"Boorish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proceeded to further lengths. They took upon themselves to appoint a high priest; selected a family which had no claim whatever to the distinction and, drawing lots among them, chose as high priest one Phannias—a country priest, ignorant, boorish, and wholly unable to discharge the function of the office. Hitherto, the people had submitted to the oppression of the Zealots, but this desecration of the holy office filled them with rage and indignation; and Ananus—the oldest of the chief priests, a man of piety and ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... General Butler, for a verbal infelicity in an order of imperative necessity and wholesome effect, has been befouled by language which no careful historian would apply to Tiberius or Louis XV. But enough of this. We should be glad to believe that these utterers of false witness were boorish men, in dark and desperate ignorance of the true bearing of our current affairs. We ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... nothing gives you uneasiness which you do not miss. That was a fine answer of Sophocles to a man who asked him, when in extreme old age, whether he was still a lover. "Heaven forbid!" he replied; "I was only too glad to escape from that, as though from a boorish and insane master." To men indeed who are keen after such things it may possibly appear disagreeable and uncomfortable to be without them; but to jaded appetites it is pleasanter to lack than to enjoy. However, he cannot be said to lack ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... countries, the large cities absorb the wealth and fashion of the nation; they are the only fixed abodes of elegant and intelligent society, and the country is inhabited almost entirely by boorish peasantry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis is a mere gathering-place, or general rendezvous, of the polite classes, where they devote a small portion of the year to a hurry of gayety and dissipation, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... of back and even to the curl of his hair that cast its dancing shadows upon the wall in front of him. She had never had a man turn his back on her this way, and yet now the accomplished deed struck her in nowise as boorish or rude. He had paid her the tribute of a deep admiration, as clear and strong and unsullied as a racing mountain stream in spring time. The few words which he deemed necessary had passed between them. Then he had withdrawn ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... ladies' man. The presence of women always disconcerted him, and made him feel awkward and boorish. He had been too much of a student in higher art to acquire the smaller art of the drawing-room. He felt ill at ease in society, and seemed to have a fatal predilection for saying the wrong thing, and suffered the ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... lowest class emigrate to more favoured provinces, since their own is too poor to support them; they work hard, and return with their savings to their native hills. Their fellow-countrymen consider them boorish in manners, uneducated, and of a low class; but they are good-natured and docile, hard-working, temperate, and honest. "In your life," wrote the Duke of Wellington, "you never saw anything so bad as the Galicians; and yet they ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Clo. He sir, that must marrie this woman: Therefore you Clowne, abandon: which is in the vulgar, leaue the societie: which in the boorish, is companie, of this female: which in the common, is woman: which together, is, abandon the society of this Female, or Clowne thou perishest: or to thy better vnderstanding, dyest; or (to wit) ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... countrymen, who had entered from the New Sanderson car, and sat next the German woman, eyed him at the gesture, and their eyes fell with a sort of dull dissent upon his handsome coat. One said something to the other, and both laughed with boorish malice. Then one, after glancing at the conductor, whose back was turned as he talked to one of the pretty girls with pompadours, bent his head hastily to the floor. Then he scraped his foot, and looked aloft with an innocent and unconcerned ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Retreat the Prince marching back, lay for some time among the Boors, who from the good Discipline, which he took care to make his Troops observe, did not give us their customary boorish Reception. And yet as secure as we might think our selves, I met with a little Passage that confirm'd in me the Notions, which the generality as well as I, had imbib'd of the private Barbarity of those People, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... could not produce a Moliere, a Racine, a Rousseau, a Voltaire, a Massillon, a Beaumarchais, or a Diderot, people must make up their minds to it, and accept the fact that great men had upholsterers and clockmakers and cutlers for their fathers. She said that genius was always noble. She railed at boorish squires for understanding their real interests so imperfectly. In short, she talked a good deal of nonsense, which would have let the light into heads less dense, but left her audience agape at her eccentricity. And in ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... improvement in this respect, but the Custom-house above all others would do well to take example from the United States and render itself somewhat less odious and offensive to foreigners. The servile rapacity of the French officials is sufficiently contemptible; but there is a surly boorish incivility about our men, alike disgusting to all persons who fall into their hands, and discreditable to the nation that keeps such ill-conditioned ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... insolence and overwhelmed in rebellion. It is your own forefather, MacIan with the broken sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is Charles refusing to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary of the magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the boorish moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet, giving his crown to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is Arthur, overwhelmed in Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in the mist, doubtful if ever ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... boorish hayseeds from out of town trying to sell their produce, unaccustomed to the fashionable Latin-Greek speech of the city folks, gaping with their mouths wide open, greedily at the steaks of sacrificial meat displayed behind enlarging glasses in the cheap cook shop windows. There ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... and Chaos, and Air, I have not seen any man so boorish, nor so impracticable, nor so stupid, nor so forgetful; who, while learning some little petty quibbles, forgets them before he has learned them. Nevertheless I will certainly call him out here to the light. Where is Strepsiades? Come ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... it was an occasion when it would have been boorish in me to refuse to meet them halfway. I even told them an excellent wheeze I had long known, which I thought they might not, have heard. It runs: "Why is Charing Cross? Because the Strand runs into it." I mean to say, this is comic providing one enters wholly into the spirit ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... once said that, if I grew ashamed of my people, ashamed even of their boorish manners, their ignorance, their crudity, you would have no ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... whether Josephine is prouder of Fred or of David. Certainly her mind is comparatively at rest regarding them both, notwithstanding my second troy is not quite like other people. I do not mean that he is boorish or eccentric, merely that he is bookish and self-absorbed. He takes no interest in his personal appearance, and he avoids every young woman except his sisters. Fred is dandified, keenly fond of ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... upset; she would eat no supper, but began to cry. "What are you worrying about?" quoth I to this excitable young person. "Don't you see that we are stopping the night on the estates of the Princess Palatine,—[The boorish Bavarian princess, the Duc d'Orleans's second wife. EDITOR'S NOTE.]—and that it is to her exquisite breeding that we owe compliments ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... am I—that same Boorish animal you know; That gross, trampling brute am I Of your sly ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... of Christianization mellows those in manner whom it cannot mend in mind, much the same will it prove with the progress of genialization. And so, thanks to geniality, the misanthrope, reclaimed from his boorish address, will take on refinement and softness—to so genial a degree, indeed, that it may possibly fall out that the misanthrope of the coming century will be almost as popular as, I am sincerely sorry to say, some philanthropists of the present time ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... change your ways once you come under my jurisdiction. We have a reputation to sustain in this establishment, young man. You would have to try and be a gentleman here. Take a lesson from my son, who so nobly forgave your boorish actions, and hearing that you and your mother were in want kindly interceded with me to forget the past. I cannot disappoint such a charitable spirit, and I am about to take you into my employ at the advice of Ferdinand. Can you start ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... will generally heed such hints, which a moment's reflection will teach him are meant to preserve the library book clean and presentable for his own use, as well as for that of others. But there will always be some rude, boorish people who will persist in their brutal and destructive treatment of books, in the face of whatever warnings. How to deal with such unwelcome persons is an ever-present problem with the librarian. If sustained by the other library authorities, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... my words with a cooing laugh, and taking my consent for granted, curled herself up in a corner of the sofa. I resumed my seat with a sigh. It would have been boorish ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... considered decidedly boorish to utter complaints against the ladies. But I am for the present a bachelor, and in that capacity claim freedom of speech as my peculiar privilege. In virtue of my unhappy position, then, I proceed to utter the first of a series of savage growls, wishing the ladies to understand ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... was a learned Frisian, born, according to some writers, of "boors' degree, but having no inclination for boorish work". According to other authorities, which the President himself favored, he was of noble origin; but, whatever his race, it is certain that whether gentle or simple, it derived its first and only ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, by far the greater part of the English people would have preferred, to the having a petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty, rapacity, boorish manners, and odious foreign ways, a thousand stories were current. It wounded our English pride to think, that a shabby High-Dutch duke, whose revenues were not a tithe as great as those of many ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mrs. Davis nor any other American woman made such "demand." Perhaps he did not know it,—if it be possible for the editor of such a quintessential extract of utter idiocy to know anything—but couldn't resist the boorish impulse to insult an aged woman, because he's built that way. The case of Senorita Cisneros appealed to the sympathy of every manly man and noble woman throughout the world—to every living creature ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and Irish inhabit their own separate quarters and frequent their own separate haunts, there are many other lines of division. Nowhere in the world are there sharper, crueller distinctions of riches and poverty, of intelligence and boorish-ness, of beauty and ugliness. How, indeed, shall you find a formula for a city which contains within its larger boundaries Fifth Avenue and the Bowery, the Riverside Drive and Brooklyn, ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... away his hand and burst into his noisy, boyish laughter, so reminiscent of things rural and boorish, of the coarse, strong spirits of the happy-go-lucky, irresponsibles that work as field hands and wood-haulers. "By cracky, Grant, I just got sight of the remnants of that dig I gave you. It ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... because he made him feel small and boorish, and of a commoner make. And feelings such as that inevitably try to ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... time I experienced a little trouble with one of the German sailors. Most of them were courteous and kindly disposed, but one, a boorish, loutish bully, who served us with drinks at table, was a painful exception to this. His name was Fuchs: we sometimes called him Luchs, by mistake, of course! But Fuchs did not think so—he strongly objected to the other name! He had only one eye, and a black ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... own. Good sense flows from him in all he utters, and he seems possessed of a prodigious fund of knowledge, which he is not at all reserved in communicating; but in a manner so obstinate, ungenteel, and boorish, as renders it disagreeable and dissatisfactory. In short it is impossible for words to describe him. He seems often inattentive to what passes in company, and then looks like a person possessed by some superior spirit. I have been reflecting on him ever since ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... it's perfectly scandalous. Lady Beaulyon was quite disgusted when she heard of it—such an alliance for a Vancourt! And Mr. and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay tell me that the man Walden is quite an objectionable person—positively boorish! It's dreadful really! But who could ever have imagined she would recover from that hunting spill? Wentworth Glynn said she was crippled for life. He told me ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... first visit Jack went out regularly once every four weeks. He fell very naturally into the ways of the house, and although his manner often amused Alice Merton greatly, and caused even her father to smile, he was never awkward or boorish. ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... note and the one who had refused to accept it were the only ones who knew of it. The girl saw only that this splendid horseman who had snatched her from under the very feet of the ladino had shown a boorish discourtesy. The savor had gone out of her adventure. Her heart was ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... back," said the lady in a low, impressive voice which would have moved anyone else, but it was lost on the boorish visitor. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... I don't think I have uttered more in her favor than her commander would say to help me to a recruit, though no lad in the three kingdoms should appear willing to try how a scarlet coat would suit his boorish figure." ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... rarely is. It is not Oscar Wilde's wax flowers of speech, nor the excessively stiff and conventionalized action of "Salome," that bores one with the Strauss opera of that name. It is not even the libretto of "Der Rosenkavalier," essentially coarse and boorish and insensitive as it is beneath all its powdered preciosity, that wearies one with Strauss's "Musical Comedy"; or the hybrid, lame, tasteless form of "Ariadne auf Naxos" that turns one against that little monstrosity. It is the generally inexpressive and insufficient ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... with Larsoneur, with a view of studying that urn mentioned in the Memorials of the Celtic Academy, which appeared to have contained the ashes of Queen Artimesia, when the mayor entered unceremoniously with his hat on, like the boorish individual he was. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... was what you wished to speak to me about. This was why you were so—so boorish and disagreeable in that shop. Tell me—was that the reason? Was that why you followed me there? Did you think—did you presume to think of preventing my buying what I pleased ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... around them, handed down from their fathers, is by no means to be confounded with the obstreperous conceit of ages of mannerism, for they, out of vanity, introduce the fleeting modes and fashion of the day into art, because to them everything like noble simplicity seems boorish and rude. The latter impropriety is now abolished: but, on the other hand, our poets and artists, if they would hope for our approbation, must, like servants, wear the livery of distant centuries and foreign nations. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... delicate, compact, penetrative nudge with the toe of a tight-fitting gaiter,—addressed rather to the conscience than the sole, to the sensibilities rather than the senses. The kick masculine is coarse, boorish, unmitigated, predicable only of Calibans. The kick feminine is expressive, suggestive, terse, electric,—an indispensable instrument in domestic discipline, as women will bear me witness, and not at all incompatible with beauty, grace, and amiability. But, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... indiscriminately. They know, as the Chinese have it, that rotten wood cannot be carved. "It is our opinion," we quote from another manager, "that courtesy cannot be pounded into a person who lacks proper social basis. In other words, there are some people who would be boorish under any circumstances. Our first and chief step toward courtesy is to exercise care in selecting our employees. We weigh carefully each applicant for a sales position and try to visualize his probable deportment as our representative, ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... of the whole morning disturbed his pulses and put a weight upon his tongue; he spoke with awkward indecision, held himself awkwardly. His own voice sounded boorish to him ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... writers do consent that ipse is he; now, are you not ipse, for I am he?' "'Which he, sir?' "'He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you clown, abandon—which is, in the vulgar, leave the society—which, in the boorish, is company of this female—which, in the common, is woman—which together is, abandon the society of this female; or clown.... I will o'errun thee with policy; therefore tremble, and depart.'" —As ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... however, to effect all that was really of moment. His manners were conciliatory and paved the way for his intrigues. Catharine was the more friendly both to him and to Santa Croce, because of the contrast between their deportment and that of Gualtieri, whom she hated for his sour disposition and boorish ways.[1205] Navarre and the princes suspected of a leaning toward Protestantism were plied with other arts. In fact, so well did the legate counterfeit liberality of sentiment, that even the Pope and ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... with Ruth without raising his hat. A denizen of Heydon Hay who had taken off his hat in the open air to a woman would have been scoffed by his neighbors, and would probably have startled the woman herself as much as his own sense of propriety. But all the same Reuben's salute seemed mutilated and boorish to the man of more finished breeding, and helped to mark him as unworthy to be the suitor of so charming a creature as the ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... "Do you remember the night that I came home and told you and father how Dakota had rescued me from the quicksand? Well," she continued, noting his nod and the frown which accompanied it, "you were cross that night—almost boorish. You moped and went off ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... every sentence he overthrew an idol, or lowered my estimation of a friend. I saw everything with new eyes, and could only marvel at my former blindness. How was it possible that I had not before observed A's false hair, B's selfishness, or C's boorish manners? I and my companion, methought, walked the streets like a couple of gods among a swarm of vermin; for every one we saw seemed to bear openly upon his brow the mark of the apocalyptic beast. I half expected that these miserable ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and of the spoils of the buildings) came finally, at the hands of that most rascally Greek, to an evil end; in a manner that, there being no trace or sign to be found of anything that was in any way good, the men who came after, although rude and boorish, and in particular in their pictures and sculptures, yet, incited by nature and refined by the air, set themselves to work, not according to the rules of the aforesaid arts, which they did not know, but according to the quality of their ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... the woman was not much regarded. Her place was by no means lofty. If the virgin, the ideal woman, rose higher from age to age, the real woman was held of little worth among these boorish masses, in this medley of men and herds. Wretched was the doom of a condition which could only change with the growth of separate dwellings, when men at length took courage to live apart in hamlets, or to build ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... to represent a point of of view. They were once called by a malign reviewer "the most detestable kind of tract," and though this is what the French call a saugrenu criticism, which implies something dull, boorish, and provincial, yet it is easy to recognise what is meant. It is not unjust to resent the appearance of the cultivated and sensitive Anglican, highly bred and graceful, who is sure to turn out hard and hollow-hearted, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Expansion of his Liking towards me, he began to give me instruction in the vocation in which a portion of my life has since (with no small Distinction, though I say it that should not) been passed. Of scientific Navigation this very Rude and Boorish person knew little, if any thing; but as a Practical Seaman he had much skill and experience. Indeed, if the Hands had not enjoyed a lively Faith in the solid sea-going Qualities of "Foul-Weather Bob," as they called him when they did not choose to ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... continued. "You persist, in a rude and boorish manner, in interrupting my conversation with the other guests in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... of this final assertion, I call you to witness the sticks at the door, Where they make it a daily, a 'manly' diversion, To ogle each woman, and sometimes do more, Who passes the hotel that's named by a saint, Where boorish bad manners ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... and felt boorish. He had never liked and disapproved of Lady Sunderbund so much as he did at that moment. And he had no words ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... power. It's ten times more impressive than the meekness of the saint. The mischief is that we like anything from a man of power. If he is insolent, we think it grand; if he is stupid, we think it a sort of condescension; if he is mild and polite, we think it marvellous; if he is boorish, we think it is simple-minded. It is power that we admire, or rather success, and both can be inherited. If a man gets a big position in England, he is always said to grow into it; but that is because we care about the position more than we ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... unlike the narrow prejudices of the French and English travellers preceding you, who, considering each the manners and habits of their own people as the only orthodox, have viewed every thing differing from that test as boorish and barbarous, that your work will be read here extensively, and operate ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... characteristics are lacking in the works after "Timon." There is practically no humour, no wit, the clowns even are merely boorish-stupid with the solitary exception of Autolycus, who is a pale reflex of one or two characteristics of Falstaff. Shakespeare's humour has disappeared, or is so faint as scarcely to be called humour; all the heroines, too, are now vowed away from sensuality: Marina passes ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... assert itself in an emphatic manner. I had eaten nothing, not even a crust of the black bread, for fifty-four hours. Little wonder that I could scarcely keep my feet. My gaoler observed my condition, but said nothing, although he modified his customary boorish attitude ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... the whole personnel of the convent came to assist, with the inhabitants of a little village adjoining, which finds protection and Christian charity from the convent. The monks, excepting two or three, seemed of an ignorant and boorish quality, but hard-working and kind-hearted. Here, evidently, a certain kind of bliss was in ignorance, and the most learned were not wise enough to be accused of much folly. The Hegoumenos, in bidding us good by, begged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... desirous to know, by what strange hap or hazard, a clever and a handsome woman, as she must have been some day, a woman moreover with great contempt for the rustic minds around her, could have settled here in this lonely inn, with only the waves for company, and a boorish husband who slaved all day in turning a potter's wheel at Watchett. And what was the meaning of the emblem set above her doorway, a very unattractive cat sitting in ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... way, that, of speaking of Clarendon Beverley!" he exclaimed, almost fiercely. "These Yankees have no respect for any thing on earth, but their own boorish selves." ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... to put up with it no longer; and in consequence I take the boorish liberty of suggesting that this is none ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... consciousness of its nerves and a pride in its very defects. When Coleridge had taught his successors to glorify the poetic perception and vision, to give to the secret feelings a new warrant and value, they came to think it boorish to conceal their fine feelings, and they acquired the habit of expressing feelings which the common man scarcely experiences without a sense of shame. The poet came to be essentially the man who felt acutely, and anything that was a "feeling" came to have ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... in hourly contact with each other. You cannot realise the agony a man inflicts on others by coarse or unpolished manners. The toil of a priest's day is severe, but the hardest day is mere summer pastime compared with the crushing thought of having to turn home to a boorish companion. This living martyrdom reaches its most acute stage when, in society, a man is forced to witness a brother priest expose the raw spots of his character to the vitriolic cynicism ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... speech, even to their own nation[14]." But it is his custom to write thus of the opponents of the Anglo-Norman civil and ecclesiastical institutions, and he brings all Scotland under the same condemnation when he tells us how David "did his utmost to draw on that rough and boorish people towards quiet and chastened manners".[15] The reference to "their own nation" shows, too, that Fordun did not understand that the Highlanders were a different people; and when he called them hostile ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... to be! But I trust you begin to see that even your strong hand couldn't control a woman's taste. Kidnapping! As intelligent a boy as you wanting to imitate these boorish movie——" ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... well up the next morning when the procession of buckboards was ready to start for Gold City. Andrew Malden and the shrewd fellow had gone an hour before, the rest were off, and only the boorish Devonshire was left to ride down with Tony. Job stood, with heart palpitating and conscience goading him, down by the big pasture gate to let them through. All his peace of mind was gone. A few moments and the crime would be carried out to its end, ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... of outward movements pertains to the beauty of honesty. For Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 18): "The sound of the voice and the gesture of the body are distasteful to me, whether they be unduly soft and nerveless, or coarse and boorish. Let nature be our model; her reflection is gracefulness of conduct and beauty of honesty." Therefore there is a virtue about the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Hannibal remained in Italy, but the majority was by no means favourably disposed towards the young general himself. His Greek refinement and his modern culture and tone of thought were but little agreeable to the austere and somewhat boorish fathers of the city; and serious doubts existed both as to his conduct of the Spanish war and as to his military discipline. How much ground there was for the objection that he showed too great indulgence towards his officers of division, was very soon demonstrated ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... run out and hide himself, when he unawares rushed, head foremost, into lady Feng's arms. Lady Feng speedily raised her hand and gave him such a slap on the face that she made the young fellow reel over and perform a somersault. "You boorish young bastard!" she shouted, "where are you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... in high dudgeon, and he was left to curse his ill-timed jest. What a blundering fool he had been! Her first, timid little advance,—and he had met it with boorish, clownish wit! A scurvy jest, indeed! She ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... then the father in dudgeon After him shouted:—"Be off! I know you're an obstinate fellow! Go and look after the business; else I shall scold you severely; But don't fancy I'll ever allow you to bring home in triumph As my daughter-in-law any boorish impudent hussy. Long have I lived in the world, and know how to manage most people, Know how to entertain ladies and gentlemen, so that they leave me In good humour, and know how to flatter a stranger discreetly. But my daughter-in-law must have useful qualities also, And be able ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... strong fighter, the rugged accomplisher the boisterous enthusiast, among their men. Whether these are atheistic, immoral, boorish, cruel, are considerations of secondary importance. The daughters marry them with little hesitation. Men are men, supreme, to be adored. Women are to be tolerated, stepped on, sat upon. Man is the master, woman ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... the variety of the life from which the Saga is drawn. More than that, there is here a rather cruel test of the heroics of Laxdla, of the story itself; the notable thing about this spectator and critic is that his boorish judgment is partly right, as the judgment of Thersites is partly right—"too much blood and too little brains." He is vulgar common sense in the presence of heroism. In his own way a critic of the heroic ideals, his appearance ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... without much fashion or style then, and this aspect has intensified itself. The peasant is the born enemy of the town, and whilst he may be perfect in the country he is a boorish and non-comprehending fellow when he comes to the capital to rule. The peasant in power has very little use for the brighter side of civilization. The more the latter is cut down the better for him. He has, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... may prove so. But of this I am certain (for I know my countrymen) that until every other country in the Christian world, even to barbarian Muscovy and the hamlets of the boorish Germans, have its playhouse at the public charge, England will never adventure. And she will adventure then only because it is her desire to be ever in the fashion, and to do humbly and dutifully whatso ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... of commercial aristocracy these people wear. Now, by birth and breeding, Diamond, you are a true aristocrat, but with you blood is everything, and it rather galls you to witness the boorish air of superiority assumed by some of these millionaire pork packers with neither education nor refinement. I don't wonder. When you came to Yale you had some silly notions about aristocracy, but you have gotten over them ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... threw a missile at him. He could not be sure what it was, as the object went wide of the mark; but he was so incensed that he made a virage, and drawing a small flask from his pocket, hurled it at his boorish antagonist. The flask contained some excellent port, he said, but he was repaid for the loss in seeing it crash on the exhaust-pipe ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... closing in on the palisades so near they could bandy words with the fighters on the galleries inside the walls. Among La Tour's fighters were Swiss mercenaries—men who fight for the highest pay. Did Charnisay in the language of the day "grease the fist" of the Swiss sentry, or was it a case of a boorish fellow refusing to fight under a woman's command? Legend gives both explanations; but on Easter Sunday morning Charnisay's men gained entrance by scaling the walls where the Swiss sentry stood. Madame La Tour rushed ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... manifests itself between the high culture of Germany and the end at which she aims, the means which she employs in the present war? Is it enough to explain this contrast, to allege that in spite of all their science the Germans are but slightly civilized, that in the sixteenth century they were still boorish and uncultivated and that their science, an affair of specialists and pundits, has never penetrated their soul or ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... battle. Even in times of peace you would hardly have a quiet hour here: for great herds of cattle come crowding down every day to my lake for water; the noisy ploughman, driving his team afield, disturbs the morning hour with his boorish shouts; and boys and dogs keep up a constant din, and make life in this place ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... brush.[219] Of the three Caracci he was the most versatile, and perhaps the most gifted. There is a note of distinction and attainment in his work. Annibale, the youngest, was a rough, wild, hasty, and hot-tempered lad, of robust build and vigorous intellect, but boorish in his manners, fond of low society, and eaten up with jealousy. They called him the ragazzaccio, or 'lout of a boy,' when he began to make his mark at Bologna. Agostino presented a strong contrast to his brother, being an accomplished musician, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... I came it was lonely for her, since she was a beautiful and refined woman with nothing in common with those who were about her. Indeed, this might be said of many women in the England of those days, for the men were rude and rough and coarse, with boorish habits and few accomplishments, while the women were the most lovely and tender that I have ever known. We became great friends, the Lady Jane and I, for it was not possible for me to drink three bottles of port after dinner like those Devonshire gentlemen, ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you?" was the ungracious response, delivered in a gruff tone of voice. Old Stolliver was a boorish, cross-grained customer, who paid slight regard to the amenities, and did not show to ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... conversation that had just passed between Dominguez and myself; then, my gaze happening to wander aft to the solitary figure at the tiller, I sauntered aft and endeavoured to strike up a conversation with him. The fellow, however, proved to be so boorish and saturnine in his manner that I quickly abandoned the attempt and, pitching my half-smoked cigar over the rail, retired below and tumbled, "all standing," into the bunk that Dominguez had indicated as mine, where, despite the food for ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... they know nothing. No Englishman will tolerate another in his house, from whom he does not expect advantage of some kind, and to those from whom he does he can be civil enough. An Englishman thinks that, because he is in his own house, he has a right to be boorish and brutal to any one who is disagreeable to him, as all those are who are really in want of assistance. Should a hunted fugitive rush into an Englishman's house, beseeching protection, and appealing to the master's feelings of hospitality, the Englishman would knock him ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to watch them!" he would gurgle. "I don't see how they can be so boorish." He thought there was no sadder sight than his six brothers and sisters jostling one another over their food, while he couldn't find a place ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... thawed into a father. But the fear of a rival in the King's favour—some gallant soldier—and dozens of them were reported every week—made him resolve once more to bring his daughter's beauties into play. The king had seen her, and, in his boorish way, had expressed his admiration; and Gyllenborg felt assured, that if he should marry his daughter according to the King's wishes, his influence would be greater than ever; and, in fact, that the premiership ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... you from the first there is no remedy. Our hopes are lost: lost by one miserable trifler, ignorant, fretful, fitful - who will have disappeared to-morrow, who knows? to his boorish pleasures!' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pregnancy, until the time when I should disgust every man. Oh! do not deny it! I did not understand it for some time, but then I guessed it. You even boasted about it to your sister, who told me of it, for she is fond of me and was disgusted at your boorish coarseness. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... you, Sir Oliver, that had you killed him after what happened I could not hold you guilty of having done more than punish a boorish and arrogant offender." ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... were indeed among the ancients some, though very few, faithful and economical, but still they were stained by some vice or other; and among the chief faults which they had either by nature or habit, they were apt to be either rapacious or else boorish, and on that account contemptible; or else ill-natured and mischievous; or fawning too much on the powerful; or too elated with power, and therefore arrogant. But of any one so universally accomplished and prudent, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... he had no more afterwards—should be suckled by his own mother, and that in his tender years he should have his character formed in the house of his parents, rather than learn less gentle or even boorish ways and habits in the houses of peasants or common people. When he was well grown, he began to exercise him in painting, seeing him much inclined to such an art, and possessed of a very beautiful genius: wherefore not many years passed before Raffaello, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... eyes, and consists of much jumping and useless waste of strength, but the English play it, and of course the modern Chinese boy must imitate them. I have made one rule: my daughters shall not play the game. It seems to me most shameful to see a woman run madly, with great boorish strides, in front of men and boys. My daughters pout and say it is played by all the girls in school, and that it makes them strong and well; but I am firm. I have conceded many things, but this to me ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... their wooden sabots they clattered and sang, waving wildly their arms or else making frantic passages of pretended love and coquetry. It upset the Englishman to see the impudence of this common peasant fellow grasping Roeselein by the waist, as he whirled her about in the boorish dance. Hence the clause to his question. She endured his inquiring ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the peel of an onion for him, so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous in his gesture. He had a sharp pointed nose, with the look of a bull, and countenance of a fool: he was in his carriage simple, boorish in his apparel, in fortune poor, unhappy in his wives, unfit for all offices in the commonwealth, always laughing, tippling, and merrily carousing to everyone, with continual gibes and jeers, the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... this over in my head and wondering what their boorish conduct could mean, when I saw, as I rode from the village, a great T new carved upon a tree. I had already seen more than one in my morning's ride, but I had given no thought to them until the words of ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to act as audience for the occasion. Mr. Bob Wheeler had departed to his work that morning in a condition which his family, who were fond of homely similes, had likened to a bear with a sore head. The sisterly attentions of Emma Wheeler were met with a boorish request to keep her paws off; and a young Wheeler, rash and inexperienced in the way of this weary world, who publicly asked what Bob had "got the hump about," was sternly ordered to finish his breakfast in the washhouse. Consequently there was a full meeting after ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... few chairs ranged round the wall were mostly occupied by Mdlle. Tirard and the other ladies of the Socialist party; but the mass of the guests were men, and they were almost all smoking, in utter indifference to the scanty presence of the fair sex. Not that they were intentionally rude or boorish; that they never were; except where an emperor or an aristocrat is concerned, there is no being on earth more courteous, kindly, and considerate for the feelings of others than your exiled Socialist. He has suffered much himself in his own time, and so miseris succurrere ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... manners win in spite of other defects. Take two men possessing equal advantages in every other respect; if one be gentlemanly, kind, obliging, and conciliating, and the other disobliging, rude, harsh, and insolent, the former will become rich while the boorish one will starve. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... caused so much disaster to their country. This uproarious demonstration of welcome on the part of the multitude moved the spleen of many who were old enough to remember the horrors of Spanish warfare within their borders. "Thus unreflecting, gaping, boorish, are nearly all the common people of these provinces," said a contemporary, describing the scene, and forgetting that both high and low, according to his own account, made up the mass of spectators on that winter's day. Moreover it seems difficult to understand why the Hollanders should ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ill-smelling and ill-behaving drugs. In truth, he hated to give anything noxious or loathsome to those who were uncomfortable enough already, unless he was very sure it would do good,—in which case, he never played with drugs, but gave good, honest, efficient doses. Sometimes he lost a family of the more boorish sort, because they did not think they got their money's worth out of him, unless they had something more than a taste of everything ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... can glory in the very things wherein they glory, and in even more. At the same time he declares himself a fool for glorying. He might have said: "Foolish, indeed, are they, and boorish creatures, who glory in themselves. They should feel shame to the very depth of their heart. No true, sane man boasts of what he is. The wicked and the frivolous do that." But the apostle's attack is not quite so severe and harsh. He addresses them civilly and delicately in that he makes himself ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... became the popular favorite. His kindness of heart, his good humor, his skill as a story teller, his strength, his courtesy, manliness, and honesty were such as to win all hearts. He would allow no man to use profane language before women. A boorish fellow who insisted on doing so in the store on one occasion, in spite of Lincoln's protests, found this out to his cost. Lincoln had politely requested him not to use such language before ladies, but the man persisted in doing so. When the women left the store, he became violently angry ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... clearest invalidation of marriage, the frustration of the noblest and most divine ends of the institution; an essentially worse frustration, he dares to say in one place, than even that conjugal infidelity which "a gross and boorish opinion, how common soever," would alone resent or recognise. It is marvellous with what richness of varying language he paints to the reader the horrible condition of a man tied for life to a woman with whom he can hold no rational or worthy conversation. "A ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... not consider that men of coarse and boorish habits and of slender parts deserve so fine an instrument nor such a complicated mechanism as men of contemplation and high culture. They merely need a sack in which their food may be held and whence it may issue, since verily they cannot ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... who are not "in society" are apt to mistake all that is excessive, all that is boorish, all that is snobbish, all that is aggressive, as being a part of that society. In this they are wrong. No one estimates the grandeur of the ocean by the rubbish thrown up on the shore. Fashionable society, good society, the best society, is composed of the ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... ailes de pigeon, and duly powdered every morning by the barber from the Ecole Polytechnique, described five points on his low forehead, and made an elegant setting to his face. Though his manners were somewhat boorish, he was always as neat as a new pin and he took his snuff in a lordly way, like a man who knows that his snuff-box is always likely to be filled with maccaboy, so that when Mme. Vauquer lay down to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... made it materially acceptable, should rule us where the gift is something so precious as a word; and when we receive one from another people, gratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself, should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices. We therefore protest against a useful and tuneful noun-substantive, a native of France, the word bouquet, being maimed into boquet, a corruption as dissonant to the ear as were to the eye plucking a rose from a variegated nosegay, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... a labourer or husbandman: figuratively a rude, surly, boorish fellow. To put a churl upon a gentleman; to drink malt liquor ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... not be prevailed upon to avail himself of her generosity; but following her to the other end of the room, thrust it into her sleeve without ceremony, exclaiming, "I'll be d—d to hell if I do." Peregrine, having checked him for his boorish behaviour, sent him out of the room, and begged that Miss Sophy would not endeavour to debauch the morals of his servant, who, rough and uncultivated as he was, had sense enough to perceive that he had no pretension to any such acknowledgment. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... experience. There are brave men, and men whose courage is suspected; quiet men, and men of opinionated perversity; quick-witted men, and men whose profound stupidity makes them continual butts for all kinds of practical jokes; refined, educated, poetical men, and men of boorish habits. In short, any camp presents such specimens of humanity as would be furnished if all the ingredients of character and experience that compose the world had been collected in a huge pepper box and sprinkled miscellaneously throughout ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... an ill-bred and thoughtless act, but as I knew, when I had pondered the matter more calmly, Miss Harding has too much sense and poise to exhibit such anger at what at its worst was merely a boorish indiscretion. It was the only straw on which I could float an apology for a concrete act, but I thought later on I did not help ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... so long as he keeps away from me," she retorted clearly. "He is coarse, vulgar, boorish, and I have far too much respect for myself to permit such a man to touch me, either upon the stage or off; to have him kiss me would be an ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Boyce had put up at the Lion d'Or. He was waiting for us in the courtyard and received us, as I thought, something shortly, hurrying us into the house. But once inside, he made ceremony enough, with endless speeches about the condescension of His Royal Highness. All this too obsequious, in a boorish taste, so that the Prince bade him have done and come to business. Therewith Colonel Boyce was as full of apologies as he had been of servilities. I vow I never heard him so copious as ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... to be shunned like heresy itself. They smell like goats; and one trembles to come within the droppings of their cloak, lest he should carry away a few little souvenirs, which the "holy man" might be glad to part with. A fat, stalwart, bacchant, boorish race they are, giving signs of anything but fasting and flagellation; and I know of nothing that would so dissipate the romance which invests monks and nuns in the eyes of some, like bringing a ship-load of them over to this country, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... was affable with all, he had eyes only for Virginia. The others he would willingly have dispensed with, especially the shipping clerk, whom he had sized up with one quick glance. He winced as he took note of the man's cheap, ready-made clothes and boorish manners. Decidedly he was quite impossible, but for the pleasure of a few moment's tete-a-tete with Virginia, he was ready to make any sacrifice—even to meet on equal social terms a ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... forms on which the mantle of romance hangs more ungracefully than upon that of the uncouth Schalken—the boorish but most cunning worker in oils, whose pieces delight the critics of our day almost as much as his manners disgusted the refined of his own; and yet this man, so rude, so dogged, so slovenly, in the midst of his celebrity, had in his obscure, but happier days, played ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... innocent than thy blessed Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who suffered for thy offences, and to whose providence you ought to submit, let what will happen?' After this, natural courage would inspire me to resist to the last drop of blood, and sooner die than suffer myself to be taken by boorish, rascally Dutchmen, who had arts to torment beyond ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... him. He called a sleigh and drove to the barracks for his own skates. Then to the Kuh-brucke, where a reach of the Mottlau was cleared and kept in order for skating. He overpaid the sleigh-driver and laughed aloud at the man's boorish surprise. There was no one so happy as Charles Darragon in all the world. He was going to tell Desiree that he ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... with trade and commerce, which they hold to be discreditable; they either loiter at home or ride about on horseback. The Roman nobility also despise trade, but farm their own property; the cultivation of the land even opens the way to a title; it is a respectable but boorish nobility. In Lombardy the nobles live upon the rent of their inherited estates; descent and the abstinence from any regular calling, constitute nobility. In Venice, the 'nobili,' the ruling caste, were all merchants. Similarly in Genoa the nobles and nonnobles were alike ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... his head, with a more boorish air than he had before manifested, and muttered something about a cow that needed his attention, and that he could not spare the time from his herd for all that the Prioress was ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your manners be neither boorish nor blunt, but even these are preferable to simpering and crawling. I wish every English youth could see those of the United States of America; always civil, never servile. Be obedient, where ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... and Bonhag hurried away, unintentionally forgetting, in his boorish incivility, to unlock the cell door, so that he had to open it in Aileen's presence. The long corridor, with its thick doors, mathematically spaced gratings and gray-stone pavement, caused Aileen to feel faint at heart. A prison, iron cells! And he was in one of them. It chilled her usually ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... absence; she told herself angrily that he was not like that, had never been like that. He was a mere brute of a man, not "such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made our world." He was, rather, unthinkably crude and boorish and detestable. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... not, however, to a watchmaker, but to an engraver, and I had been so completely humiliated by the contempt of the register, that I submitted without a murmur. My master, whose name was M. Ducommon, was a young man of a very violent and boorish character, who contrived in a short time to tarnish all the amiable qualities of my childhood, to stupefy a disposition naturally sprightly, and reduce my feelings, as well as my condition, to an absolute state of servitude. I forgot my Latin, history, and antiquities; I could ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... ungentlemanlike; unladylike, unfeminine; wild, wild as an unbacked colt. untutored, unschooled (ignorant) 491. unkempt. uncombed, untamed, unlicked^, unpolished, uncouth; plebeian; incondite^; heavy, rude, awkward; homely, homespun, home bred; provincial, countrified, rustic; boorish, clownish; savage, brutish, blackguard, rowdy, snobbish; barbarous, barbaric; Gothic, unclassical^, doggerel, heathenish, tramontane, outlandish; uncultivated; Bohemian. obsolete &c (antiquated) 124; unfashionable; newfangled ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cherish against all that is not in the likeness of themselves, cease to be the undisputed ruling forces of our collective life. We want to emancipate our lives from this slavery and these stupidities, from dull hatreds and suspicion. The ripening mind of our race tires of these boorish and brutish and childish things. A spirit that is like hers, arises and increases in human affairs, a spirit that demands freedom and gracious living as our inheritance too long deferred, and I who loved her so blindly and narrowly now love ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Mecca, but the universal desire to see the bicycle ridden seems to level all distinctions. All this tumult, it must not be forgotten, is carried on in perfect good humor; but it is, nevertheless, very annoying to have it seem that I am too boorish to repay their kindness by letting them see me ride; even walking out of town to avoid gratifying them, as some of them doubtless think. These little embarrassments are some of the penalties of not knowing enough of the language to be able to enter into explanations. Learning ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... gone with the army into Germany it is impossible to say when the war will end." Then he made a silly, boorish observation which was, "I hope for your sake ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... little confusion of manner. 'It was the fortuna belli, or more properly pacis. I had asked my brothers to put into Portsmouth that I might get rid of these letters, on which they replied in a boorish and unmannerly fashion that they were still waiting for the thousand guineas which represented my share of the venture. To this I answered with brotherly familiarity that it was a small thing, and should be paid ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a bear he was a success. He was a good bear, but then, it was objected, he was an objectless bear—a bear that meant nothing, signified nothing, simply stood there, snarling over his shoulder at nothing, and was painfully and manifestly a boorish and ill-natured intruder upon the fair page. All hands said that none were satisfied; they hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated as much to have him there when there was no point to him. But presently Harte took a pencil and drew two simple lines under his feet, and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the brush grew cold and clammy,—noting withal, the poor wretch in his slavish way, that his master's clothes were finer than the Northern captain's, his hands whiter, and proud that it was so,—holding Lamar's foot daintily, trying to see himself in the shoe, smoothing down the trousers with a boorish, affectionate touch,—with the same fierce whisper in his ear, Would the shoes ever be cleaned again? would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... person of his son and her brother-in-law, Sicinius Clarus, and with this end in view threatened to exclude her sons, whose guardian he was, from the possession of any of their father's property, if she married elsewhere. She therefore suffered herself to be betrothed to Sicinius Clarus, 'a boorish and decrepit old man,' but put off the marriage, until her father-in-law's death released her from all embarrassment. Pontianus and Pudens succeeded to the property, and Pudentilla felt herself free ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... I answered, rather testily, my temper rising slightly at what I considered the boorish familiarity of his tone and manner, which I determined to at once check—"what of ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... can scarcely be described. He dined with the Great Electress Sophia, afterwards first Queen of Prussia, and she wrote of him: "Nature has given him an infinity of wit. With advantages he might have been an accomplished man. What a pity his manners are not less boorish!" ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... sure," Mrs. Cockayne continued, "it is quite refreshing, after the boorish manners of your London shopkeepers, to be waited upon by these polite Frenchmen. ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold |
