"Dunce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... existence; its novelty shall not avail (with me at least) to save its ugliness from annihilation. If I thought otherwise, I admit that a round dozen of vultures would be none too many for the liver of a dunce who could not see that ugliness was ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... German as plain as sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius linguae: in English—illiterate, a dunce, a ninny.' ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... go back and study. No going out to play for you this morning. Jane Mason, you're the biggest dunce in school." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... limited circle of ideas would permit; but, unlike my brother, who was at this time at school, and whose rapid progress in every branch of instruction astonished and delighted his preceptors, I took no pleasure in books, whose use, indeed, I could scarcely comprehend, and bade fair to be as arrant a dunce as ever brought the blush of shame into the cheeks of anxious ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of the crew needs especial remark, Though he looked an incredible dunce: He had just one idea—but, that one being "Snark," The good Bellman ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... cynical, maybe even do something desperate, but at last I would come up smiling, calm in the faith that my life was deeper, richer for the experience, and that yours was, too. Or if it proved that yours was not, I should be amused at the shallowness of the Claire that was, for having been so simple a dunce as to imagine that you were worth while. I should thank you for teaching the present Claire to forsake that shallow one, and should find you a rung on my ladder ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... "You sweet, simple blue-eyed dunce! How shamefully your guardian neglects your education! Never even heard of the Ellewomen? Why, they compose the most brilliant society all over the world. Iduna was a silly creature, with a large warm heart, and loved her husband ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... fortified Florence against her enemies. When old he showed all the fire of youth, and his eye, like that of Moses, never became dim, since his strength and his beauty were of the soul,—ever expanding, ever adoring. His temper was stern, but affectionate. He had no mercy on a fool or a dunce, and turned in disgust from those who loved trifles and lies. He was guilty of no immoralities like Raphael and Titian, being universally venerated for his stern integrity and allegiance to duty,—as one who believes that there really is a God to whom he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... my little man, Is very hard to get, Will it make it any easier For you to sit and fret? And wouldn't it be wiser Than waiting, like a dunce, To go to work in earnest And learn ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... its form, as it meets shore, or counter-wave, or melting sunshine. Now remember, nothing distinguishes great men from inferior men more than their always, whether in life or in art, knowing the way things are going. Your dunce thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your wise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws them so,—the animal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course, the mountain ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... wooed a coy maid once, All of a summer's day he plead; Oft he spoke of the bonds of love—the dunce! And she shyly ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... worst boys in the village. I well remember the first morning he entered our school. He was then about twelve years of age; but, owing to his carelessness and inattention, he had made but slight progress in study. I learned afterwards that he had so long borne the names of "dunce" and "blockhead" in the school he attended in his own village, that he supposed himself to be really such, and made up his mind that it was useless for him to try to be anything else: and I think when our teacher first called him up for examination he was inclined to be of the same opinion. ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... to one of Johnson's prejudices, that Sterne's writings were pathetic: "I am sure," she said, "they have affected me." "Why," said Johnson, smiling and rolling himself about, "that is because, dearest, you are a dunce!" When she mentioned this to him some time afterwards he replied: "Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not have said it." The truth could not ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... I see her comin', My face gits red at once; My heart feels chokin'-like, and weak, And drops o' sweat run down my cheek, Yes, down my cheek,— Confound me for a dunce! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... her pride that was hurt. Had she taken the teasing of the meaner girls in a wiser spirit, she knew they would not have sent her the dunce cap. They continued to tease her because they ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... Walter Scott at the University of Edinburgh, was 'The Greek Dunce.' Both of these great men, to their sorrow and loss, absolutely and totally declined to learn Greek. 'But what the reason was why I hated the Greek language, while I was taught it, being a child, I do not yet understand.' The Saint was ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... "Dunce," cried Milady, "dunce! who dares to answer for another man, when the wisest, when those most after God's own heart, hesitate to answer for themselves, and who ranges himself on the side of the strongest and the most fortunate, to crush the weakest ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... somewhat disappointed in finding that the edition of the "English Poets" for which he was to write prefaces and lives was not an undertaking directed by him, but that he was to furnish a preface and life to any poet the booksellers pleased. I asked him if he would do this to any dunce's works if they should ask him. Johnson: "Yes, sir, and say he was a dunce." My friend seemed now not much to relish talking of this edition; it had been arranged by the forty chief booksellers of London, and Johnson had named his own terms ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... No was Yes. It's just your sort—provided there's no hurry— We like to worry. In twenty minutes, Sir, you wouldn't know Your father from JIM CROW, Or your illiterate self from LINDLEY MURRAY! And now then, dunce, Please move your boots, at once! If 'twere not for some twinges of the gout, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... would believe me, For all were quite ready to fall at his feet." "Indeed, you are wrong," said the Lily-belle proudly, "I cared nothing for him; he called on me once, And would have come often, no doubt, if I'd asked him, But though he was handsome, I thought him a dunce." ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... den. Three times he returned to Neewa and urged him to get up and come out where it was light. In that far corner of the cavern it was dark, and it was as if he were trying to tell Neewa that he was a dunce to lie there still thinking it was night when the sun was up outside. But he failed. Neewa was in the edge of his Long Sleep—the beginning of USKE-POW-A-MEW, the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... quarrelled with Badger about something or other; so when they approached the Sultan, Burton began addressing him, not in Arabic, but in the Zanzibar patois. The Sultan, after some conversation, turned to Badger, who, poor man, not being conversant with the patois, could only stand still in the dunce's cap which Burton, as it were, had clapped on him and look extremely foolish; while the bystanders nodded to each other and said, "Look at that fellow. He can't say two words. He's a fraud." Burton ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... come up to the grossness of the doctrine—spare the rod and ruin the child,—it at least is plain that the fear of being regarded a dunce and a fool and incurring the ridicule or displeasure of the tutor and class-mates, induces ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... And in character he was the most remarkable. Though two years our senior, he deliberately lagged behind the boys of his own age, and remained the oldest member of our form. Thoughtless masters called him a dunce, but abler ones knew him to be only idle. And Pennybet cared little for either opinion. He had schemed to remain in a low form; and that was enough. It was better to be a field-marshal among the "kids" than a ranker among his peers. Like Satan, for whom he probably felt a certain admiration, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... pardon—I ought to have known; I mean, it's very natural," I faltered and stuttered, thinking what a dunce I had been not to understand that both hers and Lord Ralles's letters had been only a pretext to get away from ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... "You are a dunce at many things," she replied. "The reason I came was because I knew that you were living in these parts, and I had a fancy ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... defence of the Dunces, is, with probably intentional ambiguity, written in the first person singular but ends by referring to "the Writers of the following Poem" (p. viii). One hand seems responsible for the preface, but we can only conclude that a Dunce collaborating with other Dunces produced the poem. Four days after its publication Pope wrote to Broome that it was "by James Moore and others," and a few weeks later wrote to Bethel that "James Moore own'd it but was made by three others, ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... what to do with your son, if he be a born dunce, if reading and writing be all the accomplishments he can acquire, if he be horribly ignorant and depraved, if he be indolent and an incorrigible liar, lost to all shame and decency, and incurably dishonest, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... ever remember that he kicked me when I came in his way, or so much as cursed my ugly face, though it was easy to see that he didn't over-like me. When I was six years old I was sent to the village school, where I was soon booked for a dunce, because the master found it impossible to teach me either to read or write. Before I had been at school two years, however, I had beaten boys four years older than myself, and could fling a stone with my left hand (for if I am right-eyed I am left-handed) ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... I went to routs and dances, Ah, how fine they were, and how Different from the dubious prances That the young indulge in now; There I first encountered Kitty, Told the girl I was a dunce, But implored her to have pity, And she said she would, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... has; I mean, I don't allow myself to be such a dunce, even in my own thoughts. I never even think ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... "dunce! who dares to answer for another man, when the wisest, when those most after God's own heart, hesitate to answer for themselves, and who ranges himself on the side of the strongest and the most fortunate, to crush the weakest and ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... laxity crept into the administration of the University and the colleges. Active enemies of our literary treasures were not behindhand, In 1535 Dr. Layton, visitor of monasteries, descended upon Oxford. "We have sett Dunce [Duns Scotus] in Bocardo, and have utterly banisshede hym Oxforde for ever, with all his blinde glosses, and is nowe made a comon servant to evere man, faste nailede up upon posses in all comon howses of easment: ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... "What a dunce-head!" exclaimed his sister; "that was last night when you played tag, and you tumbled over into the ditch and bellered like the ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... the study of grammar is not so enticing that it may be disparaged in the hearing of the young, without injury. What would be the natural effect of the following sentence, which I quote from a late well-written religious homily? "The pedagogue and his dunce may exercise their wits correctly enough, in the way of grammatical analysis, on some splendid argument, or burst of eloquence, or thrilling descant, or poetic rapture, to the strain and soul of which not a fibre in their nature would ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... dunce of the party, was set down at home, and the Banks Islanders were again found pleasant, honest, and courteous, thinking, as it appeared afterwards, that the white men were the departed spirits of deceased friends. A walk ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... striven after with might and main. He had seldom attained to it because he would never "go up past" Lisbeth. If she missed a word, he, Robert, missed it too, no matter how well he knew it. It was sweet to be thought a dunce for her dear sake. It was all the reward he asked to see her holding her place at the head of the class, her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes starry with her pride of position. And how sweetly she would lecture him on the way home from school about learning his spellings better, and wind up ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was head of his class not once; And his aunt repeatedly dubbed him "Dunce." But, "Give him a chance," said his father, Joi. "His head is abnormally large for a boy." But his aunt said, "Piffie! It's crammed with bosh! Why, he don't know the rivers and mountains of Gosh, Nor the names of the nephews ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... yet, to the lessons on law which were given us by M. Rossi, the minister of Pius IX. But Greek and Latin, and hours spent over an exercise or a translation with a fat dictionary to keep me company! Oh, mercy on me! From the scholastic point of view I was simply a DUNCE, nothing but a dunce. Yet I managed to scramble one prize—the shabbiest of them all—the second for Latin versions in the seventh class! I was presented with my reward at the prize distribution, to the tune of "Vive Henri IV." Vive ce roi vaillant, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... you thievin' dunce, How you robbed my orchard once, Takin' all the biggest apples, leavin' all the littlest runts? Do you mind my melon-patch— How you gobbled the whole batch, Stacked the vines, and sliced the greenest melons, just to ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... not believe that I am dunce enough to mistake your feelings towards Mademoiselle—they may be read in your face at this moment. Of course I do not presume to hazard a conjecture as to those of Mademoiselle towards yourself. But when I met her not long since at the house of Duplessis, with ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... spendthrift, and a debauchee. His manifold nature seemed to be always in violent ebullition. He was born in September, 1751, and was the son of Thomas Sheridan, the actor and lexicographer, His mother, Frances Sheridan, was also a writer of plays and novels. Educated at Harrow, he was there considered a dunce; and when he grew to manhood, he plunged into dissipation, and soon made a stir in the London world by making a runaway match with Miss Linley, a singer, who was noted as one of the handsomest ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... general rule, men of original literary bent are not exemplary students at college. 'The common curricoolum,' as the Scottish laird called academic studies generally, rather repels them. Macaulay took no honours at Cambridge; mathematics defied him. Scott was 'the Greek dunce,' at Edinburgh. Thackeray, Shelley, Gibbon, did not cover themselves with college laurels; they read what pleased them, they did not read 'for the schools.' In short, this behaviour at college is the rule among men who are to be distinguished in literature, not the exception. The honours ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... lazy ship? If the Queen knew how her money was eaten and drunk, by the idle knaves aboard her, she would send them all to hunt for freebooters among the islands. Look at the land, Alida, child, and you'll think no more of the fright the gaping dunce is giving thee; he only wishes to ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... that on every traveling man's head should rest a dunce cap will some fine day get badly fooled if he continues to rub up against the drummer. The road is the biggest college in the world. Its classrooms are not confined within a few gray stone buildings with red slate roofs; they are the nooks and ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... although I'm not so sharp at my Latin as I was, still I couldn't use ignarus, as you see, without fairly committing myself as a scholar; and indeed, if I went to that, it would surely be the first time I have been mistaken for a dunce." ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... chivalrous,—kind, and patient, and hard-working,—but stupid where women are concerned. Indispensable and delightful as they are in real life,—pleasant and comfortable as women actually find them,—not one in ten thousand but makes a dunce of himself the moment he opens his mouth to theorize about women. Besides, they have "an axe to grind." The pretty things they inculcate—slippers, and coffee, and care, and courtesy—ought indeed to be done, but the others ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... is an evacuation absolutely necessary to avoid fatal and plethoric congestion. A musty and limited pedant yellows himself a little among rolls and records, plunders a few libraries, and, lo! we have an entire new work by the learned Mr Dunce, and that after an incubation of only one month. He is, perhaps, a braggadocio of minuteness, a swaggering chronologer, a man bristling up with small facts, prurient with dates, wantoning in obsolete evidence. No matter; there are plenty of newspapers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... have written the letter I now hold in answer to mine, —would your ideas, your language have been the same,—had some one whispered in your ear (what may prove true), Mademoiselle O. d'Este M. has six millions and does intend to have a dunce ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... little man, Is very hard to get? Will it make it any easier For you to sit and fret? Then wouldn't it he wiser Than waiting like a dunce, To go to work in earnest, And ...
— New National First Reader • Charles J. Barnes, et al.
... meant well enough, but was still in the way, As dunces still are, let them be where they may; Indeed, they appear to come into existence 240 To impede other folks with their awkward assistance; If you set up a dunce on the very North pole All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins, And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice; Or, if he found nobody ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... passion prone, without a rhyme, Inane and madlike was he many a time, His outer self, forsooth, fine may have been, But one wild, howling waste his mind within: Addled his brain that nothing he could see; A dunce! to read essays so loth to be! Perverse in bearing, in temper wayward; For human censure he had no regard. When rich, wealth to enjoy he knew not how; When poor, to poverty he could not bow. Alas! what utter waste of lustrous grace! To state, to family what a disgrace! Of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Spider then laughed outright; "Poor fellow!" he said, "you are in a sad plight! Ha! ha! what a dunce you must be to suppose, That the heart of a Spider ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... wretched art to genius must give way, Stands at the gate of Helicon, and guards Its precinct against all but crazy bards, Our witlings keep long nails and untrimmed hair, Much in brown studies, in the bath-room rare. For things are come to this; the merest dunce, So but he choose, may start up bard at once, Whose head, too hot for hellebore to cool, Was ne'er submitted to a barber's tool. What ails me now, to dose myself each spring? Else had I been a very ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... as if you are a bigger dunce than you seem; but," added Fred, turning toward the Shawanoe, "have you seen any thing ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... "Guide to Conversation," that for utility and correctness of idiom surpasses all previous attempts of the same kind. With it in one hand, and a bagful of Napoleons or Zecchini in the other, the biggest dunce in London—nay, even a schoolmaster—may travel from Boulogne to Naples and back, with the utmost satisfaction to himself, and with substantial profit to the people of these barbarous climes. The following is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... matter is that I'm a double-barrelled dunce," was the answer. "Look here; do you see that?" and he held up ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... When he was tired of sitting, tradition has it that the little fellow used to amuse himself by getting up and standing in the corner to which the school culprits were sent. Here he duly put on the dunce's cap which he had seen them wear, and which bore the inscription, "For my bad conduct ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... 'Oliday form is my text. Last year it was Parry and Switzerland; 'ardly know where to go next. I should much like to try Monty Carlo, and 'ave a fair flutter for once, But I fear it won't run to it, pardner; my boss is the dashdest old dunce. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... even if he never touch the instrument, or as one who has studied medicine is a physician, though he does not practise, so our friend here from this time forward is now and ever shall be a general, even though he does not receive a vote at the elections. But the dunce who has not the science is neither general nor doctor, no, not even if the whole world appointed him. But (he proceeded, turning to the youth), in case any of us should ever find ourselves captain or colonel (7) under you, to give us some ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... and Latin in New, two in All Souls, and two already existed, as we have seen, in C. C. C. This Layton is he that took a Rabelaisian and unquotable revenge on that old tyrant of the Schools, Duns Scotus. "We have set Dunce in Bocardo, and utterly banished him from Oxford for ever, with all his blind glosses . . . And the second time we came to New College we found all the great quadrant full of the leaves of Dunce, the wind blowing them into every corner. And there we found a certain Mr. Greenfield, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... excellent, and cannot fail to do good the wider it is circulated. Whether it is worth your while to give up time to it is another question for you alone to decide; that it will do good for the subject is beyond all question. I do not think a dunce exists who could not understand it, and that is a bold saying after the extent to which I have been misunderstood. I did not understand what you required about sterility: assuredly the facts given do not go nearly so far. We differ so much that ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... "Yes, but you have not seen the grandest one yet! Go with me to-day to St. Paul's and hear the charity children sing." So we went, and I saw the "head cynic of literature," the "hater of humanity," as a critical dunce in the Times once called him, hiding his bowed face, wet with tears, while his whole frame shook with emotion, as the children of poverty rose to pour out their anthems of praise. Afterwards he wrote in one of his books this passage, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the Bridge ain't wut they show, So much ez Em'son, Hawthorne, an' Thoreau. I know the village, though: was sent there once A-schoolin', coz to home I played the dunce; An' I've ben sence a-visitin' the Jedge, Whose garding whispers with the river's edge, Where I've sot mornin's, lazy as the bream, Whose only business is to head up-stream, (We call 'em punkin-seed,) or else in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... bug; and when he doesn't look like an elf, he looks like a king with a high crown on his head or a naughty boy with a dunce cap." ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... simpleton, dolt, dunce, defective, witling, dotterel, driveler, blockhead, beetlehead, ninny, ignoramus, numskull, booby, clodpate, nincompoop, ass, wiseacre, dunderhead, halfwit, oaf, dullard, coot, mooncalf; zany, harlequin, buffoon, jester, merry-andrew, droll, clown, scaramouch. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... One day, when Anton came to call her to her English lesson, he found her in Karl's room, a plane in her hand, working hard at the seat of a new sledge, and good-naturedly saying, "Don't take so much trouble with me, Wohlfart; I can learn nothing: I have always been a dunce." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... sitting on Harold's knee, seemed to expect her full rescue from all grievances, and was terribly disappointed to find that he had no power to remove her from her durance in the London school-room, where she was plainly the dunce and the black sheep, a misery to herself and all concerned, hating everyone and disliked by all. To the little maiden of the Bush, only half tamed as yet, the London school-room and walks in the park were penance in themselves, and the company of three steady prim girls, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she had never met with "two such impenetrable dunces." None the less the father contrived with difficulty to scrape together enough money to send his boys to Harrow, and there, luckily, Dr. Parr discerned that Richard, with all his faults, was by no means an impenetrable dunce. Both he and Sumner, the head-master of Harrow, discovered in the schoolboy Sheridan great talents which neither of them was capable ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... truth quite positive and a thing by itself; he failed, after analysis, to understand it, though he had naturally more lights on it than any one else. He knew how it subsisted in spite of an equal consciousness of his being neither mentally nor physically quite helpless, neither a dunce nor a cripple; he knew it to be absolute, though secret, and also, strange to say, about common undertakings, not discouraging, not prohibitive. Only now was he having to think if it were prohibitive in respect ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... voice, rising and falling with the wind. The shrill shrieking penetrated to every wagon, and head after head was thrust out of the canvases to see what it meant. In another minute Pumpkin Bill, the dunce of the boomer's camp, "a nobody from nowhar," to use Cal Clemmer's words, came rushing along, hatless and with his wild eyes ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... earthquake shock! —What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground. You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,— All at once, and nothing first,— Just as bubbles do when ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... direction—and the majority of them, either the sharp spur of necessity or the relentless urge of an ambition which will not be denied. Almost without exception we have found that the only difference between genius or millionaire and dunce or tramp is a willingness to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... spider, tying a few torn threads together. "Really! Do you take me to be as big a dunce as yourself? You're going to die anyhow, if you're kept hanging long enough, and that's the time for me to suck the blood out of you—when you can't sting. Too bad, though, that you can't see how dreadfully you've damaged ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... And wore at heart their country's cause; By neither place or pension bought, They spoke and voted as they thought. Thus did your sires adorn their seat; And such alone are truly great. If you the paths of learning slight, You're but a dunce in stronger light; In foremost rank the coward placed, Is more conspicuously disgraced. 30 If you to serve a paltry end, To knavish jobs can condescend, We pay you the contempt that's due; In that you have precedence too. Whence had you this illustrious ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... disparaging application of the phrase. All Virgil says is they were both "in the flower of their youth," and both Arcadians, both equal in setting a theme for song or capping it epigrammatically; but as Arcadia was the least intellectual part of Greece, an "Arcadian" came to signify a dunce, and hence "Arcades ambo" received ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... intrigue, carried all before them; for this was, indeed, the period of the worst mismanagement these schools were to know. In later years the Liberator found time to look to them. At present—in the Moscow Corps, Sitsky, "Cock" of the school, a vicious dunce of twenty, would never be called upon to yield his position to Kashkarev, a brilliant scholar and a thoroughly scrupulous boy of eighteen, who was generally despised because his grandfather had been ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... at the Greyfriars School state that, as a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as a scholar. He did, in fact, just as much as was required of him, and no more. If he was distinguished for anything it was for verse-writing: but was his enthusiasm ever so great, it stopped when he had composed the number of lines demanded ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fro, How many folks about me—above me and below— Might make this life more happy, if old as well as young Would bear in mind the maxim which bids them hold their tongue. Hold your tongue—hold your tongue—you'll ne'er be thought a dunce: Hold your tongue and think twice before you loose it once: Hold your tongue—for quiet folks are oft reputed wise: Hold your tongue, but open wide your ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... transcription unnecessary, much just, though at times unjust criticism. A German writer has said, that the man of genius takes his notes on a slip of paper, he of good abilities on a half-page, while the dunce must fill a whole sheet. Now the reverse would be quite as true in many cases. For though thoughtless writing may be little more than wasted labor, yet there is nothing that can fix more steadily thoughts and facts in the mind than the precision and constant attention ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... thankful to my Father in heaven for excusing me. But the next united supplication, I felt that I must unite with them in kneeling, and while one tried to pull me up by the arm, with saying "I'd be a little dunce if I was in thy place," the other sister pinched the other arm, "Now, Laura Smith, be a little Methodist, will thee? I'd be ashamed if I was thee; every body will make fun of thee." But I kept my position and ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... now commenced a strict investigation, Which, as all spoke at once, and more than once Conjecturing, wondering, asking a narration, Alike might puzzle either wit or dunce To answer in a very clear oration. Dudu had never passed for wanting sense, But being "no orator as Brutus is,"[353] Could not at first expound ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... stuff that results in head-ache. My dearest, Fate has been very good to me, and I love my profession of letters. I am sure that of all educational processes there is none better than book-making; and the man who begins by making books must be a dolt, dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by writing them. So you may yet hope to see the morning that shall make your Valentine famous—for a fortnight. What man can hope to be famous for more than a fortnight in such ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... home ties were not strong and when his brother succeeded to the title and estates in Ireland Mark, who had inherited a fortune from his mother, went to live with his powerful English relatives. For a while he thought of going into the army, but he knew he was a dunce in mathematics, so he soon gave up the idea. He tried Oxford, but failed there for the same reason. Then he just drifted. Now, still on the sunny side of thirty-five, he was knocking about, sick of things, just existing, and ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... that stick alone; Come, drop it now at once; Of all the cats I ever knew You are the greatest dunce." ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... always been his counsellor and friend, and had also materially assisted in giving him the amount of knowledge he possessed in reading and writing. Had it not been for her, he confessed that he would have remained a sad dunce. ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... stuff, Marilla," she groaned. "I'm sure I'll never be able to make head or tail of it. There is no scope for imagination in it at all. Mr. Phillips says I'm the worst dunce he ever saw at it. And Gil—I mean some of the others are so smart at it. It is extremely ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fancy of the human race! Half sinner frail, half child of grace We see HERR WERTHER of the story In all the pomp of woodcut glory. His worth is first made duly known, By having his sad features shown At ev'ry fair the country round; In ev'ry alehouse too they're found. His stick is pointed by each dunce "The ball would reach his brain at once!" And each says, o'er his beer and bread: "Thank Heav'n that 'tis ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... dunce I am!" she soliloquized. "And what must he think of me! Well!" with a little sigh, "the worse his opinion of me, the better for Madeline. And here I am this minute, in spite of myself, actually rejoicing in my heart because he has not ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... cries Booth, "is it possible you should do me so much unmerited honour, and I should be dunce enough not to perceive ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... note the air of pleased attention with which even her Uncle Ralph listened to his ceaseless flow of words. "I knew he was older than Abbie, and that this was his third year in college. What could I have expected from Uncle Ralph's son? A pretty dunce he must think me, blushing and stammering like an awkward country girl. What on earth could Abbie mean about needing my help for him, and being troubled about him. It is some of her ridiculous fanatical ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... political faith and lose their economic support, or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... ever the test of the scholar: whether he allows intellectual fastidiousness to stand between him and the great issues of his time. 'Cannot the English,' he cried out to Carlyle, 'leave cavilling at petty failures and bad manners and at the dunce part, and leap to the suggestions and finger-pointings of the gods, which, above the understanding, feed the hopes and guide the wills of men?' These finger-pointings Emerson did not mistake. He spoke up for Garrison. John Brown was several times ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... "Ach, but he's a dunce onyway," said the boy. "He canna spell an easy word like 'examination,' an' he had twenty-two mistakes in his dictation test," he went on, and she was quick to note the air of priggish importance ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Howell's, and even part of Gifford's, is chiefly interesting as giving us in the very sharpest contrast the differences of the poetry before and after the melodious bursts of which Spenser, Sidney, and Watson were the first mouthpieces. Except an utter dunce (which Grove does not seem to have been by any means) no one who had before him The Shepherd's Calendar, or the Hecatompathia, or a MS. copy of Astrophel and Stella, could have written as Grove wrote. There are echoes of this earlier and woodener matter to be found later, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... next, confess'd, That in his heart he loved a jest: A wag he was, he needs must own, And could not let a dunce alone: Sometimes his friend he would not spare, And might perhaps be too severe: But yet the worst that could be said, He was a wit both born and bred; And, if it be a sin and shame, Nature alone must bear the blame: One fault he has, is sorry for't, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... bard in view, Allow for that, and judge with kindness too; Faults he must own, though hard for him to find, Not to some happier merits quite so blind; These if mistaken Fancy only sees, Or Hope, that takes Deformity for these: If Dunce, the crowd-befitting title falls His lot, and Dulness her new subject calls, To the poor bard alone your censures give - Let his fame die, but let his honour live; Laugh if you must—be candid as you can, And when you lash the Poet, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... times, which required the dilution of an idea into seven or eight volumes to make it palatable. For we are told that a young Cantab, who, when asked if he had read Clarissa, replied, "D—-n it, I would not read it through to save my life," was set down as an incurable dunce. And that a lady reading to her maid, whilst she curled her hair, the seventh volume of Clarissa, the poor girl let fall such a shower of tears that they wetted her mistress's head so much, she had to send her out of the ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... turning to his comrades, in clear disgust, "the stupid dunce thinks those fellows belong to us and we to them, just because we all wear the same sort of flying clothes! Did ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... however, from the Swede and the Prussian, Voorhees walked away, using no measures to obey. As for myself, thoroughly disgusted with this man, a vulgar rogue, I walked aft to the other lieutenant, who was only a gentleman-like dunce. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one of the company* ventured to say, 'Too fine for such a poem:—a poem on what?' JOHNSON, (with a disdainful look,) 'Why, on DUNCES. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst THOU lived in those days! It is not worth while 'being a dunce now, when there are no wits.' Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circumstance, that Pope's fame was higher when he was alive ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... disjointed and single, Haunts the rude masses of brick garlanded gayly with vine, E'en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin, E'en in the people itself? Is it illusion or not? Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim Transalpine, Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare? Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger, Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... of which tendencies are augmented by the power of the imagination, the vivid character of the whole range of thought, including what is disagreeable. This applies, in various degrees, to every step in the long scale of mental power, from the veriest dunce to the greatest genius that ever lived. Therefore the nearer anyone is, either from a subjective or from an objective point of view, to one of those sources of suffering in human life, the farther he is from the other. And so a man's ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... is told to make a hat or bonnet in fifteen minutes. Really surprising results will begin to appear. Some very lovely creations will be evolved by the tasteful fingers of the wonderful woman who can stretch a dollar; exceedingly funny dunce and soldier caps with nodding tassels of paper fringe will be the products of the big men who can always laugh and give others an occasion for mirth. Hats with brims and without, crownless and with peaked ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... distinguishing the poetical elements in which the genius is shown. The critic should frankly analyse; but mostly he does not. He tells us, for instance, that Walt Whitman is the "Adam of a new poetical era," or else that he is "a dunce of inconceivable incoherence and incompetence"; but usually he does not show us the precise data upon which either conclusion is based. Cannot profundity of thought, ardour of emotion, power and charm of expression, be actually demonstrated as present or absent in a poet, when the critic ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... Yes! Gustave, the former "dunce," the one they had called "Good-luck" because his father had made an immense fortune in guano. Not one bit changed was Gustave! The same deep-set eyes and greenish complexion. But what style! English from the tips of his pointed shoes to the horseshoe ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... which she visited. They were fancy portraits of characters, most of which were familiar to my mind. There were Guy Fawkes, Punch, his then Majesty the King, Bogy, the Man in the Moon, the Clerk of the Weather Office, a Dunce, and Old Father Christmas. Beneath each sketch was a stanza of my godmother's ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... growing bolder with impunity, waxed louder and more daring—eating apples under the master's eye, pinching each other in sport or malice, and cutting their autographs in the very legs of his desk. The puzzled dunce, who stood beside it to say his lesson out of book, looked no longer at the ceiling for forgotten words, but drew closer to the master's elbow and boldly cast his eyes upon the page. If the master did ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... I knows on," drawled the old fellow, laughing until his old head seemed ready to topple from his shoulders. "No blood relation, any how, sir. You see, my wife's cousin's aunt's husband's brother Jerry was a cousin to Nicodemus Dunce, who, if I don't disremember, was related in some way to Isacker Pete's wife's sister, and she was this ere man's niece, or somethin' o' that sort, but we ain't ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... voice as sweet as a silver bell "That for the third time, you dunce! I'm not going ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the hour of the Earthquake shock! What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,— All at once, and nothing first,— Just as bubbles do when ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "point the way to Heaven," take care: Your fingers all being thumbs, point, Heaven knows where! Farewell, poor dunce! your letter though I blame, Bears witness how my anger I can tame: I've called you ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... common sense. If men are to be fools, I would rather they were fools in little matters than in great; dulness turned up with temerity is a livery all the worse for the facings; and the most tremendous of all things is the magnanimity of the dunce. ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... conchology, you'd better say so. I shall play as much as I wish, and when I want to know about any new or curious thing, I shall consult my Cyclo, instead of bothering other people with questions, or giving it up like a dunce;" with which crushing reply Frank departed, leaving Jill to pack and unpack her treasures a dozen times, and Jack to dance jigs on the lids of the trunks ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... Comtesse de C. This trash Walpole extols in language sufficiently high for the merits of Don Quixote. He wished to possess a likeness of Crebillon; and Liotard, the first painter of miniatures then living, was employed to preserve the features of the profligate dunce. The admirer of the Sopha and of the Lettres Atheniennes had little respect to spare for the men who were then at the head of French literature. He kept carefully out of their way. He tried to keep other People from paying them any attention. He could not deny that Voltaire and Rousseau ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the written rules of grammar to save his life; he was totally indifferent as to which states bounded and bordered which; and he had been known to spell "physician" with an f and two z's. But it was when confronted by a sum that Peter stood revealed in his true colors of a dunce! ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... day Fanny Hutton Her last dress has put on; Her fine lessons forgotten, She died, as the dunce died: And prim Betsy Chambers, Decay'd in her members, No longer remembers Things, as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... grew up he clearly showed in what direction his interest lay. At school he was something of a dunce at his lessons, but let him but have a pencil and paper and his mind was wide awake at once. Every spare moment he spent making sketches on the walls ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... not compel his scholars to learn: he only scolds and punishes them if they do not, which is quite a different thing, the net effect being that the school prisoners need not learn unless they like. Nay, it is sometimes remarked that the school dunce—meaning the one who does not like—often turns out well afterwards, as if idleness were a sign of ability and character. A much more sensible explanation is that the so-called dunces are not exhausted ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... Pascualet is your boy, he ought to look like you, oughtn't he, just as you look the way your father, old Pascualo, looked. Well, he doesn't, that's all! He looks like Tonet—eyes shape, build, and complexion! Poor dunce of a Rector! They call you lanudo! But the wool on your eyes is thicker than they ever guessed! Heavens, man, take a peep at the boy! He's the living picture of Tonet, as Tonet used to be in the days when he was ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... string with your teeth, and fire our new gun? If I could, you might be the Artillery all to yourself, and it would be capital fun. You wag your tail at that, do you? You would like it a great deal better? But I can't bear you to be such a dunce, when you look so wise; and yet I don't believe you'll ever learn a letter. Aunt Jemima is going to make me a new cocked hat out of the next old newspaper, for I want to have a review; But the newspaper after that, Papa Poodle, must be ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... afford to scorn. It was the bizarrerie of the affair that tickled her, almost to laughter—Donna Maria's down-dropt gaze, the long lashes veiling eyes too holy-innocent for aught but the breviary; and he—he of all men!—playing the lover to this little dunce, with her empty brain, her ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... TOMMY (indignantly)—"Any dunce would know that. If it's milk that's spilled all you have to do is to call the cat an' she'll lick it up cleaner'n anything. But this ain't milk, an' mother'll do the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... fate shall will it, I can never die but once, I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman; He who fears death is a dunce. ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... use a-lookin' sad, An' a-mekin' out you's mad; Ef you's gwine to be so glum, Wondah why you evah come. I don't lak nobidy 'roun' Dat jes' shet dey mouf an' frown— Oh, now, man, don't act a dunce! Cain't you talk? I tol' you once, Speak ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... French for fame! "March to the field—knock out a Mounseer's brains "And pick the scoundrel's pocket for your pains. "Come Humphrey come! thou art a lad of spirit! "Rise to a halbert—as I did—by merit! "Would'st thou believe it? even I was once "As thou art now, a plough-boy and a dunce; "But Courage rais'd me to my rank. How now boy! "Shall Hero Humphrey still be Numps the plough-boy? "A proper shaped young fellow! tall and straight! "Why thou wert made for glory! five feet eight! "The road to riches is the field of fight,— "Didst ever see a guinea look so bright? "Why regimentals ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... "scholars," as he called his pupils, studied their lessons out loud. The louder they shouted, the better he liked it. If a scholar didn't know his lesson, he had to stand in the corner with a long pointed cap on his head. This was called a dunce cap. ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... right. You are the better scholar. Now what a dunce was I to think it Ovid! But hang me if ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... "Your case," replied Lord Fairfax, "is not singular. I am also sadly disappointed in my sons: one I sent into the Netherlands to train him up a soldier, and he makes a tolerable country justice, but a mere coward at fighting; my next I sent to Cambridge, and he proves a good lawyer, but a mere dunce at divinity; and my youngest I sent to the inns of court, and he is good at divinity, but nobody at the law." The relater of this anecdote adds, "This I have often heard from the descendant of that honourable family, who yet seems to mince the matter, because so immediately ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are ye sure he's not a dunce?" Why, really one might ask the same thing in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle |
