"Thick-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... treated him as though it was unnecessary for him to give any praise or commendation. When Brennan disappointed him, which was seldom, P. Q. would berate him with the same caustic fervor that lashed a stupid, thick-headed reporter to a point of self-abnegation that gave him thoughts of suicide as the only way ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... soft-handed pop-eared tenderfoot, you! there are some things you never THINK of telling a man. I never told you to open your mouth to spit, either. If you had a hired man at five dollars a year who was so all-around hopelessly thick-headed and incompetent as you are, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... of leaden gray, somewhat relieved by the blackish shade of the wings and tail, with their silvery or frosted lustre. He is certainly not an attractive bird, either in dress or in form, for he appears very "thick-headed" and lumpish, as if he scarcely knew enough to seek shelter in a time of storm; but, of course, a bird that contrives to coax a livelihood out of such unpromising surroundings must possess a fine degree of intelligence, and, therefore, cannot be so much of a dullard ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... "I think I am right. That pink-and-white Frenchman is the master mind in this conspiracy. And to think that the unintelligent muscles of a couple of thick-headed French policemen should have crudely interfered with me at such a moment!" He ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... with such a measure of respect as I could assume. He made no reply whatever. 'Don't you know me?' I asked. His answer was not reassuring: 'I know you well enough; you are the old fool Van Helsing. I wish you would take yourself and your idiotic brain theories somewhere else. Damn all thick-headed Dutchmen!' Not a word more would he say, but sat in his implacable sullenness as indifferent to me as though I had not been in the room at all. Thus departed for this time my chance of much learning from this so clever lunatic, so I shall go, if ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... a man of sense ought to be able to regulate a private establishment at least as well as a board of thick-headed guardians can regulate ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... of these thick-headed tribes can be all swelled up with pride when they have little ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... I said, leaning down to press the intercommute. Freeda is a thick-ankled, thick-headed telepath. But stupid or not, she is telepathic, and is an ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... dat 'ere way. I'd swar at ye ef yer wuz in de pulpit an' dat come ober me, jes at de fust. Yer knows Nimbus better ner dat. Now see heah, 'Liab Hill, yer's gwine ter go an' be registered termorrer, jes ez sure ez termorrer comes. Here we thick-headed dunces hez been up dar to-day a-takin' de oath an' makin' bleve we's full grown men, an' here's you, dat knows more nor a ten-acre lot full on us, a lyin' here an' habin' no ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... who was rejoiced to see a body of visitors, Mr Gregsbury looked as uncomfortable as might be; but perhaps this was occasioned by senatorial gravity, and a statesmanlike habit of keeping his feelings under control. He was a tough, burly, thick-headed gentleman, with a loud voice, a pompous manner, a tolerable command of sentences with no meaning in them, and, in short, every requisite for a very ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... in an indecisive attitude.... "You're really a fool," she said, turning away. "I thought you were clever, but you're simply thick-headed!..." ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... dear Lucius, you are a thick-headed, old-fashioned, superstitious Roman, whom I, in my superior wisdom, utterly despise," he would have produced about the same effect ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... "Then I didn't know what to do, for a minute. The porter was a pretty thick-headed darky, but he was lion-hearted; and his idea was to lay hold of a burglar wherever he could find him. There were plenty of burglars in the aisle there, or people that were afraid of burglars, and they seemed to think the porter had a good ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... I was the first man at the table, and two families came in and were waited on before the Senegambian would look at me, and after an hour and thirty minutes I got a chance to order some roast beef and baked potatoes, but the perspiring, thick-headed pirate brought me some boiled mutton and potatoes that looked as though they had been put in a wash-tub and mashed by treading on them barefooted. I paid twenty-five cents for a lemonade made of water and vinegar, with a piece of something on top that might be lemon peel, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... to a lady who was next me. She was a Christian Scientist, and wore glasses. She endeavored to convert me, but I was abnormally thick-headed that day, and had to have things explained over and over, so she ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... governing themselves, to ape the forms of real republics, and mix them with such childish clauses as come into their infantile minds. The chief newspaper of the republic resembles a high-school periodical, concocted by particularly thick-headed students without faculty assistance or editing. A history of their childish governmental activities would fill volumes. In 1910 all the copper one-centavo coins were called in and crudely changed to two-centavo pieces by surcharging the figure 2 and adding an s, a much ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... at police work, but a proper cad, in my opinion. Always swanking about the palatial residence he'd left behind in the Old Country. He called it ''is 'ome' at that. Typical specimen of the middle-class snob. Followed Taylor. Thick-headed, serious-minded sort of fool. Had great veneration for 'his juty.' No real knowledge of the Criminal Code, and minus common sense, yet begad! the silly beggar tried to be more regimental that the blooming ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... Kinnaird, with a puzzled air. "A battalion of thick-headed niggers with some slight knowledge of civilized drill, and, perhaps, a few stockades blown up ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... varying distances from place to place, how many basins of rice each man could eat, and other Chinese commonplaces, to things military. Everybody warmed to the subject. My military bodyguard were the chief speakers, and cleverly brought round the smoky fire, for the benefit of the thick-headed rustics who made up the fascinated audience, a modern battlefield, and made their ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... interest in the thing at all that I had no patience to go on with my cross-questioning. I don't think she's good enough for John, I must confess; but he is easily imposed on by young ladies—as indeed, for that matter, are the rest of his great thick-headed sex. When breakfast was over and Cousin Amelia went off as usual to practise her music for an hour or two, I thought I might steal away for a visit to my favourites in the stable; indeed I saw John at the front door in a hideous wide-awake, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... his lips, "that it were but an opera girl or a countess! And yet my mistress is the very best mistress that ever I see!" Oh this was poor, and showed a pitiful ambition in the man that did it! I will swear, my lord, that the nobleman who could thus have been betrayed, must have been a thick-headed fellow, and fit for no one public office, not even for that of turnspit ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... All I get is just the business, and I'm to carry the John Burnit Store on from its present blue-ribbon standing to still more dazzling heights, I suppose. Well, I'd like to do it. The governor deserves it. But, you see, I'm so beastly thick-headed. Now, Agnes, you have perfectly stunning judgment and all that, so if you would just——" and he came to an ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... high state of indignation; for no officer there would touch her trunk because some American Express had put little leaden stamps here and there for some unknown purpose. Not even in her best French could the irate lady make the thick-headed men understand that it was not a high crime against the nation to undo a strap till some superior officer arrived to take the responsibility of so rash ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... ornamental nor artistic, but very distinct; Jim sees them from the reverse side of the sheet first, maybe, and turns it over with interest to see what it is. He grins a good-humoured grin as he reads—poor old Bill is just as thick-headed and obstinate as ever—just as far gone on his old fad. It's rather rough on Jim, because he's too far off to argue; but, if he's very earnest on the subject, he'll sit down and write, using all his old arguments to prove that the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... going to M. Carli's myself. The story made him laugh. He told me that the burgomaster was a Catholic, a worthy man, well to do, but rather thick-headed; in short, a fine ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... thus pleaded against himself, he knew that the two men of whom he was speaking were thick-headed dolts who were always tipsy on Saturday nights, and who came to church perhaps once in ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Everything is done for you—more, of course, than one would wish—the gifted young captain-conductor speaks English one minute, French or Italian the next, gets you up in the morning, to bed at night, past countless sentries and thick-headed guards demanding an Ausweis, contrives never to cease looking as if he had stepped from a band-box, and presently pops you into your hotel in Berlin with the curious feeling of never having been ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... what it is," he said, the third time he came over, which was well within a week—for nothing breeds impatience faster than retirement from work—"you are so thick-headed in your farmhouse ways, sometimes I am worn out with you. I do not expect to be thought of any higher because I have left off working for myself; and Deborah is satisfied to be called 'Debby,' and walks no prouder than if she had got to clean her own steps daily. You can not ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... pensioners of the army. On a late Queen's birthday review on the Green, the boys and girls were in ecstasies at seeing the "old fogies" dressed out in new suits. It is very often spoken derisively to a thick-headed stupid person, but which cannot ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... proclaimed, and the country suddenly placed in a state of siege. One morning M. Milsand came to them in anxious haste, and insisted on their starting that very day. An order, he said, had been issued that no native should leave the country, and it only needed some unusually thick-headed Maire for Mr. Browning to be arrested as a runaway Frenchman or a Prussian spy. The usual passenger boats from Calais and Boulogne no longer ran; but there was, he believed, a chance of their finding one at Havre. They acted on this warning, and discovered its wisdom in the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... should decree, he thought she had never seemed more glorious than she did now, sitting with her children about her, almost unmoved by the excitement. For Mrs. Wehle had come to take everything as from the Heavenly Father. She had even received honest but thick-headed Gottlieb in this spirit, when he had fallen to her by the Moravian lot, a husband chosen for her by the Lord, whose will was not to ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... Minna would at least be pleased when she entered the house she was henceforth to manage. I also thought it necessary to get a maid for her, and a particularly suitable person was recommended me by Mme. Herold. I had also engaged a man-servant as soon as I arrived, and although he was rather a thick-headed Swiss from Valais, who had at one time belonged to the Pope's bodyguard, he soon became quite devoted to me. In addition to these two servants there was my wife's former cook, whom she had taken with her ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... fellow-creatures who form his society. Probably the rule that obtains of men and women holds good of children also: the less brain power the more happiness. Intellect—especially a growing intellect—will give a child lightning flashes of joy denied to his more thick-headed brother; but much sorrow must also result from his extra intelligence. If he rises higher, he will sink far lower, too. The placid, ordinary youth thinks less, and digests his food better, and has a pleasanter time, on the whole. A sensitive child feels with a keen freshness that only ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... understood his instructions, that his impression was the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter, and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed notary right. The discussion which followed took up a ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... the cloth covering the basket, and looking within it.] I'd best have gone myself. Of all the thick-headed men I ever did see, you're the thickest. Upon ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... of hostilities, I tell myself that the trade of fighting is a trade to be learned by slow and laborious degrees, and even then may be learned with thoroughness only by one who has a natural aptitude for it. Either that, or else I am most extraordinarily thick-headed, for I own that I am still as complete a greenhorn now as I was at ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... how the land lies, is it? I'm a thick-headed clod, or I would have suspected something of that sort when Mary pulled me down so sharply as I was cursing you at the front door." Then, with a slight touch of patronage ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... "What a thick-headed man this is!" she said, pleasantly. "Must I put it more plainly still? Engage in what your English prudery calls a 'flirtation,' with some woman here—the lower in degree the better, or the Princess might be jealous—and let the affair be seen and known ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... in thick guttural tones a thick-headed Dutchman, who had manifested towards me particular dislike, "in one or TWO days more, at farthest, we shall help to carry him ashore in a wooden box." And a pleasant smile for a moment lighted up his ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him "poor Richard," been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... tapir, like the condor, for an unknown reason, is not found north of 8 deg. N., though it wanders as far south as 40 deg.. We met but one species of peccari, the white-lipped (D. labiatus). It is much larger than the "Mexican hog," and, too thick-headed to understand danger, is a formidable antagonist. The raposa is seen only on the Middle Amazon, and very rarely there. It has a long tapering muzzle, small ears, bushy tail, and grayish hair. It takes to the water, for the one we saw at Tabatinga ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... bad influence. They provoke worldly men into using light conversation concerning sacred subjects. Thick-headed commentators upon the Bible, and stupid preachers and teachers, work more damage to religion than sensible, cool-brained clergymen can fight away again, toil as they may. It is not good judgment to fit a crown of life upon a city which has been destroyed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thick-headed thing, I'm not teasing you. I wouldn't do that. You must go and learn it again. Don't you be discouraged, Tom, you'll manage it—and if you do, I'll give you something ever so nice. There, now, that's a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... course there are prettier, and Mrs. Winscombe has more air; but none has Caroline's charming manner. Of course, you have noticed it. Even a thick-headed brother couldn't miss that. We have plans for you, too. And it's no good your ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... only familiar, but even friendly; and this, on the part of one who had so long detested me, I found the more insidious. He went little abroad; sometimes even refusing invitations. "No," he would say, "what do I care for these thick-headed bonnet-lairds? I will stay at home, Mackellar; and we shall share a bottle quietly, and have one of our good talks." And, indeed, meal-time at Durrisdeer must have been a delight to any one, by reason of the brilliancy of the discourse. He would often express wonder at his former indifference ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is exceedingly short, thick-headed (in appearance), and, like many of the English, thick-tongued. While I was looking at the instruments, Mrs. Airy came into the equatorial house, bringing Mr. Adams, the rival of Leverrier, [Footnote: See Chapter VII.]—another short ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Martin Lorimer, "many a time, and we had words upon it. We're a thick-headed people, Ralph, except for our womenkind, and if we're slow to think evil we're slow to change. The Lord forgive ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... Mr. Wilson, very deliberately, "and it's rather sad, how thick-headed some people are. You don't seem to grip the facts. It never seems to have occurred to either of you that my uncle and my nephew are one ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Beckendorff. The truth was, that gentleman had a particular wish to see Vivian out of his house. In allowing the Prince of Little Lilliput to be attended during the interview by a friend, Beckendorff had prepared himself for the reception of some brawny Jagd Junker, or some thick-headed chamberlain, who he reckoned would act rather as an incumbrance than an aid to his opponent. It was with great mortification therefore, that he found him accompanied by a shrewd, experienced, wary, and educated Englishman. A man like Beckendorff soon discovered ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... following is the larger part of chapter eight of Scott's Ivanhoe. The hero of the novel is a Saxon knight, Wilfred of Ivanhoe, son of Cedric. Ivanhoe is in love with his father's ward, Rowena, but Cedric wishes her to marry a thick-headed Saxon thane, or lord, called Athelstane. According to Scott, the period was one of unrest. England had come into the possession of the Normans, and the native Saxons hated their new masters. Richard was king. But since he had gone to the Holy Land as a leader in one of the crusades, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... for a thick-headed mule,' he says, 'this war ain't any more than just started! Do you mean to tell me you're going to play prisoner ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... the dove the wisdom of the serpent. Poor boy, poor boy, I'm afraid he'll sink, but we must do what we can to keep his chin floating above the water. And now I must go back to the study to have out my explanation with that detestable thick-headed old pig of a Blenkinsopp! "Your views about young Le Breton," I must say to him, "are unfortunately only too well founded; and I have been compelled to dismiss him this very hour from Pilbury Grammar School." Ugh—how humiliating! the profession's ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... sounding above, beneath, around me; while the moon, apparently in the very midst of the rushing waters, seemed to be struggling to keep her place, on account of the ever-varying form and density of the water masses through which she was seen, now darkly veiled or eclipsed by a rush of thick-headed comets, now flashing out through openings between their tails. I was in fairyland between the dark wall and the wild throng of illumined waters, but suffered sudden disenchantment; for, like the witch-scene in ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... confinement, it was not probable that the lusty winter of his life would be shortened by what had happened. Unfortunately, the accident threatened to have evil consequences in another quarter. Immediately after it occurred, one Matthews, a busy, thick-headed lout of a butcher, rode furiously off to Elm Park with the news. Mrs Arbuthnot, who daily looked to be confined, was walking with her husband upon the lawn in front of the house, when the great burly blockhead rode up, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... slowly by himself, but he shook his head in a dissatisfied way as he closed the book. "That's easier than the names to read, but I don't seem to get much out of it. Guess I'm too thick-headed," he ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... largest size on the heads of dwarfs of no size at all; the same heavy scroll-work, reminding one of the work of a playful giant of a green-grocer who has made a bouquet of sausages and cabbages, egg-plants and legs of mutton, and exhibits it to a thick-headed public as a—work of art. O Roman Plebs! lay this nattering unction to your soul—we did ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... latitude; don't want to swim in hot water by quarreling with every madman or every dunce, but I do doubt any man's right to combine contradictory vices. Now these worthies are stupid yet wild, thick-headed yet delirious—tortoises and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... most men are conceited, and all men are thick-headed, and you're a man. Think of what a wife she'd ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... thick-headed fool! I'll time you by hanging you to your own front door. There has been time for me to send my men out into the country; time for a farmer to come in with a cartload of produce, and be robbed here under your very nose! Maledictions on you, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... we left Gallibornu and felt relieved to have parted with the carts, as for several marches they had caused great delay and inconvenience. Although Theodori had deceived me by agreeing to conduct us direct to Cape St. Andrea I did not like to discharge the thick-headed but innocent Georgi, therefore I offered to pay them a certain sum which they themselves named, per day, for the keep of their oxen, provided they should return with their empty carts to Lithrankomi ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... cows. They raised us on milk and they had a garden. I never et much meat. I went to school and they said meat would make you thick-headed so you couldn't learn. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... intruders. Of modern luxury they had no notion; and as for sending a boy to Paris, it was sending him, they thought to certain ruin. Such sagacity will give a sufficient idea of the old-world manners and customs of this society, suffering from thick-headed Royalism, infected with bigotry rather than zeal, all stagnating together, motionless as their town founded upon a rock. Yet Angouleme enjoyed a great reputation in the provinces round about for its educational advantages, and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... he says, 'an' I'm undher ordhers to be polite with citizens I stop,' he says; 'but, if ye don't duck up that road in half a minyit, ye poy-faced, red-eyed, lop-eared, thick-headed ol' bosthoon,' he says, 'I'll take ye be th' scruff iv th' neck an' thrun ye into th' ga-as-house tank,' he says, 'if I'm coort-martialed f'r ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... Crochard in his ear. "Thick-headed fool! Have you learned no wisdom yet? I would smite you, Pigot, but that I have need of you. Listen! I and only I can save France! I demand that you take me ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the King's Arms meekly, and before I knew what I was doing I had been presented to three or four solid-thighed, thick-headed, stout-legginged farmers as "Our Lottie's intended." They laughed, and came near to shaking my hand off. I felt that if I backed out after that, I never could show my face in Eden ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... very thick-headed, and hardly knew the meaning of these long words, bat he did not like Mrs. Bullen, and he resented her talking to him, a servant, in that ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... was she, and, as it happened, she was right. Imagine any one thinking Alice Paul needed to be 'under observation!' The thick-headed idiots!" ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... made the poorest marriage of anybody that I have ever had to do with, though I have always understood that he was not a bad sort, beyond being as thick-headed as his brother the squire or an officer of dragoons. He get on at the bar! I dare say not. And he was no quicker-witted or longer-sighted in Australia. You must have heard me say how grieved I was once when I came across a fellow from Sydney who had been up the country, and remembered something of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... but feel the cut, thick-headed as he was. He tried to frame some fitting reply, but could not, and so rowed away, feeling in a worse humor ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... attracted the attention of the scientific world to such a degree that the frivolous populace of Paris had even a well-known song with the burden, "Des infiniment petits." Neither were opponents wanting. Wrong-headed men and thick-headed men are unfortunately too numerous in all times and places. One Nieuwentiit, a dweller in intellectual fogbanks, who had distinguished himself by proving the existence of the Deity in one of his works, made about this time what he doubtless considered a second ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... be so thick-headed," rousing herself, and staring sleepily at the rain-washed window and the crackling fire. She sang a little hymn to herself, that simplest of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... you—you thick-headed beast," replied the Rat, really angry, "this must stop. Not another word, but scrape—scrape and scratch and dig and hunt round, especially on the sides of the hummocks, if you want to sleep dry and warm to-night, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... just what she wanted, she should have that thing, if there is any power in the human will. But I am clumsy, and thick-headed, and make blunders—you have often said so, Clarice, and so has Jane, and even Mabel. She I speak of is of finer clay than others. Her nature has its own laws, which I can understand only very imperfectly. Yes, you know it is so: you have told me that too. O, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... yourselves, trying all the time to be dishonest under the shadow of what is called diplomacy. That is what brought the war about. It was never the will of the people. It was the Hohenzollerns and the Romanoffs, the firebrands of the French Cabinet, and your own clumsy, thick-headed efforts to get the best of everybody and yet keep your Nonconformist conscience. The people did not make this war, but it is the people who are going to ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... so thick-headed I didn't understand. But it really was a peaceful day. After Nils' chest went aft, we might have been a comfortable family ship so little were we troubled by the afterguard. Lynch, of course, kept his watch ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... Porchon only take them of us on conditions that grow harder and harder day by day. You have only your time to lose, while I am obliged to disburse two thousand francs. If we fail, habent sua fata libelli, I lose two thousand francs; while, as for you, you simply hurl an ode at the thick-headed public. When you have thought over this that I have the honor of telling you, you will come back to me.—You will come back to me!" he asserted authoritatively, by way of reply to a scornful gesture made involuntarily by Lucien. "So far from finding a publisher obliging ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... when they talked about them earlier in the spring. Of course he should want potatoes, and it was high time they were planted. A boy arrived from the back country who had lived at the farm the summer before,—a willing, thick-headed young person in process of growth,—and Israel Haydon took great exception to his laziness and inordinate appetite, and threatened so often to send him back where he came from that only William's insistence that they had entered ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... finer. Still, I should like to have them up in the nest, for they keep one warm. I am very curious to know what the ducks were so startled about; not about us, certainly, although I did say 'peep' to you pretty loudly. The thick-headed roses ought to know why, but they know nothing at all; they only look at themselves and smell. I am heartily tired of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the punt at once," said Meldon, "and don't try to be sarcastic. Nothing is less becoming to you. Your proper part in life is that of the sober, well-intentioned, somewhat thick-headed, bachelor uncle. You do that excellently; but the moment you try to be clever you give yourself ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... we were keeping wet cloths on Allan's head, she hurried in. Looking at the mark, which was now swollen, and feeling all round it, Mrs Simmins declared there was no fracture of the skull and that the blow had only stunned him. 'Well for him that he is a thick-headed Scotchman or he would have been killed,' she remarked. Taking a fleam from her pocket, she lanced the lump and let it bleed freely. 'If bruised blood is left to get into the system, there will be a fever, in which many a man has died.' Allan fell asleep and when he ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... was thick-headed, but he was open to persuasion. Eyes hard as diamonds bored into his, searched him, dominated him. The barrel of the revolver did not waver a hair-breadth. His fingers opened and the blackjack dropped from ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... (Raskolnikoff had made no statement of the kind.) "One gets confused, one loses the thread of the investigation. Yet, as far as our judicial customs go, I agree with you fully. Where, for instance, is there a man under suspicion of some kind or other, were it even the most thick-headed moujik, who does not know that the magistrate will commence by putting all sorts of out-of-the-way questions to take him off the scent (if I may be allowed to use your happy simile), and that then he suddenly gives him ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... to Zeke Higgins' teeth. Mebby, he hain't so thick through as you-all, and he hain't so thick-headed, nuther. An' he hain't no runt, as ye'd find quick 'nuf, if so be's ye dast stand up to him, man to man, 'stid o' with a gun from the laurel. He's a man—what you-all hain't. He hain't the kind to layway from the bushes, ner to be a-stealin' his neighbor's ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the boy—"of all the miserable, shortsighted, thick-headed, addle-pated duffers and asses we are the worst! We took pains to find a way into a fiendish maze of tunnels, pits, and caverns, occupied by vampires and enveloped in darkness, in search of a thing that ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... man can, while the heart is like leaping out of him. Curled disdainful moustachio; careless glance,—which however surveys the Village-groups, and does not like them. With his eye he bespeaks the yellow Courier. Be quick, be quick! Thick-headed Yellow cannot understand the eye; comes up mumbling, to ask in words: ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... it's a-coming, my friends—the corporations and the syndicates will read the handwriting on the wall; don't you be afraid of that. If they should be a little grain thick-headed and sort o' blind at first, as old King Belshazzar was, it may be that the sovereign State will have to give 'em an object-lesson—lawfully, always lawfully, you understand. But when they see, through ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... the play anyway," observed William. "She's a good girl, but she's a little thick-headed. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... sad and stern in its expression, and when Marian asked, "Papa, is it so bad as the papers say?" he replied: "God only knows how bad it is. For a large part of our army it is as bad as it can be. The most terrible feature of it all to me is that thick-headed, blundering men are holding in their irresolute hands the destinies of just such brave young fellows as Mr. Lane here. It is not so dreadful for a man to die if his death furthers a cause which he believes to be sacred, but to die from the sheer stupidity and weakness ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... your fling' is almost necessarily to fall among criminals. The death was sudden; it affected the lad profoundly, and filled him with a remorse which was to influence the whole of his life. Mr. Roach, a thick-skinned and rather thick-headed person, did not spare to remind his apprentice of the most painful things wherewith the latter had to reproach himself. Sidney bore it, from this day beginning a course of self-discipline of which not many are capable at any age, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... in London and then went to Germany. He was accompanied by Tom Thumb, and they went by the way of Paris, Strasburg, and Baden-Baden. At the frontier they had a terrible time with the thick-headed customs-inspector. This was at Kehl, near Strasburg. "I knew," said Barnum in telling the story, "that I had no baggage which was rightfully subject to duty, as I had nothing but my necessary clothing, and the package of placards and lithographs, illustrating ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... ain't got the land-grabber's point of view! Nor the canting hypocrite's point of view! Nor a thick-headed forest-runner's point of view!" he loudly stormed, rising ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... of you," he cried hoarsely. "You are ignorant men, thick-headed, fat, narrow fools, full of self-interest and prejudice. You want your jobs; they come first. I tell you that the man's right. Purge the country; get rid of the poison of ill-distributed capital, start again a new nation ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... invoices that I don't understand; but I suppose it must be because I am so thick-headed," I ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... what a queer compound a woman is! It won't do for you to go West. You will set the prairies on fire. There, there, now don't be afraid. If you think I can say anything to my nephew—the thick-headed blunderbuss—which will prevent his getting down on his knees to ask for what he'll never deserve, you don't know the Dimmerly blood. Trust to the wisdom of my gray hairs and ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... hardest work he ever did, and he showed it. Some of the cast had to be changed. Two dropped out—allured by a better wage—and all the work on their characterizations had to be done over. Others were always late or sick, and Royleston was generally thick-headed from carousal at his club. Then there were innumerable details of printing and scenery to be decided upon, and certain overzealous minor actors came to him to ask about their ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... listen to your plan, knowing very well that you have one in mind. If they haven't killed him, my Hippy will yet beat those scoundrels at their own game. Any man who has fought duels with the Germans above the clouds, and won, surely will be able to outwit a whole army of these thick-headed mountaineers. What do you think we ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... look again, so absent-minded had been his last glance at the watch. "Nine-fifteen. Why didn't I telephone to Rogers and ask him to find out which way they were coming? Sometimes I'm mighty thick-headed." ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... of the four-wheeler was 872, it was not a difficult matter to begin the inquiry. But to secure any real information—that was different. The driver, a respectable albeit somewhat thick-headed Irishman, could offer only vague recollections of his business for the night of November 16th. He had been lucky enough to secure several fares, but there had been nothing in the appearance of any of his passengers ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... stood pondering. She was thick-headed and that was why she took so long. But, in the evening, a hare jumped over ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... the devil's name, could she possibly have gone to? She might have been to Cape Horn and back before this. Miserable fool that I was to trust the craft with that thirsty, thick-headed Gibbs! Diavolo! he may have been captured, and if he has, I hope his neck has been stretched like a shred of ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise |
