"Ignorance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well for those poor creatures, that this young student made up in goodness of heart what he lacked in experience. He did not fear the pestilence half so much as his own ignorance. But for that professional pride that clings so powerfully to the young, he would have resigned at once, rather than take upon his conscience the solemn responsibility of life and death, as it lay before him in that fever-ward. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... nine he had roused by his wit and attainments the wonder of Erasmus, and now that he mounted the throne the great scholar hurried back to England to pour out his exultation in the "Praise of Folly," a song of triumph over the old world of ignorance and bigotry that was to vanish away before the light and knowledge of the new reign. Folly in his amusing little book mounts a pulpit in cap and bells, and pelts with her satire the absurdities of the world around ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... that, though the sin of the Slave Trade had been hitherto a sin of ignorance, and might, therefore, have so far been winked at, yet as the crimes and miseries belonging to it became known, it would attach even to those who had no concern in it, if they suffered it to continue either ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... the mountains, seeking refuge among the defiles and woods of the Blue Ridge or the more distant Alleghanies. The descendants of these wretched people still exist in the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky, exhibiting in their ignorance, their disregard for law, their laziness and even in their dialect the lowness of ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... to do with an idle, curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man. All these ill qualities have happened unto him, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know, moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... lac' j'ai un double plaisir a vous le dedier. Lorsqu'on dedie un livre, on prevoit l'heure ou l'ami le prend, jette un coup d'oeil et dit: 'Pourquoi m'a-t-il dedie une niaiserie pareille?' Toutes les choses de l'esprit, sauf les plus grandes, deviennent niaiseries tot ou tard. Votre ignorance de ma langue m'epargne cette heure fatale. Pour vous, mon livre sera toujours une belle et noble chose. Il ne peut jamais devenir pour vous banal comme une epouse. II sera pour vous une vierge, mieux qu'une vierge, il sera pour vous ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... they neglect the law, oligarchy. When an individual rules according to law, whether by the help of science or opinion, this is called monarchy; and when he has royal science he is a king, whether he be so in fact or not; but when he rules in spite of law, and is blind with ignorance and passion, he is called a tyrant. These forms of government exist, because men despair of the true king ever appearing among them; if he were to appear, they would joyfully hand over to him the reins of government. But, as there is no natural ruler of the ...
— Statesman • Plato
... these letters, an enquiry into the genius and writings of Shakespear. He contends for Shakespear's ignorance of the ancients, and observes, that it would derogate much from his glory to suppose him to have read, or understood them, because if he had, his not practicing their art, and not restraining the luxuriance of his imagination would be a reproach to him. After bestowing ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... placing himself before the door, remembering that Louise was still in ignorance of the death of the little girl; "wait, I must speak to you. Now, about ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... "they have the advantage of us from being on the high ground. Let's go on openly and as if in perfect ignorance ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... that which was most precious to me in safe hands I had to pass you over and to place him in the charge of the one man who from the first never doubted my innocence. Better a thousand times that my son should be brought up in a humble station and in ignorance of his unfortunate father, than that he should learn to share the doubts ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... vassals from relapsing into heathenism. Let it also be remembered, that Monks, odious as we are wont to consider them, were at one time, the only inhabitants of Christendom, who were at all acquainted with such sciences as then peered above the mists of overwhelming ignorance. Of history, they may be said to be the modern fathers, and tho' perhaps, like the age in which they lived, in some respects, blind themselves, they led, not indirectly to the enlightening of the present age. But in their own times they were far from useless; ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... after the war) as many teachers at his service as any white child. He had also one advantage over the white: he had never learned the difference between meum and tuum, and the silver lining to this cloud of ignorance lay in the fact that he was thereby enabled more speedily to increase his store of worldly goods, thus leaving time for greater devotion to the particular ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... over the unenlightened unbelievers who seemed to be only too willing to remain in ignorance of ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... FEVER).—Through ignorance which prevailed before the discovery of the germ of typhoid fever and exact methods for determining the presence of the same, the term was loosely applied and is to this day. Thus mild forms of typhoid are called gastric fever, slow fever, malarial fever, nervous fever, etc., ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... last summary I suggested that Barbarism, as we mean it, is not mere ignorance or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise sense, and means militant hostility to certain necessary human ideas. I took the case of the vow or the contract, which Prussian intellectualism would destroy. I urged that the Prussian is a ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... the boatmen. But a tremendous sweep of the gale, driving the vessel far across the head of Bute, shot her past the mouth of Loch Fyne, toward the perilous rocks of Arran. "Here our destruction is certain!" cried the master of the bark, at the same time confessing his ignorance of the navigation on this side of the island. Lord Mar, seizing the helm from the stupefied master, called to Wallace, "While you keep the men to their duty," cried he, "I ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... newly-opened port for them to be snapped up at almost any price by Chinese merchants, who then possessed but little knowledge of foreign wares and were exceedingly timid of their own officials. As time wore on this ignorance and timidity grew less and less, until the Chinese purchaser came to close quarters with the English importer, eliminating middlemen at the small ports and transferring operations chiefly to the great emporiums of Hongkong ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... approaching a defensible height. The clamour of their enemies grew louder and louder, and angry messages reached the Spartans everyday, reproaching them with their supineness and procrastination. Being asked the meaning of these reports, Themistocles professed total ignorance, and bade the Spartans send men to Athens to see for themselves. The Spartans did so, and when the men arrived at Athens the Athenians, who had been privately warned by Themistocles, kept them in custody, as hostages for their own representatives ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... passed obviously in the spirit of where ignorance is bliss Mr B. and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly entre nous variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, alias ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... cause the Sudras to hear them, before the time comes when kings often against the rules of Righteousness from motives of policy, I shall go to heaven for good! Before men cease to regard the distinctions between the lower, the middle, and the higher classes, I shall go to heaven for good. Before Ignorance assails the world and envelops all things in darkness, I shall go to heaven for good.[428] Before the time comes when the strong begin to lord it over the weak and treat them as slaves, I shall go to heaven for good. Indeed, I dare not ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... you know it wasn't a drop of water falling off the ceiling on him?" asked Gub-Gub. "Pshaw!—Such ignorance!" sniffed Too-Too. "A drop of water falling off the ceiling would have made ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... about the Inca princesses, senhor," replied the old man, sternly, but with a perplexed air; "all I know is that the disguised girl with whom you have been unfortunately travelling of late is my daughter, and, although your ignorance of the fact ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... aduersaries are yoong ignorance and old custome. For what follie soeuer tract of time hath fostered, it is so superstitiouslie pursued of some, as though no error could be acquainted with custome. But if the lawe of nations would ioine with such custome, to the maintenance of ignorance, and to the suppressing of ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... some quarters, and selfishness growing where faith decays; we see ignorance and want and all their crop of sin and misery deep-rooted in the life of every city; and the prospect which these things suggest, the problems that meet us as we think of them, might well fill ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... accompaniment to the lullaby she was singing. "Two whole weeks," she thought, while her longing reached out to that unknown room in which she pictured Oliver sitting alone. "Two whole weeks. How hard it will be for him." In her guarded ignorance of the world she could not imagine that Oliver was suffering less from this enforced absence from all he loved than she herself would have suffered had she been in his place. Of course, men were different from women—that ancient dogma was embodied ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... hearing of the new animal, named it the bison; but the colonists united in calling it the buffalo, and, as is usual in such cases, although science clearly demonstrated that it was a bison, and was not a buffalo, scientific knowledge had not a chance against practical ignorance, and "buffalo" carried the day. The true home of this animal lay in the great prairie region between the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi, the Texan forest, and the Saskatchewan River and although undoubted evidence ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... between those who did such things once, and those who continue to do them now, is that to which Jesus Christ referred when he said, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin." The days of that darkness and ignorance which God may have winked at have gone by, and he now commandeth all men to whom his will is made known to repent. Your fathers, when they were engaged in selling ardent spirit, did not know that all men, under all circumstances, would be better without it. They did not know that ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... in anatomy are as great in number. A new universe in little, discovered by the microscope, was counted for nothing by the chevalier Temple; he closed his eyes to the marvels of his contemporaries, and opened them only to admire ancient ignorance. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... you will say; but I speak of demonism and not law. How else can you explain the duality of these murders? How else can you explain Carse's ignorance of the crimes? How else can you explain those brutal dreams, the fruit of whose reality Carse found each morning on the floor beside his bed? Nor is it enough to stop alone with this question. How many men besides Jason Carse have ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... conversation. A large though somewhat scornful generosity also established her in their esteem. She would lend or give anything she possessed. When one of the forlorn and woollen-shawled old maids fell ill, she sat up of nights with her, and in spite of her ignorance of nursing, which was as vast as that of a rhinoceros, magnetised the fragile lady into well-being. I think she was fairly happy. If London had been situated amid gorges and crags and ravines and granite cliffs she would have been completely so. She yearned for mountains. Mrs. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... is, be sure, an hearty old fellow, with some very good points in his odd character; but, dwelling on an island, he oft times betrays an ignorance of the world, and of himself, so that we cannot help laughing at him, once in a while, for his conceitedness. His ignorance of America, and Americans, is a source of ridicule among us all. An English lady said to one of the officers, who had the care of American prisoners ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... use of that extended line formation on which the Prussians relied, while favouring the operations of dense columns preceded by clouds of skirmishers by which Napoleon so often hewed his way to victory. His greatest advantage, however, lay in the ignorance of his foes. Hohenlohe, believing that he was confronted only by Lannes' corps, took little thought about what was going on in his front, and judging the Muehl-thal approach alone to be accessible, posted his chief force on this side. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... as these, we will speak hereafter; in the meantime let us point out the faults which bad writers are most generally guilty of, the blunders which they commit in language, composition, and sentiment, with many other marks of ignorance, which it would be tedious to enumerate, and belong not to our present argument. The principal faults, as I observed to you, are ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... it, and Philip de Valois, adopting its decisions, prescribed fresh statutes, which were naturally framed in such a way as to show the distrust in which the Chatelet was then held. To these the officers of the Chatelet promised on oath to submit. The ignorance and immorality of the lay officers, who had been substituted for the clerical, caused much disturbance. Parliament authorised two of its principal members to examine the officers of the Chatelet. Twenty years later, on the receipt of fresh complaints, Parliament decided that three qualified ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... of the World had less Knowledge and less Light, they might have some Excuse, and some Hope that GOD would wink at the Times of their Ignorance: But they have had the Light, and have loved Darkness: The Gospel of Christ in which all the Goodness and Mercy of GOD are display'd through the Redemption purchased by the Blood of Christ; in which the Aid and Comfort ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... violent passion for Zobeide, the wife of his son Veli Pacha. Having vainly attempted to gratify it after his son's departure, and being indignantly repulsed, he had recourse to drugs, and the unhappy Zobeide remained in ignorance of her misfortune until she found she was pregnant. Then, half-avowals from her women, compelled to obey the pacha from fear of death, mixed with confused memories of her own, revealed the whole terrible truth. Not knowing in her despair which way to turn, she wrote to Ali, entreating him ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... into my mind that he could be in ignorance of how his father had constrained us, but now it flashed on my amazed mind that he had not ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... that, although the woman had been guilty of a crime, he had no help for it but to set her free. He thereupon wrote to the Directors in England, expressing his disapproval of 'such an unexpected verdict,' and notifying that in his ignorance of the law and its formalities he was by no means confident that he had done the right thing; and the end of it was that the Governor, presumably with the Directors' approval, created two justices, on whom was thereafter to fall the ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... mighty and mysterious matter, in which all have so deep an interest, and concerning which so very small a portion of the human race think much, or think with any clearness when it does become the subject of their passing thoughts at all. We too well know our own ignorance to venture on dogmas which it has probably been intended that the mind of man should not yet grapple with and comprehend. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... conscience must abide strictly by the consequences. Those days at Beaumanoir had plucked him from his moorings. For the moment the ardour of his quest for knowledge had burned low. He stifled in the air of the north, which was heavy with the fog of a furious ignorance. But his mind did not turn happily to the trifling of his Italian friends. There was a tragic greatness about such as his grandmother, a salt of nobility which was lacking among the mellow Florentines. Truth, it seemed to him, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... thought it would be no more than proper for one of her experience and years to rebuke this levity, as well as to enlighten the ignorance her niece ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... it was the only remedy in my case. There is no moral law binding any man to a contract entered into ignorantly. The fact of ignorance, in regard to the fundamental principles of an agreement, vitiates it. Is ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... be an end to the things they had to buy and to the unforeseen contingencies. Once their water pipes froze and burst; and when, in their ignorance, they thawed them out, they had a terrifying flood in their house. It happened while the men were away, and poor Elzbieta rushed out into the street screaming for help, for she did not even know whether the flood could be stopped, or whether they were ruined for life. It was nearly ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... style and taste, their endless effusion of bad poetry, their feeble plays and rude farces, the mummery and buffoonery which were mingled even with their gravest efforts, the "Rhetoricians" effectually achieved the great and important work of attracting an entire people in an age of ignorance and of darkness towards a love of letters, and thereby broke the ground for the great revival of the 17th century. Amsterdam at one time possessed several of these Chambers of Rhetoric, but towards the end of the 16th century they had all disappeared, with one brilliant ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Harrington is treating him cavalierly. That he should penetrate the idea or appreciate the merits of Mr. Goren's Balance was hardly to be expected at present: the world did not, and Mr. Goren blamed no young man for his ignorance. Still a proper attendance was requisite. Mr. Goren thought it very singular that young Mr. Harrington should demand all the hours of the day for his own purposes, up to half-past four. He found it difficult to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the words, of what he had sworn to Sidney that Sunday afternoon under the trees, on this very road! Swift shame overtook him, that he should be here, that he had allowed Carlotta to remain in ignorance of how things really stood ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... formal Answer. I must further add, that the Work would have been of very little use to the Publick, had it been filled with personal Reflections and Debates; for which Reason I have never once turned out of my way to observe those little Cavils which have been made against it by Envy or Ignorance. The common Fry of Scriblers, who have no other way of being taken Notice of but by attacking what has gain'd some Reputation in the World, would have furnished me with Business enough, had they found me dispos'd to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... as our ignorance unquestionably is concerning the physical substratum of memory, I think we are at least justified in regarding this substratum as the same both in ganglionic or organic, and in the conscious or psychological memory, seeing that the analogies between ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... de' Giuochi, as one enters by the door on the left, on the front wall, he wrought in fresco a S. Cosimo and a S. Damiano, and, in Ognissanti, a S. Christopher and a S. George, which were spoilt by the malice of time, and then restored by other painters by reason of the ignorance of a Provost little conversant with such matters. In the said church there has remained whole the arch that is over the door of the sacristy, wherein there is in fresco a Madonna with the Child in her arms by the hand of ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... struggled to get free. My mind refused to respond to the cheap intoxication of the political movements of those days, devoid, as they seemed, of all strength of national consciousness, with their complete ignorance of the country, their supreme indifference to real service of the motherland. I was tormented by a furious impatience, an intolerable dissatisfaction with myself and all around me. Much rather, I said to myself, would ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... subsequently, therefore, the government of Babylonia must still have been acknowledged in Canaan. With this agrees a statement of the Egyptian historian Manetho, upon which the critics, in their wisdom or their ignorance, have poured unmeasured contempt. He tells us that when the Hyksos were driven out of Egypt by Ahmes I., the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, they occupied Jerusalem and fortified it—not, as would naturally be imagined, against the Egyptian Pharaoh, but against "the Assyrians," as the ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... diplomatic corps was kept in more or less profound ignorance as to the pourparlers carried on since the 24th by the Imperial Foreign Office with the Triple Entente Cabinets. Nevertheless, to the diplomats who were continually going over to the Wilhelmstrasse for news, the crisis ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... to conceal his ignorance of these matters by saying that he knew little of what was passing, for that he had been the cellarer in the convent, and went out but little. Nevertheless, he had kept his ears open; as they rode north to Jedburgh, he had heard a good deal ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... George IV. died, and William, Duke of Clarence, succeeded to the throne as King William IV. That summer was the last of the Princess's ignorance of her prospects; until then not even the shadow of a throne had been projected across the sunshiny path of the happy girl of eleven. She was with her mother in one of the fairest scenes in England—Malvern. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... abundantly established by the investigations of the National Vigilance Committee within the past two years and have been confirmed by other competent authorities. These conditions have been due not to the wish or the intention of our people, but to our blindness or our ignorance. We forget that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as one declaiming of political freedom has said. The same price must be paid for every other civic excellence or right. The liberty of woman, quite as much as the liberty of man, should be protected, and woman's moral freedom, quite ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... young, Able and weak, affects the very brutes And birds—how say I? flowers of the field— As a wise workman recognizes tools 230 In a master's workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin— An indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240 Prattle fantastically ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... ignorance terribly as he asked himself these questions; but the answer was ready for utterance as Roylance said, ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... have called them, meet daily and talk great nonsense and do nothing; which does not prove their principles to be good, while it demonstrates their intellect to be contemptible. No offence to the Signor Conte del Ferice, but I think ignorance has marked his little party for its own, and inanity waits on all his councils. If they believe in half the absurdities they utter, why do they not pack up their goods and chattels and cross the frontier? If they meant anything, ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... hand when you wanted salt, and instead of a real mantelpiece there was a quaint imitation one painted over the fireplace. There were some pieces of furniture too, such as were usual in rooms of the kind, but most of them, perhaps in ignorance, had been put to novel uses, like the plate-rack, where the Painted Lady kept her many pretty shoes instead of her crockery. Gossip said she had a looking-glass of such prodigious size that it stood on the floor, and Tommy nudged Elspeth to signify, "There ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... photography had really very little genuine art in it, and was more allied to a mechanical pursuit than to an artistic one. Now, when I look back on my past ideas, I clearly see that a great deal of this disgust was due to my ignorance and self-conceit. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... esteem and approbation of mankind. There are certain deferences and mutual submissions, which custom requires of the different ranks of men towards each other; and whoever exceeds in this particular, if through interest, is accused of meanness; if through ignorance, of simplicity. It is necessary, therefore, to know our rank and station in the world, whether it be fixed by our birth, fortune, employments, talents or reputation. It is necessary to feel the sentiment and passion of pride in conformity to it, and to regulate ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... ventured to let such dangerous neighbours into the group, had there not been still more imposing mysteries connected with the Peak, into which they were not initiated. Even young Ooroony wag kept in ignorance of what was to be found on that dreaded island. He saw vessels going and coming, knew that the governor often went there, saw strange faces appearing occasionally on the Reef, that were understood to belong to the ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... me my ignorance of country ways hath led me into a grave error," says Mr. Tawnish, with a scarce perceptible shrug of the shoulders; "upon second thoughts I grant there is about a man who can put down one throat what should suffice for six, ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... have told her; there were times when he had to fight his desire to have her share his anxiety as well as know the truth about him. But she was already carrying the burden of Jim's tragedy, and her father, too, was insistent that she be kept in ignorance. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... she had flown across the hall to the room on the other side, whence she fetched back her sister. The conversation was not renewed. In ignorance of what fruit the interview might have borne, or what its results might be, Annabella dared not touch the matter; and Josephine gave her no chance. She kept up a rattling fire of nonsense, until the two ladies were forced to ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... before the discovery of the binomial system, by the Rules it is absolutely excluded as of any authority. In my opinion, under all these circumstances, it would be mere pedantry to go back to Oken's 'Lehrbuch der Naturgeschichte' for the name Mitella,—a work little known, and displaying entire ignorance regarding ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... that the part which she took against the great minister was the fruit of mere inconsiderateness and ignorance of the feelings and necessities of the nation, and that, if she had known the depth of the people's distress, and the degree in which it was caused by the viciousness of the whole existing system of government, she would gladly have promoted every measure which could tend to ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... day before without my knowing it. Suddenly I remembered that I was ill in the morning and busy in the afternoon at the Orphan Asylum, and somewhat relieved at finding so excellent an excuse for my ignorance, I looked up to see if the detective had noticed anything odd in this woman's behavior. Presumably he had, but having more experience than myself with the susceptibility of ignorant persons in the presence of danger and distress, he attached less importance to it than I did, for which I was secretly ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... himself a grave and learned assistance both for Councell and government, whom, and every of which, his princely will is, shall in their severall places & dignities bee both honoured and obeid, with no lesse respect and observance than if himself were there present in person. And that carelesse ignorance may bee no lawfull excuse for the breach of his will therin hee hath appointed their severall names and titles, with their subordinate officers and deputies to be signified & proclaimed to all his lovinge and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... earth. To coddle them, to delude them with false hopes of an unnatural equality which not all the power of the Government has been able to maintain, is only to increase their unhappiness. To a doomed race, ignorance is euthanasia, and knowledge is but pain and sorrow. It is His will that the fittest should survive, and that those shall inherit the earth who are best prepared to utilise its forces ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... with us." There is plenty of time for all the experiments, and all the blunders, and all the failures; and all the successes of the future will grow out of these, because every failure rightly seen is the seed of a coming success, and only by the failures that we make in our ignorance may the plant of wisdom be sown, and presently flower and bear fruit for the feeding of the nations. So that there is time enough, and no need for impatience, when we see the blunders of our various democratic governments. ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... out of some account," contradicted the doctor mildly. "In spite of this carelessness, he has been a great help to me during the last month. It was boyish ignorance more than mere carelessness that brought about this disaster. To be sure, I have cautioned him not to leave the door of the feed-room unfastened. But he had no idea how a cow would make a glutton of herself if she had a chance at the bins. You cannot expect a boy who was reared ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... age was a profoundly religious country. There was ignorance, there was superstition, there was bigotry; but there was faith—a faith that itself worked true miracles, even while it believed in unreal ones. At this time, also, one of those devotional movements began among the clergy in France, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... hoping that what is written may be of some use to discover the Depths of Satan; and to prevent innocent ones having their Lives endangered, or their Reputations ruined, by being through the Subtility and Power of the Devils, in consideration with the Ignorance and Weakness of Men, involved amongst the Guilty. It becomes those of my Profession to be very tender in Cases of Blood, and to imitate our Lord and Master, Who came not to destroy the Lives of Men, but ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... fact, so easy that there is no necessity whatever to give the line of play. We thus, by means of the game, solve the puzzle in real life, why the Dutchman and his wife could not catch their pigs: in their simplicity and ignorance of the peculiarities of Dutch hogs, each went after the ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... on the subject of the early history of our planet, and have some peculiar views, but I have some reserve in talking here about it, as all our knowledge on such matter is little more than ignorance. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... stopped suddenly. To say that the Fathers would not receive him, wounded his self-love sorely. Notwithstanding the ignorance and innocence of his age, he felt that there was something humiliating to his mother in this avowal, as well as to himself; and then this recital, on which he had so heedlessly entered, carried him back to the only serious trouble of his life. Why had ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Shakespeare's opinions with profound respect. They know they ought to be well acquainted with his "works," but they are not, and hope to conceal their ignorance by accepting the poet's ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... as favorable as that of British subjects, it being understood that Captain Pickett's company should remain on the island. It is proper to observe that, considering the distance from the scene of action and in ignorance of what might have transpired on the spot before the General's arrival, it was necessary to leave much to his discretion; and I am happy to state the event has proven that this discretion could not have been intrusted to more competent hands. General Scott has ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the holidays in blissful ignorance of the episode narrated in our last chapter. Branscombe's illness had been an isolated case, and apparently not due to any defect in the sanitary arrangements of his house. And as no other boy was reported to have spent his holidays ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... isn't bad—that's anywhere near perfect? Except maybe Bach fugues? Religion, education, medicine, war, agriculture, art, pleasure, anything—all systems are choked with clumsy, outworn methods and ignorance—the whole human race works and plays at about ten-per-cent. efficiency. The only possible ground for optimism about the human race that I can see is that in most all lines experts are at work showing ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... they forbode a misfortune for the tribe; and as they have no baby-farming nor creches for getting rid of the children, every one of them recoils before the necessity of performing the cruel sentence; they prefer to expose the baby in the wood rather than to take its life by violence. Ignorance, not cruelty, maintains infanticide; and, instead of moralizing the savages with sermons, the missionaries would do better to follow the example of Veniaminoff, who, every year till his old age, crossed the ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... cannot answer your case, especially, why Rodents have not become highly developed in Australia. You must assume that they have inhabited Australia for a very long period, and this may or may not be the case. But I feel that our ignorance is so profound, why one form is preserved with nearly the same structure, or advances in organisation or even retrogrades, or becomes extinct, that I cannot put very great weight on the difficulty. Then, as you say often in your letter, we know not how many geological ages it may have taken to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... excursions when Abe Hightower was otherwise engaged. Naturally enough, too, Chichester saw a great deal of Babe. He was interested in her because she was young and beautiful, and because of her quaint individuality. She was not only unconventional, but charmingly so. Her crudeness and her ignorance seemed to be merely ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... married and settled down immediately after his remarkable cruise. He had kept his party in ignorance of his financial troubles and returned with his reputation as an aristocrat firmly established. The gay young Bessie Runnymede had accepted him at once. He had become junior partner in a firm of brokers and had rented a handsome residence ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... and nations. It is evident what fruitless labour it must be to search, in those barbarous and illiterate ages, for the annals of a people, when their first leaders, known in any true history, were believed by them to be the fourth in descent from a fabulous deity, or from a man exalted by ignorance into that character. The dark industry of antiquaries, led by imaginary analogies of names, or by uncertain traditions, would in vain attempt to pierce into that deep obscurity which covers the remote history of those nations. [FN [g] Bede, lib. 1. cap. 15. Saxon Chron. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... self-government, and that no one has the right of constraining his fellow-creatures to be happy. They have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man; they are of opinion that the effects of the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them to be good to-day may be superseded by something better to-morrow. I do not ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... made off. I have never heard of such a case in my life. Besides, on this occasion he was warned that the Downshires were in the trenches by the sentry of the Westfords, and, instead of giving himself up, he deliberately turned round and ran off, so that the excuse of ignorance does not hold water. That the man was a tramp is, to my mind, no excuse either—the army is not a rest home for tired tramps. The man ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... answered Tell, submissively, "I beg you to pardon me, for it was done through ignorance and not out of contempt. If I were clever, I should not be called Tell. I pray your mercy; it shall not ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... churchyards at midnight, or spices brought directly from the East, and with seven times distilled water, and suchlike, made a life elixir, or an infallible love potion, or again a cure for this or that disease. Among the many absurdities of ignorance some of the accumulated wisdom of experience may have crept into the old recipes: a real cure for a fever, or the application of a gold ring to an inflamed eyelid. Superstition said that the ring was the marvel-worker; possibly it was some quality in the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to do with it I entirely deny. The human race for ages upon ages has been enslaved by ignorance and by interested persons whose object it has been to confine the minds of men, thereby doing more injury than if with infected hands they purposely imposed disease on the heads of the people. Almost worse than these, and at the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... little about the country, and I hadn't a notion what I was going to do. I trusted to the strength of my legs, but I was well aware that those behind me would be familiar with the lie of the land, and that my ignorance would be a heavy handicap. I saw in front of me a sea of hills, rising very high towards the south, but northwards breaking down into broad ridges which separated wide and shallow dales. The ridge I had chosen seemed to sink after a mile or two to a moor which lay like a pocket in ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... all romantic nonsense," said General Rolleston, beginning to be angry. "You are a little fool, and in your ignorance and innocence have no idea how well this young fellow has behaved on the whole. I tell you that, in spite of this one fault, I should like to shake him by the hand. I will, too; ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... down the bars, Enlightening ignorance, Enigmas deeper than the stars He solves as by a glance, And raises cinnamon cigars ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Chladni temporarily to renounce his. Many high authorities, headed by Laplace in 1802, declared for the lunar-volcanic origin of meteorites; but thought on the subject was turbid, and inquiry seemed only to stir up the mud of ignorance. It needed one of those amazing spectacles, at which man assists, no longer in abject terror for his own frail fortunes, but with keen curiosity and the vivid expectation of new knowledge, to bring about ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... it really seems to me as though it were in Austria as it ought to be in hell, and as though the small devils of stupidity, folly, and ignorance, had chosen ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... account: the Dodds are an estimable family: pray be as friendly with them as ever you can." Jane coloured with pleasure at this most unexpected reply; but her wakeful conscience reminded her, this answer was given in ignorance of her attachment to Edward Dodd, and urged her to confession. But at that Nature recoiled: Edward had not openly declared his love to her; so modest pride, as well as modest shame, combined with female cowardice to ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... than human, the events frankly marvellous. The poem is an impressive one, and in one way or another fulfils all the main qualifications of epic. But perhaps no great poem ever had so many faults. These have nothing to do with its management of supernaturalism; those who object to this simply show ignorance of the fundamental necessities of epic poetry. The first book is magnificent; everything that epic narrative should be; but after this the poem grows long-winded, and that is the last thing epic poetry should be. It is written with a running pen; so long ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... as he goes on. When he knows all, what will he do? Shouldn't wonder if he went straight for Mark. Somehow I'm rather sorry for that poor devil of a Mark—he did me a bad turn once, but I've really almost forgiven him, and—but for Mabel—I think I should have shipped dear Vincent off in perfect ignorance—dear Vincent did bore me so! But I want to be quits with charming, scornful Mabel, and, when she discovers that she's tied for life to a sham, I do think it will make her slightly uncomfortable—especially if I can tell her she's indebted to me for it all! Well, in a day or two ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... not do at all," she said, in a tone which indicated surprise at my ignorance; "that would be quite a different thing. I am a sister to everybody, but you are ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... we would take advantage of your ignorance?" Boyd said. "The stake is only to give interest to the game. I would not give a copper for a game of cards without a stake. Come, put down your half-dollar, and we'll promise to pay you back all you loose, if you wish it, ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various |
