"Dullard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he continued in the same tone. 'To learn whether the man who was mad enough to insult and defy me was the old penniless dullard some called him, or the dare-devil ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... eagle-flight through new morning-skies, and mainly because in them we already find Browning at his best and at his weakest, because in them we hear not only the rush of his sunlit pinions, but also the low earthward surge of dullard wings. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... by name, a man of humble enough extraction, but nobler of worth and manners than whatsoever other, pleased her over all and of him, seeing him often, she became in secret ardently enamoured, approving more and more his fashions every hour; whilst the young man, who was no dullard, perceiving her liking for him, received her into his heart, on such wise that his mind was thereby diverted from well nigh everything other than the love ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... painter have had as in his mind's eye he purely shadowed forth this most perfect conception of one of those who hold companionship with God! It was made up of all the rarest traits of beauty, yet its loveliness was not of the world: the veriest dullard looking on it would have paused in admiration; the most brutal have gazed into those pure eyes, untainted by one earthly feeling, one sinful thought, or impure desire. On my mind the effect was thrilling: I have pictured to myself angels ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... incident occurring in the time of Jo[a]o II and not to the King himself[22]. We may surmise that about this time, perhaps as early as 1490, Vicente became goldsmith to Queen Lianor. The events of this wonderful decade must have moved him profoundly, events sufficient to stir even a dullard's imagination as new world after new world swept into his ken: the conquest of Granada from the Moors in 1492, the arrival of Columbus at Lisbon from America in 1493, the similar return of Vasco da Gama six years later from India, the discovery of Brazil ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... doubts, of course. I can readily believe that he did. Doctor St. Jean is not a very bad man, but he is a charlatan and a dullard; he received the story of my reported insanity as he received me, as an advantage to his institution, and he never gave himself the unprofitable trouble to investigate the circumstances. I told him the truth about myself as calmly as I now speak to you, but somebody else ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... a frenzy made from this furious rush. The men, pitching forward insanely, had burst into cheerings, moblike and barbaric, but tuned in strange keys that can arouse the dullard and the stoic. It made a mad enthusiasm that, it seemed, would be incapable of checking itself before granite and brass. There was the delirium that encounters despair and death, and is heedless and blind to the odds. It is a temporary but sublime ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... education, should be the birthright of each one of them. Democracy may even intensify natural inequalities. The man who cannot say no to cheap and vulgar temptations falls all the lower in the degree to which he is a free agent. In competition with men alert, loyal, trained and creative, the dullard is condemned to a lifetime of hard labor, through no direct fault of his own. Keep the capable man down and you may level the incapable one up. But this the Twentieth Century will not do. This democracy will not do; this it ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... clever man of five-and-thirty, already bald and corpulent; he works from morning to night, reads a lot, remembers well everything he has read—and in that way he is not a man, but pure gold; in all else he is a carthorse or, in other words, a learned dullard. The carthorse characteristics that show his lack of talent are these: his outlook is narrow and sharply limited by his specialty; outside his special branch he ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to consent that M. le Marquis shall make his court to me. I like the look of the gentleman. I am flattered by his preference when I consider his eminence. It is an eminence that I may find it desirable to share. M. le Marquis does not look as if he were a dullard. It should be interesting to be wooed by him. It may be more interesting still to marry him, and I think, when all is considered, that I shall probably—very probably—decide to ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... sooner said it than I was convicted of being a dullard. 'God forgive me, dear!' I made haste to reply. 'I never saw before that there were two sides to this!' And I told her my tale as briefly as I could, and rose to seek Ronald. 'You see, my dear, you are obeyed,' ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forth, and then stepped up very close to her: "You probably think I am an idiotic simpleton, a dullard. You seem to feel that I am one of those rustic imbeciles, who has had his fingers frozen once, and spends his days thereafter sitting behind the stove, grunting and shaking every time anybody says weather to him. Well, you are wrong. There was ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... imagination the answer, of course, is obvious. The better tales all had the exaltation of the chivalric spirit in view, and sought to achieve this end by allegory as well as by parable. He must be a dullard indeed who fails to understand their symbolism. Malory, describing the entry of Tristram into the field, wishes to impress upon us the fact that he was indeed a 'preux chevalier, sans peur et sans reproche,' the model ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... woman appeared at his bridle rein, and solemnly warned him "that, if he crossed that water, he would never return alive." He was struck by the apparition, and bade one of his knights to inquire of her what she meant; but the knight must have been a dullard or a traitor, for he told the king that the woman was either mad or drunk, and no notice was taken of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... England a self-seeker, Nobility has shone in you alone. Your error grew of over-generous dreams, And misbeliefs by dullard ministers. By treating personally we speed affairs More in an hour than they in blundering months. Between us two, henceforth, must stand no third. There's peril in it, while England's mean ambition Still works to get us skewered by the ears; And in ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... discounting ordinary intelligence to say that I sought with unwearying assiduity to figure my way into the stern father's good-will; that never did dullard apply himself to mathematics more patiently than I; that never did faithfulness achieve such meagre reward. Then I engaged a private tutor. His instructions met with no ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... passionate words. "Are you such a coward that you run away at the first hurt? When the ball struck you in the face at Lords, did you retire—hurt? No; you stuck it, and scored a century! Are you such a dullard that you cannot read beneath a woman's yes and no? Love! Do you know what love means? What would you do for love? Could ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... his inward joys, his affectionate delights, which no outward infelicity can touch. A bird who thinks nothing of staying by his nest and his mate at the sacrifice of his life is not to be written down a dullard or a drudge, merely because his dress is plain and his occupation unromantic. He has a right to sing, for he has something within him ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... 'I find it a masterstroke of genius.' Their tones were ice on both sides, but their words were fire. The maid most probably thought her mistress bored, and the guest a dullard. She had seemed at first interested in the new arrival, but she lapsed now into an attitude of indifference, and the dangerous pretence went on. In this intoxicating whirl of passion, when interchange of vows was offered under the necessity of constant watchfulness and self-guardianship, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... take you into the recesses of my soul? I should have gone to my father and said, "Bring me the son-in-law whom you desire; my will abdicates,—marry me to whom you please." And the man might have been a notary, banker, miser, fool, dullard, wearisome as a rainy day, common as the usher of a school, a manufacturer, or some brave soldier without two ideas,—he would have had a resigned and attentive servant in me. But what an awful suicide! never could my soul have expanded in the life-giving rays of a beloved sun. No murmur ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac |
