"Dunce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not measured at this moment the dusky abyss over which it hovered. Hut a deepening subterranean echo, loudest at the last, lingered on his spiritual ear. For the present his keenest sensation was a desire to get away and cry aloud that M. de Mauves was no better than a pompous dunce. He bade him an abrupt good-night, which was to serve also, ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... rival those of the Buffalo in its palmiest days. I never feel that I am truly back on the open range till I hear their call and see the Prairie-dogs once more upon their mounds. As you travel up the Yellowstone Valley from Livingstone to Gardiner you may note in abundance this "dunce of the plains." The "dog-towns" are frequent along the railway, and at each of the many burrows you see from one to six of the inmates. As you come near Gardiner there is a steady rise of the country, and somewhere near the edge of the Park ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... told Bob," Margaret said. "He don't believe it. Bob's my brother, but there never was such a dunce since Adam." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... for the benefit of science or literature, except that kind of literature which goes by the name of bookmaking. Its founder was a veritable dunce, but he was the cleverest of bookmakers, and made more by it in one night than all the authors of that day in their lives. One hundred thousand pounds in one night was not bad evidence of his calculation of chances and his ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... only one son called Clement. All his rarities, secret manuscripts, of what quality soever, Dr. Napper of Lindford in Buckinghamshire had, who had been a long time his scholar; and of whom Forman was used to say he would be a dunce: yet in continuance of time he proved a singular astrologer and physician. Sir Richard now living, I believe, has all those rarities in possession, which were Forman's, being kinsman and heir unto Dr. Napper. (His ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... He is of the dream nature and he will be what he will be. I can no more fashion him to the common standard than I can make the fir-tree like unto the juniper. I've had many a curious student yonder, wild and tame, dunce and genius, but this one baffles me. He was a while up in the glen school, they tell me, and he learned there such rudiments as he has, but what he knows best was never learned anywhere but as the tinkler learns—by the roadside and in ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... you will let me, with the mass of readers, have clearer wits than the dunces—then why should I not know what you are as soon as, or sooner than Bavius, &c.—unless a dunce has a good nose, or a natural ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Rose Tavern. The freedom he used with Mr. Pope in remarking upon the Rape of the Lock, it seems was sufficient to raise that gentleman's resentment, who was never celebrated for forgiving. Many years after, Mr. Pope took his revenge, by stigmatizing him as a dunce, in his usual keen spirit of satire: There had arisen some quarrel between Gildon and Dennis, upon which, Mr. Pope in his Dunciad, B. iii. has ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... blue-eyed dunce! How shamefully your guardian neglects your education! Never even heard of the Ellewomen? Why, they compose the most brilliant society all over the world. Iduna was a silly creature, with a large warm heart, and loved ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... king; my husband is a heavy dunce; He left the grooms unmassacred, then massacred the stud. One loves long gloves; for mittens, like king's evidence, Let truth with the fingers out, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... content with making mountains of mole-hills, with speaking of a great historian as if he were a pretentious dunce. He stooped to write the words, "Natural kindliness, if no other feeling, might have kept back the fiercest of partisans from ignoring the work of a long-forgotten brother, and from dealing stabs in the dark at a brother's almost forgotten fame." The meaning of this sentence, so ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... he paused a moment and looked up at the lights in the windows. There was music going on; Phoebe, no doubt, for Ursula could not play so well as that, and the house looked full and cheerful. He had a cheerful home, there was no doubt of that. Young Copperhead, though he was a dunce, felt it, and showed an appreciation of better things in his determination not to leave the house where he had been so happy. Mr. May felt an amiable friendliness stealing over ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though he should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they with theirs.... It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig is of a ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... therefore be considered as a miracle, notwithstanding the extraordinary care and expense which his friends bestowed upon his education, that he always continued a blockhead, and was such a perfect dunce at eleven years of age, that instead of being able to read and write as a young gentleman ought to do, he could scarcely tell his letters. He was equally remarkable for his selfishness; for if he had twenty cheesecakes ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... first morning he entered our school. He was then about twelve years of age; but, owing to his carelessness and inattention, he had made but slight progress in study. I learned afterwards that he had so long borne the names of "dunce" and "blockhead" in the school he attended in his own village, that he supposed himself to be really such, and made up his mind that it was useless for him to try to be anything else: and I think when our teacher first called him up for examination he was inclined to be of the same opinion. ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... jests are insupportable," cried she, stamping with her little satin-slippered foot upon the carpet. "You excuse this gray-headed dunce merely to vex me, and to remind me that I am ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of the Dunces, is, with probably intentional ambiguity, written in the first person singular but ends by referring to "the Writers of the following Poem" (p. viii). One hand seems responsible for the preface, but we can only conclude that a Dunce collaborating with other Dunces produced the poem. Four days after its publication Pope wrote to Broome that it was "by James Moore and others," and a few weeks later wrote to Bethel that "James Moore own'd it but was made by three ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... love his books. He said, "Catch me sitting on a stool The livelong day! I'd rather be A dunce than go ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... dat you sent, Dat vas making me feel shtrong und vell, Britty soon mit the garbage it vent, For dose nurses dey don't like de shmell. Ven I ask for pork sausages vonce, Den dey say, (vot I tells you is true,) "Don't you know, you fat-headed old dunce, Dose vill ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... and to church, myself and wife, where the old dunce Meriton, brother to the known Meriton; of St. Martin's, Westminster, did make a very good sermon, beyond my expectation. Home to dinner, and we carried in Pegg Pen, and there also come to us little Michell and his wife, and dined ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... By neither place or pension bought, They spoke and voted as they thought. Thus did your sires adorn their seat; And such alone are truly great. If you the paths of learning slight, You're but a dunce in stronger light; In foremost rank the coward placed, Is more conspicuously disgraced. 30 If you to serve a paltry end, To knavish jobs can condescend, We pay you the contempt that's due; In that you have precedence too. Whence had you this illustrious name? From virtue and unblemished ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... hardly more leisured writer:[19] and—as not a defect but a consequence of the quality just attributed to them—they do not quite carry the reader along with them in that singular fashion which distinguishes the others. But no one save a dunce can find them dull: and their variety is astonishing when one remembers that the writer was, for great part of his life, a kind of recluse. He touches almost everything except love (one wonders whether there were any unpublished, and feels pretty ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... that I'm a double-barrelled dunce," was the answer. "Look here; do you see that?" and ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... boys that she had never met with "two such impenetrable dunces." None the less the father contrived with difficulty to scrape together enough money to send his boys to Harrow, and there, luckily, Dr. Parr discerned that Richard, with all his faults, was by no means an impenetrable dunce. Both he and Sumner, the head-master of Harrow, discovered in the schoolboy Sheridan great talents which neither of them was capable of calling ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... have," answered Florence, in an almost cross voice, for she could scarcely bear Kitty's affectionate manners just then. "You take me for a great dunce, Kitty, but I am not quite so bad as ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... he clearly showed in what direction his interest lay. At school he was something of a dunce at his lessons, but let him but have a pencil and paper and his mind was wide awake at once. Every spare moment he spent making sketches on the walls ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... clown who made Jimmy laugh. He was a little man with a tall, pointed white felt hat like a dunce's cap; he wore the usual clown's dress, and generally kept his hands in his pockets as if he ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... to himself. "Is it possible that I am a dunce? I never thought so! Certainly no one must know it. Am I unfit for office? It will never do to say that I cannot ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... master of its servants. Good men, if such there be, would either remain true to their political faith and lose their economic support, or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... he couldn't understand the written rules of grammar to save his life; he was totally indifferent as to which states bounded and bordered which; and he had been known to spell "physician" with an f and two z's. But it was when confronted by a sum that Peter stood revealed in his true colors of a dunce! ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... old a boy was dull or quite adverse to knowledge, he Was set an imposition or corrected with a switch: Far different our practice is, who reign by Methodology And guide the dunce by precepts learnt from Landon or from Fitch: 'Twas difficult by rule of thumb to check unseemly merriment, To make your class their pastor treat with proper due regard— 'Tis easy quite for specialists in Juvenile Temperament, Who know the books on ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... on my honour, Sim Summer, thou art a bad member, a dunce, a mongrel, to discredit so worshipful an art after this order. Thou hast cursed me, and I will bless thee. Never cap of Nipitaty[94] in London come near thy niggardly habitation! I beseech the gods ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... at Court and Church to-day: I am acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and I am so proud I make all the Lords come up to me; one passes half an hour pleasant enough. We had a dunce to preach before the queen to-day, which often happens. Windsor is a delicious situation, but the town is scoundrel. The Duke of Hamilton would needs be witty, and hold up my train as I walked upstairs. It is an ill circumstance that on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Stands at the gate of Helicon, and guards Its precinct against all but crazy bards, Our witlings keep long nails and untrimmed hair, Much in brown studies, in the bath-room rare. For things are come to this; the merest dunce, So but he choose, may start up bard at once, Whose head, too hot for hellebore to cool, Was ne'er submitted to a barber's tool. What ails me now, to dose myself each spring? Else had I been a very swan to sing. Well, never mind: mine be the whetstone's ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... transcendental curve, perfectly drawn, may work upon his gentler mood. I happen to have in my portfolio the very thing to please him. Fortune serves me well in this special circumstance. Among my boys, there is one who, though a regular dunce at everything else, is a first rate hand with the square, the compass and the drawing pen: a deft-fingered numskull, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... term is equivalent to "dunce," but it was originally employed as a law term. It is a Latin word, and literally translated means, "we do not know." In former days when a grand jury considered that a bill or indictment was not supported by sufficient evidence to prove the need for a trial, they wrote the word "ignoramus" ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... interesting as giving us in the very sharpest contrast the differences of the poetry before and after the melodious bursts of which Spenser, Sidney, and Watson were the first mouthpieces. Except an utter dunce (which Grove does not seem to have been by any means) no one who had before him The Shepherd's Calendar, or the Hecatompathia, or a MS. copy of Astrophel and Stella, could have written as Grove wrote. There are echoes of this earlier and ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... I know nothing of the man," said Perugino, vexed, it appeared, at such wounding of his vanity to be new; "let me tell you this. There are fellows abroad who dub me dunce and dull-head. The young Buonarroti, forsooth, who mistakes the large for the great, quantity for quality; who in the indetermined pretends to see the mysterious. Mystery, quotha! Mystery may be in an astrologer's horoscope, in a diagram. Mystery needs no puckered ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... it has; I mean, I don't allow myself to be such a dunce, even in my own thoughts. I never even think ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... of the Earthquake shock! —What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,— All at once, and nothing first,— Just as bubbles ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... no one would believe me, For all were quite ready to fall at his feet." "Indeed, you are wrong," said the Lily-belle proudly, "I cared nothing for him; he called on me once, And would have come often, no doubt, if I'd asked him, But though he was handsome, I thought him a dunce." ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the descendant of heroes and kings, was a lone, friendless mariner on the main, only true to his origin in the sea-life that he led. But so it has been, and forever will be. What yeoman shall swear that he is not descended from Alfred? what dunce, that he is not sprung of old Homer? King Noah, God bless him! fathered us all. Then hold up your heads, oh ye Helots, blood potential flows through your veins. All of us have monarchs and sages for kinsmen; nay, angels and archangels ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... whole boy,—are taking the place too long monopolized by the "three R's." There was need of it. It had seemed sometimes as if, in our anxiety lest he should not get enough, we were in danger of stuffing the boy to the point of making a hopeless dunce of him. It is a higher function of the school to teach principles than to impart facts merely. Teaching the boy municipal politics and a thousand other things to make a good citizen of him, instead of so filling ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... clown, who clever was found. D was a dunce, and Harlequin bound, E was soon formed with the aid of a child, F in a frolic appear'd to ...
— Funny Alphabet - Uncle Franks' Series • Edward P. Cogger
... while they were out walking; the stones thrown at windows, the correct thing being to make the breakage resemble a well-known geographical map. Also the Greek exercises, written beforehand in large characters on the blackboard, so that every dunce might easily read them though the master remained unaware of it; the wooden seats of the courtyard sawn off and carried round the basin like so many corpses, the boys marching in procession and singing funeral dirges. Yes! that had been a capital prank. Dubuche, who played the priest, had tumbled ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Barbox feels bigger and heavier in person every minute when he is being catechised by Polly! Asked by her if he knows any stories, and compelled to answer, "No! What a dunce you must be, mustn't you?" says Polly. Frightened nearly out of his wits at the dinner-table, when they are feasting together, by her getting on her feet upon her chair to reward him with a kiss, and then toppling forward among the dishes—he ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... "The hundred humble heads are at rest in the sand; one grave-stone would mock them all. But once the family brain expanded to a hat, and that survived the race. I am the Quaker who respects his hat, the Cardinal who is crowned with it; yes, and the dunce who must wear ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... is a characteristic of the old dictionary makers. The gem of my collection is Ludwig's gloss for Luemmel, "a long lubber, a lazy lubber, a slouch, a lordant, a lordane, a looby, a booby, a tony, a fop, a dunce, a simpleton, a wise-acre, a sot, a logger-head, a block-head, a nickampoop, a lingerer, a drowsy or dreaming lusk, a pill-garlick, a slowback, a lathback, a pitiful sneaking fellow, a lungis, a tall slim fellow, a slim longback, a great he-fellow, a lubberly ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... blame; And critics have no partial views, Except they know whom they abuse; And since you ne'er provoked their spite, Depend upon 't, their judgment's right. 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 ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... enemies. When old he showed all the fire of youth, and his eye, like that of Moses, never became dim, since his strength and his beauty were of the soul,—ever expanding, ever adoring. His temper was stern, but affectionate. He had no mercy on a fool or a dunce, and turned in disgust from those who loved trifles and lies. He was guilty of no immoralities like Raphael and Titian, being universally venerated for his stern integrity and allegiance to duty,—as one who believes that there really is a God to whom he is personally responsible. He gave ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... it, Alfred, and even if she wouldn't you know she ought to go; Amelia herself knows," she continued, without looking at me, "that she is quite a dunce for her age, and will need to work very hard in order to make up for lost time. So, your father and I have decided," she added conclusively, "that you shall go to boarding-school, Amelia, as early next month as ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... coincided with the announcement of midnight, made, with maddening deliberation, by Mrs. Mangan's cuckoo-clock. The usual delirium of cracker-head-dresses had befallen the company. Larry, decorated with a dunce's cap, placed upon his yellow head by a jovial matron, found himself fated, by a final effort of penalising fancy on the part of another matron, to select "a young lady," to conduct her to the topmost step of the staircase, and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... This is your English History, and this is your French Grammar; and here is a Geography Book, and here is a History of Rome. Now read attentively, and do not let your thoughts wander; and be very careful not to dogs-ear the leaves: that always looks like a dunce. And mind you sit upright,' added she, looking back, as she left the room in obedience to a summons from ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... seven or eight volumes to make it palatable. For we are told that a young Cantab, who, when asked if he had read Clarissa, replied, "D—-n it, I would not read it through to save my life," was set down as an incurable dunce. And that a lady reading to her maid, whilst she curled her hair, the seventh volume of Clarissa, the poor girl let fall such a shower of tears that they wetted her mistress's head so much, she had to send her out of the room to compose ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... juice lace necessary nuisance once pencil police policy pace race rice space trace twice trice thrice nice price slice lice spice circus citron circumstance centre cent cellar certain circle concert concern cell dunce decide December dance disgrace exercise excellent except force fleece fierce furnace fence grocer grace icicle instance innocent indecent decent introduce juice justice lettuce medicine mercy niece ounce officer patience peace piece place principal ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... "Dunce," cried Milady, "dunce! who dares to answer for another man, when the wisest, when those most after God's own heart, hesitate to answer for themselves, and who ranges himself on the side of the strongest ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... certainly at least modified my conceit. I was always the dunce of the party—the smallest child knew more of woodcraft than I did, and had something to tell of everything. Seeing Oogahnahbayah, a small eagle-hawk, flying over, they would say, 'He eats the emu eggs.' He flies over where the emu ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... dusty floor. Poor fellow! he was Triplet, and could not have died without tingeing the death-rattle with some absurdity; but, after all, he was a father driven to despair; a castle-builder, with his work rudely scattered; an artist, brutally crushed and insulted by a greater dunce than himself. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... alike; so that what at first sight seems to be death, if you view it narrowly may prove to be life; and so the contrary. What appears beautiful may chance to be deformed; what wealthy, a very beggar; what infamous, praiseworthy; what learned, a dunce; what lusty, feeble; what jocund, sad; what noble, base; what lucky, unfortunate; what friendly, an enemy; and what healthful, noisome. In short, view the inside of these Sileni, and you'll find them quite ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... if they had been printed at length were such as few had known or recollected. The subject itself had nothing generally interesting, for whom did it concern to know that one or another scribbler was a dunce? If, therefore, it had been possible for those who were attacked to conceal their pain and their resentment, the "Dunciad" might have made its way very slowly in the world. This, however, was not to be expected: every man is of importance to himself, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... advantage; or at least they think so; for they would not change with those who have them not, were they to gain by the bargain the most robust body that the most selfish coxcomb, or the heaviest dunce extant, ever boasted. For instance, would you now, my lord, at this moment change altogether with Major Benson, or Captain Williamson, or even our friend, 'Eh, really now, "pon honour"—would you!—I'm ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... from becoming a complete convert by one or two prejudices. He knows no more about it than a pikestaff. Why then does he make so much ridiculous fuss about it? It is not that he has got this one idea in his head, but that he has got no other. A dunce may talk on the subject of the Kantean philosophy with great impunity: if he opened his lips on any other he might be found out. A French lady who had married an Englishman who said little, excused him by saying, 'He is always thinking of Locke ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... "You are a dunce at many things," she replied. "The reason I came was because I knew that you were living in these parts, and I had a fancy ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... made it so clear that it was a pleasure to learn. Sometimes a boy would ask a foolish question, which would make the rest laugh; but then Mr. Harrison would say it was better to be laughed at for trying to learn, than to grow up a dunce. ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... penalty." She was blushin' fit to kill, But she answered, kinder still: "I don't want to have no harm, Please come, Ben, an' break the charm." Did I break that charm?—oh, well, There's some things I must n't tell. I remember, afterwhile, Her a-sayin' with a smile: "Oh, you quit,—you sassy dunce, You jest caught me whistlin' once." Ev'ry sence that when I hear Some one whistlin' kinder clear, I most break my neck to see Ef it 's Susy; but, dear me, I jest find I 've b'en to chase Some blamed boy about the place. Dad 's b'en noticin' my way, An' last night I heerd him say: ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... printing has made the multiplication of books by transcription unnecessary, much just, though at times unjust criticism. A German writer has said, that the man of genius takes his notes on a slip of paper, he of good abilities on a half-page, while the dunce must fill a whole sheet. Now the reverse would be quite as true in many cases. For though thoughtless writing may be little more than wasted labor, yet there is nothing that can fix more steadily thoughts and facts in the mind than the precision and constant attention required ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... children might be raised by "education" to the normal stature of the human mind. It fired Godwin himself with a zeal for education. "Folly," said Helvetius, "is factitious." "Nature," said Godwin, "never made a dunce." The failures of education are due primarily to the teacher's error in substituting compulsion for persuasion and despotism for encouragement. The excellences and defects of the human character are ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... "Thomas Nash, from the top of his wit looking down upon simple creatures, calleth Gabriel Harvey a dunce, a foole, an ideot, a dolt, a goose cap, an asse, and so forth; for some of the residue is not to be spoken but with his owne mannerly mouth; but he should have shewed particularlie which wordes in my letters were the wordes of a dunce; which sentences the sentences of a foole; which arguments ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... a farmer's lad, ten years old, tall and stout for his age, and able to do a great many more things than some city boys of fourteen. He could ride and drive, keep the stable in order, and even handle a plough. Nor was he a dunce; for, thanks to an evening school, which some of his Sunday teachers had opened in the village, he had learned to read and write very fairly. He had a comfortable place at farmer Jolly's; but there ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Gurley or Mr. Strachey, complaining of their want of insight, and bringing forward a string of embarrassing proofs. So, leaving Mother to her pleasing illusions, Laura settled down again to her role of dunce, now, though, with more equanimity than before. School was really not a bad place after all—this had for some time been her growing conviction, and the visit to Godmother seemed to bring it to ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... full of spite. And Simony—A-per-se-A-Simony—too, he is a knave for the nonce: He loves to have twenty livings at once; And if he let an honest man, as I am, to have one, He'll let it so dear that he shall be undone. And he seeks to get parsons' livings into his hand, And puts in some odd dunce that to his payment will stand: So, if the parsonage be worth forty or fifty pound a year, He will give one twenty nobles to mumble ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... say that you received the Holy Spirit by the Law. As long as you were servants of the Law, you never received the Holy Ghost. Nobody ever heard of the Holy Ghost being given to anybody, be he doctor or dunce, as a result of the preaching of the Law. In your own case, you have not only learned the Law by heart, you have labored with all your might to perform it. You most of all should have received the Holy Ghost by the Law, if that were possible. You cannot show me that this ever ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... get an exhibition! I who had been licked once a week for bad copies, and had been told by every teacher I had had anything to do with that I was a hopeless dunce. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... provocations and resentments, which were mutually discovered upon this occasion. Mr. Pope was of opinion, that next to praising good writers, there was a merit in exposing bad ones, though it does not hold infallibly true, that each person stigmatized as a dunce, was genuinely so. Something must be allowed to personal resentment; Mr. Pope was a man of keen passions; he felt an injury strongly, retained a long remembrance of it, and could very pungently repay it. Some of the gentlemen, however, who had been more severely lashed than ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... "Send that dunce of a doctor to me as soon as you can," said Pickering, rolling back suddenly once more, into the hollow made in the center of the four-poster. "Dear me, he's sweet on Polly too!" he groaned under ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... mildly and modestly, yet most pertinently, express himself about Old Burton and Old Fuller,—or wise, thoughtful, ingenious Squire M—— ably, if not very eloquently, hold forth on Shakspeare and Milton, I had (who but a dunce or dunderhead would not have had?) a "greedy great desire" to look into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... his class not once; And his aunt repeatedly dubbed him "Dunce." But, "Give him a chance," said his father, Joi. "His head is abnormally large for a boy." But his aunt said, "Piffie! It's crammed with bosh! Why, he don't know the rivers and mountains of Gosh, Nor the names of the nephews of good ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... WERTHER of the story In all the pomp of woodcut glory. His worth is first made duly known, By having his sad features shown At ev'ry fair the country round; In ev'ry alehouse too they're found. His stick is pointed by each dunce "The ball would reach his brain at once!" And each says, o'er his beer and bread: "Thank Heav'n that 'tis not ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... landed Rogue will have this wench now, when all's done, some such youth will carry her, and wear her, greasie out like stuff, some Dunce that knows no more but Markets, and admires nothing but a long charge ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... adventitious distinctions of society do not intrude. The capitalist and his agents are looking for the greatest amount of labor or the largest income in money from their investments, and they do not promote a dunce to a station where he will destroy raw material or slacken industry because of his name, or birth, or family connections. The obscurest and humblest person has a fair field for competition. That he proves himself capable of earning more money ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... the sun gets from the place where it sets to where it rises, he knows at least how it travels from sunrise to sunset, his eyes teach him that. Use the second question to throw light on the first; either your pupil is a regular dunce or the analogy is too clear to be missed. This is his first lesson ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... exhibited such a bashful appearance and uncouth address, that his mother despaired of ever seeing him improved into any degree of polite behaviour. On the other hand, Fathom, who was in point of learning a mere dunce, became, even in his childhood, remarkable among the ladies for his genteel deportment and vivacity; they admired the proficiency he made under the directions of his dancing-master, the air with which he performed ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... choice patron bless each gray-goose quill! May every Bavius have his Bufo still! 250 So when a statesman wants a day's defence, Or envy holds a whole week's war with sense, Or simple pride for flattery makes demands, May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands! Bless'd be the great! for those they take away, And those they left me; for they left me Gay; Left me to see neglected genius bloom, Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb: Of all thy blameless life, the sole return My verse, and Queensberry ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... the field—knock out a Mounseer's brains "And pick the scoundrel's pocket for your pains. "Come Humphrey come! thou art a lad of spirit! "Rise to a halbert—as I did—by merit! "Would'st thou believe it? even I was once "As thou art now, a plough-boy and a dunce; "But Courage rais'd me to my rank. How now boy! "Shall Hero Humphrey still be Numps the plough-boy? "A proper shaped young fellow! tall and straight! "Why thou wert made for glory! five feet eight! "The ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... after the Quarterly review of them came out they never sold another copy. 'My book,' he said, 'sold well—the first edition had gone off in six weeks—till that review came out. I had just prepared a second edition—such was called for—but then the Quarterly told the public that I was a fool and a dunce, and more, that I was an evil disposed person: and the public, supposing Gifford to know best, confessed that it had been a great ass to be pleased where it ought not to be, and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... gives this glimpse of another study: "I am a very Dunce, for I have not acquired ye writing shorthand yet with any degree of swiftness." That she had made some study of philosophy also is evident in this comment in a letter written after a prolonged absence from her plantation ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... I'll warrant she'll not be a dunce with Purcell. And you must admit, doctor, that your George Frederick Handel is much beholden ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... tried to draw mine," responded the professor, dropping into normal English, "but as the dunce's tie is far up the back of his collar, I leave the audience to decide ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... Dot. She had the blithest little laugh you ever heard. "What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... over the next few years, except to say that I went to college, where I was shunned by all, though never alone: was a dunce, and plucked twice. Perhaps it was I who shunned others, for had I not society in the constant presence of my Familiar? I was of course a dunce, for my brain was never steady enough to carry me over the Pons Asinorum, or to make a Latin verse with even decent correctness. I went ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... With flapping arms from stake or stump, Or, spreading the tail Of his coat for a sail, Take a soaring leap from post or rail, And wonder why He couldn't fly, And flap and flutter and wish and try— If ever you knew a country dunce Who didn't try that as often as once, All I can say is, that's a sign He never would do for a hero ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... the Stoics' account was in the forenoon (for example) the worst man in the world is in the afternoon the best of men; and he that falls asleep a very sot, dunce, miscreant, and brute, nay, by Jove, a slave and a beggar to boot, rises up the same day a prince, a rich and a happy man, and (which is yet more) a continent, just, determined, and unprepossessed person;—not by shooting forth out of a young ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... circus pony, can Distinguish letters like a man: He'll hold up for you in the ring His D for Dunce ...
— A Horse Book • Mary Tourtel
... at the fragments. "This is it. Dunce that I am not to have guessed it! Look, there is a layer of paper embedded in the wax. Look, he cut the seal out, smeared hot wax on the false packet, pressed in the seal, and curled the new wax over the edge. It was cleverly done; the seal is but little thicker, little ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... caught him; whipped him before the whole school; put a dunce-cap on his head, and stood him on a high chair. Then his humiliation seemed complete. He prayed for death. At home when he tried to tell his mother about his trouble she laughed, and boxed his ears for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... on my back for years when I might 'a had my schoolin', and when I was able to get about with my crutch I was that 'shamed to go, being such a big 'un, and such a dunce. Uncle Sam, he has a tried to teach me, but he has a awful temper, and says I'm that slow I aggrewate him ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... bug; and when he doesn't look like an elf, he looks like a king with a high crown on his head or a naughty boy with a dunce cap." ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... to tell him about Diddy and the Fair, but the Master saw what he had done. "Come here, Larry McQueen, and bring your slate," he said. "Sure, I'll teach you better manners. Get up on this stool now, and show yourself." He put a large paper dunce-cap on Larry's head, and made him sit up on a stool before ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... night, which caused great merriment next day. For ladies got smoking caps, and cigar-cases; while gentlemen received workboxes, thimbles, and tatting-needles. Peter got a jester's cap and bells, which he vowed was a dunce's cap intended for Rose, to that young lady's great indignation. Tom had a primer, and a present for a good boy, and May received a plain gold ring at which they all laughed very much, to May's excessive annoyance. After breakfast they all went to church, and ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... professions extravagant, and his curiosity insatiable. He was a secretary of state without intelligence, a duke without money, a man of infinite intrigue without secrecy, and a minister hated by all parties, without being turned out by either." "All able men," adds Macaulay, "ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child who never knew his own mind an hour together; and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... teach you to pull the string with your teeth, and fire our new gun? If I could, you might be the Artillery all to yourself, and it would be capital fun. You wag your tail at that, do you? You would like it a great deal better? But I can't bear you to be such a dunce, when you look so wise; and yet I don't believe you'll ever learn a letter. Aunt Jemima is going to make me a new cocked hat out of the next old newspaper, for I want to have a review; But the newspaper after that, Papa Poodle, must ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the mainland high and dry on. Steed appeareth none, nor pilot! Little dog, if it be thy lot To essay the dismal track Where Odysseus half hung back, How wilt thou conciliate That grim mastiff by the gate? Sure, 'twill puzzle thee to fawn On his muzzles three that yawn Antrous; or to find, poor dunce, Grace in his six eyes at once— Those ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... agreed Emma. "Although no one ever asked my hand in holy matrimony except a callow youth whom I tutored in algebra last summer. He had failed in his June examination and had to pass in September or be forever labeled a dunce by his fond family. Now you see why I can understand the psychology of saying 'no' to a proposal. This stripling, who was at least five years my junior, proposed to me out of sheer gratitude. I actually succeeded in drumming quadratic ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... will have to wait awhile," he thought. "And I—I have been a dunce, dancing attendance all these days! I had hoped to marry wealth and beauty. What did I come over here for? The demned country's barren ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... human companionship come in?" Young girls are nowadays beginning to expect bright talk from their partners, and the ladies have a singularly pretty way of saying the most biting things in a smooth and unconcerned fashion when they find a dunce beginning to talk platitudes or to patronize his partner; but the middle generation are unspeakably inane; and the worst is that they regard their inanity as a decided sign of distinction. A grave man ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... shock! What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,— All at once, and nothing first,— Just as ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will, without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it. Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly, yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... weary. Even if his mother had a headache, Charlie rattled on; if his father wanted to read or write quietly he had to go apart from Charlie, for there was no peace in the presence of the chatterbox. Of course he was a dunce, for how could he chatter and learn as well? And you may be sure he made plenty of mischief, for tongues that are always on the move do not keep to the exact truth sometimes when repeating what the ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... one admire it or take pleasure in it, he does so, not from reason, but from something within him which his reason, in so far as he has any, necessarily disapproves: so that he is rather to be laughed at as a dunce than preached to as a sinner; though perhaps this ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... you think I might be dead, then? That makes it worse, still. I was never in the slightest danger. I was only just a—dunce." ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... that once arrayed him, The charm Admitto te ad gradum, With touch of parchment can refine, And make the veriest coxcomb shine, Confer the gift of tongues at once, And fill with sense the vacant dunce. Trumbull's Progress of Dullness, Ed. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... so they have it hot, for half a day,— First A., then B., then C. and D. at once, And thus the precious moments roll away, And none can tell who is the greatest dunce. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... recitation-room and upon the parade ground, by day and by night, he was made to feel that he belonged to an inferior and despised race, and that no excellence of deportment, diligence in study, or rank in his class could entitle him to the recognition accorded to every white dunce and rowdy. Yet with rare strength of character he persevered, and when, having maintained the standing of No. fifty in a class of seventy-six, he received his well-earned diploma, there was a round ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, that his father was heard to say, if it pleased God to remove any one of his children by death, he hoped it would be Isaac. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the commentator, called his boy 'a grievous dunce.' Cortina, a renowned painter, was nicknamed, by his associates, 'Ass' Head,' on account of his stupidity, when a boy. When the mother of Sheridan once went with him to the school-room, she told the teacher that he was 'an incorrigible dunce,' and the latter was soon compelled ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... with the awkwardness of an idiot, and was so stupid in school that nothing but his previous good character saved him from a flogging. The day before the Feast of St. Nicholas (which was a holiday) the schoolmaster dismissed him with the severe inquiry, if he meant to be a dunce all his life? and Friedrich went home with two sentences ringing ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... many folks about me—above me and below— Might make this life more happy, if old as well as young Would bear in mind the maxim which bids them hold their tongue. Hold your tongue—hold your tongue—you'll ne'er be thought a dunce: Hold your tongue and think twice before you loose it once: Hold your tongue—for quiet folks are oft reputed wise: Hold your tongue, but open wide your ears and ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... school, there was a great tall dunce of the name of Fisher, who never could be taught how to look out a word in the dictionary. He used to torment everybody with—"Do pray help me! I can't make out this one word." The person who usually helped him in his distress was a very clever, good natured boy, of the name of De ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... were Adalbert Zwyny, a Bohemian violinist, who taught the piano, and Joseph Elsner, a violinist, organist and theorist. "From Zwyny and Elsner even the greatest dunce must learn something," he is quoted as saying. Neither of these men attempted to hamper his free growth by rigid technical restraints. Their guidance left him master of his own genius, at liberty to "soar ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... his school days, "How to be a Dunce," and although in mature life he was "on the side of his masters" and grateful to them "that my persistent efforts not to learn Latin were frustrated; and that I was not entirely successful even in escaping the contamination of the language of Aristotle and Demosthenes," ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... hands upon the dunce, kisses him close, grows sudden red, stammers, holds off, has the wit to make sure—and bundles ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... opportunity, other than an equality that is relative, were to be maintained in the sphere of education, a clever boy who had learned to speak German in a year would have to be coerced into idleness until every dunce among his classmates could speak it as well as he; and a similar process would be repeated in after-life. This policy, as has been pointed out already, is, even if wasteful, not ruinous in the sphere of ordinary labour—a fact which shows how ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... stuff, Marilla," she groaned. "I'm sure I'll never be able to make head or tail of it. There is no scope for imagination in it at all. Mr. Phillips says I'm the worst dunce he ever saw at it. And Gil—I mean some of the others are so smart at it. It is ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at the picture. "That dunce of a thing. It makes me tired. It isn't worth a hang. ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... to approach you? Should I examine you in the dead languages, would not your living accents charm from me all power of reproof? Could I look at you, and hear a false concord? Should I doom you to water-gruel as a dunce, would not my subsequent remorse make me want it myself as a madman? Were your fair hand spread out to me for correction, should I help applying my lips to it, instead of my rat-tan? If I ordered you to be called up, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... she may always keep a good table. I give her my new carriage and horses — that she may visit her friends in comfort. I give her my family bible — that she may live above the ill tempers and sorrows of life. I give my son Peter a hornbook — for I am afraid he will always be a dunce. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... day, and has no ear For his wife's singing. Artists must have men; They need appreciation. But it's queer What messes people make of their lives, when They should know more. If Gebnitz finds out, then His wife will pack. Yes, shut the door at once. I did not feel it cold, I am a dunce." ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... what a dunce I am! I'm afraid I'm very ungrateful. But you see I seem to have done with such things. And yet the money is going to be of some use to me ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... nurse-maid, educated at a fashionable day-school, brought into society before fifteen, living in the whirl, the bustle, the luxury, and the unhomeliness of a hotel, what could you expect of Miss Flora but that she should be, at seventeen years of age, a butterfly in her habits, a clever dunce as regards solid knowledge, and a premature woman of the world in her tastes and manners? The apartments which the Briggs family occupy at the Fifth Avenue Hotel are magnificently decorated and furnished, but they do not constitute a home. Several times Mr. Briggs has offered to purchase ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... have opinions of my own; I want to read books that open and improve the mind. I want to promote my education by attending lectures, by going to the theatre—in short, I don't want to become a dunce and a bell-jingling fool ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... ignoramus, dunce; wooden spoon; no scholar. [insulting terms for ignorant person: see also imbecility 499, folly 501] moron, imbecile, idiot; fool, jerk, nincompoop, asshole [vulgar]. [person with superficial knowledge] dilettante, sciolist[obs3], smatterer, dabbler, half scholar; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "is it possible you should do me so much unmerited honour, and I should be dunce enough not to perceive ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... elder, whose, education had been accomplished simply by a New Testament and three-inch rope, sat, or rather twisted through the rhapsody, as a dunce twists through his Greek roots, and at the first pause, drawing himself erect with the self-complacent air of a man who applies the clincher, ejaculated, with the Western twang: 'What do you think of Hi-awathy?' The professor, giving him one look, to be sure of his sanity, and a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... first Arminian. He prefers Ramus before Aristotle, and Paracelsus before Galen,[22] [and whosoever with most paradox is commended.] He much pities the world that has no more insight in his parts, when he is too well discovered even to this very thought. A flatterer is a dunce to him, for he can tell him nothing but what he knows before: and yet he loves him too, because he is like himself. Men are merciful to him, and let him alone, for if he be once driven from his humour, he ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... frequently offer still greater obstacles to social contacts. The idiot and the imbecile are obviously debarred from normal communication with their intelligent associates. The "dunce" was isolated by village ridicule and contempt long before the term "moron" was coined, or the feeble-minded segregated in institutions and colonies. The individual with the highest native endowments, the genius, and the talented enjoy or suffer from a more subtle type ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Why, and in what degrees, pride sways the soul? (For though in all, not equally, she reigns,) Awake to knowledge, and attend my strains. Ye doctors! hear the doctrine I disclose, As true, as if't were writ in dullest prose; As if a letter'd dunce had said, "'Tis right," And imprimatur usher'd it to light. Ambition, in the truly noble mind, With sister virtue is for ever join'd; As in fam'd Lucrece, who, with equal dread, From guilt, and shame, by her last conduct, fled: Her virtue long rebell'd in ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... and making bad things worse. He appeared to accept the idea that he had taken her over and made her, as he said, his particular lark; he quite agreed also that he was an awful fraud and an idle beast and a sorry dunce. And he never said a word to her against her mother—he only remained dumb and discouraged in the face of her ladyship's own overtopping earnestness. There were occasions when he even spoke as if he had wrenched ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... one day, "you'll have to go to Bonn. That'll be the best place for you, since Oxford is out of the question. You've got to take my place some day, and you mustn't grow up an absolute dunce. Atfield" (an old school-chum of his) "is well pleased with the place for his boy, Bill, so you may get ready to travel back with him next week, when ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... dunce, Morgan? Without doubt, at the end of that cave is a way up into the castle; and though the passage be too narrow for all my troop, three men and a captain will suffice to lay faggots and light them at the door. What ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... familiar. But let us beware of applying to Macaulay himself that tone of exaggeration and laborious antithesis which he so often applied to others. Boswell, he says, was immortal, "because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb." It would be a feeble parody to retort that Macaulay became a great literary power "because he had no philosophy, little subtlety, and a heavy hand." For my part, I am slow to believe that ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... a dunce," he repeated over and over again. "I should know that Janice always says just what she means, means what she says, and, as Walky Dexter puts it, has more fighting pluck than ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... his life. When I told him that, he got interested and fin'ly showed us some books he was trying to study, but he can't see sense in the grammar. Gussie promised to help him, but she never has much time for such things, and he thinks she thinks he's a plumb dunce. I promised to ask her if that's the way she felt, but he said I mustn't; so I did the next best I could think of—I told him Cherry would study grammar with him. She uses the same book he has in ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... only scolds and punishes them if they do not, which is quite a different thing, the net effect being that the school prisoners need not learn unless they like. Nay, it is sometimes remarked that the school dunce—meaning the one who does not like—often turns out well afterwards, as if idleness were a sign of ability and character. A much more sensible explanation is that the so-called dunces are not exhausted before they begin the serious ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... look!' cried Jack, with eager eyes. 'I see!' cried Tom, 'I see! You go and seek another mouse, And leave this mouse to me.' 'Indeed, I won't!' cried Jack at once; 'You surely take me for a dunce! ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... peculiarly well on women. It is not uncommon to find a lady, who, though she does not know a rule of Syntax, scarcely ever violates one; and who constructs every sentence she utters, with more propriety than many a learned dunce, who has every rule of Aristotle by heart, and who can lace his own thread-bare discourse with the golden shreds ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... provoked, never doubles his fist, Mr. Burns, in his grate, has no fuel; Mr. Playfair won't catch me at hazard or whist, Mr. Coward was wing'd in a duel. Mr. Wise is a dunce, Mr. King is a whig, Mr. Coffin's uncommonly sprightly, And huge Mr. Little broke down in a gig, While ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... the lessons on law which were given us by M. Rossi, the minister of Pius IX. But Greek and Latin, and hours spent over an exercise or a translation with a fat dictionary to keep me company! Oh, mercy on me! From the scholastic point of view I was simply a DUNCE, nothing but a dunce. Yet I managed to scramble one prize—the shabbiest of them all—the second for Latin versions in the seventh class! I was presented with my reward at the prize distribution, to the tune of "Vive Henri ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... then laughed outright; "Poor fellow!" he said, "you are in a sad plight! Ha! ha! what a dunce you must be to suppose, That the heart of a Spider ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... I have just now used the words "poet" and "dunce," meaning the degree of each quality possible to average human nature. Men are eternally divided into the two classes of poet (believer, maker, and praiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, unmaker, and dispraiser). And in process of ages they have the power of making faithful and formative ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin |
