"Ignorant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Until then Morse had only tried his recorder on a few yards of wire, the battery was a single pair of plates, and the electro-magnet was of the elementary sort employed by Moll, and illustrated in the older books. The artist, indeed, was very ignorant of what had been done by other electricians; and Professor Gale was able to enlighten him. When Gale acquainted him with some results in telegraphing obtained by Mr. Barlow, he said he was not aware that anyone had even conceived the notion ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... alone we expect protection against all things evil. Of the vote Americans can never have too much—of the vote they can never have enough. The vote is expected by its very touch, suddenly and instantaneously, to produce miraculous changes; it is expected to make the foolish wise, the ignorant knowing, the weak strong, the fraudulent honest. It is expected to turn dross into gold. It is held to be the great educator, not only as regards races, and under the influence of time, which is in a measure true, but as regards individuals and ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... long black velvet robe covered with tin-foil ornaments, with which the necromancer was wont to frighten the ignorant and superstitious peasants who came to consult him out of ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... reason, Lady Delahaye?" I asked, "why you should not tell me now what you propose to tell Isobel in a year's time? There have been so many mysterious circumstances in connection with this affair that it is hard to come to any decision when one is ignorant of ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very cold, haughty, collected, and self-possessed, and his conversation that of a man who has cultivated his intellect rather in the world than the closet. I mean, that, perfectly ignorant of things, he was driven to converse solely upon persons, and, having imbibed no other philosophy than that which worldly deceits and disappointments bestow, his remarks, though shrewd, were bitterly sarcastic, and partook of all the ill-nature for which a very ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inundation. When Alexander opened the tomb of Cyrus, the remaining bones discovered his pro- portion, whereof urnal fragments afford but a bad conjecture, and have this disadvantage of grave inter- ments, that they leave us ignorant of most personal dis- coveries. For since bones afford not only rectitude and stability but figure unto the body, it is no impossible physiognomy to conjecture at fleshy appendencies, and after what shape the muscles and carnous parts might hang in their full consistencies. A full-spread ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... brutal, ignorant, and profligate,—low-born, too (for his own men whispered, behind his back, that he was no more than his name hinted, a wood-cutter's son), he still had his deserts. Valiant he was, cunning, and skilled in war. He and his troop of Angevine ruttiers had ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... asked. "Don't we just go on from one thing to another, picking our way, but never knowing quite what to do, because we don't know what's ahead? I believe we never do learn how to live," she added, half-smiling, yet a little pensive too; "but I am so very ignorant, and—" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a family joke, or sly allusion to some thing of which we know nothing, in this story of Eurymedusa's having been brought from Apeira. The Greek word "apeiros" means "inexperienced," "ignorant." Is it possible that ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... extremely distinct and sweet voice, which appeared to issue from the centre of it. The sounds were at first musical like those of a harp, but they soon became articulate, as if a prelude to some piece of sublime poetical composition. "You, like all your brethren," said the voice, "are entirely ignorant of every thing belonging to yourselves, the world you inhabit, your future destinies, and the scheme of the universe; and yet you have the folly to believe you are acquainted with the past, the present, and the ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... But not the sort of school which you have in your mind at this moment. Clara's early years were spent in a lonely old house in the Highlands of Scotland. The ignorant people about her were the people who did the mischief which I have just been speaking of. They filled her mind with the superstitions which are still respected as truths in the wild North—especially the ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... is a very little time, since I haue beene throughly resolued to trie my fortune in the matter, so it is more then time the preparation were in hand already, and therefore no fit time now to make any number of ignorant men to vnderstand with reason the circumstance that belongeth to a matter of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... not, emissaries of treason are cunningly working upon the fears and passions of the Border States, whose true interests are infinitely more on the side of the Union than of Slavery. They are luring the ambitious with visionary promises of Southern grandeur and prosperity, and deceiving the ignorant into the belief that the principles and practice of the Free States were truly represented by John Brown. All this might have been prevented, had Mr. Buchanan in his Message thought of the interests of his country instead of those of his party. It is not too late ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... reached out her hand toward him and raised her eyes to his with a pathetic appeal. "I know it's the habit of gentlemen to make gallant speeches," she said, "probably more in your own country than here; we are more simple, and as for me, I'm ignorant, I know that very well. I am not as quick as other people, I suppose, but I don't like this sort of thing, I never shall. Somehow, it hurts me, it seems as if one despised me. Well, never mind, it's not that, of course; you are in the habit ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... adventurer, and determined to destroy him and return to France. They were base enough to tell the natives that La Salle was a spy of the Iroquois, their ancient enemies, and it required all his genius and courage to remove this idea from the minds of the ignorant savages. Failing in this scheme, they endeavored to poison him and all his faithful adherents at a Christmas dinner; by the use of timely remedies, however, the intended victims recovered, and the villains, having fled, were in vain pursued over ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... fitly spoken, so nothing is rarer than the use of a word in its exact meaning. There is a tendency to overwork both words and phrases that is not restricted to any particular class. The learned sin in this respect even as do the ignorant, and the practise spreads until it becomes an epidemic. The epidemic word with us yesterday was unquestionably "conscription"; several months ago it was "preparedness." Before then "efficiency" was heard on every side and succeeded in superseding "vocational teaching," only ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... had appointed his brother to the command of his troop, whilst Captain Shaftoe was under Mr. Radcliffe. This, in some respects, was an unfortunate step: the young and brave commander had never even seen an army before: he was inexperienced, and ignorant of all military discipline: what he wanted in knowledge, he is said, however, to have made up for by the influence he acquired over his men, and by the power he had of inciting them to ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... you do not know what complications may arise," replied Mrs. Challoner, with the gloomy forethought of middle age. She thought she knew the world better than they, but in reality she was almost as guileless and ignorant as her daughters. "Until you begin, you do not know the difficulties that will beset you," ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... count them divine, or even reckon some of them good, or, even if they were greatly good, pay them divine honour and worship; but because they are the mark and index of certain matters dependent upon fixed times, to be ignorant of which is most inconvenient to our people"—to wit, fairs and so on. Since which time St. Hugh has not been cast out of the Calendar, but is ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... likely that the more prominent of those lawyers were the intimate advisors of the corporations of that region. I said that I had met a great many lawyers from whom the complaint had come most vigorously, not only that there was too much legislation with regard to corporations, but that it was ignorant legislation. I said, "Now, the responsibility is with you. If the legislation is mistaken, you are on the inside and know where the mistakes are being made. You know not only the innocent and right things that your ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... succeeding day the mirranes called together all the Persians at about sunrise and spoke as follows: "I am not ignorant that it is not because of words of their leaders, but because of their individual bravery and their shame before each other that the Persians are accustomed to be courageous in the presence of dangers. ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... virtue's book, i.e. ignorant of the elements of virtue. A principle (Lat. principium, beginning) is a fundamental truth; hence the current sense of 'unprincipled,' implying that the man who has no fixed rules of life is the one who will readily fall into evil. Comp. Sams. Agon. 760, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... take the form of bell-ringing, stone-throwing, or the breaking of crockery, has already been referred to, and is almost invariably the work of elemental forces, either set blindly in motion by the clumsy efforts of an ignorant person trying to attract the attention of his surviving friends, or intentionally employed by some ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... Sally searched her memory for anything to warrant an assumption that her mistress had been in any way ignorant of that black business of the small hours. She had neither denied such knowledge nor asserted it, but had simply permitted Sally to leave out of her account all reference to the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... that the great mass of the electors were too vast an object for court influence to grasp, or extend to, and that in despair they must abandon it; he must be very ignorant of the state of every popular interest, who does not know, that in all the corporations, all the open boroughs, indeed in every district of the kingdom, there is some leading man, some agitator, some ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... and their children. I escaped the visit; and on my return home there was a certain delicacy respecting old associations that restrained much talk, before me, on so momentous an event. Roland, like me, had kept out of the way. Blanche, poor child, ignorant of the antecedents, was the most communicative. And the especial theme she selected was the grace and beauty ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... such had not been the former possessor of an apartment I had so often entered with the most cruel antipathy. I liked her exceedingly; she is a marked gentlewoman in her whole deportment, though whether so from birth, education, or only mind, I am ignorant. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... invasion to the highest pitch of patriotic enthusiasm. Unable to appreciate the value of what must have appeared to them a timid and pusillanimous policy, they overwhelmed Barclay de Tolly with violent accusations of cowardice, and even of treachery; rendered the more plausible to the mind of the ignorant, by the circumstance of their object being a foreigner—or at least of foreign blood. So violent ultimately became these accusations, that although the Field-marshal continued to enjoy the highest confidence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... a series of contemptible victories, and scandalous submissions. The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of a statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being ignorant of what it is his ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... which included in its plan of operations an immediate influence upon the popular mind—the most direct, immediate, and radically reforming influences which could be brought to bear, under those conditions, upon the habits and sentiments of the ignorant, custom-bound masses of men;—those masses which are, in all their ignorance and unfitness for rule, as the philosopher of this age perceived, 'that greater part which carries it'—those wretched statesmen, under ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... much by the Opinion the ignorant Part of the People entertain'd of the Matter, and nothing would satisfie some, but that they not only Conniv'd at, but even assisted him in breaking their own Walls and Fences, and that for this Reason ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... labor, science, schools, the press, learning, new ideas, social reforms, the whole progress of the age, inspiring twenty millions, can no longer be cuffed and scouted in the Senate and snubbed in the salon or public meeting by the private interests of half a million of the most illiberal and ignorant conservatives in existence. Henceforth the North must rule. 'Must' is a hard nut, but Southern teeth must crack it, whether they will or no. We may shuffle and quibble, but to this it must come. Every day of the war renders it more certain. The farm must encroach ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... knowledge in the eighteenth century gave an impetus to the study of religion, the results of which for mythological investigation appear in the works of Dupuis and others.[1521] These authors were necessarily ignorant of many important facts, but they have the merit of having collected much material, which they treated as something that had to be explained in accordance with the laws of ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... symbolism, is not only poetically beautiful, but also scientifically true; yet, as literalism, it is in the case of the ignorant, superstition, and in the case ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... girl had been allowed to go home for a few days to her friends, and knew in what part of Aldborough her friends lived. But here his sources of information suddenly dried up. He knew nothing of the destination to which Mr. Bygrave and his family had betaken themselves, and he was perfectly ignorant of the number of days over which their absence might be expected to extend. All he could say was, that he had not received a notice to quit from his tenant, and that he had been requested to keep the key of the house in his possession until Mr. Bygrave ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... give no certainty. There is only one subject upon which the individual can speak with authority, and that is his own mind, but even here he is surrounded with darkness. I believe that we shall always be ignorant of the matters which it most behoves us to know, and therefore I cannot occupy myself with them. I prefer to set them all aside, and, since knowledge is unattainable, to occupy myself ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... He was seeking for some plausible excuse for withdrawal, when the door at the end of the room was thrown open, and two men came in, talking as they did so. The one was young and well dressed, with an easy, swaggering manner, which ignorant people mistake for good breeding. He had a many-colored rosette at his buttonhole, showing that he was the knight of more than one foreign order. The other was an elderly man, with an unmistakable legal air about him. He was dressed in a quilted dressing-gown, fur-lined ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... and hell as separate places have no existence, for the good, the bad, and the indifferent exist together exactly as they exist here. I do not say that there will be no day of harvesting in which the tares shall finally be separated from the wheat. On that point, as on many others, I am ignorant. Men and women whom I know on earth speak of the dead—"the changed"—as being perfected in knowledge and as having solved for ever "the great secret." That is not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... not diminish the offence of the nephew in the mind of the reader, when he is told that the youth was not ignorant of the particular tenderness of his relative in this respect. The gentle nature of the latter, alone, rescued him from the well-merited reproach of suffering his habitual levity of mood to prevail in reference to one whom even he himself was disposed ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... represents the truths he reveals {171} as a secure harbor of refuge from the storms of this world, and he promises his readers to raise them to the rank of immortals.[21] Vettius Valens, a contemporary of Marcus Aurelius, implored them in solemn terms, not to divulge to the ignorant and impious the arcana he was about to acquaint them with.[22] The astrologers liked to assume the appearance of incorruptible and holy priests and to consider their calling a sacerdotal one.[23] In fact, the two ministries sometimes combined: A dignitary ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... credit; and this could only be done by entering it as a loan or as a deposit. The first was the least liable to reflection, and therefore I had obviously recourse to it. Why the second sum was entered as a deposit I am utterly ignorant. Possibly it was done without any special direction from me; possibly because it was the simplest mode of entry, and therefore preferred, as the transaction itself did not require concealment, having ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... course, but I cannot see why. Do you know, my dear child, you are extremely mysterious, and puzzle me. Evan takes a pleasure in speaking of you. You and Lady Jocelyn are his great themes. Why is he to be kept ignorant of your good fortune? The spitting of blood is bad. You must winter in a warm climate. I do think that London is far better for you in the late Autumn than Hampshire. May I ask my sister Harriet to invite you to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... joking on the first of April, sending the ignorant or the unwary on fruitless errands, for the sake of making them feel foolish and having a laugh at them, prevails very widely in the world. And whether you call the victim a "Fourth-month Dunce," an "April fool," an "April fish" (as in France), or an "April gowk" (as in Scotland), ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... have been published, if the words were pronounced as they are spelled. The records of the phonograph, although of course sometimes faulty, are as a general thing accurate. When I wrote out the Passamaquoddy words given below, I was wholly ignorant of their meaning. I wrote them as I heard them on the cylinder, placing at their side the English equivalent. I then pronounced the word to an Indian, and he gave the same English word which I had myself written from ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... Jill continued, "that these houses were planned by men, who were not only ignorant of the details of housework but who held them in low esteem, as of no special importance. They evidently exhausted their room and their resources on what they are pleased to call the 'main' part of the house, leaving the kitchen and all its accessories to be fashioned out ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... the Euxine upon which Dareios was preparing to march has, apart from the Scythian race, the most ignorant nations within it of all lands: for we can neither put forward any nation of those who dwell within the region of Pontus as eminent in ability, nor do we know of any man of learning 45 having arisen there, apart from the Scythian nation and Anacharsis. ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... administrators of local taxes; all that they could do was to appeal to the feelings of the benevolent, and rely upon local charity. He believed that the extremely poor should excite our liberality, the miserable our pity, the sick our assistance, the ignorant our instruction, and ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... "My friend is superstitious—and ignorant. He tells how the Duke has a ship's mast with wires on a tower fronting the far side. He says Louis ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... century, but Hung-wu cultivated friendly relations with the neighbouring states. As a quondam Buddhist priest he lent his countenance to that religion to the exclusion of Taoism, whose priests had for centuries earned the contempt of all but the most ignorant by their pretended magical arts and their search after the philosopher's stone. Hung-wu died in 1398 and was succeeded by his grandson Kien-Wen. Aware that the appointment of this youth—his father was dead—would give offence to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Bajee, ignorant of the plot that had been planned, went to Scindia's camp to remonstrate against a heavy demand for money, on account of the expenses to which Scindia had been put; and to his astonishment he was, then and there, made a prisoner. Chimnajee ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... books of instruction on every subject under the sun, we most of us know how to behave in the majority of life's little crises. We have only ourselves to blame if we are ignorant of what to do before the doctor comes, of how to make a dainty winter coat for baby out of father's last year's under-vest and of the best method of coping with the cold mutton. But nobody yet has come forward with practical ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Saul, pardoned the tribe of Judah, and went back triumphantly into Jerusalem, which a few days before had taken part in his humiliation. The tribes of the house of Joseph had taken no side in the quarrel. They were ignorant alike of the motives which set the tribe of Judah against their own hero, and of their reasons for the zeal with which they again established him on the throne. They sent delegates to inquire about this, who reproached Judah for acting without their cognisance: ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... only a minute or two, became unbearable. The Guesser had wanted to yell at the woman to shut up, to leave him alone and not bother him with her ignorant questions that he could not answer because she was inherently too stupid to understand. He had wondered why he hadn't yelled; surely it was not incumbent on a Three to answer the ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... over their heads," said the commander. "It will show the ignorant savages that we are not to ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... vegetables were brought for sale; there were sold animals, fish, grass mats, brass-wire, bows, arrows, and spears; and thither were brought ivory and slaves from the interior. But though routes from all directions met at Nyangwe, the Arabs were as ignorant of ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... onlookers, ignorant of the true facts, but their curiosity aroused by the unusual circumstances, had prevented the pair from turning back and ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... more than a great writer and scholar, can never feel sufficiently grateful to her for having given it to the world, and helped to dissipate, thanks to its wonderful arguments, so many false legends and wild stories which were believed until now, and indeed are still believed by an ignorant crowd of so-called admirers of his, who, nine times out of ten, are only detractors of his colossal genius, and remarkable, though perhaps ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... latten, brass, Laund, waste plain, Layne, conceal, Lazar-cot, leper-house, Learn, teach, Lears, cheeks, Leaved, leafy, Lecher, fornicator, Leech, physician, Leman, lover, Let, caused to, Let, hinder, Lewdest, most ignorant, Licours lecherous, Lief, dear, Liefer, more gladly, Lieve, believe, Limb-meal, limb from limb, List, desire, pleasure, Lithe, joint, Longing unto, belonging to, Long on (upon), because of, Loos, praise, Lotless, without ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... were just a party of well-meaning campers taking a summer holiday on the mountainside, meaning no harm to anybody on earth; and having done a little kindness to a poor girl and her half-crazed father, they had obtained the enmity of an entire village. How cruel and ignorant these people ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... Pennsylvania and the coal-miners:—"Congress has found (Document No. 4) that the coal companies in the anthracite regions keep thousands of surplus labourers in hand to underbid each other for employment and for submission to all exactions; hold them purposely ignorant when the mines are to be worked and when closed, so that they cannot seek employment elsewhere; bind them as tenants by compulsion in the companies' houses, so that the rent shall run against them whether wages run or not, and under leases by which ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... when he was sixteen years old, by "a bonnie sweet sonsie lass" whom we now know as "Handsome Nell." Her other name to us is vapor, and history is silent as to her life-pilgrimage. Whether she lived to realize that she had first given voice to one of the great singers of earth—of this we are also ignorant. She was one year younger than Burns, and little more than a child when she and Bobby lagged behind the troop of tired haymakers, and walked home, hand in hand, in the gloaming. Here is one of the stanzas addressed to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... weather he speeds from winter back to winter again, and vanishes from your sight into the darkness whence he came. Even so the life of man appears for a little time; but of what went before and of what comes after we are wholly ignorant. If this new religion can teach us anything of greater certainty, it surely deserves to be followed." [Footnote: Bede, Historia, Book II, chap xiii, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... The Charteris family, though not of the most elite circles of all, were in one to which the Fulmorts had barely the entree, and the ease and dash of the young ladies, Lucilla's superior age, and caressing patronage, all made Phoebe in her own eyes too young and ignorant to pass an opinion. She would have known more about the properties of a rectangle or the dangers of a ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no desire to dig, and no shame about begging, found the friar's robe a useful adjunct to the latter occupation. Long after enthusiasm had ceased to draw any large numbers into the ranks of the friars, they were increased and multiplied by crowds of ignorant and idle rogues, who were ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Clement, etc., that they declared Christ to be God, but then continues: [Greek: Ta Eirenaiou te kai Melitonos kai ton loipon tis agnoei biblia, theon kai anthropon katangellonta ton Christon] ("Who is ignorant of the books of Irenaeus, Melito, and the rest, which proclaim Christ to be God and man"). The progress in theological views is very precisely and appropriately expressed in these words. The Apologists also professed their belief in the full revelation of God upon earth, that is, in ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... adjoining one, was any such document; even in the Admiralty-office no other than an indifferent map of the coast could be found: as for the adjacent country, it was so little known in England, that, when the British troops landed, their commander was ignorant of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... afternoon Mr. Catfield—for that was his name—gave out the hymns. He was a plain, honest man, very kind, very ignorant, never reading any book except the Bible, and barely a newspaper save Bell's Weekly Messenger. Even about the Bible he knew little or nothing beyond a few favourite chapters; and I am bound to ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... although the Mississippi failed to impress her at all. The climate she found odious, the people spoke neither pure French nor good English, and many a fault besides she found, chiefly with what she politely termed "the Creowls," whom she was never tired of ridiculing as lazy, ignorant, effeminate, and morbidly conceited. She was not an ideal companion when they made an expedition into the lovely pastoral Teche country, the Acadia of exiled Acadians and Eden of Louisiana, but her lack of enthusiasm did not damp ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... equally ignorant of that sublime and useful art, working lace; she had no further idea of dancing than had been beat into her head, or rather heels, by the saltatory instructions of an itinerant dancing-master—I ask pardon, "professor"—who, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... dictatorship, but not even the senate could bear up against it. Elated by these considerations, and at the same time exasperated, he set about inflaming the minds of the commons, already sufficiently heated of themselves: "How long," says he, "will you be ignorant of your own strength, which nature has not wished even the brutes to be ignorant of? At least count how many you are, and how many enemies you have. Even if each of you were to attack an individual antagonist, still I should suppose that you would strive more vigorously ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... it. Bowditch's Epitome, and Blunt's Coast Pilot, seem to him the only books in the world worth consulting, though I should, perhaps, except Marryatt's novels and Tom Cringle's Log. But of matters connected with the shore Mr. Brewster is as ignorant as a child unborn. He holds all landsmen but ship-builders, owners, and riggers, in supreme contempt, and can hardly conceive of the existence of happiness, in places so far inland that the sea breeze does not blow. A severe ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... against him and privily said, "There is no help but that I compass the destruction of this wolf." So he bore with his injurious usage, saying to himself, "Verily insolence and evil-speaking are causes of perdition and cast into confusion, and it is said, 'The insolent is shent and the ignorant doth repent; and whose feareth, to him safety is sent': moderation marketh the noble and gentle manners are of gains the grandest. It behoveth me to dissemble with this tyrant and needs must he be ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Miranda,' said Prospero; 'there is no harm done. I have so ordered it, that no person in the ship shall receive any hurt. What I have done has been in care of you, my dear child. You are ignorant who you are, or where you came from, and you know no more of me, but that I am your father, and live in this poor cave Can you remember a time before you came to this cell? I think you cannot for you were not then three ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... do as well without the advantages we could have given them. But what breaks my heart is to see Steve, who is bigger and abler and stronger than most men, go down to the bottom of the ladder and have to take his orders from an ignorant little German. It's small of me, I know, and Steve doesn't complain. But it seems to me ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... them? Could she submit to the ignorant domination of a child who knew nothing of the complications of human life, nothing of the ways in which human beings are driven by imperious desires, or needs, which have perhaps been sown in ground of flesh and blood by dead parents, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... philosopher; which sufficiently appeared by his writing the nature of things upon their names.... His understanding could almost pierce into future contingents; his conjectures improving even to prophecy, or the certainties of prediction. Till his Fall, he was ignorant of nothing but sin.... There was then no struggling with memory, no straining for invention. His faculties were ready upon the first summons.... We may collect the excellency of the understanding then, by the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... a cloudless three weeks of honeymoon among a score of little Southern towns—and were scarcely less happy during the first months of settling down. Emeline was entirely ignorant of what was suitable or desirable in a home, and George had only the crude ideals of a travelling man to guide him. They enthusiastically selected a flat of four handsome, large, dark rooms, over a corner saloon, on O'Farrell Street. The building was new, the neighbourhood ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... himself and through himself others. A stick that snaps in two when it is leant on! Some have thought me so and some have thought otherwise. Well, you would have answers which I know not how to give, being without medicine and in face of those who are quite ignorant and therefore cannot lend me their thoughts, as it sometimes happens that men do when workers of evil are sought out in the common fashion. For then, as you may have guessed, it is the evil-doer who himself tells the doctor of his crime, though he may not know that he is ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... adulteration in the past than guano. This has been due to the fact that the practice of selling guano on analysis—especially among retail buyers—did not largely obtain in the early years of the trade. A good deal of this adulteration was probably caused by ignorant prejudice on the part of the farmer, to whom the pungency of its smell and its colour were too apt to be ranked as its most important properties. The variation in the quality of different kinds of guano was too often not sufficiently realised by the buyer, who not unfrequently ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... my kind would have lied or stolen, or they would have made mischief for people. And then there were the young fellows, the mere boys.... It's a real injury to them to find that a girl they like is—is not nice. They're so wonderfully ignorant. A woman is either entirely good or entirely bad in their eyes. You couldn't really do anything to destroy their faith, even when they pretended to be rather rough and wicked. I wasn't that kind of a ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... the miscalled Protective system, and gradually, but effectively, to root it out of the statute-book, and thereby to free the universal industry of Britain from the mischievous shackles imposed by an ignorant and mistaken selfishness." ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... machines do not yet inspire sufficient confidence in their possessors to warrant them in undertaking operations above the sea, or at any considerable distance from their bases of manoeuvring. It is true that we are entirely ignorant of the essentials of their construction; but the fact that no attempt has yet been made to send them into action over blue water inspires us with the hope and belief that their effective range of operations is confined to ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... no nurse can afford to learn only the rules of repair or of keeping in order the instrument of consciousness, without knowing what effect her efforts have on the mind itself. It is as though an ignorant maid accepted a piano as merely a piece of furniture to be kept clean and shining, and in her zeal to that end scrubbed the keyboard with soap and water which, dripping down into the body of the instrument, swells and damages its felts, rusts and ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... Barchester was ignorant who was to be its new dean. On Sunday morning Mr. Slope was decidedly the favourite, but he did not show himself in the cathedral, and then he sank a point or two in the betting. On Monday he got a scolding from ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... witchcrafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest by too much credulity for things received only upon the Devil's authority, there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us; for we should not be ignorant of his devices. ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... thank Heaven, I have no experience,) it must be a sensation very much like that which I felt. The death of external and the birth of internal consciousness overwhelmed my childish soul with a dumb, ignorant ecstasy, like that which savages feel on first hearing the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... the English was destined to be the dominant language of North America. Their strenuous though unsuccessful effort to promote a system of public schools in Pennsylvania was defeated through their own ill judgment and the ignorant prejudices of the immigrant people played upon by politicians. But the mere attempt entitles them to lasting gratitude. It is not unlikely that their divisive work of church organization may have contributed indirectly to defeat the aspirations of their fellow-Germans ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... while, but there is a law that is certain to bring him within the power of punishment. Evil spirits go up and down among us, but there is a limit they can not pass. But Indians like this Swimming Seneca do much harm. They mislead the ignorant, arouse evil passions, and raise themselves into authority by their dupes. The man who tells the people their faults is a truer friend than he who harps only on their good qualities. Be that only a tree, or be it a man bound in this form, for a thousand winters, ...
— The Lake Gun • James Fenimore Cooper
... it is so," I replied, pretending to be frightened, "so let us say no more of the matter. After all, there are other women in Cuzco besides this fair bride of the Sun. Now before you go, High-Priest, will you who are so learned help me who am ignorant? I have been striving to master your method of conveying thoughts by means of knots. Here I have a bundle of strings which I cannot altogether understand. Be pleased to interpret them to me, O most holy ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... in the Rocky and the Wahsatch ranges. Opportunities for literary education were very limited to one so engaged, and little more than what was absolutely necessary to the railmen did he receive. But he was not ignorant by any means. In later years he read extendedly and with careful discrimination. He had a poet's soul, ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... young women in woe, lads in the impressionable period when sentimental experiences assume importance prodigious, youth of both sexes bewildered between physical and religious sensations, the sick and the poor, the ignorant and the cultivated, all found in him that sympathy which opens the heart, and which, most of human qualities, endears ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... officer of great acco{m}pte in tymes paste, and yet vsed in the courte of France but by one other name, in some parte beinge the office of the marshall of Englande. All whiche, because yo{u} shall not thinke I dreame, (though yt may seme strange to the ignorant to have so greate one officer intituled of suche base p{er}sons as to be called kinge or gouernor of Ribauldes,) [Sidenote: Johannes Tyllius maketh mention of a Rex Ribaldorum.] yo{u} shall here Joh{ann}es ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... Desmoscolecida or with the Nematoda. With regard to the systematic position of the group, it certainly comes nearest—especially in the structure of its reproductive organs—to the Nematoda. We still, however, are very ignorant of the internal anatomy of these forms, and until we know more it is impossible to arrive at a very definite conclusion as to their position in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Miserables knocks at the door and says: "Open to me, I ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sign, Wild," spoke up Arietta, as she brought her horse to a halt. "Well, it was not painted by an ignorant man, anyhow. It is about the first sign, with so many letters to it, that I have seen spelled correctly—in a ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... arose among theologians regarding animals classed as "superfluous." St. Augustine was especially exercised thereby. He says: "I confess I am ignorant why mice and frogs were created, or flies and worms.... All creatures are either useful, hurtful, or superfluous to us.... As for the hurtful creatures, we are either punished, or disciplined, or terrified ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits, that hardness has come upon Israel in part, until the fullness of the Gentiles come in. (26)And so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written: ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... "sharpens and does not enlarge the mind," I yet can admire without envy the superior knowledge evinced by the honorable manager. Indeed, upon my soul, I believe he is aware of an astronomical fact which many professors of that science are wholly ignorant of. But nevertheless, while some of his honorable colleagues were paying attention to an unoccupied and unappropriated island on the surface of the seas, Mr. Manager Boutwell, more ambitious, had discovered an untenanted and unappropriated region in the skies, reserved, he would have us think, in ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... alterations and emendations of the above scheme, for I need that sort of help, being ignorant of business and not able to learn a single ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up, for want of leisure to devote to them. But one of these days, I will make up for present deficiencies. I study only what I absolutely love, now; but then, if I can, I will study what I am at present ignorant of, and cultivate a taste ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... in his nervous walk, "I have lost those instructions. I have lost the entire plan of movement! It has been stolen from my room—is perhaps now in the hands of the enemy, and I ignorant of the contents! I had only glanced at them and meant to go over them thoroughly tonight. They are gone, and it means failure, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... anthropomorphon, and that of Columella, who terms it semihomo;' nor to Albertus, 'when he affirmed that mandrakes represent mankind with the distinction of either sex.' The roots, which were commonly sold in various parts of Europe 'unto ignorant people, handsomely made out the shape of man or woman. But these are not productions of nature but contrivances of art, as divers have noted.... This is vain and fabulous, which ignorant people and simple women believe; for the ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... of unfriendliness appeared the waitress at the St. Brasten Cocoa House; first, as a human being to whom he could talk, second, as a woman. She was ignorant and vulgar; she misused English cruelly; she wore greasy cotton garments, planted her large feet on the floor with firm clumsiness, and always laughed at the wrong cue in his diffident jests. But she did laugh; she did listen while he stammered ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... town,—the happiest wife, the merriest mother. To-day she is a mere wreck of her former self, pallid, drawn, almost speechless, yet she is not ill. She will not acknowledge to an ache or a pain; will not even admit that any change has taken place in her. But you have only to see her. And I am as ignorant of the cause of it all—as you are!" ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... himself with serious questions and he was totally ignorant of all details of financial undertakings. It was, therefore, perfectly easy for Sergei Antonovitch to assume a tone of solid, practical sense, which imposed completely on the young prince. Young Shadursky, from politeness, and to prove his worldly wisdom, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... most important point is this, that to a something of this kind not one category can be found applicable. Take, for example, the conception of substance, that is, something that can exist as subject, but never as mere predicate; in regard to this conception I am quite ignorant whether there can really be anything to correspond to such a determination of thought, if empirical intuition did not afford me the occasion for its application. But of this ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... strange that Mr. Irving should form such an undue estimate of Reed's character, nor can we believe him to be ignorant of what was his real position and standing among his brother officers. As early as 1776, when Reed contemplated resigning his commission as Adjutant General, the announcement was hailed with pleasure, for ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... (in 1869 Lesseps greeted him in Paris as the "father" of the canal); and in 1831 he introduced to the home government the idea of opening a new overland route to India, by a daring and adventurous journey (for the Arabs were hostile and he was ignorant of the language) along the Euphrates valley from Anah to the Persian Gulf. Returning home, Colonel Chesney (as he then was) busied himself to get support for the latter project, to which the East India Company's board was favourable; and in 1835 he was sent out in command of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... more. I, no more than the others, had any view about the question at issue, while my possible contribution was less by one thing, namely, the false assumption of a knowledge that I had not got. I was, I admit, much put out, and being overwhelmed by the mob of ignorant speakers, I held my peace, fearing lest I should be rightly set down as insane if I held out for being sane among those madmen.[55] So I continued to ponder all the questions in my mind, not swallowing what I had heard, but rather chewing the cud of constant meditation. At last ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... the principal of the school. With a few alterations they approved it. The girls had seen many banners at Chautauqua and they had talked with the ladies who had made the banner of their mother's class, so that they were not entirely ignorant of the work they were laying out for themselves. Nevertheless, they profited by the experience of others and did not have to try too ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... babies must have discipline, system, frugality, and leisure for individual development drilled into them. I do not wish them to be ignorant of one single modern grace and accomplishment; mind and body must be trained together like a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... population!) who live by the manufacture of cotton? Is not the wealth of Great Britain founded on cotton, which alone furnishes four-fifths of its exported manufactures? All this is true, and they are not ignorant of it at Manchester. Notwithstanding, what happened there the other day? An immense meeting was convoked for the purpose of carefully examining the great cotton business, and the perils created by the present crisis. I do not know that among these manufacturers, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... any mystic brotherhood, and, as I have explained, no Mahatma, although I have called myself thus for present purposes because the name is a convenient cloak. I repeat that I am ignorant if there are such people as Mahatmas, though if so I think Jorsen must be one of them. Still he never told me this. What he has told is that every individual spirit must work out its own destiny quite independently of others. Indeed, being rather fond of ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... the Polish delegates remarked: "If you had put the question to the inhabitants fifty years ago they would have expressed their wish to remain with the Germans because at that time they were profoundly ignorant and their national sentiment was dormant. Now it is otherwise. For since then many of them have been educated, and the majority are alive to the issue and will therefore declare for Poland. And if any section of the territory ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... sides by the most beautiful and picturesque scenery of sea and mountain, in a land rich in historical and poetical annals, yet a large portion of the inhabitants impress a stranger with the conviction that they are the poorest, and perhaps the most ignorant, population in Europe. It is a sad reflection, that applies especially to all parts of southern Italy, that the descendants of the Romans, once the rulers of the world, are now classed among the lowest in intelligence ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Christian Church was not delayed; for his baptism is recorded, in the register of St. Mary's parish in that city, to have been performed on the day of his birth. His father is there stiled Gentleman, a circumstance of which an ignorant panegyrist has praised him for not being proud; when the truth is, that the appellation of Gentleman, though now lost in the indiscriminate assumption of Esquire, was commonly taken by those who could not boast of gentility. His father was Michael Johnson, a native ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Paris, must at least be a German count The young Graf plays with his lips on the ivory head of his bamboo, as he holds it with his kid-gloved hand, sitting carefully the while, lest the elbow of his French coat should be soiled by contact with a desk ignorant of duster for many a month. He is condemned, however, to hear, day by day, over and over, many a truth that will scarcely flatter his noble ears. The heft and the toil of writing down a lecture are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... this paralyzing bourgeoisie with astonishing life. One turns back from much more exciting literature to these ignorant, ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... her hands in that intense way of hers, "won't she be happy when she hears! A little ignorant unknown freshman to win the prize for the best short story among eight hundred students! Her mother will be delighted. Her mother will ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, all too easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter. At the hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous and the unsparing, our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone. We have handled it in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion. This has been our policy as a nation. If there is to be success for any plan to remedy ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... the beacon had all the effect which Lance could have desired upon the minds of his rude and ignorant hearers, who, in their superstitious humour, had strongly associated the Polar-star of Peveril with the fortunes of the family. Once moved, according to the national character of their countrymen, they soon became enthusiastic; and Lance found himself at ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... one thing, however, to be said in favour of the gentleman— namely, his education, which fits him for offices and professions which must remain for ever out of the reach of the half-ignorant. It is, therefore, only in agricultural pursuits, and mechanical operations, that the working man is able to obtain a superiority; and then only if he be sober and industrious, for whiskey has been the great bane of the colony. Hundreds ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... she asked bluntly. "You ken that I'm no' the wife you would have gotten nor the yin your folk would like you to get," she said, searching his face with a keen look. "I'm no' born in your class. I'm ignorant an' have not the fine manners your wife should have, an' I doot neither your faither nor your mither wad consent to such ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Morrow that the man he was interrogating was ignorant of Brunell's connection with the Lawton case, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... platform with approval and affection, and the Chairman of the Program Committee said she was sure they were all deeply indebted to Miss Vail for a most enlightening little lecture. "I am free to confess," she said, smiling, "that it is a subject upon which I, personally, have been ignorant, and I believe many of our club ladies would ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... his impossible scheme—many people said so, when, some years afterwards, he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment and a fine of thirty thousand francs for his share in it. But if he did not, the French peasantry did, and money came pouring in. Ignorant people sold their little all and gathered together at Marseilles and other ports, where ships waited to convey them to the new paradise; in all, nearly half a million pounds was subscribed. Then away ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... much fat in our diet. We were great muscular machines, and fat was the fuel for our engines. Muckraking was just beginning in those days, and a prying reformer came to live for a while at the Greasy Spoon. He told us that so much grease in our food would kill us. We were ignorant of dietetics; all we knew was that our stomachs cried for plenty of fat. The reformer said that our landlady fed us much fat meat because it was the cheapest food she could buy. Milk, eggs and fruits would cost more, and so this greedy cruel woman was lining her pocket at the ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... are discussed daily in the newspapers and voted on at times at the polls, and it is the duty of every man to try to understand them. For if these questions are not intelligently settled, they will be settled by the ignorant, and the result will be ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... domus ortus aspicit et Phoebi tenerum iubar; illa cadentem detinet exactamque negat dimittere lucem, cum iam fessa dies et in aequora montis opaci umbra cadit vitreoque natant praetoria ponto. haec pelagi clamore fremunt, haec tecta sonoros ignorant fluctus terraeque silentia malunt. * * * * * quid mille revolvam culmina visendique vices? sua cuique voluptas atque omni proprium thalamo mare, transque iacentem Nerea diversis ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Midget, now stop crying. You're not going to be punished; you don't deserve to be. What you did was not wrong in itself,—at least it would not have been for older people. But you children are ignorant of the ways of the grown-up world, and so you ought not to have taken the responsibility of dictating to or advising grown people. ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... old man only looked with pity at Farmer Nicholas; and with a sort of sorrow too, reflecting how much he might have made in a bargain with such a customer, so ignorant and hot-headed. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore |
