. Mulcahy had at first anticipated; and when she had shaken and aroused him, for the twentieth time that morning, and scolded him until the spirit-broken blockhead whimpered,—nay, wept, or pretended to weep,—the dame returned to her ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... compare his blood; His blood in mud delights to run; Witness his lazy, lousy son! Puff'd up with pride and insolence, Without a grain of common sense, See with what consequence he stalks, With what pomposity he talks; See how the gaping crowd admire The stupid blockhead and the liar. How long shall vice triumphant reign? How long shall mortals bend to gain? How long shall virtue hide her face, And leave her votaries in disgrace? ——Let indignation fire my strains, Another ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... have you done!—Look up to me, my dearest life!—Sweet injured innocence, look up to me! What have you done!—Long will I not survive you!—And I was upon the point of drawing my sword to dispatch myself, when I discovered—[What an unmanly blockhead does this charming creature make me at her pleasure!] that all I apprehended was but a bloody nose, which, as far as I know (for it could not be stopped in a quarter of an hour) may have saved her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... heard what had happened, he said, 'You blockhead, you can't have done it properly; just let me have a try,' and with these words he seized his wife by the roots of her hair, cut her throat with a razor, and then took the pipe and blew into it with all his ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... and he crossed himself with great fervor. "Six thousand pounds English! why, that must be a hundred thousand—blockhead that I am!—more than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was considerably enlivened by the Squire's ale, commenced a series of gesticulations and capers, in the midst of which he stopped and cried, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... discovery of the civilized ages, by Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and Co. There is no God, but have we not invented gunpowder?—who wants a God, with that in his pocket?[68] There is no Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but have we not paper and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and the Day of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for a judge, and the flat of the universe for the throne? There is no law, but only gravitation and congelation, and we are stuck together in an everlasting hail, and melted together ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... right reason, which of necessity will give allowance to the failings of others, by considering that there is nothing perfect in mankind." In the same Essay he gives his own receipt for satire: "How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms!... This is the mystery of that noble trade.... Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive: a witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... die of cold," said the Judge. "Don't be a blockhead, Perkins, we have got to get her ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... and yet 'tis true, There are as mad, abandon'd critics too. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always listening to himself appears. All books he reads, and all he reads assails, From Dryden's Fables down to D'Urfey's Tales. With him, most authors steal their works, or ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... English one." He who honored me with this eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and good one," and of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and, finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by —— College, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... fool! you've spoiled all. There!" he shouted despairingly, as the quick clatter of hoofs rang from the arroyo behind them, "there they go! That's your work, blockhead! Out of my way, or by God—" but the sentence was left unfinished as, joined by the sheriff, who had galloped up at the sound of the robbers' flight, he darted past the unconcerned Ezekiel. Demorest would have followed, but Blandford, with ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... thyself thou art; For that by nature fit, No blockhead better suits the part, Than ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... my sole ornaments, my prettiest feature," said the Woozy, uneasily. "If I give up those three hairs I—I'm just a blockhead." ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a bit hard, and eating a cold luncheon harder still; but worst of all was having to hear him growl and snap at the clerks. Oh, he's perfectly horrid. I don't see how they stand it. Of course, I had my share. 'Miss Blockhead' was ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... coastwise blockhead that gets lost if he loses sight of land. He steers a course from headland to headland, and every little while on dark nights he stands in close and listens. Pretty soon he hears a dog barking alongshore. 'All right,' he says to the mate; 'we're off Point Montara. I know that Newfoundland ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... he stood in the center of the room and scratched his head. "Hang it, I've made an ass of myself. That blockhead will have the gendarmes about my ears. If they arrest me there will be the devil to pay. The Lord and the Baronet Fitzgerald!" he repeated. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and fell to laughing again. "Confound these picture-book kingdoms! They ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Mr. Colton, I tell you that you are all wrong. Simply because a man lives in the country it does not follow that he is a blockhead. No one in Denboro is rich, as you would count riches, but plenty of them are independent and ask no help from any one. You can't ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... has been coming over me ever since I came here; but it is greatest since yesterday. You know what sorrows I have passed through, Jemima; how unjustly I was always treated at school, the masters keeping me back and calling me a blockhead, though, as they themselves allowed, I had the best memory of any boy in the school, and could repeat whole books from beginning to end. You know how cruelly father always used me, calling me a noodle and a ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... weighs every statement, questions every fact, and corrects every inaccuracy.' The liar at any rate recognises that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilised being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company. Mr. Mahaffy, however, makes an exception in favour of the eminent specialist and tells us that intelligent questions addressed to an astronomer, or a pure mathematician, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... his course has run, How comes it that he shows his face Next morning in his former place?" "Ho! there's a pretty question, truly!" Replied our wight, with an unruly Burst of laughter and delight, So much his triumph seemed to please him: "Why, blockhead! he goes back at night, And that's the reason no one sees him!" The ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... cut short the marionette's words by taking out their handcuffs and preparing to lead him away to prison. But the innkeeper was a good-hearted man, and he was sorry for the poor blockhead. He begged them to leave ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Erizo, Erizo, this Block must be remov'd, he has stepped between you and a Command to Day, and perhaps may lye between me and my Mistress to Night.' 'By Hell (answered Erizo) thou hast raised a Fury in me, that will not be lulled asleep, but by a Potion of his Blood; let's dispatch this Blockhead first': And running at the Footman, with one Thrust killed him. Dangerfield by this time had been let out, and hearing the Noise, ran to the Place; they presently assaulted him; he defended himself very bravely the space of some Minutes, having wounded Gonzago in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... law, we may remark, takes no account of the theft of a patronymic. Worse than all is the rape of ideas which these caterers for the public mind, like the slave-merchants of Asia, tear from the paternal brain before they are well matured, and drag half-clothed before the eyes of their blockhead of a sultan, their Shahabaham, their terrible public, which, if they don't amuse it, will cut off their heads by curtailing the ingots and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... beginning of 1651. The Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio is now pleasanter reading for Milton's detractors than for those who honour his name. The unbridled insults which it heaps upon Charles I and still more upon Salmasius, for whom its least offensive titles are such as "blockhead," "liar" and "apostate," exceed even the wide limits of abuse customary in these days. Corruptio optimi pessima: such a man as Milton, if he once descends to the bandying of foul language, will beat the very bargemen themselves. But what astonished his contemporaries was not ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... found, under the rose be it spoken, even for a bishop to be a blockhead: but, if that bishop had sense enough to discern my good qualities, I ought not to be the most unrelenting of his censurers. My defence of the articles would indeed do its own business: yet to come ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... case, thought, sure the man is blind! "What sort of eyes can you have got?" said he. "Why very good ones, friend, as you may see." "Yes, I perceive the clearness of the ball. Pray let me ask you Can you read at all?" "No! you great blockhead!—If I could, what need Of paying you for any 'helps to read?'" And so he left the maker in a heat, Resolved to post him for an arrant ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... didn't carry a small figure, sir. Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises. —How long before this leg is done? Perhaps an hour, sir. Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (turns to go). Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books. I am so rich, I could have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman empire (which was ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... rug, put them in the carriage, and drove off to her own town. Grigory accepted the blow like a devoted slave, without a word, and when he escorted the old lady to her carriage he made her a low bow and pronounced impressively that, "God would repay her for the orphans." "You are a blockhead all the same," the old lady shouted to him ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... inclined to think it would be accurate and worth while. It wouldn't do not to capture it. At the same time I wouldn't have laid a finger on her, to compel her, for a million dollars. I stood and stared like a blockhead for a minute, at my wit's end, and she sat there and smiled. All of a sudden I had an idea. I caught the end of the table and tipped it up, and off slid the young lady, and I snatched at the knob of the drawer, and had ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the Siege of Carthagena will have to go on WITHOUT Engineer science henceforth. May be important, that,—who knows? Another thing was still more palpably important: Sea-General Vernon had an undisguised contempt for Land-General Wentworth. 'A mere blockhead, whose Brother has a Borough,' thinks Vernon (himself an Opposition Member, of high-sniffing, angry, not too magnanimous turn);—and withdraws now to his Ships; intimating: 'Do your Problem, then; I have set you down beside it, which was my part of the affair!'—Let us give the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... nothing more injurious to golf than serenely admiring the view. But the clerical golfer, being a man of quick temper, poured forth a torrent of abuse, exclaiming, "How could I hole the ball with that blockhead over there working his umbrella as if it were the pendulum of an eight-day clock!" When this is the kind of thing that is happening, I advise the golfer to try variations in his stance for putting, effecting the least possible amount of change at a time. There is a chance that at ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... inexpedient &c 647; frivolous &c (trivial) 643. Phr. Davus sum non [Lat.] [Oedipus]; a fool's bolt is soon shot [Henry V.] clitellae bovi sunt impositae [Lat.] [Cicero]; fools rush in where angels fear to tread [Pope]; il n' a ni bouche ni eperon [Fr.]; the bookful blockhead, ignorantly read [Pope]; to varnish nonsense with the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lost your pleasure to secure your fear. How can he show his manhood, if you bind him To box, like boys, with one hand tied behind him? This is plain levelling of wit; in which The poor has all the advantage, not the rich. The blockhead stands excused, for wanting sense; And wits turn ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... visitors, one was Ferfitchkin, a Russianised German—a little fellow with the face of a monkey, a blockhead who was always deriding everyone, a very bitter enemy of mine from our days in the lower forms—a vulgar, impudent, swaggering fellow, who affected a most sensitive feeling of personal honour, though, of course, he was a wretched little coward at heart. He was one of ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... demanded in the man's own language, "by standing in the way of the maharajah sahib's orders? Here's his highness sending a lady doctor to the princess for an excuse to confine her elsewhere and have all this trouble off our hands, and you, like a blockhead, stand in the way to ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... let off too much steam. Quite against your principles to be so violent—shame on you, man. Yet after all it was very provoking to be made such a fool of before that insolent fellow. Poor Teddy—I wish I hadn't hit you such a slap. But, after all, you deserved it, you superstitious blockhead. Well, well, it's of no use regretting. Glad I didn't hit Ladoc, though, it's too soon for that. Humph! the time has come for action, however. Things are drawing to a point. They shall culminate to-morrow. ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... farmer laughed, and thus replied: 'Thou dull important lump of pride, 30 Dar'st thou with that harsh grating tongue, Depreciate birds of warbling song? Indulge thy spleen. Know, men and fowl Regard thee, as thou art an owl. Besides, proud blockhead, be not vain, Of what thou call'st thy slaves and train. Few follow wisdom or her rules; Fools in ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... but this absurd pot of heavy-wet can and does, Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites, and this accursed dish of liquor. And thou pratest of thy 'liberty,' thou entire blockhead!"—Carlyle. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... could scold him, so I forgave him and invited him to sit down and have a smoke. He fairly jumped at the idea, and it pleased me to see him bite. I thought then how little Tescheron could know of this innocent blockhead, Jim Hosley, whose heart and brain traps were built on the open, sanitary ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... often said, that surely you must all be informed on this point), how the drawing, the placing, and the cutting of this most crucial test of a man's powers as an artist or workman, determines the extent of one or other, or both; for a man may be the one, and show himself a blockhead as to the other. You ask for originality, and you find copy, copy all over the world; yet you may suddenly pounce on a line or two not seen in combination before, most abominably in juxtaposition to ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... the cleverest, grandest old man that ever lived, wrote it!” declaimed Larry, his voice booming loudly in the room. “It’s all a great big game, fixed up to try you and Pickering,—but principally you, you blockhead! Oh, it’s grand, perfectly, deliciously grand,—and to think it should be my good luck to ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... down a bridge, and flooded heaven knows how many campi; then rain came—and it is still thawing—so that my saddle-horses have a sinecure till the roads become more practicable. Why did Lega give away the goat? a blockhead—I must have him again. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... burnt dreadeth the fire, Jack," answered the old man. "This is not the first time we have had the King's coin pulled down. I am as true a man to the King as any here; but I have taken no oath to that dotipole [blockhead] of Warwick; and if he play this game once too oft, he may find he hath ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... had gained over, came at last to meet him by appointment. When he arrived, it was only to inform him of the manner in which he had been baffled, to convince him that the game was up, and that nothing was left him but to retreat utterly foiled in his attempt, and to be stigmatized as a blockhead by his enraged sovereign. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... brief newspaper notice of a murderer's execution somewhere in France. The Procureur, who was present at the last toilet of the criminal, sees that he is putting on his shoes on his bare feet, and—the blockhead!—reminds him: 'What about the socks?' But the other gives him a look and says, sort of thoughtfully: 'Is it worth while?' Do you understand, these two remarks, so very short, struck me like a blow on the skull! At once all the horror and all the stupidity of unnatural ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... nomination to so many places, that commands the regiments and ships-of-war, and "robs the Exchequer with unwashed hands." The man who owns it, may be what he can, an honest man, or a scoundrel, a mushroom or an Howard, a scholar, or a brute, a wit or a blockhead, c'est egal. Proud, haughty, highdaring, free England, is not this true to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... "Nay, not a blockhead, Monsieur; I have good eyes, and I have seen what I have seen. But, really ill as you are, Monsieur le ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... scruples,' cried Saint-Pol, smiting the table, 'you will gain nothing else. Within your country's law, blockhead! Why, my sister is within the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... superstitious art represented finally by Perugino, and the modern scientific and anatomical art represented primarily by Michael Angelo. And the epithet bestowed on Perugino by Michael Angelo, 'goffo nell' arte,' dunce, or blockhead, in art,—being, as far as my knowledge of history extends, the most cruel, the most false, and the most foolish insult ever offered by one great man to another,—does you at least good service, in showing how trenchant the separation ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... "The blockhead doesn't seem to know yet," growled the captain, as the other turned away, "that the lead will give you deep water here until your vessel has ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... that the cords were too long," mutters the old man; "but no, 'It's not too long, Daddy.' There's no making you do anything, you will have everything your own way.... Blockhead!" ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... provisions in port. The men, of course, naturally retaliated by measuring their work according to the food they got; and then it was seen that the game was to be too costly and too perilous. The common-sense commander would find a judicious retreat from an untenable position, and the blockhead would persevere with it during a whole voyage, and boastfully retail a sickening story of meanness to an audience who, he cherished the idea, would regard him as a hero! How much bitterness and loss was caused by this parochial-minded malignity can never be estimated. It was undoubtedly a ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... failure, until his figure became a universal terror. His common method was to price a horse, and while the dealer showed Barney the animal's teeth, Haggart would slip under the uplifted arm, and ease the blockhead of his blunt. Arrogant in his skill, delighted with his manifold triumphs, Haggart led a life of unbroken prosperity under the brisk air of heaven, and, despite the risk of his profession, he remained ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... surely that terrible leader of Walter's Was not utterly void of foundation in fact. Was the Cabinet really not full of defaulters, And resolved for a time on that ruinous act?" "Cease, blockhead, to babble Your ganderlike gable: Could Repeal e'er be REASON CONTENTS ME with Graham, Could the NE NIMIUM Of good Gordon succumb, Or the Stanley's SANS CHANGER be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... "Milet-Mureau, an old blockhead. A pretty time to choose to let fools sail the ship! English rockets from all the headlands, and those cursed Chouan cockchafers in the air! You may rely upon it that some one behind those puppets pulled the wire when they saw we were getting ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... by heaven, that's too bad! My father's trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad? My father, sir, did never stoop so low— He was a ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... funds. His wife, who had by this time returned with the wives of the other officers to Russia, had actually been searched for hidden booty.[12] And now, after toils and hardships untold, only five months' provisions were left for the ships sailing from Kamchatka; and the blockhead underlings were compelling a waste of those provisions by sailing in the wrong direction. If the worst came, could Bering hold his men with those tied hands ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... that the imprudent is honoured and the wise despised. The alchemist died of poverty and distress, while the blockhead found a ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... expresses from General Howe, at New York, in North America, as late as the 19th of last February, which are, in every respect, very disagreeable indeed. He writes in severe terms against General Heister, whom he calls an old woman in the field, and a stupid and incorrigible blockhead in the cabinet; he also says, that the Hessians and other Germans are the worst troops under his command, and are not fit to be trusted in any business; he has, therefore, desired several particular English ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... had not long been in Hades, was cowering over a small fire in a distant corner, endeavoring to keep from freezing, when his Impious Majesty himself heard the youth soliloquizing: "When will LIE BIG, the editor of the Sun, keep me company?" "You blockhead!" exclaimed his Majesty, "LIE BIG, the editor of the Sun, is not coming back for some time; he is of more service to me on earth, making converts for my jurisdiction, than the public are ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... not have said so at first, you blockhead?" said the Duke, signing the paper without looking at the contents—"What other letters? And remember, I must be ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... chapel friend, an ancient virgin like herself, named Mademoiselle Vaubois, who was a positive blockhead, and beside whom Mademoiselle Gillenormand had the pleasure of being an eagle. Beyond the Agnus Dei and Ave Maria, Mademoiselle Vaubois had no knowledge of anything except of the different ways of making preserves. Mademoiselle ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... little blockhead should be allowed to do what she liked with her money and that he should not be able to forbid her! This he said to himself at intervals of five minutes through the day—which led to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are incapable of gauging power of intellect and fineness of character. But the veriest blockhead and simpleton who ever lounged in a doorway or lisped in Pall Mall can tell a fine woman when he sees her, and is probably able to find pleasure and hope in the spectacle. It is these blockheads and simpletons ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... came to the bottom of the ladder, called out that he had brought him a patient, desiring some one to bear a hand, and help him easily down. The surgeon turned about, but instead of giving any assistance, exclaimed, "You blockhead, what do you do here with a man that has lost his head?" "Lost his head!" says Benbow; "the lying fellow, why he told me it was his leg; but I never in my life believed what he said without being sorry ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to argue; it is vain to say to this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea. For, I ask of the men of knowledge of the world whether they would not hold him for a blockhead that should hope to prevail in an argument whose scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask, further, when such attempts have been made, have they not failed of success? ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... than moral character. The former naturally takes a much more outward direction, and expresses itself not only in the face and the play of feature, but also in the gait, down even to the very slightest movement. One could perhaps discriminate from behind between a blockhead, a fool and a man of genius. The blockhead would be discerned by the torpidity and sluggishness of all his movements: folly sets its mark upon every gesture, and so does intellect and a studious nature. Hence that remark of La Bruyere that ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying; and for this reason—I can never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough to ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... hand that way, and cried, 'Sir Cloudesly Shovel! a very gallant man!' As he stood before Busby's tomb, the Knight uttered himself again after the same manner, 'Dr. Busby, a great man! he whipped my grandfather; a very great man! I should have gone to him myself, if I had not been a blockhead; a ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... Junius, for blinking the whole questions B and C. He it is that has settled the question A, so that it will never be re-opened by a man of sense. A man who doubts, after really reading Mr. Taylor's work, is not only a blockhead, but an irreclaimable blockhead. It is true that several men, among them Lord Brougham, whom Schlosser (though hating him, and kicking him) cites, still profess scepticism. But the reason is evident: ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Marriage retrieves them and turns them into respectable and adoring husbands. Though rattle-brained, much given to gallantry, and somewhat lax in morality, they are not knaves or monsters; they do not inspire disgust. Even the lumpish blockhead, Squire Sullen—according to Macaulay a type of the main strength of the Tory party for half a century after the Revolution—contrasts favourably with his prototype Sir John Brute in Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife, He is a sodden sot, who always goes to bed drunk, ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... most affecting picture of my position, shewing that I should be in need of everything until my arrival at Rome, where I was going, I said, to fill the post of secretary of memorials, and my astonishment may be imagined when I saw the blockhead delighted at ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... my heart I had a conviction that one who had not studied the Talmud could not be anything but a blockhead ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... what her destiny would be, and the oracle replied that she had not yet taken the first step towards it. Esther was astonished and called her governess to see the two answers, but the good woman saw nothing wonderful in them whatever. Esther impatiently called her a blockhead, and entreated me to let her ask another question. I begged her to do so, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... me to turn my head, and I saw in a doorway that led to another room the erect figure of Major Lessard listening intently, a black frown on his eagle face. When MacRae had finished his story and the incapable blockhead behind the desk sat there regarding the two of us as though he considered that we had been the victims of a rank hallucination, Lessard slammed the door shut behind him and strode ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Weston his name is. I can give you his description in three words—an insensate, ugly, stupid blockhead. That's four, but ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... my old man—the old blockhead—off he goes: "Marry, marry," he says, "he must marry her and cover the sin," he says. "We must take the lad home," he says, "and he shall marry," he says. Well, I did my best to make him change his mind, but, dear me, no. So, all right, ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... and the same profusion. When they had taken their seats in the corner of the room, Yussuf said, "Now my guests, as you hope for pardon, tell me, do you know nothing of what has happened to me this day—and what the blockhead of a caliph has been about?" Haroun and the vizier could with difficulty restrain their laughter, as they shook their heads. "Yes," continued Yussuf, "that vicegerent of a tattered beard, and more tattered ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... physicians cannot tell what an ague is, and all our arithmetique is not able to number the days of a man'—which, God knows, is not the fault of arithmetique, but that our understandings reach not the thing." "The blockhead Albemarle hath strange luck to be loved, though he be, and every man must know it, the heaviest man in the world, but stout and honest to his country." "He advises me in what I write to him, to be as short as I can, and obscure." ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... into a loud laugh. "What a blockhead you are, to be sure!" he shouted, slapping his thighs. "Good heavens, was there ever such an idiotic person! Don't stare at me so stupidly. Come, come, you needn't begin to cry directly. Go and fetch some ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... men is allotted a complete endowment of mental faculties, of capacities of intellect and feeling; the degree to which these are energized, are injected with nervous flame, makes the difference between a genius and a blockhead. There being high vital pressure at a full, rich, interior source, and thence, strong mental currents, through what channels the currents shall flow depends on individual aptitudes, these aptitudes shaping, in the one case, a Dante, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... mean to tell to the first blockhead I meet. First of all I should like to know who you are. If you are robbers I shall defend myself against you to the best of my ability; if you are fools I shall try to enlighten you; if you are brave and honest men I ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... puppy, a fool, a blockhead, a clumsy varlet, a mere Jack Belford!—I thought myself a much cleverer fellow than I am!—Why could I not have been followed in by Dorcas, who might have taken it up, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... retorted, smiling. "He is—he is not your friend or relative, is he? He is such a blockhead, and, saving your presence, at the same time ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Wakes from his dream and labours for a joke; With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart." ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... ass I am! I remember now. I left the stick against the wall of the opera house. Blockhead! With a stick, now!... ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... not converse with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, whom he wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but like a philosopher and friend who has passed through life with thought and observation, and is willing to enable others to pass through it with pleasure and profit. A writer of this stamp, I confess, appears to me as much superior to a common bookworm, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... said he, half repenting of his anger at her blunders over the cards. "Go out before dinner; you know you don't mind this cursed weather; and see that you come home full of adventures to relate. Come, little blockhead! give me a kiss, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... because I have used from time to time the only possible phrases for the case, that I mean the Victorian Englishman to appear as a blockhead, which means an unconscious buffoon. To all this there is a final answer: that he was also a conscious buffoon—and a successful one. He was a humorist; and one of the best humorists in Europe. That which Goethe had never taught the Germans, Byron did manage to teach the ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... see, after the fever heat has subsided, what trash I have palmed upon them in the name of liberty!' Yet this is the way, Jonathan, to deal with demagogues. You make too much of yours, man. You are not the blockhead we take you for after all; but you delight to see your public men in motley, and the rogues will fool you to the top of your bent, till it is your pleasure to put down the show. So now that the piper has to be paid, and a lucid interval appears to be dawning upon you, to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... what the letter meant. It was not written by Naomi at all, and in my heart I cursed myself as a blockhead for being so easily duped. I heard the gruff voices of men, and among others I felt sure I heard that of Israel Barnicoat. For some few minutes, although my hands were pinioned, I struggled fiercely, but it was ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... poltroon, shaker, squeamer, Blockhead, sluggard, dullard, dreamer, Shirker, shuffler, crawler, creeper, Sniffler, snuffler, wailer, weeper, Earthworm, maggot, tadpole, weevil! Set upon thy course of evil, Lest the King of Spectre-land Set ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... motioning the two young men to sit down. "It was the fault of that blockhead Pastrini, that I did not sooner assist you in your distress. He did not mention a syllable of your embarrassment to me, when he knows that, alone and isolated as I am, I seek every opportunity of making the acquaintance of my neighbors. As soon as I learned I could in any way ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... very far from being the blockhead these references imply. His "Third Nights" were probably far more profitable than Dryden's.[23] By his friends he was classed with the liveliest wits of a brilliant court. Rochester ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... exemplary cheapness. For instance, at Talyllyn, in Merionethshire, or anywhere off the line of tourists, I and a lieutenant in our English navy paid sixpence uniformly for a handsome dinner; sixpence, I mean, apiece. But two months later came a golden blockhead, who instructed the people that it was "sinful" to charge less than three shillings. In Wales, meantime, I suffered grievously from want of books; and fancying, in my profound ignorance of the world, that I could borrow money upon my own expectations, or, at least, that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... "No man but a blockhead," said Johnson, "ever wrote except for money." The doctrine is, of course, perfectly outrageous, and specially calculated to shock people who like to keep it for their private use, instead of proclaiming it in public. But it is a good expression of that huge contempt for the foppery ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... an argument that the Pope should be reconciled to him, because men of his profession were commonly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise; his holiness, enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and told him, it was he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man himself would not offend: the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and Michael Angelo had the Pope's benediction, accompanied with presents. This bishop had fallen into the vulgar ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinet, A fiddler may a fortune get; A blockhead, with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice: And oft the dancing-master's art Climbs from the toe to touch the heart. In learning let a nymph delight, The pedant gets a mistress by't. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... myself, for good and all. You see I had sworn to get her from you, and I could think of nothing but that oath. So I wrote—but, oh, Macrorie, Macrorie, why, in Heaven's name, did you make that mistake about Mrs. O'Halloran, and force that infernal oath out of me? Why did that confounded old blockhead forget to introduce her to you? That's the cause of all my woes. But I won't bore you, old fellow; I'll go on. So, you see, in my determination to get her, I stuck at nothing. First of all, instead ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... medley as it was, for there went fat "King Cole" with the most ragged of the beggar-maids. "Mistress Mary," in her pretty blue dress, tripped along with "Simple Simon" staring about him like a blockhead. The fine lady left her horse to dance with "Bobby Shafto" till every bell on her slippers tinkled its tongue out. "Bo-Peep" and a jolly fiddler skipped gayly up and down. "Miss Muffet" took the big spider for her partner, and made his many legs fly about in the wildest ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... What blockhead thinks now of reading Milton, or Pope, or Gray? Paradise Lost is lost; it has gone to the devil. Pope's Epistles are returned to the dead-letter office; the age is too loyal for "ruin seize thee, ruthless king," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... half. Do you think Blondel, who is on the point, Blondel, who will and will not and on whom all must turn, Blondel the upright, the impeccable, the patriotic, without whom we can do nothing, and who, I tell you, hangs in the balance—do you think he likes it, blockhead? Or is the more inclined to trust his life with us when he sees us brawlers, toss-pots, common swillers? Do you think he on whom I am bringing to bear all the resources of this brain—this!"—and again the big man tapped his forehead with tragic earnestness—"and ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... again!—the pains I took the other night again to make you comprehend what Free Trade meant. I knew you didn't understand a word about it; and if you did understand, you wouldn't believe me. You never take any notice of anything I say; but if Mrs. Bushel or any other blockhead tells you anything, you believe ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... of inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners—and, I married her:—gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might have—But let me remember to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... week-any night: let me know. Good-bye, good-bye, Lady Angela. God bless you. Here, James, give me your arm down the steps, and whistle for my fellow to draw up. There he is, in the middle of the road, the blockhead." ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... happened, or that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives sensuous images of truth; but it is only the Philistine or the blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. This ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to understand the ordinary use of the human language. If I did not suspect that you were a genius, I should certainly know you were a blockhead. I fancy we had better be getting along ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... nothing very amusing in all this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did not deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very soon have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish creature! The men who serve under this Imperial ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... matter of fact, I don't see," said I. "You will think me an awful blockhead, but I don't perceive anything singular in a cigar manufacturer sending ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... "Blockhead, that you cannot keep your thoughts on what you are doing! One might expect as good a game from the tumbler's dog. Is it the drink that you have got into your head, or the war matters that you ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... rasping sort of creature, especially if she does not cultivate sympathy with cigarettes as she gets older. [Laughter.] Let us be fair to mere man. Mere man has always treated me with exemplary fairness, and I certainly have never maintained that the blockhead majority is entirely composed of men; neither have I ever insinuated that it is man that ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... for a Whig, or a Puritan, or any other unimaginative blockhead, to cry out against all this as nauseous flattery, and assert that after all she was rather an unpoetical personage than otherwise—a coarse-minded old maid, half prude, half coquette, whose better part was mannish, and all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... practical use of the quality of imagination is to ameliorate married life. But who in England or America (or elsewhere) thinks of it in that connection? The plain man considers that imagination is all very well for poets and novelists. Blockhead! Yes, despite my high esteem for him, I will apply to him the Johnsonian term of abuse. Blockhead! Imagination is super-eminently for himself, and was beyond doubt invented by Providence in order that the plain man might chiefly exercise it ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... State-Paper Office).]—who is not much of a support either, though a gnarled weighty old stick in his way ("Professor at Strasburg once"): not interesting to us here. The rest his Imperial Majesty considers to be of sublimated blockhead type, it appears. Prince Eugene had died lately, and with Eugene ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... or I'll throw you out, you miserable blockhead!" roared Rokoff, taking a threatening step toward ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw tolerably—should do it at least—have had good masters, and flatter myself that I am not quite a blockhead." ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... skull against a wall," he had said in those hours of confidence; "and, to be as sublime a blockhead, if you'll allow me the word, you, my dear fellow, have kept sounding the charge. We've sat prating here of 'success,' heaven help us, like chanting monks in a cloister, hugging the sweet delusion that it lies somewhere in the work itself, in the expression, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... councillor. At that time if there was a Catholic, no matter how high or great or learned he was, he could not get a place. But if a Protestant came that was a blockhead and ignorant, the place would be open to him. There was a revolution rising because of that, and O'Connell brought it into the House of Commons and got it changed. He was the greatest man ever was in Ireland. He was a very clever lawyer; he would win every ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... and almost round and blue and I got it in a tree. Now if you're not a blockhead mebbe you can guess what it is." He moved his ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... John in his enthusiasm, catching her in his arms and kissing her. "I wouldn't for the world have you any thing but the darling little Lillie you are. I love your faults more than the virtues of other women. You are a thousand times better than I am. I am a great, coarse blockhead, compared to you. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings this noon; you know, Lillie, I'm hasty, and apt to be inconsiderate. I don't really know that I ought to let you go over ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Ovid too, That man's a blockhead, have confest: Powel and Stretch[1] the hint pursue; Life is a farce, the world ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Beauties and manly Graces, and deserting him every Night for an execrable Italian Ballad, so vile that a Boy who should write such lamentable Dogrel would be turn'd out of Westminster-School for a desperate Blockhead, too stupid to be corrected and amended by the harshest ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... applied to any particular individual, it breaks down completely. It is unfortunately no rare thing to see the good man striving against fate, and the fool born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Still on a large scale no test can be conceivably more reliable; a blockhead may succeed for a time, but a succession of many generations of blockheads does not go on steadily gaining ground, adding field to field and farm to farm, and becoming year by year more capable and prosperous. Given time— of which there is no ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... there again, how a man suffers for being good-natured,' said the locksmith. 'Miss Emma was with her uncle at the masquerade at Carlisle House, where she had gone, as the people at the Warren told me, sorely against her will. What does your blockhead father when he and Mrs Rudge have laid their heads together, but goes there when he ought to be abed, makes interest with his friend the doorkeeper, slips him on a mask and domino, and mixes with ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... we say? by a light wife,—"or to serve under the haughty FONTANGE [Species of topknot; so named from Fontange, an unfortunate female of Louis Fourteenth's, who invented the ornament.] of my Spouse [as Ludwig Rudolf does, by all accounts], than to have a blockhead who would drive me mad by her ineptitudes? and whom I should be ashamed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... you not got rid of your ideas of metempsychosis yet, eh? Do you still believe that men are turned into beasts, and beasts into men?" The features of our Dchiahour relaxed into a broad grin. "Ho-le! Ho-le!" said he, slapping his forehead; "what a blockhead I am—what was I thinking about? I had forgotten the doctrine,"... and he turned off quite abashed at having given his ridiculous warning. The fish was fried in mutton ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... still more angry, and said: "What! the blockhead gave his eight krans to a beggar? Send him to me." And when Abdul Karim came before him, he said scornfully: "You must fancy yourself a big man, Abdul. I never give more than a copper coin to a beggar, but your ...
— The Cat and the Mouse - A Book of Persian Fairy Tales • Hartwell James
... mean? It means that you are a stupid, a fool, a blockhead! All the world knows that one of your daughters is the mistress of a nobleman, and you are not only content to live with her and share her shameful earnings, but you actually come here to me and make a ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... to be put aside, and most resolutely, for, whenever it occupied his mind, he soon found himself uttering contemptuous remarks upon his own thick-headed folly. He would sometimes blurt out such words as 'fool—idiot—blockhead,' as he walked along the street, astonishing passers-by who could not be supposed to know that the speaker was applying ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... governing bodies. On the public sentiment of Greece this hatred seems to have been a more powerful influence than more subtle political considerations. The detested Bulgar, the barbarian, the "kondri-cephalous" (blockhead) was advancing into eastern Macedonia, which the Greeks had gained at so much cost, and they were taking possession of that section of the country where the population really is preponderatingly Greek. In the north, in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... been shown to a genius, like him, "broken-hearted." He'd " no doubt but his friends in Parnassus must know How his fine declamation was laugh'd at below; And how Keate, like a blockhead ungifted with brains, Had neglected to grant him a prize for his pains. He was sure, if such conduct continued much longer, The school must grow weaker, and indolence stronger; That the rights of sixth form would be laid in the dust, And the school after that, he thought, tumble ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... was a blockhead, a just-qualified general practitioner, and quite ignorant of mental science. He simply said there was no moth. Had he possessed the wit, he might still, perhaps, have saved Hapley from his fate by entering into his delusion, and covering ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... impossible conditions.[895] But Charles was too impatient to await his caprice. "My dear aunt," he once said to the Queen of Navarre, a short time before her death, "I honor you more than the Pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not indeed a Huguenot, but neither am I a blockhead; and if the Pope play the fool too much, I will myself take Margot," his common nickname for his sister, "by the hand, and give her away in marriage in ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... hands trembling so that he could scarcely hold his work, he began to administer the palatable poison which every human heart is only too ready to receive. "I tell you, Bill," said he, "you are the biggest blockhead I ever saw. If you like to look at the pictures, stand at the windows as long as you please, and do not run yourself to death. Just look at the other shoemakers' boys; they hang their string of boots and shoes over their ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... so, Alexandra Pavlovna, because you don't know me. You think I am a perfect blockhead, a log; but do you know I am capable of melting like sugar, of spending whole ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... left you in the lurch; I told you he would. Lucien is a clever fellow, and you never were respectful to him. You used him as a hack. Repent, blockhead!" said Blondet. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac |
