"Boorish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them he can glory in the very things wherein they glory, and in even more. At the same time he declares himself a fool for glorying. He might have said: "Foolish, indeed, are they, and boorish creatures, who glory in themselves. They should feel shame to the very depth of their heart. No true, sane man boasts of what he is. The wicked and the frivolous do that." But the apostle's attack is not quite so severe and harsh. He addresses them civilly ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... evenings, you will find that most of them, to say the least, border closely on vulgarity; that they are utterly unsuitable to childhood, notwithstanding that they are played with great glee; that they are, in fine, common, rude, silly, and boorish. One can never watch a circle of children going through the vulgar inanities of "Jenny O'Jones," "Say, daughter, will you get up?" "Green Gravel," or "Here come two ducks a-roving," without unspeakable shrinking and moral disgust. These plays are dying out; let them die, for there ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... a fellow, who came trotting up with an old straw hat on his head. He was dressed in the coarsest brown homespun cloth. His face was rather sallow from fever-and-ague, and his tall figure, though strong and sinewy was quite thin, and had besides an angular look, which, together with his boorish seat on horseback, gave him an appearance anything but graceful. Plenty more of the same stamp were close behind him. Their company was raised in one of the frontier counties, and we soon had abundant evidence of their rustic breeding; dozens ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the end at which she aims, the means which she employs in the present war? Is it enough to explain this contrast, to allege that in spite of all their science the Germans are but slightly civilized, that in the sixteenth century they were still boorish and uncultivated and that their science, an affair of specialists and pundits, has never penetrated their soul or ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... went up as a freshman to Oriel. His career as an undergraduate was externally distinguished by nothing uncommon, and promised nothing remarkable. He describes himself as shy, awkward, boorish, and mentally shapeless and inert. In 1833, however, he felt what he describes as the first stirrings of intellectual life within him. 'Hitherto I have had no mind, properly so-called, merely a boy's intelligence, receptive ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... the Spanish Bourbons was a situation that Napoleon could readily utilize in order to have his way both in Portugal and in Spain. On the throne of Spain was seated the aging Charles IV (1788- 1808), boorish, foolish, easily duped. By his side sat his queen, a coarse sensuous woman "with a tongue like a fishwife's." Their heir was Prince Ferdinand, a conceited irresponsible young braggart in his early twenties. And their favorite, the true ruler of Spain, if Spain at this time could ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the cicada will then give place to the din of battle. Even in times of peace you would hardly have a quiet hour here: for great herds of cattle come crowding down every day to my lake for water; the noisy ploughman, driving his team afield, disturbs the morning hour with his boorish shouts; and boys and dogs keep up a constant din, and make life in ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... visit Jack went out regularly once every four weeks. He fell very naturally into the ways of the house, and although his manner often amused Alice Merton greatly, and caused even her father to smile, he was never awkward or boorish. ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... finds out a small per-centage. Where can he take refuge? If Robinson Crusoe had been a social Duffer, he and Friday would not have been on speaking terms in a week. People think the poor Duffer malignant, boorish, haughty, unkind; he is only a Duffer, an irreclaimable, sad, pitiful creature, quite beyond the reach of philanthropy. On my grave write, not MISERRIMUS (though that would be true enough), ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... further lengths. They took upon themselves to appoint a high priest; selected a family which had no claim whatever to the distinction and, drawing lots among them, chose as high priest one Phannias—a country priest, ignorant, boorish, and wholly unable to discharge the function of the office. Hitherto, the people had submitted to the oppression of the Zealots, but this desecration of the holy office filled them with rage and indignation; and Ananus—the oldest of the chief priests, a man of piety ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... tolerate another in his house, from whom he does not expect advantage of some kind, and to those from whom he does, he can be civil enough. An Englishman thinks that, because he is in his own house, he has a right to be boorish and brutal to any one who is disagreeable to him, as all those are who are really in want of assistance. Should a hunted fugitive rush into an Englishman's house, beseeching protection, and appealing to the master's feelings of hospitality, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... home generally calls the mountaineer back to his rugged hills. The Galicians of the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain leave their poor country for a time for the richer provinces of Portugal and Spain, where they become porters, water-carriers and scavengers, and are known as boorish, but industrious and honest. The women from the neighboring mountain province of Asturias are the professional wet-nurses of Spain. They are to be seen in every aristocratic household of Madrid, but return to the mountains with their ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... household. I fear that until I came it was lonely for her, since she was a beautiful and refined woman with nothing in common with those who were about her. Indeed, this might be said of many women in the England of those days, for the men were rude and rough and coarse, with boorish habits and few accomplishments, while the women were the most lovely and tender that I have ever known. We became great friends, the Lady Jane and I, for it was not possible for me to drink three bottles of port after dinner like those Devonshire gentlemen, and so I would seek refuge ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fun, bright and cheerful; when alone with his wife he has scarcely a word to say; he moves about the house with the lofty indifference of a lord, and with a heartless disregard of every member of the household. At home he is cold and cross and boorish, in other women's parlors he is polite and considerate and engaging. He has a smile and a compliment for other women, none for his wife. If they attend an evening reception, he brings his wife there, and he takes her home; during the interval she has little, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... sure," Mrs. Cockayne continued, "it is quite refreshing, after the boorish manners of your London shopkeepers, to be waited upon by these polite Frenchmen. They ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... that made it materially acceptable, should rule us where the gift is something so precious as a word; and when we receive one from another people, gratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself, should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices. We therefore protest against a useful and tuneful noun-substantive, a native of France, the word bouquet, being maimed into boquet, a corruption as dissonant to the ear as were to the eye ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... the ungracious response, delivered in a gruff tone of voice. Old Stolliver was a boorish, cross-grained customer, who paid slight regard to the amenities, and did not ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... was a success. He was a good bear, but then, it was objected, he was an objectless bear—a bear that meant nothing, signified nothing, simply stood there, snarling over his shoulder at nothing, and was painfully and manifestly a boorish and ill-natured intruder upon the fair page. All hands said that none were satisfied; they hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated as much to have him there when there was no point to him. But presently Harte took a pencil and drew two ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... efficient for this or that practical task, suffuse your whole mentality with something more important than skill. They redeem you, make you well-bred; they make "good company" of you mentally. If they find you with a naturally boorish or caddish mind, they cannot leave you so, as a technical school may leave you. This, at least, is pretended; this is what we hear among college-trained people when they compare their education with every other sort. Now, exactly how much ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... so many curved spines and cramped chests and inflamed throats and diseased lungs as there are among children. If parents knew more of art, and were in sympathy with all that is beautiful, there would not be so many children coming out in the world with boorish proclivities. If parents knew more of Christ, and practised more of His religion, there would not be so many little feet already starting on the wrong road, and all around us voices of riot and blasphemy would not come up with such ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... to the ladies in the parlor and found them standing near the window. Stanley had tried to kiss Dorothy, and she had slapped his face. Fortunately he had taken the blow good-humoredly, and was pouring into her unwilling ear a fusillade of boorish compliments when. I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... have been more mischievous than malicious. It was probably due to a somewhat too liberal use of pillaged wine. In general, the worst charges against the Germans in France were that they had been exceedingly rude and boorish. There were, however, some instances which came to my notice where German officers had shown consideration for the civilians, had politely apologized for their unwelcome but "necessary" intrusion into French families, and had carefully paid for their board and lodging. We talked with several ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... untutored, unschooled (ignorant) 491. unkempt. uncombed, untamed, unlicked^, unpolished, uncouth; plebeian; incondite^; heavy, rude, awkward; homely, homespun, home bred; provincial, countrified, rustic; boorish, clownish; savage, brutish, blackguard, rowdy, snobbish; barbarous, barbaric; Gothic, unclassical^, doggerel, heathenish, tramontane, outlandish; uncultivated; Bohemian. obsolete &c (antiquated) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... absence; she told herself angrily that he was not like that, had never been like that. He was a mere brute of a man, not "such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made our world." He was, rather, unthinkably crude and boorish and detestable. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... movement in its palmy days—the brutal and cowardly baiting of a penalised class; the boorish insult to ideals held sacred by sensitive devotees; the deliberate cultivation of intra—parochial blood-feud; the savage fostering of hate for hate's own sake; the thousand squalid details of affray, ambuscade, murder, maltreatment, malicious injury to property—these, happily ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... whole personnel of the convent came to assist, with the inhabitants of a little village adjoining, which finds protection and Christian charity from the convent. The monks, excepting two or three, seemed of an ignorant and boorish quality, but hard-working and kind-hearted. Here, evidently, a certain kind of bliss was in ignorance, and the most learned were not wise enough to be accused of much folly. The Hegoumenos, in bidding us good by, begged us warmly to come again and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... his exterior appearance, you would not have given the peel of an onion for him, so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous in his gesture. He had a sharp pointed nose, with the look of a bull, and countenance of a fool: he was in his carriage simple, boorish in his apparel, in fortune poor, unhappy in his wives, unfit for all offices in the commonwealth, always laughing, tippling, and merrily carousing to everyone, with continual gibes and jeers, the better by those means to conceal ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... renewed infusion of continental ideals. France was more than ever the arbiter for the "gentry and civiller sort of mankind." Travellers such as Evelyn, who deplored the English gentry's "solitary and unactive lives in the country," the "haughty and boorish Englishman," and the "constrained address of our sullen Nation,"[301] made an impression. It was generally acknowledged that comity and affability had to be fetched from beyond the Seas, for the "meer Englishman" ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... what he told you! Alice, he is a perfectly unknown and untrained young—creature. All young men talk that way. He is perfectly gauche and boorish in ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... chieftain whose military genius had caused so much disaster to their country. This uproarious demonstration of welcome on the part of the multitude moved the spleen of many who were old enough to remember the horrors of Spanish warfare within their borders. "Thus unreflecting, gaping, boorish, are nearly all the common people of these provinces," said a contemporary, describing the scene, and forgetting that both high and low, according to his own account, made up the mass of spectators on that winter's day. Moreover ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bullet through our skulls," he answered in boorish derision; and the man between them ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... exposed to the civilisation of the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war. The Popes accused him of heresy. It is true that Frederick seems to have felt a deep and serious contempt for the rough Christian world of the North, for the boorish German Knights and the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his tongue, went on a Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was duly crowned as King of the Holy City. Even this act did not placate the Popes. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Aytta van Zuichem was a learned Frisian, born, according to some writers, of "boors' degree, but having no inclination for boorish work". According to other authorities, which the President himself favored, he was of noble origin; but, whatever his race, it is certain that whether gentle or simple, it derived its first and only historical ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Timotheus[179] the son of Konon, whose success was attributed by his enemies to fortune, and they had paintings made in which he was represented asleep while Fortune was throwing a net over the cities, all which he took in a very boorish way, and got into a passion with his enemies, as if they were thus attempting to deprive him of the honour due to his exploits; and on one occasion, returning from a successful expedition, he said to the people, "Well, Fortune has had no share in this campaign, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... of the commercial traveller; that intrepid soul who dares all, and boldly brings the genius of civilization and the modern inventions of Paris into a struggle with the plain commonsense of remote villages, and the ignorant and boorish treadmill of provincial ways. Can we ever forget the skilful manoeuvres by which he worms himself into the minds of the populace, bringing a volume of words to bear upon the refractory, reminding us of the indefatigable worker in marbles ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... villages, such a one as Chesterton in all respects, and one could have thought it in England but for the language of the people. We went into a little drinking house where there were a great many Dutch boors eating of fish in a boorish manner, but very merry in their way. But the houses here as neat as in the great places. From thence to the Hague again playing at crambo—[Crambo is described as "a play at short verses in which a word is ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the style of outward movements pertains to the beauty of honesty. For Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 18): "The sound of the voice and the gesture of the body are distasteful to me, whether they be unduly soft and nerveless, or coarse and boorish. Let nature be our model; her reflection is gracefulness of conduct and beauty of honesty." Therefore there is a virtue about ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... muddle! Barney Custer swore at himself inwardly for a boorish fool. What in the world had ever prompted him to speak those ridiculous words! And now how was he to unsay them without mortifying this beautiful girl who had just kissed ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
