"Blockhead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has passed through this way of education but must have seen an ingenuous creature expiring with shame, with pale looks, beseeching sorrow, and silent tears, throw up its honest sighs, and kneel on its tender knees to an inexorable blockhead, to be forgiven the false quantity of a word in making a Latin verse. The child is punished, and the next day he commits a like crime, and so a third, with the same consequence. I would fain ask any reasonable man whether this lad, in the ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... letter as she wished to send Gerald fine shades of expression were needed beyond what she could compass. She was fond of Gerald; in this letter she must not be too fond, yet she must be fond enough. What hope that a blockhead would strike the exact middle of so ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... have parted with the colt, and have only got a gross of green spectacles, with copper rims and shagreen cases! A murrain take such trumpery! The blockhead has been imposed upon, and should ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... now," cried Brown recklessly. "My prayers, tears, and alms-giving haven't been without avail. The terrors and agonies I've endured this last few days lest that old blockhead should take himself off without saying or doing anything, no man will ever know. And he would have gone off, too, had it not been for that lucky fluke of your mother's. Do you mind ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... outward direction, and expresses itself not only in the face and the play of feature, but also in the gait, down even to the very slightest movement. One could perhaps discriminate from behind between a blockhead, a fool and a man of genius. The blockhead would be discerned by the torpidity and sluggishness of all his movements: folly sets its mark upon every gesture, and so does intellect and a studious nature. ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... consider; and it will have results under the sun. You cannot help it, say you; there is no shutting up of a Reverend Desfontaines, which would be so salutary to himself and to us all? No:—and when human reverence (daily going, in such ways) is quite gone from the world; and your lowest blockhead and scoundrel (usually one entity) shall have perfect freedom to spit in the face of your highest sage and hero,—what a remarkably Free ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "What a blockhead I was!" he thought, quite angry with himself. "If I'd just staid quietly where I was put, and not gone racing off, with the idea that I knew more about their railroads than the Belgians themselves, I'd never have gotten myself into such a scrape. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ballot was taken." How narrowly the Federalists escaped the folly of electing Burr may be inferred from the further statement of Bayard, that "the means existed of electing Burr, but this required his cooperation. By deceiving one man (a great blockhead), and tempting two (not incorruptible), he might have secured ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... lexicon has it, "one who perceives." The man who is no aesthete stands confessed, by the logic of language and the necessity of the case, as a thick-witted, tasteless, senseless, and impenetrable blockhead. I do not wish to insult Mr. Whistler, but I feel bound to avow my impression that there is no man now living who less deserves the honour of enrolment in such ranks as these—of a seat in the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... been coming over me ever since I came here; but it is greatest since yesterday. You know what sorrows I have passed through, Jemima; how unjustly I was always treated at school, the masters keeping me back and calling me a blockhead, though, as they themselves allowed, I had the best memory of any boy in the school, and could repeat whole books from beginning to end. You know how cruelly father always used me, calling me a noodle and a milksop, just because he couldn't understand my fine nature. You know how he has ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... pull back to supper, sir?" quoth Moses Yerk to the captain. We all started, the men dipped their oars, our dreams were dispelled, the charm was broken—"Confound the matter—of—fact blockhead," or something very like it, grumbled the captain—"but give way, men," fast followed, and we returned towards the ship. We had not pulled fifty yards, when we heard the distant rattle of the muskets of the sentries at the gangways, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... head bent lower and lower over her work. Mr. Dimmerly never played a more wretched game of whist. At last he quite startled them all by throwing down the cards and saying, in the most snappish of tones, "I wish the blockhead ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... reconciled to him, because men of his profession were commonly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise; his holiness, enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and told him, it was he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man himself would not offend: the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and Michael Angelo had the Pope's benediction, accompanied with presents. This bishop had fallen into the vulgar ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... waste of human energy on barren spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, the incredible facility of doing mischief; two strong games played out, twice won, and then twice lost; the hatred of a statesman—a blockhead with a painted face and a wig, but in whom the world believed—all these things, great and small, had not crushed, but for the moment had dashed Marcas. In the days when money had come into his hands, his fingers had not clutched it; he had allowed himself the exquisite pleasure ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... walked over to his bed, kicked him a few times, and told him he would scald him if he didn't turn out. It was quite light by then. N'Yawk joined us in a few minutes. "What the deuce was you fellers kicking up such a rumpus fer last night?" he asked. "You blamed blockhead, don't you know?" the boss answered. "Why, the sheriff searched this camp last night. They had a battle down at the bridge afterwards and either they are all killed or else no one is hurt. They would have been here otherwise. Ward took a shot at them once yesterday, but I guess he didn't hit; ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... that if it's got to be done anyhow, I may as well do it as any other fellow. It just says 'woe' right out, sharp and plain; and I know about it, and I do it, that's the point. Stick to that point, Tode Mall, you blockhead, you. If you're arguing a thing, why don't you argue, and not slip and slide ...
— Three People • Pansy
... happened, or that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives sensuous images of truth; but it is only the Philistine or the blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... otherwise; resolves, in the usual explosive temper of mind, to replace him by one of two others; whereupon strange stirring-up of rival-attorney and other human interests and catastrophes. "Frank Vane" (Sterling himself), and "Peter Mogg," the pattern English blockhead of elections: these are the candidates. There are, of course, fierce rival attorneys; electors of all creeds and complexions to be canvassed: a poor stupid Borough thrown all into red or white heat; into blazing paroxysms of activity and enthusiasm, which render the inner life of it (and of England ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Knollys with swollen eyes; and remembering the scene of the afternoon, he made inquiries about her of the innkeeper. The latter had heard the guide's account of the meeting; and as soon as Zimmermann had made plain what he had told her of the falling body, "Triple blockhead!" said he. "Es war ihr Mann." The Herr Professor staggered back into his seat; and the kindly innkeeper ran upstairs to see what had happened to his ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... other things, reproaching the imperfection of humane learning, he cried, 'All our physicians cannot tell what an ague is, and all our arithmetique is not able to number the days of a man'—which, God knows, is not the fault of arithmetique, but that our understandings reach not the thing." "The blockhead Albemarle hath strange luck to be loved, though he be, and every man must know it, the heaviest man in the world, but stout and honest to his country." "He advises me in what I write to him, to be as short as I can, and obscure." ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... idiot had eyes only for Bourienne—I shall have to get rid of her. And how is it she has not pride enough to see it? If she has no pride for herself she might at least have some for my sake! She must be shown that the blockhead thinks nothing of her and looks only at Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... imbecile, natural; simpleton, dolt, dunce, defective, witling, dotterel, driveler, blockhead, beetlehead, ninny, ignoramus, numskull, booby, clodpate, nincompoop, ass, wiseacre, dunderhead, halfwit, oaf, dullard, coot, mooncalf; zany, harlequin, buffoon, jester, merry-andrew, droll, clown, scaramouch. Associated ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the family for years." The admiral shook his head convincedly. "I ask your pardon, my dear. My ears are not so keen as might be. I'm an old blockhead to think that you were having an attack of ghosts. But we'll solve the riddle shortly, and then we shan't have any trouble with our alarm bells," with a significant glance at Fitzgerald. "Well, Mr. Breitmann, suppose we take a look at the work? Laura, you show Mr. Fitzgerald the gardens. ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... said to yourself: 'Pardine! I'll go hunt up that old blockhead, that absurd numskull! What a shame that I'm not twenty-five! How I'd treat him to a nice respectful summons! How nicely I'd get along without him! It's nothing to me, I'd say to him: "You're only too happy to see me, you old idiot, I want to marry, I desire to wed Mamselle No-matter-whom, daughter ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a sparrow; but I entreat you to sleep without dreaming, or to keep your visions to yourself.—Why do you keep such fast hold of me?—What on earth can you be afraid of?—Surely you do not think the blockhead Binks, or any other of the good folks below yonder, dared to turn on me? Egad, I wish they would pluck up a little mettle, that I might have an excuse for drilling them. Gad, I would soon teach them ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... does not pretend his stone is safe. All he says is, safe or not, he'll run it out. So now the question is, will you pay four shillings from your box for this blockhead's loss of time in hanging and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... came in the dancers on the rope, and a gorbelly'd blockhead standing out with a ladder, commanded his boy to hopp every round singing, and dance a jigg on the top of it, and then tumble through burning hoops of iron, with a glass in his mouth. Trimalchio was the only person that admir'd it, but withal said, he did not like ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... "How intolerable that it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief!" The obstinacy of George III. cost England her dearest and fairest possession. It is almost impossible to picture what would be her power to-day if she had continued to ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... President of the Council, blockhead!" Laval cried irately. "You madman! you idiot!" he continued, as light broke in upon him, and he saw that it was indeed on a fool's errand that he had been roused so early. "Is this your conspiracy? Have you ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... a blockhead," said Croustillac, contemptuously. "If he has no other means of pleasing—faith, I pity ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... prides of to-day—that even the most retiring of its authors expected to be admired, not for what he had discovered, but for what he was. It did not matter in our dynasties of determined noblesse how many things an industrious blockhead knew, or how curious things a lucky booby had discovered. We claimed, and gave no honor but for real rank of human sense and wit; and although this manner of estimate led to many various collateral mischiefs—to much toleration of misconduct in persons who were ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... look full of ineffable contempt, told him, "He deserved scourging for his pronunciation." The witty fellow answered, "What do you deserve, doctor, for not being able to answer the first time? Why, I'll give one, you blockhead, ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... of the intellectual impulse of the day. But at the time, though there were two parties, yet within the lines of each there was a loyal reciprocity of what is called on such occasions appreciation. Wig ducked to wig, each blockhead had a brother, and there was a universal apotheosis of the mediocrity of our set. If the greatest happiness of the greatest number be the true theory, this was all that could be desired. Even Lessing at one time looked up to Hagedorn as the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... lady's-maids, not to each other or to the world. Charlotte Bronte perhaps did not know that an elegant girl of rank does not in a friend's house address her host's footman before his guests in these words—"Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding." Nor does a gentleman speak to his governess of the same lady whom he is thought to be about to marry in these terms—"She is a rare one, is she not, Jane? A strapper—a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom." But all these things are rather the result ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... "Good God, what a blockhead that brother of mine is! He will never be good for anything as long as he lives! He who wants to be a ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... one colored boy in school, who did not sit on a bench, like the rest, but on a block of wood that looked like a backlog turned endwise. Aunt Hannah often called him a "blockhead," and I supposed it was because he sat on that block. Sometimes, in his absence, a boy was made to sit in his place for punishment, for being a "blockhead" too, as I imagined. I hoped I should never be put there. Stupid little girls received ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... astonished at the effeminacy engendered by provincial life. His old Bouvard was turning into a blockhead; in short, "he was no ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... converse with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, whom he wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but like a philosopher and friend who has passed through life with thought and observation, and is willing to enable others to pass through it with pleasure and profit. A writer of this stamp, I confess, appears to me as much superior to a ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... you blockhead! Why didn't you trot that old woman aboard her train? She'll have to wait here ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... for all the sables and money in the world," she cried. "It's my Kiddy I want. Oh, you dear, stuck-up, crazy blockhead!" ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... sorry for what I said," cried he. "I am a guzzling old blockhead, and don't know how to treat a gentleman when he honors me with his company. It is not in my blood nor breeding to have such knowledge. Ned, you will make a man, and I lied if I said otherwise. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw tolerably—should do it at least—have had good masters, and flatter myself that I am not quite a blockhead." ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... "wasted their sweetness on the desert air." Some call them "old maids;" but it is a malicious appellation, unless it can be proved that they have refused to be wives. I would always take the part of a spinster; they are a peculiar people, far more "sinned against than sinning." Every blockhead thinks himself at liberty to crack a joke upon them; and when he says something, that he conceives to be wondrous smart, about Miss Such-an-One and her cat or poodle dog, he conceives himself a marvellous clever ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... "Suggestion, you blockhead! Why, the thought flashed through my head the very moment I heard the first note. But hush—there ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... said it in such an affectionate tone, her eyes were so beseeching, her feeble voice was so humble and so passionate in making the request, that mademoiselle had not the courage to force her to accept an assistant. She simply called her a "blockhead," who believed, like all country-people, that a few days in bed ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... be persuaded that my neighbour Jenkins considers me a blockhead, and I shall never shine in conversation with him any more. Let me discover that the lovely Phoebe thinks my squint intolerable, and I shall never be able to fix her blandly with my disengaged eye again. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... grand supper in hotel afterward. And I'd ask my mother how soon I too may be a queen. And she'd give me to learn the words they say, and I'd say them. Then she'd clap me on the head again and tell me, 'Oh, you're Ned's girl. You're a blockhead, just like your father!' And I'd say, 'Where is my father? Why does he never come?' And after that my mother would always sit quiet, and never ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... did not condemn these cruelties. Juvenal represents a woman angry at one of her slaves. "Crucify him," says she. "By what crime has the slave merited this punishment? Blockhead! Is a slave, then, a man? It may be that he has done nothing. I wish it, I order it, my will ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... "Blockhead! I'll have you broken on the wheel for this," Lucas stormed. "I am no more Count of Mar than I am King of Spain. Speak up, you old turnspit," he shouted to Maitre Menard. "Am ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... a puppy, a fool, a blockhead, a clumsy varlet, a mere Jack Belford!—I thought myself a much cleverer fellow than I am!—Why could I not have been followed in by Dorcas, who might have taken it up, while ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... heard what had happened, he said, 'You blockhead, you can't have done it properly; just let me have a try,' and with these words he seized his wife by the roots of her hair, cut her throat with a razor, and then took the pipe and blew into it with all his might but he couldn't bring her back to life. The same thing happened ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... heard in your life. So—o! Once again! Come, that was better! But you must sigh like a horse down with the colic. So—o! that's right. Thus I go, drilling myself in hypocrisy; stamp impatiently in the street when I fail to succeed; rail at myself for being such a blockhead, whilst the astonished passers-by turn round and ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... found out afterward, had got around into our rear and on our flanks. But there was to be no rest for us then, for just at that time the fiddles began to play again a livelier tune than ever around Froeschwiller. For there's no use talking, fellows, MacMahon may be a blockhead but he is a brave man; you ought to have seen him on his big horse, with the shells bursting all about him! The best thing to do would have been to give leg-bail at the beginning, for it is no disgrace ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... only problem in existence to which his fatalism did not supply the key. He knew himself to be a better man than Billy Goodge. There was no doubt about it. At school, where Billy was the woodenest blockhead, he was top of his class. He knew things about troy weight and geography and Isaac and the Mariners of England of which Billy did not dream. To Billy the football news in the Saturday afternoon edition of The Bludston ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Blockhead that I was, not to have let well enough alone. For I was to blame for what followed. I may have grown unconsciously rhetorical, and waved my hand in the direction of the canoes. I do not know. I do know that at the word "cargo" Father ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... Bartenstein," [Robinson to Lord Warrington, 5th July, 1735 (in State-Paper Office).]—who is not much of a support either, though a gnarled weighty old stick in his way ("Professor at Strasburg once"): not interesting to us here. The rest his Imperial Majesty considers to be of sublimated blockhead type, it appears. Prince Eugene had died lately, and with Eugene ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... authority—and, mark you, the whole blamed place is already riddled with this new pernicious doctrine—you know what I mean—before we know where we are the whole East will be in a blaze. India! My God! This contract we were negotiating would have countered this outward thrust. And you, you blockhead, you come here and insult the man upon whose ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... doing!" exclaimed L'Isle, with well-feigned astonishment. "Then Lady Mabel is an automaton," he added scornfully, "and I, blockhead that I am, never found it out till now! But I am thankful for wisdom even that comes too late. I now know Lady ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... letter meant. It was not written by Naomi at all, and in my heart I cursed myself as a blockhead for being so easily duped. I heard the gruff voices of men, and among others I felt sure I heard that of Israel Barnicoat. For some few minutes, although my hands were pinioned, I struggled fiercely, but it was of no use; besides, I heard a threatening voice near ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... you," he said, pushing the servant violently away. "Come, Derrick, help me! you are worth two of that blockhead." ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... the imprudent is honoured and the wise despised. The alchemist died of poverty and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... inclined to think it would be accurate and worth while. It wouldn't do not to capture it. At the same time I wouldn't have laid a finger on her, to compel her, for a million dollars. I stood and stared like a blockhead for a minute, at my wit's end, and she sat there and smiled. All of a sudden I had an idea. I caught the end of the table and tipped it up, and off slid the young lady, and I snatched at the knob of the drawer, and had ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... matter, but carried the body down to the surgeon, and when he came to the bottom of the ladder, called out that he had brought him a patient, desiring some one to bear a hand, and help him easily down. The surgeon turned about, but instead of giving any assistance, exclaimed, "You blockhead, what do you do here with a man that has lost his head?" "Lost his head!" says Benbow; "the lying fellow, why he told me it was his leg; but I never in my life believed what he said without being sorry for ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... talked with the man whom you have chosen to play the fool with. I find him worthy of his mistress; a tame, coward-hearted, infatuated blockhead. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Darrell; "and I was a blockhead and blunderer, as man always is when he mistakes a speck in his telescope for a blotch in ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tattered cloak, Wakes from his dream and labours for a joke; With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart Than when a blockhead's ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... elder women rose and regarded him with looks of pitying disdain. Miss Polson's glance said "Fool!" plainly; Susan, a simple child of nature, given to expressing her mind freely, said "Blockhead!" ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... in the least doubt," said the Colonel, "the efficacy of your qualifications to lay the devil; but still I think some odd mistake has occasioned this confusion amongst them, if there has any such in reality existed. Desborough is a blockhead, to be sure; and Harrison is fanatic enough to believe anything. But there is Bletson, on the other hand, who believes nothing.—What do you know of this ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... against the grain of Mr. Bazzard,' said Mr. Grewgious. 'He is very short with me sometimes, and then I feel that he is meditating, "This blockhead is my master! A fellow who couldn't write a tragedy on pain of death, and who will never have one dedicated to him with the most complimentary congratulations on the high position he has taken in the eyes of posterity!" Very trying, very trying. However, in giving him directions, I reflect ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... coastwise blockhead that gets lost if he loses sight of land. He steers a course from headland to headland, and every little while on dark nights he stands in close and listens. Pretty soon he hears a dog barking alongshore. 'All right,' he says to the mate; 'we're off Point Montara. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... my heart I had a conviction that one who had not studied the Talmud could not be anything but a blockhead ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Utopia," I said, and then sought once more to tranquillise his mind. "No doubt among the vulgar, coarse-minded people outside the Rule there may be something of the sort. Every earthly moral blockhead, a little educated, perhaps, is to be found in Utopia. You will, no doubt, find the 'cut' and the 'boycott,' and all those nice little devices by which dull people get a keen edge on life, in their place here, and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of long ropes in the square at Regina until you are dead, dead, dead! Think of it, Lagrange, what a great big ugly bloated corpse you'll make hanging by the neck after your toes have stopped twitching, twitching, and your face is a beautiful blue. Eh? Bien! is not that so, blockhead?" ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... FONTANGE [Species of topknot; so named from Fontange, an unfortunate female of Louis Fourteenth's, who invented the ornament.] of my Spouse [as Ludwig Rudolf does, by all accounts], than to have a blockhead who would drive me mad by her ineptitudes? and whom I should be ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "You careless blockhead!" he shrieked, raising the injured foot from the ground, while a spasm of anguish contracted his features. "Did you take ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... The intellectual capacities take a much more outward direction. They are expressed not only in the face and play of his features, but also in his walk, nay, in every movement, however slight it may be. One could perhaps discriminate from behind between a blockhead, a fool, and a man of genius. A clumsy awkwardness characterises every movement of the blockhead; folly imprints its mark on every gesture, and so do genius and a reflective nature. Hence the outcome of La Bruyere's remark: Il n'y a ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... blockhead! no. And it will be the worse for you if you tell him. Come, take your sixpence, and think yourself well off that we ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... turn out a dull blockhead,' he said, 'and so I propose that you should take charge of him, and teach him to keep himself young. I wish I had done ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... languages; that is, every one who is fit for nothing else; philology being the last resource of dulness and ennui, I have got a little in advance of the throng, by mastering the Armenian alphabet; but I foresee the time when every unmarriageable miss, and desperate blockhead, will likewise have acquired the letters of Mesroub, and will know the term for bread, in Armenian, and perhaps ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... said the dwarf as he walked the streets alone. 'My friend has stolen a march upon me. It led him to nothing, and therefore is no great matter, save in the intention. I'm glad he has lost his mistress. Ha ha! The blockhead mustn't leave the law at present. I'm sure of him where he is, whenever I want him for my own purposes, and, besides, he's a good unconscious spy on Brass, and tells, in his cups, all that he sees and hears. You're useful to me, Dick, and cost nothing but a little treating ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... But if you blab, you are undone: Consider what a risk you run: You lose your credit all at once; The town will mark you for a dunce; The vilest doggrel Grub Street sends Will pass for yours with foes and friends; And you must bear the whole disgrace, Till some fresh blockhead takes your place. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of cold," said the Judge. "Don't be a blockhead, Perkins, we have got to get her ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... Jesuits, so that efficacious grace is no longer necessary, I shall be a heretic, you say. And if I admit it, as you do, so that efficacious grace is still necessary, why I sin against common-sense, I am a blockhead, say the Jesuits. What can I do in this dilemma, of being a blockhead, a heretic, or a Jansenist? To what a strait are we come, if it is only Jansenists, after all, who are at variance with neither faith nor reason, and who preserve themselves both ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... last night that the cords were too long," mutters the old man; "but no, 'It's not too long, Daddy.' There's no making you do anything, you will have everything your own way.... Blockhead!" ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... were you doing? What was everyone else doing?" cried the gunboat's commander. "Did you think it a part of our cruise to serve as mooring for stray torpedo boats? You—come here, you blockhead!" ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... would have thought me a blockhead. You know that he has depicted me as a rogue and fool. Since I am neither, it was not serious; therefore ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... carriage to be driven opposite to Mr. Law's hotel and then to be overturned. Addressing herself to the coachman, she said, "Overturn here, you blockhead—overturn!" Mr. Law ran out to her assistance, when she confessed to him that she had done this for the sole purpose of having ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... bold threats and the like which were openly made in the King's Court and his city of Paris. And he blamed no less strongly his brother-in-law, M. de Theligny, who was one of the hottest heads of them all, calling him a downright fool and blockhead. The Admiral never was guilty of this loud talk, at least not in public. I do not say that in secret or with his closest friends he did not say things. And this was the true cause of his death and of the massacre ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... pilfering from public funds. His wife, who had by this time returned with the wives of the other officers to Russia, had actually been searched for hidden booty.[12] And now, after toils and hardships untold, only five months' provisions were left for the ships sailing from Kamchatka; and the blockhead underlings were compelling a waste of those provisions by sailing in the wrong direction. If the worst came, could Bering hold his men with those tied ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... sacra! that would be a mess. But he is at the bottom of the St Lawrence—the courts say so, and the Church say so—and ghosts don't walk here.' 'But if that Beauty Steele come back alive, what would happen it?' I speak. 'His wife is marry, blockhead!' he say. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thought, "I'm the biggest blockhead that ever lived! Just because Lupin's friend is fair and Clotilde dark, I never thought of connecting the two women! As though the blonde lady could afford to continue fair after the murder of the baron and the ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for disturbing the old received spelling, is—that Jean Hordal, a descendant of La Pucelle's brother, spelled the name Darc, in 1612. But what of that? Beside the chances that M. Hordal might be a gigantic blockhead, it is notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century, was all monopolized by printers: ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... can put a bullet through the ace on a card five times running at thirty-five paces," he said, "that won't take away your appetite, I suppose? You look to me to be inclined to be a trifle quarrelsome this morning, and as if you would rush on your death like a blockhead." ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Poets is Johnson's last, longest, and most popular work. More than any other of his works it was written to please himself: he did so much more than he was paid to do that he almost refuted his own doctrine that no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Instead of being written, like most of his earlier books, in poverty, if not in obscurity, the Lives were written at his ease, with his pension in his pocket, with the booksellers at his feet, with the consciousness ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... bruised my fists thumping against a stone wall. Had I discoursed to her in Bengalee she would have comprehended me no more imperfectly. The doom of hopelessness was upon her. She was not merely a fool, but had taken the full degree as a self-satisfied blockhead. I deserved what I got—and ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... patronymic. Worse than all is the rape of ideas which these caterers for the public mind, like the slave-merchants of Asia, tear from the paternal brain before they are well matured, and drag half-clothed before the eyes of their blockhead of a sultan, their Shahabaham, their terrible public, which, if they don't amuse it, will cut off their heads by curtailing the ingots and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... never meant. Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinet, A fiddler may a fortune get; A blockhead, with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice: And oft the dancing-master's art Climbs from the toe to touch the heart. In learning let a nymph delight, The pedant gets a mistress by't. Cadenus, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... careless or lazy to look out for yourself," retorted the baron. "But then you can have no possible objection to the present match. The fair Julia is just twenty—eyes, you dog—lips, you rascal—a shape, you blockhead, to bewitch an anchorite. And then she has the gelt—the money, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... a cask of Aminean wine, from which his servant stole a large quantity. When the master perceived the deficiency, he diligently inspected the top of the cask but could find no traces of an opening. "Look if there be not a hole in the bottom," said a bystander. "Blockhead," he replied, "do you not see that the deficiency is at the top, and not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... the civilized ages, by Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and Co. There is no God, but have we not invented gunpowder?—who wants a God, with that in his pocket?[68] There is no Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but have we not paper and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and the Day of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for a judge, and the flat of the universe for the throne? There is no law, but only gravitation and congelation, and we are stuck together in an everlasting hail, and melted together in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... wonder how opinions which, on his showing, are so inconceivably absurd, could ever have been held by any human being. Men are Whigs or not-Whigs, and the not-Whig is less a heretic to be anathematised than a blockhead beneath the reach of argument. All political wisdom centres in Holland House, and the 'Edinburgh Review' is its prophet. There is something in the absolute confidence of Macaulay's political dogmatism which varies between the sublime and the ridiculous. We can ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the way to serve it?" shouted Frolov, not looking into the sauceboat. "Do you call that sauce? You don't know how to wait, you blockhead!" ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... my hands in shape less good than the best I can turn out; but I have often felt the temptation to do so, and wished—almost, not quite—that there was no money in it. I recast Dr. Johnson's saying: "None but a blockhead would write unless he needed money." None but a blockhead would write for ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... "Confound you, you blockhead!" roared the captain, in a rage,—"'twould take the patience of the pope and the cardinals, and the cardinal virtues into the bargain, to keep one's temper with you. Do you know the four ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... It means that you are a stupid, a fool, a blockhead! All the world knows that one of your daughters is the mistress of a nobleman, and you are not only content to live with her and share her shameful earnings, but you actually come here to me and ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... a blockhead," thought the abbe as he looked at the president, whose rumpled hair added to the ill grace of his brown countenance. "Couldn't he have found some little trifle ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... She would be in Paris before the police made any definite move. The one thing that disturbed him was the thought of the blockhead of a chauffeur, who had got drunk before his return from Versailles. If he talked; well, he could say nothing beyond the fact that he had deposited the singer at the house as ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... minutes they mounted skyward, climbing slowly, and the stout General tried to make his companion understand by much gesticulation that the blockhead ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... glances. C'est une charmante fille." "Well," added sir William, "and the whole town gives her to you." "Parbleu! the town is very impertinent. There will go two words to that bargain." "My lord Martin, you know, has enlisted himself amongst her admirers." "Pox take the blockhead, I suppose he would marry her. Bien. After I have led her a dance, he shall do what he pleases with her." "But," said sir William, "my lord intends to call you to an account." "Morbleu," cried Prettyman, "I thought I had been in a land of liberty." "But let me tell you, my lord is very ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... was still more angry, and said: "What! the blockhead gave his eight krans to a beggar? Send him to me." And when Abdul Karim came before him, he said scornfully: "You must fancy yourself a big man, Abdul. I never give more than a copper coin to a beggar, but your Excellency gives them silver. The beggar promised that you should ...
— The Cat and the Mouse - A Book of Persian Fairy Tales • Hartwell James
... called them King's scholars, I forget why—very wicked fellows! Joseph, you may thank the Lord you were not bred at a public school; you would never have preserved your virtue as you have. The first care I always take is of a boy's morals; I had rather he should be a blockhead than an atheist or a presbyterian. What is all the learning in the world compared to his immortal soul? What shall a man take in exchange for his soul? But the masters of great schools trouble themselves about no such thing. I have known a lad of eighteen at the university, who hath not ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... to laugh" is another precept of the hypercritical mother. Why? Goodness only knows!—for none but a pompous blockhead or a solemn prig will pretend that he never relaxes. But let ancient Plato, brimful as he was of philosophy, answer the question "When ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... "Blockhead, that you cannot keep your thoughts on what you are doing! One might expect as good a game from the tumbler's dog. Is it the drink that you have got into your head, or the war matters that you ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... a blockhead of the provoking species. In his itch for correction, he forgot the words—'lies my safe way!' The Bear is the extreme pole, and thither he would travel over the space contained between it and ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... went to was Prince Odescalchi, one of the men who had then recently risen to the surface, officially termed the hero of the Young Liberals. Pantaleoni had dubbed him a blockhead, and he had not lied. He turned out to be a very conceited and frothy young man with a parting all over his head, fair to whiteness, of strikingly Northern type, with exactly the same expressionless type of face as ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... all, it was a rebuke to a rampant "Bibliolatry." As I heard all these different versions of so simple a matter, and found that not a few were inclined to each, I could, not help exclaiming, "In truth the Devil is a very clever fellow, and man even a greater blockhead than I had taken him for." But in spite of the surprise with which I had listened to these various explanations of an event which seemed to me clear as if written with a sunbeam, this last reason, which assigned as the cause of God's resumption of his own gift, an ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... do, then? Fash. Cut his throat, or get someone to do it for me. Lory. Gad so, sir, I'm glad to find I was not so well acquainted with the strength of your conscience as with the weakness of your purse. Fash. Why, art thou so impenetrable a blockhead as to believe he'll help me with a farthing? Lory. Not if you treat him de haut en bas, as you used to do. Fash. Why, how wouldst have me treat him? Lory. Like a trout—tickle him. Fash. I can't flatter. Lory. Can you starve? Fash. Yes. Lory. I can't. Good ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... "1781.—What a blockhead Dr. Burney is to be always sending for his daughter home so! what a monkey! is she not better and happier with me than she can be anywhere else? Johnson is enraged at the silliness of their family conduct, and Mrs. Byron disgusted; I confess myself provoked excessively, but I love the girl so ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... against telling all the town, for my part," rejoined Ludovico; "afterwards though—you understand; and not beforehand, or our little escapade would be spoilt by some blockhead or other insisting on joining us. Our friend Leandro there, for instance; think ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... above all, don't quote me in cold blood, that the foolish people may see, after the fever heat has subsided, what trash I have palmed upon them in the name of liberty!' Yet this is the way, Jonathan, to deal with demagogues. You make too much of yours, man. You are not the blockhead we take you for after all; but you delight to see your public men in motley, and the rogues will fool you to the top of your bent, till it is your pleasure to put down the show. So now that the piper has to be paid, and a lucid interval appears to be dawning upon you, to the pillory at once with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... of by the girls, but this can never with truth be said of me. I most emphatically in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... some of our cits, the first thing after their death is to take care of their birth—let him bear a pair of stockings, he is the first of his family that ever wore one.... And you, Mr. Blockhead, I warrant you have not call'd at Mr. Pestle's the apothecary: will that fellow never pay me? I stand bound for all the poison in that starving murderer's shop: he serves me just as Dr. Quibus did, who promised to write a treatise against water-gruel, a healthy slop that has done me ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... own works, or, what is nearly as acceptable, in disparagement of the work of his contemporaries. "If ever he speaks favorably of the productions of a particular friend, dissent boldly from him; pronounce his friend to be a blockhead; never fear his being vexed. Much as people speak of the irritability of authors, I never found one to take offense at such contradictions. No, no, sir, authors are particularly candid in admitting the faults of their friends." At the dinner Buckthorne explains the geographical boundaries ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... hysterical, fanciful, sir, I vow to God." "I tell you, sir," says Ratcliff, "she cannot live three days to an end, unless there is some very effectual course taken with her; she has a malignant fever." Then "fool," "puppy," and "blockhead," were the best words they gave. I could hardly restrain them from throwing the ink-bottles at one another's heads. I forgot to tell you that one party of the physicians desired I would take my sister Peg ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... carry the cloth. One of the said masters, called Jousse Bandouille, showed him that it was not seemly nor decent for one of his condition to do so, and that therefore he should deliver it to one of them. Ha, said Janotus, baudet, baudet, or blockhead, blockhead, thou dost not conclude in modo et figura. For lo, to this end serve the suppositions and parva logicalia. Pannus, pro quo supponit? Confuse, said Bandouille, et distributive. I do not ask thee, said Janotus, blockhead, quomodo supponit, but pro quo? It is, blockhead, pro tibiis meis, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... dolt, numskull, witling, blockhead, coot, lackbrain, ninny, oaf, nincompoop, mooncalf, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 'Bouts-rimes,' said he, 'is a mere conceit, and an old conceit; I wonder how people were persuaded to write in that manner for this lady.' I named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase. JOHNSON—'He was a blockhead for his pains!' BOSWELL—'The Duchess of Northumberland wrote.'—'Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she pleases; nobody will say anything to a lady of her high rank: but I should be apt to throw ... verses in his face." (Boswell, vol. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... there again, how a man suffers for being good-natured,' said the locksmith. 'Miss Emma was with her uncle at the masquerade at Carlisle House, where she had gone, as the people at the Warren told me, sorely against her will. What does your blockhead father when he and Mrs Rudge have laid their heads together, but goes there when he ought to be abed, makes interest with his friend the doorkeeper, slips him on a mask and domino, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... mentioned, Dr. Johnson held them very cheap: 'Bouts-rim'es,' said be, 'is a mere conceit, and an old conceit; I wonder how people were persuaded to write in that manner for this lady.' I named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase. Johnson—'He was a blockhead for his pains!' Boswell. 'The Duchess of Northumberland wrote.' Johnson: 'Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she pleases; nobody will say any thing to a lady of her high rank: but I should be apt to throw * * * *'s verses in his face.'" Boswell. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... "had caught them climbing it many a time, but her threats and prohibitions had no effect. One day when Haydn was balancing himself aloft, far above his schoolfellows, the empress saw him from the windows, and requested her Hofcompositor to take care that 'that fair-headed blockhead,' the ringleader of them all, got 'einen recenten Schilling' (slang for 'a good hiding')." The command was only too willingly obeyed by the obsequious Reutter, who by this time had been ennobled, and rejoiced in ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... "Wow! Wow! You blockhead! Neighboring kings, indeed, and their good-for-nothing sons! No, siree! The husband I want for my daughter is an honest farmer lad who knows how to work and how to play! That's the kind of son-in-law we ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... to-day! You might have held the pretty head aside, Peep'd in your fans, been serious thus, and cried— 'The play may pass—but that strange creature, Shore, I can't—indeed now—I so hate a whore—' Just as a blockhead rubs his thoughtless skull, And thanks his stars he was not born a fool; So from a sister sinner you shall hear, 'How strangely you expose yourself, my dear!' 10 But let me die, all raillery apart, Our sex are still forgiving at ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart. This mournful truth is every where confess'd, Slow rises worth, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... gain your point by obstinacy," he added. "I swear that not another word shall pass between you and that blockhead of a chief—not if I have to turn ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... and a cannon salute are heard together. The boat glides away. They all wave their handkerchiefs. TJAELDE hurries into the room.) I have no handkerchief; that blockhead has—. (Looks at VALBORG.) ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... the ministerial negotiations with him have been rather difficult. During this time Thuillier's chances have been making headway. Minard, on whom they counted to create a diversion, sits, the stupid fool, in his corner; the seizure of that pamphlet has given your blockhead of a protege a certain perfume of popularity. In short, the ministry are afraid he'll be elected, and nothing could be more disagreeable to them. Pompous imbeciles, like Thuillier, are horribly embarrassing in ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... in the canyon, the hold-up, and the double murder, a slight sound caused me to turn my head, and I saw in a doorway that led to another room the erect figure of Major Lessard listening intently, a black frown on his eagle face. When MacRae had finished his story and the incapable blockhead behind the desk sat there regarding the two of us as though he considered that we had been the victims of a rank hallucination, Lessard slammed the door shut behind him and strode ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... honorable. The most distinguished of four generations of Basires, engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings from the monuments, with no oversight but that of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... fifteen cents apiece for them in Rome. They are now four for a dollar. And I suppose that I'll have to smoke them all up in Monte Carlo, or the Italian end of this ruin will sink the harpoon into me for fifty more francs. I'd like to get that blockhead over ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the marionette's words by taking out their handcuffs and preparing to lead him away to prison. But the innkeeper was a good-hearted man, and he was sorry for the poor blockhead. He begged them to leave Pinocchio in ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. That may be; but the reason is that the crocodile does not live fast—he is a slow coach. I believe it is generally understood among naturalists that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed through innumerable generations on the Nile. The crocodile made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... man—the old blockhead—off he goes: "Marry, marry," he says, "he must marry her and cover the sin," he says. "We must take the lad home," he says, "and he shall marry," he says. Well, I did my best to make him change his mind, but, dear me, no. So, all right, thinks ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... Majesty," said a low cringing voice, approaching, "this man is in the walk against orders. There is some mistake, may it please your Majesty. Quit the walk, blockhead," he hissed ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... knows better than you that after the row in the street,—when Mountjoy was, I believe, the aggressor,—he was again seen by another person. I hate such deceit and scheming." Here Augustus smiled. "What are you sniggering there at, you blockhead?" ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... by heaven, that's too bad! My father's trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad? My father, sir, did never stoop so low— He was a gentleman, I'd have ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... for a long time," said a basket-maker. "And he is particularly glad it should be precisely Rui's body, which the sacred heart should have blessed. You ask why?—Hatasu is Ani's ancestress, blockhead!" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... than a Chinese wall in truth's way, and built of materials that are indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to argue; it is vain to say to this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea. For, I ask of the men of knowledge of the world whether they would not hold him for a blockhead that should hope to prevail in an argument whose scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask, further, when such attempts have been made, have they not failed of success? The indignant heart repels a conviction that ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... invade England any more," and kept his promise, they farther say. Essentially a truth, as we already know, though the circumstances were all different; and the promise was to a devout High Priest, not to a crowned Blockhead and cowardly Do-nothing. One other "Olaus" I find mentioned in our Books, two or three centuries before, at a time when there existed no such individual; not to speak of several Anlafs, who sometimes seem to mean Olaf and still oftener ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... If you get entangled in a dispute with some learned blockhead, you may silence him with a few extemporary quotations. Select the author for whom he has the greatest admiration, and give him a passage in the style of that writer, which most pointedly condemns the opinion he supports. If it does ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... husband, however, really tired after his unusual bodily efforts of the previous day, only slumbered, as Mrs. Mulcahy had at first anticipated; and when she had shaken and aroused him, for the twentieth time that morning, and scolded him until the spirit-broken blockhead whimpered,—nay, wept, or pretended to weep,—the dame returned ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... do for us, you know!" said the Colonel. "Another review, and by some officer who was not a d—d lawyer blockhead, might be awkward!" Colonel Crawford either forgot, at that moment, that he had any connection with the legal profession, or he chose to ignore the fact; and it is not to be supposed that his subordinate reminded him of it. "We must have a paragraph ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... When he settled here, he was discoursin' on the weather, an' he talked it out about proper. He'd say, 'Wet year! Wet year!' jest like that! He got the 'wet' jest as good as I can, an', if he drawed the 'ye-ar' out a little, still any blockhead could a-told what he was sayin', an' in a voice pretty an' clear as a bell. Then he got love-sick, an' begged for comp'ny until he broke me all up. An' if I'd a-been a hen redbird I wouldn't a-been so long comin'. ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... beno—ado. Blight velkigi. Blind blinda. Blind, window rulkurteno. Blindness blindeco. Blind-alley senelirejo. Bliss felicxegeco. Blister veziko. Blister (plaster) vezikigilo. Blithe gaja. Bloat sxveli. Block (pulley) rulbloko. Block (log) sxtipo. Blockade blokado. Blockhead malsagxulo. Blond blonda. Blood sango. Bloodshed sangversxo—ado. Bloodvessel sangvejno. Bloom flori. Blossom flori. Blot makulo. Blotch skabio. Blotting paper sorba papero. Blow (stroke) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... dreadeth the fire, Jack," answered the old man. "This is not the first time we have had the King's coin pulled down. I am as true a man to the King as any here; but I have taken no oath to that dotipole [blockhead] of Warwick; and if he play this game once too oft, he may find he hath ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... "You little blockhead, how you have frightened me!" said Ludovicka, repulsing her almost rudely. "I was asleep here, dreaming such sweet dreams, and all at once you have come and waked me, you little night owl. Go, go to bed, Louisa, and do not be so timid, child. No robbers and murderers come here, and in our castle ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... so idle as to waste This Life disputing upon Taste; And most—let that sad Truth be written— In this contentious Land of Britain, Where each one holds "it seems to me" Equivalent to Q. E. D., And if you dare to doubt his Word Proclaims you Blockhead and absurd. And then, too often, the Debate Is not 'twixt First and Second-rate, Some narrow Issue, where a Touch Of more or less can't matter much, But, and this makes the Case so sad, Betwixt undoubted ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Vice-Chancellor, to conduct the performance of some of his works; among these was the Oratorio Athaliah, especially written for the occasion. Handel was offered the degree of Doctor of Music, but (unlike Haydn) declined it, because he disliked 'throwing away his money for dat de blockhead wish'. ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells |
