"Boor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forget, sir, that you address the king?" she cried. "That you are without honor I have heard men say, and I may truly believe it now that I have seen what manner of man you are. The most lowly-bred boor in all Lutha would not be so ungenerous as to take advantage of his king's helplessness to heap ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is a very boor blace for zo famous a bainter. I do not understand it! But I have certainly done goot business ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... the O'Valley Leather Works found his solace in tucking the pound-and-a-half spaniel under his arm and trying to convince himself that he was all wrong and a self-made man must keep a watch on himself lest he become a boor! ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... mistakes kindness for weakness. You must be firm but just. Now you can see why explorers, upon emerging from long stays in the jungle, appear to be rude and ill-mannered. It is simply because they had to be harsh and at times unfeeling, and it becomes a habit. Stanley, for example, was often called a boor and a brute when in reality he was merely hiding a fine nature behind the armour necessary to resist ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... her eyes in troubled question, "When your cousin Eugenie was here, you remember, she talked about it one day. She said we had no right to let Lynn become so attached to a mere country boy who would grow up a boor. She said he had no education, no breeding, no family, and that Lynn had the right to the best social advantages to be had in the world. She said Lynn was a natural born aristocrat, and that we had a great ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... goodwill 'twixt rich and poor! Goodwill and peace 'twixt class and class! Let old with new, let Prince with boor Send round the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... in him the well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down at the inn for addressing her coarsely. A spasm of anguish shot through her, and she returned ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... agitated and flushed countenance as he uttered the words. 'Perhaps,' he sarcastically continued, without giving her time to reply—'perhaps you deem yourself marriageable at the matron-like' age of nineteen, and have selected some country boor for ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... troubadour who knew his business would begin with praises of his beloved; she is physically and morally perfect, her beauty illuminates the night, her presence heals the sick, cheers the sad, makes the boor courteous and so forth. For her the singer's love and devotion is infinite: separation from her would be worse than death; her death would leave the world cheerless, and to her he owes any thoughts ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... defect that I had noted in the modern young woman is not less notable in the modern young man. Briefly, he is a boor. If it is true that 'manners makyth man,' one doubts whether the British race can be perpetuated. The young Englishman of to-day is inferior to savages and to beasts of the field in that they are ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... of people: I am hurt. The gods take part against me, could this Boor Have held me thus else? I must shift for life, Though I do loath it. I would find a course, To lose it, rather by ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... she is; it will do her all the good in the world, as, you see, she is evidently doing good—taming this boor, by all accounts. Nancy is a rank old Tory, and turns up her nose at any one not born in the purple. Times have changed, as Nancy will ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... boy, his grandson, I think he's a boor. Goodness me—I hope nobody will introduce him. I'm sure ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... the monk, colouring with anger at the trick put on him; "what has a boor like thee to do with parables?—But I ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... knew there was no offence in his heart, not the remotest rude intent, but the fact was before me that he had frightened a woman, had given this very lovely guest of my friends good cause to hold him a boor, if she did not, indeed, think him (as she probably thought me) an ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... looking blackguard! He would go for to offer for to presume for to dare to lay hands on an honest man's son's doug! It sets him weel, the bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep—"Ay, Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco fright; but I'll gie them up their fit for't; ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... her peasant sketches was naturally over-estimated by those who, never having studied the class, could not conceive of a peasant except conventionally, as a drunken boor. The very just portrait of Cecilia Boccaferri, the conscientious but obscure artist in Le Chateau des Desertes, might seem over-flattered to such as imagine that all opera-singers must be persons of riotous living. The types she prefers to present, if exceptional, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... been supplanted in Nance's regards, though Nance had never regarded him as anything but a nuisance and a boor. And Julie considered herself scorned and slighted, though Gard had never considered her save as Tom ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... my opportunity. I hurried to the rescue, and, being fluent in German as in several other languages—it is part of my stock in trade—I sharply reproved the guard and called him an unmannerly boor for his cowardly treatment of an unprotected lady. My reward was a sweet smile, and I felt encouraged to hazard a few words in reply to her cordial thanks. She responded quickly, readily, and I thought I might ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... extracts from his speeches. The Democrats were once more a dominating power and their organs naturally attacked the California Senator who defied both President and party; they asserted that Broderick was an ignorant boor, whose speeches were written for him by a journalist named Wilkes. But they did not explain how Broderick more than held his own in extemporaneous debate with the nation's seasoned orators. Many of these would have taken advantage of his inexperience, for he was the second youngest ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... and he thought it a fine thing to stand on a platform of unspoken compact with this gentleman of a social school unfamiliar to him; from which it may be seen that cattle-breeding and bullock-driving need not make a man a boor. What his sisters guessed when they found that Barbara Golding and the visitor were old friends is another matter; but they could not pierce their ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and labouring peasants, live in miserable cabins, which afford them little more than shelter from the storms. The Boor of Norway is said to make all his own utensils. In the Hebrides, whatever might be their ingenuity, the want of wood leaves them no materials. They are probably content with such accommodations as stones of different forms ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... of Norway Cried, "Man, in his coarse, brutal boor-way, Would wipe his big feet On my sex soft and sweet; But I'll be no mere mat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... a boor at Hatfield, and he had three daughters: one hight Deorwyn, the other Deorswith, the third Golde. And Wulflaf at Hatfield has Deorwyn to wife. AElfstan, at Tatchingworth, has Deorswith to wife: and Ealhstan, AElfstan's brother, has Golde to wife. There ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... has changed the spring into that riper summer-time which is on the verge of autumn; and that hour of late sunset which is on the verge of night. Under its rich glow lies the sleeping Iphigenia, draped in folds upon folds of white, and her attendants; while Cymon, who is as unlike the boor of tradition as Spenser's Colin Clout is unlike an ordinary Cumbrian herdsman, stands hard-by, wondering, pensively wrapt in so exquisite a vision. Altogether, a great presentment of an immortal idyll; so treated, indeed, that it becomes much more ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... two years old, Yet so outrageous rank and full was grown That France was wholly overspread with shade, And bitter fruits lay on the untilled ground That stank and bred so foul contagious smells That not a nose in France but stood awry, Nor boor that cried not FAUGH! upon ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... slept not on a watch, always of perilous exposure in one so young and of her sex. On more than one occasion did Ralph, in the course of the dinner, remark the indignant fire flashing from her intelligent eye, when the rude speech of some untaught boor assailed a sense finely-wrought to appreciate the proper boundaries to the always adventurous footstep of unbridled licentiousness. The youth felt assured, from these occasional glimpses, that her education had been derived from a different ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... this policy can only be fully appreciated when standing by the side of the solitary settler's hut in the West, where even an Eastern man has degenerated to a boor in manners, where his children have grown up uneducated, and where the Sabbath has become an unknown day, and religion and its obligations have ceased to exercise control upon the heart ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... the island was even more of a boor than we had anticipated. As soon as he landed he wanted to know what we were doing on his property, and peremptorily ordered us off. Bill answered that we were camping there, and politely asked if we couldn't stay out the summer. But Gill would not listen to the ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... "that was a stroke. Lord, how he will love you when he discovers the trick! What a boor he makes of himself to cover his designs! Here is a bag of trouble, and necessity has forced our hands into it. For all his gruffness and seeming impatience, D'Herouville has never yet made a blunder or ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... gentleman; and on a second occasion shall be born of a princess and shall be a prince, and so on, always rising, till he be absorbed into the Deity. But if he have borne himself ill, he who was the son of a gentleman shall be reborn as the son of a boor, and from a boor shall become a dog, always going down lower ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... better nature visible to the other, and had led to the formation of a friendship full of mutual appreciation of the other's best qualities. Now it is just possible that if they had not known one another, Hawbury might have thought the Baron a boor, and the Baron might have called Hawbury a "thundering snob;" but as it was, the possible boor and the possible snob each thought the other one of the finest fellows in ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... I must not forget to add, that the ruffians left, at a cottage on the roadside, the man whose face was blackened with powder, apparently because he was unable to bear transportation. He died in about half an hour after. On examining the corpse, it proved to be that of a profligate boor in the neighbourhood, a person notorious as a poacher and—smuggler. We I received many messages of congratulation from the neighbouring families, and it was generally allowed that a few such instances of spirited ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the scene before him. Then he took a step forward which brought him perilously near the edge of the steep rock. His lips moved though no sound could be heard for the tumult of the falls which was rending the air. What connection had such a man with his surroundings? No boor or clown was he, for the simple dignity of face and manner marked him as one of ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... coarse Calabrian boor, who pressed His store of pears upon a sated guest, Have you bestowed your favours. "Eat them, pray." "I've done." "Then carry all you please away." "I thank you, no." "Your boys won't like you less For taking home a sack of them, I guess." "I could not thank you more if I took ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... if nothing else, and he had always thought that clumsiness was inexcusable. He had a guilty sense that while Beth was still the little lady to her finger tips, born to a natural nobility, he, the Grand Duke Peter, had been the boor, the vulgar proletarian. The look in her eyes had shamed him as the look in his own eyes had shamed her. She had known what his wooing meant, and it hadn't been what she wanted. The mention of love on lips that kissed as ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... discovered in their search. But when any other student in his search after truth was compelled to cross that hitherto so exemplary student, he immediately became as insolent as if he had been the greatest boor in the country. Till, as he spat out scorn at all who differed from him we always remembered this in A Kempis—'Surely, an humble husbandman that serveth God is better than a proud philosopher that, neglecting himself, laboureth to understand the ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... be too large for it so long as he is a boor and coward, insults our guests, scandalizes us all, shames his sisters, and treats his parents with open scorn. He won't try to be like other people and accept his world as he finds it. His inordinate conceit is a disease. It is eating up his own life and making ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the mission had to contend was the vicinity of the Boers of the Cashan Mountains, otherwise named "Magaliesberg". These are not to be counfounded with the Cape colonists, who sometimes pass by the name. The word Boer simply means "farmer", and is not synonymous with our word boor. Indeed, to the Boers generally the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. Those, however, who have fled from English law on various pretexts, and have been joined by English ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a holiday in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I had lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, I should have grown up an ignorant boor, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... boats, behind lay all our loves and fortunes—was ever Highland heart but swelled on such a time? Sturdy black and hairy scamps the Irish—never German boor so inelegant—but venomous in their courage! Score upon score of them ran in on us through the Arches. Our lads had but one shot from the muskets, then into them with ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... a word and followed the negro maid. Of course the lady thought me a surly boor, but my heart was burning, for I had hoped for a different welcome. As I passed along the hall and up the broad staircase, the thought came to me that all of this would one day be mine, should I choose to claim it, and then, with ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... his clownishness that undid me. When I had played with him and laughed at him for a handful of seconds for the clumsy boor he was, he became so angered that he forgot the worse than little fence he knew. With an arm-wide sweep of his rapier, as though it bore heft and a cutting edge, he whistled it through the air and rapped it down on my crown. I was in amaze. Never had so absurd a thing happened to me. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... proud and disdainful to Fortune's gay child, But to Poverty's offspring submissive and mild; As rude as a boor, and as rough in dispute; Then as for politeness—oh! dear—I'm a brute! I show no respect where I never can feel it; And as for contempt, take no pains to conceal it. And so in the suite, by these laudable ends, I've a great many foes, and a ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... different characters. Sometimes he is an officer with mustaches fiercely twisted, carrying his head with a dashing military air. Again he is a cavalier wearing his velvet mantle, and plumed hat, with the languid elegance of a gentleman of leisure. Sometimes he seems a mere country boor, a rough, unkempt fellow, with coarse features and a ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... I am the Kaiser's servant, And must think of pleasing him. He sent me Not to caress these hinds, to soothe or nurse them: Obedience is the word! The point at issue is Shall Boor or Kaiser here be ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... he said. "I have been doing penance an hour. I am very sorry I was such a boor. I was in earnest when I said I didn't get the gad when I needed it. I had a big disappointment to-day, and I came in sore and cross. I am ashamed of myself, but you will never see me that way again. I know I will make a failure of my profession if I don't ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... style. The poor notary did not dare to press the matter and was compelled to dine, although half dead. His companions were so completely duped by Mauprat's assurance that they ate and drank merrily, treating the notary as a lunatic and a boor. They left Roche-Mauprat all drunk, singing the praises of their host, and laughing at the notary, who fell down dead upon the threshold of his house on ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... voice exclaimed; "Your rustic garb is much too poor; How comes it, you are not ashamed In such a place to play the boor? From company like this withdraw! Obey the ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... all classes of old Rome, were equally available among ourselves. The conquerors of the world introduced their baths wherever they established their power; but we have repudiated the blessings of water in such a form, and now the Russian boor and the Finnish peasant, the Turk, the Egyptian, the basest of people, and the barbarians of Africa, shame even the inhabitants of England's metropolis; for every where but in our land, though the duty of cleanliness may not be enjoined as next to godliness, as with us, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... his eyebrows, Lane signified that he would make no attempt at detaining the doctor longer than he wished to stay. He awaited punctiliously the other man's pleasure, silently emphasising that the interview was not of his bringing about. "Thinks I'm a boor and a brute," ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... two cotton umbrellas, rasped his chair over the bare boor into a corner of the room, and sat hunched over an imaginary rat hole, for all the world like a gawky Quaker apprentice. And this was a candidate for the Senate of the United States, who on the morrow was to meet in debate ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a marriage? I found, before long, that I was married to a boor. She could not comprehend one subject that interested me. Her dullness palled upon me till I grew to loathe it. And after some time of a wretched, furtive union—I must tell you all —I found letters somewhere (and such letters they were!) which showed me ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not pretty, but she had an expressive original little face and her manners were charming. Janet Oglethorpe was a boor beside her. It was doubtful if she had ever been aggressive in manner or rude in her life; although she never hesitated to give utterance to the extremest of her opinions or to maintain them to the bitter end (when she sometimes sped home to have hysterics on her husband's broad chest). ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... man behave in a rude and uncivil manner to his father or mother, his brothers or sisters, his wife or children; or fail to exercise the common courtesies of life at his own table and around his own fireside, you may at once set him down as a boor, whatever pretensions he may ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... he vill do vat you dell him," put in Schmucke; "he vants to lif for his boor friend Schmucke's sake, I'll ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... this thing grow in his imagination; but oh, if it had but come a bit sooner! If it had only been on the way over to the Y.M.C.A. hut instead of on the way back that letter would never have been written! She would have set him down as a boor perhaps, but what matter? What was she to him, or he to her? Well—perhaps he would have written a letter briefly to thank her for her offer of knitting, but it would have been an entirely different letter from the one he did write. He ground his teeth as he thought ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... great causeway was the only plan. A weird scene it was on the beginning of that Noche Triste—the sorrowful night—which stands forth so unforgetably in the history of the Conquest. Disorder everywhere; piles of gold and valuables upon the floor, each Spaniard, whether cavalier or boor, loading himself with what he thought he could carry. "Pocket what you can," Cortes said, "but recollect that gold is heavy and we have to travel swiftly"—grave advice, the neglect of which cost some their lives ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... reader, do not suppose that I mean any disrespect to Mynheer Von Bloom, by calling him a "boor." In our good Cape colony a "boor" is a farmer. It is no reproach to be called a farmer. Von Bloom was one—a Dutch ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... have heard and seen, we entertain little doubt that there are men capable of asking such a question; but we know no way of answering it but by asking in return why an Esquimaux Indian should not compose an overture equal to any of Handel's, or a Dutch boor dance a pas seul as well as Vestris, or a minuet as well as the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... ears I kissed her once more. Had she not at that smiled at me a little, I should have been a boor, I admit. As she did—and as I in my innocence supposed all girls did—I presume I may be called but a man as men go. Miss Grace grew very rosy for a Sheraton, but her eyes were bright. So I threw my hat on the grass by ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... with his large hands and heavy ways! She had laughed at him ever since she could remember, and had ordered him about much as though he were a faithful dog always ready to do her bidding; but she had never quite realized what a clumsy boor he was till their handsome, dark-faced Trevlyn cousin had come amongst them, with his earnest eyes, his graceful movements, and his slim, attractive person. Cuthbert's manners, that in fine society would have been called rustic ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of nations depends more on them than on the intellect of its kings and legislators. A civil war in America will end in shaking the world; and that war may be caused by the vote of some ignorant prize-fighter or crazed fanatic in a city or in a Congress, or of some stupid boor in an obscure country parish. The electricity of universal sympathy, of action and reaction, pervades everything, the planets and the motes in the sunbeam. FAUST, with his types, or LUTHER, with his sermons, worked greater results than Alexander or Hannibal. A single thought ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... "I have acted towards you like a boor and a ruffian, as indeed I am; but let this plead for me, that I have ever been used to the roughness of the camp, bereft of gentler ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... there, whose friend he was or what acquaintance brought him, Martin did not know. Nor had he the curiosity to inquire about him of Ruth. In short, Brissenden struck Martin as anaemic and feather-brained, and was promptly dismissed from his mind. An hour later he decided that Brissenden was a boor as well, what of the way he prowled about from one room to another, staring at the pictures or poking his nose into books and magazines he picked up from the table or drew from the shelves. Though a stranger in the house he finally isolated himself in the midst of the company, huddling ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... consulting their own consciousness, the fact now in dispute appears to some persons self-evident. But in matters of such high abstraction as this, even the evidence of self-evidence must not be relied upon too implicitly. To the country boor it appears self-evident that wood is annihilated by combustion; and even to the mind of the greatest philosophers of antiquity it seemed impossible to doubt that the sun moved over a stationary earth. Much more, therefore, may our broad distinction between ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... youthful friend, abjure These tricks that smack of Cleon and the tanners; And let the Dutch instruct a German Boor In manners. ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... Went plodding home a weary boor A streak of light before him lay, Fallen through a half-shut stable-door Across his path. He passed—for naught Told what was going on within; How keen the stars, his only thought; The air how calm and cold and thin, In the solemn midnight, ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... no truth in it," with a light, scornful laugh. "The families are neighbors, you know; and I suppose the boor takes a look for encouragement. I shall not go away this summer. I ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... air; creatures, in fine, more various and diverse than imagination, before the fact, could conceive. Yet, throughout this astonishing, inconceivable variety, science walks in steady perception of a unity extending far toward details of structure. The boor laughs, when told that the forefoot of his horse and his own hand are essentially the same member. A "Positive Philosopher" laughs, when told that through Fetichism and Lutheranism there runs a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... if the advice of your learned physician should recommend a tour to these parts. Several curiosities have been lately dug up near the wall, as well as at the ancient station of Habitancum. Talking of the latter, I suppose you have long since heard the news, that a sulky churlish boor has destroyed the ancient statue, or rather bas-relief, popularly called Robin of Redesdale. It seems Robin's fame attracted more visitants than was consistent with the growth of the heather, upon a moor worth a shilling an acre. Reverend as you write yourself, be revengeful for once, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... familiar with standards of comparison at the North of which she need not be ashamed. Even her mother and sister had remarked, in effect, "It is evident that Captain Lane has been accustomed to the best society." His esteem was not the gaping admiration of a boor to whom she ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... at knucklebones with other boys in a narrow street, and when his turn came to throw, a loaded waggon was passing. He at first ordered the driver to stop his team because his throw was to take place directly in the path of the waggon. Then as the boor who was driving would not stop, the other children made way; but Alkibiades flung himself down on his face directly in front of the horses, and bade him drive on at his peril. The man, in alarm, now stopped his ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... the keyhole, outside which she waited and listened. It was long before he would reply, and when he did it was to say sternly at her from within: 'I am ashamed of you! It will ruin me! A miserable boor! a churl! a clown! It will degrade me in the eyes of all the gentlemen ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... gleam of satire stole into Rutli's light eyes. "My sweetheart, ven I vos dinks det, is der miller engaged do bromply! It is mooch better dan to a man dot vos boor and plint and grazy! So! Vell, der next day I pids dem goot-py, und from der door I say, 'I am det now; but ven I next comes pack alife, I shall dis village py! der lants, der houses all togedders. And den ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... The gallant caitiff, Noticing the swain is poor (Courtesy with him is native, Not like you, suburban boor), Bows, and says in accents sunny, 'Pass along, Sir—make good speed; I'm convinced you've got no money And I do not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... admiring eyes of men may not depart one step from the straight and narrow path, but her husband's honor stands ever within the pale of danger. Let that husband whose courtship ceased at Hymen's shrine, who is a gallant abroad and a boor at home, keep watch and ward, for homage is sweet even ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... will be nothing difficult to do in this case. Gorgibus is a simpleton, a boor, who will readily believe everything you say, provided you speak to him of Hippocrates, of Galen, and that you ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... ideal; and those Parisian Sundays passed in strolling through noisy village streets depressed her beyond measure. Her only pleasure in those throngs was the consciousness of being stared at. The veriest boor's admiration, frankly expressed aloud at her side, made her smile all day; for she was of those who ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... touched them, as the precious drugs sweated through the bat's handle in the Arabian story. I tell you he is at home wherever he smells the invigorating fragrance of Russia leather. No self-made man feels so. One may, it is true, have all the antecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor or a shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them change places. Our social arrangement has this great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as they change specific gravity, without being clogged by layers of prescription. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... my thoughts dropped back to the evening before, and I went over word for word every careless phrase she had spoken. Was she merely kind to the boor in her house? or had there been a deeper meaning in her divine smile—in her suddenly lifted eyes? "O Ben Starr, you have won!" she had said, and had the thrill in her voice, the tremor of her bosom under its fall of lace, meant that her heart was touched? Modest or humble I had ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... his big jaw dropping. Stupid boor that he was, he could not have explained the terrifying effect which this wild music and those tense, uplifting faces had upon him, but he would have given anything to be back in his mother's kitchen, with the lamp lit and the dark, unfamiliar night ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... nothing else outstanding might quench that craving definitively, or be rational in se. No otherness being left to annoy us, we should sit down at peace. In other words, as the theoretic tranquillity of the boor results from his spinning no further considerations about his chaotic universe, so any datum whatever (provided it were simple, clear, and ultimate) ought to banish puzzle from the universe of the philosopher and confer peace, inasmuch as there would ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... wold in Vester Haf, There builds a boor his hold; And thither he carries hawk and hound, ...
— Ellen of Villenskov - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... what had everybody else said about her? Why should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last obliged tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted? And he had been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and risked his life, to prove what? What had he proved? Nothing? What would the people say? What would his friends say? ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... that stiff-necked old watch-dog callously laying his corns so that Stewart Morrison would appear to be boor enough to allow a young lady to wait along with that unspeakable rabble; and when he did come he would arrive in his shirt-sleeves to be matched up against a handsome young man in an Astrakhan top-coat! ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... a colonist and a member of the dominant caste. He troubled himself as little about the welfare of the remains of the old Celtic population, as an English farmer on the Swan River troubles himself about the New Hollanders, or a Dutch boor at the Cape about the Caffres. The years which he passed in Ireland, while the Cromwellian system was in full operation, he always described as "years of great satisfaction." Farming, gardening, county business, and studies rather entertaining than profound, occupied his time. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Through these latter days, during which the scales had been dropping from his eyes in spite of prejudice, he had been forced into a grudging admiration of the man's capability. Brayley could read little and spell less; he was a clown and a boor in the matter of the finer, exacting social traditions; but he could run a cattle-range, and he read his men as other men read books. Conniston realized suddenly, shocked with the realization, that in Brayley there was that same sort of thing which he had come to respect in ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... Spartans led to fight, And made them conquer in the muse's right; So would our poet lead you on this day, Showing your tortured fathers in his play. To one well-born the affront is worse, and more, When he's abused, and baffled by a boor: With an ill grace the Dutch their mischiefs do, They've both ill-nature and ill-manners too. Well may they boast themselves an ancient nation, For they were bred ere manners were in fashion; And their new commonwealth has set them free, Only from honour and civility. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... hand over both of hers, clasped in her lap. "I know," I acknowledged repentantly, "and—people do queer things when it is moonlight. The moon has got me to-night, Alison. If I am a boor, remember ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... boor (he reflected) was Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, confessedly the social triumph of his generation! This imbecile, without a syllable to say for himself, without a solitary adroit word within tongue's reach, wherewith to annihilate the hussy, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... torpid shoal of jest and anecdote, 410 Like those queer fish that doze the droughts away, And wait for moisture, wrapped in sun-baked clay; This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his task, Perched in the corner on an empty cask, By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some boor Rattled a double-shuffle on the floor; "Hull's Victory" was, indeed, the favorite air, Though "Yankee Doodle" claimed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... "Mad'ur." In this form it is no dictionary word, but under the root "D'r" I find in the Muhit: "wa 'l-'amatu takulu fulanun da'irun ya'ni ghalizun jafin" the common people say such a one is "daiir," i.e., rude, churlish. "Mad'ur" may be a synonym and rendered accordingly: as though thou wert a boor or clown.—ST] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... woman's lover! It was too amazing. Brangwen went home despising himself for his own poor way of life. He was a clod-hopper and a boor, dull, stuck in the mud. More than ever he wanted to clamber out, to this ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... this: Sir Henry Clinton received me like a gentleman, but as soon as Sir Peter had retired he listened to me as though I were demented when I exposed my plan to burn New York and take the field. I say he used me with scant civility, and bowed me out, like the gross boor he is!" ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the sun and made to laugh rainbows. The country of the Fertile Plain of Sweet Flags was transformed. It suddenly became the land wherein gods grew not singly but in whole forests. Like the Shulamite, when introduced among the jewelled ladies of Solomon's harem, so stood the boor amid the sheen and gold of ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... lady-love As ever clipt in arms a noble knight? Am I not blithe as bird the live-long day? It pleases me to bear what you call pain, Therefore to me 'tis pleasure: joy and grief Are the will's creatures; martyrs kiss the stake— The moorland colt enjoys the thorny furze— The dullest boor will seek a fight, and count His pleasure by his wounds; you must forget, love, Eve's curse lays suffering, as their natural lot, On womankind, till custom makes it light. I know the use of pain: bar not the leech Because his cure is bitter—'Tis such medicine Which breeds ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... knew in his heart now that the girl's father had meant nothing of the kind. Of course the girl had forgotten him long since. If he ever came to her mind as a fugitive memory it would be in the guise of a churlish boor as impossible ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... herself as old. And she was old. And Amy had the tricks and manners of an old spinster. Thus the excitement in the house was an 'old' excitement, and, like Constance's desire to look smart, it had its ridiculous side, which was also its tragic side, the side that would have made a boor guffaw, and a hysterical fool cry, and a wise man meditate sadly upon the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... a few days ago this boor hed the ashoorence to write to the Georgy Convenshun that it 'must not'—mark the term—'MUST NOT assoom the confedrit war debt.' Is a tailor to say 'must not' to shivelrus Georgy? Good God!—where are we driftin? ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... already observed, with difficulty and labour. A native only of the mountain district could obtain from the lips of the people their sacred and well-preserved lore, and even he not easily. The tales were narrated from time to time in the spinning-room, or in the so-called "Hell" of the boor or weaver, without any determinate connexion. The listener gathered mere fragments, and these not fully, when, thrown off his guard, he ventured to interrupt the speaker. Each narrator conceives his tale differently, and one individual is apt to garnish the experience of many, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... harp, So must I play upon his prejudice, Which finds no virtue in politic foes, And thus shall shrewdness do its perfect work. But Seldonskip? I love this hombre not. He looketh on our race with proud disdain, Hence I with poison must sour Francos' mind, That he but vileness in this boor shall see. Some men, I ween, would tread in virtue's path, Unless strong passion, born of love intense, Should goad them to stretch out a greedy hand, And grasp from beauty's bough forbidden fruit. For lechery, like plaster ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... which is, mentioning any particular quality as absolutely essential to either man or woman, and exploding all those who want it. This renders every one uneasy who is in the least self-conscious of the defect. I have heard a boor of fashion declare in the presence of women remarkably plain, that beauty was the chief perfection of that sex, and an essential without which no woman was worth regarding; a certain method of putting all those in the room, who are but ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... father's wheat-bread. The poet, on observing the hare come bleeding past him, "was in great wrath," said Thomson, "and cursed me, and said little hindered him from throwing me into the Nith; and he was able enough to do it, though I was both young and strong." The boor of Nithside did not use the hare worse than the critical Dr. Gregory, of Edinburgh, used the Poem: when Burns read his remarks he said, "Gregory is a good man, but he ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... a ruffian, and had found a boor; but she was to be convinced that the ruffian existed in him. Notice came up to the castle of a convoy of waggons, and all was excitement. Men-at-arms were mustered, horses led down the Eagle's Ladder, and an ambush prepared in ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... away Went plodding home a weary boor: A streak of light before him lay, Fall'n through a half-shut stable door Across his path. He passed—for naught Told what was going on within; How keen the stars! his only thought; The air how calm and cold and thin, In the solemn midnight ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the English. I dare say there is some truth in it, but for my own part I would rather be cheated by a friendly fellow who gives you a cheery word and a bright look than receive exact value for my money from the "plain blunt" boor who seldom has the common politeness to ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Nero. "What do you mean, Arsenius? I tell you that the fellow was an ignorant upstart, with the bearing of a boor and the voice of a peacock. I tell you also that there are a good many who are as guilty as he among the people, for I heard them with my own ears raise cheers for him when he had sung his ridiculous ode. I have half a mind to burn their town about their ears so that they ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... toward her, "will you always be thus cruel? Do you not understand that in this world you are the only thing I care for? You think me a boor; perhaps I am,—and yet it rests with you, my Lady, to make me what you will. For I love ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... give him a regular liberal Education, it is one hundred to one, but he turns out a Gentleman of Merit, Learning, Worth, and Politeness; whereas it would certainly require more than Herculean Labour to chissel a French Paisan, a primitive Westmoreland, or Devonshire Boor, not only into the Form of an elegant, but even into that of a ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... chute—and it's all they do know how to do—they used to git two and a half a day to my six, but this way we both git just the same. I says something about it didn't seem right to me, and one them Hunnyacks called me a boor-jaw. Well, then I talked to ...
— The Gibson Upright • Booth Tarkington
... at him for a moment, puzzled and a little angry, and he guessed her thoughts. He was behaving like a boor; but it was better that she should ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... recent period. Gallenga says: "The destruction of the majestic timber [between the Vals Sesia and Sessera] dates no farther back than 1848, when, on the first proclamation of the Constitution, the ignorant boor had taken it for granted that all the old social ties would be loosened, and therefore the old forest-laws should be at once set at naught."—Country ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... violent outbreak. It was quite possible that Perkins and others would take him for a chicken-hearted fool, but all the same he would maintain this attitude of resolute self-control to the very end. After all, what mattered the silly gibes of an ignorant boor? And when his term was done he would abandon the farm life forever. It took but little calculation to make quite clear that there was not much to hope for in the way of advancement from farming in this part of Canada. Even Perkins, who received the very highest wage in that ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... still in Hemskerck's Quaker Meeting, (16) face By face in Flemish detail, we may trace How loose-mouthed boor and fine ancestral grace ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... was different from his father in capacity as a drudging clerk, like Boutwell, is different from a brilliant financier like Gladstone. In organization he differed from him as a boor differs from a gentleman. He seemed made of a coarser clay. The difference between them is well indicated by their tastes at the table. Both were terrible gluttons, a fact which puritanic criticism might set down as equally to the discredit of each of them. But even in intemperance ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... through the high crevice that was his window the sounds of life outside smote upon his ear. The noise of the city seemed to become all revel. Some one under the walls laughed—the hearty, raucous laugh of the care-free boor. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... checks himself, saying, I forgot, you never touch the 'after-feed.' Then he throws up both eyes and hands, and affects to look aghast at the mistake. 'Really,' he says, 'I shall soon become us much of a boor as the people of this country. I hear nothing now but mowing, browsing, and 'after-feed,' until at last I find myself using the latter word for 'dessert.' He says it prettily and acts it well, and although his wife has often listened to the same ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... republicanism, while Goethe is slightly sniffed at for his snobbishness. Yet he was only behaving as a gentleman should. If Mozart had been in Beethoven's place, how courtly would have been the bow of the little, graceful Austrian composer! No, Beethoven was a boor, a clumsy one, and this quality abides in his music—for music is always the man. Put Beethoven in America in the present time and he would have developed into a dangerous anarchist. Such a nature matures rapidly, and a century might have marked the evolution from a despiser ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... slightest interest to me," she returned, "whom you're rude to, or how you spend your spare time. The habits of an ill-mannered boor are not of great importance, are they?" She turned her back on him, and parted the undergrowth with her hands, preparatory ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... explanation. What you did was the act of a boor—and a fool,' says the dame, 'n' ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... not abide in meat. A fat man is merely a fat animal. A lofty soul abhors fat. A healthy stomach and normality denote merely the average mortal and the average mortal is nothing but a boor." ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... sound argument against the suffrage of women in a democracy. There are a hundred arguments for it. The question now is one of organization, of agitation, of perseverance. In my judgment he who sneers at suffrage not only proclaims himself a boor and casts discredit on at least four women—his mother, his wife, his sister and his daughter—but he reveals a depth of ignorance that is pitiable. Let the appeal be to experience. Not one of the direful consequences predicted has come to pass where suffrage is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... his fellow-officers, while I went on questioning my cousin as to the Wynnes to their uttermost generation. Either he cared little about them, or he knew little, for he seemed much to prefer to tell queer stories about the court ladies, and my Lord Chesterfield's boor of a son, who had such small manners and such a large appetite, and of Sir Guy Carleton, whom he was about to join in Canada. He advised me to get a pair of colours as my aunt had once desired, and seemed surprised when I paraded my friend Mr. Wilson's opinions as my own, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Councillor Kirst in Wuensch Street, Rose and Mary, two wide-awake, mischievous lassies who are the heroines of the book. Young Ernst von Schiller, the second son of the prematurely deceased poet, is their playmate; they make fun of August von Goethe as he goes a-wooing; they quarrel with the sour-visaged boor, Arthur Schopenhauer, as they go in and out of his mother's house, the novelist's; old Madam Kummerfeld, a former actress who in her youth had as Juliet inspired the Leipsic student Goethe, is their teacher in the art of sewing as well as making a courtly bow—which latter accomplishment they ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... is it right To leave a brother in such a plight as this— Either to imitate your courtesy, Or by your act to be adjudged a boor? ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... was fixed for the descent of the fire-ships. So soon as it should be dark, the thirty-two lesser burning-vessels, under the direction of Admiral Jacob Jacobzoon, were to be sent forth from the neighborhood of the 'Boor's Sconce'—a fort close to the city walls—in accordance with the Italian's plan. "Run-a-way Jacob," however, or "Koppen Loppen," had earned no new laurels which could throw into the shade that opprobrious appellation. He was not one of Holland's naval heroes, but, on the whole, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ever I was in. For myself I don't much care, for they've paid a price for my carcase. I didn't tell you, did I, that the mob set on them as they haled us here and pulled four wounded men and those who carried them to bits? Oh! yes, they have paid a price, a very good price for a Frisian boor ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... it was in the tree, and he had not been there for a week! Why had he not thought of it before? The fault was his, not hers. Perhaps she had gone away, believing him faithless, or a country boor. ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... address—mail reaches me from time to time, by aforesaid vessel—is P.O. Box 14, Blue Harbor, Me. ME stands for Mid Equator, but the abbreviation is sufficient. Blue Harbor is my own literal translation of the native Bluar Boor. Box 14 refers to the native system of delivering messages. P.O. has, I think, something to do with the P. & O. steamers, which, however, do not very ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... longing to fulfil their destiny of adorning the neck of Beauty. Amulya, my boy, don't you look at these with your fleshly eye, they are Lakshmi's smile, the gracious radiance of Indra's queen. No, no, I can't give them up to that boor of a manager. I am sure, Amulya, he was telling us lies. The police haven't traced the man who sank that boat. It's the manager who wants to make something out of it. We must get those letters ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... and went up to the easel. I was not an artist nor a critic, nor in any way qualified to be a judge of painting as painting; but of genius, who is not a judge? In any art it is recognisable, patent, obvious to all. There is no human clod, no boor who is utterly insensible to its influence. It needs no education to perceive its presence, though the ignorant could not tell you what that presence was. Genius is as the sun itself: as universally perceptible. Even the rustic clown feels the sun ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... gypsy!" she exclaimed, suddenly resuming her old wild manner, "why did you not prize it yourself? He has told me all about the romantic scenes of the academy,—he says you transformed him from a rough boor into a feeling, tender-hearted man,—that you stole into his very inmost being, like the breath of heaven, and made the barren wilderness blossom like the rose. Ah! you ought to hear how beautifully he talks of you. But I am not jealous ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... orchestra. The place is something like the Gaiety Theatre at Simla, enlarged twenty times. The "Light Brigade" of Buffalo occupy the boxes and the stage, "as it was at Simla in the days of old," and the others sit in the parquet. Here I went with a friend—poor or boor is the man who cannot pick up a friend for a season in America—and here was shown the really smart folk of the city. I grieve to say I laughed, because when an American wishes to be correct he sets himself to imitate the Englishman. This he does vilely, and ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po; Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor Against the houseless stranger shuts the door; Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies, 5 A weary waste expanding to the skies: Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart untravell'd fondly turns to thee; Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, And drags at each ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... doors of respectability and honor turn on silver hinges. Gravity relaxes, fashion gives way, beauty smiles, and talent defers, before the man of money. He may be an ignoramus, but he possesses the golden alphabet. He may be a boor, but Plutus lends a charm which eclipses the grace of Apollo. He may have accumulated his wealth in a way which would make an intelligent hyena ashamed of himself, but he has accumulated it, and the past is forgotten. I do not mean to say that, as the general rule, wealth is ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin |
