"Ignorant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who had in reality scattered like chaff before the wind, she still saw in her cheerful visions tilling her familiar fields. It was as if she had fallen asleep with the great blow that bad wrecked her body, and had dreamed on steadily throughout the years. Of real changes she was as ignorant as a new-born child. Events had shaken the world to its centre, and she, by her obscure hearth, had not felt so much as a sympathetic tremor. In her memory there was no Appomattox, news of the death of Lincoln ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... was beating almost painfully, as if with weight of a novel kind of fear, that yet was not altogether fear. Stafford looked at her with the man's, the lover's eagerness, but her face told him nothing. She was so ignorant of the very A B C of love that there was no start of surprise, no word or movement which might guide him; but his instant thought was that she ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... America!" Which remark, thanks to the expressive by-play of the illustrious actor, and to the superior air with which he replied, "I believe you!" gave those who stood near to understand that these gentlemen knew exactly what would happen in America in such a case. Now, they were equally and entirely ignorant on that subject; but upon the crowd their words made ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... seems to me that thou wast ignorant of all that which I went out to do, and my plan was ...
— Judith • Arnold Bennett
... himself down upon the ground. Then a learned Brahmana, Saunaka by name versed in self-knowledge and skilled in the Sankhya system of yoga, addressed the king, saying, 'Causes of grief by thousands, and causes of fear by hundreds, day after day, overwhelm the ignorant but not the wise. Surely, sensible men like thee never suffer themselves to be deluded by acts that are opposed to true knowledge, fraught with every kind of evil, and destructive of salvation. O king, in thee dwelleth that understanding furnished with the eight attributes ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... above-mentioned letters to Hon. Solomon Lincoln: "We have a vague tradition that my great-grandfather went from Pennsylvania to Virginia, and that he was a Quaker." It is of little consequence that this "vague tradition" was stoutly contradicted by the President's father, the ignorant Thomas, who indignantly denied that either a Puritan or a Quaker could be found in the line of his forbears, and who certainly seemed to set heredity at defiance if such were the case. But while thus repudiating others, Thomas himself was in some danger of being repudiated; for so pained have ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Ignorant in a great measure of its contents, Mary Avenel had been taught from her infancy to hold this volume in sacred veneration. It is probable that the deceased Lady of Walter Avenel only postponed initiating her daughter into the mysteries of the Divine Word, until she should be better able to comprehend ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... invented these lies to deceive us, or else she does not know herself how her husband looks. Whichever is the case, she must be deprived of these riches as soon as possible. And yet, if she is really ignorant of her husband's appearance, she must no doubt have married a god, and who knows what will happen? At all events, if—which heaven forbid—she does become the mother of a divine infant, I shall instantly hang myself. Meanwhile let us return to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was on what is sometimes styled a "savage island"—an island that lay far out of the usual track of ships, that had only been discovered a little more than a year at that time, and was inhabited by a blood-thirsty, savage, cruel, and ignorant race of human beings, who had renounced idolatry and embraced Christianity only a few months before. They knew no more of ship-building than the celebrated man in the moon, and their methods of building canoes were quite inapplicable to vessels of large capacity. Besides this, Mr ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... uncomfortable idea that by the Christian standard—that divine test of the true and pure—bribery would not be altogether approved of; and yet he was tacitly coming round to the understanding that "packets" would be required, for what purpose both he and Mr Donne were to be supposed to remain ignorant. But it would be very awkward, so near to the time, if he were to be clearly convinced that bribery, however disguised by names and words, was in plain terms a sin. And yet he knew Mr Benson had once or twice convinced him against his will of certain things, which he had thenceforward ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I trust we shall, in breaking our way through and reaching the town, well and good. If, on the other hand, we find greater obstacles than we expect, and are forced to fall back fighting, we shall have the advantage that darkness will be setting in. The Russians, the greater part of whom will be ignorant of our strength, will lose time before they move, fearing they may be assaulted in other quarters, and in the darkness we might be able to make good our escape, which it is certain none of us would do, should we meet with a ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... to leave the room," said Mrs. Van Vechten, pointing toward Rosamond, who, wholly ignorant of the nature of her offence, retreated hastily, wondering how she had ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... Memnon's head breathing wild music in the morning sunshine, crocodiles, copper-coloured natives, and Antony and Cleopatra. These things were about as much as Miss McCroke's painstaking tuition had implanted in her pupil's mind. And here, without a shadow of vocation, this poor ignorant girl was poring over the driest details that ever interested the scholar. The mysteries of the triple language, the Rosetta Stone, Champollion—tout le long de la riviere. Was it any wonder that her head ached almost to agony, and that the ringing of imaginary ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... of passionless indifference. Candeille was standing close by, looking obviously distressed and not a little puzzled. An instant's reflection was sufficient to convince Marguerite that the whilom actress of the Varietes Theatre was obviously ignorant of the events to which Chauvelin had been alluding: she was, therefore, of no serious consequence, a mere tool, mayhap, in the ex-ambassador's hands. At the present moment she looked like a silly child who does not understand the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... not a complete work, and ought not to be criticized as such. It consists of Fragments of her Memoirs, which my mother had intended to complete at her leisure, and which would have probably undergone alterations, of the nature of which I am ignorant, if a longer life had been allowed her ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... camp above Dover, where their leaders' first act, on rallying, was to send their prisoner, Commius, under a flag of truce to Caesar, with a promise of unconditional submission. That his landing had been opposed, was, they declared, no fault of theirs; it was all the witlessness of their ignorant followers, who had insisted on fighting. Would he overlook it? Yes; Caesar was ready to show this clemency; but, after conduct so very like treachery, considering their embassy to him in Gaul, he ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... and, I dare say, true enough," replied Dr. Livesey. "We take the risk, but we are not so ignorant as you believe us. Next, you say you don't like the crew. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for invocation of the spirits of the devil, specially in the vision of one Mr. William Sympson, her cousin and her mother's brother's son, who she affirmed was a great scholar and doctor of medicine, dealing with charms and abusing the ignorant people. Against this poor woman her own confession, as in the case of Bessie Dunlop, was ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... not be ignorant of his present condition, and that the place he was in could not afford him subsistence or defence; and especially considering that the state of our affairs were such, that if we should escape from thence we could not remove to our advantage, he had thought good to let ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... grown man, dealing cautiously and dispassionately with serious things; and what hope he has is based on the consciousness of ignorance—ignorance of man, ignorance of the nature of the mind, its origin and capacities. Michelangelo is so ignorant of the spiritual world, of the new body and its laws, that he does not surely know whether the consecrated Host may not be the body of Christ. And of all that range of sentiment he is the poet, a poet still alive, and in [96] possession of our inmost thoughts—dumb ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... kind of people who will never let on that they don't know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant they are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't shot over their heads. The queen was just one of that sort, and was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. She hesitated a moment; then her face brightened ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... time commerce was despised as dishonorable and industry merely tolerated as a necessary evil. In the Japan of Yalu, Liao-yang, and Mukden we have no modern Minerva springing full-armed from the head of Jove, but rather an unrecognized Ulysses {36} of ancient skill surprising onlookers merely ignorant of the long record of his prowess. Viewed from the same historical standpoint, however, industrial Japan is a mere learner, unskilled, with the long and weary price of victory yet ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... tribunal. Several of the commissioners, like Pauw and Muis for example, were personal enemies of Barneveld. Many of them were totally ignorant of law. Some of them knew not a word of any language but their mother tongue, although much of the law which they were to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... arches and sheds, on doorsteps and in cellars. They have neither home nor friend. To many of them the thieves' life is their natural calling; they live as animals live, and hope only as animals hope, and when they die, die as animals die; ignorant of God, ignorant of good, ignorant of their own souls. Yet even for such as they, Christ died, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... rest, in fact rather less than more. I, no more than the others, had any view about the question at issue, while my possible contribution was less by one thing, namely, the false assumption of a knowledge that I had not got. I was, I admit, much put out, and being overwhelmed by the mob of ignorant speakers, I held my peace, fearing lest I should be rightly set down as insane if I held out for being sane among those madmen.[55] So I continued to ponder all the questions in my mind, not swallowing what I had heard, but rather chewing the cud of constant meditation. At last the ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... now as I never did before, for don't I want to prove to this old world that I appreciate its bringing me to you? And you'll teach me about this art of yours, won't you, my little girl with the long, serious name? I'm ignorant, sweetheart, I don't know much about pictures, but don't you think that I can learn? Why, liebchen, I'm learning already! I never knew what they meant by lights and shadows until I saw ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... and Ready." Although Taylor was no politician and a stranger even to the ballot-box, he regarded himself as a Whig, but he took pains to explain that he was not an "ultra Whig." Daniel Webster called him "an ignorant old frontier Colonel," but not only Webster, but Clay and Seward, joined in his support. Many a Whig who voted for Taylor accepted him as the choice of two evils. Lincoln, however, was enthusiastic in his support of the nominee. He went into the campaign, as Nicolay and Hay remind us, with "exultant ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... productions; but these appear to me to be the chief. The relations which exist between the social and political condition of a people and the genius of its authors are always very numerous: whoever knows the one is never completely ignorant of ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... certainly ignorant of all but your Reims, not to know that!" replied Oudarde. "'Tis ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Salisbury Court were small rectangular theatres, the former constructed in a hall forty-six feet broad and sixty-six feet long, the latter erected on a plot of ground forty-two feet broad and one hundred and forty feet long, we are not left entirely ignorant of the shape and the approximate size of the Cockpit.[583] And from Middleton's Inner Temple Masque (1618) we learn that it was constructed of brick. Its sign, presumably, was that of a phoenix rising ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... has invested Wise Elshie with some qualities which made him appear, in the eyes of the vulgar, a man possessed of supernatural power. Common fame paid David Ritchie a similar compliment, for some of the poor and ignorant, as well as all the children, in the neighbourhood, held him to be what is called uncanny. He himself did not altogether discourage the idea; it enlarged his very limited circle of power, and in so far gratified his conceit; and it soothed his misanthropy, by increasing his ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... guardians and responsible for everything she had. My hands are clean of that—your brother did it without my knowledge. But no judge living would believe that I, being a guardian with my husband, could be so wholly ignorant of his affairs. There are severe penalties for such things, Bosio—I believe that we should both be sent to penal servitude; for no power on earth could save us from a conviction, any more than anything but Veronica's money can save us from ruin now. Gregorio has taken ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... pursue the atoms one by one, To see the law whereby each thing goes on. But some men, ignorant of matter, think, Opposing this, that not without the gods, In such adjustment to our human ways, Can nature change the seasons of the years, And bring to birth the grains and all of else To which divine Delight, the guide of life, Persuades mortality and leads it on, That, through ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... own importance in the scheme and the honors which his position in certain companies would heap upon him, that an abyss had yawned before him of which he had been wholly unaware. He was not unaware of it now. He was a vainglorious, ignorant man, whose life had been spent in common work done under the supervision of those who knew what he did not know. He had fed himself upon the comforting belief that he had learned all the tricks of any trade. He had been openly boastful of his astuteness and experience, and ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... place on the chart without consulting it. Bowditch's Epitome, and Blunt's Coast Pilot, seem to him the only books in the world worth consulting, though I should, perhaps, except Marryatt's novels and Tom Cringle's Log. But of matters connected with the shore Mr. Brewster is as ignorant as a child unborn. He holds all landsmen but ship-builders, owners, and riggers, in supreme contempt, and can hardly conceive of the existence of happiness, in places so far inland that the sea breeze does not blow. A severe and exacting officer ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... they may be planted in the wilderness, where there is plenty of land for them to subsist on, and where they may flourish as a free state; but they are, I doubt, too little disposed to labor without compulsion, as well as too ignorant to establish a good government, and the wild Arabs would soon molest and destroy or again enslave them. While serving us, we take care to provide them with everything, and they are treated with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... his superfluous energy on scientific farming, making the glebe and the hereditary estate as much the model farm as Hillside was the model parish. He had lately set up a threshing-machine worked by horses, which was as much admired by the intelligent as it was vituperated by the ignorant. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ornate column, no one marvels that there should also be mechanical skill enough in it to set it up on end; but the men who tore from the quarry these vast slabs, some of them eighteen feet in height over the soil, and raised them where they now stand, must have been ignorant savages, unacquainted with machinery, and unfurnished, apparently, with a single tool. And what, when contemplating their handiwork, we have to subtract in idea from their minds, we add, by an involuntary process, to their bodies: we come to ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... contract. He monopolized the sale of salt, flour, bread; and imposed a heavy tax on oil. Sixtus V. by exactions of a like description and by the sale of numberless offices, accumulated a vast sum of money, much of which bore heavy interest. He was so ignorant of the first principle of political economy as to lock up the accruing treasure in the Castle of S. Angelo. The rising of Masaniello in Naples was simply due to the exasperation of the common folk at having even fruit and vegetables ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... cleverness." About 1485 he went to an abbey of Olivetan monks at Villanova, a small village in lower Lombardy, where he illuminated 20 choral books with heads of saints and prophets, with very beautiful borders of flowers, fruits, and animals. These were sold by an ignorant and greedy priest for 17 zecchins, and only a few of the miniatures have been recovered, which are now kept in the sacristy. Of them, Vincenzo Sabbia, the Olivetan abbot, who was "confratello di religione" and nearly contemporary, ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... major, "though I think it was no more than right that you should have consulted me in regard to your methods, of which I am still profoundly ignorant. In getting up the scheme, I based everything on the fact that Corny could go into his uncle's house and obtain all ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... bad, or that his language is slangy or ill-chosen, you insinuate that when he lived at home with his papa and mamma he was surrounded by bad models, or, in plain English, that his parents were vulgar or ignorant people; when you say that he writes bad grammar, or is guilty of glaring solecisms, or displays want of etymological knowledge, you insinuate that his education was neglected, or that he has not associated with correct speakers. Usually, too, you do all this in the ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... rapport condition contact with these Akashic Records, and is thus enabled to read from them what he sees there. To him it actually seems as if he were seeing the actions of things in present existence, and many excellent clairvoyants are ignorant of the existence of the Akashic Records, though they habitually read the contents thereof; these clairvoyants know simply that they "see" these past happenings—they have not the faintest conception of how they ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... him all possibilities of education at such an early age, he was illiterate in his speech and as ignorant of the conventionalities of polite society as an Indian; but he possessed a heart overflowing with the milk of human kindness, was generous in the extreme, and ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... be omitted that when I speak of those people who were really thus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of their own conditions; for if they really knew their circumstances to be such as indeed they were, they must have been a kind of wilful murtherers if they would have gone abroad among healthy people—and it would have verified indeed the suggestion which I mentioned above, and which ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... doubtless true that much good may result from the employment of suggestion by a charlatan, in the form of a written medical charm, both parties being alike profoundly ignorant of the ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... daughter Miranda,' said Prospero; 'there is no harm done. I have so ordered it, that no person in the ship shall receive any hurt. What I have done has been in care of you, my dear child. You are ignorant who you are, or where you came from, and you know no more of me, but that I am your father, and live in this poor cave Can you remember a time before you came to this cell? I think you cannot for you were not then three ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... because I think that the dangerous class in this community is to be found among persons who, without intelligence, create animosity, and by their method of preaching tend to retard rather than to promote the progress of the poor and ignorant ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... them and hurried away in the pursuit; yet they could not break into the midst of their battle, but were received with strong resistance and obstinacy. Yet they put to flight the left wing, where Cassius commanded, being in great disorder, and ignorant of what had passed on the other wing; and, pursuing them to their camp, they pillaged and destroyed it, neither of their generals being present; for Antony, they say, to avoid the fury of the first onset, had retired into the marsh that was hard by; and Caesar was nowhere to be found after his being ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Cetinje. While waiting outside the monastery for the appearance of the Prince, who was attending divine service within, I entered into conversation with a gendarme. We spoke of many things, and to my surprise, for he was but an ignorant peasant, he inquired as to the progress of the war. He asked the nature of the country, on which subject I was luckily able to enlighten him. Parts of it are not at all unlike Montenegro. At this ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... for the most part; their half naked forms, browned by the sun, and hardened by the winter winds—a motley gathering; amongst whom there were scores of fasting men, and hundreds through whose wretched dwellings the, wind and rain found free ingress. They were poor, they were weak, they were ignorant, they were unarmed! but there was one, thing at least which they possessed—that quality which Heaven bestowed on the Irish race, to gild and redeem their misfortunes. Of courage and resolution they had plenty: they understood little of the causes which led to the outbreak ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... situation absolutely, she chose her mother; and perhaps one would not have had her do otherwise. Yet in the long run it was bound to be a mistake. Aurore was clever, refined, well read, and had had the training of a fashionable convent school. The mother was ignorant and coarse, as was inevitable, with one who before her marriage had been half shop-girl and half courtesan. The two could not live long together, and hence it was not unnatural that Aurore Dupin should marry, to enter upon a ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... is a very diverting, comical story; and I should like very much to tell it to the gouty gentlemen that come to our house." "That," answered Mr Barlow, "would be highly improper, unless you were particularly desired. Those gentlemen cannot be ignorant that such unbounded indulgence of their appetites can only tend to increase the disease; and therefore you could teach them nothing new on the subject. But it would appear highly improper for such a little boy as you to take upon him to instruct others, while he all the time wants so much ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... he began the ascent—cleared but did not rest. Over and over the problem came, each time clearer and more difficult. He must that night give away a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars—terrible ordeal! Ninety thousand dollars to go to an old Irishman and his wife—both ignorant, careless. ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... whisper. "She hangs the underwear in plain sight. I ain't never been used to the like of that! I could not stay. Bert is kind enough, so is Et, and they have one girl, Maud, that I really do like. She is twenty-one, but, of course, brought up the way she has been, she is awful ignorant for that age. Mind you, that girl had never turned the heel of a stocking until I got her at it, but Maud can learn. I'd take that girl quick, and bring her up like my own, if Bert would let me. Well, anyway, ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... heard nothing of the REsuscitation!" cried Gadgem, all his fingers opened like a fan, his eyebrows arched to the roots of his hair. "You surPRISE me! And you are really ignorant of the PHOEnix-like way in which it has RISen from its ashes? I said RISen, sir, because it is now but a dim speck in the financial sky. Nor the appointment of Mr. John Gorsuch as manager, ably backed by your DIStinguished father—the setting of the bird upon its legs—I'm ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... introduced to a mind wholly ignorant of its existence may be trusted to convey its own impression; but the thoughtless mind will be either too proud, or too shallow, or too confident, to be sensitive to right impressions. Thus the trouble with most people who call themselves Christians is not to educate them into ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... elderly man of great dignity, and almost as much of a figure there as the Elder himself. It was an act of great temerity to approach him for items of news for the Leauvite Mercury. Of this fact the young reporter seemed to be blithely ignorant. All the clerks were covertly watching the outcome, and thus attention was turned from Harry King; even the teller glanced frequently at the cashier's desk as he counted the bank ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... sir," continued he, stopping; "you're no fit to manage a farm; you're as ignorant as yon coo, an' as senseless as its cauf. Wi' gude management, Clackandow should produce you twahunder and odd pounds yearly; but in your guiding I doot if it will yield the half. However, tak' it or want it, mind me, sir, that ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... instant. The two stand in the light of that event—clearly revealed—types of the two systems in conflict to-day: the one, brave, refined, courtly, generous, tender, and true; the other, not lacking in brute courage, reckless, besotted, ignorant, and cruel. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... very plain that the instant circumstances lead us beyond the limits of our means of comprehension, we are to believe in, and not to reason on, revelation. The whole history of Christianity teaches this. Its first ministers were uneducated men; men who were totally ignorant until enlightened by their faith; and all the lessons it teaches are to raise faith, and faith in the Redeemer, high above all other attainments, as the one great acquisition that includes and colours ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... deserves, else, he will force his way into your very drawing room. Never, never, never, extend to him the courtesies due to an equal. He is not an equal, he is not a man at all; he is a fat, sleek, leering, ruminating animal, at his best; he is a wolf, a vampire, a devil, at other times; ignorant, vain, avaricious, gross. Rather than see him force himself upon you, as he has forced himself upon us here, I will myself sever our friendship, I will never see, never speak with you again. John Burrill shall find a limit, which even his brute ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the compass is second nature. But those who are unlearned in the art soon find out their mistake when they put their inexperience into practice. The sun is a pointing finger to the craftsman—a disastrous lure to the ignorant. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... successful irregular practisers in physick; he said, 'Taylor[1186] was the most ignorant man I ever knew; but sprightly. Ward[1187] the dullest. Taylor challenged me once to talk Latin with him; (laughing). I quoted some of Horace, which he took to be a part of my own speech. He said a few words well enough.' BEAUCLERK. 'I remember, Sir, you said ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... seers, these men, ignorant in the world's wisdom, but many of them secure in the knowledge of One, whom to know is life eternal, turned in their fear and perplexity to the ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... owe their pastoral wealth originally to Captain John Macarthur, of the 102nd regiment: he was assisted by the enterprise of Captain Waterhouse, of the royal navy, who, though a sailor and confessedly ignorant of pastoral affairs, conveyed to the colony the stock which laid the foundation of its fortunes. The sheep brought by the first fleet to New South Wales, were sacrificed to the necessities of the time: ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... I can't think what you mean, mamma! Eustace is not an ignorant goose, though you seem to think so; ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... class, prone to a various erudition (a compliment fully returned by the learned in other directions, who are almost always profoundly ignorant of the actual art of music). One of the rule-proving exceptions is Charles Crozat Converse, who has delved into many philosophies. An example of his versatility of interest is his coining of the word "thon" (a useful substitute for the ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... speech and attire to every society. He even claimed that he could think with the brains of anybody and adapt his inner mind, as well as his outer shape, to the changing environment of his activities. He appreciated the histrionics that operate out of sight, and would adopt the blank purview of the ignorant, the deeper attitude of the cultured, or the solid posture of that class whose education and inherent opinions is based upon tradition. He had made a study of the superficial etiquette and manners and customs of what is called "the best" society, and knew its ways as a ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... of those laws of occult force, the power of which we feel while we are totally ignorant of its rules, we fix upon the noonday as the time for some ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... Pharaoh are another instance of that ignorant carrying out of the divine purposes which we have already had to notice. They evidently contemplate only a temporary stay in the country. They say that they are come 'to sojourn'—the verb from which are formed the noun often rendered 'strangers,' and that which Jacob uses ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... same time, I was afraid my name of St. Ives was scarcely suitable; till I remembered there was a town so called in the province of Cornwall, thought I might yet be glad to claim it for my place of origin, and decided for a Cornish family and a Scots education. For a trade, as I was equally ignorant of all, and as the most innocent might at any moment be the means of my exposure, it was best to pretend to none. And I dubbed myself a young gentleman of a sufficient fortune and an idle, curious habit of mind, rambling the country at my own ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recognizable in context. 2. The official name of the database language used by the Pick Operating System, actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with delusions of grandeur. The name permits {marketroid}s to say "Yes, and you can program our computers in English!" to ignorant {suit}s without quite running afoul of the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians, taught that the world was not made by the primary God, but by a certain power far separated from him, and at a distance from that Principality who is supreme over the universe, and ignorant of him who is above all. He represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation, while he nevertheless was more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... vigorously, saying over and over again, "Lucy, you do not want to work, you are a lazy, good-for-nothing nigger!" I was angry at being called a nigger, and replied, "You don't know nothing, yourself, about it, and you expect a poor ignorant girl to know more than you do yourself; if you had any feeling you would get somebody to teach me, and then I'd do ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... and as they trotted briskly across the desert, sounds of mirth floated on the air from the camp where the Abyssinians were making merry over their victory, serenely ignorant of the surprise that ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... long, cold, mystic look, rose to his feet and left the room with emphasis and dignity. For a moment she was puzzled. But Sam's older brother was this year completing his education at a university, and Mrs. Williams was not altogether ignorant of the obligations of secrecy imposed upon some brotherhoods; so she was able to comprehend Sam's silent withdrawal, and, instead of summoning him back for further questions, she waited until he was out of hearing ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... one day, "I've been quite shocked to find how appallingly ignorant our Maids of Honour are. Fancy, they've never heard of Shakespeare, or Ibsen, or ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... officers of the road, the air-brake is now in use by the Mexican Central corporation, from the Rio Grande to the capital; but the National line between the capital and Vera Cruz is not able to make use of this greater safeguard and economical air-brake, because a lot of stupid, ignorant brakemen object! ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... to believe like them. What could be the use of that physiological inquiry into Bernadette's case, so full of gaps and intricacies? Why should he not accept her as a messenger from the spheres beyond, as one of the elect chosen for the divine mystery? Doctors were but ignorant men with rough and brutal hands, and it would be so delightful to fall asleep in childlike faith, in the enchanted gardens of the impossible. And for a moment indeed he surrendered himself, experiencing a delightful feeling of comfort, no longer seeking to explain anything, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference—at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... October, 1830, witnessed the trial of the notorious impostor, John St. John Long (whose real name was O'Driscoll) for the manslaughter of Miss Cushin. The success of this ignorant and notorious quack, who managed for a series of years to extract a magnificent income of some L10,000 or L12,000 per annum by trading on the credulity of his fellow-creatures, forms a curious commentary on the weakness of contemporary "society." ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... practically no conception of what we were doing and had done. The majority of our own people, indeed, were in much the same case. While the great story was still in the making, while the foundations were still being laid, it was impossible to correct all the annoying underestimates, all the ignorant or careless judgments, of people who took a point for the whole. The men at the heart of things could only set their teeth, keep silence and give no information that could help the enemy. The battle of the Somme, last July, was the first real testing of their work. The Hindenburg ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... life, with its motives and enjoyments, into the present moment. Captain Truck, therefore, was soon forgotten, and the literati, as that worthy seaman had termed the associates of Mrs. Legend, remained just as vapid, as conceited, as ignorant, as imitative, as dependent, and as ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... I ask you to do this for my sake," and again the smile beamed, the white hand was extended, and the subtle seductiveness of beauty had its way once more. Men are never so old, so humble, or so ignorant as to be insensible to the charm. Faithful old Reynolds took the lovely soft hand in both of his, and bent his white head and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... hold the infant manatee, and occasionally to scratch themselves when leeches irritate. The courtship of sea-cows, the qualities which appeal most to their dull minds, the way they protect the callow youngsters from voracious crocodiles, how or where they sleep—of all this we are ignorant. We belong to the same class, but the line between water and air is a no man's land which neither of us can pass for more ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... and then, extracts from his speeches. The Democrats were once more a dominating power and their organs naturally attacked the California Senator who defied both President and party; they asserted that Broderick was an ignorant boor, whose speeches were written for him by a journalist named Wilkes. But they did not explain how Broderick more than held his own in extemporaneous debate with the nation's seasoned orators. Many of these would have taken advantage of his inexperience, for he was the ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... that overshadowed your society withered, like Jonah's gourd, in a day. As for the comparatively small class of violent crimes against persons, unconnected with any idea of gain, they were almost wholly confined, even in your day, to the ignorant and bestial; and in these days, when education and good manners are not the monopoly of a few, but universal, such atrocities are scarcely ever heard of. You now see why the word "atavism" is used for ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Americans, some of them illiterate and ignorant, all of them strong, taking with them law, order, society, the church, the school, anew were staging the great drama of human life, act and scene and episode, as though upon some great moving platform drawn by invisible cables beyond the vast ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... ignorant young man,—ignorant of the depths to which sin will sink human nature, but rich in the ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... a board some Spirifers, etc., from three palaeozoic stages, and arranged them in single and branching lines, with horizontal lines marking the formations (like the diagram in my book, if you know it), and the result seemed to me very striking, though I was too ignorant fully to appreciate the lines of affinities. I longed to have had these shells engraved, as arranged by Mr. Salter, and connected by dotted lines, and would have gladly paid the expense: but I could not persuade Mr. Salter to publish a little paper on the subject. I can hardly doubt that many curious ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... was well for him that his ignorant faith could accept the illusion as a vision charged with all the benignities of peace on earth, good-will toward men. With a keen thrill in his heart, on his knees he drew the charge from his rifle, and flung it down a rift in the ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... unarmed, so ignorant, so small, we who live on this particle of mud which turns round in ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... they were to the Gnostics, separate beings, but are the very working of the Logos, consubstantial manifestations of God's nature and attributes. But mankind, fallen into folly and vice, perversity and sin, lying in darkness, were ignorant that these Divine qualities were in reality mediate exhibitions of God, immediate exhibitions of the Logos. "The light was shining in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." Then, to reveal to men the truth, to regenerate them and conjoin them through himself with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... unemployed," and the millions of dumb, helpless, struggling thrifty men and women whose hard earned savings constitute a large part of the capital of the corporations; and who are already alarmed at the shrinking value of these savings. It is, perhaps most of all, the mass of ignorant unthrifty poor, whose chief wealth is the wages paid them by the corporations which they are taught to look on as ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... fallen rotting stems of Opuntia and on the bases of dead Yucca leaves, still attached. Associated with the typical phase and often occurring alone on the Yucca leaves is a discoidal form which when first sent in (1908) was called var. gracilis. Presented alone to one ignorant of its history and associations, it would surely pass for a distinct species. This stalked phase is very delicate; the stipe pale brown, or yellow. See Plate II., Fig. 9. See also Sturgis Col. ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... served you right, ye accursed! The so-called soldiers, one finds, made not the least fight anywhere; could make none, led and guided as they were, and the "Generals" often enough traitors, always ignorant, and blockheads, were in the habit, when expressly commanded to fight, of taking physic, and declaring that nature was incapable of castor-oil and battle both at once. This ought to be explained a little to the modern English and their War-Secretaries, who undertake ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... her cause Rearing gorgeous temples where paupers are to kneel Repentant females to be buried alive Repentant males to be executed with the sword Revocable benefices or feuds Ruinous honors Sale of absolutions was the source of large fortunes to the priests Same conjury over ignorant baron and cowardly hind Scaffold was the sole refuge from the rack Schism which existed in the general Reformed Church Scoffing at the ceremonies and sacraments of the Church Secret drowning was substituted for public ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... matters as the wise and prudent—even more likely, if our Saviour's words are to be believed. Dear child, do you not see that our Lord came to save all men, and call all men into His Church; and that therefore He must have marked His Church in such a manner that the most ignorant may perceive it as easily as the most learned? Learning is very well, and it is the gift of God; but salvation and grace cannot depend upon it. It needs an architect to understand why Paul's Church is strong and beautiful, and what makes it so; but any child or foolish ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... for the reporter, who recalled now the counsel Gounsovski had given him. "Watch the Bay of Lachtka, and tell me then if you still believe Natacha is innocent!" Gounsovski must have known when he said this that Natacha had embarked in company with the Nihilists, but evidently he was ignorant that she had gone with them ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... third and a very large class of the labouring population were opposed to task work, because they were able to earn so very little at it. "Those who choose to labour may earn good wages," writes Colonel Jones to Mr. Trevelyan; but he forgot, or was ignorant of the fact, that great numbers of the working class had been already so weakened and debilitated by starvation, that they were unable to do what the overseers regarded as a day's work; and it is on record that task work frequently ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... Stewart was not ignorant of all that went on in her mind. She had threatened him with the balcony, just as, earlier in the winter, it had been a window-ledge with which she had frightened him. But there was this difference, whereas before he had drawn her back from the window and clapped her into sanity, now he let her ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thought that rule applied only to the names of kings, but of course I am but an ignorant white man who may well be mistaken on such matters of your ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... had a charming manner, and was brilliant in conversation, while his range of subjects was almost unlimited, whereas, the wooer in whom we take such an affectionate interest, was wrinkled, dull, narrow-minded, unimaginative, selfish, over-bearing, arrogant, illiterate, ignorant in almost everything except jurisprudence, of which he was the greatest oracle then living, and uninterested in everything except law, his ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... and intricate characters that yet (here he ventured on a little joke, and laughed at it himself) had their lighter side. And in the long picture-gallery Ruth and he studied the old masters, as they had seldom been studied before, with an intense and ignorant interest on the one hand, and an entire absence ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... woman, giving the details of that early call, was, of course, ignorant of the lady's name; but after the first word or two David's mother knew it. "Bring me a time-table. Never mind my supper! I must see the lady. I think I know who she was. She wanted to see me, and ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Silence! You talk like an ignorant girl, blinded by passion. The pogrom is a holy crusade. Are we Russians the first people to crush down the Jew? No—from the dawn of history the nations have had to stamp upon him—the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... looked with pity at Farmer Nicholas; and with a sort of sorrow too, reflecting how much he might have made in a bargain with such a customer, so ignorant and hot-headed. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... just sat in his office, and kept the ship owners waitin' in line, swearin' bitter and refined cuss-words about 'ignorant fiend' and 'cussed pedagogue,' which last, for Kink's enlightenment, means ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Raphael. "In Greek art, beauty of soul and beauty of form are one. It's French you are talking, though the ignorant ateliers where you picked it up flatter ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of mere ignorance is a poor thing; it cannot, under any circumstances, be permanent, nor is it at all valuable as a foundation of character. The true preparation for life, the true basis of a manly character, is not to have been ignorant of evil, but to have known it and avoided it; not to have been sheltered from temptation, but to have passed through it and overcome it by God's help. Many have drawn exaggerated pictures of the lowness of public school ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... I admire their experience and their good sense. An American should never be allowed to speak of Europe; for he will then probably display a vast deal of presumption and very foolish pride. He will take up with those crude and vague notions which are so useful to the ignorant all over the world. But if you question him respecting his own country, the cloud which dimmed his intelligence will immediately disperse; his language will become as clear and as precise as his thoughts. He ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... talent, consequently they were not encouraged to repeat the visit. Mr. Blake continued his business successfully, I supposed, until towards the close of the year 1868. He became despondent and I could see trouble was brewing. He never brought his business home, so I was ignorant of anything in regard to its standing. In early years he had much to do with mining stocks and still held some that he thought would be profitable. The four years we were in Boston he held much stock and that was one reason we left, so he could be ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... the English colony at New Plymouth. Being of a trading turn, he carried with him in his vessel among other merchandise about L50 in wampum which he managed to dispose of there.[28] Wampum was as yet comparatively unknown in Massachusetts Bay, and the colonists were ignorant of its uses. This purchase made with great reluctance, they sent to their trading house at Kennebeck, where "when the inland Indians came to know it, they could scarce procure enough for many years together." Everywhere ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... King walked into the temple and led the Queen back to the palace without saying a word; but the whole avenue was full of dark men bearing torches and armed with swords, who were searching the undergrowth. And presently they found Pierrot who, ignorant of all that had happened, had been listening all night to the song of the night-jar. He was dragged to the palace and cast into a dungeon, and the King was told. But the revel did not cease, and the dancing and the music continued softly as before. The King sent for Columbine and told her she ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... string, past a chemist's shop, who, being used to buy old paper to wrap his drugs in, called the man in, and, struck by the appearance of the 'Boke,' gave him 3s. for the lot. Not being able to read the Colophon, he took it to an equally ignorant stationer, and offered it to him for a guinea, at which price he declined it, but proposed that it should be exposed in his window as a means of eliciting some information about it. It was accordingly placed there with this label, 'Very ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... be regretted that, in these days of scientific knowledge, when the exact and fundamental causes and processes of diseases are so clearly known to medical men and when laws based on this knowledge have been enacted for the purpose of reducing mortality and preventing the spread of disease, ignorant individuals should allow their prejudices to stand in the way of compliance with the spirit ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... guilty as well as the unhappiest woman in the world. She had never learned aught of the Friars, save to have confidence in good works, and seek atonement for sins by austerity of life, fasting and discipline; she was wholly ignorant of the pardon granted by our good God through the merits of His Son, the remission of sins by His blood, the reconciliation of the Father with us through His death, and the life given to sinners by His sole goodness and mercy; and ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... pounds. Mix and let them stand for two weeks; then fine with skimmed Milk one-half gallon. This will be very pale, and a similar article, when bottled in champagne bottles and silvered and labeled, has often been sold to the ignorant for champagne. ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... heart, than the question of its results. It is the natural inclination of one deeply moved by a spectacle of depravation in his own time and country, to extol some other time or country, of which he is happily ignorant enough not to know the drawbacks. Rousseau wrote about the savage state in something of the same spirit in which Tacitus wrote the Germania. And here, as in the Discourse on the influence of science and art upon virtue, there is a positive side. To miss this in resentment ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Austin,' he retorted. 'I lived long enough to appreciate the necessity of being ignorant, but your style of existence is really not to be mentioned in the same cycle with mine. You talk about three meals a day, as if that were an ideal; you forget that with the eating your labor is just begun; those meals have to be digested, every one of 'em, and if you could only understand ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... unalterably resolved not to change from good to evil. It is only good to pass from evil to good." The proconsul said: "If you contemn the beasts, I will cause you to be burnt to ashes." Polycarp answered: "You threaten me with a fire which burns for a short time, and then goes out; but are yourself ignorant of the {227} judgment to come, and of the fire of everlasting torments which is prepared for the wicked. Why do you delay? Bring against me what you please." While he said thus and many other things, he appeared in a transport of joy and confidence, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... ruther go somewhar else an' he did—poor, ignorant devil! I went to t' other feller that was rasslin' with a log tryin' to git it under him. He'd flop the log an' then it would flop him. He'd throwed his rifle 'crost the timber. I goes over an' picks it up an' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... definite mood, and to set up what is most hostile to all mood, to all unity of being: comparison, analysis, classification. You may know quite exactly the difference between Giotto and Simon Martini, between a Ferrarese and a Venetian, between Praxiteles and Scopas; and yet be ignorant of the meaning which any of these might have in your life, and unconscious of the changes they might work in your being. And this, I fear, is often the case with connoisseurs and archaeologists, accounting for the latent suspicion of the ignoramus and the good philistine, that such persons are somehow ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... ignorant men, but so much we clearly see,—that we have sold our labor where we could sell it dearest, and our employer has bought it where he could buy it cheapest. He has paid high, and he must get all the labor that he can; and, by a strong instinct which possesses us, we shall ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... examined the advertisements in the newspapers for any sign that Riderhood acted on his hinted threat of so summoning him to renew their acquaintance, but found none. Having paid him handsomely for the support and accommodation he had had at the Lock House, and knowing him to be a very ignorant man who could not write, he began to doubt whether he was to be feared at all, or whether they need ever ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the coroner's business nor the jury's business, to know better than the medical officer for the district, on whose evidence they relied. But it is my business; for the said officer is my partner, and, but for me, our business would be worth very little. He is about as ignorant and easy-going an excellent old fellow as ever let a life slip out ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... but exhibited no tolerance. It paraded patriotism, but never sacrificed interest. But its great fundamental failing was the untrustworthiness of its statements. It existed to pervert truth. Its conductors were mainly political adventurers. They were unscrupulous, but they were not so utterly ignorant that they failed to see the necessity of occasionally making correct assertions. It was, however, this mixture of fact with fiction that was the chief cause of the evil influence exerted. The result of it all was that the entire nation, in a moral sense, breathed an atmosphere of ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Rudolph, they had unloaded some weight of responsibility. He had not only accepted it, but lightened them further, girt them, by a word and a look. Somehow, for the first time since landing, Rudolph perceived that through this difficult, troubled, ignorant present, a man might burrow toward a future gleam. The feeling was but momentary. As for Heywood, he still marched on grimly, threading the stuffed corridors like a ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... third mates, fastened in their state rooms, lay in their births listening, fearing to speak, and being ignorant of the numerical strength of the mutineers, and unarmed, thought it best to wait the dreadful issue, hoping that their lives ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... propensity to strong courses, and would talk of suicide in a speculative way. It is not difficult to discover the truth of that unfortunate union and disunion. Shelley, betrayed by the impulses of his enthusiast nature and the ignorant and deplorable credulity of a bookworm, allowed himself to be imposed upon by a designing boarding-school girl and her relatives, and everything followed as a matter of course. The unhappy wife recklessly broke the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... at least, but that the little bell had only gone four times. Twice or thrice he looked angrily and impatiently round; but there was Sir Mulberry in the same attitude, putting his glass to his lips from time to time, and looking vacantly at the wall, as if he were wholly ignorant of the presence of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the color he made sure that it was that of Inca Caxas, and so moved heaven and earth to get money to buy it. At length he did, from Archie Hope, on condition that he consented to the marriage of his step-daughter with the young man. Thinking that Sidney was ignorant of the jewels, he sent him to bring the ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... grave difficulty is the want of proper general officers to command the troops and enforce order and discipline, and especially to protect public property from robbery and plunder. Some of the brigadier-generals assigned to this department are entirely ignorant of their duties and unfit for any command. I assure you, Mr. President, it is very difficult to accomplish much with such means. I am in the condition of a carpenter who is required to build a bridge with a dull axe, a broken saw, and rotten timber. It is true that I have some very good green ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... new archbishop. The letter despatched by the Cabinet to Pope Adrian immediately after the diet of Strengnaes had proved of little service, for Brask on the 18th of July had secretly sent a messenger to the pope with word that Church property was being confiscated. Gustavus, ignorant of the bishop's perfidy and wondering at the pope's delay, now wrote again. "For a long time, Holy Father," began the courteous monarch, "our cathedral chapters have urged us to solicit you in behalf of the persons elected by them to fill their vacant posts. Trolle having resigned ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... after its occupant has grown beyond your ministry. I tell you, sir, the world is indifferent to its children. Neglected by their parents, subject to hired tenderness or none at all; left to the care of ignorant or depraved nurses, and often taught little but selfishness and greed of gain, the children of men are surrounded by destructive agencies. Can we wonder that the human mind loses in infancy so much of its native power? But so the generations of earth are growing up, bearing embittered fruit and ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... cannot believe that an untidy, ignorant man with dirty teeth stained with tobacco juice can give spiritual advice, and one must admit that ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... Their idea of learning all about a creature was to dig up its home, and frighten it out of its wits, and kill it; and after a few moons of that sort of foolery they claimed to know all about us. Us! whose ancestors knew the world millions of years before the ignorant Humans came on the earth at all!" The Platypus spluttered out more dirty water, ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... bring about a complete transformation of their lives and character, he entered upon the work with deep enthusiasm. His ideals were splendid, eminently worthy of the man and the cause; but, unhappily, he had to deal with savages, of whose natures he was profoundly ignorant. He took with him his wife and youngest daughter, Josephine, and also a number of mechanics from Union Colony to aid in the great work of regeneration ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... and those hands, then lifted in rapt devotion, stretched out to beckon you and all the world to His breast, and hear the voice that rose in that burst of thanksgiving melting into tenderness as it woos you, be you wise or ignorant, to come to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... say, for I knew quite well his words were true, and that I was the fool, not he. Up to a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. He knew from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed the point of his words about the necessity of there being a victim, and that we ourselves were ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... until the plague had gone. As a doctor's assistant in an infirmary organized in one of the mining districts of the government of Ekaterinoslav, he witnessed a peasant revolt in which several doctors were killed and others cruelly burned by the exasperated and ignorant mob. Veressayev has traced these sad events with tremendous ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... by the entrance of Jerry Swinger, who had been sent by Dr. Vaudelier to ascertain the present frame of his son's mind, and broach to him the tidings that he was beneath his father's roof,—a circumstance of which his watchers were also ignorant. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... whom I owe the sort of life which I adopted. I was not uncomely then, I had a mild disposition and affectionate ways. The decorum which I noticed in the girl had drawn my attention to her beauty. I found in her, moreover, so much indifference to her charms, that I would have sworn she was ignorant of them. How simple minded I was at that time! What a pleasure, said I to myself, if I can win the love of a girl who does not care to have lovers, since she is beautiful without observing it, and hence is no coquette! I never left her without my affectionate surprise increasing ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... resumes her household duties, even her hard field-work. Cases occur in which the mother of only one day is forced by the hardship of circumstances to take to the field. Of course, these women, so cruelly enslaved, are to the last degree ignorant. What time, even if opportunity offered, have they for schooling, or even discourse? None whatever. They are but little superior in intellect to animals. Naturally, this ignorance begets superstition, and from this source arise new perils for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... interest of Spain is very clear. To embroil Europe with the United Provinces, against which subsists the ancient malice of their conquered liberty, is our policy, but the king of France is allied with the United Provinces. You are not ignorant, besides, that it would be a maritime war, and that France is not in a state to make ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... it must be the work of time. Both races have their work to do. The colored man must outgrow his old condition of things, and thus create around him a new class of associations. This generation has known him as a being landless, poor, and ignorant. One of the most important things for him to do is to acquire land. He will never gain his full measure of strength until (like Anteus) he touches the earth. And I think here is the great fault, or misfortune of the race; they ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... him in stead of firmly rooted principles of virtue, and had carried him safe through all the temptations of his unprotected and lonely youth. He had the air and bearing, and had had in most things the experience, of a man of the world; and yet he was as ignorant of the wily ways of a wily woman as if he had never been out of the wilderness. Victorine's tears smote on ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... on the platform, took unerring aim. The captain had fallen, Lieutenant Dillon was badly wounded and led back to the boats, and the command had devolved upon a young man who had but just joined the regiment, and who was ignorant of anything like military tactics, even if they could have been brought into play upon ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... with regard to the works of Justin, Miltiades, Tatian, Clement, etc., that they declared Christ to be God, but then continues: [Greek: Ta Eirenaiou te kai Melitonos kai ton loipon tis agnoei biblia, theon kai anthropon katangellonta ton Christon] ("Who is ignorant of the books of Irenaeus, Melito, and the rest, which proclaim Christ to be God and man"). The progress in theological views is very precisely and appropriately expressed in these words. The Apologists also professed their belief in the full ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... to enjoy each other's society, without inconvenience, as much as it would be profitable for us both: and likewise because he feels it more necessary for him to have some intellectual pursuit less closely connected with deep passion than poetry, and is of course desirous, too, not to be so wholly ignorant of knowledge so exceedingly important. However, whether Wordsworth come or no, Calvert and I have determined to begin and go on. Calvert is a man of sense and some originality, and is besides what is well called a handy man. He is a good practical mechanic, etc., and is desirous to lay out ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull |
