"Ignorant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to another; which the one renders and the other receives, without either being able to tell how it is done. The more is the incense sweet, penetrating, powerful. Lois went home silently, through the rain and wind, and did not know why a certain mist of happiness seemed to encompass her. She was ignorant why the storm was so very beneficent in its action; did not know why the wind was so musical and the rain so refreshing; could not guess why she was sorry to get home. Yet the fact was before her as she ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... turbots' eggs instead of sheep, one would hardly have done more than make a fair start by the time the maid came in to draw the curtains and let in the sun on one's exhausted temples. A person like myself, ignorant of mathematics, could not easily count more that 10,000 in an hour. This would mean that, even if one lay in bed for ten hours, which one never does except on one's birthday, one would have counted only 100,000 out of the 14,311,000 eggs by the time one had to get up for ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... other hand, the ideals of very many of the silk-stocking reformers did not relate to the questions of real and vital interest to our people; and, singularly enough, in international matters, these same silk-stockings were no more to be trusted than the average ignorant demagogue or shortsighted spoils politicians. I felt that these men would be broken reeds to which to trust in any vital contest for betterment ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... what incitement has a slave to become wise? there is no great art in hilling corn, or in running a furrow; and to do this, they know they are doomed, whether they seek into the mysteries of science, or remain ignorant as they are. ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... the old regime were jostled by the stories of the French nurses and English governesses and the Paris fashions of the new era. She had listened breathlessly, with her eager young zest in life, to the amazing and contradictory narrations of the tourists who were every whit as ignorant as she was, and her curiosity was on fire to see for herself. She felt that a chance in a thousand had come ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... unfolded it, and found it to be the jib of some schooner. He cut off one end of this, and then with his knife began to make a hole in the seat for his mast. It was very slow work, but he succeeded at last in doing it, and inserted the pole. Then he fastened the sail to it. He was rather ignorant of navigation, but he had a general idea of the science, and thought he would learn by experience. By cutting off the rope from the edge of the sail he obtained a sheet, and taking off the cover of the biscuit box ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... "Santa Maria!" she said, "you don't call that dancing!" Then, beckoning to her husband, she cried, "But they know nothing! They cannot earn their salt! We have made a bad bargain. Come, then, and we will teach these ignorant ones the trescone!" ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... to the rocks piled about their sleeping place which hinted that they had lain among the ruins left by man. But of this side of the mountains both were ignorant, for Memphir's ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... not, like other objects, come within the direct cognizance of our perceptive faculties. We have an organization, by means of which we are enabled to perceive various objects around us; and, by travelling to other lands, we can obtain a knowledge of many things of which we had before been ignorant. We perceive also what is going on within us. The telescope and the microscope reveal to us wonders which, without their intervention, we could never have discovered. But we cannot through the instrumentality of ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... only one code of morals and one law of spiritual life, and in course of time she saw her daughters ripening into such a beautiful womanhood, and her sons entering the arena of life not with the simplicity which is ignorant of danger and evil, but with the sterling integrity which baffles the darts of temptation with the panoply of principle and the armor of uprightness. Unconsciously she elevated the tone of society in which she moved by a life which was a beautiful and earnest expression of patient ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... beginning, must have an end, although it might endure for a long period after leaving the body, there were among the Greeks and Romans two other classes of believers in a future life, namely, the ignorant body of the people, who credited, more or less fully, the common fables concerning Hades; and an educated body of select minds, who, while casting off the popular superstitions, yet clung tenaciously to the great fact of immortality in some form or other, without attempting to define ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... continue to read from a worthier motive? If not, we pray you, close the book, and pass it on to someone more serious minded. Our message is only for those who will hear with the desire to help. But do not say: "I am too ignorant as to what to do, I am too weak, or I am too lowly, and without talents or influence." No, you are not. There is a place for you to help. God will show it to you, if this book does not suggest a practicable ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... papers, it did not occur to him for an instant to doubt. To his view, all things that were put into papers were put there for a purpose—it would express his notion more clearly, perhaps, to say for a price. Of the methods of Fleet Street, he was profoundly ignorant, but his impressions of them were all cynical. Upon reflection, however, it seemed unlikely to him that Lord Plowden had secured the insertion of these rumours. So far as Thorpe could fathom that nobleman's game, its aims would not be served by ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... world goes on in its blindness, apparently satisfied that everything is all right because its exists, ignorant of the evil consequences of apparently beneficial pecularities, vaunting man's erectness and its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... eyes, and a masculine voice. She had the commanding qualities of Cleopatra, from whom her flatterers traced her descent, and she was without her vices. While Syriac was her native tongue, she was not ignorant of Latin, which she was careful to have taught to her children; she carried on her government in Greek, and could speak Koptic with the Egyptians, whose history she had studied and written upon. In her dress and manners she joined the pomp of the Persian court to the self-denial ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Cardinal Mazarin accidentally found out what was going on, and was greatly displeased. He was anxious that the intellectual powers of the king should not be developed, for the cardinal desired to grasp the reins of government with his own hands. To do this, it was necessary that the king should be kept ignorant, and should be ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... as he inspected them, but being quite ignorant of his language they made no reply; and the Gaul from time to time threw pebbles at their faces ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... discord or war of opposite principles in the soul; and deformity is the want of symmetry, or failure in the attainment of a mark or measure. The latter arises from ignorance, and no one is voluntarily ignorant; ignorance is only the aberration of the soul moving towards knowledge. And as medicine cures the diseases and gymnastic the deformity of the body, so correction cures the injustice, and education (which differs ...
— Sophist • Plato
... image-worship (not idolatry) [Footnote: Idols and images are not the same thing; the image is, or should be, symbolic. So, at least, I venture to define it.] simply as a provisional concession to the ignorant masses, who will not perhaps always remain so ignorant. So, then, Image-worship and its attendant Mythology have naturally become intertwined with high and holy associations. Thus that delicate poetess Mrs. Naidu ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... a lord chancellor!—the world would be turned topsy-turvy! You see that you are quite astonished that a genius can be even a county magistrate, and know the difference between a spade and a poker! In fact, a genius is supposed to be the most ignorant, impracticable, good-for-nothing, do-nothing sort of thing that ever walked upon two legs. Well, when I began life I took excellent care that nobody should take me for a genius; and it is only within the last year or two that I ventured to emerge a ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the sinful world. Three strange comrades were these, who knew each other so far as one man can know another, yet each knowing from a different stand-point. Perrot knew certain traits of Iberville of which De Casson was ignorant, and the abbe knew many depths which Perrot never even vaguely plumbed. And yet all could meet and be free in speech, as though each read the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... As before noticed, there is a prevailing opinion here that Protestants have no Scriptures, whilst, indeed, as we know, they are the Christians who only, bonâ fide, have the free use of the Scriptures. I saw that Haj Ahmed, though a Marabout, was sufficiently ignorant on the religion of Christians. His ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... "looked up" the picture. Crowe and Cavalcaselle assign it without hesitation to Roger van der Weyden, and give a weak little drawing of it in their "Flemish Painters." I learn from them also—what I was ignorant of—that Nicholas Rollin, Chancellor of Burgundy and founder of the establishment at Beaune, was the original of the worthy kneeling before the Virgin in the magnificent John van Eyck of the Salon Carre. All I could see was the court of the hospital and two or three rooms. The court, with ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... had the account been true. The follies and profusion of a handsome minion pass lightly over the surface of a nation's life. Unluckily Villiers owed his fortune to other qualities besides personal beauty. He was amazingly ignorant, his greed was insatiate, his pride mounted to sheer midsummer madness. But he had no inconsiderable abilities. He was quick of wit and resolute of purpose; he shrank from no labour; his boldness and self-confidence faced any undertaking which was needful for the king's service; he was devoted, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... of the Virgin Mary is an emphasis on the fact that man born of woman may be divine. But the ignorant masses of the people of the Roman Empire were undoubtedly incapable of grasping a theory of the Incarnation put forward in the terms of Greek philosophy; while it was easy for them, with their readiness to believe in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as if God, foreseeing the slander that would, in after ages, be put, or attempted to be put, on his son Ham, by ignorant or designing men attempting to show that he was the progenitor of the negro race, directed Mizraim, the second son of Ham, by an interposition of his power and providence, or by direct inspiration, to put away his dead, by a process of embalming, the details of which, for ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... went away in a rage.' Many of us would like that there should be a little private door for us in consideration of our position or acquirements or respectability, or this, that, or the other thing. At any rate we are not to be classed in the same category with the poor and the ignorant and the sinful and the savage all over the world. But we are so classed. Do not you and the men in Patagonia breathe the same air? Are not your bodies subject to the same laws? Have you not to be contented to be fed in the same fashion, and to sleep and eat and drink in the same ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the tower the rays of a late winter sun were striking it almost horizontally, lighting it up in a picturesque glow. Piercy, with his archaeological knowledge, was able to tell the owner and Gifford a good deal about the ancient structure of which they had previously been ignorant. ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... Bauer would seize the opportunity to slip in; perhaps Bauer had seen him come out, and was in his turn waiting till the coast should be clear; or, again, perhaps the useful spy had gone off to intercept Rupert of Hentzau, and warn him of the danger in the Konigstrasse. Ignorant of the truth and compelled to accept all these chances, Rudolf waited, still watching the distant beginnings of dawning day, which must soon drive him to his hiding-place again. Meanwhile my poor wife waited also, a prey to every ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... instituted the Church to carry on the work He Himself was doing upon the earth—teaching the ignorant, visiting the sick, helping the poor, forgiving sins, etc. He commanded all men to hear the Church teaching, just as they would hear Himself. But suppose some persons should establish a false Church ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... her—as a man like you can easily trace her from Montauban. If you have any traffickings with her, it shall be made worth your while to secure the pearls for the family; but, remember, the first object is herself, and that she should be ignorant of the existence of him whom she fancied ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shores of Anticosti. Though there was no good pilot on board, the two commanders nightly went to bed and slept the sleep of the just. Off Egg Islands, on the night of August 22, there was fog and a strong east wind. Walker evidently thought he was near the south shore, ignorant of the strong undertow of the tide here, which had carried his ships thirty miles off the course. The water was rolling in the lumpy masses of a choppy cross sea when a young captain of the regulars dashed breathlessly into Walker's stateroom and begged him "for the Lord's sake to come ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... known Gabriel since his childhood, and spoke to him in the second person. The ignorant priest still retained the remembrance of Luna's great triumphs obtained in the seminary, and though he saw him so poor and ailing, taking refuge in the Cathedral almost on charity, his "tuteo" of superiority was not free from admiration. Gabriel, on his ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... know whether you are guilty at all, and I suspend my judgment as to all the crimes you are accused of, since of them I can learn nothing except through your confession. Thus it is my duty still to doubt your guilt. But I cannot be ignorant of what you are accused of: this is a public matter, and has reached my ears; for, as you may imagine, madame, your affairs have made a great stir, and there are few people who know nothing ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... five chapters of his book on Property Law to the subject. The only circumstances strong enough to vitiate a purchase, which has been reduced to a written contract, is proof of fraudulent representation as to an encumbrance of which the buyer was ignorant, or a defect in title; but every circumstance which the purchaser might have learned by careful investigation, the law presumes that he did know. Thus, in buying a leasehold estate or house, all the covenants of the original lease are presumed to be known. "It is not ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the treason, and foments rebellion, by the introduction of loose thoughts, under the name of harmless mirth. The news soon reach Diabolus, and an infernal conference, or dialogue of devils, is revealed by our author; who had watched the course and causes of spiritual declension, and was not 'ignorant of Satan's devices.' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Dumb School for six years:—"When I was at home, I knew one word, 'God,' but I did not know what it meant, nor how the world was made, and my mind was very hard and uncultivated, resembling the ground that is not ploughed, and I was perfectly ignorant. I thought then that my mind would open when I was a man: but I was mistaken, it would not have opened if I had not come to school to be taught; I would have been ignorant and have known nothing that is proper, and no religion would have come toward ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... has faithfully described the Malay and Hindu therapeutics of the present day, enriching his description by observations founded on a long practice in Paris and in his own native Luzon. From this potpourri of scientific therapeutics and ignorant, superstitious drugging the interested physician will elicit not a few useful data concerning the treatment of disease in the tropics, and at the same time gain a more intimate knowledge of both the people and plants ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... presume to comprehend, to exactly understand, the sublime, inconceivable divine essence when you are wholly ignorant of your own body and life? You cannot explain the action of your laughter, nor how your eyes give you knowledge of a castle or mountain ten miles away. You cannot tell how in sleep one, dead to the external world, is yet alive. If we are ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... ignorant, and I am growing old. I am almost seventeen. I don't know anything to speak of. Mamma wishes me to go to school. Papa did not, but now he does. I won't go. I would rather be stupid all my life long than leave home. But mamma is vexed, and I want to please her, and I thought,—Mr. Brownslow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in the roof of the cavern, while in that of the Mengwe all was dark and sunless. The life of the Indians was a life of misery compared with that they now enjoy, and it was endured only because they were ignorant of a fairer or richer world, or a better or happier ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... deep sympathy she excited; she answered us civilly and gaily, and seemed amused at our fancying there was something unusual in red pepper pods; she gave us several of them, and I felt fearful lest a hard mistress might blame her for it. How very childish does ignorance make us! and how very ignorant we are upon almost every subject, where hearsay evidence is ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... into my class a new pupil, poorly clad and ignorant, but so redolent of soapsuds and with such a freshly laundered look that I renewed my inclinations to charity. I took her home in my electric, and she lived at a distance that gave me ample time to listen to the complete ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... anything else, told them I had seen something white on the rise the previous night, when I was shutting up the inn. But the whole village has got it into their heads that I saw the White Lady, and they think because I've seen her I'm a doomed man. The country folk round about here are an ignorant ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... came she my lady?" continued the good man, anxious to know the whole, and ignorant of any reasons for delicacy where so great a favorite as Denbigh was in ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... the world people who live close to nature have, by the more cultivated, been classed as peculiar. An ignorant nation is brutal, but an uneducated community in the midst of an enlightened nation is quaint, unconsciously softened by the cultivation and refinement of institutions that lie far away. In such communities live ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... arrived at by an hour's daily industry in anything! "An hour in every day," says a writer, "withdrawn from frivolous pursuits, would, if properly employed, enable a person of ordinary capacity to go far toward mastering a science. It would make an ignorant man a well-informed one in less than ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... theologians the works of Zoroaster, which the Mobeds read every day without understanding them. An enslaved people who for a long time practised a thousand ceremonies, the sense and reason of which they were ignorant of, would naturally fall into innumerable abuses. This was what Darab, more learned than the others, observed. The purifications were multiplied; the Zend text was inundated with Pehlvi commentaries, often very inconsistent. Darab at first attempted the way of instruction. But he found ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... without hesitation. Through terror or manly spirit, or whatever you choose to call it, resign again the next day. As soon as you have done this, make interest for another place, and if you can obtain it, throw it up as soon again. This, my lord, is not, as an ignorant and coxcomical writer has represented it, "the vibration of a pendulum," but a conduct, wise, manly, judicious, and heroic. Who does not know, that the twinkling stars are of a more excellent nature, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... process is restored; sleep is quiet and refreshing, and recovery is perfectly established in an incredibly short period. A cure of this kind generally requires five, seven, eleven, and fourteen days. This result is so favorable, that those who have not witnessed it, or who are too ignorant and egotistical to investigate the facts, may reject ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... were fain to become deeply interested, it is true, but passive spectators of this primitive species of ferrying. The Pawnee selected the beast of Mahtoree, from among the three horses, with a readiness that proved he was far from being ignorant of the properties of that noble animal, and throwing himself upon its back, he rode into the margin of the river. Thrusting an end of his lance into the hide, he bore the light vessel up against the stream, and giving his steed the rein, they pushed boldly into the current. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... privileges of the child of God. In this state there is open to all the gift of sanctifying grace which is the possession of God now, and in the future will unfold into the capacity of the complete participation of the life of heaven. This belongs to, is within the grasp of, any child, any ignorant peasant, any toiler, as much as it is within the grasp of bishop or priest or Religious. And this much—and how much it is!—the Church has succeeded in accomplishing. It may be slow in offering the riches of the Gospel to the unconverted ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... enough since, that had we been better instructed, all this would have been simple enough; but to us ignorant lads, fresh come from England, it was a terrible problem to solve, one which grew more difficult every day. In those days, when settlers were few, and Vancouver Island just coming into notice, there was no regular steamer, only a speculative ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... ignorant of all that has occurred; of the sanguinary scene enacted—played out complete—on the edge of the cypress swamp, and the sad one inside the house—still continuing. Aware of the one, or witness of the other, while passing that lone cottage, as with wet eyes she takes ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to excite a communion of soul. Hilda was clever and well-read, with a deep love for the beautiful, and a familiar acquaintance with all modern literature. There was not a beautiful spot on the road which had been sung by poets or celebrated in fiction of which she was ignorant. Ferney, sacred to Voltaire; Geneva, the birth-place of Rousseau; the Jura Alps, sung by Byron; the thousand places of lesser note embalmed by French or German writers in song and story, were all greeted by her with a delight that was girlish in its enthusiastic demonstrativeness. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... became impossible for them to obtain intelligence of each other's welfare. It was by no means surprising, therefore, that eight months elapsed, and the spring arrived, without Herrera hearing any thing of Count Villabuena or his daughter; and that the Count, on the other hand, remained ignorant of the proceedings of the young man whose life he had saved, and in whose fate he could not but feel interested, save through the occasional rumour of some dashing exploit, by which Herrera maintained and increased the high ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... have paid my card debts, of course, but there is hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it seems to bring in less every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don't know if my aunt's agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser." She paused a moment, and added in a lighter tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all this, but I want your help in making Judy understand ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... turns, and remaining a few days in each. As the congregation was too large for the room in the farm house the service was held in the open air. The Scotch soldiers were all present, and joined heartily in the singing, although many of them were ignorant of the language, and sang the words of Scotch ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... power of sweetness and patience," in dealing with matters like pagan art, pagan literature was even then manifest; and has the character of the moderation, the divine moderation of Christ himself. It was only among the ignorant, indeed, only in the "villages," that Christianity, even in conscious triumph over paganism, was really betrayed into iconoclasm. In the final "Peace" of the Church under Constantine, while there was plenty of destructive fanaticism in the country, the revolution was accomplished in ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar with savages, but these poor, misguided, ignorant creatures took me straight to their kind of joss place to present me to the blessed old black stone there. By this time I was beginning to sort of realise the depth of their ignorance, and directly I set eyes on this deity I ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... course, rejected. After the Senate had refused to recognize the British convention with Honduras of the 27th August, 1856, with full knowledge of its contents, it was impossible for me, necessarily ignorant of "the provisions and conditions" which might be contained in a future convention between the same parties, to sanction them ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... come to sea, and is ignorant of his profession, it appears to be a custom—which I shall take care shall not be followed up—to play him all manner of tricks, and tell him all manner of falsehoods. Now, sir, what have you to say ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... the other, to do evil or to do good. In each case the song and the pure heart of the singer turn the scale in the right direction; but Pippa knows nothing of her influence. She enjoys her holiday and goes to bed still happy, still singing, quite ignorant of the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... going to foreign parts; but as he'd always been wild, it was only looked upon as a part of his wildness, and we weren't so much surprised to hear a year or two afterwards that he'd drunk himself to death upon cheap brandy—odyvee as they call it, poor ignorant creatures—at Calais." ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... usually goes with such good breeding. There is no story of him more really characteristic than that of his ceremoniously returning the salute of an aged Negro and saying to a friend who was disposed to deride his actions: "Would you have me let a poor ignorant coloured man say that he had better manners than I?" For the rest the traditional eulogy of his public character is not undeserved. It may justly be said of him, as it can be said of few of the great men who have moulded the destinies of nations, that history can put its fingers on ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... on being painted handsome, and think they shall look better if the artist gives them a little more red and white! Such, for the most part, are the historians of our times, who sacrifice everything to the present moment and their own interest and advantage; who can only be despised as ignorant flatterers of the age they live in; and as men, who, at the same time, by their extravagant stories, make everything which they relate liable to suspicion. If notwithstanding any are still of opinion, that the agreeable should be admitted in history, let them join that which ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... may be colonels in another six months; for when a name is recommended for promotion for good service, by a general, you may well suppose there is no question asked as to his age. Of course, no general would recommend you as captains to command companies in a regiment, because you are altogether ignorant of a captain's duty; but you are quite capable of filling the duties of captain, on the staff, as those duties require only clear headedness, ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... him with a cool little smile. Von Holzen had not come here to talk of Cornish. He had come on purpose to say something which he had not succeeded in saying yet, and she was not ignorant of this. She was going to make it as difficult as possible for him, so that when he at last said what he had come to say, she should know it, and perhaps divine ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... knows it now," he replied, with a troubled countenance. "His mother has written and told him all. We were ignorant ourselves of this, you must recollect, till Richard was able ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... to West Indian prosperity, is that exuberance of advantages which they enjoy from serenity of climate and fertility of soil—causes which, in the absence of proper stimulus to industry and improvement, have led to an improvident system of cultivation, and to a blind and ignorant adherence ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... he declared, "you have said just what could be said from your point of view, and God knows, even now, who is in the right! You are looking at the future with a very full knowledge of many things of which we are all ignorant. You have, quite naturally, too, the politician's hatred of the methods these people propose. I myself am inclined to think that they are a ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the traditions of Brackenfield," she asked, "if you can so far forget yourselves as to descend to such behaviour? One would imagine you were poor ignorant girls who had never been taught better; indeed, many a Sunday-school class would have had more self-respect. Whoever began it"—here she looked hard at Marjorie—"is directly responsible for lowering the tone of the school. Think ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... United States Bank of Pennsylvania had contributed largely to increase the sentiment of distrust by reason of the loss and ruin sustained by the holders of its stock, a large portion of whom were foreigners and many of whom were alike ignorant of our political organization ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... direct question shows his ignorance of his own job. Listen, old thing. Thanks to us, you are now actuating a machine of whose construction you know nothing, that that machine may, over wires of whose ramifications you are, by your very position, profoundly ignorant, deliver a power which you can never realise, to localities beyond the extreme limits of your mental horizon, with the object of producing phenomena which in your wildest dreams (if you ever dream) you could never comprehend. Is that ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... been to Geneva before, and being entirely ignorant of the accommodations afforded by either of these houses of entertainment, Manning, at a hazard, selected the "Geneva Hotel" as his place of abode. Consigning his valise to the care of the waiting porter, he was ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... his own noble sentiments. No general attack was made in revenge for what they saw was the result of misunderstanding, although they were ignorant of the exact circumstances which led, first to the uncommon and extraordinary veneration with which he had been treated, and then to the sudden ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... equally ignorant with Lieutenant Loti but uninstructed evidently, marries a geisha whose father had made the happy dispatch at the request of the Son of Heaven after making a blunder in his military command. She is Cio-Cio-San, also Madama Butterfly, and she comes to her wedding with a bevy of ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... our baggage to file off. General Dulauloy had entrusted the operation to Colonel Montford. The Colonel, instead of remaining on the spot to direct it, and to give the signal, ordered a corporal and four sappers to blow up the bridge the instant the enemy should appear. The corporal, an ignorant fellow, and ill comprehending the nature of the duty with which he was charged, upon hearing the first shot discharged from the ramparts of the city, set fire to the fougades and blew up the bridge. A part of the army was still on the other side, with a park of 80 pieces ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... these notes, that student of etymology may read the criticisms of so able a man. Dean Trench is taken to task for a misuse of every where in making two words of it. Landor puts the question, "Is the Dean ignorant that everywhere is one word, and where is no substantive?" Trench asserts that caprice is from capra, "a goat," whereupon his critic says, "No,—then it would be capracious. It is from caper—capere." To retract, writes Trench, means properly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of Earl of Chester), and the Earl of Kent, "queux nous volons que soent sauuez si auant come home poet." According to Froissart, the Queen's company could not make the port they intended, and landed on the sands, whence after four days they marched (ignorant of their whereabouts) till they sighted Bury Saint Edmunds, where they remained three days. Miss Strickland tells a rather striking tale of the tempestuous night passed by the Queen under a shed of driftwood ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... this or that vulgarian (men began to say) exercise (and boast of!) the power to keep the people ignorant upon matters vital to us all? To distort, to lie? The sheer necessity of getting certain truths told, which these powerful but hidden fellows refused to tell, was a force working at high potential and almost compelling the ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... principles with which he justified his takeover?—He takes good care not to repudiate them; it would drive the already rebellious provinces to extremes; on the contrary, he proclaims them with renewed vigor, through which move the ignorant crowd, seeing the same flask always presented to it, imagines that it is always served with the same liquor, and is thus forced to drink tyranny under the label of freedom. Whatever the charlatan can do with his labels, signboards, shouting and lies for the next ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... credit for moderation. Those volumes were hailed with exultation by the four or five Old-School papers of our church, and all of them, even the Missionary, invite the continuance of the discussion in pamphlet form. Those publications did not agitate the church, neither will this. That man must be ignorant of human nature, who does not perceive a vast difference between a controversy conducted in the newspapers of the church, and one confined to independent pamphlets or volumes. In the former case, the dispute is ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... were the rains over, but the stakes which I had cut from the trees, shot out like willows the first year after lopping their heads. I was ignorant of the tree I cut them from; but they grew so regularly beautiful, that they made a most lively appearance, and so flourished in three year's time, that I resolved to cut more of them; and these soon growing made a glorious fence, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... and a sack, weighing twenty pounds, was jolted out. Relieved of this weight it rose again, but less powerfully, and Lunardi found himself, a little later, being dragged and bumped along the ground at a great pace. Some ignorant peasants, terrified by the balloon, ran for their guns, and the poor aeronaut was treated to a shower of bullets. Fortunately, the speed soon carried him out of range; then, seizing an opportunity, he leapt ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... tenor's voice is spoilt by affectation, And for the bass, the beast can only bellow; In fact, he had no singing education, An ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow; But being the prima donna's near relation, Who swore his voice was very rich and mellow, They hired him, though to hear him you 'd believe An ass ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... wine-merchant, these open-hearted and knowing young men were considerably taken aback to find a boy of Horace's age and toilet ushered into their august presence. Blandford would have preferred to appear ignorant of the identity of the intruder, but Horace left him no room for that ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... that Norman was ignorant of the fears for Harry, for four lines had been added since Ethel had seen the poem, saying how self- sacrifice sent forth the sailor-boy from home, to the lone watch, the wave and storm, his spirit rising high, ere manhood ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... is like a wound in battle; the shock is so great that for a time it numbs all pain. I have heard my husband say that a soldier who has had his arm carried off by a cannon ball will fall from the shock, and when he recovers consciousness will be ignorant where he has been hit. It is so with you; probably the sense of pain and loss will increase every day as you take it in more and more. As for what you say about the murderer, it will undoubtedly be a good thing for you to have something ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... get into our stride, and the small kitchen turns out its gallons and buckets of liquid. Mrs. —— has been helping me with my work. It is good to see anyone so beautiful in the tiny kitchen, and it is quaint to see anyone so absolutely ignorant of how a pot is washed ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... you what it is," said the first speaker, "you have evidently been taught by some of those wise old know-nothings, who have succeeded in making you as clever as themselves, and it is our intention to show you how ignorant you all are. I think you will believe in fairies before we have done with you. Now, we are gnomes, and have just completed a subterranean passage between here and the land of the ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... pace he did not moderate until he had placed nearly a mile between him and the scene of his adventure; he then paced slowly to regain his breath. His head was in a strange whirl; mischief was threatened against some one of whose name he was ignorant; Squire Egan was declared to be in the power of an old rascal; this grieved Andy most of all, for he felt he was the cause of his old ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... servant I had found apparently asleep, and, unless he acted a part with supreme skill, he was a stupid and ignorant boor, and as innocent of the murder as myself. There was still the Russian princess whom he had expected to find, or had pretended to expect to find, in the same room with the murdered man. I judged that she must now be either upstairs with the servant, or that ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... reforms have also, like Peter the Great's ideas, been imported from the West—from the Far West, the United States. I am sure my fellow-countrymen will be gratified to learn the truth, and I cheerfully accept the risk, and assume that Russia will, in all probability, remain ignorant of my interference! ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... also infer from hence, that should we, out of an ignorant boldness and presumption, attempt, when we have offended, by ourselves to approach the presence of God, God would not accept us. He told Eliphaz so. What Eliphaz thought, or was about to do, I know not; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and his followers, is composed of animals, chiefly of small size, which differ from all others by the peculiarity of their teeth. No one, even though he be most ignorant of comparative anatomy, could mistake the rat or rabbit-like skull of a rodent for that of any other creature. The peculiar pincer-like form of the jaws, with their curved chisel-shaped teeth in front, mark the order at a glance. There ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... think the Miss Murgatroyds might have stepped "right out of Dickens." I was fairly nonplussed, because I thought they were going to say "out of the ark"—you know how one mentally finishes a sentence as soon as it is begun?—and I simply dared not confess that I have not read Dickens! Alas, how ignorant of our own standard literature we are apt to feel when we talk with Americans, and find it completely a part ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... Disappointed in love at the age of twenty-four, Egremont left England, to return after eighteen months' absence a much wiser man. He was now conscious that he wanted an object, and, musing over action, was ignorant how to act. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... not the least reason why either wood, coal, or any other solid fuel should be used for the burning of brick. This style of burning brick belongs to a past age. The art of brickmaking has made tremendous progress during the past quarter of a century. It is no longer the art of the ignorant; brains, capital, experience, science, wide and general knowledge, must in these days be the property of the successful brick manufacturer. There are some such progressive brick manufacturers in Chicago, who use neither coal nor ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... to exhibit some instances of heredity. I have no less than twenty-two families in which this curious tendency is hereditary, and there may be many more of which I am still ignorant. I have found it to extend in at least eight of these beyond the near degrees of parent and child, and brother and sister. Considering that the occurrence is so rare as to exist in only about one in every twenty-five or thirty males, these results are very remarkable, and their ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Jordan? You seen Jud Hopkin's roan go by them fancy Coles mares? Well, well, it done my heart good! This gent Coles comes out of the East to teach us poor ignorant ranchers what right hoss flesh should be. He's going to auction off them half dozen mares after the race. Well, sir, I wouldn't give fifty dollars a head for 'em. Nor neither will nobody else when they see ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... too late," he had told her when the scolding was over. "If I was one of your little scholars hyeh in Bear Creek schoolhouse, yu' could learn me to like such frillery I reckon. But I'm a mighty ignorant, growed-up man." ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... something deeper than the gaiety of which I earlier spoke. Gay she can be, and is, but the spell that all unwittingly she exercises, derives from the profounder depth of which the Eastern poet thought when he said that "We ourselves are Heaven and Hell." . . . Innocent but not ignorant, patient, yet capable of a hearty little grumble at her lot, Pippa is "human to the red-ripe of the heart." She can threaten fictively her holiday, if it should ill-use her by bringing rain to spoil her enjoyment; but even this intimidation is of the very spirit of confiding love, for her threat ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... rubbers, was only really fattening the down-stroke of a letter here and there, or blowing the loose chalk off the rainbow, or toning the outside edge of the shoulder of mutton. Though he did this with the greatest confidence, he did it (as it struck me) in so ignorant a manner, and so spoilt everything he touched, that when he began upon the purple smoke from the chimney of the distant cottage of the proprietor of the golden harvest (which smoke was beautifully ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... in your hands, Bertha, and you carelessly destroyed it, as the child breaks the toy of whose value he is ignorant. What did you expect from this wretch for whom you had the frightful courage to kill me, with a kiss upon your lips, slowly, hour by hour? You thought you loved him, but disgust ought to have come at last. Look at him, and judge between us. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... Montsorel (to the Duchesse de Christoval) And are you also ignorant of the place where he ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... was told of the escape of the party, and that some of them had already been recaptured. It seems that as soon as they got into the street the party dispersed, either singly or in twos and threes; but having neither food nor money, and being quite ignorant of the English language or the localities round Liverpool, they were quite helpless and everywhere betrayed who they were, what they were, and where they came from. Some fell in with the town watchmen; others struck out ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... what we should do with the silver. I was so much interested in the circumstance of our curious discovery of the hidden treasure that the thought of its market value, or of our means of disposing of it, had never entered my head; and I believe Hercus and Rosson were totally ignorant of the fact that our find was really worth more than the mere interest we naturally attached to the articles as curious antiquities. Had I been asked as to the disposal of them, I believe I would have proposed that the whole ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton |
