"Dullard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the aristocracy of nature, the purest race, the chosen people." He sends all his heroes to Palestine for inspiration; wisdom dwells in her gates. Another aristocracy, that of talent, he recognizes and applauds. No dullard ever succeeds, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... No man but a dullard without a spark of imagination could have witnessed the scene presented at that moment without experiencing a thrill which he would have found it difficult to describe. The sunshine, sending a beam through the stained glass of the great window on the stairway, threw warm tints ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... to me. I like the look of the gentleman. I am flattered by his preference when I consider his eminence. It is an eminence that I may find it desirable to share. M. le Marquis does not look as if he were a dullard. It should be interesting to be wooed by him. It may be more interesting still to marry him, and I think, when all is considered, that I shall probably—very probably—decide ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... fighter, a beauty, a walking museum of all odd humours, and a living shadow of a past renown. "There are changes in wit as in fashion," said Sir William Temple, and he proceeds to instance a nobleman who was the greatest wit of the court of Charles I., and the greatest dullard in that of Charles II.* But Heavens! how awful are the revolutions of coxcombry! what a change from Beau Fielding the Beauty, to Beau Fielding ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which he gathered from his perusals was that the author was a pretentious dullard, an absolute criminal, a genius; that the actors and actresses were all splendid and worked hard, though conceivably one or two of them had been set impossible tasks—to wit, tasks unsuited to their personalities; that he himself ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... he still bear love? Ay, passionate love. The heart which truly loves Puts not its love aside for ends of State, Or marriage bonds, or what the dullard law Suffers or does not suffer, but grows stronger For that which seeks to ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... little George when he spoke regarding them. He made a hundred blunders and showed his ignorance many a time. It did not increase the respect which the child had for his senior. A quick brain and a better education elsewhere showed the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and he began accordingly to command him and to look down upon him; for his previous education, humble and contracted as it had been, had made a much better gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cy. Oh, dullard! And you complain of Carion's pulling your hair! Wait till you get a taste of this stick; you shall know what it ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... at the least he muttered something in some outlandish gibberish," replied the captain, laughing a little shamefacedly. "And he told me its meaning, partly in Latin, for we spoke together in that tongue, but I am such a dullard that I forgot the words as soon as he spoke them, and so asked him to write them down. Then he fell a pondering again, and said like the pastor, that the two inscriptions differed in every way, and he must muse awhile and look in his books before he could read them fairly, and he asked me to leave ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... as far as ever from looking handsome or pretty, but it must have been a dullard who proclaimed her face unpleasing. She had eyes of remarkable intelligence, something like Marcella's but milder, more benevolent. Her lips were softly firm; they would not readily part in laughter; their frequent smile ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... was floundering in a morass of wrath and amazement it was this loud-voiced youngster. He was a slow-witted lout, but the veriest dullard must have perceived that the disappearance of the weapon which presumably killed his father was a ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... doubts, of course. I can readily believe that he did. Doctor St. Jean is not a very bad man, but he is a charlatan and a dullard; he received the story of my reported insanity as he received me, as an advantage to his institution, and he never gave himself the unprofitable trouble to investigate the circumstances. I told him the truth about myself as calmly as I now speak to you, but somebody ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... blow as this could come from a man! Dullard and fool you must be, Dwight Pollard, or else you have never known me. Why should he risk his honor and his safety in an action as dangerous to him as ungrateful to you? Because he admires her? Guy Pollard is not so loving. But I—I whom you ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... absolute confidence of a man, obey him. Only thus do you get him to lay aside his weapons, be he friend or enemy. Any dullard can be waited on and served, but to serve requires judgment, skill, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... Senor, while I think a moment," he urged. "Surely it can be arranged without hurt to the fair name of—of any. Riatas—ah, now I have it, Senor! Dullard, not to have thought of it at once! Truly must I be in my dotage!" He did not mean that, of course, and he was quite openly pleased when Jack smiled ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... marry another man. There had been no opportunity for any confidential talk. The name of William Pressley had never been mentioned between them. The thought of him was like a touch of fire to Paul Colbert, so burning was the contempt which he felt for this conceited dullard whose blundering had nearly been his own death. But he could not say anything of this to her—the fact that she had once been engaged to be married to the man held him silent. It might be that she ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... this useless prating!" he said imperatively yet good-naturedly—"In everything ye showed your dullard ignorance and lack of discernment. For, concerning the matter of attire, are not the fashions of Al-Kyris copied more or less badly in every quarter of the habitable globe?—even as our language and literature form the chief study and delight of all scholars and educated ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... value of those later portions, in which Buchanan inserted so much which he had already spoken out in his Detection of Mary. In that book also, "liberavit animam suam;" he spoke his mind, fearless of consequences, in the face of a king who he must have known—for Buchanan was no dullard—regarded him with deep dislike, who might in a few years be able ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Ha! seest thou how gallantly each fronts the other, the hair bristling, the eyes fixed, the tail on end, the fangs glistening? Now the lesser one moves slowly round and round the bigger, who, mind you, Mistress Sibyll, is no dullard, but moves, too, quick as thought, not to be taken unawares. Ha! that is a brave spring! Heigh, dogs, Neigh! a good sight!—it makes the blood warm! The little one hath him ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in high and universal esteem. Parents read poetry to their children. Children recited poetry to their parents. And he was a dullard, indeed, who did not at least profess, in his hours of idleness, to pour spontaneous ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... a question,' he continued in the same tone. 'To learn whether the man who was mad enough to insult and defy me was the old penniless dullard some called him, or ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... must the inspired painter have had as in his mind's eye he purely shadowed forth this most perfect conception of one of those who hold companionship with God! It was made up of all the rarest traits of beauty, yet its loveliness was not of the world: the veriest dullard looking on it would have paused in admiration; the most brutal have gazed into those pure eyes, untainted by one earthly feeling, one sinful thought, or impure desire. On my mind the effect was thrilling: I have pictured to myself angels as poets have described ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... from a poet who is also a scholar, is that on books which are living things: 'Marlowe and Shakespeare, AEschylus and Sappho, do not for us live only on the dusty shelves of libraries.' To Swinburne, as he says, the distinction between books and life is but a 'dullard's distinction,' and it may justly be said of him that it is with an equal instinct and an equal enthusiasm that he is drawn to whatever in nature, in men, in books, or in ideas is great, noble, and heroic. The old name of Laudi, which has lately ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... left the soldier the latter stood looking after him, and as the sound of the man's steps died away he gave a sigh, muttering to himself, "It may be a good thing after all to be such a dullard as I am. God's thunder! if I meet the Gars I'll fight him hand to hand, or my name's not Hulot; for if that fox brings him before me in any of their new-fangled councils of war, my honor will be as soiled as the shirt of a young trooper ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... disjointed and single, Haunts the rude masses of brick garlanded gayly with vine, E'en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin, E'en in the people itself? Is it illusion or not? Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim Transalpine, Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare? Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger, Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Spectator, "Mr. Saintsbury in his new book has given to the world a singularly delightful gift. The Peace of the Augustans is in no sense written down. Yet every page is so subtly seasoned with amusing comment, and the whole book is so charmingly garnished that none but a dullard could fail to find delight in its perusal, however little he knew of the spirit which animated the eighteenth century. One can hardly imagine better reading after a day of hard ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... sharp eyes at times, and a dullard under the influence of the baby god will turn shrewd and exert rare wiles in the conduct of his wooing. Giovanni, by some intuition usually foreign to his dull nature, seemed to divine what manner of man would be Madonna Paola's ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... and leave their order; Wherefore they must be also capable Of dissolution through the frame at last, That they along with body perish all. But should some say that always souls of men Go into human bodies, I will ask: How can a wise become a dullard soul? And why is never a child's a prudent soul? And the mare's filly why not trained so well As sturdy strength of steed? We may be sure They'll take their refuge in the thought that mind Becomes a weakling in a weakling ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... are at the basis of personality, creating genius and dullard, weakling and giant, Cavalier and Puritan. All human traits may be analyzed in terms of them because they are ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... words ending in 'ard', at least one half should have dropped out of use; I refer to that group of which 'dotard', 'laggard', 'braggard', now spelt 'braggart', 'sluggard', 'buzzard', 'bastard', 'wizard', may be taken as surviving specimens; 'blinkard' (Homilies), 'dizzard' (Burton), 'dullard' (Udal), 'musard' (Chaucer), 'trichard' (Political Songs), 'shreward' (Robert of Gloucester), 'ballard' (a bald-headed man, Wiclif); 'puggard', 'stinkard' (Ben Jonson), 'haggard', a worthless ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... been with his prince, would never have occurred; for, being a wise man, he would not have failed to propitiate Kotsuke no Suke by sending him suitable presents; while the councillor who was in attendance on the prince at Yedo was a dullard, who neglected this precaution, and so caused the death of his master and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... is not a dullard, or a man stupefied by some predominant vice, has guessed or even perhaps discovered with some certainty, that there are subtle senses lying within the physical senses. There is nothing at all extraordinary in this; if we took the trouble to call Nature into the witness box we ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to be marvellous, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... dullard!" and forthwith smote Beltane upon the leg. "Now thine arm, slothful boy—thy left arm!" and he smote Beltane upon the arm. "Now thy sconce, boy, thy mazzard, thy sleepy, golden head!" and straightway he smote him on the head, and, thereafter, with sudden, cunning stroke, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... of black lava and glittering ice, gloomy and unknown but to the fleet rein-deer, who seeks for shelter in a region at whose horrors the hardy natives tremble; and last, but not least, the ruins of the Scandinavian inhabitants, and the present fast disappearing race of "the Innuit," or Esquimaux. Dullard must he be who sees not ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... beloved by the inhabitants. Lord Erith, Lord Rosherville's heir, considered his cousin a low person, of deplorably vulgar habits and manners; while Foker, and with equal reason, voted Erith a prig and a dullard, the nightcap of the House of Commons, the Speaker's opprobrium, the dreariest of philanthropic spouters. Nor could George Robert, Earl of Gravesend and Rosherville, ever forget that on one evening when he condescended to play at billiards with his nephew, that ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dullard thousands throng And jostle rudely at Life's holy feast? The dull ears hear no tender strains of Song, And they that know Love best ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... gentleman, a very worthy friend,' though if we were to enquire, this varlet poet might turn out, after all, to be the mere decoy duck of the hostess, paid to draw gulls and fools thither. The mere dullard sat silent, playing with his glove or discussing at what apothecary's the best ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... laughing stock of the irreligious, than thus to clip the wings of faith, to throw her into a dungeon, to keep her from the light of day, to make her read through. Hebrew spectacles, and to force her to be a laggard and dullard, instead of a bright and volatile spirit, forward and foremost in ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... very mould and image, so shameful? Shall we seek to know her essence by the garment of a garment, or hope to behold that which really is in the shadows we cast upon shadows? Shame is of the brute dullard who thinks shame. The evil ever sees Evil glaring at him, Plato, the golden-moutheds with the soul of pure fire, has said the truth of this matter in his De Republica the fifth book, where he speaks of young maids sharing the exercise of the Palaestra, yea, and the Olympic ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... measuring the print left by the queen's foot as she walks, and priding himself on its beauty. It is so natural to wish to find what is fair and precious in high places,—so astonishing to find the Bourbon a glutton, or the Guelph a dullard ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... find it a masterstroke of genius.' Their tones were ice on both sides, but their words were fire. The maid most probably thought her mistress bored, and the guest a dullard. She had seemed at first interested in the new arrival, but she lapsed now into an attitude of indifference, and the dangerous pretence went on. In this intoxicating whirl of passion, when interchange of vows was offered under the necessity of constant watchfulness and self-guardianship, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... not behindhand in English. Fancy my calling you, upon a fitting occasion,—Fool, sot, silly, simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead, clumsy-pate, dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numpskull, ass, owl, loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, addle-head, tony, zany, fop, fop-doodle; a maggot-pated, hare-brained, muddle-pated, muddle-headed, Jackan-apes! Why I could go on ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... ceased to be overpowered. When the day began, eye and soul were filled with the light that never was on sea or shore. We spoke low and little, gazing with throbbing hearts, breathless, receptive, solemn, and before twelve o'clock we flatted out and made jests. This is humiliation,—that our dullard souls cannot keep up to the pitch of sublimity for two hours; that we could sail through Glory and Beauty, through Past and Present, and laugh. Low as I sank with the rest, though, I do believe I held out the longest: but what can one frail pebble do against a river? "How pretty cows look in a landscape," ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... leave to put a serious question to your worships while you are idly striking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed. Pray, why is it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in the days of yore? Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard, jolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose cockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool. Now would I know whether you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically may, that formerly men were fools ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... fellow with a low forehead and a weakly receding chin, Kerry classified as a dullard, a witling, unaware that if the brow were but low enough and the chin virtually absent altogether he might stand in the presence of a second Daniel. Physiognomy is a subtle science, and the exceptions ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... eight 'Rake's Progress' pictures had fetched but twenty-two guineas each. The six 'Harlot's Progress,' fourteen guineas each. The 'Strolling Players' had gone for twenty-six guineas! O purblind connoisseurs! Dullard dillettanti! Still there was something for the widow; not her wedding portion—that seems to have long before melted away. Sir James Thornhill had been forgiving, kind, and generous after a time—two years—and opened to the runaway lovers his heart and his purse. But there was little to show for ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... changed. I look back with something which is akin to pity on the vain child who thought fine clothes and array the likest to enhance the fair face and form which maybe God has given me. Ay, Mary, I have learned better now. I should have been a dullard, in sooth, had I not learned much in the companionship graciously granted me by my honoured mistress. To be near her is an education, and she has been pleased in many ways to instruct me, not only in the needlecraft and tapestry work in which ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... every way, was the sister of her brother. Her mind was fit companion for his, and whenever he had a difficult problem on hand he would clarify it by explaining it to her; and be it known, you can never talk well to a dullard. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... in this manner:— Mr. Dullard fell in love (I do n't tell where all this happened, Or the time, for of the Dullards Every age and time give samples) With a very lovely lady: At her coach-door as he chattered One fine evening, he such nonsense Talked, that one who heard his clatter, Asked ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... minds of men most beauteous Faith Seems doomed to death, And to her place is hoisted, by soul treason, The dullard Reason, Let me not hurry forth with flag unfurled To proselyte an unbelieving world. This is my task: in depths of unstarred night Or in diverting and distracting light To keep (in crowds, or in my room alone) Faith on her lofty throne; And whatsoever ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... dullard; he had lain prostrate in the wretchedness of his loss. "A girl you could put in your hat—and there you have a strong man prone." He had been a sluggard, weary of himself, unfit to fight, a failure in life ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Highland woman appeared at his bridle rein, and solemnly warned him "that, if he crossed that water, he would never return alive." He was struck by the apparition, and bade one of his knights to inquire of her what she meant; but the knight must have been a dullard or a traitor, for he told the king that the woman was either mad or drunk, and no notice was ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... would have been better for me," he said. "I have no place here among men with decently shaped bodies and clear heads. I'm a great clumsy fool, and there's no help for it. If I'd had more brain, I might have managed the rest; but I'm a dullard too. They may well sneer at me. I think I will go away and bury myself somewhere among the people I ought to have lived among by rights. In some simple country place I might find those who know less than I do, and forget the rest; and perhaps be content enough in time. I shall ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
