"Ignoramus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the wiseacres who subscribed to the English papers, received daily bulletins and compared market quotations from year to year, getting, for all their pains, results that made them tear their hair. He was an ignoramus and he was proud of it! He trusted to his lucky star. Whenever he thought it best, he would ship his produce off from the port of Valencia, and—there you are!—it would always turn out that his oranges found no competition on arrival and brought the highest prices. More than once ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... creatures," says John Stuart Mill, "would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though he should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they with theirs.... It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the three words with an air of pride, which indeed seemed to say "please bear in mind that I am no ignoramus." ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... gifted with long words (even in mine own tongue), save what I may have won from the Bible or Master William Shakespeare, whom, in the face of common opinion, I do value highly. In short, I am an ignoramus, but pretty ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... per minima tamen spatiola; in palpitatione vero sine ullo ordine musculi unius lacertus subito subsilit, nec regulariter continuoque movetur, sed nunc semel aut bis, nunc minime intra idem tempus subsilit; an causa irritans in sensorio communi, an in musculo ipse palpitante Quaerenda sit, ignoramus. Nosologiae Methodicae, ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... kitchen, the anteroom or the street. Like all the youths of his circle, he deemed himself a revolutionary, although he was oppressed by political disputes, dissensions, and mutual reproaches; and not being able to stand the reading of revolutionary brochures and journals, was almost a complete ignoramus in the work For that reason he had not attained even the very least party initiation; although at times there were given him instructions of a sort, not at all of a safe nature, the meaning of which was not made clear to him. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... stop here and be educated by me in the same way as I was educated by my poor father before going to Oxford. He's a bright intelligent boy—you don't think him an ignoramus, Jolly, eh?" ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... possesses the following title—"New Essayes and Characters, with a new Satyre in defence of the Common Law, and Lawyers: mixt with reproofe against their Enemy Ignoramus, &c. London, 1631." It seems not improbable that some person had attacked Stephens's first edition, although I am unable to discover the publication alluded to. I suspect him to be the editor of, or one of the contributors ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... dirty crumpled pieces of paper bearing such names as Troy, Palmyra, and Geneva, which were in fact notes of American banks which might have suspended payment, I was constantly taken, not for an ignoramus from the "Old Country," but for a "genuine Down-Easter." Canadian credit is excellent; but the banking system of the States is on a very insecure footing; some bank or other "breaks" every day, and lists of the defaulters are posted ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... scoff. 'You must learn to mock; to frump your own father on occason.' Ironically used in Ruggle's Ignoramus.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a sceptic, and entirely an ignoramus. But I met a man the other day who would have laughed at us for doubting. He was an awfully strange fellow. His name is Marr. I ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... knowledge of each to enable me to take intelligent action, as I did this morning, instead of standing helplessly by, or, what might be worse, making a blind attempt to do something on the chance that it might be the right thing, as once happened to myself when a bungling ignoramus gave me a glass of brandy to cure what he called mulligrumps, but what in truth turned out to ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... now obvious to Dash all and his friend, that this young man, Jasper Surety, was not altogether the ignoramus at first presumed. They had already been entertained by his remarks, and his annotations were of a description to warrant the expectancy of further amusement in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... my submission made no impression upon the Cardinal, I got the Bishop of Arles, a wise and moderate gentleman, to go to him along with me, and to join with me in offering our reasons. But we found his Eminence a very ignoramus in ecclesiastical polity. I only mention this to let you see that in my first misunderstanding with the Court I was not to blame, and that my respect for the Cardinal upon the Queen's account was carried to an excess ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was ignorant—though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might have been a consul at home. His easy familiarity with great men was beautiful to see, and when Philip learned what a tremendous underground influence this little ignoramus had, he no longer wondered at the queer appointments ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... peruse Ovid's "Art of Love," since they know it all in advance; remarks that three quarters of female authors are no better than they should be; maintains that Madame Guion would have been far more useful had she been merely pretty and an ignoramus, such as Nature made her,—that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz probably would never have married into the family had they possessed that accomplishment,—that the Spartan women did not know the alphabet, nor the Amazons, nor Penelope, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... himself "IGNORAMUS," writes to inquire "The address of a Society called 'The London French Polishers.'" He says, "I want my French polished up a bit before ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... given seriously to the latter, will leave an ample margin of time for recreation and amusement; and who knows what he may need, until the need is there to test what he knows? To be great on sport, and a "stick" at one's business; to be an authority on amusements, and an ignoramus about almost everything else that is anything, is the surrender of manhood, and that in a day which has no need comparable with ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I was not a spiritual hypochondriac any more than a bodily one, and would not trouble myself about that either; so they called me Atheist and went their way. After ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... and break away. It was necessary to go faster than he went, in order to retrieve as much line as possible. But paddle as fast as they could the fish kept ahead. He was not towing the boat, of course; for only an ignoramus imagines that a salmon can "tow" a boat, when the casting-line that holds him is a single strand of gut that will break under a strain of ten pounds. He was running away, and the canoe was chasing him through the roaring torrent. But he held his lead, and there were ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... the grand jury to indict Warren for libel on account of this intemperate attack. The jury, however, returned "ignoramus," and the Governor had to bear the affront, which was but one of a series directed against him during his ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Poor Ben had so little opportunity for schooling! He was not to blame for his want of knowledge; but could she throw herself away upon an ignoramus? "It's still there, but ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... content myself with my inability to comprehend what relates to them. But instead of plaguing you with an endless enumeration of my difficulties, I had better tell you some of the passages which gave me, ignoramus as I am, peculiar pleasure.... I am afraid I shall transcribe your whole book if I go on to tell you all that has struck me, and you would not thank me for that—you, who have so little vanity, and so much to do better with your time than to read my ignorant admiration. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... encouragement to meditate the ruin of the high-crowned hat. I went nearer to him, in order to take a closer survey; never was such a bungler; he made blots upon blots; God knows, I began to feel some remorse at winning of such an ignoramus, who knew so little of the game. He lost his reckoning; supper was served up; and I desired him to sit next me. It was a long table, and there were at least five-and-twenty in company, notwithstanding ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... some of the Russian archeologists will protest against the opinions I maintain, that is to say, the opinions of the Hindu archeologists, and will treat me as an ignoramus, outraging science. In self-defence, and in order to show how unstable a ground to base one's opinions upon are the conclusions even of such a great authority as Mr. Fergusson, I must mention the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... "Shame on you, Van! Don't let our friends think that you're an absolute ignoramus." He added: "Venus has no moon, and no wind, at least under the roof. Therefore, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... Lefty. "It's too bad to be afflicted the way he is. He ought to do the way a boy I knew once did. He suffered just as Dormy does. You'd tell him a thing in his left ear and the first thing you'd know, pop! it would all come out of the other ear and be lost. The poor fellow was growing up to be an ignoramus. Couldn't keep a thing in his head, until one night I overheard his father and mother talking about it in the library. The boy's father wanted to punish him for not remembering what he learned at school, ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... officers, especially of Bourlamaque, Malartic, and La Pause, the last "un homme divin." Some of the Canadian officers, praised by Vaudreuil, he had tried and found wanting. "Don't forget," he wrote to Levis, "that Mercier is a feeble ignoramus, Saint Luc a prattling boaster, Montigny excellent but a drunkard. The others are not worth speaking of, including my first lieutenant-general Rigaud." This Rigaud was the brother of Vaudreuil. When the Governor wrote to the minister, he, for his part, ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... ruin Shaftesbury,—a corrupt man doubtless, but then on the side of liberty, the enemy of encroaching despotism,—a London Grand-Jury refused to find a bill, and was warmly applauded by the city. Their verdict of IGNORAMUS was a "personal liberty bill" for that time, and therefore was the king's wrath exceeding hot, for "Ignoramus was mounted in Cathedra," and there was a stop put to such wickedness. So London must be brought down. She refused to surrender ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... twentieth century? Many simple people would likely call me a person of education, even of learning, belike, seeing a list of books under my name. A schoolman who examined me would be pardoned (by me, at all events) for calling me an ignoramus of no education whatever. For—and this I never reflected upon until the present moment—I could not for the life of me 'analyse' the simplest sentence, in the rather odd scholastic sense of that word. Inherited instinct and long practice make me aware, I believe, of an error in syntax, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... beginning of this century told us that Cicero did not utter the words attributed to him, and could not have uttered them. According to Wolf, it would be doing Cicero an egregious wrong to suppose him capable of having used such words, which are not Latin, and which were probably written by some ignoramus in the time of Tiberius. Such a verdict might have been taken as fatal—for Wolf's scholarship and powers of criticism are acknowledged—in spite of La Harpe, the French scholar and critic, who has named the Marcellus as a thing of excellence, comparing it with the eulogistic ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... great institution like the Hamburg Botanical Gardens would let a man of your worth perish rather than pay his ransom of L600? Happy young man! You now see the value of a sound, scientific education. Had you been an utter ignoramus as I am, I wouldn't have asked the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... day. That sour-apple philosopher, by the way, is taking her departure to-morrow. And I'm not half so sorry as I pretend to be. She's made me feel like an intruder in my own home. And she's a soured and venomous old ignoramus, for she sneered openly at my bath-thermometer and defies Poppsy and Pee-Wee to survive the winter without a "comfort." After I'd announced my intention of putting them outdoors to sleep, when they were four weeks old, she lugubriously acknowledged ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Roche-Mauprat; it is enough to have been a slave there. You are most kind, and on my honour I love you; but I have very little love for conditions. I have never done anything from interested motives. I would rather remain an ignoramus than develop a pretty wit for another's dole. Moreover, I could never consent to make such a hole in my cousin's fortune; though I know perfectly well that she would willingly sacrifice a part of her dowry to obtain ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... complimentary to the white men of the South that their organized brigandage proved to be more stubborn, more far-sighted than was unorganized ignorance. In a warfare of this disreputable nature very little honor can be accorded to the victorious party, be he brigand or ignoramus. The warfare is absolutely devoid of principle, and, therefore, victory, any way it is ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... smile for me of never-failing freshness; to love him is to love me, for he was during a long while the instructor of my tender age; my good mother, to whom I owe everything, and who set so great store on my good deportment, and did not want me to be (that is what she used to say) an illustrious ignoramus, put that book into my hands, though I was then little more than a child at the breast. It has been like my conscience to me, and has whispered into my ear many good hints and excellent maxims for my behavior and for the government of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... he venture to delight in the original and naive lyrics of some untaught bard of nature, without being able to justify his admiration by learned citations from Virgil and Horace, to say nothing of the categories of Aristotle—he is considered as an ignoramus, who might possibly impose upon those ignorant as himself, but who should at least have the modesty to yield up at once his opinion to the conclusive decisions of the great literary pundits! In vain may he assert that such and such a passage is touching ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his eyes off this girl who had already completed the high school course which he had not yet begun; besides, she had learned a lot of other things which would be beyond him to ever reach. Even though he were an ignoramus, he could bask in the light of her greater learning. She ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... son to the repugnance of Mrs. Armitage alone; and to this idiotic hallucination she has, I fear, fallen a sacrifice. Judging from the emaciated appearance of the body, and other phenomena communicated to me by her ordinary medical attendant—a blundering ignoramus, who ought to have called in assistance long before—she has been poisoned with iodine, which, administered in certain quantities, would produce precisely the same symptoms. Happily there is no mode of destroying human life which so surely leads to the detection of the murderer as the use ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... great amphitheatre of the Sorbonne—"an imprecatory meeting," he called it. Perrotin promptly accepted, and professed himself overcome by the honour. His servile tone before this licensed government ignoramus made a striking contrast with his bold statements a few moments before, and Clerambault, somewhat taken ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... school. Oh, the number of foreign schools I have been at in my life! And yet I am quite an ignoramus. I know nothing— nothing in the world—I assure you; except that I play and dance beautifully,—and French and German of course I know, to speak; but I can't read or write them very well. Do you know they wanted me to translate a page of an easy German book into English the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Party, Resolve to hiss, as late did Popish Crew, | By Yea and Nay, she'll throw her self on you, | The grand Inquest of Whigs, to whom she's true. | Then let 'em rail and hiss, and damn their fill, Your Verdict will be Ignoramus still. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... world can the teacher be thinking of, to keep such an ignoramus in the class?" thought Hector. "He doesn't know enough to join a class ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... awhile. Helen is no better. She scarcely speaks, but lies patient and still. He looked in at her this morning, but she did not lift her eyes. Oh, she is so young to die! And she has so much to do. She has not even begun to do yet. She has so much of herself to do with, she is not an ignoramus like me. Her life has been one strong, pure influence Hollis said to-night. He is sure she will get well. He says her father and mother pray for her night and day. And his Aunt Helen said such a beautiful thing yesterday. She was talking to Hollis, for she knows he loves her so much. ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... phenomena are due to influences exerted by gods, devils, and the stars. Each member and principal organ of the human body was supposed to correspond with some planet or constellation. Similar foolish ideas were widely prevalent, especially in Germany. Paracelsus was an ignoramus, who affected to despise all the sciences, because of his lack of knowledge of them. While prating much about divine light as the source of all learning and culture, his boorish mien and rude manners afforded evidence that he did not profit much ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... irritate him." As I had told him my name he shewed me, smilingly, an accusation against me, drawn up by someone who had witnessed the fact. The good bishop gently chid me for having called the friar-confessor of the Duke of Medina an ignoramus. He had refused to admit that a priest might say mass a second time on a high festival, after breaking his fast, on the command of his sovereign prince, who, by the hypothesis, had not heard ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... child; do you imagine that a contract is like a house of cards which you can blow down at will? Dear little ignoramus, you don't know what trouble we have had to found an entail for the benefit of your eldest son. Don't cast us back into the discussions from ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... "You never asked me anything about it. You told me what you wanted done, and I did it. How could I believe you were such an ignoramus as not to know the a b c of the thing you were talking about?" He added, in cynical contempt, "But you needn't worry. You can make it right with the managers by spending a little more money than you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hadn't written to Cousin Oscar about no jail, and that I wasn't to tell him either. Now goes Cousin Oscar on a beeline to tell Uncle how dreadful Stanley has went and disgraced the family; and Uncle will want to know how he heard of it. 'Why,' says Oscar, 'an old ignoramus from Arizona, named Johnson—friend of Stanley's—he told me about it. He came up here to get me to help Stanley out; wanted me to go ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... election drive you out of public life? It was so obvious that you were made the victim for Horlock's growing unpopularity in the country. Haven't you realised that yourself—or perhaps you don't care to talk about these things to an ignoramus such as ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... intelligent. He checked his horse, that fell to grazing the bit of green by the way. "As though," he said, "I stood in Cipango beneath a golden roof, I know that it can be done! Twelve hundred leagues at the most. Look!" he said. "You are not an ignoramus like some I have met; nor if I read you right are you like others who not knowing that True Religion is True Wonder up with hands and cry, 'Blasphemy, Sacrilege and Contradiction!' Earth and water make an orb. Place ant on apple and see that ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... next man. Just because some of you eggheads spend half your life in college don't mean you've got any monopoly on good common sense. I went to the school of hard knocks, understand, and I got plenty of diplomas to prove it. Take it easy on that ignoramus talk." ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... the limits of the brief span allotted to us upon earth to acquire a certain number of facts. It is monstrously absurd to sacrifice our best years in stuffing so many facts into the brain, in order to avoid being laughed at by a few thin-minded pedants as an ignoramus. Some consolation, at least, might surely be derived from the reflection that many of the greatest geniuses whom the world has produced were profoundly ignorant as to ninety per cent. of the things which are considered to be indispensable ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... Nations Covenant or the full text of the President's message. Former times when the papers had in 'em straight murders and bank robberies from the inside or out, Mawruss, and you sat opposite somebody in the Subway who had to move his lips while he was reading, you took it for granted that he was an ignoramus which had to hear them simple words pronounced, even if it was by his own lips, before he could understand them, Mawruss, but you take this here letter of the 20th inst., Mawruss, and when you read where President Wilson says with reference to telephone and telegraph rates, Mawruss, 'there ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... bear intelligently on all the actions of life, that is to say, to much greater advantage than when we use it ignorantly, just as a genius endowed with strength can do far more with it than an ignoramus. For there is nothing requiring Thought in which it cannot aid us. I have alluded to Poetry. Now this does not mean that a man can become a SHAKESPEARE or SHELLEY by means of all the forethought and suggestion ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... gave me a great deal of well-meant advice, no doubt, as to how I might live at the public expense outside the prison walls, as well as explanations in every department of crime. I remember the following dialogue taking place between us, which also serves to show how an ignoramus in the science, or a young country lad, perhaps for the first time convicted of crime, might be instructed in vice, and incited to continue a career he had perhaps very thoughtlessly, ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... of this tyrant, God appointed Deborah and her husband Barak. Barak was an ignoramus, like most of his contemporaries. It was a time singularly deficient to scholars. (73) In order to do something meritorious in connection with the Divine service, he carried candles, at his wife's instance, to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... situation thinks the "companion" is right, and so he becomes a convinced and devoted Anarchist! What would happen, if pursuing his studies of the social question further, he had understood that the "companion" was a pretentious ignoramus, that he talked twaddle, that his "Ideal" is a delusion and a snare, that outside bourgeois politics there is, opposed to these, the political action of the proletariat, which will put an end to the very existence of capitalist society? He ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... sir, that my name will have other and more personal claims upon posterity," said Challenger, severely. "Any ignoramus can hand down his worthless memory by imposing it upon a mountain or a river. I need ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nothing that had taken place within thirty years, but otherwise his mind was perhaps as good as it ever was, for he must always have been an ignoramus, and would never know anything if he lived to be as old as he said he was going on to be. Why he was interested in the rebellion of 1745 I could not discover, for he of course did not go over to Scotland to carry a pike in it, and he only remembered to have heard it talked about as a great ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... could more effectually ruin the dramatic art than to have you write a play. People, seeing your work, would say, here, this will never do. The stage must be discouraged at all costs. A hypocrite throws the ministry into disgrace, an ignoramus brings shame upon education, and an unpopular lawyer gives the bar a bad name. I think you are just the man ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... "an angel of light would have been very conspicuous in those days. I didn't pose for such a part. In fact, if I had not succeeded in appearing like a partial ignoramus I should have been obliged to go into a monastery, for in those days the monks were the only people who knew anything. They expected to do all the teaching that was done; but, for all that, a few scholars cropped up now and then, and here and there, who did not care to have ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... having asked his opinion of politics, he says he really knows nothing about them; he had been so completely engrossed by his own business that he has not had time to read even a newspaper. But, though an ignoramus in politics, he has been studying lime, which is more to his purpose. If his friend can give him any information about that, he will promise to read a newspaper now and then in the ensuing session of Parliament, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... social aspects of these Scientific Congresses, they were becoming every year more festive, and, at all events to the ignoramus outsiders who joined them, more pleasant. My good cousin and old friend, then Colonel, now General, Sir Charles Trollope, was at Venice that autumn. I said on meeting him, "Now the first thing is to, make you a member." "Me! a member of ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... see, I never do what sane people are expected to do now-a-days. I never wear long trains, (talking of trains, that's the Charing Cross Metropolitan Station—I've something to tell you about that), and I never play lawn-tennis. I can't cook an omelette. I can't even set a broken limb! There's an ignoramus for you!" ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... ignoramus, look," he yelled. "You own a horse that's fit to win the Melbourne Cup or the American Derby, and you don't know it. What do you want for him? Give you ten thousand for him this minute—and I am not so certain that ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... ha!—That was neat, I grant you, Terry," said Lord Clonbrony. "But what a dolt of a born ignoramus must that sheriff's fellow have been, not to know Naboclish when ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... and nothing but the truth? What could be finer and better than all this?—what could more certainly assure justice? How close the resemblance is between this ideal picture and what actually occurs all know, or should know. The judge is commonly an ignoramus incapable of logical thought and with little sense of the dread and awful nature of his responsibility. The prosecuting attorney thinks it due to his reputation to "make a record" and tries to convict by hook or crook, even when he is himself persuaded of the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... it? I would go to seek it in the burning heart of Africa, or in the icy regions of the Pole if I knew it were there. But I do not know where it is. I do not know if it be guarded in a triple- locked iron case by some jealous biblomaniac. I do not know if it be growing mouldy in the attic of some ignoramus. I shudder at the thought that perhaps its tore-out leaves may have been used to cover the pickle-jars of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... is a great man who combines being the top authority in his profession with a kindness and bonhomie which make even an ignoramus feel happy with him—and with the frankest love for flanerie and "sport." We all fell in love with him. To hear him after lunch, in his fluent, but lisping English, holding forth about the ruins of Domitian's villa—"what ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... they are evidently the invention of an ignoramus, who knows nothing of the delicate anatomy of the generative organs or of the proper treatment of the diseases incident thereto, for none other would have thought of such a preposterous plan of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... don't know. He wanted to speak to me alone. I fancied he had never had time, never had an opportunity to speak freely. He has spoken freely now! Do you know, he may be an extraordinary man, but he's a fool, really.... He doesn't know how to put two words together. He's simply an ignoramus. Though, indeed, I don't blame him much... he might suppose I was a giddy, mad, worthless girl. I hardly ever talked to him.... He did excite my curiosity, certainly, but I imagined that a man who was ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... attitude with which she bends over her infant! Beyond it hangs the Madonna del Cardellino of Raffaelle: what heavenly grace, what simplicity, what saint-like purity, in the expression of that face, and that exquisite mouth! And from these must I turn back, on pain of being thought an ignoramus, to admire the coarse perpetration of Michel Angelo—because it is Michel Angelo's? But ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... accents, "Verily, you tribe of foxes are the most pleasant people in point of tongue and the subtlest in jest, and this is but a joke of thine; but all times are not good for funning and jesting." The fox replied, "O ignoramus, in good sooth jesting hath a limit which the jester must not overpass; and deem not that Allah will again give thee possession of me after having once delivered me from thy hand." Quoth the wolf, "It behoveth thee to compass my release, by reason of our brotherhood and good fellowship; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... mountains were the works of moles, Or dirt thrown up in digging holes! Some days of travel brought him where The tide had left the Oysters bare. Since here our traveller saw the sea, He thought these shells the ships must be. "My father was, in truth," said he, "A coward, and an ignoramus; He dared not travel: as for me, I've seen the ships and ocean famous; Have cross'd the deserts without drinking, And many dangerous streams, unshrinking." Among the shut-up shell-fish, one Was gaping widely at the sun; It breathed, and drank the air's perfume, Expanding, like a flower in ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... and hoard-penny ignoramus doctors, with several great personages who formed excuses for not accepting my books; or they would receive them, but give nothing for them; or else deny they had them, or remembered anything of them; and so gave me nothing for my last present of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... has been done with the name more than once in modern times. In a bill sent to the grand jury at St. Mary's, Maryland, February 1st, 1643/4, it was stated that Ingle's ship in 1642 was the "Reformation." The bill was, however, returned "Ignoramus," and the use of the ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... You were all good fellows together until you drifted, blindfolded, into the trap poor Morrell set for you. You thought I was ill-treating Con—disregarding his best interests—starving his soul! Oh! you poor little ignoramus; the boy never had a soul worth mentioning until it got awakened, in self-defense, and grew its own limit. What did you and Brace know of the past—the past that went into Con's making? You were free enough with your young condemnation and ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... at the election; one of the members of the old Board had been called "an ignoramus," in the stress of battle, and being much concerned and mystified asked a neighbour what the term signified, adding, no doubt thinking of a hippopotamus, that he believed it was some kind of animal! His knowledge of zoology was probably as limited ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the margin of the 1670 edition is written "Albumazar, Ignoramus." The author of "Albumazar," a piece presented before the King at Cambridge in 1614, and printed in the same year, was John Tomkis. "Ignoramus," a Latin comedy by James Ruggle (or Ruggles), was ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... the patent title by which Aristotle's moral philosophy was universally known; therefore any ignoramus, who never dipped beyond the title, might, and would, have used it. But no person, except one well read in the philosophy itself, would think of giving it such a designation as checks; which word, nevertheless, is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... notwithstanding the fact that sweet little gentle Agnes was lying close to her, with her pretty head of fair hair pressed against the elder girl's shoulder. But when she went downstairs, and took her place in the class, and found that, after all, she was not such an ignoramus as her companions evidently expected to find her, her spirits rose, and for the first time in her existence a sense of ambition awoke within her. It would be something to conquer Lucy Merriman—the proud, the disdainful, the unpleasant Lucy. After what Professor Merriman had said, Irene ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... heaven and earth. (Murmurs from the crowd.) Alone and unprotected I have risked my life on this enterprise. I was the first who pledged its accomplishment to the king, and unaided I have kept my pledge, and yet here in my place I find Don Ramon—an ignoramus. ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... are no better than a heathen ignoramus. I mean why shouldn't they sing Handes Church Music, and Church Music in general in Lady Whittlesea's Chapel? Behind the screen up in the organ-loft what's to prevent 'em? By Jingo! Your singing-boys have gone to the Cave of Harmody; you ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with a port-wine label!" Ask Oliver his opinion of Roland. "Never was a man so overrated by the world and by himself." Ask Tweedledumski his opinion of Tweedledeestein's performance. "A quack, my tear sir! an ignoramus, I geef you my vort? He gombose an opera! He is not fit to make dance a bear!" Ask Paddington and Buckminster, those two "swells" of fashion, what they think of each other? They are notorious ordinaire. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He couldn't interest me. He would be an ignoramus in such things—he would bore me, and I ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... his fellow. The school is already almost broke up, and the rest daily going away; and I beg of you of all love to have me fetched away also, for I cannot bear to be any longer under one who is a perfect ignoramus, who scarce knows the declination of musa, and is more fit to be a scarecrow than a schoolmaster; hoping you will send for me soon, with my love to my aunt, and my duty to my honoured parents, craving their blessing and yours. And ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... he! Bravo! bravo! Viscount Innisdale, noble family, distant branch,—the devil I am! What an ignoramus my father was not to know that! Why, rest his soul, he never knew who his grandfather was; but the world shall not be equally ignorant of that important point. Let me see, who shall be Viscount Innisdale's great-grandfather? ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... angry, Viktor Nikolaitch," she said, clinking glasses with the lawyer. "It seems to me you give advice and know nothing of life yourself. According to you, if a man be a mechanic or a draughtsman, he is bound to be a peasant and an ignoramus! But they are the cleverest ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ignoramus, a filthy story-teller, a monster. Seward is the brains of the administration. Without Seward, Lincoln would ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... it is," answered his friend, with just a touch of shakiness in his voice. "Look here Grady, you know I made a good course in the Seminary. You know I am not an ignoramus and you know that I work hard. I prepare every sermon and write it out; when the manuscript is finished I know it by heart. Now, here is the sermon for to-day. Look at it and if you love me, read it. Tell me what is wrong ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... third floor? If ya want the sixth floor ya can ride. Third floor! My Gawd! Third floor!" And on and on he mutters and up and up I go, all the proud feelings of owning the world stripped from me—exposed before the multitudes as an ignoramus who didn't know any better than to ride in the elevator when she was bound only for the third floor. "Third floor," continues muttering the elevator man. At last there is no one left in the elevator but the muttering man ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... cling close to Him. Ye ha' muckle need o' His care. An' dinna trust your life to the dochtering o' a sullen ignoramus like the captain,—an obstinate, self-willed brute, that, right or wrang, will ha' his ain way. Dinna tak' ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... credentials in any shape. I made up my mind that she had something to sell—a bit of carving or some intaglio supposed to be antique. It was known that I had a fancy for oddities. I said to myself, "She has read or heard of my 'Old Gold' story, or else 'The Buried God,' and she thinks me an idealizing ignoramus upon whom she can impose. Her sepulchral name is at least not Italian; probably she is a sharp countrywoman of mine, turning, by means of the present aesthetic craze, an honest penny ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... heart 'twill agitate, And then the stanzas of my theme Will not, preserved by kindly Fate, Perish absorbed by Lethe's stream. Then it may be, O flattering tale, Some future ignoramus shall My famous portrait indicate And cry: he was a poet great! My gratitude do not disdain, Admirer of the peaceful Muse, Whose memory doth not refuse My light productions to retain, Whose hands indulgently caress The bays of age ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... Sedgwick is the author of the article in the "Spectator". No one else could use such abusive terms. And what a misrepresentation of my notions! Any ignoramus would suppose that I had FIRST broached the doctrine, that the breaks between successive formations marked long intervals of time. It is very unfair. But poor dear old Sedgwick seems rabid on the question. "Demoralised understanding!" If ever I talk with him I will tell ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... me no more with his cane, but his insults were the same, if not worse. With time I became hardened, I no longer heeded anything; I was an ignoramus, a camel, a bumpkin, an idiot, a loggerhead—I was everything! It must further be understood that I alone was favored with these pretty names. He had no relatives; there had been a nephew, but he had died ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... common delight. Presently they swung along, hand in hand, laughing, quoting, reminding each other of this fine thing, and that. Newbury was a considerable musician; Marcia was accustomed to be thought so. There was a new and singular joy in feeling herself but a novice and ignoramus beside him. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was very angry because I left them'. He said that after he took me, a stupid little country ignoramus, and made something out of me, my desertion was nothing short of rank ingratitude and religious hypocrisy and treason to the land of my birth. One might have inferred that he picked me out of the gutter, brushed the dirt off, smoothed ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... me" (a matter which hath come to my knowledge) and "thou hast dissipated[FN458] my mind" (Azhakta ruhi thou scatterest my wits, in the Calc. Edit. Saghgharta ruhi thou belittles" my mind). But even Lane never wrote "I only required thee to shave my head"—the adverb thus qualifying, as the ignoramus loves to do, the wrong verb—for "I required thee only to shave my head." In the second echantillon we have "a piece of gold" as equivalent of a quarter-diner and "for God's sake" which certainly does not ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... from one side of the bed to the other; no sleep, no rest. The poor Crippled wrist, too, never left one moment in the same position; now up, now down, now here, now there; was it to be wondered at, if its pains returned? The surgeon then was to be called, and to be rated as an ignoramus, because he could not divine the cause of this extraordinary change. In fine, my friend, you must mend your manners. This is not a world to live at random in, as you do. To avoid those eternal distresses, to which you are for ever exposing us, you must learn to look forward ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sister seemed under some sort of strain, chiefly because I was determined to make a good impression. I told her about myself, my horses, my house in the country, my yacht. I tried to show her I wasn't an ignoramus as to books and art, even if I hadn't been to college. She listened, while Sam sat embarrassed. "You must bring your sister down to visit me," I said finally. "I'll see that you both have the time of your lives. Make up a party of your friends, Sam, and come down—when shall we say? Next Sunday? ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... child. What can an ignorant man do with knowledge? He is as likely to use it wrong end uppermost as in any other manner. Learning is a ticklish thing; it was said by Festus to have maddened even the wise and experienced Paul and what may we not expect it to do with your downright ignoramus? What ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... influence of Grundtvig, from the strict dogmatic orthodoxy of the State Church. The study of Darwin, Spencer, Mill, and Comte led him still farther on to a position which may be called that of the agnostic theist, that of Spencer, who does not deny God, but says ignoramus. We may recall the late utterance of Bjrnson, quoted above: "Grundtvig and Goethe are my two poles." It was the dogma of Hell, the teaching of eternal damnation and punishment, that began Bjrnson's breach with the Church. He saw how this doctrine enslaved and dwarfed the souls ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... much to heart that she eased her feelings by abusing Pin in thought; Pin was a pig-headed little ignoramus, as timid as ever of setting one foot before the other. And the rest of them would be just the same—old stick-in-the muds, unchanged by a hair, or, if they HAD changed, then changed for the worse. Laura had somehow never foreseen the day on which she would find herself out of tune with her ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... workman recognizes tools 230 In a master's workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin— An indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240 Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure—and I must hold ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... the reader may as well face the fact that many of them will not spend eternity in the same place with the Saviour and Paul. With many the question as to whether the Saviour, when He said, "Ye are of your father the devil," told the truth, or was a wilful liar and deceiver, or a deluded fanatic and ignoramus, is merely a matter of taste, or preference, or opinion. It may be claimed by some that "Ye are of your father the devil," grates on refined ears and finer sensibilities. But it is more than a question whether it ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... addressed to him the most offensive insults, which fairly delighted everybody, as the devil alone could be bold enough to address a Capuchin in such a manner; but the holy man, hearing himself called an obtrusive ignoramus and a stinkard, went on striking Bettina with a heavy crucifix, saying that he was beating the devil. He stopped only when he saw her on the point of hurling at him the chamber utensil which she had just seized. "If it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... not be that. There was not one of them such a nautical ignoramus as to believe himself within ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... ineffable value of human personalities and who professes to desire their transformation and yet who has no desire to give them better homes, better cities, better family relationships, better health, better economic resources, better recreations, better books and better schools, is either an ignoramus who does not see what these things mean in the growth of souls, or else an unconscious hypocrite who does not really care so much about the souls of men as he says ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... as an ignoramus or a rebel, whichever she likes best to take in leading-strings. I remember her. I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... something to bring him fame; every scientist or scholar (if there are any) who fakes a fact in the interest of his theory; every fool who talks through his hat without knowing; every sentimentalist who plays up to the sentimentalism in himself and other people; every second-hand ignoramus who takes over a view or a prejudice wholesale, without investigating the facts it's based on for himself. You find it everywhere, the taint; you can't get away from it. Except by keeping quiet and learning, and wanting ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... snatch Cynthia from that hidden evil the nature of which he could only guess at. Her world was the artificial one of hotels, and shops, and numbered streets—in the real world, of which the lonely wastes of the Mendips provided no meager sample, she was a profound ignoramus, a fat little automaton equipped with atrophied senses. But she blundered badly in composing herself so cozily for the remainder of the run to Bristol. Medenham had dwelt many months at a time in lands where just such simple indications of mood on the part of man or beast had meant ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... such an ignoramus being sent to her, but Zell seemed so patient and willing that she decided to try her. Zell gave her whole soul to the work, and though the place was a hard one, would have eventually learned to fill it. The family were a little surprised ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... lie, I am no rascal; and as for quibbling with words—suppose I did! What then? All the first people does it! The newspapers does it! the gentlefolks that calls themselves the guides of the popular mind does it! I'm no ignoramus. I read the newspapers, and knows what's what." "You read them to some purpose," said I. "Well, if you are lamed for life, and unfitted for any active line—turn newspaper editor; I should say you are perfectly qualified, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... is no slouch at finding things. He is no ignoramus, either, for he must be able to read and write and understand geography to get any good out of that memorandum. Does it give the exact details ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... glad you understand it, Colonel, and so there's not a bit of harm done, after all. I'm an ignoramus about guard duty, anyway, and I'll wager the guard got on better without me, after all. And now, Colonel, since I've given you a wholly satisfactory explanation as to why I simply couldn't be here to-day, if you've nothing more to say to me, sir, I'll go to my quarters, get into my bath ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... what it is," he said, "there would be trembling in the heart of a very great man when the nine cravens returned without me. For I am no shaveling ignoramus, but a gentleman of birth; aye, and one who, though poor, is a near cousin of the marshal himself. I warrant the rascals who ran away would smart right soundly for leaving me behind. For Gilles de Sille ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... called by names of animals. You all know also that to praise the beauty of a child, without the offer of that child to Allah as a sacrifice, is fatal; because there is unseen a jealous listener who hates and would deform the progeny of Eve. Such facts as those are known to every ignoramus, and their cause is plain. But there exists another and more subtle danger in the careless use of words, particularly with regard to personal remarks, like that of these same children when they cried to our ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the mountains and wage war with human nature at large.'' He removed to Burlington, Vermont, in 1787, and died there on the 11th of February 1789. He was, says Tyler, "a blustering frontier hero—an able-minded ignoramus of rough and ready humour, of boundless self-confidence, and of a shrewdness in thought and action equal to almost any emergency.'' Allen wrote a Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity (1779), the most celebrated book ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in the court is to maintain order and preserve dignity. They are almost avid in their pursuit of the ignoramus who comes in with his hat on his head or covers himself on going out before he reaches the door. Their salaries are not large but their duties are not arduous. They may seem solicitous to the judge and sometimes overbearing to the litigants and lawyers, but they are only in ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... frequently accompany it in any former period, at least, in England, which is, that unbelievers in revelation generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and providence of God so as to become properly Atheists." So that, according to you, I am a Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of no sincerity; whose writings are full of nothing but gross mistakes and misrepresentations. Now I ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the main question? What has my book in common with my person? ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... must think me an ignoramus. The first four lines are sung naturally in unison; then there is a repeat, in which the tenors and basses are singing against the women's voices. By that time the stage will be full. Well, then, what I'm thinking ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... must marry the daughter of the old one! And, as Handel either did not approve of the lady, or of matrimony generally (and in fact he never was married), he promptly retired from the competition. At first, no one suspected the youth's talents, for he amused himself by pretending to be an ignoramus, until one day the accompanyist on the harpsichord (then the most important instrument in an orchestra) was absent, and young Handel took his place, astonishing everybody by his masterly touch. Probably this discovery aroused the jealousy of some of his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... "It's the America you know, expressed in such simple human terms that even a young ignoramus like me will be able to understand it. Out of this big country a good many thousands of men, I suppose, have come to you for money. Which are the most ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... she blushed, and looked at Herr Carovius questioningly. "Don't you know our Daniel Nothafft, you little ignoramus?" said Herr Carovius. "You know nothing of our coryphaeus? Hail to the Master! Welcome home! He is here, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... which Nicolas de la Salle, whom he had supplanted as intendant, wrote to Ponchartrain that D'Artaguette had deceived him, being no better than Bienville himself. La Salle further declared that Barrot, the surgeon of the colony, was an ignoramus, and that he made money by selling the medicines supplied by the King to cure his Louisianian subjects. Such were the transatlantic workings of ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... not suit everybody. It supposes profound and impartial examination. He who doubts because he does not know the grounds of credibility, is no better than an ignoramus. The true sceptic has counted and weighed the reasons. But it is no light matter to weigh arguments. Who of us knows their value with any nicety? Every mind has its own telescope. An objection that disappears in your eyes, is a colossus in mine: you find an argument trivial that to me is overwhelming.... ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stept unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... "Ignoramus" (we ignore), the word by which a grand jury indicated its refusal to prosecute an indictment. We here find the Superior Court, the highest common-law court of Massachusetts under the second charter, taking ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... tell me, in good faith, what I must do!" David has now the chance he loves. Here is one who knows nothing whatever of the things it is his pride to have learned at least the names of, the things to a Nuremberger worth knowing among all. The ignoramus shall be properly dazzled. David strikes an attitude. "Myself," he informs Walther, "I am learning the Art from the greatest master in Nuremberg, Hans Sachs. For a full year I have received his instructions. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... stand in your way, almost knowing how to read. The demagogues will neither have an educated nor an honest man; they require an ignoramus and a rogue. But do not, do not let go this gift, which ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... of the artistic passion behind it; its coherent statement had to wait for other and more reflective days. The thing began as a vision, not as a syllogism. Here the name of Franz Schubert inevitably comes up. Schubert was an ignoramus, even in music; he knew less about polyphony, which is the mother of harmony, which is the mother of music, than the average conservatory professor. But nevertheless he had such a vast instinctive sensitiveness to musical values, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Colonna, and wrote to Aretino about transcripts: 'Niccolo has copied it on paper for Cosmo de' Medici: you must write to Carlo Aretino for another copy, or he might lend you the original, because if the scribe should be an ignoramus you might get a fable instead of ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... spectator of the actions of others, and began pushing right and left. "Get along, get away ye vagabonds!" he politely cried: "you little shrimps! what business have you to stop the way?—Alfred, you ignoramus! ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... there all these things, and also the implements of agriculture, from a crooked stick up to the plow which makes it possible for a man to cultivate the soil without being an ignoramus. I saw at the same time a row of skulls, from the lowest skull that has ever been found; skulls from the central portion of Africa, skulls from the bushmen of Australia, up to the best ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... worth defending. I can conceive of a far less important English influence upon our social customs. But in neither case, domination. That England dominates our finance, our industry, our politics, is just now, especially, the suspicion of a paranoiac, or the idea of an ignoramus. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... over them without end. I can forgive his being a shiftless farmer so long as he really does his literary chores up to the hilt. A man can be slack in everything else, if he does one thing as well as he possibly can. And I guess it won't matter my being an ignoramus in literature so long as I'm rated A-1 in the kitchen. That's what I used to think as I polished and scoured and scrubbed and dusted and swept and then set about getting dinner. If I ever sat down to read for ten minutes the cat ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... a little surprised, therefore, to find occasion to suspect that one of my principal subordinates was trying to impose on me as though I were an ignoramus. For when any important crime of a certain kind occurred, and I set myself to investigate it a la Sherlock Holmes, he used to listen to me in the way that so many people listen to sermons in church; and when I was done he would stolidly announce that the crime was the work of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... is one born into this world an ignoramus, knowing nothing of the laws, customs and usage one inadvertently breaks? And for which one's punished. Why does one grow into a youth full of high ambition only to be driven into vile actions ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... must not only learn to read and write, he must learn to draw. We cannot afford to let our young folks grow up without this power. A new French book is just now much talked about, with this droll title, "The Life of a Wise Man, by an Ignoramus." It is the story of the great Pasteur, whose discoveries in respect to life have made him world renowned. I turned to the book, eager to find out the key to such success, and I found the old story—"the child was father of the man." This philosopher, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... union of nervous zeal and pitiless indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a secret sin—the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and Harry to inspect your stable: such conduct is to invite rebuff, to expose yourself to just animadversion. Keep the ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... pest; but still, could not help yelling out his entreaties and indignations at times. .. Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle. Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore held his peace on that head, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... before any others. Afterwards we will study together the MSS. of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemy, of Olympiodorus and Stephanus, which I discovered at Ravenna, in a vault where they have been locked up since the reign of that ignoramus Theodosius who ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... thereupon obliged to comply with and assist those that advanced them in their impious practices. The names of these high priests, or rather ridiculous and profane persons, were Jesus the son of Damneus, Jesus the son of Gamaliel, Matthias the son of Theophilus, and that prodigious ignoramus Phannias, the son of Samuel; all whom we shall meet with in Josephus's future history of this war; nor do we meet with any other so much as pretended high priest after Phannias, till Jerusalem was ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... scorn his Raven's croak, And well may mock his mystifying cloak Inscribed with runes from tongues he has not read To make the ignoramus turn his head. The artificial glitter of his eyes Has captured half-grown boys. They think him wise. Some shallow player-folk esteem him deep, Soothed by his steady wand's mesmeric sweep. The little lacquered boxes in his hands ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... electroscope that will telegraph rays of light (!) and enable us thereby to see our most distant friends, and of stowing in a small compass electricity enough to exterminate an army. This imaginative ignoramus adds, "Give to our present biped acquaintance the ability to exterminate armies with a lightning flash, added to the power of sailing at will through the air or of passing at will and in safety beneath the ocean waves, and he would depopulate the earth." The writer gives ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... he received a letter from a certain G— S—, who wrote from Southampton detailing a number of observations he had made upon the organisms to be seen with a magnifying glass in an infusion of vegetable matter, and as "an ignoramus," apologised for any appearance of conceit in so doing, while asking his advice as to the best means of improving his scientific knowledge. Huxley was much struck by the tone of the letter and the description of the experiments, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... my company he was put upon to do the work, but could not; at last he said he could do nothing as long as I was in presence. I at last shewed him his error, but left him as I found him, a pretending ignoramus. ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... old hunter, what do you say to that?" said the doctor, stroking his disagreeable pet: "that dirty-faced, uncombed, ill-dressed ignoramus of a boy claims you for a relative. Do you realize the ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... help you to get into the Treasury Office, where he holds a high post. You understand what he told you about the examinations; you know more about such things, praise God! than I do. I am only an ignoramus, my lad, but I am your father. Now listen; I want to have a word of explanation with you, so that from this day on till I go to where your dear mother is we can look each other calmly in the face and understand one another at the first glance. Your mother ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... must," said the friar, clutching Adam's robe, and concealing his resentment by an affected grin. "Thou thinkest me a mere ignoramus—ha! ha!—I think the same of thee. Why, man, thou hast never studied the parts of the human body, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "I want you to show me a thorough-going hot corner. You know I am an ignoramus of this ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... hope so, sir," answered Dick. "If we don't it shall not be my fault. And although I am rather an ignoramus at present in respect of a sailor's work generally, you will find me both ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... these assertions the critic quoted certain passages and phrases. He objected to cheeks "scarred" by tears, to "dauntless" statues, and to "terror-stricken" wagons. The very touches of poetic impressionism that largely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an ignoramus. There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions subtly conveyed by Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as deliberate with him as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an imagist before our modern ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... she answered, with exultation and heightened color, "but it seems absurd to suppose that such a little ignoramus as I am can ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Tolstoy holds forth about what he doesn't know and is too obstinate to care to understand. Thus his statements about syphilis, foundling hospitals, the aversion of women for the sexual relation, and so on, are not merely open to dispute, but show him up as an ignoramus who has not, in the course of his long life, taken the trouble to read two or three books written by specialists. But yet these defects fly away like feathers in the wind; one simply does not notice them in face of the real worth ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... V., 244. Later, the Pope keeps silent about his interviews with Napoleon. "He simply lets it be understood that the emperor spoke to him haughtily and contemptuously, even treating him as an ignoramus in ecclesiastical matters."—Napoleon met him with open arms and embraced him, calling him his father. (Thiers, XV., 295.)—It is probable that the best literary portrayal of these tete-a-tete conversations is the imaginary scene in "Grandeurs et Servitudes ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
