"Ignoramus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had deposited a half-broken young horse in the drawing-room, and had told me to exercise it! My dear, Christian's portrait is a Godsend! But I may tell you, in strict confidence, that, so far, it's far too clever for an ignoramus like me to make head or tail ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... "a boy of the house" discourses with two gentlemen concerning the play, and explains that the author will "not be entreated to give it a prologue. He has lost too much that way already, he says. He will not woo the Gentile ignoramus so much. But careless of all vulgar censure, as not depending on common approbation, he is confident it shall super-please judicious spectators, and to them he leaves it to work with the rest by example or otherwise." Further, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the Emperor Francis the First, often used to reply to questions that were put to him, "I do not know." An ignoramus one day said to him, "But the emperor pays you for knowing." "The emperor," he replied, "pays me for what I know; if he were to pay me for what I am ignorant of, all the treasures of his ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... ten minutes, during which time he learned most of all there was to know about my little journalistic and debating experience at Cambridge, and the general trend of my views and purposes. I do not think he particularly desired my services; but, on the other hand, I was not an absolute ignoramus. I had written for publication; I had enthusiasm; and there ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... thrown up in digging holes! Some days of travel brought him where The tide had left the oysters bare. Since here our traveller saw the sea, He thought these shells the ships must be. 'My father was, in truth,' said he, 'A coward, and an ignoramus; He dared not travel: as for me, I've seen the ships and ocean famous; Have cross'd the deserts without drinking, And many dangerous streams unshrinking; Such things I know from having seen and felt them.' ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... heart of Africa, or in the icy regions of the Pole if I knew it were there. But I do not know where it is. I do not know if it be guarded in a triple- locked iron case by some jealous biblomaniac. I do not know if it be growing mouldy in the attic of some ignoramus. I shudder at the thought that perhaps its tore-out leaves may have been used to cover the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... of the lady, or of matrimony generally (and in fact he never was married), he promptly retired from the competition. At first, no one suspected the youth's talents, for he amused himself by pretending to be an ignoramus, until one day the accompanyist on the harpsichord (then the most important instrument in an orchestra) was absent, and young Handel took his place, astonishing everybody by his masterly touch. Probably this discovery aroused the jealousy of some of his brother-artists, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... but in support of these assertions the critic quoted certain passages and phrases. He objected to cheeks "scarred" by tears, to "dauntless" statues, and to "terror-stricken" wagons. The very touches of poetic impressionism that largely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an ignoramus. There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions subtly conveyed by Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as deliberate with him as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an imagist before our modern ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... In the margin of the 1670 edition is written "Albumazar, Ignoramus." The author of "Albumazar," a piece presented before the King at Cambridge in 1614, and printed in the same year, was John Tomkis. "Ignoramus," a Latin comedy by James Ruggle (or Ruggles), was ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... bends over her infant! Beyond it hangs the Madonna del Cardellino of Raffaelle: what heavenly grace, what simplicity, what saint-like purity, in the expression of that face, and that exquisite mouth! And from these must I turn back, on pain of being thought an ignoramus, to admire the coarse perpetration of Michel Angelo—because it is Michel Angelo's? But I ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... generalissimo; I see all the little threads which he is spinning around me, and which, as soon as they are strong enough, he will convert into a net, in which he will catch me, in order to exhibit me to the world as an ignoramus and dreamer, destitute both of ability and luck as a general. Do not tell me that I am mistaken, my friend; I have hitherto observed every thing with close attention, and my observations unfortunately do not deceive me. The generalissimo is desirous of punishing me for my victories at ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... the artistic passion behind it; its coherent statement had to wait for other and more reflective days. The thing began as a vision, not as a syllogism. Here the name of Franz Schubert inevitably comes up. Schubert was an ignoramus, even in music; he knew less about polyphony, which is the mother of harmony, which is the mother of music, than the average conservatory professor. But nevertheless he had such a vast instinctive sensitiveness to musical values, such a profound and accurate feeling ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... no jail, and that I wasn't to tell him either. Now goes Cousin Oscar on a beeline to tell Uncle how dreadful Stanley has went and disgraced the family; and Uncle will want to know how he heard of it. 'Why,' says Oscar, 'an old ignoramus from Arizona, named Johnson—friend of Stanley's—he told me about it. He came up here to get me to help Stanley out; wanted me to go out ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... with his feet. 'All the same, I'm lucky. There are so many of us scouring the town every day without getting the smallest job. The day before yesterday I discovered an architect who works for a large contractor. You can have no idea of such an ignoramus of an architect—a downright numskull, incapable even of tracing a plan. He gives me twenty-five sous an hour, and I set his houses straight for him. It came just in time, too, for my mother sent me word that she was quite cleared out. Poor mother, what a ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... of our own country, and by foreigners. Its plot is either very slight or hopelessly hackneyed, and it is redeemed from sheer commonplace only by its picturesque language. It is usually told in the first person by some English-murdering ignoramus. It is simple, and sometimes has a homely pathos. It may present character as either active or inactive, though usually the former. Its excuse for existence is that it gives truthful expression, in their own language, to the thoughts of certain classes of society; ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... a finished product. The Batlan is a species unknown outside of the ghetto. In a sense, he is the bohemian in Jewry. His distinguishing traits are his oddity and farcical ways. Not that he is an ignoramus—far from that. In many instances he is an erudite Talmudist, but his simplicity, his absent-mindedness, his lack of all practical sense, incapacitate him from undertaking anything, of whatever nature it may be. He is a parasite, ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... very same Louis Ulbach, was employed by a newspaper where he was sure to please by insulting me, and the very first thing he did was to give me a kick, such a kick as twenty horses covered with sleigh-bells could not give. He called me "ignoramus," and wondered what "this fellow" meant by his literary drivelling. The most curious part of the whole business is, that he did not write the article, all he did was to sign it! Four years, and a scratch given his vanity, had proved enough ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... desired to make invocation, he did so; nothing appeared, or would: three or four times in my company he was put upon to do the work, but could not; at last he said he could do nothing as long as I was in presence. I at last shewed him his error, but left him as I found him, a pretending ignoramus. ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... his eyes off this girl who had already completed the high school course which he had not yet begun; besides, she had learned a lot of other things which would be beyond him to ever reach. Even though he were an ignoramus, he could bask in the light of her greater learning. She did ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... you small ignoramus! It's a blacksnake and a monster. It is one of the dreads of the small life of the wood, and it was one of the dreads of my youth, and its ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... ignoramus, look," he yelled. "You own a horse that's fit to win the Melbourne Cup or the American Derby, and you don't know it. What do you want for him? Give you ten thousand for him this minute—and I am not so certain that race ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... for its educational system and for its schools. These schools are all under Government control, and meet the wants of every class. The authorities are upheld by the parents, both being determined there shall be no such thing as an ignoramus in Denmark, so whether the children are educated at home or sent to school, they must begin lessons at the age of seven. If they have a governess at home the parents must give a guarantee to the authorities that the governess is efficient and capable of giving the standard education ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... friend," said the king, "that a great institution like the Hamburg Botanical Gardens would let a man of your worth perish rather than pay his ransom of L600? Happy young man! You now see the value of a sound, scientific education. Had you been an utter ignoramus as I am, I wouldn't have asked ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... will not conjure up such horrors. I believe Harry is at this moment sitting in the hotel discussing a good dinner before a blazing fire." And, as Mattie looked injured at this, she continued, still more merrily: "My dear, are you such an ignoramus as to believe that any amount of wax candles and charming women will induce an Englishman to forego his dinner? He will come by and by; and if he gets cold coffee, he will have his deserts." And then Mattie's ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... "He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... had recognized an ecclesiastic, "as, in spite of the sharp tone in which you speak, you seem a man of learning, permit a poor ignoramus to ask you a few details about this Jehu, dead these two thousand six hundred years, who, nevertheless, is honored by ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... sciolist. He also speaks of an electroscope that will telegraph rays of light (!) and enable us thereby to see our most distant friends, and of stowing in a small compass electricity enough to exterminate an army. This imaginative ignoramus adds, "Give to our present biped acquaintance the ability to exterminate armies with a lightning flash, added to the power of sailing at will through the air or of passing at will and in safety beneath ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... et centenarios et Decanos debeat eorum exercitus ordinari. [Sidenote: Interitus.] Post hoc ab ictu tonitrui esc occisus, peractis suis ordinationibus and statutis. Hic autem habuit quatuor filios: Vnus vocabatur Occoday, secundus Tossuch can, tertius Thaaday et nomen quarti ignoramus. [Sidenote: Liberi.] Isti quatuor filij cum alijs maioribus qui tunc erant, primum filium videlicet Occoday elegerunt imperatorem, filij autem istius Occoday Cuyne, qui nunc est imperator, Cocthen et Cyrenen. [Sidenote: Nepotes.] Et si plures habuerit filios ignoramus. Filij autem Tossuch ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... only learn to read and write, he must learn to draw. We cannot afford to let our young folks grow up without this power. A new French book is just now much talked about, with this droll title, "The Life of a Wise Man, by an Ignoramus." It is the story of the great Pasteur, whose discoveries in respect to life have made him world renowned. I turned to the book, eager to find out the key to such success, and I found the old story—"the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... never asked for the place with the hope of getting it. Only too happy I to have that miserable post of mace-bearer. On the other I built but castles in the air. Your Holiness will do well, since you do not care to give it me, to bestow it on a man of talent who deserves it, and not upon some fat ignoramus who will spend his time scratching his paunch, if I may quote your holiness' own words. Follow the example of Pope Giulio's illustrious memory, who conferred an office of the same kind upon Bramante, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... she answered, with exultation and heightened color, "but it seems absurd to suppose that such a little ignoramus as I ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Magdalene!"—"What a to-do you make! Come, tell me, in good faith, what I must do!" David has now the chance he loves. Here is one who knows nothing whatever of the things it is his pride to have learned at least the names of, the things to a Nuremberger worth knowing among all. The ignoramus shall be properly dazzled. David strikes an attitude. "Myself," he informs Walther, "I am learning the Art from the greatest master in Nuremberg, Hans Sachs. For a full year I have received his instructions. Shoe-making and poetry I learn simultaneously. When I ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... least through the influence of Grundtvig, from the strict dogmatic orthodoxy of the State Church. The study of Darwin, Spencer, Mill, and Comte led him still farther on to a position which may be called that of the agnostic theist, that of Spencer, who does not deny God, but says ignoramus. We may recall the late utterance of Bjrnson, quoted above: "Grundtvig and Goethe are my two poles." It was the dogma of Hell, the teaching of eternal damnation and punishment, that began Bjrnson's breach with the Church. He ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... Pseud. O Ignoramus in the Law! Can you bring an Action of Theft for Trover or Conversion, or for one that having borrow'd a Thing forswears it, that puts a Trick upon one, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... personalities and who professes to desire their transformation and yet who has no desire to give them better homes, better cities, better family relationships, better health, better economic resources, better recreations, better books and better schools, is either an ignoramus who does not see what these things mean in the growth of souls, or else an unconscious hypocrite who does not really care so much about the souls of men ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... correspondingly bitter and distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a secret sin—the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and Harry to inspect your stable: such conduct is to invite rebuff, to expose yourself to just animadversion. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... sell—a bit of carving or some intaglio supposed to be antique. It was known that I had a fancy for oddities. I said to myself, "She has read or heard of my 'Old Gold' story, or else 'The Buried God,' and she thinks me an idealizing ignoramus upon whom she can impose. Her sepulchral name is at least not Italian; probably she is a sharp countrywoman of mine, turning, by means of the present aesthetic craze, an ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... characteristics known, to the uttermost corners of the earth? To which question we may answer, Not quite. In avoiding that ridiculous sensitiveness which prompts so many Americans to feel personally insulted by the weak remarks of every wandering ignoramus, we would by no means fall into the opposite error of attaching no importance whatever to the good opinion or the degree of consciousness as to our existence entertained ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... hiss, as late did Popish Crew, | By Yea and Nay, she'll throw her self on you, | The grand Inquest of Whigs, to whom she's true. | Then let 'em rail and hiss, and damn their fill, Your Verdict will be Ignoramus still. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... in the face of heaven and earth. (Murmurs from the crowd.) Alone and unprotected I have risked my life on this enterprise. I was the first who pledged its accomplishment to the king, and unaided I have kept my pledge, and yet here in my place I find Don Ramon—an ignoramus. ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... share in most things in the establishment to remain a passive spectator of the actions of others, and began pushing right and left. "Get along, get away ye vagabonds!" he politely cried: "you little shrimps! what business have you to stop the way?—Alfred, you ignoramus! ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... President's message. Former times when the papers had in 'em straight murders and bank robberies from the inside or out, Mawruss, and you sat opposite somebody in the Subway who had to move his lips while he was reading, you took it for granted that he was an ignoramus which had to hear them simple words pronounced, even if it was by his own lips, before he could understand them, Mawruss, but you take this here letter of the 20th inst., Mawruss, and when you read where President Wilson says with reference to telephone and telegraph rates, ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... all in the dark together," says Anatole France; "the only difference is, the savant keeps knocking at the wall, while the ignoramus stays quietly in the middle of the room." We used to be intensely interested in the knocking of the savants, but as nothing ever came of it, we have become satisfied with the middle of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... females never; opines that women have no occasion to peruse Ovid's "Art of Love," since they know it all in advance; remarks that three-quarters of female authors are no better than they should be; maintains that Madame Guion would have been far more useful, had she been merely pretty and an ignoramus, such as Nature made her,—that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz probably would never have married into the family, had they possessed that accomplishment,—that the Spartan women did not know the alphabet, nor the Amazons, nor Penelope, nor Andromache, nor ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... his social level, and that was scholarship. A boy born in the gutter need not despair of entering the houses of the rich, if he had a good mind and a great appetite for sacred learning. A poor scholar would be preferred in the marriage market to a rich ignoramus. In the phrase of our grandmothers, a boy stuffed with learning was worth more than a girl ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... have received instruction from her husband and yet she delights in wrong-doing, [12] it may be that the wife is justly held to blame; but supposing he has never tried to teach her the first principles of "fair and noble" conduct, [13] and finds her quite an ignoramus [14] in these matters, surely the husband will be justly held to blame. But come now (he added), we are all friends here; make a clean breast of it, and tell us, Critobulus, the plain unvarnished truth: Is there an one to whom you are more in the habit ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... is unchanged. His grade of morality is neither better nor worse. His tolerance or narrowness remains what it previously was. If he was bigoted while here he is still bigoted there. If he was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely that in the astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development, but in a world where ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... sense of tears in the unconscious humour of the solemn or pompous epitaph composed by the village ignoramus. ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... Hoyt, trying to be soothing, as he believed it was always best to be with women,—to tell the truth he was an ignoramus where women were concerned,—"I think it would be better if you didn't look at them. There are reasons why—" he ambled on like this, stupid man that he was, till the lady naturally insisted upon seeing the ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... had always submitted sadly to this last and utmost violence inflicted on them by the Pontiff of Physical Religion in the effort to force unification of the universe; they had protested with mild conviction that they could not state the geological record in terms of time; they had murmured Ignoramus under their breath; but they had never dared to assert the Ignorabimus that lay on the tips of ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... foot of her bed. During one of these weary watches, it came into his head to kill time by scribbling some dramatic scenes on loose sheets of paper, which he hid during the intervals of his visits under the cushion of an arm-chair. A Piedmontese and a thorough ignoramus, he had scarcely ever attempted to write even so much as a letter in Italian; and as to a literary composition in any language, such a thing had never occurred to him. The Cleopatra thus written in his lady's bed-room and secreted under the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... during a long while the instructor of my tender age; my good mother, to whom I owe everything, and who set so great store on my good deportment, and did not want me to be (that is what she used to say) an illustrious ignoramus, put that book into my hands, though I was then little more than a child at the breast. It has been like my conscience to me, and has whispered into my ear many good hints and excellent maxims for my behavior and for the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Nikolaitch," she said, clinking glasses with the lawyer. "It seems to me you give advice and know nothing of life yourself. According to you, if a man be a mechanic or a draughtsman, he is bound to be a peasant and an ignoramus! But they are ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... I'm just a country boy but I'm as smart as the next man. Just because some of you eggheads spend half your life in college don't mean you've got any monopoly on good common sense. I went to the school of hard knocks, understand, and I got plenty of diplomas to prove it. Take it easy on that ignoramus talk." ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... cabals and municipal wranglings, although they also are necessary in this day as conspiracies and battles were in mine. I am not fit for your roomful of ministers and learned men and pretty women: the former would think me an ignoramus, and the latter—what would afflict me much more—a pedant.... Rather, if your Excellency really wants to show yourself and your children to your father's old protege of Mazzinian times, find a ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... good one) of a citizen of Narbonne, whose name I forget, who is described as having devoted all his time and his intelligence to collecting the objects by which the visitor is surrounded. This excellent man was a connoisseur, and the visitor is doubtless often an ignoramus. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... twentieth century? Many simple people would likely call me a person of education, even of learning, belike, seeing a list of books under my name. A schoolman who examined me would be pardoned (by me, at all events) for calling me an ignoramus of no education whatever. For—and this I never reflected upon until the present moment—I could not for the life of me 'analyse' the simplest sentence, in the rather odd scholastic sense of that word. Inherited ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... ha!—That was neat, I grant you, Terry," said Lord Clonbrony. "But what a dolt of a born ignoramus must that sheriff's fellow have been, not to know Naboclish ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... confess that I find the air of this region of speculation too rarefied for my constitution, and I am disposed to take refuge in 'ignoramus et ignorabimus.' ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... nothing but legal notices, that I have been afraid the Latin I want to write might prove rather barbaro-forensic than Ciceronian. He is swallowed up, body and soul, in law; he eats, drinks, plays (at the card table) Law, nothing but Law. He acts Ignoramus in the play so thoroughly, that you w'd swear that in the inmost marrow of his head (is not this the proper anatomical term?) there have housed themselves not devils but pettifoggers, to bemuddle with their noisy chatter his own and his friends' wits. He brought here, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... readily that the engineer said, after a time, "You're a likely feller, for such a derned ignoramus! Where have you been hid ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... some good pictures in the palace, too, but not so extraordinarily good as the guide-books and the guide would have us to think. The latter, like most men of his class, is an ignoramus, who showed us an Andrea del Sarto (copy or original), and called it a Correggio, and made other blunders of a like nature. As is the case in England, you are hurried through the rooms without being allowed time to look at the pictures, and, consequently, ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all because he surely does mull over them without end. I can forgive his being a shiftless farmer so long as he really does his literary chores up to the hilt. A man can be slack in everything else, if he does one thing as well as he possibly can. And I guess it won't matter my being an ignoramus in literature so long as I'm rated A-1 in the kitchen. That's what I used to think as I polished and scoured and scrubbed and dusted and swept and then set about getting dinner. If I ever sat down to read for ten minutes the cat would get into the custard. No woman in the country sits ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... young leddy; cling close to Him. Ye ha' muckle need o' His care. An' dinna trust your life to the dochtering o' a sullen ignoramus like the captain,—an obstinate, self-willed brute, that, right or wrang, will ha' his ain way. Dinna tak' ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Thackeray. But your skill in "dress" settles the question of sex. I think, however, some woman must have assisted in the school scenes of Jane Eyre, which have a striking air of truthfulness to me—an ignoramus, I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... night for his supper. His friend having asked his opinion of politics, he says he really knows nothing about them; he had been so completely engrossed by his own business that he has not had time to read even a newspaper. But, though an ignoramus in politics, he has been studying lime, which is more to his purpose. If his friend can give him any information about that, he will promise to read a newspaper now and then in the ensuing session of Parliament, for the purpose of ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... most tedious. Somebody seems to have attacked him and his Characters. A second edition, in 1631, was entitled "New Essays and Characters, with a new Satyre in defence of the Common Law, and Lawyers: mixt with Reproofe against their enemy Ignoramus." ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Lord Umfraville's host," young Calverley at once began, "you cannot with decorum convey to the ignoramus my opinion as to his ability to conjugate the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... impossible to converse with a friend at a distance beyond the carrying power of a speaking trumpet. To-day, a boy who does not know that one may talk very agreeably with a friend a thousand miles away is an ignoramus; and experimenters whisper among themselves that, if the undulatory theory of light have any foundation, there is no real reason why we may not see that same friend at that same distance, as well as talk with him. Ten years ago we ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... think so. You surely wouldn't let a little affair like one election drive you out of public life? It was so obvious that you were made the victim for Horlock's growing unpopularity in the country. Haven't you realised that yourself—or perhaps you don't care to talk about these things to an ignoramus such ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their ideas of robbing the stranger are faint and barbarous; here, as throughout Dalmatia, should you give a man money, and the sum be not even more than twice the value of the obligation, the poor ignoramus is delighted, and thanks and blesses you most fervently. The climate of Cattaro is not considered healthy. The inhabitants die of consumption in the winter, and fever in the summer, and they generally have a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... baffled and helpless. For the first time he was able to recognize and appreciate a certain type of Englishman to which he himself to some extent belonged—an arrogant ignoramus who, encamped behind his wall of superiority, fears nothing because he sees nothing, and sees nothing because outside the walls there can not possibly be anything worth looking at. Nicholson had torn down Stafford's imagined security, and he stood aghast at his old insolent ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... blessed young h'ignoramus! Why, Tommy, your brains be all wool-gathered this mornin'! Can't you see that old Sir Ommaney is tellin' the cruiser to 'carry on' as soon as she likes, and bid adoo to Spithead when she's weighed her anchor? See, too, ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... however, is a different being. In some cases he has medical knowledge, in the majority of instances he is an ignoramus. His sole object is to make money, and he sells remedies which he knows to be worthless, and even vends drugs which he is sure will do positive harm in ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... submission made no impression upon the Cardinal, I got the Bishop of Arles, a wise and moderate gentleman, to go to him along with me, and to join with me in offering our reasons. But we found his Eminence a very ignoramus in ecclesiastical polity. I only mention this to let you see that in my first misunderstanding with the Court I was not to blame, and that my respect for the Cardinal upon the Queen's account was carried to an excess ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this self-dubbed ignoramus making all this pother about being deprived of the classics? Surely he cannot have failed to realise that it is impossible to understand and appreciate the classics properly without having learnt Latin and Greek? But ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... is the death of sound learning. People think they know what they have read, and take no pains to learn. Too much reading only produces a pretentious ignoramus. There was never so much reading in any age as the present, and never was there less learning; in no country of Europe are so many histories and books of travel printed as in France, and nowhere is ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Alfieri was placed under the care of a priest called Don Ivaldi, who taught him writing, arithmetic, Cornelius Nepos, and Phaedrus. He soon discovered, however, that the worthy priest was an ignoramus, and congratulates himself on having escaped from his hands at the age of nine, otherwise he believes that he should have been an absolute and irreclaimable dunce. His mother and father-in-law were constantly repeating the maxim ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the three words with an air of pride, which indeed seemed to say "please bear in mind that I am no ignoramus." ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... Charlie to the performers, "you weren't within ten bars of each other!" And Edwin wondered how Charlie could tell that. As for him, he did not know enough of music to be able to turn over the pages for others. He felt himself to be an ignoramus among a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... unbelievers in revelation generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and providence of God so as to become properly Atheists." So that, according to you, I am a Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of no sincerity; whose writings are full of nothing but gross mistakes and misrepresentations. Now I ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the main question? What has my book in common with my person? And how can you ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Don Luis. "True, he is not a skilled mining man, yet he knows so much on the subject that, compared with him, I am an ignoramus. But that is what you are here for, you two. You are the experts. Investigate, ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... effectually ruin the dramatic art than to have you write a play. People, seeing your work, would say, here, this will never do. The stage must be discouraged at all costs. A hypocrite throws the ministry into disgrace, an ignoramus brings shame upon education, and an unpopular lawyer gives the bar a bad name. I think you are just the man ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... conspiracy to murder him, and the deliberate, persistent manner in which that object was being pursued points to a very strong and definite motive. Then the tactics adopted point to considerable forethought and judgment. They are not the tactics of a fool or an ignoramus. We may criticize the closed carriage as a tactical mistake, calculated to arouse suspicion, but we have to weigh it ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... printed in 1669.[198] The title is "Quadratura circuli, cubatio sphaerae, duplicatio cubi," 4to.[199] Hobbes, who began in 1655, was very wrong in his quadrature; but, though not a Gregory St. Vincent,[200] he was not the ignoramus in geometry that he is sometimes supposed. His writings, erroneous as they are in many things, contain acute remarks on points of principle. He is wronged by being coupled with Joseph Scaliger, as the two great ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... An ignoramus believes the Bible because of the miracles, and because of the miracles an Ingersoll disbelieves it—and both are equally blind . A cult is simply an expression, more or less crude, of the religious sentiment of a people, the poor garment with which ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... said Harry Warrington, with a sigh of great humility; "I feel that I have neglected my own youth sadly; and am come to England but an ignoramus. Had my dear brother been alive, he would have represented our name and our colony, too, better than I can do. George was a scholar; George was a musician; George could talk with the most learned people in our country, and I make no doubt would have held his own here. Do you ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the estrangement so much to heart that she eased her feelings by abusing Pin in thought; Pin was a pig-headed little ignoramus, as timid as ever of setting one foot before the other. And the rest of them would be just the same—old stick-in-the muds, unchanged by a hair, or, if they HAD changed, then changed for the worse. Laura had somehow never foreseen the day on which she would find herself out of tune ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... his fellow. The school is already almost broke up, and the rest daily going away; and I beg of you of all love to have me fetched away also, for I cannot bear to be any longer under one who is a perfect ignoramus, who scarce knows the declination of musa, and is more fit to be a scarecrow than a schoolmaster; hoping you will send for me soon, with my love to my aunt, and my duty to my honoured parents, craving their blessing and yours. And this is all at present from, honoured uncle, your ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... spatiola; in palpitatione vero sine ullo ordine musculi unius lacertus subito subsilit, nec regulariter continuoque movetur, sed nunc semel aut bis, nunc minime intra idem tempus subsilit; an causa irritans in sensorio communi, an in musculo ipse palpitante Quaerenda sit, ignoramus. Nosologiae Methodicae, ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... pleased them. It DID please Faith, but Una felt a secret, bitter humiliation because they never learned to do anything. The other girls in her class at school could cook and sew and knit; she only was a little ignoramus. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... looks like a beginning of activity; Scott consented to move on Arlington Heights, but during two or three days opposed the seizure of Alexandria. Is that all that he knows of that hateful watchword—strategy—nausea repeated by every ignoramus and imbecile? ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... Russian archeologists will protest against the opinions I maintain, that is to say, the opinions of the Hindu archeologists, and will treat me as an ignoramus, outraging science. In self-defence, and in order to show how unstable a ground to base one's opinions upon are the conclusions even of such a great authority as Mr. Fergusson, I must mention the following instance. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... as for quibbling with words—suppose I did! What then? All the first people does it! The newspapers does it! The gentlefolks that calls themselves the guides of the popular mind does it! I'm no ignoramus. I reads the newspapers, and knows what's what." "You read them to some purpose," said I. "Well, if you are lamed for life, and unfitted for any active line—turn newspaper editor; I should say you are perfectly qualified, and this day's adventure may be the foundation of your fortune;" thereupon ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... language of which he was ignorant—though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might have been a consul at home. His easy familiarity with great men was beautiful to see, and when Philip learned what a tremendous underground influence this little ignoramus had, he no longer wondered at the queer appointments ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... well face the fact that many of them will not spend eternity in the same place with the Saviour and Paul. With many the question as to whether the Saviour, when He said, "Ye are of your father the devil," told the truth, or was a wilful liar and deceiver, or a deluded fanatic and ignoramus, is merely a matter of taste, or preference, or opinion. It may be claimed by some that "Ye are of your father the devil," grates on refined ears and finer sensibilities. But it is more than a question whether it is pride, or religious prejudice, or refined sensibilities, ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... magus, magi. But such as have properly become English words, may form the plural regularly in es; as, chorus, choruses: so, apparatus, bolus, callus, circus, fetus, focus, fucus, fungus, hiatus, ignoramus, impetus, incubus, isthmus, nautilus, nucleus, prospectus, rebus, sinus, surplus. Five of these make the Latin plural like the singular; but the mere English scholar has no occasion to be told which they are. Radius makes the plural radii or radiuses. Genius has ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... as an ignoramus or a rebel, whichever she likes best to take in leading-strings. I remember her. I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from that hidden evil the nature of which he could only guess at. Her world was the artificial one of hotels, and shops, and numbered streets—in the real world, of which the lonely wastes of the Mendips provided no meager sample, she was a profound ignoramus, a fat little automaton equipped with atrophied senses. But she blundered badly in composing herself so cozily for the remainder of the run to Bristol. Medenham had dwelt many months at a time in lands ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... money.' I wanted no further encouragement to meditate the ruin of the high-crowned hat. I went nearer to him, in order to take a closer survey; never was such a bungler; he made blots upon blots; God knows, I began to feel some remorse at winning of such an ignoramus, who knew so little of the game. He lost his reckoning; supper was served up; and I desired him to sit next me. It was a long table, and there were at least five-and-twenty in company, notwithstanding the landlord's ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... beguilements, other masked democratic tyrannies, entering, reassure it; bliss of publicity, contempt of skill, and joy in machinery and machine results. An itinerant ignoramus comes round with his own lawn-mower, the pushing of which he now makes his sole occupation for the green half of the year, and the entire length, breadth and thickness of whose wisdom is a wisdom not of the lawn but only of the lawn-mower; how to keep its bearings oiled and its knives chewing ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... help thinking that he was better situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen of foreman ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... is one born into this world an ignoramus, knowing nothing of the laws, customs and usage one inadvertently breaks? And for which one's punished. Why does one grow into a youth full of high ambition only to be driven into vile actions one ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... an old feller," exclaimed one inspired ignoramus. "Wonder where it came from." Another, a stout, prosperous, business-looking party, observed that it was cracked. "Reckon that was done bringing it here," he said. "The railroads are ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... tradition of her family pleaded for him. She was fond of him too. She had always liked him as a friend; she had always admired him as a loyal gentleman and a soldier. Of course, he was not clever. He was no lover of books, and, compared with Bob, he was an ignoramus; but what did that matter? He ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... [Footnote 2: For "Ignoramus" (we ignore), the word by which a grand jury indicated its refusal to prosecute an indictment. We here find the Superior Court, the highest common-law court of Massachusetts under the second charter, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... not utter the words attributed to him, and could not have uttered them. According to Wolf, it would be doing Cicero an egregious wrong to suppose him capable of having used such words, which are not Latin, and which were probably written by some ignoramus in the time of Tiberius. Such a verdict might have been taken as fatal—for Wolf's scholarship and powers of criticism are acknowledged—in spite of La Harpe, the French scholar and critic, who has named the Marcellus as a thing of excellence, comparing it with the eulogistic speeches of Isocrates. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... me if I am dazed, and don't be insulted. I recall that Entedius prefaced his narrative with an oath to its veracity. I am ready to believe all this if he reaffirms it. But I have a horrible feeling that you farmers think you have caught a city ignoramus and that it is your duty to stuff me with the tallest stories you can invent. Please set me right. If you are stuffing me the joke is certainly on me, for these incredible tales seem true: if they are true the joke is ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... an ignoramus with marvellous instincts in certain directions. That's why a lot of people—silly people, you think, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... letter he was considered a genius; now a sailor is, comparatively, an educated man: and if one is to be found who cannot read and write well, and accomplish far more abstruse things with his head, he is dubbed—a donkey. He is not now the debauched ignoramus which has made the English sailor a proverb all over the world. Education is of little value if it is not capable of changing a man's habits for the better. There is, however, much room for improvement in certain national traits; apropos of this, the "Mail" for ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... advanced them in their impious practices. The names of these high priests, or rather ridiculous and profane persons, were Jesus the son of Damneus, Jesus the son of Gamaliel, Matthias the son of Theophilus, and that prodigious ignoramus Phannias, the son of Samuel; all whom we shall meet with in Josephus's future history of this war; nor do we meet with any other so much as pretended high priest after Phannias, till Jerusalem ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... revenge; Bonaparte, in his dawn, had met it in Italy, and superbly defeated it—the old owl fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only overthrown, but scandalized. Who was this Corsican of six-and-twenty years of age? What meant this splendid ignoramus, who, having everything against him, nothing for him, without provisions, ammunition, guns, shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men against masses, dashed at allied Europe, and absurdly gained impossible victories? Who was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... If an ignoramus, a pamphleteer, presumes to criticize without discrimination, you can confound him; but make rare mention of him, for fear of sullying ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... that is heard about trimming emanates, of course, from the ignoramus; the knife, he says, is used on them all, a sharp razor is run over their coats, they are singed, they are cut, they are rasped (the latter is the favourite term). Anything like such a sweeping condemnation is quite inaccurate and most unfair. It is impossible to cut a hair without being ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... ignoramus," said his master, and, holding the wondering little foundling on his arm, with his rabbit still clutched by the ears, he proceeded down to the roadway, scored like a narrow gray streak through the brush, and plodded onward towards ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... little excitement at the election; one of the members of the old Board had been called "an ignoramus," in the stress of battle, and being much concerned and mystified asked a neighbour what the term signified, adding, no doubt thinking of a hippopotamus, that he believed it was some kind of animal! His knowledge of zoology was probably as limited as that disclosed ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Poor Ben had so little opportunity for schooling! He was not to blame for his want of knowledge; but could she throw herself away upon an ignoramus? "It's still there, but has gone out ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... field— As a wise workman recognizes tools {230} In a master's workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin— An indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, {240} Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure—and I must hold ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... came upon some turf-diggers, and my visitors mounted their masks to mystify them. The clodpoles looked scared and very quiet, till I went up to one of them who knew me,—of course I was in my natural physiognomy,—and I said to him, "My friend, these are foreigners:" and the poor ignoramus staring at those portentous noses said seriously, "Ees, I sees they be." Clearly he thought all "furriners" ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper |
