"Ignorance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his place of worship where he received a moral training which elevated him immeasurably above the peasantry of England as well as of his old home. The clergy of Lower Canada confessedly did their best to relieve the ignorance of the people, but they were naturally unable to accomplish, by themselves, a task which properly devolved on the governing class. Under the French regime in Canada the civil authorities were as little ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... Though our ignorance Of Cassilanes engagements might asswage Severity of justice, yet to shew How no excuse should smooth a breach of Law, I yield me to ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... answered, "it is no magic, that is a fiction of ignorance. There is no such thing as magic, though there is such a thing as a knowledge of the secrets of Nature. That water is my glass; in it I see what passes if I will to summon up the pictures, which is not often. Therein I can show thee what thou wilt of the past, if it be anything that hath ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... of malice prepense (especially, for obvious reasons, if a hare is in any way concerned) in scorn, not in ignorance, by persons who are well acquainted with the real meaning of the word and even with its Sanscrit origin. The truth is that an incredulous Western world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritual Mrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... difficult for some of you to understand this excessive terror, albeit the situation was not a particularly desirable one. A college boy, in these enlightened days, laughs at supernatural tales as the delusions of ignorance in past ages; but for those who have had the misfortune to be imbued in infancy with superstition, as was Charles Channing, the terror still exists, college boys though they may be. He could not have told (had ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... September 22cd 1805. Notwithstanding my positive directions to hubble the horses last evening one of the men neglected to comply. he plead ignorance of the order. this neglect however detained us untill 1/2 after eleven OCk at which time we renewed our march, our course being about west. we had proceeded about two and a half miles when we met Reubin Fields one of oure hunters, whom Capt. Clark had dispatched to meet us with some dryed fish ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... within the lifetime of men who were young at the close of the last century, the Hawaiian tongue became a written language, and made the traditions of savages highly colored stories, in various degrees according to ignorance, prejudice and sympathy, accepted as historical. The marvels accomplished by the missionaries influenced them to deal gently with those whose conversion was a recognized triumph of Christendom, and there was an effort to condemn Captain Cook, who had affected ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... themselves, must any one judge of what others say concerning them. Erroneous or inadequate views, confused or inconsistent statements, are the peculiar property of those who advance them; they have, in reality, no relationship to science itself, because they originate in ignorance; but all science is knowledge—it is knowledge methodized. What general rules are requisite for the syntactical parsing of the several parts of speech in English, may be seen at once by any one who will consider for a moment the usual construction of each. The correction ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Veil, Statuary, Bouret Arrest in the Village, Painting, Salmson A Mother, Statuary, Lenoir Joan of Arc, Statuary, Chapu Paying the Reapers, Painting, Lhermitte Ignorance, Painting, Paton ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp
... in her place," she said, slowly and firmly, and with peculiar emphasis, "and my lover were in any danger, I would far rather know it, and give him my help, if possible, my prayers and sympathy at any rate, than to remain in ignorance, and perhaps ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... account) prevented me from writing—whence arose great to-do, hunting of precedents and so forth, ending in my "making my mark," and the Chancellor attesting it with a superfluity of solemn oaths. Then the French ambassador was introduced, to present his credentials; here my ignorance was of no importance, as the King would have been equally raw to the business (we worked through the whole corps diplomatique in the next few days, a demise of the Crown ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... suggetti con otte o nove altri villaggi posti sopra detto fiume." Father du Creux, who arrived in Canada about the year 1625, in his "Historia Canadensis," gives the name of Canada to the whole valley of the St. Lawrence, confessing, however, his ignorance of the etymology: "Porro de Etymologia vocis Canada nihil satis certe potui comperire; priscam quidem esse, constat ex eo, quod illam ante annos prope sexaginta passim usurpari ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... no friend to receive and guide him, but rapacious agents ready to take every advantage of his ignorance, with an eye to his scanty purse. A host of captains, mates, and sailors, eager to make up so many heads for the voyage, pack them aboard like sheep, and cross the Atlantic, either to New York or to Quebec, just as they have ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... than from any poverty native to the mind. And perhaps in aesthetics the reason is the same: those disclosures which seem fatal to the dignity of art seem so perhaps only in the proportion of our ignorance; and those conscious and unconscious artifices which it seems unworthy of the serious artist to employ were yet, if we had the power to trace them to their springs, indications of a delicacy of the sense finer than we conceive, and hints of ancient harmonies in nature. This ignorance ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... solid South on one side that was in accord with the political party in the North which had sympathized with the rebellion, it finally, in the judgment of Congress and of the majority of the legislatures of the States, became necessary to enfranchise the negro, in all his ignorance. In this work, I shall not discuss the question of how far the policy of Congress in this particular proved a wise one. It became an absolute necessity, however, because of the foolhardiness of the President and ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... midnight when our guest took his departure, the ship's orchestra playing him over the side with a selection from The Sultan of Sulu, which, in view of my ignorance as to whether Sulu possessed a national anthem, seemed highly appropriate to the occasion. As the launch bearing the Sultan shot shoreward Hawkinson set off a couple of magnesium flares, which he had brought along for the purpose of ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... slept, and in order not to wake Him they looked at one another and spoke in whispers. Their hearts were full of the impressions of their late experiences. They thought of the persecution in their native land, the attractiveness of the big world, and their ignorance of the future. Many of them during this gloomy rest-time thought of their former lives. Who is managing my boat? Who tends my fruit-trees? Who works in my workshop? Who sits in the profitable toll-house? Who is providing for my wife, my children? ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... patriarchs and their families, the Israelites a handful in respect, Christ and his apostles, and not all of them, neither. Into what straits hath it been compinged, a little flock! how hath superstition on the other side dilated herself, error, ignorance, barbarism, folly, madness, deceived, triumphed, and insulted over the most wise discreet, and understanding man, philosophers, dynasts, monarchs, all were involved and overshadowed in this mist, in more than Cimmerian darkness. [6355]Adeo ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... attentively. "I hate a hypocrite," he said. "Mr. Ferguson pretends that he wants to help us, while he is scheming to cheat us out of a large sum, relying upon our ignorance of the increased value ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... have absolutely lost every idea of civil or political administration; and if any thing could excite laughter in the midst of an ignorance so deplorable, it would be the conversation of such a silly fellow who constantly imagines that Paris must give the law and the ton to all Europe, and ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... treacherous director, that will infallibly lead him astray. Nature warns him to enlighten his understanding, to search after truth, to inform himself of his duties; superstition enjoins him not to examine any thing, to remain in ignorance, to fear truth; it persuades him there are no relations so important to his interest, as those which subsist between himself and systems which he can never understand. Nature tells the being who is in love with his welfare, to moderate his passions, to resist them when ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Mr. Carteret's, at Hawnes in Bedfordshire, the seat of his grandfather Lord Granville; I know few better portraits. It is at once a countenance of goodness and cunning, a mixture I think pleasing. It seems to imply that the person's virtue was not founded on folly or ignorance of the world; it implies perhaps more, that the person would combat treachery and knavery, and knew how. I could fancy the head in question was such a character as Margaret Queen of Navarre, sister of Francis the First. who was very free in her conversation ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... prevail, expressed their astonishment at his condescension. Never was there so fine a specimen of patience, gentleness, and humility, blended with true dignity, as upon that remarkable occasion. He instructed her ignorance, endured her petulance, corrected her mistakes, awakened her conscience, converted her heart, and eventually honoured her as a messenger of mercy and salvation to her Samaritan friends. At another time, when the disciples rebuked those who brought their little children to him, that he might ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... commit such a wrong?" Gurnemanz pursues unrelenting, even after these expressions of contrition. "I did not know," Parsifal answers. Then to the amazement of all are revealed the most extravagant ignorance and simplicity ever met. "Where do you come from?" "I do not know." "Who is your father?" "I do not know." "Who directed you here?" "I do not know." "What is your name?" "I have had many, but no longer remember any of them." "Truly," grumbles ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves with all their ignorance saw plainly enough that it could not succeed. That affair in its philosophy corresponds with the many attempts related in history at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... developed his idea from on high, with scorn and condescension, displaying at the same time an amount of ignorance as to the real aims, thoughts, and methods of the revolutionary world which filled the silent Mr Verloc with inward consternation. He confounded causes with effects more than was excusable; the most distinguished propagandists with impulsive bomb throwers; assumed organisation where in the nature ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... observed,—"Well, the writer of that must have been a most egregious ass. There is no such thing as 'Sulphate of Bilgerius,' or 'Silica Bilgica,' or anything like them", and then the old fellow chuckled to himself over my supposed ignorance. I was willing he should. I'm accustomed to being called an ass, and always like to be recognized ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... know the truth," he said one morning, when the doctor made his usual visit; "it is no kindness to keep me in ignorance of my true condition. If I am not likely to rise from this bed a well man, then it is time I settled my business; so tell me ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... the discovery would lead him to turn from Mrs. Crawford in abhorrence. Moreover, he was strongly opposed to divorce, and Carl had heard him argue that a divorced person should not be permitted to remarry. Yet in ignorance he had married a divorced woman, who had been convicted of theft, and served a term of imprisonment. The discovery would be a great shock to him, and it would lead to a separation and restore the cordial relations ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... a scholar's daughter, and she had lived with books. She would have scorned to pretend, and her pose, if she had one, was a pose of ignorance—she claimed less than she might. But the Master soon discovered that she had many of her father's tastes, that she knew something of archaeology—he bore it even when she shyly quoted Lanciani—that she read Latin, and was apparently passionately ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... owed to mankind: no one had ever seen any legitimate marriages, no one had beheld any children whose parentage was indubitable; nor had any one any idea what great advantage there might be in a system of equal law. And so, owing to error and ignorance, cupidity, that blind and rash sovereign of the mind, abused its bodily strength, that most pernicious of servants, for the purpose of gratifying itself. At this time then a man,[56] a great and a wise man truly ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... was involved in great perplexity by ignorance of the longitude of the river's mouth. Not having descended so far in his former expedition as to be able to judge of its appearance from the sea, he passed the main entrance of the Mississippi unawares, and proceeded 200 miles to the westward, where he found himself ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... sculpture, supposing always that you are no practising artist, in other words, supposing that you know nothing about the subject, implies that you must live amongst comme-il-faut people who possess pictures and casts to look at; else how the deuce could you have got your knowledge—or, by the way, your ignorance, which answers just as well amongst those who are not peevish. We, however, are so, as we have said already. And what made us peevish, in spite of strong original stamina for illimitable indulgence to all predestined bores and nuisances in the way of conversation, was—not the ignorance, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to resolve, and they would not abandon it at the will of the first innovator. The questions in dispute were embittered by personal feeling and party animosities. Franciscans and Dominicans were divided by points of logic not less than by the rules of their orders.[12] Ignorance and passion alike gave ardor to discussion, and it was vain to attempt to convince the heated partisans on one side or the other, that the truths they sought were beyond the reach of human faculties, and that their dialectics and metaphysics served to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... opinion a man was never thoroughly committed until he had recorded his sentiments in black and white for the inspection of his neighbours. His own success in life, which had been tolerable, thanks to his industry and integrity, he attributed altogether to his ignorance of those dangerous arts; and now a cloud swept across his lately beaming face as he exclaimed, "What! the good creature is a lover of books? Well, we must admit that even the best have their failings. No matter. Write down the name of this ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... divided, one-half watching Parma, the other the Armada. The trained soldiers and sailors were for the sound plan of attacking Plymouth first. Some admirals even proposed the only perfect plan of crushing Drake in detail as he issued from the Sound. All were in blissful ignorance of the astounding feat of English seamanship which had already robbed them of the only chance they ever had. But Philip, also landsman-like, had done his best to thwart his own Armada; for Sidonia produced the royal orders forbidding any attack on England ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... Johnson, in his Observations on Macbeth (Works, v. 55-7), shews his utter disbelief in witchcraft. 'These phantoms,' he writes, 'have indeed appeared more frequently in proportion as the darkness of ignorance has been more gross; but it cannot be shewn that the brightest gleams of knowledge have at any time been sufficient to drive them out of the world.' He describes the spread of the belief in them in the middle ages, and adds:—'The reformation did not immediately arrive ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... not lie on the surface, I'll warrant they are there," Ellery went on as though letting off pent-up steam. "They are like her voice—like all her motions—neither loud nor faint, but exquisitely modulated. She seems to me like the embodiment of innocence,—not the innocence of ignorance, but the untaintedness of a mind that goes through the world selecting the best, as the bee takes honey and leaves the rest. There's no subject, so far as I can see, on which she is afraid to think; but I can not imagine that ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... three months in recruiting his armies throughout the interior of France; and the troops, by means of which it was his purpose to change the face of affairs beyond the Alps, were already marching by different routes, each detachment in total ignorance of the other's destination, upon the territory of Switzerland. To that quarter Buonaparte had already sent forward Berthier, the most confidential of his military friends, and other officers of the highest skill, with orders ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Cossacks, who really become more assimilated to the Kirghiz than these to their conquerors, the mir, or communal system, is now penetrating these fertile districts, and systematically replacing the Mongolian culture. But the ignorance of this lower class of Russians is almost as noticeable as that of the natives themselves. As soon as we entered a village, the blacksmith left his anvil, the carpenter his bench, the storekeeper his counter, and the milkmaid her task. After ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... over which we have passed, we find the origin of the gas engine in the minds of the same men as were first to propose the steam engine, Huyghens and Papin, 1680 and 1690. Greater mechanical difficulties and ignorance of the nature of explosives caused the abandonment of the internal combustion idea, and the mechanical difficulties with steam being less, the steam engine became successful, and triumphed over its rival. The knowledge and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... I was powerless to do anything in hindrance. The rebels with more craft than any one had credited to them, had driven a galley from their camp under the ground, intending so to make an entrance into the heart of the city. In their clumsy ignorance, and having no one of sufficient talent in mensuration, they had bungled sadly both in direction and length, and so had ended their burrow under this chamber of the captain of the gate. The great flagstone in its fall had, it appeared, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... continued, "these fellows do not know a word of French. All along the way which they will have to traverse they will meet friendly outposts, who will report to them on the condition of the roads and warn them of any danger that might be ahead. Their ignorance of our language may be a source of infinite peril to them. They need an interpreter to ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a chance to put them up for the night and still avoid disclosures, had not circumstance ordered that the Countess and I should be working in the garden at the very moment that brought them pounding at the postern gates. Old Conrad opened the gate in complete ignorance of our presence in the garden. (We happened to be in a somewhat obscure nook and seated upon a stone bench—so he must be held blameless.) The quartette brushed past the old man and I, hearing their ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... themselves, reaped this plant in May when it should not have been gathered until September, and dried it in ovens when its moisture should have been gradually evaporated in the shade. This fatal mistake, arising from cupidity, and in some measure from ignorance, ruined the sale of their ginseng among the only people on earth who are partial to its use, and at an early period cut off from the colony a new branch of trade, which, under proper regulations, might have been essentially productive."—Heriot's Travels through the Canadas, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... that more lives have been lost because of foolish incredulity than from ignorance of the danger. For more than a year there have been fears of an accident of just such a character. The foundations of the dam were considered to be shaky early last spring and many increasing leakages were reported from ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... well. 'I have God'—have I? I have a drop at the bottom of a too often unsteadily held and spilling cup, and the great ocean rolls unfathomable and boundless at my feet. How partial, how fragmentary, how clouded with doubts and blank ignorance, how intermittent, and, alas! rare, is our knowledge of Him. We sometimes go down our streets between tall houses, walking in their shadow, and now and then there is a cross street down which a blaze of sunshine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... at first with faint amusement at the mingled shrewdness and ignorance of these men, then with a fierce pride in his city which made his words, as the letter-writer expressed it, shine like rubies and sing like a fountain. The merchants listened, and munched their sticky baclawi, ripe olives and dates and figs, and drank many tiny cups of coffee, more entertained than ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... as well as their ancestors, there is reason to hope as much for each new pair of human creatures. But it is one of the fatalities of our ill-jointed life that houses are usually furnished for future homes by young people in just this state of blissful ignorance of what they are really wanted for, or what is likely to be done with the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Temple, to the revival of their ancient worship, and that therefore they will always consider England, not their country, but merely as their place of exile. But, surely, Sir, it would be the grossest ignorance of human nature to imagine that the anticipation of an event which is to happen at some time altogether indefinite, of an event which has been vainly expected during many centuries, of an event which even those who confidently expect that it will happen do not confidently ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of McClellan and Pope over their sanguinary battle-fields. The possibility thrilled me like a novel discovery, that the Old World might be willing to hear of the New, as I could depict it, fresh from the theatre of action. At great expense foreign correspondents had been sent to our shores, whose ignorance and confidence had led them into egregious blunders; for their travelling outlay merely, I would have guaranteed thrice the information, and my sanguine conceit half persuaded me that I could present it as acceptably. I did not wait to ponder upon this ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... he meant my trunks and those were in what I, in my ignorance, would have called a ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his stepdaughter's claim to this fortune?" thought the Captain. "He will affect ignorance of the whole transaction until his plans are ripe, and then spring them suddenly upon his brother George. I wonder if there is anything to be made out of George by letting him into the secret of his brother's interference? No; I think not. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... use of anyone telling me. It's in all the books—and it's true. It strikes me," continued Lambert, laughing in spite of himself, "that you have been kept in happy ignorance of a good many ridiculous things on YOUR side ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... surviving brother so large an arrear of affection for the long injustice I had rendered him that I was almost pleased to find something set upon the opposite score. All men, perhaps, would rather forgive than be forgiven. I resolved, therefore, to affect ignorance of Gerald's knowledge of the forgery; and, even should he confess it, to exert all my art to steal from the confession its shame. From this train of reflection my mind soon directed itself to one far fiercer and more intense; and I felt my heart pause, as if congealing into marble, when ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of spawning, and anatomical details; but it is not here that we can elucidate or even illustrate this astonishing Ichthyology. It is not always easy to understand—but the obstacle lies often, I take it, in our own ignorance. The identification of species is not always plain, for here as elsewhere Aristotle did not reckon with a time or place where the familiar words of Greek should be unknown or their homely significance forgotten. Among the great host of fish-names there are several referring, somehow or other, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... they were living, although rented, contained many comforts and even luxuries; for the mother, aside from her pension-money, was being liberally paid by the uncle for keeping him and his family. And Edwin's ignorance, as has already been inferred, was due to his lack of training and to the fact that everything in his mother's house was so new and different from what he had been used to ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... that women be the apparels to catch men, but they take none but them that will be poor or else them that know them not. And he said that there is none so great empechement unto a man as ignorance and women. And he saw a woman that bare fire, of whom he said that the hotter bore the colder. And he saw a woman sick, of whom he said that the evil resteth and dwelleth with the evil. And he saw a woman brought to the justice, and many other women ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... you'se great on de natural principles ob de chemical skyence, I see; but lord honey, I doos pity your ignorance on jography questions. So, take care ob yourself, ole nigger—yaw! yaw!" and they parted with the formality of two Websters, and half a dozen common-sized dignitaries of the nation ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... kinds cannot be distinguished, it is surely rather a credit than a discredit to an artist whose medium or material has more in common with a musician's than with a sculptor's.' Rarely has the prying ignorance of ordinary criticism been more absurdly evident than in the criticisms on Poems and Ballads, in which the question as to whether these poems were or were not the record of personal experience was debated with as much solemn fury as if it really ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... presumptuous to express the belief that, when our knowledge is more complete and our obedience the expression of our knowledge, London will count her centuries of freedom from typhoid and cholera, as she now gratefully reckons her two hundred years of ignorance of that plague which swooped upon her thrice in the first half of the ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... were eventually secured (without the payment) Balzac burned them, lest such a catastrophe should occur again. The Princess Radziwill says that the story of the letters was invented by Balzac and is ridiculous; also, that it angered her aunt because Balzac revealed his ignorance of Russian matters, by saying such things. Lawton (Balzac) intimates that Balzac and Madame Hanska quarreled, she being jealous and suspicious of his fidelity, and that he burned her letters. De Lovenjoul (Un Roman ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... stratum, the second group in the altar tower, symbolizes human struggle for emancipation from ignorance and superstition, in which Religion and War are dominating factors. The kneeling figures on the side altar are similarly expressive. The torches above these mediaeval groups symbolize the Dawn of Understanding. The chanticleers ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... wasn't yet invented? His mamma never said to him in early youth, 'Why-why,' or 'Tomtom,' as the case might be, 'that's the wrong hand to hold your flint-scraper in.' He grew up to man's estate in happy ignorance of such minute and invidious distinctions between his anterior extremities. Enough for him that his hands could grasp the forest boughs or chip the stone into shapely arrows; and he never even thought in his innocent soul which particular hand he ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... consent not to whatso I require of thee, I will cause a scandal to befal thee and thou wilt perish." Quoth she, "Allah (extolled and exalted be He!) judge betwixt me and thee, and know that, shouldst thou hew me limb from limb, I would not consent to that thou biddest me to do." His ignorance[FN420] of womankind persuaded him that she would tell her spouse; so he betook himself of his exceeding despite, to a company of people in the mosque and informed them that he had witnessed a man commit adultery with his brother's wife. They believed his word and documented his charge ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the wise thing to do). And, if they are not let in on the facts, they may blunder in and spoil everything. We want to save the women at the earliest moment, without any possible handicaps due to ignorance or inadvertence." ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... very simple matter after that. On the one hand were infinite tact and skill; on the other, innocence, ignorance, and an overwhelming gratitude ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... Wilson's published denial may have converted some to the belief that the drafting of the Covenant was in no way responsible for the delay of the peace, but the number of converts must have been very few, as it meant utter ignorance of or indifference to the circumstances which conclusively proved the ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... the freedmen in congested districts, the more inclined the reformers were to think that instant abolition was an event which they "could not reasonably expect, and perhaps could not desire." Being in a state of deplorable ignorance, the slaves did not possess sufficient information "to render their immediate emancipation a blessing either to themselves or ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... heart's impulses checked; thus were the first tender leaves of affection frozen in the cold breath of mere calculation. He wronged himself in this; yet, in his worldliness and ignorance, did he feel proud of being above, what he called, the weaknesses of ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... success a molehill? What is an artist without love? How is he to bear up against his disappointments from within, his mortification from without? the great ideas he has and cannot grasp, and all the forms of ignorance that sting him, from stupid insensibility down ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... came loaden with his crimes, but upon searching into his bundle, I found that instead of throwing his guilt from him, he had only laid down his memory. He was followed by another worthless rogue, who flung away his modesty instead of his ignorance. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of Papists are very few, crumbling into small parcels, and daily diminishing; their common people are sunk in poverty, ignorance and cowardice, and of as little consequence as women and children. Their nobility and gentry are at least one half ruined, banished or converted. They all soundly feel the smart of what they suffered in the last Irish war. Some of them are already retired into ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... notice in those rough and bloody times. She may have been right, or she may have been wrong, but in weighing her decision it must always be borne in mind that she was, and until the end remained, in utter ignorance of Marie's heroic design to go to her ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... to enter a new land with a new lie on your lips. I spoke the truth to the evil-minded Custom House man who turned my most sacred raiment on a floor composed of stable refuse and pine splinters; but the reporter overwhelmed me not so much by his poignant audacity as his beautiful ignorance. I am sorry now that I did not tell him more lies as I passed into a city of three hundred thousand white men. Think of it! Three hundred thousand white men and women gathered in one spot, walking upon real pavements ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... Uncle Richard; "and I feel quite ashamed of my ignorance. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and I ought to have known that in this process I was preparing so ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... rivals. We will compel them to turn manufacturers in self-defence; and when, in close imitation of us, they impose high duties on British goods for the protection of their own produce, we will, in our speeches and despatches, express wonder and pity at their strange ignorance of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a few hours before, General Cox's division of Federal infantry had passed, Butler coming so close to his rear that the stragglers were captured. But a heavy fog covered the valley and hid all things from sight, so that Cox continued his march in ignorance that a strong body of Confederate cavalry was so close upon his track. On Fairview Heights, near the road, was a Federal signal-station, which a squad was sent to capture. The two officers in charge of it escaped, but two privates ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... uneducated men, went to extremes in everything, had published under his name a proclamation extravagantly violent and even insulting to the Emperor. Whether Napoleon was aware of this proclamation I cannot pretend to say, but he affected ignorance of the matter if he was informed of it, for on the 24th, having met Augereau at a little distance from Valence, he stopped his carriage and immediately alighted. Augereau did the same, and they cordially ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Margaret reasoned. That the crime committed in the quiet grove, near St. Cross, was an every-day deed, done for the most pitiful and sordid motives that can tempt a man to shed his brother's blood, never for a moment entered into her thoughts. Other people might think this in their ignorance of the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was then but a dim suspicion, and as such would have been unwise to give utterance to, but which now, from various subsequent calculations assuming no little probability, it may be important that you should not remain in further ignorance of. ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... sympathies of the powerful and magnanimous. But as that which is nationally weak only serves as a prey to that which is nationally strong, so the poor, emaciated Kaloramas had for years been a prey to the avarice of rival adventurers, who, in that spirit which arrogance always asserts over ignorance, would make their king a puppet and themselves mere vassals. And this the wily adventurers did, by professing great friendship for the king and his people, then setting up a fictitious claim to a voice in the affairs of the kingdom, and finally demanding for such ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... "Ignorance and inconsideration, are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind."—This is an observation of Dr. Tillotson, with relation to the interest of his fellow-men, in a future and immortal state: But it is of equal truth and importance, ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... of thus following passers-by (and especially female passers-by) in the streets, which Gringoire was fond of doing, there is no better disposition than ignorance of where one is going ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the learned Counsel, when Mr. Ricard underwent that most formidable Examination you speak of,—and I solemnly affirm, That he then said, He knew nothing at all about the Matter, one Way or the other; and the Reasons he gave for his utter Ignorance, were, first, That he was then so full of Concern, at the Difference which arose between two Gentlemen, both his Friends, that he did not attend to the Subject Matter of it,—and of which he declared again he knew nothing at all. ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... have been poisoned from childhood with this religious conviction, this most awful of beliefs, I cry: "Throw off these tyrants of the mind. Emancipate yourselves from this fearful ignorance and mental bondage!" What a burden will be lifted from their lives and what a glorious freedom ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... dreams by night having no deeper significance than our own. Some writers say that the constant interposition of God in their behalf was because they needed his special care and attention. But the irregularity and ignorance of their lives show clearly that their guiding hand was of human origin. If the Jewish account is true, then the God of the Hebrews falls far short of the Christian ideal of a good, true manhood, and the Christian ideal as set forth in the New Testament falls short ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Life in its truth and its essence? And the reward? The commonplace. The welcome of wife and children—and the tossing of a crowing babe in one's arms. And I had missed it all, lived outside it all. I had spoken blasphemously in my besotted ignorance of these sacred common things, and verily I had my recompense in a desolate home and a life of about as much use to humanity as that of St. Simeon Stylites ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... it in a dead tongue. His English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as in his earliest poem, the Account of the greatest English Poets (1694), the tameness of the verse is matched by the ignorance of the criticism. The student will observe how differently the theme is treated by a true poet like Drayton in his Epistle to Reynolds; or, like Ben Jonson, in the many allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... patriotic career of the negro race in this country in an authentic and connected form. In the time to come the race will take care of itself. Slavery is ended, and now they are striking off link by link the chains of ignorance which the servitude of some and the humility of all imposed upon them. If the past is the story of an oppressed race, the future will reveal that of one uprisen to great opportunities, which they will improve from generation to generation, and guard with the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... upbringing of the youth in a forest, far from the haunts of men, his absolute ignorance of the existence of human beings other than his parent and himself, present a close parallel to the accounts of Perceval's youth and woodland life, as related ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... the will and in accord with the reason of the understanding, no one is reformed in states of no freedom or rationality. There are many such states, but they may be summarized as states of fear, misfortune, mental illness, physical disease, ignorance, and intellectual blindness. Something will be ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... charms, miracles, and supernatural appearances. They all arise either from hallucinations of the mind or senses; from the mutual action of the natural, though invisible, powers of gaseous and ethereal fluids; from the delusions of ignorance, implicit faith, or ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... they were really a King and Queen, whom the Fairies were punishing for their ignorance and idleness. You may imagine that I was by this time half dead with fatigue, but Mirlifiche insisted upon my feeding her unicorn before I did anything else. To accomplish this I had to climb up a long ladder into the hayloft, and bring down, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... request that their chiefs would come and have a talk with him. They obeyed his summons, and when they were seated in Council with their "Father Kit," he explained to them how that the soldiers had taken prisoner their brave through mistake and ignorance. He informed them, that his countrymen did not wish to do their tribe any injury, and he trusted that they would overlook the affair; advising them that the best way to show to the white men that their intentions ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... that some curious oaken canoes were discovered in the soil, but were, unfortunately, destroyed for firewood by the tinners. It is hard to estimate how many valuable antiquities have been similarly destroyed by carelessness and ignorance; but such ruin has been more often suffered by stone monuments, longstones, kistvaens, snatched for use as gate-posts and walls by heedless ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... shall tell her, now. I never meant her to know, but she must, because she's doing you wrong in her ignorance." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of all that is beautiful, without asking the name of the master and the school. This Bohemian is recruited from amongst those young fellows of whom it is said that they give great hopes, and from amongst those who realize the hopes given, but who, from carelessness, timidity, or ignorance of practical life, imagine that everything is done that can be when the work is completed, and wait for public admiration and fortune to break in on them by escalade and burglary. They live, so to say, on the outskirts of life, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... speech of those classes who control and make the standard speech and literature of the nation. If a dictionary of English slang were published now, how many young ladies and gentlemen of the educated classes, either in England or America, could profess honest and absolute ignorance of the meaning of most of the words? The answer to this question makes the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... the Sambre-et-Meuse, commanded by Hoche. The constitutional radius of six myriametres (twelve leagues), which the troops could not legally pass, was violated: and the councils denounced this violation to the directory, which feigned an ignorance, wholly disbelieved, and ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... easy slide of thought, laid to the charge of the mere philosopher who detects and announces its operation. In reality, those are the cruel people who would contentedly see a great number of their fellow-creatures going on from year to year in a misery, which, being brought upon themselves by ignorance, and the want of a right spirit of enterprise, can only be banished or lessened by their being rightly informed, and induced to enter ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known as "trusts," appeal especially to hatred and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... have had his reasons for doing so. I don't consider I have any right to inquire into them, if they are kept secret from me. But the very fact of your having taken part in the matter reassures me on that score, be sure of that, Darya, in any case. But you see, my dear, you may, through ignorance of the world, have quite innocently done something imprudent; and you did so when you undertook to have dealings with a low character. The rumours spread by this rascal show what a mistake you made. But I will find out about him, and as it is my task to protect you, I shall know how to defend ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... forewarn you: and do not, when ye have been caught in the snares of Ate, throw the blame on fortune, nor ever at any time say that Jove cast you into unforeseen calamity: no indeed, but ye your ownselves: for well aware, and not on a sudden, nor in ignorance, will ye be entangled by your senselessness in an impervious ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... it were nothing, and I go on reading the Parliamentary Debates as if they were something, and I concern myself far more about one railway- bridge across a public thoroughfare, than about a dozen generations of scrofula, ignorance, wickedness, prostitution, poverty, and felony. I can slip out at my door, in the small hours after any midnight, and, in one circuit of the purlieus of Covent-garden Market, can behold a state of infancy and youth, as vile as if a Bourbon sat upon the English throne; a great ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... side were wealth, strength, and leisure, accompanied by the refinement of luxury, the elegance of taste, the pleasures of wit, and the religion of art. On the other were labor, and a rude ignorance; but in the midst of this coarse and ignorant multitude, it was not uncommon to meet with energetic passions, generous sentiments, profound religious convictions, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... as we can see, it must be so,—how much does it behove us to fear greatly the peril we incur by a careless and GOD-forgetting life! "Israel doth not know," said the prophet, "My people doth not consider." {47} That was the pity of it. It was the thoughtlessness, and the ignorance which came of it, ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... hands, never seen by the eyes of white men; the drum whose note has never yet been heard in the North, but which some day, perhaps, may be; whose note is not yet understood by those of the North, over-wise, arrogant in the arrogance of an utter ignorance, who may yet one day hear its strange and ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... that curious mixture of innocence, ignorance, and sophistication, incredible outside America, where the self-dependent girl so early becomes sufficient for herself and too much ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Body as a Machine. Wholesome food and fresh air are necessary for a healthy body. Many housewives, through ignorance, supply to their hard-working husbands and their growing sons and daughters food which satisfies the appetite, but which does not give to the body the elements needed for daily work and growth. Some foods, ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... much better, too, that they should talk about one another in one another's presence. That is always more straightforward; and, in this case, it would minimise the chances of a misunderstanding in the future. For instance, if Lucia showed ignorance about the Bishop of Mesopotamia—! "Do let's send for Lucia," the Countess said again, coaxingly; and the Count, after a playful show of unwillingness to end their ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... hand of Chatterton, especially as they may be proved very often to have taken their rise either from blunders of Skinner himself, or from such mistakes and misapprehensions of his meaning as Chatterton, from haste and ignorance, was ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... and his father and mother in ignorance of the fledgling wings he was beginning to flap, G. G. succeeded admirably; but it might have been better to have told them all ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Richard's progress and conduct, and had said something about examining him himself, to see how he was getting on. This had caused Mr. Robertson no little alarm, for he knew that even the most superficial questioning would betray the extent of Richard's ignorance, and he had resolved that, henceforth, he would endeavour to assert his authority, and to insist upon Richard's devoting a certain portion of each day, regularly, to study. Should the squire meet the boy ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... experience were so mixed in him that nature could stand up and say: "This is a man." This is not the same idle performance as to descant rapturously upon his purely inborn genius. It is no purpose of mine to attempt a definition or dissection of genius. It is only in our youth or ignorance that we possess the confidence to define such abstractions as beauty, goodness, genius, and art. Still less do I propound a recipe for its manufacture. If I knew the secret of its attainment I should ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... States is particularly fortunate in its abundant riches of soil, forest and mine, and in the fact that from the beginning of the nation these have been the inheritance not of a people slowly learning the use of tools and materials, and emerging from ignorance and savagery, but representing the most advanced and enlightened ideas and spiritual ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... had succeeded in keeping a large part of his stock- holders in ignorance of the true condition of Hope Consolidated, but he quailed at the inevitable result of this article, which had been flung far and wide into every city and village in the land. He dared not think of its effect upon his present enterprise, now so auspiciously launched. He had made a ringing ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... ground bequeathed, were to be assigned: or, ground sold, were to be layd out: or (when disorder preuailed) that Commons were distributed into seueralties. For, where, vpon these & such like occasions, Some by ignorance, some by negligence, Some by fraude, and some by violence, did wrongfully limite, measure, encroach, or challenge (by pretence of iust content, and measure) those landes and groundes: great losse, disquietnes, murder, and warre did (full ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... "you will retract this unkind accusation. If you intend, which I suppose is the case, to marry Edward Middleton, you are no doubt anxious to keep no secret from him; but I protest unto you, Ellen, that if you do marry him, especially in ignorance of the real nature of your position, you will bring upon yourself,—I said it to you once before,—incalculable misery! You do not believe me,—I see you do not!" he exclaimed, with impatience; "but ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... out my identity. But, in offering to them this excellent Baudru, it was inevitable, you understand, inevitable that they would seize upon him, and, despite the insurmountable difficulties of a substitution, they would prefer to believe in a substitution than confess their ignorance." ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... in half an hour's time, the harbour was left behind; the vessel was out at sea. Suddenly, Mary heard loud cries behind her: a boat coming in under press of sail, through her pilot's ignorance had struck upon a rock in such a manner that it was split open, and after having trembled and groaned for a moment like someone wounded, began to be swallowed up, amid the terrified screams of all the crew. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was certainly living in a fool's paradise that evening. He did not imagine for an instant that he should ever hear of the escapade again. The incident was ended. Carrissima remained in blissful ignorance, and he had made ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... The direst result of ignorance or of distorted ideas of this tremendous matter of carrying on human life is that it leaves the girl unconscious of the supreme importance of her mate. So heedlessly and ignorantly is our mating done to-day that the huge machinery of Church and State and the tremendous ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... chin between his hands, and his elbows resting on his knees, while he recalled all the misadventures, all the vexations of his early youth, when Roman wits had shot their little satires upon his bulk and his ignorance. He could not write, but his son Verus placed the names upon his tablets, and they were sent to the Governor of Rome. Men who had long forgotten their offence were called suddenly ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as in America, is one of the greatest factors in the high death-rate, but conditions are improving. {65} And so long as authorities declare that in America half the infant death-rate is due to ignorance or neglect, we haven't much right to point a ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... respective jurisdictions of the United States and the Dominion of Canada in the Great Lakes at the approaches to the narrow waters that connect them. The waters in question are frequented by fishermen of both nationalities and their nets are there used. Owing to the uncertainty and ignorance as to the true boundary, vexatious disputes and injurious seizures of boats and nets by Canadian cruisers often occur, while any positive settlement thereof by an accepted standard is not easily to be reached. A ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... rage of the ungodly, how long shall they exercise their fury upon thy servants, who further thy word in this world, seeing they desire to choke and destroy thy true doctrine and verity, by which thou hast shewed thyself unto the world, which was drowned in blindness and ignorance of thy name? O Lord, we know surely that thy true servants must suffer for thy name's sake, both persecution, affliction and troubles in this present life, which is but a shadow, as thy prophets and apostles have shewed us, but yet we desire thee, merciful Father, that thou ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... 30 counties where the combination poll books were used no voter was checked as having voted, but the certificates show that 55,107 votes were cast on the amendment. In 27 cities canvassed, a total disregard or ignorance of the registration laws in nearly all precincts appears and in many of these the violations are ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... exams for many months, and when he set out on his journey in February his heart beat high. He stopped at Naples to be examined by the aged King Robert as to his merit for the honor of the laurel, and "for three days I shook all my ignorance," is Petrarch's reference to the way he answered the questions asked him by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... for you, Captain Lindsay. I consider it more than possible that Holkar will make an attempt to recapture Delhi. Colonel Ochterlony, in command there, must be warned of the probability of an attack. He may be in ignorance of what is passing here. You will bear this despatch, urging on him to do all that he can to place the town in a state of defence, and to summon to his assistance as many irregulars as possible from the neighbouring chiefs. The distance is a hundred and twenty miles. I leave ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... ignorance—"Why, ...the Coupee's the Coupee.... Come along, then. Maybe you can get a look at it before it's ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... old serpent, the devil, replied: "Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil". In other words, he told Eve that Jehovah was trying to keep her and her husband in ignorance and thus take advantage of them. Doubtless the devil himself ate of the fruit in the presence of Eve and then deliberately lied to her by saying: "Ye shall not surely die"—God knows that you will not die. And by this means he induced mother Eve to eat of the fruit—which ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... up treason and insurrection around his—Mr. Butler's—fireside," &c.—He returns to the charge, and asserts, with equal accuracy, "Millions are being expended to distribute Uncle Tom's Cabin throughout the world, with the view of combining the fanaticism, ignorance, and hatred of all the nations of the earth in a common crusade against the peculiar institutions of the State and section of this Union represented by the senator from South Carolina." One might almost imagine that the copy of Webster's Dictionary, which Mr. Douglas has in his library—if ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... I gambled on Paolo's ignorance of the custom," said I. "I flattered myself that I'd totted up his character like a sum on a slate, and I acted on the estimate I formed. If I had kept entirely to facts, without giving the rein to my imagination, you might now be ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... stranger in Rome; the Count Tornik also is a foreigner, which excuses an ignorance that would be unpardonable ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... some alarmists think. Those alarmists are doing more hurt than good by their overdrawn descriptions and excited declamation. They are fastening a morbid attention on a morbid subject. There is an innocent ignorance, which, if dangerous in some cases, is, in many cases, the highest safety. There is a wholesome unconsciousness, a noble preoccupation with good and pure things, which is a far more promising protective from evil and its temptations than a keen scent and an eager notice ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... silently but quickly put into execution; and on the third morning after our consultation every thing was in readiness for our departure. Until the carriage I had sent for by a trusty person was at the door, even Elspeth remained in ignorance of our intended flitting. I then sought the village, and announced to the people my final departure. They heard me in silence; the majority of them had already looked on me as one extirpated from ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the rough mine lads of the village. Thus, until he went into the breaker to earn his own living, he had held but slight intercourse with them. His friend Paul, being the son of a miner, knew far more of underground life than he, and often smiled at his ignorance of many of ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... just above indicated, I should be the last to admit. The notion that it is so is, I believe, a dangerous error. It is an error that tends to put a man out of sympathy with the efforts of science to discover that the world is an orderly whole, and tempts him to rejoice in the contemplation of human ignorance. ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... to me the worst part of it, that a child should have been brought up in such ignorance of right and wrong. However, she can ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... that I was very sorry to hear it, but that I meant to go on; indeed, I think that it was only terror of the brigands coupled with the promise of a considerable reward which persuaded him to do so, though, owing to my ignorance of Spanish and his very slight knowledge of English, precisely what he feared I could not discover. In the end we started, and towards evening Antonio pointed out to us the hacienda of Concepcion, a large white ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... or French, are the only people of Europe who can deduce a perpetual succession from the conquerors of the Western empire. But their conquest of Gaul was followed by ten centuries of anarchy and ignorance. On the revival of learning, the students, who had been formed in the schools of Athens and Rome, disdained their Barbarian ancestors; and a long period elapsed before patient labor could provide the requisite materials to satisfy, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... what virtue is, Sokrates had a definite doctrine with reference to Ethics, which we may call his PSYCHOLOGY of the subject. This was the doctrine that resolves Virtue into Knowledge, Vice into Ignorance or Folly. 'To do right was the only way to impart happiness, or the least degree of unhappiness compatible with any given situation: now, this was precisely what every one wished for and aimed at—only that many persons, from ignorance, took the wrong road; and no man was wise enough always ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... particularly in this kingdom, is of all others the most unfortunately circumstantiated; For as you deal in the most worthless kind of trash, the penny productions of pennyless scribblers, so you often venture your liberty and sometimes your lives, for the purchase of half-a-crown, and by your own ignorance are punished for ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... while it enriches a State, affords employ to the needy and diligent. This, unquestionably, is no bad appropriation of these buildings, which, when inhabited by monks, were, for the most part, no more than an asylum of sloth, hypocrisy, pride, and ignorance. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... a company was making merry by ridicule on physicians, exclaimed, "I defy any person I ever attended, to accuse me of ignorance or neglect." "That you may do, doctor, dead ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... and the desire to use it stronger, and he ended by sparing no color of it. But he compromised with his sympathy for her, by deepening the shadows in the behavior of the man who could bring all this sorrow upon those dearest to him. He dwelt upon the unconsciousness of the family, the ignorance of the whole household, in which life ran smoothly on, while the head of both was a fugitive from justice, if not the victim of a swift retribution. He worked in all the pathos which the facts were capable of holding, and at certain points he enlarged the ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... filthy table-cloth in its original one-pound tin; and there was a Turkish officer in riding pants and red morocco slippers, back from the Yemen with two or three incurable complaints. He talked out-of-date Turkish politics in bad French and eked out his ignorance of table manners with ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... who had a mighty influence over the ancient barons, no less devout in their religious principles, than valorous in their military enterprises. The Roman pontiff, after an insensible progress, during several ages of darkness and ignorance, began now to lift his head openly above all the princes of Europe; to assume the office of a mediator, or even an arbiter, in the quarrels of the greatest monarchs; to interpose in all secular affairs; and to obtrude his dictates as sovereign laws on his obsequious disciples. It was a sufficient ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... was turned into favour, and he said to Bova: "Hark ye, old man; from this hour on never more beg alms in Bova's name, for we are commanded to slay anyone who speaks a word in his praise in this country; you are, however, pardoned for your ignorance. Go straight to the back court, where you will see the fair Princess Drushnevna, who gives alms to beggars like you. In three days her wedding with King Marcobrun is ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... matter," said he, after a few words of kindly welcome. "Evidently the question of inter-planetary travel is coming to the front. In your article you suggest that a locomotive car, that is to say, a car able to propel itself through what we, in our ignorance, call empty space, though, in reality, it is chock-full, and very 'thrang' as the Scotch say, might yet be contrived, and even worked by energy drawn from the ether direct. When I read that, sir, I sat up and rubbed ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... is no hope. Mediocrity is a sin. Poverty is the penalty of failure,—poverty, from whose loins spring the criminal and the tramp, both failures, both discouraged workers. Poverty is the inferno where ignorance festers and vice corrodes, and where the physical, mental, and moral parts of nature ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... thought he had opened the gates of heaven by bequeathing lands gained by a robber's sword, to pamper the lazy sloth of some fifty monks. If those monks had presumed to question his own actions, his disdain would have been mixed with simple wonder that men so besotted in ignorance, and who could not construe the Latin of the very prayers they pattered, should presume to be the judges of educated men. It is possible—for his nature was earnest—that a pure and enlightened clergy, that even a clergy, though defective in life, zealous in duty and cultivated ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... times, and which had seldom been absent from his thoughts an hour since that night when, from her perch on the gate-post, Jerrie had startled him with the question she was asking him now. But be affected ignorance and said, as indifferently as he could, with those blue eyes upon him seeming to ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... "And the Commands sanctification. "Having times of this ignorance God winked therefore these promises, dearly at; but now commandeth all men beloved, let us cleanse ourselves everywhere to repent." Acts 17:30. from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr |
