"Boor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the way it strikes a vulgar contemporary. Without this average man and his commentary the story of the death of Kjartan would lose much. There is first of all the comic value of the meanness and envy in the mind of the boor, his complacency at the quarrels and mutual destruction of the magnificent people. His intrusion on the scene, his judgment of the situation, is proof of the variety of the life from which the Saga is drawn. More than that, there is here a rather cruel ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... grin, and shake his empty noddle in clouds, the Vulcanian epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of Science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that phosphor ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... harvest-home and feast, Than claims the boor from scythe released, On these scorched fields were known! Death hovered o'er the maddening rout, And, in the thrilling battle-shout, Sent for the bloody banquet out A summons of his own. Through rolling smoke the Demon's eye Could well each destined guest espy, Well could his ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... visiting your city for the first time, you would endeavor, as in the following example, to speak to him in his own idiom and put him at his ease by referring to the things with which he is undoubtedly familiar. It is only a "boor" who seeks to impose his own hobbies and interests upon a stranger, disregarding entirely the presumable likes and dislikes of ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... uttered the words. 'Perhaps,' he sarcastically continued, without giving her time to reply—'perhaps you deem yourself marriageable at the matron-like' age of nineteen, and have selected some country boor for ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... for my carcase. I didn't tell you, did I, that the mob set on them as they haled us here and pulled four wounded men and those who carried them to bits? Oh! yes, they have paid a price, a very good price for a Frisian boor and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the coxcomb, and though coarse the boor, Though dulness haunts the rich and pain the poor, In this colossal city, Yet London is not Rome, O Shade!" I said. "A later JUVENAL should not find her dead To ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... have done with the girl whose lips had doubtless been given to Stevens as often and as readily as to himself. The thought put him in a rage, while the idea of meeting Stevens on an equality humiliated him— strife with such a boor was in itself a degradation. And Loo had brought it about. He could never forgive her. The whole affair was disgraceful, and her words, "Every girl expects to be kissed when she goes out with a man," were vulgar and coarse! With which ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... inflated and serious to bombast—sometimes ludicrous, even to puerility; that he makes none of his personages speak in any distinct character, so that in his scenes the son cannot be known from the father—the citizen from the boor—the hero from the shopkeeper, or the divine from ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... my hand over both of hers, clasped in her lap. "I know," I acknowledged repentantly, "and—people do queer things when it is moonlight. The moon has got me to-night, Alison. If I am a boor, remember that, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and lavish it on pleasure to make thee gay, and fit for luckier lovers: take that best part of me, and let this worst alone; it was that first won the dear confession from thee that drew my ruin on—for which I hate it—and wish myself born a poor cottage boor, where I might never have seen thy tempting beauty, but lived for ever blessed in ignorance.' At this the tears ran from his eyes, with which the softened Sylvia mixed her welcome stream, and as soon as she could ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... wealth! I cannot find it in my heart to change them, for they seem longing to fulfil their destiny of adorning the neck of Beauty. Amulya, my boy, don't you look at these with your fleshly eye, they are Lakshmi's smile, the gracious radiance of Indra's queen. No, no, I can't give them up to that boor of a manager. I am sure, Amulya, he was telling us lies. The police haven't traced the man who sank that boat. It's the manager who wants to make something out of it. We must get ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... cut him short by saying, that if he was satisfied with the article that was his affair, but that the article had certainly not been written with a view to pleasing him. And he turned his back on him. The virtuoso thought him a kindly boor and went away laughing. But Christophe remembered having received a card of thanks from another of his victims, and a suspicion flashed upon him. He went out, bought the last number of the Review at a news-stand, turned to his article, and read... ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... you address the king?" she cried. "That you are without honor I have heard men say, and I may truly believe it now that I have seen what manner of man you are. The most lowly-bred boor in all Lutha would not be so ungenerous as to take advantage of his king's helplessness to ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... occurs? The gallant caitiff, Noticing the swain is poor (Courtesy with him is native, Not like you, suburban boor), Bows, and says in accents sunny, 'Pass along, Sir—make good speed; I'm convinced you've got no money And I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... him the well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down at the inn for addressing her coarsely. A spasm of anguish shot through her, and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Quaker Meeting, (16) face By face in Flemish detail, we may trace How loose-mouthed boor and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... contrast between the well-bred, polite man who knows how to choose and use his words correctly and the underbred, vulgar boor, whose language grates upon the ear and jars the sensitiveness of the finer feelings. The blunders of the latter, his infringement of all the canons of grammar, his absurdities and monstrosities of language, make ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... as may be guessed, was greeted with shouts of laughter, and then another brigadier took up the word: "Well, Cyrus," said he, "our friend here has certainly met with an absolute boor: my own experience is somewhat different. You remember the admonitions you gave us when you dismissed the regiments, and how you bade each of us instruct his own men in the lessons we had learnt from you. Well, I, like the rest of us, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... there are men capable of asking such a question; but we know no way of answering it but by asking in return why an Esquimaux Indian should not compose an overture equal to any of Handel's, or a Dutch boor dance a pas seul as well as Vestris, or a minuet as well ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... was not an artist nor a critic, nor in any way qualified to be a judge of painting as painting; but of genius, who is not a judge? In any art it is recognisable, patent, obvious to all. There is no human clod, no boor who is utterly insensible to its influence. It needs no education to perceive its presence, though the ignorant could not tell you what that presence was. Genius is as the sun itself: as universally perceptible. Even the ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... upon his own. I knew there was no offence in his heart, not the remotest rude intent, but the fact was before me that he had frightened a woman, had given this very lovely guest of my friends good cause to hold him a boor, if she did not, indeed, think him (as she probably thought me) ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather,—said a wise old friend to me,—he was a boor.—Better too few words, from the woman we love, than too many: while she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks, she is working for herself.—Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... him, but he knew in his heart now that the girl's father had meant nothing of the kind. Of course the girl had forgotten him long since. If he ever came to her mind as a fugitive memory it would be in the guise of a churlish boor as impossible as his own ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... the scene before him. Then he took a step forward which brought him perilously near the edge of the steep rock. His lips moved though no sound could be heard for the tumult of the falls which was rending the air. What connection had such a man with his surroundings? No boor or clown was he, for the simple dignity of face and manner marked him as one of ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... on a river's rim, And an oak that grew near by Looked down with cold hauteur on him, And addressed him this way: "Hi!" The rush was a proud patrician, and He retorted, "Don't you know, What the veriest boor should ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... friend," he said. "You belong to the modern condition of things, to the world which has become just a little over-civilized. You may call me a boor, if you like, but I want you to understand this. If I fail to unmask you by any other means, I shall revert to the primeval way of deciding such differences as lie between you and me, the differences which make for hate. I can wield a horse-whip ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... once, have assumed a harmful as their secondary meaning; how many worthy have acquired an unworthy. Thus 'knave' meant once no more than lad (nor does 'knabe' now in German mean more); 'villain' than peasant; a 'boor' was a farmer, a 'varlet' a serving-man, which meaning still survives in 'valet,' the other form of this word; [Footnote: Yet this itself was an immense fall for the word (see Ampere, La Langue Francaise, p. 219, and Littre, Dict. de la Langue Francaise, preface, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... grasped his chin reflectively, admitting that he had not thought of that contingency. "But father was a knowing man," he added; "he looked close at things. Though he was only a boor common man, he had traffeled a great deal, and I think he'd know gold when he ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... weren't. All the same, I suppose your grand relations would consider me a presumptuous boor for daring to lift my eyes to you. And yet, if I could make you love me, it wouldn't count for a blade of grass that your father was born in a castle and mine in a crofter's cabin.... Only—you know too—' he became ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... has changed the spring into that riper summer-time which is on the verge of autumn; and that hour of late sunset which is on the verge of night. Under its rich glow lies the sleeping Iphigenia, draped in folds upon folds of white, and her attendants; while Cymon, who is as unlike the boor of tradition as Spenser's Colin Clout is unlike an ordinary Cumbrian herdsman, stands hard-by, wondering, pensively wrapt in so exquisite a vision. Altogether, a great presentment of an immortal idyll; so treated, indeed, that it becomes much more ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... the weeks are even shorter than before: you wonder why on earth all the single men in the world do not rush tumultuously to the Altar; you look upon them all as a travelled man will look upon some conceited Dutch boor who has never been beyond the limits of his cabbage-garden. Married men, on the contrary, you regard as fellow-voyagers; and look upon their wives—ugly as they ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... influence upon our actions: one gown can make a romp, another a princess, another a boor, another a sparkling coquette, out of the same woman. The female mood is susceptibly sympathetic to the fitness or unfitness of dress. Now, Ruth was without doubt the same girl who had so earnestly and sympathetically heard the ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... looking at him askance as he munched the last morsel and drained the last drops—"this boor probably understood the biting taunt in my words... and no doubt he has read the manuscript with eagerness; he is simply lying with some object. But possibly he is not lying and is only genuinely stupid. I like a genius to be rather stupid. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... monk, colouring with anger at the trick put on him; "what has a boor like thee to do with parables?—But ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... such a marriage? I found, before long, that I was married to a boor. She could not comprehend one subject that interested me. Her dulness palled upon me till I grew to loathe it. And after some time of a wretched, furtive union—I must tell you all—I found letters somewhere (and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... orbits. Colours variegated more Nor Turks nor Tartars e'er on cloth of state With interchangeable embroidery wove, Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom. As ofttimes a light skiff, moor'd to the shore, Stands part in water, part upon the land; Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor, The beaver settles watching for his prey; So on the rim, that fenc'd the sand with rock, Sat perch'd the fiend of evil. In the void Glancing, his tail upturn'd its venomous fork, With sting like scorpion's arm'd. Then thus my guide: "Now ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Hogarth broke into the presence of Loveday at Cheyne Gardens with a glad face, crying: "Forgive me, my friend, for being a boor!" ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... pardon me," he said. "I did not dream you stood so near. Else no such harsh sounds should have offended your fair ears. As for Messer d'Anguissola..." He shrugged as who would say, "Have pity on such a boor!" ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... reports, or from its actual dreariness, the doctor had found it impossible to get a tenant; and, that the place might not fall to ruin before he could reside in it himself, he had placed a country boor, with his family, in one wing, with the privilege of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... and I halted and turned, striving to remember decency and that I was conducting like a very boor. This was neither the time nor place to force a quarrel on any man.... And Lana was right. I had no earthly warrant to interfere if she gave me none; perhaps ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... along, taking no girl seriously, but using them all so, out of necessity. If he was an unscrupulous person he enjoyed it; if he knew what conscience meant he periodically took himself to task—but never quite solved the problem. There was no solution to it. One could not be a hermit or a boor because girls had hearts and the bank had none. He must play the game. He was taking a big chance of having his own heart cracked, and thought of danger for himself fostered recklessness ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... of its kings and legislators. A civil war in America will end in shaking the world; and that war may be caused by the vote of some ignorant prize-fighter or crazed fanatic in a city or in a Congress, or of some stupid boor in an obscure country parish. The electricity of universal sympathy, of action and reaction, pervades everything, the planets and the motes in the sunbeam. FAUST, with his types, or LUTHER, with his sermons, worked greater results than Alexander or Hannibal. A single thought ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... stiff-necked old watch-dog callously laying his corns so that Stewart Morrison would appear to be boor enough to allow a young lady to wait along with that unspeakable rabble; and when he did come he would arrive in his shirt-sleeves to be matched up against a handsome young man in an Astrakhan top-coat! Under those circumstances, what view would ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... labouring peasants, live in miserable cabins, which afford them little more than shelter from the storms. The Boor of Norway is said to make all his own utensils. In the Hebrides, whatever might be their ingenuity, the want of wood leaves them no materials. They are probably content with such accommodations as stones of different forms and sizes can ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... you have said is true; no one need be shocked at your words. Moreover, you are not the first who has treated of this matter; and I swear by Allah that it is necessary to know this book. It is only the shameless boor and the enemy of all science who will not read it, or who will make fun of it. But there are sundry things which you will have to treat about yet." And he mentioned other subjects, chiefly of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the island was even more of a boor than we had anticipated. As soon as he landed he wanted to know what we were doing on his property, and peremptorily ordered us off. Bill answered that we were camping there, and politely asked if we couldn't stay ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... "You boor!" she hissed. "You base underbred clod! Is this your care and your hospitality? I would rather wed a branded serf from my father's fields. Leave go, I say——Ah! good youth, Heaven has sent you. Make him loose me! By the honor of your mother, I pray you to stand ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Gosling. Boor! what's that to you? With Love's soft sorrows what hast thou to do? 'Tis here for consolation I must look. (Takes ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tread of people: I am hurt. The gods take part against me, could this Boor Have held me thus else? I must shift for life, Though I do loath it. I would find a course, To lose it, rather ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... powerful leaders were directing all their energies was still counted an amateur in politics, irascible and indiscreet. He was laughed at in the cities as a boor and condemned in New England as an ignoramus, though Harvard College, under some strange inspiration, was soon to award him the doctorate of laws. Having come to power by means of a combination of South and West, Jackson had found his followers ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... of devotion, and watched the eyes, brightened or softened in praise or in prayer, till he owned the genuineness and guessed the depth of both, then perceived in school how far removed his unknown comrade was from the mere superstitious boor. This was the beginning. The rest had been worked out by the instruction and discipline of the place, enforced by the example, and latterly by the conversation, of his fellow-prisoner, until he had come forth sincerely repenting, and with the better hope for the future that his ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never heard or read a single sound argument against the suffrage of women in a democracy. There are a hundred arguments for it. The question now is one of organization, of agitation, of perseverance. In my judgment he who sneers at suffrage not only proclaims himself a boor and casts discredit on at least four women—his mother, his wife, his sister and his daughter—but he reveals a depth of ignorance that is pitiable. Let the appeal be to experience. Not one of the direful consequences predicted has come to pass where ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... no use to him. The etiquette of shopping in Germany seems to us rather topsy-turvy at first. In a small shop the proprietor is as likely as not to conduct business with a cigar in his mouth, even if you are a lady, but if you are a man he will think you a boor if you omit to remove your hat as you cross his threshold. Whether you are a man, woman, or child, you will wish him good-morning or good-evening before you ask for what you want, and he will answer you before he asks what your commands are. If you are a woman, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... that a man of young Cardigan's evident intelligence and advantages could be such a boor, Shirley. However, I, for one, am not surprised. You will recall that I warned you he might be his father's son. The best course to pursue now is to forget that you have ever ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... adds with accustomed simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen "Some More" of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually "begin to take an absorbing interest in them"—the vulgar boor. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... presume for to dare to lay hands on an honest man's son's doug! It sets him weel, the bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep—"Ay, Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco fright; but I'll gie them up their fit for't; I'll show them, in a couple of hurries, that they ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... criminal will be most likely arrested," Arthur Lovell continued, still dwelling upon the subject of the murder; "he will be traced by those clothes. He will endeavour to sell them, of course; and as he is most likely some wretchedly ignorant boor, he will very probably try to sell them within a few miles of the scene ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... we look at the picture, what a daub it looks! what a clumsy effigy! How many men and wives come to this knowledge, think you? And if it be painful to a woman to find herself mated for life to a boor, and ordered to love and honor a dullard; it is worse still for the man himself perhaps, whenever in his dim comprehension the idea dawns that his slave and drudge yonder is, in truth, his superior; that the woman who does his bidding, and submits to his humor, should be his lord; that she can ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... that doze the droughts away, And wait for moisture, wrapped in sun-baked clay; This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his task, Perched in the corner on an empty cask, By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some boor Rattled a double-shuffle on the floor; "Hull's Victory" was, indeed, the favorite air, Though "Yankee Doodle" claimed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... "You are right." At the appointed time they were seated with other ladies in attendance at the side of the platform. Presently Rev. Dr. Mandeville, of Albany, arose, turned his chair facing them, his back to the audience, and stared at them with all the impudence of a boor, as if to wither them with his ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in her peasant sketches was naturally over-estimated by those who, never having studied the class, could not conceive of a peasant except conventionally, as a drunken boor. The very just portrait of Cecilia Boccaferri, the conscientious but obscure artist in Le Chateau des Desertes, might seem over-flattered to such as imagine that all opera-singers must be persons ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... before the old Clay homestead, which had been the birthplace of a General, a Governor and an Ambassador, Rosamond, reading near an upper window, saw Mose, the stable man, take his horse. She thought: "Here comes that conceited boor, Caleb Saylor, to see me again; I shall send word I am not at home; * * * but it is dreadfully dull this afternoon, no one else seems to be coming, this book is the worst ever, he might prove entertaining; ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... intellectual aristocracy of his people, recognize as a poet, should remain unenjoyed by us, whatever his language. Admiration is an art which we must learn. Many Germans say Racine does not please them. The Englishman says, 'I do not understand Goethe.' The Frenchman says Shakespeare is a boor. What does all this amount to? Nothing more than the child who says it likes a waltz better than a symphony of Beethoven's. The art consists in discovering and understanding what each nation admires in its great men. He ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... might be trying to a tenderly reared girl, and that he ought to give me advice and warnings. But this Thing bearing a gentleman's repute; this bat-brained darling of a society that I'm not thought good enough to enter, had insulted me like a boor under my own roof; and he would probably boast of it like a boor to others as base as himself! The poverty of it, the ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... and withdrew them, like rabbits in a warren, before I could make a direct appeal to the attention of any individual. The return of the huntsmen and hounds relieved me from my embarrassment, and with some difficulty I got one clown to relieve me of the charge of the horses, and another stupid boor to guide me to the presence of Sir Hildebrand. This service he performed with much such grace and good-will, as a peasant who is compelled to act as guide to a hostile patrol; and in the same manner I was obliged to guard against his deserting ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... miserable morning, and am not to be blamed. As I am a man, I will speak boldly and secure recognition." But as the little company mingled and conversed before the music commenced, no opportunity offered. He determined to show her, however, that he was no country boor, and with skill ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... clean, debauched the chaste, and, acting simultaneously on the body and the soul, it insinuated into its possessor a base selfishness, an ignoble pride; it suggested that he spend for himself alone; it made the humble man a boor, the generous man a skinflint. In one second it changed every habit, revolutionized every idea, metamorphosed the most ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... with his big jaw dropping. Stupid boor that he was, he could not have explained the terrifying effect which this wild music and those tense, uplifting faces had upon him, but he would have given anything to be back in his mother's kitchen, with the lamp lit and the dark, unfamiliar ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... he, "but a few days ago this boor hed the ashoorence to write to the Georgy Convenshun that it 'must not'—mark the term—'MUST NOT assoom the confedrit war debt.' Is a tailor to say 'must not' to shivelrus Georgy? Good God!—where are we driftin? For one, I never will be consilliated ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... people,—their well-known love of "bigness," their tendency to ask "How much?" rather than "Of what kind?" There is a lack of discrimination in the daily bill of fare served up by the American press that cannot but disgust the refined and tutored palate. It is only the boor who demands a savoury and a roast of equal bulk; it is only the vulgarian who wishes as much of his paper occupied by brutal prize-fights or vapid "personals" as by important political information or literary criticism. There is undoubtedly a modicum of truth in Matthew Arnold's ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... over the meadow to make sure that she did not need his support. In spite of the utter unreasonableness of the affair, in some unaccountable way his sympathies were on the side of the miller. The fellow was a boor, of course, but, by Jove! he was a magnificent boor. It had been long since Gay had seen such an outburst of primitive feeling—long since he had come so close to the good red earth on which we walk and ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... qualities. There are charming rich men, but either they inherited their wealth, or made it in some high pursuit to which gain was only an incident, or they are exceptional cases. But of course Bagley isn't even a fair type of the regular money-grinder—he's a speculator in anything, and a boor compared with even ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... she was Madama Flavia, and I was Pipistrello the juggler. What could I say to her? I could have fallen at her feet and kissed her or killed her, but I could not speak. No doubt I looked but a poor boor to her—a giant and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... "Boor!" thought George. But he could not actively resent the slight. He glanced round at the walls; he was in a prison. He was at the mercy of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Foureau and Marescot, but, as the notary stuck to his office, Foureau was chosen—a boor, an idiot. The doctor waxed indignant. Rejected in the competition, he regretted Paris, and the consciousness of his wasted life gave him a morose air. A more distinguished career was about to open for him—what a revenge! He drew up a profession of faith, and went ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... his meat by dropping red-hot stones into a water-vessel made of hide; and Linnaeus found the Both land people brewing beer in this way—"and to this day the rude Carinthian boor drinks such stone-beer, as it is ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... for a tiller or boor, from 'Bauer', 'bauen'. The latter hath two senses, to build and ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... part walked rapidly away, looking round from time to time, and keeping their ears open. They were very much mortified at having been forced to let a mere boor dictate to them, and anxious, especially de Jars, as to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at the affront, still thought that as he was on duty he was bound to obey, and tied up the ribbon of the sock. Then Kotsuke no Suke, turning from him, petulantly exclaimed: "Why, how clumsy you are! You cannot so much as tie up the ribbon of a sock properly! Any one can see that you are a boor from the country, and know nothing of the manners of Yedo." And with a scornful laugh he moved ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... The boor shaded his eyes, and looked at me sulkily from under his matted and tangled hair. "You are not of his company?" he ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... their blood-money; and what had she bought with it? Nothing, nothing. To spend it, only, she had wrecked her sex and her soul; to spend it for such trifles as children want—candy and common ornaments, a dance and a treat, a gift for some boor or forester or even negro she was misleading, or to establish a silly reputation for generosity: generous at the expense of human happiness, and of robbing people of liberty and life, merely ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... I said good-bye to her that day, or just walked out of the room, like the forgetful boor I sometimes am, with ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... twenty days, and then died—quickly and unwarned, dropping his magician's wand, to be picked up never. I wondered if he was ready, and if the God whom he had often met amid the moss on the sea-cliffs and in the offing was the God who pardoned sin and by His grace saves painter and boor. The Lord bless the unappreciated artists; they do a glorious work for God and the world, but for the most part live in penury, and the brightest color on their palette is crimson with their ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... divined the same thing in his new-found companion, and took a great risk to prove his surmise true. Ivan had not an inkling of what Vladimir ventured in taking him to that exclusive little palace, where, did his protege prove a boor, he knew well he should never find a place for himself again. But Vladimir had spent many an evening at the opera with Ivan; and had studied well the expressions that Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, even Flotow, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Well, drudge on, boor, drudge on; I am going to tempt the students of Trebisonde to leave father and mother, forego for ever the established and common rule of living, disclaim and free themselves from obeying their lawful sovereign's edicts, live in absolute liberty, proudly despise everyone, laugh at all mankind, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... motionless before the tightly fitted portal of stone. Then through the high crevice that was his window the sounds of life outside smote upon his ear. The noise of the city seemed to become all revel. Some one under the walls laughed—the hearty, raucous laugh of the care-free boor. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... they were all speaking together, a maiden dressed in green, and with a bulrush plaited over her head, came from a neighbouring morass, and going up to the fellow who was noisiest and bragged most of his bridal gift, she said, 'What will you give to Lady Boe?' The boor, who was half intoxicated from the brandy and ale he had swallowed, seized a whip, and answered, 'Three strokes of my waggon-whip.' But at the same moment he fell a corpse to ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Bakkus, "now is the time to make a bold bid for a sure fortune. There is a horse called Goffredo who is quoted in the sacred inner ring of those that know at 8 to 1. I have information withheld from this boor rabble, that he will win, and that he will come out at about 15 to 1. I shall therefore invest my five louis in the certain hope of seventy-five beautiful golden coins clinking into my hand. Come ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... poor notary did not dare to press the matter and was compelled to dine, although half dead. His companions were so completely duped by Mauprat's assurance that they ate and drank merrily, treating the notary as a lunatic and a boor. They left Roche-Mauprat all drunk, singing the praises of their host, and laughing at the notary, who fell down dead upon the threshold of his house on dismounting ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... it in general. This rough life had made each one's better nature visible to the other, and had led to the formation of a friendship full of mutual appreciation of the other's best qualities. Now it is just possible that if they had not known one another, Hawbury might have thought the Baron a boor, and the Baron might have called Hawbury a "thundering snob;" but as it was, the possible boor and the possible snob each thought the other one of the finest fellows in ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... stay where she is; it will do her all the good in the world, as, you see, she is evidently doing good—taming this boor, by all accounts. Nancy is a rank old Tory, and turns up her nose at any one not born in the purple. Times have changed, as Nancy ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... Linton was infatuated with the naughty, tricksy young beauty of Wuthering Heights. Her violent temper did not frighten him, although his own character was singularly sweet, placid and feeble; her compromising friendship with such a mere boor as young Heathcliff was only a trifling annoyance easily to be excused. And when his own father and mother died of a fever caught in nursing her he did not love her less for the sorrow she brought. A fever she had wilfully taken in despair, and a sudden sickness of ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... had found apparently asleep, and, unless he acted a part with supreme skill, he was a stupid and ignorant boor, and as innocent of the murder as myself. There was still the Russian princess whom he had expected to find, or had pretended to expect to find, in the same room with the murdered man. I judged that she must now be either ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... can have it again, and more. What's the matter with me? I ask you a plain question: What is it?" Unconscious of the pathos in that enquiry, he went on passionately: "I'm not lame, I'm not loathsome, I'm not a boor, I'm not a fool. What is it? What's the mystery ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... see a ruffian, and had found a boor; but she was to be convinced that the ruffian existed in him. Notice came up to the castle of a convoy of waggons, and all was excitement. Men-at-arms were mustered, horses led down the Eagle's Ladder, and an ambush prepared in the woods. The autumn rains were ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up his hat. "I don't care what Rosenthal said. He always was a boor. The point with me is that I've lost my temper in the classroom for the last time. Come ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... hear my prayer, Suffer not ladies the scarlet to wear; And, Sir, you must grant me this boon beside, Let no boor's son a good courser ride." Woe befall ...
— Queen Berngerd, The Bard and the Dreams - and other ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... pardee, I am bid to take another one of ye, am I?" he snarled. "As though ye caused me not trouble enow; and this one a cub, looking a very boor in carriage and breeding. Mayhap the Earl thinketh I am to train boys to his dilly-dally household service as well as to use ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... are masterpieces, but they are portraits, and the man is brought out by a multiplicity of short touches,—caustic, satirical, and matter of fact. His poetry may be said to resemble an English country road, on which passengers of different degrees of rank are continually passing,—now knight, now boor, now abbot: Spenser's, for instance, and all the more fanciful styles, to a tapestry on which a whole Olympus has been wrought. The figures on the tapestry are much the more noble-looking, it is true; but then they are dreams and phantoms, whereas the people on the country ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... myself only with facts. And the great fact of all is the contemptibleness of average humanity. I will submit for your reverent consideration the name of a great American philanthropist—Cornelius Vanderbilt. Personally he was a disgusting brute; ignorant, base, a boor in his manners, a blackguard in his language; he had little if any natural affection, and to those who offended him he was a relentless barbarian. Yet the man was a great philanthropist, and became so by the piling up of millions of dollars. Of course he did that for his own ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... the other hand, believed this mystic passion to be genuine love. Coming to visit her at Nohant, he was revolted by the clownish husband with whom she lived. It gave him an esthetic shock to see that she had borne children to this boor. Therefore he shrank back from her, and in time their relation ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... that? [Picks up the medallion] How dare you, you beast? What right have you? [Tearfully] Do you want me to kill you? You moujik! You boor! ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... rude uncouth husband would prove her death. How could she entertain the same thoughts, after her marriage with such a boor, as she had before? He could never sympathise with her. No, she would be obliged to remain unmarried for ever. Perhaps not even a laborer would wed her! On St. John's eve, when she had ventured to ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... is the matter with Jeanne? Poor girl, she has hidden behind a tree. She does not want to be seen by him; and she is quite right, it would be paying the boor ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... hour Katherine's wrath continued high, and she repeated, with clinched hands, all her invectives against the bigotry of Bruce. He was a bully—a boor—a brute—a tyrant. He considered himself the superman. And in pitiable truth he was only a moral coward—for his real reason in opposing her had been that he was afraid to have Westville say that his ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... went on questioning my cousin as to the Wynnes to their uttermost generation. Either he cared little about them, or he knew little, for he seemed much to prefer to tell queer stories about the court ladies, and my Lord Chesterfield's boor of a son, who had such small manners and such a large appetite, and of Sir Guy Carleton, whom he was about to join in Canada. He advised me to get a pair of colours as my aunt had once desired, and seemed surprised ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... his eyebrows, Lane signified that he would make no attempt at detaining the doctor longer than he wished to stay. He awaited punctiliously the other man's pleasure, silently emphasising that the interview was not of his bringing about. "Thinks I'm a boor ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... weep a little to-morrow, and she would not kneel any more at the shrine in the garden wall; and then—and then—she would stay here and marry the good boor Jeannot, just the same after a while; or drift away after him to Paris, and leave her two little wooden shoes, and her visions of Christ in the fields at evening, behind her forevermore, and do as all the others did, and take not only ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... carrying his head with a dashing military air. Again he is a cavalier wearing his velvet mantle, and plumed hat, with the languid elegance of a gentleman of leisure. Sometimes he seems a mere country boor, a rough, unkempt fellow, with coarse features and a ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... passing). Is that boor really going to be allowed to make a speech! (Going up to LIND.) May I have the honour of drinking a glass of wine with you, Mr. Lind? (Several of the guests begin to talk, ostentatiously indifferent to JAKOBSEN who is ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... began abruptly, in a whisper, "is the rudest, most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to him the other day I thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved abominably—like a boor—like a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor? Because I played a joke on him, is that any reason why ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... curry favor with Johnson, took to laughing loud and long at everything he said. Johnson's patience at last became exhausted, and after a particularly objectionable outburst, he turned upon the boor with: ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... whom that lofty title could not, by any stretch of charity, be bestowed? This may happen,—how soon the future only knows. Think of this miserable man of coming political possibilities,—an unpresentable boor, sucked into office by one of those eddies in the flow of popular sentiment which carry straws and chips into the public harbor, while the prostrate trunks of the monarchs of the forest hurry down on the senseless stream to the gulf of political oblivion! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... was about her none of the emptiness, the starved quality, of the woman with her destiny unfulfilled; nothing of the futility, the incompletion, of the celibate that causes the imagination to turn with relief to contemplation of the most bovine mother of a family. It must have been an impervious boor indeed who would venture to jest upon Miss Allison's single state. It spoke of naught but dignity. Life, it would seem, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
