"Dunce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her, nor do I ever remember that he kicked me when I came in his way, or so much as cursed my ugly face, though it was easy to see that he didn't over-like me. When I was six years old I was sent to the village school, where I was soon booked for a dunce, because the master found it impossible to teach me either to read or write. Before I had been at school two years, however, I had beaten boys four years older than myself, and could fling a stone with ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... I get an exhibition! I who had been licked once a week for bad copies, and had been told by every teacher I had had anything to do with that I was a hopeless dunce. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... he, chuckling, "hark to that lovely rascal in the cart, yonder—hark to him; Galen was an ass and Hippocrates a dunce beside ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... clothe with flesh and blood some subject presented as a skeleton. It is not uncommon, indeed, to recognize in later years with astonishment a useful citizen or genius whom at school or college we recall as a dunce or laggard. In our present society, because of archaic methods of education, the development of such is largely left to chance. Those who might have been developed in time, who might have found their task, often become wasters, drudges, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... drivel for a tidy little screw; You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are, But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR. Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce, I myself — you mayn't believe it — helped to run a paper once With a chap on Cambaroora, by the name of Charlie Brown, And I'll tell you all about it if you'll take the ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... by way of exchange. It cannot therefore be considered as a miracle, notwithstanding the extraordinary care and expense which his friends bestowed upon his education, that he always continued a blockhead, and was such a perfect dunce at eleven years of age, that instead of being able to read and write as a young gentleman ought to do, he could scarcely tell his letters. He was equally remarkable for his selfishness; for if he had twenty cheesecakes in his box, or his pockets full of oranges and apples, he ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... so enticing that it may be disparaged in the hearing of the young, without injury. What would be the natural effect of the following sentence, which I quote from a late well-written religious homily? "The pedagogue and his dunce may exercise their wits correctly enough, in the way of grammatical analysis, on some splendid argument, or burst of eloquence, or thrilling descant, or poetic rapture, to the strain and soul of which not a fibre in their ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... shoeing-horn, but they shall pick up the pebble, and courtesy unto you for your grace. And set your mind on a lad that you do count to have more sense than the rest, and beshrew me if he show you not in fair colours ere the week be out that he is as great a dunce as any. I reckon Jack shall be the next. Well, well!— let the world wag. 'Twill all be o'er an hundred years hence. They shall be doing it o'er again by then. Howbeit, 'tis ill work to weep ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... too young yet to go to sea, but when you are old enough you cannot perhaps do better. The sea requires people of sense more than any other, and yet some persons send the dunce of the family on board ship, and then are surprised that he does not get on. You shall now go back to the friends who have taken care of you, and who seem good people. We must find somebody to whom you may go when you wish to get some more learning, and I dare say you will find some means of ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... highest honour within mortal reach, and was striven after with might and main. He had seldom attained to it because he would never "go up past" Lisbeth. If she missed a word, he, Robert, missed it too, no matter how well he knew it. It was sweet to be thought a dunce for her dear sake. It was all the reward he asked to see her holding her place at the head of the class, her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes starry with her pride of position. And how sweetly ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I first put it on, "It is plain to the veriest dunce That every beauty Will feel it her duty To yield to its glamour at once. They will see that I'm freely gold-laced In a uniform handsome and chaste" - But the peripatetics Of long-haired aesthetics, Are very much more to their taste - Which I never counted upon When ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... is of the dream nature and he will be what he will be. I can no more fashion him to the common standard than I can make the fir-tree like unto the juniper. I've had many a curious student yonder, wild and tame, dunce and genius, but this one baffles me. He was a while up in the glen school, they tell me, and he learned there such rudiments as he has, but what he knows best was never learned anywhere but as the tinkler learns—by the roadside and in ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... day Fanny Hutton Her last dress has put on; Her fine lessons forgotten, She died, as the dunce died; And prim Betsey Chambers, Decay'd in her members, No longer remembers Things, as ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... is my text. Last year it was Parry and Switzerland; 'ardly know where to go next. I should much like to try Monty Carlo, and 'ave a fair flutter for once, But I fear it won't run to it, pardner; my boss is the dashdest old dunce. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... be true for all that, Jacob! For you're a dunce, and there are simpler things than ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... original, I assure you I shall be ashamed of it, bring down my foot and crush it out of existence; its novelty shall not avail (with me at least) to save its ugliness from annihilation. If I thought otherwise, I admit that a round dozen of vultures would be none too many for the liver of a dunce who could not see that ugliness was only ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... as if you are a bigger dunce than you seem; but," added Fred, turning toward the Shawanoe, "have you seen any thing of ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... I have just now used the words "poet" and "dunce," meaning the degree of each quality possible to average human nature. Men are eternally divided into the two classes of poet (believer, maker, and praiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, unmaker, and dispraiser). And in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... person is very often, apparently at least, stupid; a stupid, intractable person is, therefore, called a DUNCE: one who is deaf and intractable. What now becomes of Duns Scotus, and all the rest of the recondite ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... studies requiring discipline. He nibbled at various books and was precociously brilliant in Latin. On the contrary, he was absolutely incapable of construing two Greek words, showed no aptitude for living languages and promptly proved himself a dunce when obliged to master ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and the Scotists were as Realists opposed to the Nominalists, who, as followers of Thomas Aquinas, were called Thomists. Abuse, in later time, of the followers of Duns gave its present sense to the word Dunce.] ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... over the next few years, except to say that I went to college, where I was shunned by all, though never alone: was a dunce, and plucked twice. Perhaps it was I who shunned others, for had I not society in the constant presence of my Familiar? I was of course a dunce, for my brain was never steady enough to carry me over the Pons Asinorum, or to make a Latin ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... scornfully chosen by Pope as dunce-hero of the Dunciad, had, for the past six years, been pilloried by Fielding; and, not unmindful of these onslaughts, he inserted in his new work a virulent attack on the late manager of the New Theatre in the Haymarket. The tenor of Pasquin was here grossly misrepresented. Fielding ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... very thing,' said Charles; 'that Ovis of yours was music; I would have made you a Knight of the Golden Fleece on the spot. Tutors I could get by shoals, but a fellow-dunce is inestimable.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his school days, "How to be a Dunce," and although in mature life he was "on the side of his masters" and grateful to them "that my persistent efforts not to learn Latin were frustrated; and that I was not entirely successful even in escaping ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... seventy-six girls exactly like her any day of the week. Rather pretty, rather fair, rather nice, rather musical! Everything rather, and nothing very! and thinks Oswald the most wonderful man in the world. She can't be very clever herself, if she thinks that, can she? Oswald was always a regular dunce!" ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... supposed to be the richest subject in Europe, very profuse in gardening, birds, and household furniture, but mighty frugal and parsimonious in everything else; of a very lofty mien, and yet not proud; of no deep understanding.—Swift. As great a dunce as ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... "What a dunce I am!" cried Heinz in amazement, pressing his hand upon his brow. "That's why your face was so familiar! By my saint! I am no knight if I did not see you then, before the battle waxed hot. It was close beside your Burgrave Frederick, who held aloft ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... into the pedigree of 'dunce' lays open to us an important page in the intellectual history of Europe. Certain theologians in the Middle Ages were termed Schoolmen; having been formed and trained in the cloister and cathedral schools which Charlemagne and his immediate ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... and there's charity,' says Iky, 'but my mother sewed happiness on my waist this morning.' Did you ever hear of such a dunce as that ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... too liberal entirely, so she is, it 'ud cost his heirs and succissors betther nor ten pounds to have him out as soon as the other. Get along, man, and take half a year at dogmatical theology: go and read your Dens, you poor dunce, you!" ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... approaching next, confessed, That in his heart he loved a jest: A wag he was, he needs must own, And could not let a dunce alone: Sometimes his friend he would not spare, And might perhaps be too severe: But yet, the worst that could be said, He was a wit both born and bred; And, if it be a sin or shame, Nature alone must bear the blame: One fault he hath, is sorry for't, His ears are half a foot too short; Which ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet dunce cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke bonnet. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... you are on my side," cries his ward exultantly. She tucks her arm into his. "And as for all that talk about 'knowledge'—don't bother me about that any more. It's a little rude of you, do you know? One would think I was a dunce—that I knew nothing—whereas, I assure you," throwing out her other hand, "I know quite as much as most girls, and a great deal more than many. I daresay," putting her head to one side, and examining him thoughtfully, "I know more than you do, if it comes to that. ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... send them to Mat Meegan, is it?" he replied—"and do you think, sir," said he, "that I'd send them to that dry-headed dunce, Mr. Frazher, with his black coat upon him, and his Caroline hat, and him wouldn't take a glass of poteen wanst in seven years? Mat, sir, likes it, and teaches the boys ten times betther whin he's dhrunk nor when he's sober; and you'll never find a good tacher, sir, but's ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... between the horns of a dilemma. Either our young chieftain must be a dunce, or we are rearing the Clever Woman ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he was rubbing his wiry head with irritation, and poring over his letters for some clew, like a dunce going back through his pot-hooks, suddenly a great knock sounded through the house—one, two, three—like the thumping of a mallet on a cask, to learn whether any beer ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... on all roads On bridges broad enough to spread Between the learned and the dunce Between the living ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... "Shoot, you dunce, shoot before he gets up to you!" shouted Will. "If he gets one swipe at you with that paw, you'll land out in the Gulf of Alaska! Fill ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... father—the fear of bearing tales and making bad things worse. He appeared to accept the idea that he had taken her over and made her, as he said, his particular lark; he quite agreed also that he was an awful fraud and an idle beast and a sorry dunce. And he never said a word to her against her mother—he only remained dumb and discouraged in the face of her ladyship's own overtopping earnestness. There were occasions when he even spoke as if he had wrenched his little ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... of Chopin were Adalbert Zwyny, a Bohemian violinist, who taught the piano, and Joseph Elsner, a violinist, organist and theorist. "From Zwyny and Elsner even the greatest dunce must learn something," he is quoted as saying. Neither of these men attempted to hamper his free growth by rigid technical restraints. Their guidance left him master of his own genius, at liberty to "soar like the lark into the ethereal ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... she did not stay, Various as the chameleon that she bore; Now a grand monarch with a crown of hay, Now mendicant in silks and golden ore: A statesman, now equipp'd to chase the boar, Or cowled monk, lean, feeble, and unfed; A clown-like lord, or swain of courtly lore; Now scribbling dunce, in sacred laurel clad, Or papal father now, in homely ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... like me in this, any more than in bodily favour; he was keen of wit and quick of memory; he was quick in learning, yet as modest as he was clever, for he never sought in any way to lord it over me because I, poor dunce, was not of such nimble ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... too, Mary Ogle, though rather younger than himself, had always been his counsellor and friend, and had also materially assisted in giving him the amount of knowledge he possessed in reading and writing. Had it not been for her, he confessed that he would have remained a sad dunce. ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... gentleman, 'that people who are blessed with sense and abilities to behave well, should so misuse them as to set a bad, instead of a good example to others, and by that means draw many into sin, who otherwise, perhaps, might never have acted wrong. Was this Sharply, you have been speaking of, a dunce and blockhead at his book, he would never gain the commendations that Mr. Chiron now bestows upon him; and, consequently, no boy would wish to be thought like him; his bad example, therefore, would not be of half the ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... cannot fail to do good the wider it is circulated. Whether it is worth your while to give up time to it is another question for you alone to decide; that it will do good for the subject is beyond all question. I do not think a dunce exists who could not understand it, and that is a bold saying after the extent to which I have been misunderstood. I did not understand what you required about sterility: assuredly the facts given do not go nearly so far. We differ so much that it is no use arguing. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Blackwood, of Fraser, at a time when quarterly and monthly magazines played a greater part in literature than they have played since or are likely to play again. He edited one of these periodicals for thirty years. "Nobody," as Mr. Browning has it, "calls him a dunce." Yet there is no collected edition of his works; his sober, sound, scholarly, admirably witty, and, with some very few exceptions, admirably catholic literary criticism, is rarely quoted; and to add to this, there is a curious prepossession ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... has; I mean, I don't allow myself to be such a dunce, even in my own thoughts. I never even think ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... take what we can give them—they call it love—not love of us and of America, but love of the little Wops and the little Greasers and the little Polaks in their own home-land. Oh, dear, such a frightful mess we have got ourselves into. And what a dunce I was to go to that silly meeting and get ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... had to smile when he saw the villagers tumbling through their doorways. They couldn't have done anything that would have suited him better. Had there been a single one among the prairie dogs that wasn't a dunce he would have run away from his hole, outside the village, to hide somewhere until Benny Badger ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... begged to stay on another half year, you know, because of the exam, but I failed again in that hateful arithmetic: I'm a perfect dunce over figures, father; I hope you don't mind. I can sing very well; my voice was better than any of the other girls, and that will give you more pleasure than if I could do all the sums in the world. They tried to teach me algebra, too. ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... is!" said Mary, looking back at her as they walked away. "I had thought that I was rather good at liking poetry, but she leaves me feeling like the dunce at the kindergarten." ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Austell, in Cornwall. Though poor, he contrived to send his two sons to a penny-a-week school in the neighbourhood. Jabez, the elder, took delight in learning, and made great progress in his lessons; but Samuel, the younger, was a dunce, notoriously given to mischief and playing truant. When about eight years old he was put to manual labour, earning three-halfpence a day as a buddle-boy at a tin mine. At ten he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and while in this ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... sons,—the elder a dunce, the younger, Lycophron (or wolf-heart), a youth of noble nature and fine intellect. He sent them on a visit to Proclus, their mother's father, and from him the boys learned, what they had not known before, that their father ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... wooed a coy maid once, All of a summer's day he plead; Oft he spoke of the bonds of love—the dunce! And she ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... boy grew up he clearly showed in what direction his interest lay. At school he was something of a dunce at his lessons, but let him but have a pencil and paper and his mind was wide awake at once. Every spare moment he spent making sketches on the ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... some books well enough, but not studying-books," said Ivy, with a sigh, "and I don't see any good in them. If it wasn't for mamma, I never would open one,—never! I would just as soon be a dunce as not; I don't see anything very horrid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Indeed, you are wrong," said the Lily-belle proudly, "I cared nothing for him; he called on me once, And would have come often, no doubt, if I'd asked him, But though he was handsome, I thought him a dunce." ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... least modified my conceit. I was always the dunce of the party—the smallest child knew more of woodcraft than I did, and had something to tell of everything. Seeing Oogahnahbayah, a small eagle-hawk, flying over, they would say, 'He eats the emu eggs.' He flies over where the emu is sitting on ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... instructors were wise and worthy); and I am now so old, that I may say, without any great exhibition of vanity, that I have always kept well up among my school- and college-companions: but that blockhead kept me steadily at the bottom of my class, and kept a frightful dunce at the top of it, by his peculiar system. I have observed (let me say) that masters and professors who are stupid themselves have a great preference for stupid fellows, and like to keep down clever ones. A professor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... people are working together, the absurd and adventitious distinctions of society do not intrude. The capitalist and his agents are looking for the greatest amount of labor or the largest income in money from their investments, and they do not promote a dunce to a station where he will destroy raw material or slacken industry because of his name, or birth, or family connections. The obscurest and humblest person has a fair field for competition. That he proves himself capable of earning more money for his employers is a testimonial ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though he should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they with theirs.... It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion, it is only ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... "What a dunce-head!" exclaimed his sister; "that was last night when you played tag, and you tumbled over into the ditch and bellered like the big baby ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... brother and sister. When he was tired of sitting, tradition has it that the little fellow used to amuse himself by getting up and standing in the corner to which the school culprits were sent. Here he duly put on the dunce's cap which he had seen them wear, and which bore the inscription, "For my bad ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... Abuse pell-mell encounter with abuse; Write he again, Ile write eternally; Who feeds Revenge, hath found an endless Muse. If Death ere made his black Dart of a Pen, My Pen his special Bayly shall become: Somewhat Ile be reputed of 'mongst men, By striking of this Dunce or dead or dumb: Await the World the Tragedy of Wrath, What next I paint shall tread no ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... — N. ignoramus, dunce; wooden spoon; no scholar. [insulting terms for ignorant person:] (imbecility) 499 (folly) 501 moron, imbecile, idiot; fool, jerk, nincompoop, asshole [Vulg.]. [person with superficial knowledge] dilettante, sciolist^, smatterer, dabbler, half scholar; charlatan; wiseacre. greenhorn, amateur ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... before fifteen, living in the whirl, the bustle, the luxury, and the unhomeliness of a hotel, what could you expect of Miss Flora but that she should be, at seventeen years of age, a butterfly in her habits, a clever dunce as regards solid knowledge, and a premature woman of the world in her tastes and manners? The apartments which the Briggs family occupy at the Fifth Avenue Hotel are magnificently decorated and furnished, but they do not constitute a home. Several times Mr. Briggs has offered to purchase a ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... dunce, And people suppose me clever; This could but have happened once, And we missed ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... look!' cried Jack, with eager eyes. 'I see!' cried Tom, 'I see! You go and seek another mouse, And leave this mouse to me.' 'Indeed, I won't!' cried Jack at once; 'You surely take me for a dunce! ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... little man, Is very hard to get, Will it make it any easier For you to sit and fret? And wouldn't it be wiser Than waiting, like a dunce, To go to work in earnest And ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... the Duke of Wellington, whom her son strikingly resembled in features, person, and character; while his father was principally distinguished as a musical composer and performer. [118] But, strange to say, Wellington's mother mistook him for a dunce; and, for some reason or other, he was not such a favourite as her other children, until his great deeds in after-life constrained her to be proud ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Archer that shot at a frog, B was a Butcher—he had a big dog, C was a Captain all covered with lace, D was a Dunce with a very ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... Friars Gray caught him; whipped him before the whole school; put a dunce-cap on his head, and stood him on a high chair. Then his humiliation seemed complete. He prayed for death. At home when he tried to tell his mother about his trouble she laughed, and boxed his ears for being a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... flaxen heads and pretty faces. The rosy little children, holding up their eager hands and crying the answer to this question and that, seemed mocking her. She seemed to read in the book, "Oh, Ethel, you dunce, dunce, dunce!" She went home silent in the carriage, and burst into bitter tears on her bed. Naturally a haughty girl of the highest spirit, resolute and imperious, this little visit to the parish school taught Ethel lessons more valuable than ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... pick the scoundrel's pocket for your pains. "Come Humphrey come! thou art a lad of spirit! "Rise to a halbert—as I did—by merit! "Would'st thou believe it? even I was once "As thou art now, a plough-boy and a dunce; "But Courage rais'd me to my rank. How now boy! "Shall Hero Humphrey still be Numps the plough-boy? "A proper shaped young fellow! tall and straight! "Why thou wert made for glory! five feet eight! "The road ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... the year 1759, he who, in less than thirty years afterwards, held senates enchained by his eloquence and audiences fascinated by his wit, was, by common consent both of parent and preceptor, pronounced to be "a most impenetrable dunce." ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... sinking; but the sense of weakness only made him more resolute to finish the work which (however mistakenly) he thought it his duty to leave completed; more determined that, having lived for so many years a dunce, he would go down to the grave cleansed of the stain of ignorance, having read and appreciated as much of the great writers of antiquity as any man who had had a well-trained youth, a studious manhood. Soon after his great illness (which, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... carefully picks up whatever he considers fit to eat, that is to say, pretty well everything that lies about on the stones. Great things were hoped of him, but hitherto he has disappointed all expectations: he is the dunce of the establishment. Perhaps he is too young still: his little elephant-soul no doubt resembles that of a sucking-babe which, in the place of its feet and hands, plays with the stupendous nose that must first explore and question the universe. It is ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... prone, without a rhyme, Inane and madlike was he many a time, His outer self, forsooth, fine may have been, But one wild, howling waste his mind within: Addled his brain that nothing he could see; A dunce! to read essays so loth to be! Perverse in bearing, in temper wayward; For human censure he had no regard. When rich, wealth to enjoy he knew not how; When poor, to poverty he could not bow. Alas! what utter waste of lustrous grace! ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a dunce, but even a dunce can liven up sufficiently when he's in love to see whether his sweetheart cares for him or not, and you didn't take much pains to hide the state of affairs," he said with a rueful laugh. "I know enough about girls to ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... a farmer's lad, ten years old, tall and stout for his age, and able to do a great many more things than some city boys of fourteen. He could ride and drive, keep the stable in order, and even handle a plough. Nor was he a dunce; for, thanks to an evening school, which some of his Sunday teachers had opened in the village, he had learned to read and write very fairly. He had a comfortable place at farmer Jolly's; but there was plenty of work to do, and the food was plain, though he always ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... and single, Haunts the rude masses of brick garlanded gayly with vine, E'en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin, E'en in the people itself? Is it illusion or not? Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim Transalpine, Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare? Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger, Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... not understand a lesson; and he always made it so clear that it was a pleasure to learn. Sometimes a boy would ask a foolish question, which would make the rest laugh; but then Mr. Harrison would say it was better to be laughed at for trying to learn, than to grow up a dunce. ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... noticeable among those seniors who had not disdained the brew of punch that had coincided with the announcement of midnight, made, with maddening deliberation, by Mrs. Mangan's cuckoo-clock. The usual delirium of cracker-head-dresses had befallen the company. Larry, decorated with a dunce's cap, placed upon his yellow head by a jovial matron, found himself fated, by a final effort of penalising fancy on the part of another matron, to select "a young lady," to conduct her to the topmost step of the staircase, and there, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... wretched little dunce I am!" she soliloquized. "And what must he think of me! Well!" with a little sigh, "the worse his opinion of me, the better for Madeline. And here I am this minute, in spite of myself, actually rejoicing in my heart ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... with as soon as possible, taking no interest in her work, and when she came out her brain was a sluggish and unresponsive as one might expect. Well aware of her shortcomings, she made light of them, insisting laughingly that she was the dunce of the family and Virginia its genius. She would do the drudgery of housekeeping while her sister ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... realms of verse invade, Forth from the court, where sceptred sages sit, Abused with praise, and flatter'd into wit, Where in lethargic majesty they reign, And what they won by dulness, still maintain, 40 Legions of factious authors throng at once, Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce. To 'Hamilton's[84] the ready lies repair— Ne'er was lie made which was not welcome there— Thence, on maturer judgment's anvil wrought, The polish'd falsehood's into public brought. Quick-circulating ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... that her boy takes so little interest in so useful a work, and even, perhaps, scolds him, and threatens him for not loving study. "If you don't learn to read," she says to him, in a tone of irritation and displeasure, "you will grow up a dunce, and every body will laugh at you, and you will be ashamed to ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the world I've travelled to and fro, How many folks about me—above me and below— Might make this life more happy, if old as well as young Would bear in mind the maxim which bids them hold their tongue. Hold your tongue—hold your tongue—you'll ne'er be thought a dunce: Hold your tongue and think twice before you loose it once: Hold your tongue—for quiet folks are oft reputed wise: Hold your tongue, but open wide your ears and ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... household, headed by the physician, and closely followed by the companion, with the hired nurses. Methought that the doctor looked on this wreck of mortality with grim satisfaction. "I knew it," said he, slowly; "and Doctor Phillimore is nothing more than a solemn dunce. I told him that she would not survive to be subjected to the consultation of the morrow. And how happens it," said he, turning fiercely to the companion and the nurses, "that my patient was thus left ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... ought to have known; I mean, it's very natural," I faltered and stuttered, thinking what a dunce I had been not to understand that both hers and Lord Ralles's letters had been only a pretext to get away from the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... stupid! If Pascualet is your boy, he ought to look like you, oughtn't he, just as you look the way your father, old Pascualo, looked. Well, he doesn't, that's all! He looks like Tonet—eyes shape, build, and complexion! Poor dunce of a Rector! They call you lanudo! But the wool on your eyes is thicker than they ever guessed! Heavens, man, take a peep at the boy! He's the living picture of Tonet, as Tonet used to be in the days when he was ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... ties; I notice them so little, I imagine—So things are coming around, as I said. And if my big trade now succeeds, perhaps that will bring luck for us all. It would be fun to show her that I am not such a dunce, ha, ha!" ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the clown who made Jimmy laugh. He was a little man with a tall, pointed white felt hat like a dunce's cap; he wore the usual clown's dress, and generally kept his hands in his pockets as if he ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... 'You little dunce. Why, what we call a stafell without the household furniture. So you will find a wedding dress and all kinds of dresses and garments without number awaiting you, for I gave the milliner ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Michael Angelo uses of Perugino. Behold, the Christians despising the Dunce Greeks, as the Infidel modernists despise ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... little corporeal damage, as might a poet or a philosopher. There is no certainty in speculation, for by this experiment it has been proved, that the bulls-eye in the stable window, in falling is as fragile as the palace's clearest pane of crystal. Who would have thought it? A dunce, that no one would have branded for having brains, has from a mere tumble given up the ghost. Bury him, bury him; I am sorry for it, but cannot howl," and at these last words a howl was heard from below, and soon Babet Blais came rushing along the corridor, wringing her hands, and frantically ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... your affectionate nature, and noble principles, it is a pity you should be regarded only as a dull and sullen little dunce, whom no one cares to ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... I think you one great Fool. Did your King tell you thus to treat the Indians? Had he been such a Dunce he ne'er had conquer'd, And made the running French for Quarter cry. I always mind that such proud Fools are Cowards, And never do aught that ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... go back and study. No going out to play for you this morning. Jane Mason, you're the biggest dunce ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... attention with which even her Uncle Ralph listened to his ceaseless flow of words. "I knew he was older than Abbie, and that this was his third year in college. What could I have expected from Uncle Ralph's son? A pretty dunce he must think me, blushing and stammering like an awkward country girl. What on earth could Abbie mean about needing my help for him, and being troubled about him. It is some of her ridiculous fanatical nonsense, I suppose. I wish she ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... be puzzled what to do with your son, if he be a born dunce, if reading and writing be all the accomplishments he can acquire, if he be horribly ignorant and depraved, if he be indolent and an incorrigible liar, lost to all shame and decency, and incurably dishonest, make a newspaper editor of him. Look around you, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... horn-book for little Luke Toy—and for two hours taught them with the same joyless severity under which their fathers and mothers had suffered. For spelling 'lamb' without the final b, Ivy Nancarrow underwent the punishment invariably meted out for such errors—mounted the dunce's bench, and wore the dunce's cap; nor did 'Thaniel Langmaid's knuckles escape the ruler when he dropped a blot upon his copy, 'Comparisons are Odious'—a proposition of which he understood the meaning not at all. The cane ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... just leave that stick alone; Come, drop it now at once; Of all the cats I ever knew You are the greatest dunce." ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... when the signal came, Discharged their a-b abs against the dame, Who, 'mid the volleyed learning, firm and calm, Patted the furloughed ferule on her palm, And, to our wonder, could detect at once, Who flashed the pan, and who was downright dunce. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... "Ach, but he's a dunce onyway," said the boy. "He canna spell an easy word like 'examination,' an' he had twenty-two mistakes in his dictation test," he went on, and she was quick to note the air of priggish importance ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... ran until he reached his uncle's. His uncle, when he saw him in such a plight, said: "Oh! what is the matter?" "Uncle!" said the boy, "the same innkeeper has changed the tablecloth, too, for me." The uncle was on the point of giving the dunce a good thrashing; but afterward, seeing that it was a child, he calmed his anger, and said: "I understand; but I will give you a remedy by which you can get back everything from that thief of a landlord. Here it is! It is a stick. Hide it under your bolster; and if any one comes ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... nothing, or only weak home-brewed stuff that results in head-ache. My dearest, Fate has been very good to me, and I love my profession of letters. I am sure that of all educational processes there is none better than book-making; and the man who begins by making books must be a dolt, dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by writing them. So you may yet hope to see the morning that shall make your Valentine famous—for a fortnight. What man can hope to be famous for more than a fortnight in such a railroad age ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... no dunce," thought Mr. Hugh Ingelow. "Miss Blanche has found a foe worthy of her ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... and fire our new gun? If I could, you might be the Artillery all to yourself, and it would be capital fun. You wag your tail at that, do you? You would like it a great deal better? But I can't bear you to be such a dunce, when you look so wise; and yet I don't believe you'll ever learn a letter. Aunt Jemima is going to make me a new cocked hat out of the next old newspaper, for I want to have a review; But the newspaper after that, Papa Poodle, must be kept to make ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the Wise and Good Are seen, far off, and rarely understood. The world's a father to a Dunce unknown, And much he thrives, for Dulness! he's thy own. No hackney brethren e'er condemn him twice; He fears no enemies, but dust ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... partial views, Except they know whom they abuse; And since you ne'er provoked their spite, Depend upon 't, their judgment's right. But if you blab, you are undone: Consider what a risk you run: You lose your credit all at once; The town will mark you for a dunce; The vilest doggrel Grub Street sends Will pass for yours with foes and friends; And you must bear the whole disgrace, Till some fresh blockhead ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... it be thy lot To essay the dismal track Where Odysseus half hung back, How wilt thou conciliate That grim mastiff by the gate? Sure, 'twill puzzle thee to fawn On his muzzles three that yawn Antrous; or to find, poor dunce, Grace in his six eyes at once— ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pampered by his mother, Anne de Coligny, that he reached the age of twelve years without having learned to read or write. When the over-tender mother died, the boy's father, Duke George, took his dunce-son's education in hand; but this gentleman was peculiar in his notions of the training of young minds. French and German he deemed unnecessary trivialities, and the Christian religion a banality. Instead of these prosaic lessons the boy was instructed in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... have become of the fools?" he muttered. "He oughter been home two, three days ago, and we hain't seen a sign of him yet. Can't be Lew's such a dunce as to walk into the red-skins' ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... to take her mother to New York shortly; but as "that dear old dunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be necessary to wait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as the largest steamers sailed from Liverpool, and Ellan was so near to that port, perhaps I would not mind ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... last of the crew needs especial remark, Though he looked an incredible dunce: He had just one idea—but, that one being "Snark," The good Bellman ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... great nature, a great writer, and a man of piercing intellect: he is a jack or a dunce that denies it. But of you, more than of most men at all your equals in intellectual resource, it may be said that yours is not a spherical or universal, but a special and linear intelligence,—of great human depth and richness, but special ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... fool then: Do you remember what a dance you led me? how I grew qualm'd in love, and was a dunce? could expound but once a quarter, and then was out too: and then out of the stinking stir you put me in, I prayed for my own issue. You ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... will agree with me, but I expect you girls will, and perhaps even Miss Lincoln may be secretly looking forward to to-morrow, though she won't reveal her feelings! I'm afraid from this you'll guess that I must have been a dunce at school myself. I frankly confess I never gained a prize in my life, but for that reason I shall appreciate all the more my privilege of distributing these beautiful books; and you will feel you have my true sympathy when I wish you a ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... day: Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick If they were not his own by finessing and trick; He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back. Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what came; And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, Who peppered the highest was surest to please. But let us be candid, and speak out our mind: If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave, What ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... that he may be more welcome to you, he says. Were it to be sent unsealed, the characters we write in would be Hebrew to the dunce. I desire you to return it; and I'll give you a copy of it upon demand; for I intend to keep it by me, as a guard against the infection of your company, which might otherwise, perhaps, some time hence, be apt to weaken the impressions ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... which he was to write prefaces and lives was not an undertaking directed by him, but that he was to furnish a preface and life to any poet the booksellers pleased. I asked him if he would do this to any dunce's works if they should ask him. Johnson: "Yes, sir, and say he was a dunce." My friend seemed now not much to relish talking of this edition; it had been arranged by the forty chief booksellers of London, and Johnson had named ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... treat you, once a year, To the same stupid set; Good cheer Such hardship cannot soften. To listen to the self-same dunce, At the same leaden table, once Per ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... the Stoics' account was in the forenoon (for example) the worst man in the world is in the afternoon the best of men; and he that falls asleep a very sot, dunce, miscreant, and brute, nay, by Jove, a slave and a beggar to boot, rises up the same day a prince, a rich and a happy man, and (which is yet more) a continent, just, determined, and unprepossessed person;—not by shooting forth out of a young and tender body a downy beard or the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... are nowadays beginning to expect bright talk from their partners, and the ladies have a singularly pretty way of saying the most biting things in a smooth and unconcerned fashion when they find a dunce beginning to talk platitudes or to patronize his partner; but the middle generation are unspeakably inane; and the worst is that they regard their inanity as a decided sign of distinction. A grave man who adds a sense of humour to his gravity may ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... himself of the imputation of dullness, and obtained sundry honorary silver pennies, as acknowledgments of his application; his school-fellows now solicited his friendship as eagerly as they had avoided it before; and in less than a twelvemonth after his arrival, this supposed dunce was remarkable for the brightness of his parts; having in that short period learnt to read English perfectly well, made great progress in writing, enabled himself to speak the French language without hesitation, and acquired some knowledge in the rudiments of the Latin tongue. The usher ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... grimly. "You would put a dunce cap on poor America, and stand her in a corner. If I resign, Dona Eustaquia, it will be to become a ranchero, not a shopkeeper. To tell the truth, I have little desire to leave ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... also to hear that "Tristram Shandy" was one of the first books he read after "Robinson Crusoe," and that Robertson's "America" was an early favorite. Rousseau's "Confessions" had discovered to him that he was not a dunce. Speaking of English pauperism, he said that government should direct poor men what to do. "Poor Irish folks come wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... it came on me all at once, 175 This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training for ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... inability and ill looks of my advocate, than to my cause. Again, thou art deprived of the force men of our cast give to arguments; for she won't let thee swear!-Art, moreover, a very heavy, thoughtless fellow; tolerable only at a second rebound; a horrid dunce at the impromptu. These, encountering with such a lady, are great disadvantages.—And still a greater is thy balancing, (as thou dost at present,) between old rakery and new reformation; since this puts thee into the same situation with ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... in New, two in All Souls, and two already existed, as we have seen, in C. C. C. This Layton is he that took a Rabelaisian and unquotable revenge on that old tyrant of the Schools, Duns Scotus. "We have set Dunce in Bocardo, and utterly banished him from Oxford for ever, with all his blind glosses . . . And the second time we came to New College we found all the great quadrant full of the leaves of Dunce, the wind blowing them into every corner. And there we found a certain Mr. Greenfield, a gentleman ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... on in untempered crudity. And who is not sensible of the vulgarity and coarseness of the account of Boswell? 'If he had not been a great fool he would not have been a great writer ... he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb,' and so forth, in which the shallowness of the analysis of Boswell's character matches the puerile rudeness of the terms. Here again, is a sentence about Montesquieu. 'The English at that time,' Macaulay says of the middle of the eighteenth century, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... refute his statements as to the shallowness of Sterne by declaring that "Tristram Shandy" affected her to tears, Johnson rolled himself into contortions, made an exasperating grimace, and replied, "Why, dearest, that is because you are a dunce!" Afterward, when reproached for the remark, he replied, "Madam, if I had thought so, I surely would not have ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... What sort of a dunce do you take me for? I didn't miss a vibration of my voice, a ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... school, for the teacher says that I am a little behind in reading, writing, composition, history, geography, and arithmetic. In other subjects I am not so dull. Yes, yes; it will certainly do me more good to go to school. Then I shall be a dunce ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... "Self Help" relates that Swift failed in his examinations, that James Watt (the discoverer of the motive power of steam), Stephenson and Newton were bad pupils, that an Edinburgh professor regarded Walter Scott as a dunce. [The same with Darwin, who says in his autobiography, "When I left the school I was, for my age, neither high nor low in it, and I believe that I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... as sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius linguae: in English, illiterate, a dunce, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Marilla," she groaned. "I'm sure I'll never be able to make head or tail of it. There is no scope for imagination in it at all. Mr. Phillips says I'm the worst dunce he ever saw at it. And Gil—I mean some of the others are so smart at it. It is ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... overlooked by those who remember, at the opening of the Dunciad, the note upon this very question about the orthography of Shakspeare's name, as also upon the other great question about the title of the immortal Satire, Whether it ought not to have been the Dunceiade, seeing that Dunce, its great author and progenitor, cannot possibly dispense with the letter e. Meantime we must remark, that the first three of Mr. Campbell's variations are mere caprices of the press; as is Shagspere; or, more probably, this last euphonious variety arose ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... eram. I have had troubles in the world, and nothing alters a man so much as grief. I have heard it will change the colour of a man's hair in a night. However, at last, know me he did, that's sure enough; for we are both of an age, and were at the same charity school. George was a great dunce, but no matter for that; all men do not thrive in the world according to their learning. I am sure I have reason to say so; but it will be all one a thousand years hence. Well, sir, where was I?—O—well, we no sooner knew each ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... knows on," drawled the old fellow, laughing until his old head seemed ready to topple from his shoulders. "No blood relation, any how, sir. You see, my wife's cousin's aunt's husband's brother Jerry was a cousin to Nicodemus Dunce, who, if I don't disremember, was related in some way to Isacker Pete's wife's sister, and she was this ere man's niece, or somethin' o' that sort, but ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... knows that bonds couldn't be burst without being burst asunder. But, let the impregnable Jackass think—what would become of the noble rhythm and the majestic roll of sound? Shakespeare was an ignorant dunce also when he characterized the ingratitude that involves the principle of public honor as "the unkindest cut of all." Every school child knows that it is ungrammatical; but only those who have any sense learn after awhile the esoteric secret ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison |
