"Dunce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw; You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are, But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR. Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce, I myself — you mayn't believe it — helped to run a paper once With a chap on Cambaroora, by the name of Charlie Brown, And I'll tell you all about it if ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... ever flunked a college course. It remained for you to be the first Holiday to wear a dunce cap." ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... offer still greater obstacles to social contacts. The idiot and the imbecile are obviously debarred from normal communication with their intelligent associates. The "dunce" was isolated by village ridicule and contempt long before the term "moron" was coined, or the feeble-minded segregated in institutions and colonies. The individual with the highest native endowments, the genius, and the talented enjoy ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... to be added to the record of Pope's work but the revised "Dunciad," in which, to gratify an increased antipathy, he displaced its old hero, Theobald, in favor of Colley Cibber, who, whatever his faults, was certainly not a typical dunce. Toward the close of his life those infirmities at which Wycherley had hinted in his youth grew upon him, and he became almost entirely dependent upon nurses. He had not, to use De Quincey's words, drawn that supreme prize in life, "a fine intellect with a healthy stomach," and his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... looks of my advocate, than to my cause. Again, thou art deprived of the force men of our cast give to arguments; for she won't let thee swear!-Art, moreover, a very heavy, thoughtless fellow; tolerable only at a second rebound; a horrid dunce at the impromptu. These, encountering with such a lady, are great disadvantages.—And still a greater is thy balancing, (as thou dost at present,) between old rakery and new reformation; since this puts thee ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... the sand; one grave-stone would mock them all. But once the family brain expanded to a hat, and that survived the race. I am the Quaker who respects his hat, the Cardinal who is crowned with it; yes, and the dunce who must wear it in ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... of existence; its novelty shall not avail (with me at least) to save its ugliness from annihilation. If I thought otherwise, I admit that a round dozen of vultures would be none too many for the liver of a dunce who could not see that ugliness was ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... when fate shall will it, I can never die but once, I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman; He who fears death is a dunce. ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... she gives this glimpse of another study: "I am a very Dunce, for I have not acquired ye writing shorthand yet with any degree of swiftness." That she had made some study of philosophy also is evident in this comment in a letter written after a prolonged absence from her plantation home for the purpose of attending some social function: "I began to ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... "Oh, you big dunce!" Jasper clapped his books on the table with a bang, making Pickering draw down his long legs, rushed around to precipitate himself on the rest of the figure in the chair, when he pommelled him ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... opinion in after life. But the study of grammar is not so enticing that it may be disparaged in the hearing of the young, without injury. What would be the natural effect of the following sentence, which I quote from a late well-written religious homily? "The pedagogue and his dunce may exercise their wits correctly enough, in the way of grammatical analysis, on some splendid argument, or burst of eloquence, or thrilling descant, or poetic rapture, to the strain and soul of which not a fibre in their nature would yield a vibration."—New-York Observer, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... he clearly showed in what direction his interest lay. At school he was something of a dunce at his lessons, but let him but have a pencil and paper and his mind was wide awake at once. Every spare moment he spent making sketches on the ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... take her mother to New York shortly; but as "that dear old dunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be necessary to wait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as the largest steamers sailed from Liverpool, and Ellan was so near to that port, perhaps I would not mind . . . just for a week or ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... meltin' snows, An' rattles di'mon's from his granite; Time wuz, he snatched away my prose, An' into psalms or satires ran it; But he, nor all the rest thet once Started my blood to country-dances, Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce Thet ha'n't no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... term is equivalent to "dunce," but it was originally employed as a law term. It is a Latin word, and literally translated means, "we do not know." In former days when a grand jury considered that a bill or indictment was not supported by sufficient ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... hundred pounds, and left only one son called Clement. All his rarities, secret manuscripts, of what quality soever, Dr. Napper of Lindford in Buckinghamshire had, who had been a long time his scholar; and of whom Forman was used to say he would be a dunce: yet in continuance of time he proved a singular astrologer and physician. Sir Richard now living, I believe, has all those rarities in possession, which were Forman's, being kinsman and heir unto Dr. Napper. (His son Thomas Napper, Esq.; most generously gave most of these manuscripts ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... beauty is no dunce," thought Mr. Hugh Ingelow. "Miss Blanche has found a foe worthy ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... never doubles his fist, Mr. Burns, in his grate, has no fuel; Mr. Playfair won't catch me at hazard or whist, Mr. Coward was wing'd in a duel. Mr. Wise is a dunce, Mr. King is a whig, Mr. Coffin's uncommonly sprightly, And huge Mr. Little broke down in a gig, While driving ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... as sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius linguae: in English, illiterate, a dunce, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the second thing about Hester Grimes. She was not alone a dunce when it came to acting, she was a ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... but I'll warrant she'll not be a dunce with Purcell. And you must admit, doctor, that your George Frederick Handel is much beholden ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Moempelgard. This prince had been so pampered by his mother, Anne de Coligny, that he reached the age of twelve years without having learned to read or write. When the over-tender mother died, the boy's father, Duke George, took his dunce-son's education in hand; but this gentleman was peculiar in his notions of the training of young minds. French and German he deemed unnecessary trivialities, and the Christian religion a banality. Instead ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... N. ignoramus, dunce; wooden spoon; no scholar. [insulting terms for ignorant person: see also imbecility 499, folly 501] moron, imbecile, idiot; fool, jerk, nincompoop, asshole [vulgar]. [person with superficial knowledge] dilettante, sciolist[obs3], smatterer, dabbler, half scholar; charlatan; wiseacre. greenhorn, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the Dunciad. While he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one of the company* ventured to say, 'Too fine for such a poem:—a poem on what?' JOHNSON, (with a disdainful look,) 'Why, on DUNCES. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst THOU lived in those days! It is not worth while 'being a dunce now, when there are no wits.' Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circumstance, that Pope's fame was higher when he was alive than ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... given us by M. Rossi, the minister of Pius IX. But Greek and Latin, and hours spent over an exercise or a translation with a fat dictionary to keep me company! Oh, mercy on me! From the scholastic point of view I was simply a DUNCE, nothing but a dunce. Yet I managed to scramble one prize—the shabbiest of them all—the second for Latin versions in the seventh class! I was presented with my reward at the prize distribution, to the tune of "Vive Henri IV." Vive ce roi vaillant, ce diable a quatre . . .!" At the same moment ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... astounded me. I get an exhibition! I who had been licked once a week for bad copies, and had been told by every teacher I had had anything to do with that I was a hopeless dunce. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... Grammar; and here is a Geography Book, and here is a History of Rome. Now read attentively, and do not let your thoughts wander; and be very careful not to dogs-ear the leaves: that always looks like a dunce. And mind you sit upright,' added she, looking back, as she left the room in obedience to a summons from ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... studies requiring discipline. He nibbled at various books and was precociously brilliant in Latin. On the contrary, he was absolutely incapable of construing two Greek words, showed no aptitude for living languages and promptly proved himself a dunce when obliged to master the elements of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... balcony on that side of the building. Looking in that direction she saw Dr. Lacey sitting out on the balcony and so near her window that he must have heard all the conversation between herself and her sister! She thought, "Well, he of course thinks me a silly little dunce; but I do like our blacks, and if I ever own any of them, I'll first teach them to read and then send them all to Liberia." Full of this new plan, she forgot Dr. Lacey and ere she was aware of it had reached the store. She procured the articles she wished for, and returning to Mrs. Crane's, gave ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... said Godfrey Thornton, relieved. "I thought you might want to grow up a dunce, and become a bricklayer ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... if you are a bigger dunce than you seem; but," added Fred, turning toward the Shawanoe, "have you seen any ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... was! I broke my fast: But I defy the basest tongue To prove I did my neighbour wrong; Or ever went to seek my food, By rapine, theft, or thirst of blood. The Ass approaching next, confess'd, That in his heart he loved a jest: A wag he was, he needs must own, And could not let a dunce alone: Sometimes his friend he would not spare, And might perhaps be too severe: But yet the worst that could be said, He was a wit both born and bred; And, if it be a sin and shame, Nature alone must bear the blame: One fault he has, is sorry for't, His ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... dunce," she replied. "I can talk French and German, and do arithmetic, and play the organ. Father used to teach me these things. I can learn at Tredowen very well. I hope that my friends will let me ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by the power of the imagination, the vivid character of the whole range of thought, including what is disagreeable. This applies, in various degrees, to every step in the long scale of mental power, from the veriest dunce to the greatest genius that ever lived. Therefore the nearer anyone is, either from a subjective or from an objective point of view, to one of those sources of suffering in human life, the farther he is from the other. And so a man's natural ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Earthquake shock! What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,— All at once, and nothing first,— Just as ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... them to Mat Meegan, is it?" he replied—"and do you think, sir," said he, "that I'd send them to that dry-headed dunce, Mr. Frazher, with his black coat upon him, and his Caroline hat, and him wouldn't take a glass of poteen wanst in seven years? Mat, sir, likes it, and teaches the boys ten times betther whin he's dhrunk nor when ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... my dunce of a classmate has found his way into Congress, and is living amid the perpetual excitement of intellectual minds, while I am cooped up in an ignorant country parish, obliged to be at the beck and call of every old woman, who happens to ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... and passion prone, without a rhyme, Inane and madlike was he many a time, His outer self, forsooth, fine may have been, But one wild, howling waste his mind within: Addled his brain that nothing he could see; A dunce! to read essays so loth to be! Perverse in bearing, in temper wayward; For human censure he had no regard. When rich, wealth to enjoy he knew not how; When poor, to poverty he could not bow. Alas! what utter waste of lustrous ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... have now all been named, And I hope you will learn them at once; Indeed, if you don't you will need be ashamed To be known for a very great dunce. ...
— Footsteps on the Road to Learning; - The Alphabet in Rhyme • Anonymous
... was a clown, who clever was found. D was a dunce, and Harlequin bound, E was soon formed with the aid of a child, F in a ...
— Funny Alphabet - Uncle Franks' Series • Edward P. Cogger
... may visit her friends in comfort. I give her my family bible — that she may live above the ill tempers and sorrows of life. I give my son Peter a hornbook — for I am afraid he will always be a dunce. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... is strictly my opinion; it is in every way excellent, and cannot fail to do good the wider it is circulated. Whether it is worth your while to give up time to it is another question for you alone to decide; that it will do good for the subject is beyond all question. I do not think a dunce exists who could not understand it, and that is a bold saying after the extent to which I have been misunderstood. I did not understand what you required about sterility: assuredly the facts given do not go nearly so far. We differ so much that it is no use arguing. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... declared, in opposition to one of Johnson's prejudices, that Sterne's writings were pathetic: "I am sure," she said, "they have affected me." "Why," said Johnson, smiling and rolling himself about, "that is because, dearest, you are a dunce!" When she mentioned this to him some time afterwards he replied: "Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not have said it." The truth could not be more ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... remember the first morning he entered our school. He was then about twelve years of age; but, owing to his carelessness and inattention, he had made but slight progress in study. I learned afterwards that he had so long borne the names of "dunce" and "blockhead" in the school he attended in his own village, that he supposed himself to be really such, and made up his mind that it was useless for him to try to be anything else: and I think when our teacher ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... instructors were wise and worthy); and I am now so old, that I may say, without any great exhibition of vanity, that I have always kept well up among my school- and college-companions: but that blockhead kept me steadily at the bottom of my class, and kept a frightful dunce at the top of it, by his peculiar system. I have observed (let me say) that masters and professors who are stupid themselves have a great preference for stupid fellows, and like to keep down clever ones. A professor who was himself a dunce at college, and who has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... clown who made Jimmy laugh. He was a little man with a tall, pointed white felt hat like a dunce's cap; he wore the usual clown's dress, and generally kept his hands in his pockets as ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... and looked up at the lights in the windows. There was music going on; Phoebe, no doubt, for Ursula could not play so well as that, and the house looked full and cheerful. He had a cheerful home, there was no doubt of that. Young Copperhead, though he was a dunce, felt it, and showed an appreciation of better things in his determination not to leave the house where he had been so happy. Mr. May felt an amiable friendliness stealing over ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... my dear mamma, and now let me run And send it to heaven at once, For if He don't get it by Christmas time, He surely will think me a dunce." The letter was posted, the letter was scanned, With numberless grins by the men Whose duty it was to assort all the waifs That came from ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... her pride that was hurt. Had she taken the teasing of the meaner girls in a wiser spirit, she knew they would not have sent her the dunce cap. They continued to tease her because they knew ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... elements in which the genius is shown. The critic should frankly analyse; but mostly he does not. He tells us, for instance, that Walt Whitman is the "Adam of a new poetical era," or else that he is "a dunce of inconceivable incoherence and incompetence"; but usually he does not show us the precise data upon which either conclusion is based. Cannot profundity of thought, ardour of emotion, power and ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... voice as sweet as a silver bell "That for the third time, you dunce! I'm not going to tell ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... dunce, but even a dunce can liven up sufficiently when he's in love to see whether his sweetheart cares for him or not, and you didn't take much pains to hide the state of affairs," he said with a rueful laugh. "I know enough about girls to know when they ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... attractions of London to a greenhorn like myself, he broke in with, "Yes, but you have not seen the grandest one yet! Go with me to-day to St. Paul's and hear the charity children sing." So we went, and I saw the "head cynic of literature," the "hater of humanity," as a critical dunce in the Times once called him, hiding his bowed face, wet with tears, while his whole frame shook with emotion, as the children of poverty rose to pour out their anthems of praise. Afterwards he wrote in one of his books this passage, which seems ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... have opinions of my own; I want to read books that open and improve the mind. I want to promote my education by attending lectures, by going to the theatre—in short, I don't want to become a dunce and a bell-jingling fool like ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... in it. Ay, and if it wasn't that the Church is too liberal entirely, so she is, it 'ud cost his heirs and succissors betther nor ten pounds to have him out as soon as the other. Get along, man, and take half a year at dogmatical theology: go and read your Dens, you poor dunce, you!" ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... came on me all at once, 175 This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training for the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... will be on his guard, and we must be very cunning. To-morrow is exhibition day, and he will have on his best dark-green jacket, and Frank and I are to sit one on each side of him. You see he is really a dunce about every thing but playing tricks; and, when he is asked a question, he will be scared out of his senses, and not know what to say. Now Frank is going to pretend to help him, while I write Dunce in large letters on the stupid fellow's ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... the baptismal register. It was not a question of faculty or proficiency, how a lad should be classed and what he should read, but of calendar years. As if a shoemaker should fit his last to the age instead of the foot. Such an age, such a study. Gottfried is a genius, and Hans is a dunce; but Gottfried and Hans were both born in 1646; consequently, now, in 1654, they are both equally fit for the Smaller Catechism. Leibnitz was ready for Latin long before the time allotted to that study in the Nicolai-Schule, but the system was inexorable. All access to books cut off by rigorous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... bewilderment, "Where on earth does the human companionship come in?" Young girls are nowadays beginning to expect bright talk from their partners, and the ladies have a singularly pretty way of saying the most biting things in a smooth and unconcerned fashion when they find a dunce beginning to talk platitudes or to patronize his partner; but the middle generation are unspeakably inane; and the worst is that they regard their inanity as a decided sign of distinction. A grave man who adds ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... lead but to practices the most atrocious, and results the most disastrous, if carried out among ourselves? Tell us, ye hair-splitting sophists, the exact quantum of knowledge which is necessary to constitute a freeman. If every dunce should be a slave, your servitude is inevitable; and richly do you deserve the lash for your obtuseness. Our white population, too, would furnish blockheads enough to satisfy all the classical ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... to have been afraid of his personal safety from his numerous foes. Pope replied in a manly but self-defensive style. He is said about this time to have in his walks carried arms, and had a large dog as his protector; but none of the dunces had courage enough to assail him. Dennis, who was no dunce, might have ventured on it—but he had become miserably infirm, poor, and blind; and Pope had heaped coals of fire on his head, by contributing a Prologue to a play which was acted ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... some choice patron bless each gray goose quill! May ev'ry Bavius have his Bufo still! So, when a Statesman wants a day's defence, Or Envy holds a whole week's war with Sense, 250 Or simple pride for flatt'ry makes demands, May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands! Blest be the Great! for those they take away. And those they left me; for they left me Gay; Left me to see neglected Genius bloom, 255 Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb: Of all thy blameless life the sole return My Verse, and Queenb'ry weeping ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... Lochiel, etc., should have been at the very top of the tree. Somehow he wants audacity, fears the public, and, what is worse, fears the shadow of his own reputation. He is a great corrector too, which succeeds as ill in composition as in education. Many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce, and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity. Yet Tom Campbell ought to have done a great deal more. His youthful promise was great. John Leyden introduced me to him. They afterwards quarrelled. When I repeated Hohenlinden ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... ease. A singular instance happened one evening, when she insisted that some of Sterne's writings were very pathetick. Johnson bluntly denied it. 'I am sure (said she) they have affected me.' 'Why (said Johnson, smiling, and rolling himself about,) that is, because, dearest, you're a dunce[350].' When she some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said with equal truth and politeness; 'Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... and standish, that the parts in which I have come feebly off were by much the more laboured." He attempted to write Rokeby with great care, but threw the first version into the fire because he concluded that he had "corrected the spirit out of it, as a lively pupil is sometimes flogged into a dunce by a severe schoolmaster."[356] He was better satisfied with the result when he resumed his pen in his "old Cossack manner."[357] Similarly he writes of John Home's tragedy, Douglas, that the finest scene was, "we learn with pleasure but without surprise," unchanged from the first ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... where it sets to where it rises, he knows at least how it travels from sunrise to sunset, his eyes teach him that. Use the second question to throw light on the first; either your pupil is a regular dunce or the analogy is too clear to be missed. This is his first lesson ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... put it on, "It is plain to the veriest dunce That every beauty Will feel it her duty To yield to its glamour at once. They will see that I'm freely gold-laced In a uniform handsome and chaste" - But the peripatetics Of long-haired aesthetics, Are very much more to their taste - Which I never counted upon When I ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... a characteristic of the old dictionary makers. The gem of my collection is Ludwig's gloss for Luemmel, "a long lubber, a lazy lubber, a slouch, a lordant, a lordane, a looby, a booby, a tony, a fop, a dunce, a simpleton, a wise-acre, a sot, a logger-head, a block-head, a nickampoop, a lingerer, a drowsy or dreaming lusk, a pill-garlick, a slowback, a lathback, a pitiful sneaking fellow, a lungis, a tall slim fellow, a slim longback, a great he-fellow, a lubberly ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... not need aid and support. They need guidance and direction—and the majority of them, either the sharp spur of necessity or the relentless urge of an ambition which will not be denied. Almost without exception we have found that the only difference between genius or millionaire and dunce or tramp is a willingness to pay ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... boy? In terror he waited for her explanation. "Why, stupid! If Pascualet is your boy, he ought to look like you, oughtn't he, just as you look the way your father, old Pascualo, looked. Well, he doesn't, that's all! He looks like Tonet—eyes shape, build, and complexion! Poor dunce of a Rector! They call you lanudo! But the wool on your eyes is thicker than they ever guessed! Heavens, man, take a peep at the boy! He's the living picture of Tonet, as Tonet used to be in the days when he was a boy with you, down at the tavern, and was running around ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "Oh yes; what a dunce I am! I'm afraid I'm very ungrateful. But you see I seem to have done with such things. And yet the money is going to be of some use to ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... of the Duke of Wellington, whom her son strikingly resembled in features, person, and character; while his father was principally distinguished as a musical composer and performer. [118] But, strange to say, Wellington's mother mistook him for a dunce; and, for some reason or other, he was not such a favourite as her other children, until his great deeds in after-life constrained her to be proud ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... no more take for granted Hazlitt's valuation of Wordsworth than Timon's judgment of Alcibiades. Hazlitt sees through coloured glasses, but his vision is not the less penetrating. The vulgar satirist is such a one as Hazlitt somewhere mentioned who called Wordsworth a dunce. Hazlitt was quite incapable of such a solecism. He knew, nobody better, that a telling caricature must be a good likeness. If he darkens the shades, and here and there exaggerates an ungainly feature, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... should be known, was one of the dullest boys in Saint Dominic's, and it was a standing marvel how he ever came to be in the Fifth, for he was both a dunce and an idiot. But he had one ambition and one idea, which was that he could write poetry; and the following touching ballad from his pen he offered to the Dominican, and the Dominican showed its appreciation of real talent ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... were Adalbert Zwyny, a Bohemian violinist, who taught the piano, and Joseph Elsner, a violinist, organist and theorist. "From Zwyny and Elsner even the greatest dunce must learn something," he is quoted as saying. Neither of these men attempted to hamper his free growth by rigid technical restraints. Their guidance left him master of his own genius, at liberty to "soar like the lark into the ethereal blue of the skies." He respected them both. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... might be better to go to school, for the teacher says that I am a little behind in reading, writing, composition, history, geography, and arithmetic. In other subjects I am not so dull. Yes, yes; it will certainly do me more good to go to school. Then I shall be a dunce no longer." ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... teaching me any thing," interrupted Alfred. "I guess I ain't such a dunce as to ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... know very much, Miss Kerr," said Mervyn shyly as he took the book from her hand; "papa says I am a dreadful dunce, but I only began to learn ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... he exclaimed, "must have carried them off. He constantly does this, out of jealousy of my reputation; but I will be even with him yet! Such splendid instruments! They will almost work of themselves, and are capable of imparting some skill even to him, dunce as he is!... I shall be back in an hour or two; he must rest, sleep, have nothing to excite him, nothing to inflame the wound; and when the operation is well over, we shall see! May the Lord ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... been thinking of? There is Mrs. Davids, as neat as a new cent, and the master hand to save. She is always taking on; and she will be glad enough to have somebody to look out for her,—why, sure enough! And there I was right at her house this very day, and never once thought of her! What an old dunce!" ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... afternoon in the City, an' it was pretty warm—a hot April followin' on a raw March. I stood waitin' for the six o'clock car an', my grief, I was tired. My feet ached like night in preservin' time. An' I was thinkin' how like a dunce we are to live a life made up mostly of urrants an' feetache followin'. Yet, after all, the right sort o' urrants an' like that is life—an', if they do ache, 'tain't like your feet was your soul. Well, an' just before the car come, up ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... some books well enough, but not studying-books," said Ivy, with a sigh, "and I don't see any good in them. If it wasn't for mamma, I never would open one,—never! I would just as soon be a dunce as not; I don't see ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... boy was dull or quite adverse to knowledge, he Was set an imposition or corrected with a switch: Far different our practice is, who reign by Methodology And guide the dunce by precepts learnt from Landon or from Fitch: 'Twas difficult by rule of thumb to check unseemly merriment, To make your class their pastor treat with proper due regard— 'Tis easy quite for specialists in Juvenile Temperament, Who know the books on ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... noticeable among those seniors who had not disdained the brew of punch that had coincided with the announcement of midnight, made, with maddening deliberation, by Mrs. Mangan's cuckoo-clock. The usual delirium of cracker-head-dresses had befallen the company. Larry, decorated with a dunce's cap, placed upon his yellow head by a jovial matron, found himself fated, by a final effort of penalising fancy on the part of another matron, to select "a young lady," to conduct her to the topmost step of the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... more "scriblative" though hardly more leisured writer:[19] and—as not a defect but a consequence of the quality just attributed to them—they do not quite carry the reader along with them in that singular fashion which distinguishes the others. But no one save a dunce can find them dull: and their variety is astonishing when one remembers that the writer was, for great part of his life, a kind of recluse. He touches almost everything except love (one wonders whether there were any unpublished, and feels pretty sure that ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... education had been accomplished simply by a New Testament and three-inch rope, sat, or rather twisted through the rhapsody, as a dunce twists through his Greek roots, and at the first pause, drawing himself erect with the self-complacent air of a man who applies the clincher, ejaculated, with the Western twang: 'What do you think of Hi-awathy?' The professor, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pony, can Distinguish letters like a man: He'll hold up for you in the ring His D for Dunce and K for King. ...
— A Horse Book • Mary Tourtel
... the crew needs especial remark, Though he looked an incredible dunce: He had just one idea—but, that one being "Snark," The good Bellman engaged ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... my side," cries his ward exultantly. She tucks her arm into his. "And as for all that talk about 'knowledge'—don't bother me about that any more. It's a little rude of you, do you know? One would think I was a dunce—that I knew nothing—whereas, I assure you," throwing out her other hand, "I know quite as much as most girls, and a great deal more than many. I daresay," putting her head to one side, and examining him thoughtfully, ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... "Was that the vice president? Here, Dick! build a fire in the best room. Put everything in tiptop order, Sally. What a dunce I was to turn Mr. Jefferson away! He shall have all the rooms in the house, and the ladies' parlor, too, I'll go right round to the ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... very thing,' said Charles; 'that Ovis of yours was music; I would have made you a Knight of the Golden Fleece on the spot. Tutors I could get by shoals, but a fellow-dunce is inestimable.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... subject in hand and tossed it up and down for half a dozen pages with a gusto that drove home to many minds the conviction, the strange conviction, that our greatest biography was written by one of the very smallest men that ever lived, 'a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect'—by a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb; by one 'who, if he had not been a great fool, would never have been a great writer.' So far Macaulay, anno Domini 1831, in the vigorous pages of the Edinburgh Review. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... dunce, Morgan? Without doubt, at the end of that cave is a way up into the castle; and though the passage be too narrow for all my troop, three men and a captain will suffice to lay faggots and light them at the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... study. No going out to play for you this morning. Jane Mason, you're the biggest dunce ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... are scared out of your seven senses, you wretched dunce!" retorted the doctor, out of temper; and, shaking the lad, he said, "See if you can tell me now ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... Forth from the court, where sceptred sages sit, Abused with praise, and flatter'd into wit, Where in lethargic majesty they reign, And what they won by dulness, still maintain, 40 Legions of factious authors throng at once, Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce. To 'Hamilton's[84] the ready lies repair— Ne'er was lie made which was not welcome there— Thence, on maturer judgment's anvil wrought, The polish'd falsehood's into public brought. Quick-circulating slanders mirth afford; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the Rose Tavern. The freedom he used with Mr. Pope in remarking upon the Rape of the Lock, it seems was sufficient to raise that gentleman's resentment, who was never celebrated for forgiving. Many years after, Mr. Pope took his revenge, by stigmatizing him as a dunce, in his usual keen spirit of satire: There had arisen some quarrel between Gildon and Dennis, upon which, Mr. Pope in his Dunciad, B. iii. has ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... that the disputes raged. Though beginning only with some trifle, they would soon go on to God knows what. Frequently, even I myself did not know to what they related. Anything and everything would enter into them, for my father would say that I was an utter dunce at the French language; that the head mistress of my school was a stupid, common sort of women who cared nothing for morals; that he (my father) had not yet succeeded in obtaining another post; that Lamonde's "Grammar" was a ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... laughed together. It was perfectly true that Isabel, who was keen almost to the point of brilliance in the application of mathematics to such practical matters as finance and real life, had never academically been anything but a hopeless dunce, while Helen, who had penetrated so far into the upper occult that the mind shuddered to follow, was notoriously incapable of making her personal accounts balance within fifty per cent. It was an understood situation that ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... a girl like Kitty Malone not to be popular; and the other girls valued her, and thought themselves highly privileged to be in the same class with her, dunce as she was. ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... He did not know how much the others were growing to like him, but Annie showed it in every way, and he loved her in return most dearly. Dick soon found out how useful Tom could be to him in his lessons; for though older than his cousin, Master Dick was a regular dunce, and had never even wished to learn till Tom came; and long before Jack could be brought to acknowledge it, Dick maintained that "Tom had a great deal of pluck in him, though it ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... second man stood pat and Malone's green tinge became obvious to the veriest dunce. The cowboy, on Her Majesty's right, asked for a card, received it and sat back without a ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... then we had our own drive home, which was chiefly occupied with Dora, who, sitting on Harold's knee, seemed to expect her full rescue from all grievances, and was terribly disappointed to find that he had no power to remove her from her durance in the London school-room, where she was plainly the dunce and the black sheep, a misery to herself and all concerned, hating everyone and disliked by all. To the little maiden of the Bush, only half tamed as yet, the London school-room and walks in the park ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon this very question about the orthography of Shakspeare's name, as also upon the other great question about the title of the immortal Satire, Whether it ought not to have been the Dunceiade, seeing that Dunce, its great author and progenitor, cannot possibly dispense with the letter e. Meantime we must remark, that the first three of Mr. Campbell's variations are mere caprices of the press; as is Shagspere; or, more probably, this last euphonious variety ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... written rules of grammar to save his life; he was totally indifferent as to which states bounded and bordered which; and he had been known to spell "physician" with an f and two z's. But it was when confronted by a sum that Peter stood revealed in his true colors of a dunce! ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... "What a dunce-head!" exclaimed his sister; "that was last night when you played tag, and you tumbled over into the ditch and bellered like the ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... think that I should ask a dunce? If I could but begin, I know I could go on." Here Miss Bruce considered a little. "I must think of my thoughts: no, I must write ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... use a-lookin' sad, An' a-mekin' out you's mad; Ef you's gwine to be so glum, Wondah why you evah come. I don't lak nobidy 'roun' Dat jes' shet dey mouf an' frown— Oh, now, man, don't act a dunce! Cain't you talk? I tol' you once, Speak ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... now used the words "poet" and "dunce," meaning the degree of each quality possible to average human nature. Men are eternally divided into the two classes of poet (believer, maker, and praiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, unmaker, and dispraiser). And in process of ages ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... See your confounded sect!(55) Well; I had the same luck to-day with Mr. Harley; 'twas a lovely day, and went by water into the City, and dined with Stratford at a merchant's house, and walked home with as great a dunce as Ferris, I mean honest Colonel Caulfeild,(56) and came home by eight, and now am in bed, and going to sleep for a wager, and will send this letter on Saturday, and so; but first I will wish you a merry Christmas and a happy ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... be right astronomically, Mistress, then is he the greater dunce in respect of true learning, the which goes by the globe. Argal, 'twere better he widened ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... O'erlooked and unemployed, fell sick and died. Then study languished, emulation slept, And virtue fled. The schools became a scene Of solemn farce, where ignorance in stilts, His cap well lined with logic not his own, With parrot tongue performed the scholar's part, Proceeding soon a graduated dunce. Then compromise had place, and scrutiny Became stone-blind, precedence went in truck, And he was competent whose purse was so. A dissolution of all bonds ensued, The curbs invented for the mulish mouth Of headstrong youth were broken; bars and bolts Grew rusty by disuse, and ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... by an invitation to a street-car conductors' dance turned out work of a Grecian perfection, while Marie Louise bit her lips and blushed with shame under the criticisms of her teacher. She was back in school again, the dunce of the class, and abject discouragements alternated with ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... hearts, yet confoundedly sick If they were not his own by finessing and trick; He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back. Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what came; And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, Who peppered the highest was surest to please. But let us be candid, and speak out our mind: If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave, What a commerce was yours, ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... on his school days, "How to be a Dunce," and although in mature life he was "on the side of his masters" and grateful to them "that my persistent efforts not to learn Latin were frustrated; and that I was not entirely successful even in escaping ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... bells—ring! Hip, hurrah for the King! The dunce fell into the pool, oh! The dunce was going to school, oh! The groom and the cook Fished him out with a hook, And he piped his eye ...
— Under the Window - Pictures & Rhymes for Children • Kate Greenaway
... fellow-scholars; but, at the same time, exhibited such a bashful appearance and uncouth address, that his mother despaired of ever seeing him improved into any degree of polite behaviour. On the other hand, Fathom, who was in point of learning a mere dunce, became, even in his childhood, remarkable among the ladies for his genteel deportment and vivacity; they admired the proficiency he made under the directions of his dancing-master, the air with which he performed his obeisance at ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... always at work, and yet it never seemed weary. Even if his mother had a headache, Charlie rattled on; if his father wanted to read or write quietly he had to go apart from Charlie, for there was no peace in the presence of the chatterbox. Of course he was a dunce, for how could he chatter and learn as well? And you may be sure he made plenty of mischief, for tongues that are always on the move do not keep to the exact truth sometimes when repeating what the ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... Stoics' account was in the forenoon (for example) the worst man in the world is in the afternoon the best of men; and he that falls asleep a very sot, dunce, miscreant, and brute, nay, by Jove, a slave and a beggar to boot, rises up the same day a prince, a rich and a happy man, and (which is yet more) a continent, just, determined, and unprepossessed person;—not by shooting forth out of a young and tender body ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... just now used the words 'poet' and 'dunce,' meaning the degree of each quality possible to average human nature. Men are eternally divided into the two classes of poet (believer, maker, and praiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, unmaker, and dispraiser). And in process of ages they have ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... wise men know well the mischiefs that must arise from inequality of pecuniary means amongst their scholars: they know how injurious it would be to learning, if deference were, by the learned, paid to the dunce; and they, therefore, take the most effectual means to prevent it. Hence, amongst other causes, it is, that their scholars have, ever since the existence of their Order, been the most celebrated for learning of any men in ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... silver pennies, as acknowledgments of his application; his school-fellows now solicited his friendship as eagerly as they had avoided it before; and in less than a twelvemonth after his arrival, this supposed dunce was remarkable for the brightness of his parts; having in that short period learnt to read English perfectly well, made great progress in writing, enabled himself to speak the French language without hesitation, and acquired ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... then, have they all some employment but me, Who lie lounging here like a dunce? O then, like the Ant, and the Sparrow, and Bee, I'll go to ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... least that most testing of all school examinations, the war, have shown us that we must revise all our old notions as to cleverness and stupidity. We know now that, short of real mental deficiency, there is or ought to be no such personage as the dunce. Just as the criminal is generally a man of unusual energy and mental power directed into wrong channels, so the dunce is a pupil whose special powers and aptitudes have not revealed themselves in the routine of school life. And just as the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Hutton Her last dress has put on; Her fine lessons forgotten, She died, as the dunce died; And prim Betsey Chambers, Decay'd in her members, No longer remembers ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Cork) insisting, one evening, that Sterne's writings were very pathetic, Johnson bluntly denied it. "I am sure," she rejoined, "they have affected me." "Why," said Johnson, smiling and rolling himself about, "that is because, dearest, you're a dunce." When she some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said, with equal truth and politeness, "Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... only betrayed his condition by his pallor and the hatred in his expression. Presently he felt a touch on his arm and heard his name pronounced by Lydia. Her voice calmed him. He tried to look at her, but his vision was disturbed; he saw double; the lights seemed to dunce before his eyes; and Lord Worthington's voice, saying to Cashel, "Rather too practical, old fellow," seemed to come from a remote corner of the room, and yet to be whispered into his ear. He was moving irresolutely in search ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... men, whose misfortune it is to have understanding. Henceforth let no man care to learn, or care to be more than worldly-wise; for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and slothful, to be a common steadfast dunce, will be the only pleasant life, and only ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... many a grace, By shrugs and strange contortions of his face, How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, Excels a dunce that has been kept at home. The Progress of Error. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... would do you all the good in the world to compete with other girls,' and then, the moment you take them at their word and get interested and eager, round they turn, and it's, 'Oh the folly of cram! Oh the importance of health!' 'Oh what does it matter, my dear good child, if you are a dunce, so long as you keep your complexion!' No, I'm not angry, I'm perfectly calm, but it makes me ill! I can't stand being thwarted in my best and noblest ambitions. If I had a daughter, and she wanted to cram in her holidays, I'd be proud of her, ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... groveling dolts! Begone! nor dare reply to my just wrath! Never behold me more! or if you stay Let not a sigh, a shrug, a stoop betray What poor, weak, miserable men you are. Not as I—I am a God! Look, dunce! I tread or leap beneath this load ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... to stay on another half year, you know, because of the exam, but I failed again in that hateful arithmetic: I'm a perfect dunce over figures, father; I hope you don't mind. I can sing very well; my voice was better than any of the other girls, and that will give you more pleasure than if I could do all the sums in the world. ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the Earthquake shock! —What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,— All at once, and nothing first,— Just as bubbles do when ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... that you received the Holy Spirit by the Law. As long as you were servants of the Law, you never received the Holy Ghost. Nobody ever heard of the Holy Ghost being given to anybody, be he doctor or dunce, as a result of the preaching of the Law. In your own case, you have not only learned the Law by heart, you have labored with all your might to perform it. You most of all should have received the Holy ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... was a notable dunce at the parson's school, while Lenny Fairfield was the pride and boast of it; therefore Mr. Stirn was naturally, and almost justifiably, ill-disposed towards Lenny Fairfield, who had appropriated to himself ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seeing the birds fly, didn't jump With flapping arms from stake or stump, Or, spreading the tail Of his coat for a sail, Take a soaring leap from post or rail, And wonder why He couldn't fly, And flap and flutter and wish and try— If ever you knew a country dunce Who didn't try that as often as once, All I can say is, that's a sign He never would do for ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... at its bitterest between the eighteenth century classicists and such poets as Wordsworth [Footnote: See the Prelude.] and Burns, but it is by no means stilled at present. Yeats [Footnote: See The Scholar.] and Vachel Lindsay [Footnote: See The Master of the Dance. The hero is a dunce in school.] have written poetry showing the persistence of the quarrel. Though the acrimony of the disputants varies, accordingly as the tone of the poet is predominantly thoughtful or emotional, one does ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... this property is little better than a dunce; and they tell me I have talents and learning, and I have taken to my heart the maxim, 'Knowledge is power.' And yet, with all my struggles, will knowledge ever place me on the same level as that on which this dunce is born? I don't wonder that ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... world vied with each other to slander his name"; and then he continues: "I have read your 'Battle of Waterloo,' and in order to impress every line of it on my memory I translated it twice in French and Italian."[21] Obviously this young man was neither a dunce nor indolent when his father's fame and his own interests ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... shaken. She had always believed that wight was a synonym for dunce, but now that he put the question to her in that tone, she was not positive. Her angry eyes faltered ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... few years, except to say that I went to college, where I was shunned by all, though never alone: was a dunce, and plucked twice. Perhaps it was I who shunned others, for had I not society in the constant presence of my Familiar? I was of course a dunce, for my brain was never steady enough to carry me over the Pons Asinorum, or to make a Latin ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sharp at my Latin as I was, still I couldn't use ignarus, as you see, without fairly committing myself as a scholar; and indeed, if I went to that, it would surely be the first time I have been mistaken for a dunce." ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... meltin' snows,[23] 105 An' rattles di'mon's from his granite; Time wuz, he snatched away my prose, An' into psalms or satires ran it; But he, nor all the rest thet once Started my blood to country-dances, 110 Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce Thet hain't no use ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the Quarterly review of them came out they never sold another copy. 'My book,' he said, 'sold well—the first edition had gone off in six weeks—till that review came out. I had just prepared a second edition—such was called for—but then the Quarterly told the public that I was a fool and a dunce, and more, that I was an evil disposed person: and the public, supposing Gifford to know best, confessed that it had been a great ass to be pleased where it ought not to be, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... unpromising as its meridian day was bright; and that in the year 1759, he who, in less than thirty years afterwards, held senates enchained by his eloquence and audiences fascinated by his wit, was, by common consent both of parent and preceptor, pronounced to be "a most impenetrable dunce." ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... their countenances, a little wondering what was their position with regard to each other; for this, then, was the beautiful little cousin about whom Philip had talked to her mother, as sadly spoilt, and shamefully ignorant; a lovely little dunce, and so forth. Hester had pictured Sylvia Robson, somehow, as very different from what she was: younger, more stupid, not half so bright and charming (for, though she was now both pouting and cross, it was evident that this was not her ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... her, refused to explain the manner of working out a very difficult example, or to permit her to apply to any one else for assistance, and then punished her because it was done wrong; and when the child could no longer keep back her tears, called her a baby for crying, and a dunce for not understanding her ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... "Shoot, you dunce, shoot before he gets up to you!" shouted Will. "If he gets one swipe at you with that paw, you'll land out in the Gulf of Alaska! Fill him full ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... are the Apeninnes, and there Caucasus." The smallest mole hill is a mountain. At the end of some days our traveller arrives At a certain canton where every oyster thrives, And our famed traveller turned very pale, Thinking he saw great vessels setting sail "Mercy," said he, "My father was a dunce, He did not dare to travel even once, While I have seen already, The maritime empire, And travelled to my heart's desire." From a certain learn'd man, The rat had heard of such things, And thinks he has seen all he can. Among the many oysters closed, There was one open, which ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... y plush rus'set stunt cus'to dy dunce duch'ess skulk 1ux'u ry trump scuf'fle young ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey |
