"Ignoramus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a different being. In some cases he has medical knowledge, in the majority of instances he is an ignoramus. His sole object is to make money, and he sells remedies which he knows to be worthless, and even vends drugs which he is sure will do positive harm in the majority ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... knowledge) and "thou hast dissipated[FN458] my mind" (Azhakta ruhi thou scatterest my wits, in the Calc. Edit. Saghgharta ruhi thou belittles" my mind). But even Lane never wrote "I only required thee to shave my head"—the adverb thus qualifying, as the ignoramus loves to do, the wrong verb—for "I required thee only to shave my head." In the second echantillon we have "a piece of gold" as equivalent of a quarter-diner and "for God's sake" which certainly does not preserve local colour. In No. 3 we find "'May God,' said I," etc.; "There is no deity ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... little surprised, therefore, to find occasion to suspect that one of my principal subordinates was trying to impose on me as though I were an ignoramus. For when any important crime of a certain kind occurred, and I set myself to investigate it a la Sherlock Holmes, he used to listen to me in the way that so many people listen to sermons in church; and when I was done he would ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... far better place for them!" exclaimed Massachusetts, "though I am awfully sorry for her. Oh! you lucky, lucky girl! and you dear, precious, stupid ignoramus, not to know poison dogwood when ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... had the British not been too gravely interested, would have afforded them entertainment. The rules of no known military war game could be applied to the situation, and its uniqueness was a matter as incomprehensible to the tactician as to the ignoramus. For instance, from Maritzburg to Ladysmith one side alternated with the other at intervals along the line. There were British troops at Maritzburg, Boers at Balgowan; British at Mooi River, Boers at Willow Grange; ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... revelation generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and providence of God so as to become properly Atheists." So that, according to you, I am a Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of no sincerity; whose writings are full of nothing but gross mistakes and misrepresentations. Now I ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the main question? What has my book in common with my person? And how can you hold any converse with a man of ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Viscount Innisdale, noble family, distant branch,—the devil I am! What an ignoramus my father was not to know that! Why, rest his soul, he never knew who his grandfather was; but the world shall not be equally ignorant of that important point. Let me see, who shall be Viscount Innisdale's great-grandfather? Well, well, whoever ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bed to the other; no sleep, no rest. The poor Crippled wrist, too, never left one moment in the same position; now up, now down, now here, now there; was it to be wondered at, if its pains returned? The surgeon then was to be called, and to be rated as an ignoramus, because he could not divine the cause of this extraordinary change. In fine, my friend, you must mend your manners. This is not a world to live at random in, as you do. To avoid those eternal distresses, to which you are for ever exposing us, you must learn to look ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... old hunter, what do you say to that?" said the doctor, stroking his disagreeable pet: "that dirty-faced, uncombed, ill-dressed ignoramus of a boy claims you for a relative. Do ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... were flushed with a coarse colour, his eyes dull; he would launch into discourses upon his talent, his success, his development, the advance he was making.... It turned out in actual fact that he had barely talent enough to produce passable portraits. He was a perfect ignoramus, had read nothing; why should an artist read, indeed? Nature, freedom, poetry were his fitting elements; he need do nothing but shake his curls, talk, and suck away at his eternal cigarette! Russian audacity ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... Davies. I relate it as a good instance of one of his minor peculiarities. He was utterly without that didactic pedantry which yachting has a fatal tendency to engender In men who profess it. He had tossed me the chart without a thought that I was an ignoramus, to whom it would be Greek, and who would provide him with an admirable subject to drill and lecture, just as his neglect of me throughout the morning had been merely habitual and unconscious independence. In the second place, master of his ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... that was scholarship. A boy born in the gutter need not despair of entering the houses of the rich, if he had a good mind and a great appetite for sacred learning. A poor scholar would be preferred in the marriage market to a rich ignoramus. In the phrase of our grandmothers, a boy stuffed with learning was worth more than a girl ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... certain passages and phrases. He objected to cheeks "scarred" by tears, to "dauntless" statues, and to "terror-stricken" wagons. The very touches of poetic impressionism that largely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an ignoramus. There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions subtly conveyed by Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as deliberate with him as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an imagist before our ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... could be hidden, would not have selected the name, or the nearest possible approach to the name, of an ignorant unread actor. As he was never suspected of not being the author of the plays and poems, Will cannot have been a country ignoramus, manifestly incapable of poetry, wit, and such learning as the plays exhibit. Every one must judge for himself. Mr. Greenwood fervently believes in ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... Latent ista omnia, Luculle, crassis occultata et circumfusa tenebris, ut nulla acies humani ingeni tanta sit, quae penetrare in caelum, terram intrare possit: corpora nostra non novimus: qui sint situs partium, quam vim quaeque pars habeat ignoramus. Itaque medici ipsi, quorum intererat ea nosse, aperuerunt, ut viderentur. Nec eo tamen aiunt empirici notiora esse illa, quia possit fieri ut patefacta et detecta mutentur. Sed ecquid nos eodem modo rerum naturas persecare, aperire, dividere possumus, ut videamus terra penitusne ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... heart of Africa, or in the icy regions of the Pole if I knew it were there. But I do not know where it is. I do not know if it be guarded in a triple- locked iron case by some jealous biblomaniac. I do not know if it be growing mouldy in the attic of some ignoramus. I shudder at the thought that perhaps its tore-out leaves may have been used to cover the pickle-jars ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... girl that wasn't educated like him, an' he'd begin to get fool notions about hisself—why, it'd make it pretty hard for the girl to get along with him." He grinned. "But accordin' to what I hear, Kane ain't goin' to marry no ignoramus exactly, for he's took a shine to Ruth Hamlin, Willets' school teacher. She's got a heap of brains, that girl, an' I reckon she'd lope alongside of Kane, wherever ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... my duty," said he, "to teach that preposterous ignoramus something worth knowing about Sennacherib. Besides I am a bachelor and would sooner spend Christmas, as to whose irritating and meaningless annoyance I cordially agree with you, among strangers than among my married sisters' ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... young leddy; cling close to Him. Ye ha' muckle need o' His care. An' dinna trust your life to the dochtering o' a sullen ignoramus like the captain,—an obstinate, self-willed brute, that, right or wrang, will ha' his ain way. Dinna ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... from an author I never heard of, with great encomiums on my taste and knowledge. To be sure, I am warranted to insert this certificate among the testimonia authorum, before my next edition of the Painters. Now, I assure you, I am much more just—I have sent the gentleman word what a perfect ignoramus I am, and did not treat my vanity with a moment's respite. Your brother has laughed at me, or rather at the poor man who has so mistaken me, as much as ever I did at his absence and flinging down every thing at breakfast. Tom, your brother's man, told him to-day, that ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stept unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... her education—or lack of it?" Barry went on relentlessly. "You know quite well that the girl is a little ignoramus in reality. She has read nothing, been nowhere, learned precious little; and she has no more conversation ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... attendant in the court is to maintain order and preserve dignity. They are almost avid in their pursuit of the ignoramus who comes in with his hat on his head or covers himself on going out before he reaches the door. Their salaries are not large but their duties are not arduous. They may seem solicitous to the judge and sometimes overbearing to the litigants and lawyers, but they are only in the position ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... let a little affair like one election drive you out of public life? It was so obvious that you were made the victim for Horlock's growing unpopularity in the country. Haven't you realised that yourself—or perhaps you don't care to talk about these things to an ignoramus such as ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... And then the stanzas of my theme Will not, preserved by kindly Fate, Perish absorbed by Lethe's stream. Then it may be, O flattering tale, Some future ignoramus shall My famous portrait indicate And cry: he was a poet great! My gratitude do not disdain, Admirer of the peaceful Muse, Whose memory doth not refuse My light productions to retain, Whose hands indulgently caress The ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... so, sir," answered Dick. "If we don't it shall not be my fault. And although I am rather an ignoramus at present in respect of a sailor's work generally, you will find me both ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... In a master's workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin— An indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240 Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure—and ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... Hoyt, trying to be soothing, as he believed it was always best to be with women,—to tell the truth he was an ignoramus where women were concerned,—"I think it would be better if you didn't look at them. There are reasons why—" he ambled on like this, stupid man that he was, till the lady naturally insisted upon seeing the pictures without ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... not suit everybody. It supposes profound and impartial examination. He who doubts because he does not know the grounds of credibility, is no better than an ignoramus. The true sceptic has counted and weighed the reasons. But it is no light matter to weigh arguments. Who of us knows their value with any nicety? Every mind has its own telescope. An objection that disappears in your eyes, is a colossus ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... He looked in at her this morning, but she did not lift her eyes. Oh, she is so young to die! And she has so much to do. She has not even begun to do yet. She has so much of herself to do with, she is not an ignoramus like me. Her life has been one strong, pure influence Hollis said to-night. He is sure she will get well. He says her father and mother pray for her night and day. And his Aunt Helen said such a beautiful thing yesterday. She was talking to ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... amity until what is virtually universal suffrage was introduced and the ignoramus became the tool of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... confess that I find the air of this region of speculation too rarefied for my constitution, and I am disposed to take refuge in 'ignoramus et ignorabimus.' ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... either did not approve of the lady, or of matrimony generally (and in fact he never was married), he promptly retired from the competition. At first, no one suspected the youth's talents, for he amused himself by pretending to be an ignoramus, until one day the accompanyist on the harpsichord (then the most important instrument in an orchestra) was absent, and young Handel took his place, astonishing everybody by his masterly touch. Probably this discovery aroused ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... three or four times in my company he was put upon to do the work, but could not; at last he said he could do nothing as long as I was in presence. I at last shewed him his error, but left him as I found him, a pretending ignoramus. ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... himself "IGNORAMUS," writes to inquire "The address of a Society called 'The London French Polishers.'" He says, "I want my French polished up a bit before ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... An ignoramus believes the Bible because of the miracles, and because of the miracles an Ingersoll disbelieves it—and both are equally blind . A cult is simply an expression, more or less crude, of the religious sentiment of a people, the poor garment ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... problems. It simply got itself there by the force of the artistic passion behind it; its coherent statement had to wait for other and more reflective days. The thing began as a vision, not as a syllogism. Here the name of Franz Schubert inevitably comes up. Schubert was an ignoramus, even in music; he knew less about polyphony, which is the mother of harmony, which is the mother of music, than the average conservatory professor. But nevertheless he had such a vast instinctive sensitiveness to musical values, such a profound and accurate feeling for beauty in tone, that ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... judged from its professing to answer a tract of Wallis, printed in 1669.[198] The title is "Quadratura circuli, cubatio sphaerae, duplicatio cubi," 4to.[199] Hobbes, who began in 1655, was very wrong in his quadrature; but, though not a Gregory St. Vincent,[200] he was not the ignoramus in geometry that he is sometimes supposed. His writings, erroneous as they are in many things, contain acute remarks on points of principle. He is wronged by being coupled with Joseph Scaliger, as the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... per minima tamen spatiola; in palpitatione vero sine ullo ordine musculi unius lacertus subito subsilit, nec regulariter continuoque movetur, sed nunc semel aut bis, nunc minime intra idem tempus subsilit; an causa irritans in sensorio communi, an in musculo ipse palpitante Quaerenda sit, ignoramus. Nosologiae Methodicae, Vol. I. ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... disposed, at first, to sport with his ignorance, he could not refrain from giving him a true answer. Still, his contempt for the ignorant apprentice was not to be concealed, and he replied, "Ninety-five millions of miles, you ignoramus!" James did not retort; but, repeating over in his mind the distance named, fixed ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Nicolas de la Salle, whom he had supplanted as intendant, wrote to Ponchartrain that D'Artaguette had deceived him, being no better than Bienville himself. La Salle further declared that Barrot, the surgeon of the colony, was an ignoramus, and that he made money by selling the medicines supplied by the King to cure his Louisianian subjects. Such were the transatlantic workings of the paternalism ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... are discussing conditions in Europe. You must speak in one way to the man who has traveled and in an entirely different way to the man who has never gone abroad—in one way to the well-read man, in an entirely different way to the ignoramus. Let us say you are discussing urban life, urban problems. You must speak in one way to the man who lives in the city, in another to the man who lives in the country. Let us say you are discussing the labor problem. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... being in jail. She told him Stan hadn't written to Cousin Oscar about no jail, and that I wasn't to tell him either. Now goes Cousin Oscar on a beeline to tell Uncle how dreadful Stanley has went and disgraced the family; and Uncle will want to know how he heard of it. 'Why,' says Oscar, 'an old ignoramus from Arizona, named Johnson—friend of Stanley's—he told me about it. He came up here to get me to help Stanley out; wanted me to go out ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... hands of a child. What can an ignorant man do with knowledge? He is as likely to use it wrong end uppermost as in any other manner. Learning is a ticklish thing; it was said by Festus to have maddened even the wise and experienced Paul and what may we not expect it to do with your downright ignoramus? What ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... there was danger that the fish would take a turn around one of them and break away. It was necessary to go faster than he went, in order to retrieve as much line as possible. But paddle as fast as they could the fish kept ahead. He was not towing the boat, of course; for only an ignoramus imagines that a salmon can "tow" a boat, when the casting-line that holds him is a single strand of gut that will break under a strain of ten pounds. He was running away, and the canoe was chasing him through ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Malartic, and La Pause, the last "un homme divin." Some of the Canadian officers, praised by Vaudreuil, he had tried and found wanting. "Don't forget," he wrote to Levis, "that Mercier is a feeble ignoramus, Saint Luc a prattling boaster, Montigny excellent but a drunkard. The others are not worth speaking of, including my first lieutenant-general Rigaud." This Rigaud was the brother of Vaudreuil. When the Governor wrote to the minister, ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... fellow has a slick tongue in his mouth, and can spin stories that haven't a particle of foundation except in his brain. He's no ignoramus, that's sure, and if he hasn't traveled in all those countries he's read about the same, and can talk everlastingly about things he ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... heal me of sickness today than has the horse which I rode to church this morning. In these days of great learning, when men are able to cure diseases by medicine and surgery, there is no need of divine healing, and every man who claims to be healed by divine power makes himself an ignoramus and a ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... great ones scorn his Raven's croak, And well may mock his mystifying cloak Inscribed with runes from tongues he has not read To make the ignoramus turn his head. The artificial glitter of his eyes Has captured half-grown boys. They think him wise. Some shallow player-folk esteem him deep, Soothed by his steady wand's mesmeric sweep. The little lacquered boxes in his hands Somehow suggest old times and reverenced lands. From them doll-monsters ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... the speaker. A speaker should never try to be smart at the expense of a man in the audience, even when he speaks out of his turn. A courteous explanation of why you wish him to keep his questions until after your speech is much better. If he persists after that, he is either an ignoramus or drunk. If drunk ask two or three of your supporters in the audience to lead him off down the street. If he is a natural fool the problem is not so easy. But if you keep unbroken courtesy and he keeps up his unprovoked interruptions some indignant person ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... baffled and helpless. For the first time he was able to recognize and appreciate a certain type of Englishman to which he himself to some extent belonged—an arrogant ignoramus who, encamped behind his wall of superiority, fears nothing because he sees nothing, and sees nothing because outside the walls there can not possibly be anything worth looking at. Nicholson had torn down Stafford's imagined security, and he stood aghast at his ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... sense of tears in the unconscious humour of the solemn or pompous epitaph composed by the village ignoramus. ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... here, Dolly Fayre," and Alicia's eyes flashed, "I won't be dictated to by a little country ignoramus! I've had experience in the ways of the world, and you haven't. Now suppose you let me alone. It's none of your business, as you ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... of Physical Religion in the effort to force unification of the universe; they had protested with mild conviction that they could not state the geological record in terms of time; they had murmured Ignoramus under their breath; but they had never dared to assert the Ignorabimus that lay on ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... notes Shakespear's contempt for the tradesman and mechanic, and his incorrigible addiction to smutty jokes. He does us the public service of sweeping away the familiar plea of the Bardolatrous ignoramus, that Shakespear's coarseness was part of the manners of his time, putting his pen with precision on the one name, Spenser, that is necessary to expose such a libel on Elizabethan decency. There was nothing whatever to prevent Shakespear from being as decent as More was before ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... had taken place within thirty years, but otherwise his mind was perhaps as good as it ever was, for he must always have been an ignoramus, and would never know anything if he lived to be as old as he said he was going on to be. Why he was interested in the rebellion of 1745 I could not discover, for he of course did not go over to Scotland to carry a pike in it, and he only remembered to have heard it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... only interesting part of that is the post-script. It will be just fine to have those dogs along. I suppose Mrs. Calvert sent them up from Baltimore to Deerhurst. But if I were you, Dolly Doodles, I wouldn't let that ignoramus preach to me like he does to you in that letter. He's a prig, that's what he is, and I hate a prig. ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... send her own brother to college, knows vastly more of those things than he does. The same exposure awaits him wherever he goes, and whenever he has the audacity to open his mouth. At sea he is a landlubber; in the country a cockney; in town a greenhorn; in science an ignoramus; in business a simpleton; in pleasure a milksop—everywhere out of his element, everywhere at sea, in the clouds, adrift, or by whatever word utter ignorance and incapacity are to be described. ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... I'm not saying we are not going to find plenty of stumps and roots and a tough sod in this furrow we are going to plow. It's only the fool or the ignoramus who underrates the strength of his opponent. It is going to be just plain, honest justice and the will of the people against the money of the Harrimans and the Goulds and the Vanderbilts and all the rest of 'em. But the law is mighty, and it will prevail. Give us an honest legislature to make ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... into his head to kill time by scribbling some dramatic scenes on loose sheets of paper, which he hid during the intervals of his visits under the cushion of an arm-chair. A Piedmontese and a thorough ignoramus, he had scarcely ever attempted to write even so much as a letter in Italian; and as to a literary composition in any language, such a thing had never occurred to him. The Cleopatra thus written in his lady's bed-room ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... much to heart that she eased her feelings by abusing Pin in thought; Pin was a pig-headed little ignoramus, as timid as ever of setting one foot before the other. And the rest of them would be just the same—old stick-in-the muds, unchanged by a hair, or, if they HAD changed, then changed for the worse. Laura had somehow never foreseen the day on which she would find herself out of tune with her ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... average country gentleman of his time, was a profound ignoramus. What knowledge had been drilled into him in boyhood, he had since taken pains to forget. He was familiar with the punctilio of duelling, the code of regulations for fencing, the rules of athletic sports, and the intricacies ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... the original to Cardinal Colonna, and wrote to Aretino about transcripts: 'Niccolo has copied it on paper for Cosmo de' Medici: you must write to Carlo Aretino for another copy, or he might lend you the original, because if the scribe should be an ignoramus you might get a ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... evil the nature of which he could only guess at. Her world was the artificial one of hotels, and shops, and numbered streets—in the real world, of which the lonely wastes of the Mendips provided no meager sample, she was a profound ignoramus, a fat little automaton equipped with atrophied senses. But she blundered badly in composing herself so cozily for the remainder of the run to Bristol. Medenham had dwelt many months at a time in lands where ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... much? Why you are an ignoramus out and out. Well, I'll tell you. It's a stone on Blarney Castle, set low down in the wall, five or six feet from the top; and to kiss it, why that is no easy matter, for you have to be held by your heels and let hang over the wall; and if you can get some ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... greater part of the theoretical wisdom of the world comes to us in the shape of legacies bequeathed by fools. A fool is not a person without knowledge or understanding—that is an ignoramus. The true fool—the only fool worthy of a wise man's contemplation—is the man who knows and understands, and habitually refrains from acting according to knowledge and understanding. It is the record ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... an ignoramus or a rebel, whichever she likes best to take in leading-strings. I remember her. I was greatly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... de nobis, duo Graeci et tres Hispani, semetipsos ab alijs segregantes, visi sunt alium requirere introitum nos praecedere cupientes, et certe nos illos exinde non vidimus, et quid eis acciderit an periculum subierint, velne ignoramus. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... world can the teacher be thinking of, to keep such an ignoramus in the class?" thought Hector. "He doesn't know enough to join a ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... door, but she held him there a moment, while she laughed delightedly and hugged him. "I knew it was me. As if we'd let our old doc go, or have anything to do with a young ignoramus from Denver! Didn't you know I was joking? ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... a doctor of medicine who had blundered beyond his province; his fellow-Catholics in France bitterly denounced him as a heretic; and in Germany the great Protestant theologian, Michaelis, who had edited and exalted Lowth's work, poured contempt over Astruc as an ignoramus. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... me if I am dazed, and don't be insulted. I recall that Entedius prefaced his narrative with an oath to its veracity. I am ready to believe all this if he reaffirms it. But I have a horrible feeling that you farmers think you have caught a city ignoramus and that it is your duty to stuff me with the tallest stories you can invent. Please set me right. If you are stuffing me the joke is certainly on me, for these incredible tales seem true: if they are true the joke is doubly ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... of these Scientific Congresses, they were becoming every year more festive, and, at all events to the ignoramus outsiders who joined them, more pleasant. My good cousin and old friend, then Colonel, now General, Sir Charles Trollope, was at Venice that autumn. I said on meeting him, "Now the first thing is to, make you a member." "Me! a member of a Scientific Congress!" said he. "God bless you! ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... him while he plays, but never—never to have anything to do with him. Play grandly, honourably. Be not, of course, cast down at losing; but above all, be not eager at winning, as mean souls are. And, indeed, with all one's skill and advantages, winning is often problematical; I have seen a sheer ignoramus that knows no more of play than of Hebrew, blunder you out of five thousand pounds in a few turns of the cards. I have seen a gentleman and his confederate play against another and HIS confederate. One never is secure in these cases: and when one ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... angel of light would have been very conspicuous in those days. I didn't pose for such a part. In fact, if I had not succeeded in appearing like a partial ignoramus I should have been obliged to go into a monastery, for in those days the monks were the only people who knew anything. They expected to do all the teaching that was done; but, for all that, a few scholars cropped up ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... of Itzea Humble and a wanderer Dogmatophagy Ignoramus, Ignorabimus Nevertheless, we call ourselves materialists In defense of religion Arch-European Dionysus or Apollonian Epicuri de grege porcum Evil and Rousseau's Chinaman The root of disinterested evil Music as a sedative Concerning Wagner ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Cicero did not utter the words attributed to him, and could not have uttered them. According to Wolf, it would be doing Cicero an egregious wrong to suppose him capable of having used such words, which are not Latin, and which were probably written by some ignoramus in the time of Tiberius. Such a verdict might have been taken as fatal—for Wolf's scholarship and powers of criticism are acknowledged—in spite of La Harpe, the French scholar and critic, who has named the Marcellus as a thing of excellence, comparing ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... of science whom it accuses of conscious and wholesale plagiarism [there is no such accusation in 'Evolution, Old and New'] than it would be to men of science in general for requiring such elementary instruction on some of the most famous literature in science from an upstart ignoramus, who, until two or three years ago, considered himself a painter by ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... end of the shelf, it would fly to the other end, equally grazing all the bindings. It is ten years since John Milton, or Robert Southey, or Sir William Hamilton have been out of their places, and that was when an ignoramus broke into the study. The volumes of the encyclopedias never change places. Manuscripts unblotted, and free from interlineation, and labeled. The spittoon knows its place in the corner, as if treated by tobacco chewers with oft indignity. You could go into that study with your eyes shut, turn ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... fine, spirited race, very picturesquely attired, mostly in bows and arrows, and as creatures of romance I admired them greatly. Persons such as I and my parents were generally depicted in this connection as fleeing from them. And it did strike me as an ignoramus kind of thing that I should be called a native. When I was reasoned with to the effect that I was a native of Indiana, my resentment but grew. There were no ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... "Schoolma'ams" and Professors. They are no longer flowers, but specimens, each bud and blossom pleading in vain for life, as ruthless fingers coolly dissect them to discover whether they are poly or mollyandria. And what an ignoramus you must be, if you do not know that a balloon-vine is a Cardiospernum Halicactum. The "feast" on these occasions is that "of reason" alone, encyclopedias and dictionaries being all the nourishment required, although a stray bottle here and there might hint at "the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... passes by with the scant praise, "Wherein I also found some things that were somewhat pleasing to me." The other is a much more vital production. Even to this day it is an immensely interesting piece of reading. It consists of conversations between various men who stand for types of worldling, ignoramus, theologian, etc., and there are very clear traces of it in the Pilgrim's Progress, especially in the talks between Bunyan's ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Sedgwick is the author of the article in the "Spectator". No one else could use such abusive terms. And what a misrepresentation of my notions! Any ignoramus would suppose that I had FIRST broached the doctrine, that the breaks between successive formations marked long intervals of time. It is very unfair. But poor dear old Sedgwick seems rabid on the question. "Demoralised ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... through the influence of Grundtvig, from the strict dogmatic orthodoxy of the State Church. The study of Darwin, Spencer, Mill, and Comte led him still farther on to a position which may be called that of the agnostic theist, that of Spencer, who does not deny God, but says ignoramus. We may recall the late utterance of Bjrnson, quoted above: "Grundtvig and Goethe are my two poles." It was the dogma of Hell, the teaching of eternal damnation and punishment, that began Bjrnson's breach with the Church. He saw ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... brother the generalissimo; I see all the little threads which he is spinning around me, and which, as soon as they are strong enough, he will convert into a net, in which he will catch me, in order to exhibit me to the world as an ignoramus and dreamer, destitute both of ability and luck as a general. Do not tell me that I am mistaken, my friend; I have hitherto observed every thing with close attention, and my observations unfortunately do not ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... terribly abused by the leading counsel for the opposition in the course of the proceedings before the Committee—stigmatised by them as an ignoramus, a fool, and a maniac—that even his friends seem for a time to have lost faith in him and in the locomotive system, whose efficiency he nevertheless continued to uphold. Things never looked blacker for the success of the railway system than ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... read the letters first, and then heard their tale and expressed his wonder that men so wise and mannerly should take such pains to court an ignoramus and recluse, to undertake such unwonted and uncongenial cares, but they must be well aware that he was a monk and under authority. He had to deal not with the primate and chief of the English Church in this matter, but with his superior overseas, and so they must either give ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... the same year that Absalom and Achitophel was published, the Medal, a Satire, was likewise given to the public. This piece is aimed against sedition, and was occasioned by the striking of a medal, on account of the indictment against the earl of Shaftsbury for high treason being found ignoramus by the grand jury, at the Old Bailey, November 1681: For which the Whig party made great rejoicings by ringing of bells, bonfires, &c. in all parts of London. The poem is introduced with a very satirical epistle to the Whigs, in which the author says, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... rather a sceptic, and entirely an ignoramus. But I met a man the other day who would have laughed at us for doubting. He was an awfully strange fellow. His name is Marr. I ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... not keep his eyes off this girl who had already completed the high school course which he had not yet begun; besides, she had learned a lot of other things which would be beyond him to ever reach. Even though he were an ignoramus, he could bask in the light of her greater learning. She did ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... flout, scoff. 'You must learn to mock; to frump your own father on occason.' Ironically used in Ruggle's Ignoramus.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... never be done?" cries the Master. "Quel lourdaud! But why do I trouble you with French expressions, which are lost on such an ignoramus? A lourdaud, my dear brother, is as we might say a bumpkin, a clown, a clodpole: a fellow without grace, lightness, quickness; any gift of pleasing, any natural brilliancy: such a one as you shall see, when you desire, by looking in the mirror. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nothing more than a plain unlettered man, not read in foreign languages, as a gentleman might be, nor gifted with long words (even in mine own tongue), save what I may have won from the Bible or Master William Shakespeare, whom, in the face of common opinion, I do value highly. In short, I am an ignoramus, but pretty ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... eternity in the same place with the Saviour and Paul. With many the question as to whether the Saviour, when He said, "Ye are of your father the devil," told the truth, or was a wilful liar and deceiver, or a deluded fanatic and ignoramus, is merely a matter of taste, or preference, or opinion. It may be claimed by some that "Ye are of your father the devil," grates on refined ears and finer sensibilities. But it is more than a question whether it is pride, or religious ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... see, I never do what sane people are expected to do now-a-days. I never wear long trains, (talking of trains, that's the Charing Cross Metropolitan Station—I've something to tell you about that), and I never play lawn-tennis. I can't cook an omelette. I can't even set a broken limb! There's an ignoramus for you!" ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... happens when the machine we are discussing is examined in the different grades of animals. The ignoramus who has not followed it through its changes and reductions cannot recognize it when it is presented to him in its lowest condition; but any one who has carefully observed it throughout, knows that it is, in point of fact, the same ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... little gentle Agnes was lying close to her, with her pretty head of fair hair pressed against the elder girl's shoulder. But when she went downstairs, and took her place in the class, and found that, after all, she was not such an ignoramus as her companions evidently expected to find her, her spirits rose, and for the first time in her existence a sense of ambition awoke within her. It would be something to conquer Lucy Merriman—the proud, the disdainful, the unpleasant Lucy. After what Professor ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... all," I answered. "It's the America you know, expressed in such simple human terms that even a young ignoramus like me will be able to understand it. Out of this big country a good many thousands of men, I suppose, have come to you for money. Which are ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... beginning of activity; Scott consented to move on Arlington Heights, but during two or three days opposed the seizure of Alexandria. Is that all that he knows of that hateful watchword—strategy—nausea repeated by every ignoramus and imbecile? ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... submission made no impression upon the Cardinal, I got the Bishop of Arles, a wise and moderate gentleman, to go to him along with me, and to join with me in offering our reasons. But we found his Eminence a very ignoramus in ecclesiastical polity. I only mention this to let you see that in my first misunderstanding with the Court I was not to blame, and that my respect for the Cardinal upon the Queen's account was carried to an excess ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... of seizing naval stores in American ships, and condemning them as contraband. It makes also a concession to England to seize provisions and other articles in American ships. Other articles are all other articles, and none but an ignoramus, or something worse, would have put such a phrase into a treaty. The condition annexed in this case is, that the provisions and other articles so seized, are to be paid for at a price to be agreed upon. Mr. Washington, as President, ratified this treaty after he knew the British ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... can forgive his being a shiftless farmer so long as he really does his literary chores up to the hilt. A man can be slack in everything else, if he does one thing as well as he possibly can. And I guess it won't matter my being an ignoramus in literature so long as I'm rated A-1 in the kitchen. That's what I used to think as I polished and scoured and scrubbed and dusted and swept and then set about getting dinner. If I ever sat down to read for ten minutes the cat would get into the custard. No woman in the country sits down ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... butter! I've never been accustomed to regard failure as an instance of superiority, but no doubt I am wrong—no doubt I am behind the times—no doubt you are all condemning me in your minds as a blundering old ignoramus! A father is nothing but a nuisance who must be tolerated for the sake of what can be got ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... could you expect of a woman who meddled with things outside her province? Since she had asserted the grass would absorb everything, its failure to absorb the salt proved beyond all doubt she was an ignoramus, a dangerous charlatan, and a crazy woman, better locked up, who had destroyed Southern California to her own obscure benefit. The victory over the grass became a victory over Miss Francis; of the ordinary gumchewing moviegoing ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... by the Adriatic and devoted friendship for Lord Byron? And immediately the English observer of the phenomenon, after moralizing a little on the crass ignorance of Frenchmen in respect to our literature, goes on to write like an ignoramus himself, on Mme. Charles Reybaud, encouraging that pure budding novelist, who is in fact a hack writer of romances third and fourth rate, of questionable purity enough, too. It does certainly appear wonderful that we should not sufficiently stand abreast here in ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... to your advice, when you have been exposing your ignorance to that child ever since it was able to comprehend anything. You set yourself up as an authority on this question, when your youngest baby is fully alive to the fact that you are a total ignoramus in regard to it. ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... have appeared possible to any but the most superficial sciolist. He also speaks of an electroscope that will telegraph rays of light (!) and enable us thereby to see our most distant friends, and of stowing in a small compass electricity enough to exterminate an army. This imaginative ignoramus adds, "Give to our present biped acquaintance the ability to exterminate armies with a lightning flash, added to the power of sailing at will through the air or of passing at will and in safety beneath ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... she had a secret from her sisters, however, and she hugged it to her with much glee. She realized that Helen was by no means the ignoramus Belle and ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... you understand it, Colonel, and so there's not a bit of harm done, after all. I'm an ignoramus about guard duty, anyway, and I'll wager the guard got on better without me, after all. And now, Colonel, since I've given you a wholly satisfactory explanation as to why I simply couldn't be here to-day, if you've nothing more to say to me, sir, I'll go to my quarters, get into my ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... my silly child; do you imagine that a contract is like a house of cards which you can blow down at will? Dear little ignoramus, you don't know what trouble we have had to found an entail for the benefit of your eldest son. Don't cast us back into the discussions from which we have ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... entreaties and indignations at times. .. Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle. Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore held his peace on that head, but otherwise was quite frank and confidential with him, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... occasion to peruse Ovid's "Art of Love," since they know it all in advance; remarks that three quarters of female authors are no better than they should be; maintains that Madame Guion would have been far more useful had she been merely pretty and an ignoramus, such as Nature made her,—that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz probably would never have married into the family had they possessed that accomplishment,—that the Spartan women did not know the alphabet, nor the ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... consent, and his father's expressed approval, before she could yield him an answer that might appear a forgetfulness of her station, her ignorance, her damaged character. Gower protested himself, with truth, a spotted pard, an ignoramus, and an outcast of all established classes, as the worshipper of Nature cannot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dolt, numskull, witling, blockhead, coot, lackbrain, ninny, oaf, nincompoop, mooncalf, ignoramus, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... an ignoramus," said others, "who, after having made a perfect rattle out of the organ in his own church, comes here to profane ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... of all there was to know about my little journalistic and debating experience at Cambridge, and the general trend of my views and purposes. I do not think he particularly desired my services; but, on the other hand, I was not an absolute ignoramus. I had written for publication; I had enthusiasm; and there was ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... philosopher explained its nature? any chemist shown its composition? Is luck that strange, nondescript fairy, that does all things among men that they cannot account for? If so, why does not luck make a fool speak words of wisdom; an ignoramus utter lectures on philosophy? ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... feeling that you haven't learned anything delights me, too. It proves that you have learned a great deal. It is only the ignoramus who thinks he is wise; the wise man knows that he is an ignoramus. That's a platitude, but it is none the less true. I have cold comfort for you: the more you learn, the less confident you will be of your own learning, the more utterly ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... Currer was a lady, and Mayfair circumstantialised by making her the chere amie of Mr. Thackeray. But your skill in "dress" settles the question of sex. I think, however, some woman must have assisted in the school scenes of Jane Eyre, which have a striking air of truthfulness to me—an ignoramus, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... a leisurely way along George Street the other day, towards Strunalls, where I get my cigars, and had arrived opposite No. —, when I suddenly noticed, just ahead of me, a tall lady of remarkably graceful figure, clad in a costume which, even to an ignoramus in fashions like myself, seemed extraordinarily out of date. In my untechnical language it consisted of a dark blue coat and skirt, trimmed with black braid. The coat had a very high collar, turned over to show ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... painted window-panes! In darkness wrapp'd the church remains, If from the market-place we view it; Thus sees the ignoramus through it. No wonder that he deems it tame,— And all his life 'twill be ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... For "Ignoramus" (we ignore), the word by which a grand jury indicated its refusal to prosecute an indictment. We here find the Superior Court, the highest common-law court of Massachusetts under the second charter, taking cognizance of a case of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... situation thinks the "companion" is right, and so he becomes a convinced and devoted Anarchist! What would happen, if pursuing his studies of the social question further, he had understood that the "companion" was a pretentious ignoramus, that he talked twaddle, that his "Ideal" is a delusion and a snare, that outside bourgeois politics there is, opposed to these, the political action of the proletariat, which will put an end to the very existence of capitalist society? He ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... [Sidenote: Interitus.] Post hoc ab ictu tonitrui esc occisus, peractis suis ordinationibus and statutis. Hic autem habuit quatuor filios: Vnus vocabatur Occoday, secundus Tossuch can, tertius Thaaday et nomen quarti ignoramus. [Sidenote: Liberi.] Isti quatuor filij cum alijs maioribus qui tunc erant, primum filium videlicet Occoday elegerunt imperatorem, filij autem istius Occoday Cuyne, qui nunc est imperator, Cocthen et Cyrenen. [Sidenote: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... of the Court nodded and sighed. "Monseigneur Giron of Laval, the greatest scholar in Quebec, he said to me once that M'sieu' Jean Jacques missed being a genius by an inch. But, monsieur le juge, not to have that inch is worse than to be an ignoramus." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... false information," he thought. "Perhaps he's trying to throw me off the scent. I'll put a few questions that no one but an ignoramus would ask in good faith. If he's trying to bluff me, I'll beat him at ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... crowd.) Alone and unprotected I have risked my life on this enterprise. I was the first who pledged its accomplishment to the king, and unaided I have kept my pledge, and yet here in my place I find Don Ramon—an ignoramus. ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... fellow, 'you lie, I am no rascal; and as for quibbling with words—suppose I did! What then? All the first people does it! The newspapers does it! The gentlefolks that calls themselves the guides of the popular mind does it! I'm no ignoramus. I reads the newspapers, and knows what's what.' 'You read them to some purpose,' said I. 'Well, if you are lamed for life, and unfitted for any active line—turn newspaper editor; I should say you are perfectly ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Mill, "would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals 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 ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... entering his library in the vital centre of a delectable refutation of an ignoramus—"I suppose it's no use looking to you for sympathy in a matter of this ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... shou'd the Torys now,—who will desert me, Because they find no dry bobs on your Party, Resolve to hiss, as late did Popish Crew, | By Yea and Nay, she'll throw her self on you, | The grand Inquest of Whigs, to whom she's true. | Then let 'em rail and hiss, and damn their fill, Your Verdict will be Ignoramus still. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... almost more than he could bear. Then memory added fuel to the present. It was that man who had conjured up some kind of opposition to his mother—had made living problems harder for her until she had won the confidence of others. The man must be, Travers concluded, a fanatic and an ignoramus, and to think of him holding power over that ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... few. Whatever general advance is made, those not at the head are behind—are ignorant and immoral according to the new standard, and unfit to control in the higher and broader policies demanded by the progress made. Where there is true and general progress the philosopher of yesterday would be the ignoramus of to-day, the honorable of one generation the vicious of another. The peasant of our time is incomparably superior to the statesman of ancient America, yet he is unfit to govern, for there ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... G. Ruggle (1575-1622). Ignoramus. Com[oe]dia [in five acts and in prose] coram Regie Jacobo et totius Angli magnatibus per Academicos Cantabrigienses habita. Editio quarta. Londini, ex ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... following title—"New Essayes and Characters, with a new Satyre in defence of the Common Law, and Lawyers: mixt with reproofe against their Enemy Ignoramus, &c. London, 1631." It seems not improbable that some person had attacked Stephens's first edition, although I am unable to discover the publication alluded to. I suspect him to be the editor of, or one of ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... done with the name more than once in modern times. In a bill sent to the grand jury at St. Mary's, Maryland, February 1st, 1643/4, it was stated that Ingle's ship in 1642 was the "Reformation." The bill was, however, returned "Ignoramus," and the use of the name ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... repugnance of Mrs. Armitage alone; and to this idiotic hallucination she has, I fear, fallen a sacrifice. Judging from the emaciated appearance of the body, and other phenomena communicated to me by her ordinary medical attendant—a blundering ignoramus, who ought to have called in assistance long before—she has been poisoned with iodine, which, administered in certain quantities, would produce precisely the same symptoms. Happily there is no mode of destroying human life which so surely ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... a great man who combines being the top authority in his profession with a kindness and bonhomie which make even an ignoramus feel happy with him—and with the frankest love for flanerie and "sport." We all fell in love with him. To hear him after lunch, in his fluent, but lisping English, holding forth about the ruins of Domitian's villa—"what treasures ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the lady of the house the most perfect and unexceptionable curtsy, regarding her all the time with an air that seemed to say, "I wonder if she knows how to return it, poor little ignoramus?" ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... into loud laughter, and addressed to him the most offensive insults, which fairly delighted everybody, as the devil alone could be bold enough to address a Capuchin in such a manner; but the holy man, hearing himself called an obtrusive ignoramus and a stinkard, went on striking Bettina with a heavy crucifix, saying that he was beating the devil. He stopped only when he saw her on the point of hurling at him the chamber utensil which she had just seized. "If it is the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of the universe. The propagators of this system altogether misconceived the scope of the gospel dispensation. They substituted salvation by carnal ordinances for salvation by faith; they represented man in his natural state rather as an ignoramus than a sinner; and, whilst they absurdly magnified their own Gnosis, they entirely discarded the doctrine of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... not help thinking that he was better situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... is no slouch at finding things. He is no ignoramus, either, for he must be able to read and write and understand geography to get any good out of that memorandum. Does it give the exact details of the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... a boy I knew once did. He suffered just as Dormy does. You'd tell him a thing in his left ear and the first thing you'd know, pop! it would all come out of the other ear and be lost. The poor fellow was growing up to be an ignoramus. Couldn't keep a thing in his head, until one night I overheard his father and mother talking about it in the library. The boy's father wanted to punish him for not remembering what he learned at school, when his mother said just ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... ignorant—though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might have been a consul at home. His easy familiarity with great men was beautiful to see, and when Philip learned what a tremendous underground influence this little ignoramus had, he no longer wondered at the queer appointments ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... their ideas of robbing the stranger are faint and barbarous; here, as throughout Dalmatia, should you give a man money, and the sum be not even more than twice the value of the obligation, the poor ignoramus is delighted, and thanks and blesses you most fervently. The climate of Cattaro is not considered healthy. The inhabitants die of consumption in the winter, and fever in the summer, and they generally have a sickly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... impossible. He knew also that the peine forte et dure was inflicted for refusing to plead, and that this pirate, by de Silva's own account, had been found guilty. But he wanted to suggest that Froude was an ignoramus, and for the purpose of beating a dog one stick is as ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... winter. How nobody knew, and I least of all. Looking backward, I seem to have gone to sleep one night, an ignoramus, and awakened next morning knowing letters, yet ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... of the art of medicine is subject to great variations. It is only of real value when, free from all charlatanism, it rests on a sufficiently scientific basis; for the art of an ignoramus falls into error and employs inappropriate methods; on the other hand, the art of a charlatan has for its object the purse of the patient. It is common to meet with physicians who have a good practical experience of art without possessing scientific ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... argument all through the beginning of the 'Apology,' supported by instance on instance from history, is—I cannot get a just hearing, because I have failed in opening this mine. So it is always. Glory covers the multitude of sins. But a man who has failed is a fair mark for every slanderer, puppy, ignoramus, discontented mutineer; as I am now. What else, in the name of common sense, could have been his argument? Does Mr. Napier really think that Raleigh, even if, in the face of all the noble and pious words which ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... forth about what he doesn't know and is too obstinate to care to understand. Thus his statements about syphilis, foundling hospitals, the aversion of women for the sexual relation, and so on, are not merely open to dispute, but show him up as an ignoramus who has not, in the course of his long life, taken the trouble to read two or three books written by specialists. But yet these defects fly away like feathers in the wind; one simply does not notice them in face of the real worth of the story, or, if one notices them, it ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... new and strange. "Foreign languages that we do not understand always seem jibberings, babblings, in which it is impossible to fix a definite, clear-cut, individualized group of sounds. The countryman in the crowded street, the landlubber at sea, the ignoramus in sport at a contest between experts in a complicated game, are further instances. Put an inexperienced man in a factory, and at first the work seems to him a meaningless medley. All strangers of another ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... course, considerable training and feeding, before it could venture to grapple with any new or important task. He has been known to say frankly to his political friends, when invited to take part in some question that depended upon authorities, "You know I'm an ignoramus—but here I am—instruct me and I'll do my best." It is said that the stock of numerical lore, upon which he ventured to set up as the Aristarchus of Mr. Pitt's financial plans, was the result of three weeks' hard study of arithmetic, to which he doomed himself, in the early part ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... but legal notices, that I have been afraid the Latin I want to write might prove rather barbaro-forensic than Ciceronian. He is swallowed up, body and soul, in law; he eats, drinks, plays (at the card table) Law, nothing but Law. He acts Ignoramus in the play so thoroughly, that you w'd swear that in the inmost marrow of his head (is not this the proper anatomical term?) there have housed themselves not devils but pettifoggers, to bemuddle with their noisy chatter his own and his friends' wits. He brought here, 'twas all his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... eggheads spend half your life in college don't mean you've got any monopoly on good common sense. I went to the school of hard knocks, understand, and I got plenty of diplomas to prove it. Take it easy on that ignoramus talk." ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds) |
