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More "Blockhead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lawyers, administrators, landlords, county councils and district councils, Moscow and St. Petersburg. "Yes, yes, yes," Golushkin put in, "that's just how it is! For instance, our mayor here is a perfect ass! A hopeless blockhead! I tell him one thing after another, but he doesn't understand a single ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... Well, yes, answered she, I do love him. I do not endeavour to conceal it from you. Good God! what Woman in my Place could forbear. But, how can I commit such a publick Adultery. A publick Adultery, replied Kelirieu, with a seeming Amazement, what Blockhead has put such Fancies into your Head. But this Crime so justly condemned both by divine and human Laws, consists in the Injury done to a Man, whose Wife against his Will, or without his Knowledge, admits a Gallant ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... fogginess of certain writers who deem themselves, and are deemed by the multitude, transcendental par excellence. COLERIDGE however thought that to parody stupidity by way of ridiculing it, only proves the parodist more stupid than the original blockhead. Still, one such attempt may be tolerated; but when imitators of the parodist arise and fill almost every newspaper in the country with similar witticisms, such efforts become 'flat and unprofitable;' for nothing is easier than to put words together ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Glenarm, the cleverest, grandest old man that ever lived, wrote it!” declaimed Larry, his voice booming loudly in the room. “It’s all a great big game, fixed up to try you and Pickering,—but principally you, you blockhead! Oh, it’s grand, perfectly, deliciously grand,—and to think it should be my good luck ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... girls, but this can never with truth be said of me. I most emphatically in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and a good one," and of all my tutors was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and finally to that of a respectable scholar at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by —- College, Oxford, and was a sound, well-built ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... about it!" replied the gardener, lost in amazement. "I have been abroad for the last three years. Oh, they wrote to me, and I did not understand. I am a blockhead. Oh, my daughter, you understand me, then? Do you hear my voice? Answer me: do you hear me? Do you hear ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... empty! why didn't you look, you young blockhead?" cried the prefect, catching the small boy by the arm, while Noaks and Mouler burst into a roar ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... not get home till about nine, having fasted the whole time. James, the blockhead, lost my poor Spice, a favourite terrier. The fool shut her in a stable, and somebody, [he] says, opened the door and let her out. I suspect she is lost for aye, for she was carried to Jedburgh in ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... his essay on Madame D’Arblay, that Lady Miller kept a vase “wherein fools were wont to put bad verses.” Dr. Johnson also said, when Boswell named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase, “He was a blockhead for his pains”; on the other hand, when told that the Duchess of Northumberland wrote, Johnson said, “Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she pleases: nobody will say anything to a lady of her high rank.” Remembering ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... pause Hawker went on: "And now see the precious old fool! He is deeply interested in the movements of the little ants, and as childish and ridiculous over them as if they were highly important.—There, you old blockhead, ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... elephant should carry on his back The tools of war, the mighty public pack, And fight in elephantine way and form; The bear should hold himself prepared to storm; The fox all secret stratagems should fix; The monkey should amuse the foe by tricks. "Dismiss," said one, "the blockhead asses, And hares, too cowardly and fleet." "No," said the king; "I use all classes; Without their aid my force were incomplete. The ass shall be our trumpeter, to scare Our enemy. And then the nimble hare Our ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... public duty. I care nothing for it personally. I have been taunted with my inconsistency. I feel like the Senator from Kentucky about an argument of that kind. If I did not sometimes change my mind I should consider myself a blockhead or a fool. But in this matter, fortunately, I have not changed my mind. In 1866 I anticipated the time when we could sell three per cent. bonds and said that was a part of the funding scheme, and so continued, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... bishop, who, thinking to serve the artist by it, made it an argument that the Pope should be reconciled to him, because men of his profession were commonly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise; his holiness, enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and told him, it was he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man himself would not offend: the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and Michael Angelo had the Pope's benediction, accompanied with presents. This bishop had fallen into the vulgar error, and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... you'll drop into the infinitude of the ridiculous! Bachelor, you can make your own happiness; you enjoy some to-day, you do without it to-morrow; married, you must take it as it comes; and the day you want it you will have to go without it. Marry, and you'll grow a blockhead; you'll calculate dowries; you'll talk morality, public and religious; you'll think young men immoral and dangerous; in short, you'll become a social academician. It's pitiable! The old bachelor whose property the heirs are waiting for, who fights ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... so early was a bit hard, and eating a cold luncheon harder still; but worst of all was having to hear him growl and snap at the clerks. Oh, he's perfectly horrid. I don't see how they stand it. Of course, I had my share. 'Miss Blockhead' was his ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... bottom of some very remote place, and there lies obscurely concealed. So that there is not, amongst so many words and terms as are in use, any one that can explain or show it. Socrates therefore was not a fool or blockhead for seeking and searching what himself was; but they are rather to be thought shallow coxcombs, who inquire after any other thing before this, the knowledge of which is so necessary and so hard to find. For how could he expect to gain the knowledge of other things, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... tell you he is the most contemptible blockhead that the universe can furnish! Courage perhaps he possesses, but of brains ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... the poor man was not a mere clown or blockhead; but beneath his "hodden gray" often carried good feeling, intelligence, and wit. He was rather humorous than ludicrous, and had some dignity of character. Since his time, consideration for the poor has ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... squeamer, Blockhead, sluggard, dullard, dreamer, Shirker, shuffler, crawler, creeper, Sniffler, snuffler, wailer, weeper, Earthworm, maggot, tadpole, weevil! Set upon thy course of evil, Lest the King of Spectre-land Set on ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... and managed to let it be known to his play-loving king that he knew the latest French games. The French Duc de Longueville had for some time been an honored prisoner at the English court, held as a hostage from Louis XII, but de Longueville was a blockhead, who could not keep his little black eyes off our fair ladies, who hated him, long enough to tell the deuce of spades from the ace of hearts. So Brandon was taken from his duties, such as they were, and placed at the card ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... down with Dogberry; above all, don't quote me in cold blood, that the foolish people may see, after the fever heat has subsided, what trash I have palmed upon them in the name of liberty!' Yet this is the way, Jonathan, to deal with demagogues. You make too much of yours, man. You are not the blockhead we take you for after all; but you delight to see your public men in motley, and the rogues will fool you to the top of your bent, till it is your pleasure to put down the show. So now that the piper has to be paid, and a lucid interval appears to be dawning upon you, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Smith, and Co. There is no God, but have we not invented gunpowder?—who wants a God, with that in his pocket?[68] There is no Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but have we not paper and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and the Day of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for a judge, and the flat of the universe for the throne? There is no law, but only gravitation and congelation, and we are stuck ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... policemen cut short the marionette's words by taking out their handcuffs and preparing to lead him away to prison. But the innkeeper was a good-hearted man, and he was sorry for the poor blockhead. He begged them to leave ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... now," cried Brown recklessly. "My prayers, tears, and alms-giving haven't been without avail. The terrors and agonies I've endured this last few days lest that old blockhead should take himself off without saying or doing anything, no man will ever know. And he would have gone off, too, had it not been for that lucky fluke of your mother's. Do you mind ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... really I am not a nut tree specialist, as I see most of you people are. I will admit that I have been associating with experimentation for the last eight or ten years and have become slightly nutty, but really my big interest is timber. I am still a blockhead. So in discussing and talking with you this morning for a few minutes about the value of nut trees in Tennessee I want you to just keep in the back of your minds that the thing in the timber world that I think is the prettiest when it comes ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... Whig, or a Puritan, or any other unimaginative blockhead, to cry out against all this as nauseous flattery, and assert that after all she was rather an unpoetical personage than otherwise—a coarse-minded old maid, half prude, half coquette, whose better part was mannish, and all that belonged to her sex a ludicrous exaggeration ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... of the marvel of the Relic, "for my sister dwelleth by the gate of the Convent of the Troodos, and she hath much learning of the most blessed Relic;—how that Queen Alixe laid the bit on her tongue—she who could never speak fairly—more like a blockhead of a stammering peasant than a Royal lady—may Heaven forgive me! And how for ever after, her speech flowed freely, so that all might understand her. It must be good to be ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... man whom you have chosen to play the fool with. I find him worthy of his mistress; a tame, coward-hearted, infatuated blockhead. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... other things, that these little people gathered into the great houses after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to put them into a tumult of apprehension. I never found one out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after dark. Yet I was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson of that fear, and in spite of Weena's distress I insisted upon sleeping away from ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... otherwise they would have thought me a blockhead. You know that he has depicted me as a rogue and fool. Since I am neither, it was not serious; therefore it ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... was between the legislator who passed laws against witches, and the burgher who defended his guild from some feudal aggression? between the enlightened scholar and the dunce of to-day, than there was between the monkish alchemist and the blockhead of yesterday? Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no doubt wiser than the churl, burgher, and blockhead of the twelfth. But the gentleman, statesman, and scholar of the present age are at least quite as favorable a contrast to the alchemist, witch-burner, and baron ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the lighter and looked at his employer through a cloud of blue-gray smoke. "I mean, after all, he's on the records as being a crackpot. I'd be a pretty stupid reporter if I believed everything he said. If I don't act a little skeptical, he'll think I'm either a blockhead or a phony ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... touching your own antecedents, character, or even personal appearance; and you may afterwards be informed by good-natured friends, that the upshot of your discussion had been to leave on the mind of your acquaintance the firm conviction that you yourself are intellectually a blockhead and morally a villain. And even when dealing with human beings who have reached that crowning result of a fine training, that they shall have got beyond thinking a man their "enemy because he tells them the truth," you may find that you have rendered a service like that rendered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... you last night that the cords were too long," mutters the old man; "but no, 'It's not too long, Daddy.' There's no making you do anything, you will have everything your own way.... Blockhead!" ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... where you neither lent or bestowed a shilling—poured out my money as profusely as you, Sir, have poured out my blood, every drop of which, Sir, shall cost you a slice of your estate. But even without Sturk's speaking one word, I've evidence which escaped you, conceited blockhead, and which, though the witness is as mad almost as yourself, will yet be enough to direct the hand of justice to the right man. There is a Charles, Sir, whom all suspect, who awaits trial, judgment, and death in this ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... I don't see," said I. "You will think me an awful blockhead, but I don't perceive anything singular in a cigar manufacturer ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... does his duty, and I will give him a bit over his feed, for he is a horse to be respected; and the Assessor too is a good horse. But what are YOU shaking your ears for? You are a fool, so just mind when you're spoken to. 'Tis good advice I'm giving you, you blockhead. Ah! You CAN travel when you like." And he gave the animal another cut, and then shouted to the trio, "Gee up, my beauties!" and drew his whip gently across the backs of the skewbald's comrades—not as a punishment, but as a sign of his approval. That done, he addressed ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and witty fashion; and if you have reached sense at last, (which some, it may be remarked, never do,) I think you will blush even through the unblushing front of manhood, and think what a terrific, unutterable, conceited, intolerable blockhead you were. It is not till people attain somewhat mature years that they can rightly understand the wonderful forbearance their parents must have shown in listening patiently to the frightful nonsense they talked and wrote. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... said he, a little nettled, "I draw tolerably—should do it at least—have had good masters, and flatter myself that I am not quite a blockhead." ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... prove I am no good.' Clara's father—he used sometimes when drunk to ask his wife, 'Who got you your blackbrowed she-devil there? Not I!'—Clara's father, anxious to get her off his hands as soon as possible, betrothed her to a rich young shopkeeper, a great blockhead, one of the so-called 'refined' sort. A fortnight before the wedding-day—she was only sixteen at the time—she went up to her betrothed, her arms folded and her fingers drumming on her elbows—her favourite position—and suddenly gave him a slap on his rosy cheek with her ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... us, you know!" said the Colonel. "Another review, and by some officer who was not a d—d lawyer blockhead, might be awkward!" Colonel Crawford either forgot, at that moment, that he had any connection with the legal profession, or he chose to ignore the fact; and it is not to be supposed that his subordinate ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Spencerian hand; but for such a letter as she wished to send Gerald fine shades of expression were needed beyond what she could compass. She was fond of Gerald; in this letter she must not be too fond, yet she must be fond enough. What hope that a blockhead would strike the exact middle of so fine ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... he, half repenting of his anger at her blunders over the cards. "Go out before dinner; you know you don't mind this cursed weather; and see that you come home full of adventures to relate. Come, little blockhead! give me a kiss, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... your paraffin? Never mind anything more, waiter. I could not eat a mouthful. What is the bill? Very well; and there is something for yourself, blockhead." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... they thought good, to present it to the House; and so it was carried. They did also vote this day thanks to be given to the Prince and Duke of Albemarle, for their care and conduct in the last year's war, which is a strange act; but, I know not how, the blockhead Albemarle hath strange luck to be loved, though he be, and every man must know it, the heaviest man in the world, but stout and honest to his country. This evening late, Mr. Moore come to me to prepare matters for my Lord Sandwich's defence; wherein I can little assist, but will do all ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of course, for he should have known boys say things they don't mean. Well, the two kept on acting all these years like strangers. The old man grew bitter. Last year when the boys went to Mexico he said that if he had a son instead of a blockhead he'd be sending a boy to do his share down there. It almost killed him to think of his boy sitting back while others went and defended the flag. Well, Granny said yesterday she was in the yard and she heard the gate click. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... said the official, "any more?" I could reply with a clear conscience that I had not. To my surprise, the paper was returned to me. He next took up my note-book. Now, said I to myself, this is a worse scrape than the other. What a blockhead I am not to have put the book into my pocket; for, except in extreme cases, the traveller's person is never searched. The man opened the thin volume, and found it inscribed with mysterious and strange characters. It was written in short-hand. He turned over the leaves; on every ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Schemes of Politesse, For books, and buildings, politicks, and dress. This is True Taste, and whoso likes it not, Is blockhead, coxcomb, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... Dickinson acted on the principle that an opponent is necessarily a blockhead or a scoundrel. But there was little or no truth in his severe arraignment. Richmond's purpose was plainly to nominate Horatio Seymour if it could be done with the consent of the Northwestern States, and his sudden affection for a two-thirds rule came ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... tone. "Ah, rascal, scoundrel, madman!" quoth he. "If we be delayed here any longer thou shalt be hanged for a false thief! To keep the king's messengers waiting thus! Canst thou not see the king's seal? Canst thou not read the address of the royal letter? Ah, blockhead, thou shalt dearly abide this delay when my ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... "Blockhead, that you cannot keep your thoughts on what you are doing! One might expect as good a game from the tumbler's dog. Is it the drink that you have got into your head, or the war matters that you ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the Southern commanders I was inclined to think it would be accurate and worth while. It wouldn't do not to capture it. At the same time I wouldn't have laid a finger on her, to compel her, for a million dollars. I stood and stared like a blockhead for a minute, at my wit's end, and she sat there and smiled. All of a sudden I had an idea. I caught the end of the table and tipped it up, and off slid the young lady, and I snatched at the knob of the drawer, and had the papers ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... he stood in the center of the room and scratched his head. "Hang it, I've made an ass of myself. That blockhead will have the gendarmes about my ears. If they arrest me there will be the devil to pay. The Lord and the Baronet Fitzgerald!" he repeated. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and fell to laughing again. "Confound these picture-book kingdoms! ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the count, motioning the two young men to sit down. "It was the fault of that blockhead Pastrini, that I did not sooner assist you in your distress. He did not mention a syllable of your embarrassment to me, when he knows that, alone and isolated as I am, I seek every opportunity of making the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of my heart I had a conviction that one who had not studied the Talmud could not be anything but a blockhead ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... thumping against a stone wall. Had I discoursed to her in Bengalee she would have comprehended me no more imperfectly. The doom of hopelessness was upon her. She was not merely a fool, but had taken the full degree as a self-satisfied blockhead. I deserved what I got—and more of ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... may fill in their vivacious language, the courteous terms the people apply to each other, such as "you ass, pig, monkey, cuckoo, chump, blockhead, fungus," or, on the other side, "my honey, my heart, my dove, my life, my sparrowkin, my dainty cheese." But to go more fully into matters like these would carry ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... at length. "I never knew before that you were such a blockhead. There is about as much resemblance between this young gentleman and that horse-thief outside as there is between ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... is a coastwise blockhead that gets lost if he loses sight of land. He steers a course from headland to headland, and every little while on dark nights he stands in close and listens. Pretty soon he hears a dog barking alongshore. 'All right,' he says to the mate; 'we're ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... of this miserable man is despicably disgusting,' said Pott, pretending to address Bob Sawyer, and scowling upon Slurk. Here, Mr. Slurk laughed very heartily, and folding up the paper so as to get at a fresh column conveniently, said, that the blockhead really ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... modern novels. Kalb also is but a worthless subject, and what is worse, but indifferently handled. He is meant for the feather-brained thing of tags and laces, which frequently inhabits courts; but he wants the grace and agility proper to the species; he is less a fool than a blockhead, less perverted than totally inane. Schiller's strength lay not in comedy, but in something far higher. The great merit of the present work consists in the characters of the hero and heroine; and in this respect ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... a quite incredible number of times. The man must have been an abject blockhead, as I believe most professional criminals are. His lack of observation was astounding. It is true that he began to be surprised and rather bewildered. He even noted that 'there seemed a bloomin' lot of 'em;' and the quality of his arithmetical feats and his verbal enrichments ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... my skull against a wall," he had said in those hours of confidence; "and, to be as sublime a blockhead, if you'll allow me the word, you, my dear fellow, have kept sounding the charge. We've sat prating here of 'success,' heaven help us, like chanting monks in a cloister, hugging the sweet delusion that it lies ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... about motors and power and pressures and cylinders and cranes and screws, and such-like. She would sit and listen and smile, but of course understood not a word of it all, and as soon as Peer discovered this he would get perfectly furious, and call her a little blockhead. ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... of that," said the little man. "If this blockhead here," with a lurch of the head backwards to where the blacksmith rode behind, "hasn't blundered in his 'reckonings,' we'll bag the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... blockhead, can't I make you understand? It wouldn't do at all. We should both of us be wrong then—each with ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... been left in peace these nine centuries by all but you," and again he set upon me. "Withhold, brother," said Merlin {48a} who stood near, "be not too hasty; thank him rather for that he hath kept your name in respected memory on earth." "In great respect, forsooth," quoth he, "by such a blockhead as this. Are you, sirrah, versed in the four and twenty metres? Can you trace the line of Gog and Magog and of Brutus son of Silvius {48b} down to a century before the destruction of Troy? Can you prophesy when, and how the wars between the lion and the eagle, and between the stag ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... a special genius for reading. When he began to go to school to Amos this fact appeared at once, and it speedily became a casus belli between the two, for Amos was a blockhead with a reading book, and the boy put him terribly to shame ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... began to sing through his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear people." Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late Majesty had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the old blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it?" His fury now rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it would be no more than justice to whip such a villain ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by. Another glance at the 'Break of Day,' and another exclamation: 'Too much blue, you blockhead!' The insulted plasterer turned round to reconnoitre the speaker, and as if concluding, from his appearance, that he could be no very great connoisseur, he quietly set to work again, shrugging his shoulders in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... letter meant. It was not written by Naomi at all, and in my heart I cursed myself as a blockhead for being so easily duped. I heard the gruff voices of men, and among others I felt sure I heard that of Israel Barnicoat. For some few minutes, although my hands were pinioned, I struggled fiercely, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... Peace, D'O had Court-Martial, which sentenced him to death, Friedrich making it perpetual imprisonment: "Perhaps not a traitor, only a blockhead!" thought Friedrich. He had been recommended to his post by Fouquet. What Trenck writes of him ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... at this time I believe he has more knowledge than many twice his standing. He is never engaged in disputes, and this not from a milkiness and yielding to others, but he seems superior to contention, and leaves a blockhead to enjoy his own nonsense." In December of the same year he reiterates, "Your son always gives me satisfaction. He behaves well and always like a gentleman and I endeavour to instil in him a contempt for what is trifling ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... be able to speak more fluently. All the servants stood in the courtyard and saw them mount their steeds, and here by chance came the third brother; for the squire had three sons, but nobody counted him with his brothers, for he was not so learned as they were, and he was generally called 'Blockhead-Hans.' ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... of moving, and there he sits yawning and pining for want of something to do. When he walks, he drags his feet along as if they were too heavy to lift up. His clothes are always dirty, for he will not brush them; his eyes are dull and heavy; he looks like a clown and speaks like a blockhead. Idle Richard is a burthen to ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... a blockhead, Monsieur; I have good eyes, and I have seen what I have seen. But, really ill as you are, Monsieur ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings from the monuments, with no oversight but that of his own taste ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... first in the attack. He seized the cow by the tail, and cried out, 'It was a gentleman commoner, as he had him by the tail of his gown;' while the doctor, who had caught the cow by the horns at the same time, immediately replied, 'No, no, you blockhead, 'tis the postman, and here I have hold of the rascal by his blowing-horn.' Lights, however, were immediately brought, when the character of the real offender was discovered, and the laugh of the whole town was turned upon ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... probably invented about the same time with the anagram, though it is impossible to decide whether the inventor of the one or the other were the greater blockhead. The simple acrostic is nothing but the name or title of a person, or thing, made out of the initial letters of several verses, and by that means written, after the manner of the Chinese, in a perpendicular line. But besides these ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... boy, I'm sorry for what I said," cried he. "I am a guzzling old blockhead, and don't know how to treat a gentleman when he honors me with his company. It is not in my blood nor breeding to have such knowledge. Ned, you will make a man, and I lied if I said otherwise. Come, I'm sorry, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... But Charles was too impatient to await his caprice. "My dear aunt," he once said to the Queen of Navarre, a short time before her death, "I honor you more than the Pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not indeed a Huguenot, but neither am I a blockhead; and if the Pope play the fool too much, I will myself take Margot," his common nickname for his sister, "by the hand, and give her away in marriage ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... is fit for nothing else; philology being the last resource of dulness and ennui, I have got a little in advance of the throng, by mastering the Armenian alphabet; but I foresee the time when every unmarriageable miss, and desperate blockhead, will likewise have acquired the letters of Mesroub, and will know the term for bread, in Armenian, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... him on this side of the water. The "Tail" has an individual or two of that genus,—and the rest is mainly yet undecided. For example, I knew old —- myself; and can testify, if you will believe me, that few greater blockheads (if "blockhead" may mean "exasperated imbecile" and the ninth part of a thinker) broke the world's bread in his day. Have a care of such! I say always to myself, —and to you, which ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the child as distinct from the wrong acts which the child may commit. If a child lies, that does not make of him a liar, any more than does his failure to understand what he has just been told make of him a blockhead. Yet the natural consequence of lying, for instance, is to be mistrusted in the future—to be branded a liar. This, however, is one of the worst things that can happen to a child, and one of the surest ways of making ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... "The blockhead must have taken the old pack-horse road on the fell-side. One would be safe in that fool's stupidity. You ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... little from his cares aside; Pope, Milton, Dryden, with delight has seized, His soul engaged and of his trouble eased: When, with a heavy eye and ill-done sum, No part conceived, a stupid boy will come; Then Leonard first subdues the rising frown, And bids the blockhead lay his blunders down; O'er which disgusted he will turn his eye, To his sad duty his sound mind apply, And, vex'd in spirit, throw his pleasures by. Turn we to Schools which more than these afford - The sound instruction and the wholesome board; ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... wishing to do so, and chattered of it to me in fondness. If you will swear to give me a good share I will lend you my shoulders in order that you may climb on to the top of the wall and from there throw yourself into the pear-tree, which is against the wall. There, now do you say that I am a blockhead, an animal?" ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... as the beast could make it—that is, to the bone. I say, what a blessing it is to have a thick skull! My old schoolmaster used to tell me I was a blockhead, and I thought he was wrong; but he was right enough, or I ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... an affectionate tone, her eyes were so beseeching, her feeble voice was so humble and so passionate in making the request, that mademoiselle had not the courage to force her to accept an assistant. She simply called her a "blockhead," who believed, like all country-people, that a few days in bed ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... dear friend, it is dangerous to have too refined a taste, even in office, even in the rank in which you are placed. One hesitates to proclaim the excessively stupid things that stir the crowd, and the blockhead who is bold enough to declare his folly creates a hellish noise with his nonsense, while a man of refinement, who is not always a squeamish man, remains in his corner unseen. Remember that more moths are caught at night with a greasy candle ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... taken as an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives sensuous images of truth; but it is only the Philistine or the blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. This seems to me ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... point;—where we shall find the old superstitious art represented finally by Perugino, and the modern scientific and anatomical art represented primarily by Michael Angelo. And the epithet bestowed on Perugino by Michael Angelo, 'goffo nell' arte,' dunce, or blockhead, in art,—being, as far as my knowledge of history extends, the most cruel, the most false, and the most foolish insult ever offered by one great man to another,—does you at least good service, in showing how trenchant the separation is between ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... the densest blockhead in all Europe!" he announced emphatically. "If I had realised your identity, I would willingly have left you alone. No wonder you were feeling indisposed for idle conversation! Mr. Francis Norgate, eh? A little affair at the ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ethereal plain, And Pegasus runs restive in his "Waggon," Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain? Or pray Medea for a single dragon?[220] Or if, too classic for his vulgar brain, He feared his neck to venture such a nag on, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, Could not the blockhead ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... into a loud laugh. "What a blockhead you are, to be sure!" he shouted, slapping his thighs. "Good heavens, was there ever such an idiotic person! Don't stare at me so stupidly. Come, come, you needn't begin to cry directly. Go ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... Married, you'll drop into the infinitude of the ridiculous! Bachelor, you can make your own happiness; you enjoy some to-day, you do without it to-morrow; married, you must take it as it comes; and the day you want it you will have to go without it. Marry, and you'll grow a blockhead; you'll calculate dowries; you'll talk morality, public and religious; you'll think young men immoral and dangerous; in short, you'll become a social academician. It's pitiable! The old bachelor whose property the heirs are waiting for, who fights to his last breath with ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... superstitious foolery, ruling over mankind!" he cried, as Edward came in: "That miserable fellow there whom you met flatters himself he shall gain a large sum of money from me, if he can detect our thief by means of some senseless artifice. He won't come back again, the blockhead! for I have at length given vent for once to my feelings. There is nothing in the world so insufferable to me, as when people try, by means of certain phrases fabricated at random, or of certain traditional ceremonies, most of them ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... open-mouthed astonishment, as though quite too incredible for belief; it seems to them an act of almost criminal discourtesy, and those immediately about me seem almost inclined to take me back to the threshing-floor like a culprit. But the mudir himself is not such a blockhead but that he realizes the mistake he has made. He is too proud to acknowledge it, though; consequently his friends miss, perhaps, the only opportunity in their uneventful lives of seeing a bicycle ridden. Owing to my ignorance of the vernacular, I am ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... thank France for that which, as to us, has no existence. Then, again, Pope acquiesced at other times in an opinion of his early friends, that not Pompey, but himself, was the predestined patriarch of 'correctness.' Walsh, who was a sublime old blockhead, suggested to Pope that 'correctness' was the only tight-rope upon which a fresh literary performer in England could henceforth dance with any advantage of novelty; all other tight-ropes and slack-ropes of every description ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... authority—and, mark you, the whole blamed place is already riddled with this new pernicious doctrine—you know what I mean—before we know where we are the whole East will be in a blaze. India! My God! This contract we were negotiating would have countered this outward thrust. And you, you blockhead, you come here and insult the man upon whose ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... size of the towns gives less scope for barefaced swindlers. And thus, if the standard of commercial morality is lower here than at home, people are not taken in so easily, or to so great an extent. Everyone is expected to be more or less of a business man, and is looked upon as a blockhead and deserving to be cheated, if he does not understand and allow for the tricks of the trade. In Melbourne the heavy protectionist tariff has brought about an almost universal practice of presenting the customs with false invoices so skilfully ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... considered the most ancient of the noble families in the Morea; is a well-meaning old blockhead; has a son, a good-looking youth, who commanded the Government forces against the captains in 1824; is said ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... presently laughs,—then suddenly frowns, and assumes an appearance of indignation.) Miss Mary Morris, have you become such an egregious fool that you dare not satisfy the ordinary cravings of human nature, just because an idle, dissipated, bashful blockhead—nonsense! ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... blood in mud delights to run; Witness his lazy, lousy son! Puff'd up with pride and insolence, Without a grain of common sense, See with what consequence he stalks, With what pomposity he talks; See how the gaping crowd admire The stupid blockhead and the liar. How long shall vice triumphant reign? How long shall mortals bend to gain? How long shall virtue hide her face, And leave her votaries in disgrace? ——Let indignation fire my strains, Another villain yet remains— Let purse-proud ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... course; otherwise they would have thought me a blockhead. You know that he has depicted me as a rogue and fool. Since I am neither, it was not serious; therefore ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... desisted from farther advance. The British attempts on Georgia were deferred to a later period. But the loyalists were busy, particularly that portion of them, which took the name of Scopholites, after one Scophol, a militia Colonel, whom Moultrie describes as an "illiterate, stupid, noisy blockhead". He proved not the less ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... the imprudent is honoured and the wise despised. The alchemist died of poverty and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... inexpedient &c 647; frivolous &c (trivial) 643. Phr. Davus sum non [Lat.] [Oedipus]; a fool's bolt is soon shot [Henry V.] clitellae bovi sunt impositae [Lat.] [Cicero]; fools rush in where angels fear to tread [Pope]; il n' a ni bouche ni eperon [Fr.]; the bookful blockhead, ignorantly read [Pope]; to varnish nonsense with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... read Tooke's Pantheon, and prated of the Heathen gods. This was very harmless and innocent pastime; tiresome, to be sure, yet laughable withal; nor did it call for any further rebuke than an occasional tap upon the cranium of some blockhead who forsook his legitimate sphere, thrust himself in your way, and became unsufferably blatant. Now the spirit of the times has changed. The literary youth of London are all in the facetious line. They have regular clubs, at which they meet to collate the gathered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... was too impatient to await his caprice. "My dear aunt," he once said to the Queen of Navarre, a short time before her death, "I honor you more than the Pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not indeed a Huguenot, but neither am I a blockhead; and if the Pope play the fool too much, I will myself take Margot," his common nickname for his sister, "by the hand, and give her away in marriage ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... so. Nothing is ever in order, unless I see to it myself. Give me the lantern. Now oil the bearings thoroughly. Put the feather into the socket, and work the pin in and out, that the oil may go all round. Now pour in some oil from the lip of the flask; but not upon the treadle, you old blockhead. Now do the other end the same. Ah, now it would go with the weight of a mouse! I have a great mind to make ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... or I'll throw you out, you miserable blockhead!" roared Rokoff, taking a threatening ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him pepperily). Yes; you blockhead! She received me with a pistol at her head. Your cavalry were at my heels. I'd have blown out her brains if she'd uttered ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... principles to be so violent—shame on you, man. Yet after all it was very provoking to be made such a fool of before that insolent fellow. Poor Teddy—I wish I hadn't hit you such a slap. But, after all, you deserved it, you superstitious blockhead. Well, well, it's of no use regretting. Glad I didn't hit Ladoc, though, it's too soon for that. Humph! the time has come for action, however. Things are drawing to a point. They shall culminate to-morrow. Let ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... magnify their office and make it honorable. The most distinguished of four generations of Basires, engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... abbot great satisfaction and himseemed fortune had opened him the way to his chief desire; wherefore, 'Daughter,' quoth he, 'I can well believe that it must be a sore annoy for a fair and dainty dame such as you are to have a blockhead to husband, but a much greater meseemeth to have a jealous man; wherefore, you having both the one and the other, I can lightly credit that which you avouch of your tribulation. But for this, speaking briefly, I see neither counsel nor remedy save one, the which is that Ferondo be cured ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Insensibly came on her side. It was an unforeseen event; Things took a turn he never meant. Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinet, A fiddler may a fortune get; A blockhead, with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice: And oft the dancing-master's art Climbs from the toe to touch the heart. In learning let a nymph delight, The pedant gets a mistress by't. Cadenus, to his grief and shame, Could scarce oppose Vanessa's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax; Bessie the nursemaid; Adele, the little French girl, Mr. Rochester's ward; the two Rivers sisters—they are admirable portraits. But Mr. Rochester, the haughty Baroness Ingram of Ingram Park, Miss Ingram, who says to the footman, "Leave that chatter, blockhead, and do my bidding," St. John Rivers, the blue-eyed fanatic—these are caricatures or types, according as you like to view them. To me they are types: characters finely conceived, and only exaggerated because Charlotte Bronte had never mixed with people of that species ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lady would be scornful of our kind, but an American would not be so particular, blockhead?" And the large grenadier of a woman, looking like one of the commune, gave his ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... tricked. Ah! blockhead, brute, triple fool that I am! But those laugh best who laugh last. Oh, duped, duped like a monkey, cheated with an empty nutshell!" And with a hearty blow bestowed upon the nose of the smirking valet de chambre, he made all haste out of the episcopal palace. Furet, however good a trotter, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... down. They are higher than a Chinese wall in truth's way, and built of materials that are indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to say to this mountain, be thou cast into the sea. For I ask of the men of knowledge of the world, whether they would not hold him for a blockhead, that should hope to prevail in an argument, whose scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask further, when such attempts have been made, whether they have not failed of success? The indignant heart repels the conviction ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart." ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... only with-held by airy and unseasonable Scruples. Well, yes, answered she, I do love him. I do not endeavour to conceal it from you. Good God! what Woman in my Place could forbear. But, how can I commit such a publick Adultery. A publick Adultery, replied Kelirieu, with a seeming Amazement, what Blockhead has put such Fancies into your Head. But this Crime so justly condemned both by divine and human Laws, consists in the Injury done to a Man, whose Wife against his Will, or without his Knowledge, admits a Gallant to her Embraces? But, lovely Kismare, how different is your Case! Will not your ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... the Catholics? You are surprised that men who have tasted of partial justice should ask for perfect justice; that he who has been robbed of coat and cloak will not be contented with the restitution of one of his garments. He would be a very lazy blockhead if he were content, and I (who, though an inhabitant of the village, have preserved, thank God, some sense of justice) most earnestly counsel these half-fed claimants to persevere in their just demands, till they are admitted to a more complete share of a dinner for which they pay as much as the ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... actually suppose, having proved me once, that I would suffer such a common cut-throat as you to march off with my treasure? Look up at me, man! I charge you with having murdered Coffin, even as you have just murdered that other poor blockhead who trusted you." He nodded sideways—but still keeping his eyes upon Glass—towards the body, which lay as it had fallen. "Answer me. Are you guilty? ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... you smoked a pipe), and were to hear those present begin to argue and dispute concerning different matters, you would feel of as little account among them as I do; for I myself figure there only as a blockhead, and feel ashamed, since it takes me a whole evening to think of a single word to interpolate—and even then the word will not come! In a case like that a man regrets that, as the proverb has it, he should have ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... cab at once and go for Nick Carter! Lose not a moment! Don't wait to ask questions, you blockhead! Away with you, at once! Bring Nick Carter here with the ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... happened for a long time," said a basket-maker. "And he is particularly glad it should be precisely Rui's body, which the sacred heart should have blessed. You ask why?—Hatasu is Ani's ancestress, blockhead!" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Bards we have; and yet't is true, 610 There are as mad abandon'd Critics too. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always list'ning to himself appears. 615 All books he reads, and all he reads assails. From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... I'll give him his welcome at the door. Commend me to your lady, I pray ye, heartily. [Exit PAGE. Humphrey, I marvel where Sir Richard is so late! Truly, truly, he does not as beseems a gentleman of his calling; pray, let some go forth to meet him on the green, and send in that blockhead Block. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... again! Come, that was better! But you must sigh like a horse down with the colic. So—o! that's right. Thus I go, drilling myself in hypocrisy; stamp impatiently in the street when I fail to succeed; rail at myself for being such a blockhead, whilst the astonished passers-by turn round and stare ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... Stupid blockhead that I was!—I trembled to clasp her in my arms, but dared not believe in so much joy, and yet restrained ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... got?— You great obstinate blockhead, You log of the village! You too must needs argue; Pray what did you tell us? 460 'The popes live like princes, The lords of the belfry, Their palaces rising As high as the heavens, Their bells set a-chiming ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... point, Blondel, who will and will not and on whom all must turn, Blondel the upright, the impeccable, the patriotic, without whom we can do nothing, and who, I tell you, hangs in the balance—do you think he likes it, blockhead? Or is the more inclined to trust his life with us when he sees us brawlers, toss-pots, common swillers? Do you think he on whom I am bringing to bear all the resources of this brain—this!"—and again the big man tapped his forehead with tragic earnestness—"and whom you could ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... of genius, or at all events of satiric talent; but that the attempt to ridicule a silly and childish poem, by writing another still sillier and still more childish, can only prove (if it prove any thing at all) that the parodist is a still greater blockhead than the original writer, and, what is far worse, a malignant coxcomb to boot. The talent for mimicry seems strongest where the human race are most degraded. The poor, naked half human savages of New Holland were found excellent mimics: and, in civilized society, minds of the very lowest stamp ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... amorous blockhead, a credulous cuckold, and, (though painted as a brave fellow, and a soldier,) a mere Tom. Essence, and a quarreler with his best friend, dies like a fool, (as we are led to suppose at the conclusion of the play,) without either sword or pop-gun, of mere grief ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Mr. Colton, I tell you that you are all wrong. Simply because a man lives in the country it does not follow that he is a blockhead. No one in Denboro is rich, as you would count riches, but plenty of them are independent and ask no help from any one. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... cried Saint-Pol, smiting the table, 'you will gain nothing else. Within your country's law, blockhead! Why, my sister is within the Count's ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... "What a blockhead I was!" he thought, quite angry with himself. "If I'd just staid quietly where I was put, and not gone racing off, with the idea that I knew more about their railroads than the Belgians themselves, I'd never have gotten myself into such a scrape. And now ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... another while with cruelty. For he used to say by way of jest, that he had ceased morari [602] amongst men, pronouncing the first syllable long; and treated as null many of his decrees and ordinances, as made by a doting old blockhead. He enclosed the place where his body was burnt with only a low wall of rough masonry. He attempted to poison (362) Britannicus, as much out of envy because he had a sweeter voice, as from apprehension ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Trinity College he remained for thirteen years, studying, thinking, dreaming, bewildering most of the collegians, his colleagues, who seemed to have been unable to make up their minds whether he was a genius or a blockhead. Within the walls of Trinity he worked, gradually and laboriously piecing together and thoughtfully shaping out his theory of the metaphysical conception of the material world about him; poring over Locke and Plato, breathing an atmosphere saturated with Cartesianism, his ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... "Stop, you blockhead!" he shouted. "I don't want you to kill the man!" He then pointed again to the flesh and to the hole. The chief uttered a few words, which had the desired effect; for the man threw the flesh into the hole, which was immediately ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... the stupidest blockhead I ever saw, for one who knows how to keep a set of books. Are you simpleton enough to suppose I would leave the Florina opposite the mouth of the river, where she would drag her anchor in the first blow that came?" growled Mr. Whippleton, with increased vehemence and anger. "I was going ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... that, at all events, he would pass down first; and, the space being very narrow, the two dignitaries came into collision, and found themselves in utter darkness. The words "blockhead" and "booby" were the mildest which they now applied to ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... sane men is allotted a complete endowment of mental faculties, of capacities of intellect and feeling; the degree to which these are energized, are injected with nervous flame, makes the difference between a genius and a blockhead. There being high vital pressure at a full, rich, interior source, and thence, strong mental currents, through what channels the currents shall flow depends on individual aptitudes, these aptitudes shaping, in the one case, a Dante, in another, a Newton, in another, a Mirabeau. And Nature, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... ay, you whoreson blockhead, 'tis your only block of wit in fashion now-a-days, to ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... drudgery of schools, And tamely stoop to every pedant's rules; For seven long years debarr'd of liberal ease, To plod in college trammels to degrees; Beneath the weight of solemn toys to groan, Sleep over books, and leave mankind unknown; 20 To praise each senior blockhead's threadbare tale, And laugh till reason blush, and spirits fail; Manhood with vile submission to disgrace, And cap the fool, whose merit is his place, Vice-Chancellors, whose knowledge is but small, And Chancellors, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of it derived through analysis: "The bear is a growler, i.e., his father, who has told him many a lie about the genesis of babies. He reviles him for it. He was a blockhead, he had a wooden head. The mighty tree is the phallus. The chain is marriage. He was a henpecked husband, a tamed bear. Mother held him by the chain. This chain (the bond ? of marriage) Omicron desired to sunder. (Incest thoughts.) When the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... fiercely. 'How come you to have forgotten all at once that I am your lord's chosen friend, and that everything concerning him is safe with me. In very deed, I think you have ridden too hard in the sun; your brains must have frizzled. Blockhead! If in haste, the lord Marcian did not speak of me, he took it for granted ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... The only thing which prevented my yielding to it was the fear that I might find the canon to be a fool, incapable of playing the part with dignity. As for the Corticelli, she soon passed from tears to laughter, and would have done it well, but if, as I feared, the canon was a blockhead, I should ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... you're too careless or lazy to look out for yourself," retorted the baron. "But then you can have no possible objection to the present match. The fair Julia is just twenty—eyes, you dog—lips, you rascal—a shape, you blockhead, to bewitch an anchorite. And then she has ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... once when I was a boy, and father went along with me to teach me. Well, the first flock of plover I seed I let slip at 'em, and missed 'em. Says father, says he, "What a blockhead you be, Sam, that's your own fault, they were too far off; you hadn't ought to have fired so soon. At Bunker's hill we let the British come right on till we seed the whites of their eyes, and then we let 'em ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... invitation to an Irish nobleman of his acquaintance: "I hope, my Lord, if ever you come within a mile of my house, that you'll stay there all night." When he was suffering from an attack of gout, he thus rebuked his shoemaker: "O, you're a precious blockhead to do directly the reverse of what I desired you. I told you to make one of the shoes larger than the other, and instead of that you have made one of them smaller ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... who fell Plump to the bottom of a well, 'Poor blockhead!' cried a passer-by, 'Not see your ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... library should be distributed to the masters of the baths, amounting to 4000, to be used in heating their stoves during a period of six months, modern paradox would attempt to deny. But the tale would not be singular even were it true: it perfectly suits the character of a bigot, a barbarian, and a blockhead. A similar event happened in Persia. When Abdoolah, who in the third century of the Mohammedan aera governed Khorassan, was presented at Nishapoor with a MS. which was shown as a literary curiosity, he asked the title of it—it was ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... gain your point by obstinacy," he added. "I swear that not another word shall pass between you and that blockhead of a chief—not if I have to ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... to recover his breath, or whether to show that his victory was consummated, and that he was in his rights of possession). "Hollo," said Mr. Stirn, "what is all this?—what's the matter, Lenny, you blockhead?" ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... each sweaty Brow Is search'd.... Hence ev'ry Blockhead, Knave, and Dunce, Start into Preachers ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... my way, you stupid blockhead, or I'll kick you out of my way! I have not time to wait for the lot of fools that you ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... began: 'If you subtract six from nine, what remains?' said he. 'Three, sir,' said Boone. 'Very good,' said the master; 'now let us come to fractions. If you take three-quarters from a whole number, what remains?' 'The whole, sir,' answered Boone. 'You blockhead!' cried the master, beating him; 'you stupid little fool, how can you show that?' 'If I take one bottle of whiskey,' said Boone, 'and put in its place another in which I have mixed an emetic, the whole will remain if nobody drinks it!' The Irishman, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... found, under the rose be it spoken, even for a bishop to be a blockhead: but, if that bishop had sense enough to discern my good qualities, I ought not to be the most unrelenting of his censurers. My defence of the articles would indeed do its own business: yet to come forth under episcopal ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Indolence he vouchsafed only a line of cold commendation, of commendation much colder than what he has bestowed on the Creation of that portentous bore, Sir Richard Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren rascal. Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt which he felt for the trash of Macpherson was indeed just; but it was, we suspect, just by chance. He despised the Fingal for the very reason which led many men of genius to admire it. He despised it, not because it was essentially commonplace, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... codex. Here it will be necessary to explain that caudex, codex, in Latin, meant a block of wood, and had its humorous by-senses among the Roman dramatists, as the word block has among ourselves, such as blockhead.[5] So caudicalis provincia was a jocular expression for the occupation ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... intellectual capacities take a much more outward direction. They are expressed not only in the face and play of his features, but also in his walk, nay, in every movement, however slight it may be. One could perhaps discriminate from behind between a blockhead, a fool, and a man of genius. A clumsy awkwardness characterises every movement of the blockhead; folly imprints its mark on every gesture, and so do genius and a reflective nature. Hence the outcome of La Bruyere's remark: Il n'y a rien ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... fifteen cents apiece for them in Rome. They are now four for a dollar. And I suppose that I'll have to smoke them all up in Monte Carlo, or the Italian end of this ruin will sink the harpoon into me for fifty more francs. I'd like to get that blockhead over the line. I'd ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... courtiers gaze, And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart." ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... permission. It signified nothing to him that on his wake belated police officers, not a little relieved to find themselves belated, shook warning handbills at his retreating back. He was going to see what the world had to show him, poor incredulous blockhead, and he did not mean that occasional spirited persons shouting "Hi!" at him should stay his course. He came on down by Rochester and Greenwich towards an ever-thickening aggregation of houses, walking rather slowly now, staring about ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... what I don't mean to tell to the first blockhead I meet. First of all I should like to know who you are. If you are robbers I shall defend myself against you to the best of my ability; if you are fools I shall try to enlighten you; if you are brave and honest men I will ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... till about nine, having fasted the whole time. James, the blockhead, lost my poor Spice, a favourite terrier. The fool shut her in a stable, and somebody, [he] says, opened the door and let her out. I suspect she is lost for aye, for she was carried to Jedburgh ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... what the letter meant. It was not written by Naomi at all, and in my heart I cursed myself as a blockhead for being so easily duped. I heard the gruff voices of men, and among others I felt sure I heard that of Israel Barnicoat. For some few minutes, although my hands were pinioned, I struggled fiercely, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... provisions in port. The men, of course, naturally retaliated by measuring their work according to the food they got; and then it was seen that the game was to be too costly and too perilous. The common-sense commander would find a judicious retreat from an untenable position, and the blockhead would persevere with it during a whole voyage, and boastfully retail a sickening story of meanness to an audience who, he cherished the idea, would regard him as a hero! How much bitterness and loss was caused by ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... "The girl's a blockhead!" "Where's her eyes, I wonder?" shouted the carpenters, after the manner of carmen and stage drivers, when you narrowly escape being run over by ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... number of five. However, by death I stand credited but by one. Well, Margery, rest her soul! was a queer creature; when she was gone, I felt awkward at first, and being sensible that wishes availed nothing, I often wished for her return. For ten years more I kept my senses and lived single. Oh, blockhead, dolt Solomon! Within this twelvemonth thou art married again—married to a woman thirty years younger than thyself; a fashionable woman. Yet I took her with caution; she had been educated in the country; but now she has more ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... of our cits, the first thing after their death is to take care of their birth—let him bear a pair of stockings, he is the first of his family that ever wore one.... And you, Mr. Blockhead, I warrant you have not call'd at Mr. Pestle's the apothecary: will that fellow never pay me? I stand bound for all the poison in that starving murderer's shop: he serves me just as Dr. Quibus did, who promised to ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... unsuspecting innocence," and "interested attentions," and other similar expressions—all of which, however, were lost upon Titmouse. Tapping with an auctioneer's hammer on a block of granite, would make about as much impression upon it as will hint, innuendo, or suggestion, upon a blockhead. So it was with Titmouse. He promised to dine at Satin Lodge on the Sunday after the ensuing one—with which poor Mr. Tag-rag was obliged to depart content; having been unable to get Titmouse up to Clapham on either ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... it!" replied the gardener, lost in amazement. "I have been abroad for the last three years. Oh, they wrote to me, and I did not understand. I am a blockhead. Oh, my daughter, you understand me, then? Do you hear my voice? Answer me: do you hear me? Do you hear what ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... success. As applied to any particular individual, it breaks down completely. It is unfortunately no rare thing to see the good man striving against fate, and the fool born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Still on a large scale no test can be conceivably more reliable; a blockhead may succeed for a time, but a succession of many generations of blockheads does not go on steadily gaining ground, adding field to field and farm to farm, and becoming year by year more capable and prosperous. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... slight sound caused me to turn my head, and I saw in a doorway that led to another room the erect figure of Major Lessard listening intently, a black frown on his eagle face. When MacRae had finished his story and the incapable blockhead behind the desk sat there regarding the two of us as though he considered that we had been the victims of a rank hallucination, Lessard slammed the door shut behind him and strode ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... realized the truth of this. Indeed, when he came to look carefully at the wooden head, he did not blame his daughters for not wishing to marry it. Should he force one of them to consent, it was not unlikely she would call her husband a blockhead—a term almost certain to cause ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... actor Griffin in collaboration with Lewis Theobald. About this Gay wrote to Caryll in April: "There is a sixpenny criticism lately published upon the tragedy of 'The What D'ye Call It,' wherein he with much judgment and learning calls me a blockhead and Mr. Pope a knave. His grand charge is against 'The Pilgrim's Progress' being read, which, he says, is directly levelled at Cato's reading Plato. To back this censure he goes on to tell you that 'The Pilgrim's ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... Glencairn has wounded me to the soul here, because I dearly esteem, respect, and love him. He showed so much attention, engrossing attention, one day, to the only blockhead at table (the whole company consisted of his lordship, dunder-pate, and myself), that I was within half a point of throwing down my gage of contemptuous defiance, but he shook my hand and looked so benevolently good at parting, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... civility and good-breeding. Ease is allowed, but carelessness and negligence are strictly forbidden. If a man accosts you, and talks to you ever so dully or frivolously, it is worse than rudeness, it is brutality, to shew him, by a manifest inattention to what he says, that you think him a fool or a blockhead, and not worth hearing. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... care about your paraffin? Never mind anything more, waiter. I could not eat a mouthful. What is the bill? Very well; and there is something for yourself, blockhead." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... talked with the man whom you have chosen to play the fool with. I find him worthy of his mistress; a tame, coward-hearted, infatuated blockhead. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... comrades heard what had happened, he said, 'You blockhead, you can't have done it properly; just let me have a try,' and with these words he seized his wife by the roots of her hair, cut her throat with a razor, and then took the pipe and blew into it with all his might but he couldn't bring her back to life. The same ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... boy in school, who did not sit on a bench, like the rest, but on a block of wood that looked like a backlog turned endwise. Aunt Hannah often called him a "blockhead," and I supposed it was because he sat on that block. Sometimes, in his absence, a boy was made to sit in his place for punishment, for being a "blockhead" too, as I imagined. I hoped I should never be put ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... Macaulay attacks an old non-juror or a modern Tory, we can only wonder how opinions which, on his showing, are so inconceivably absurd, could ever have been held by any human being. Men are Whigs or not-Whigs, and the not-Whig is less a heretic to be anathematised than a blockhead beneath the reach of argument. All political wisdom centres in Holland House, and the 'Edinburgh Review' is its prophet. There is something in the absolute confidence of Macaulay's political dogmatism which varies between the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... had dealings and spoke with him, and that I said to you that he had a great facility for speaking languages, but that otherwise he was no good. Because I have seen him several times in the Papal chapels with a certain air of an ass and certain grimaces of a blockhead that cannot happen to a man of talent. I am told, moreover, that he is a spy, and that for that reason he was given the hat. I know, moreover, that he has not written anything at all. For that reason I do not wish to take ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Alexandra Pavlovna, because you don't know me. You think I am a perfect blockhead, a log; but do you know I am capable of melting like sugar, of spending whole ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... for a Whig, or a Puritan, or any other unimaginative blockhead, to cry out against all this as nauseous flattery, and assert that after all she was rather an unpoetical personage than otherwise—a coarse-minded old maid, half prude, half coquette, whose better part was mannish, and all that belonged to her sex a ludicrous exaggeration of its weaknesses. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... said be, 'is a mere conceit, and an old conceit; I wonder how people were persuaded to write in that manner for this lady.' I named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase. Johnson—'He was a blockhead for his pains!' Boswell. 'The Duchess of Northumberland wrote.' Johnson: 'Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she pleases; nobody will say any thing to a lady of her high rank: but I should be apt to throw * * * *'s verses in his face.'" Boswell. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... was Ferfitchkin, a Russianised German—a little fellow with the face of a monkey, a blockhead who was always deriding everyone, a very bitter enemy of mine from our days in the lower forms—a vulgar, impudent, swaggering fellow, who affected a most sensitive feeling of personal honour, though, of course, he was a wretched little coward at heart. He was one of those worshippers ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... should be paid only in reverence of the number of their acres, the size of their houses, the elegance of their equipage and domestic arrangements, and perhaps some official capacity, in which many a notorious blockhead ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... sovereign was a selfish, coarse old man, who in private life would, as Lady Montagu said, have passed for an honest blockhead. He neither knew anything about England, nor did he desire to know anything of it. He could not speak a word of the language of the country he was called to govern, and he made no attempt to learn it; even the coronation service had ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, whom he wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but like a philosopher and friend who has passed through life with thought and observation, and is willing to enable others to pass through it with pleasure and profit. A writer of this stamp, I ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... ne'er beyond his day. But with the Parson 'tis another case, He, without holiness, may rise to grace. The Poet has one disadvantage more, That if his play be dull, he's damn'd all o'er, Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor. 20 But dulness well becomes the sable garment; I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a Priest's perferment: Wit's not his business, and as wit now goes, Sirs, 'tis not so much yours as you suppose, For you like nothing now but nauseous beaux. You laugh not, gallants, as by proof ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... company with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who has already men listening to him on this side of the water. The "Tail" has an individual or two of that genus,—and the rest is mainly yet undecided. For example, I knew old —- myself; and can testify, if you will believe me, that few greater blockheads (if "blockhead" may mean "exasperated imbecile" and the ninth part of a thinker) broke the world's bread in his day. Have a care of such! I say always to myself, —and to ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... eh?' said the dwarf as he walked the streets alone. 'My friend has stolen a march upon me. It led him to nothing, and therefore is no great matter, save in the intention. I'm glad he has lost his mistress. Ha ha! The blockhead mustn't leave the law at present. I'm sure of him where he is, whenever I want him for my own purposes, and, besides, he's a good unconscious spy on Brass, and tells, in his cups, all that he sees and hears. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
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