"Bumpkin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... keen to champion this boy. The old man has been mixed up in many a questionable transaction, and I shouldn't be surprised if it turned out that he was in league with these fellows who got that country bumpkin's seven hundred and fifty dollars, and that he put the boy up to playing ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... of some note should not only behave like a country bumpkin, but actually seem to need encouragement so that he should "feel at home" in a London drawing room, was a fact so ridiculous that it spurred his bemused wits into something ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... story was told me by Mr. Crabb Robinson,[681] who was long connected with the Times, and intimately acquainted with Mr. W***.[682] When W*** was an undergraduate at Cambridge, taking a walk, he came to a stile, on which sat a bumpkin who did not make way for him: the gown in that day looked down on the town. "Why do you not make way for a gentleman?"—"Eh?"—"Yes, why do you not move? You deserve a good hiding, and you shall get it if you don't ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... The bumpkin dodged with a laugh and disappeared in the crowd and dust, cuffing, pushing, scuffling, hugging, and kissing quite ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... with one swift comprehensive glance, as the driver reined up his tired horses before the door. A temper; a quick temper, a temper easily provoked, but a kindly woman nevertheless. No country bumpkin, but a shrewd, capable business woman, with two light blue eyes fixed stolidly on the main chance; a woman, moreover, blessed with a sense of humour; else why those deep lines stretching from nose to chin; that radiating nest of wrinkles ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... newspaper in those days, but the four pages of which it consisted were full of meat. There was no descriptive reporting; but what could be more expressive than the announcement of a marriage in such terms as these:—"On Tuesday se'n-night, Squire Brown of Bumpkin Hall was married to Miss Matilda Midas of Halifax, a handsome young lady with ten thousand pounds to her dowry"? We are much more florid nowadays, but by no means so precise. The leader-writer did not spread himself abroad a hundred years ago. Indeed, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... Besides, if Mr. Kissam actually did come upon the discovery he says he did, at the period designated—nearly eight years ago—how happens it that he took no steps, on the instant, to reap the immense benefits which the merest bumpkin must have known would have resulted to him individually, if not to the world at large, from the discovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man of common understanding could have discovered what Mr. Kissam says he did, and yet have subsequently acted so ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of Hallam which hangs in the provost's house at Eton represents a rosy, solid, rather heavy-featured young man, with a flushed face,—Mr. Gladstone said that this was caused by overwork,—who looks more like a young country bumpkin on the opera-bouffe stage ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... moustache to hide a poor mouth. He aimed at nothing but Germany, Germany emphasised, indurated, enlarged; Germany and his class in Germany; beyond that he had no ideas, he was inaccessible to ideas; his mind never rose for a recorded instant above a bumpkin's elaborate cunning. And he was the most influential man in the world, in the whole world, no man ever left so deep a mark on it, because everywhere there were gross men to resonate to the heavy notes he emitted. He trampled on ten thousand lovely things, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... I gave Assa's grandchild to the gardener, and told him the sixth toe had come off; I had made a little wound on his foot to take in the bumpkin. So Assa's grandchild, the son of the Mohar, grew up as the gardener's child, and received the name of Pentaur, and he was brought up in the temple here, and is wonderfully like Assa; but the gardener's monstrous brat is the pioneer Paaker. That ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape these unfavorable reflections of himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather a chilling rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or fine feeling in him. Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of hieroglyphs write detestable verses? Has the theory of the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... bumpkin-looking person. Belonging to the genus Yankee, he had yet a few peculiar traits of his own. He had a smallish, bullet-shaped head, set, with dignified poise, on a pair of wide, flat shoulders. His chest was broad and swelling, his limbs straight, muscular, ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... wouldn't touch it for sixpence," said Fred; "but I ain't afraid, only I don't want to be bitten again by any of your nasty country bumpkin things, else I'd ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... BUMKIN, BUMPKIN, OR BOOMKIN. A short boom or beam of timber projecting from each bow of a ship, where it is fayed down upon the false rail. Its use is to extend the clue or lower corner of the fore-sail to windward, for which purpose there is a large block fixed on its outer end, through which the tack is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... tastes and ideas, or capable of apprehending criticisms without full explanation appended, that he is doing so. Rather would I ask such a reader to suppose that before him there stands a man of incomparably inferior enlightenment and schooling—a rude country bumpkin whose life, throughout, has been passed in retirement—a bumpkin to whom it is necessary to explain each circumstance in detail, while never forgetting to be as simple of speech as though he were a child, and at every step there were a danger of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... gamester, who, having a deep knowledge of the world, had taken the name of Fabris, and the younger brother had to assume it likewise. Soon afterwards he bought an estate with the title of count, became a Venetian nobleman, and his origin as a country bumpkin was forgotten. If he had kept his name of Tognolo it would have injured him, for he could not have pronounced it without reminding his hearers of what is called, by the most contemptible of prejudices, low extraction, and the privileged class, through an absurd error, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... keep your fingers out of my eye," said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation. "The fact is, I'm all here—head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded nuisance, but I am. That's no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... kept,—not to speak of the miller's boy, who was already watching me. No matter where you are in the country, however solitary you may think yourself, you are certain to be the focus of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a laborer rests on his hoe, a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a little goat-girl, or shepherdess, or milkmaid climbs a willow ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... to total ignorance regarding the driver of that ramshackle conveyance; to being utterly at sea in the neighbourhood; to having walked like any country bumpkin from the railroad station, lugging an unconscionably heavy bag; and yet, despite all this, she seemed amazingly sure of herself. He recalled her frivolous remark about her jewels, and now wondered if there ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... himself, "great pity he's so delicate. Not at all a pleasant cough—quite a churchyard tone about it. Tut! tut! I'm not favourably impressed with that doctor; an officious bumpkin, he seems to me. And this Armstrong—I should really like to know a little more about him. Pottinger was decidedly of my way of thinking. Not a nice fellow at all, Armstrong. Wrong sort of companion for Roger. Poor fellow! how ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... wiser not to reply to this, and contented himself with thanking her as they entered the room. He paused before Miss Conklin, and gave her "bumpkin," adding, by way of explanation, "a rude country fellow." She spelt it cheerfully, without the "p." When the mistake was made plain to her, which took some little time, she accepted his arm, and went with him into the passage. He kissed ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... a partial set-off to the general courtesy that characterises them. The average intelligence of what may be called the working class Malay is almost as far superior to that, say, of the British country bumpkin as are his manners. Mr. H. O. FORBES says in his "Naturalist in the Eastern Archipelago" that he was struck with the natives' acute observation in natural history and the accuracy with which they could give the names, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... was a very roomy boat, being entirely open from stem to stern, and was conveniently rigged with two masts, the main and mizzen, upon which were set two standing lugs and a jib, the mizzen sheet being hauled out to the end of a bumpkin; consequently when once her sails were set she could easily ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... veriest bumpkin knows the force of the adage about one's shaking the tree, for another to gather up the fruit. But Virgil was patient, and did well at the last; though the chronicles do not tell us how many pears ever came to the teeth of him that did ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... possibly had this quotation in his mind when he designed the following:—The deponent is a country bumpkin, to whom an official tenders the Testament, at the same time extending his disengaged palm. "Pleas zur," says Hodge, "wot be I to zay?" (To him the officer), "Say, This is the truth and nothing but the truth, so help ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... never be done?" cries the Master. "Quel lourdaud! But why do I trouble you with French expressions, which are lost on such an ignoramus? A lourdaud, my dear brother, is as we might say a bumpkin, a clown, a clodpole: a fellow without grace, lightness, quickness; any gift of pleasing, any natural brilliancy: such a one as you shall see, when you desire, by looking in the mirror. I tell you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little bumpkin!" said he, and brought in a square-built child, who with fat, red cheeks, and round arms, stared around him. "That is a strong fellow! Here is something to take hold of! Tralla-ralla-ralla!" And he danced him round ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... know how to cope with this kind of woman. Mrs. Bryce made her feel a clumsy fool, a sort of country bumpkin. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... a Gentleman, or one that was her Betters, should give her a civil Salute, she should curtsy and be humble, nevertheless. Her innocent forsooths, yess, and't please yous, and she would do her Endeavour, moved the good old Lady to take her out of the Hands of a Country Bumpkin her Brother, and hire her for her own Maid. I staid till I saw them all marched out to take Coach; the brother loaded with a great Cheese, he prevailed upon her to take for her Civilities to [his] Sister. This poor Creatures Fate is not far off that ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... bumpkin suspect me? In order to avert suspicion, I will confide everything to the friendly air."—Relates his past life and future plans, at the top of his lungs, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... Spartan savage," said one of the wreath-sellers, laughing. "He doesn't even know it's the regular festival of Athena. Run along, bumpkin, and ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... clumsy waggon; the stubborn knave of a waggoner has gotten the middle of the road and there he sticks. He'll draw neither to the left or the right. I've a mind to get down and baste the surly bumpkin's hide." ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... a-year—her son, all the while, being in a thriving way as a general merchant in the capital of the parish, and with clear profits from his business of L300 per annum, yet suffering the mother that bore him, and suckled him, and washed his childish hands, and combed the bumpkin's hair, and gave him Epsoms in a cup when her dear Johnny-raw had the belly-ache, to go down, step by step, as surely and as obviously as one is seen going down a stair with a feeble hold of the banisters, and stumbling every foot-fall down that other flight of steps that ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... also, which we drank up on Monday and Tuesday, because it was spoiling. "I have never seen none of the French quality," she says, "and I have a purdigious curosity; though as to dukes and dukes' sons, and these high top captains, I know they'll think me a mere country bumpkin. Howsever, they can't call me worse than 'Fat Kit Square,' and that's the worst name I ever got from any of our English petite bears, which I suppose these petite French quality ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay |
