"Dunce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dared to contradict my opinions I called him a dunce, a rascal, a villain, and frightened him ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... so clear and so 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 the judgment of the whole English-speaking race, a judgment ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... had forgotten that. Why, how will he know where to call. I fear I have made a mistake. A man who is as big a dunce as that can be of no service ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... and study. No going out to play for you this morning. Jane Mason, you're the biggest dunce ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Philosophumena found him, and induced him to write a book of controversy in the shape of history. Here was an anonymous person who, as Newman described it, "calls one pope a weak and venal dunce, and another a sacrilegious swindler, an infamous convict, and an heresiarch ex cathedra." In the Munich Faculty there was a divine who affirmed that the Church would never get over it. Doellinger undertook to vindicate the insulted See of Rome; and he ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... other gender but the feminine without violating prosody; for although I'm not so sharp at my Latin as I was, still I couldn't use ignarus, as you see, without fairly committing myself as a scholar; and indeed, if I went to that, it would surely be the first time I have been mistaken for a dunce." ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... nowadays this 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 ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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 like the lark into the ethereal blue ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... Copley Fielding's fine drawing of "Folkstone Cliff." There is an affected absence of effect in his "Arundel Castle"—the blues and yellows are not in harmony—and all has an uncomfortable, unsubstantial look. Eliza Sharpe's "Little Dunce" is a delightful drawing. It is only the old dame that can ever be angry with a little dunce—and she puts on more than half her anger; and this is a glorious little dunce, that we would not see good for the world—the triumph of nature over tuition. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... at ease, and thankful to my Father in heaven for excusing me. But the next united supplication, I felt that I must unite with them in kneeling, and while one tried to pull me up by the arm, with saying "I'd be a little dunce if I was in thy place," the other sister pinched the other arm, "Now, Laura Smith, be a little Methodist, will thee? I'd be ashamed if I was thee; every body will make fun of thee." But I kept my position and made no reply, but secretly prayed for strength in my great weakness. But my fears ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Fairfax, "is not singular. I am also sadly disappointed in my sons: one I sent into the Netherlands to train him up a soldier, and he makes a tolerable country justice, but a mere coward at fighting; my next I sent to Cambridge, and he proves a good lawyer, but a mere dunce at divinity; and my youngest I sent to the inns of court, and he is good at divinity, but nobody at the law." The relater of this anecdote adds, "This I have often heard from the descendant of that honourable family, who yet seems to mince the matter, because so immediately related." The eldest ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... your boy, he ought to look like you, oughtn't he, just as you look the way your father, old Pascualo, looked. Well, he doesn't, that's all! He looks like Tonet—eyes shape, build, and complexion! Poor dunce of a Rector! They call you lanudo! But the wool on your eyes is thicker than they ever guessed! Heavens, man, take a peep at the boy! He's the living picture of Tonet, as Tonet used to be in the days when he was a boy with you, down at the tavern, and was running ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 gif ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... cent, and the master hand to save. She is always taking on; and she will be glad enough to have somebody to look out for her,—why, sure enough! And there I was right at her house this very day, and never once thought of her! What an old dunce!" ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... With lawless pen the realms of verse invade, Forth from the court, where sceptred sages sit, Abused with praise, and flatter'd into wit, Where in lethargic majesty they reign, And what they won by dulness, still maintain, 40 Legions of factious authors throng at once, Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce. To 'Hamilton's[84] the ready lies repair— Ne'er was lie made which was not welcome there— Thence, on maturer judgment's anvil wrought, The polish'd falsehood's into public brought. Quick-circulating slanders mirth afford; And reputation bleeds in every word. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... and Thomists, followers of the teaching of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, caused Thomist perversion of the name of Duns into its use as Dunce and tradition of the subtle Doctor's extreme personal ugliness. Doctor Subtilis was translated The ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... standing ground of daily assault on the dusty jacket of poor Pete, and that was that the lad came late to school. Every morning Pete's welcome from the tailor-schoolmaster was a volley of expletives, and a swipe of the cane across his shoulders. "The craythur! The dunce! The durt! I'm taiching him, and taiching him, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... the statue into the Tiber; whereupon the Duke of Sessa wittily replied: 'Throw him to the bottom, and, like a frog, he'll go on croaking.' Berni, again, wrote one of his cleverest Capitoli upon the dunce who could not comprehend his age; and when he died, his doctor's door was ornamented with this inscription: Liberatori ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... then laid them on in untempered crudity. And who is not sensible of the vulgarity and coarseness of the account of Boswell? 'If he had not been a great fool he would not have been a great writer ... he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb,' and so forth, in which the shallowness of the analysis of Boswell's character matches the puerile rudeness of the terms. Here again, is a sentence about Montesquieu. 'The English at that time,' ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... 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 was plenty of work to do, and the food was plain, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... 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 ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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 ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... will attract the attention of the others," he reasoned. "What a dunce I was to get lost! I surely make a fine leader!" Throwing up the pistol he discharged it. Hardly had he done so when his pony started to bolt. Away dashed the steed under some trees and then through a mass of vines, and Jack was thrown to the ground, ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... began addressing him, not in Arabic, but in the Zanzibar patois. The Sultan, after some conversation, turned to Badger, who, poor man, not being conversant with the patois, could only stand still in the dunce's cap which Burton, as it were, had clapped on him and look extremely foolish; while the bystanders nodded to each other and said, "Look at that fellow. He can't say two words. He's a fraud." Burton revelled in Badger's discomfiture; ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Maurits suddenly says to Anne-Marie: "What a dunce I am! I am quite forgetting to speak to ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... when I see her comin', My face gits red at once; My heart feels chokin'-like, and weak, And drops o' sweat run down my cheek, Yes, down my cheek,— Confound me for a dunce! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Cornwall. Though poor, he contrived to send his two sons to a penny-a-week school in the neighbourhood. Jabez, the elder, took delight in learning, and made great progress in his lessons; but Samuel, the younger, was a dunce, notoriously given to mischief and playing truant. When about eight years old he was put to manual labour, earning three-halfpence a day as a buddle-boy at a tin mine. At ten he was apprenticed ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... her two 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
... church, which stands among trees, with an air of large solidity a little graver than the small, shingle-spired churches of the other two villages, are tablets to the memory of a number of Enticknaps, described sturdily as "yeomen," of Upper Dunce, Pockford, and Gorbage Green, which appears on the maps in the plainer form of Garbage Green. Enticknap is a good Surrey name to-day, and there were Enticknaps in Chiddingfold at the Conquest. The parish registers are full of Enticknaps; in one century there ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... have to pay away money that they haven't got for their extravagant sons, aren't likely to be reasonable. There's two things you've gone and done which put me beside myself, when I think of them: you've turned out next door to a dunce at college, when your poor mother thought so much of you—and when you might have pleased and gratified her so if you chose—and, well! I won't say what the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 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 ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... bells—ring! Hip, hurrah for the King! The dunce fell into the pool, oh! The dunce was going to school, oh! The groom and the cook Fished him out with a hook, And he piped his ...
— Under the Window - Pictures & Rhymes for Children • Kate Greenaway
... this day Fanny Hutton Her last dress has put on; Her fine lessons forgotten, She died, as the dunce died: And prim Betsy Chambers, Decay'd in her members, No longer remembers Things, as she ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Iphigenia as he did, might exceed in certain things, as young men in love very often do, nevertheless Aristippus, considering that Love had turned him from a dunce into a man, not only patiently bore with the extravagances into which it might whiles lead him, but encouraged him to ensue its every pleasure. But Cimon, (who refused to be called Galesus, remembering that Iphigenia had called him by the former name,) seeking to put an honourable term to ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... a time there lived an old couple who had three sons; the two elder were clever, but the third was a regular dunce. The clever sons were very fond of their mother, gave her good clothes, and always spoke pleasantly to her; but the youngest was always getting in her way, and she had no patience with him. Now, one day it was announced in the village that the King ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... these so-called good men real blockheads, stupid fools, who believe every word spoken to them with a friendly mien! This honest man really believes that his highly-prized master is now saved, because he bears in his bosom the fragments of the order for his arrest. Worthy dunce; as if there were no duplicate, and as if every promise were countersigned by the Divinity himself! Go home with your count—my word shall be fulfilled. No hair of his head shall be touched, but his proud back shall be curled, and in the mines ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... e'en from the cradle, fit To rule in politics as well as wit: The grave, the gay, the fopling, and the dunce, Start up (God bless us!) statesmen all ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... the chapter on 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the 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, and ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... faithless to his paternal duty, and called him a thoughtless booby. Instead of turning the ungrateful rascal out of the house, he, the dunce, had given him hopes of becoming her poor, dazzled, innocent daughter's husband. During the ensuing weeks, Senora Petra prepared Coello many bad days and still worse nights; but the painter persisted in his resolution to give Isabella to Ulrich, if in a year and a half he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in this, any more than in bodily favour; he was keen of wit and quick of memory; he was quick in learning, yet as modest as he was clever, for he never sought in any way to lord it over me because I, poor dunce, was not of ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... "I was 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 ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and have a capital plan. You see he will be on his guard, and we must be very cunning. To-morrow is exhibition day, and he will have on his best dark-green jacket, and Frank and I are to sit one on each side of him. You see he is really a dunce about every thing but playing tricks; and, when he is asked a question, he will be scared out of his senses, and not know what to say. Now Frank is going to pretend to help him, while I write Dunce in large letters on the stupid ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... 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
... working together, the absurd and 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 for his employers is a testimonial better than a diploma ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... rag I have ceased to use. It is a peculiarity of mine never to remember my own ties; I notice them so little, I imagine—So things are coming around, as I said. And if my big trade now succeeds, perhaps that will bring luck for us all. It would be fun to show her that I am not such a dunce, ha, ha!" ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... first put it on, "It is plain to the veriest dunce That every beauty Will feel it her duty To yield to its glamour at once. They will see that I'm freely gold-laced In a uniform handsome and chaste" - But the peripatetics Of long-haired aesthetics, Are very much more to their taste - Which I never counted upon ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one of the company* ventured to say, 'Too fine for such a poem:—a poem on what?' JOHNSON, (with a disdainful look,) 'Why, on DUNCES. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst THOU lived in those days! It is not worth while 'being a dunce now, when there are no wits.' Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circumstance, that Pope's fame was higher when he was alive than it was then. Johnson said, his ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... the Friars Gray 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... landlord. "Was that the vice president? Here, Dick! build a fire in the best room. Put everything in tiptop order, Sally. What a dunce I was to turn Mr. Jefferson away! He shall have all the rooms in the house, and the ladies' parlor, too, I'll go right round to the Planters' and fetch ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... sister Clementine; and later yet, to 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 IV." Vive ce roi vaillant, ce diable a quatre . . .!" At the same ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... 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
... passion prone, without a rhyme, Inane and madlike was he many a time, His outer self, forsooth, fine may have been, But one wild, howling waste his mind within: Addled his brain that nothing he could see; A dunce! to read essays so loth to be! Perverse in bearing, in temper wayward; For human censure he had no regard. When rich, wealth to enjoy he knew not how; When poor, to poverty he could not bow. Alas! what utter waste ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to behave well, should so misuse them as to set a bad, instead of a good example to others, and by that means draw many into sin, who otherwise, perhaps, might never have acted wrong. Was this Sharply, you have been speaking of, a dunce and blockhead at his book, he would never gain the commendations that Mr. Chiron now bestows upon him; and, consequently, no boy would wish to be thought like him; his bad example, therefore, would not be of half ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... right honest hearts have they. Each loves to play And have his own way, Yet I'm happy to say They quarrel, if ever, but seldom. Though competent quite To maintain their own right, And even to fight, Yet peace to their bosom is welcome. Both go to school, And learn by rule That in neither a dunce we may find; Both read and spell And like it well; Thus with pleasure is profit combined. One's eyes are black, The other's blue; They both have honest hearts and true, And love each other dearly: One's father, is brother To the ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... down for half a dozen pages with a gusto that drove home to many minds the conviction, the strange conviction, that our greatest biography was written by one of the very smallest men that ever lived, 'a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect'—by a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb; by one 'who, if he had not been a great fool, would never have been a great writer.' So far Macaulay, anno Domini 1831, in the vigorous pages of the Edinburgh Review. A year later appears in Fraser's ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... mother to New York shortly; but as "that dear old dunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be necessary to wait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as the largest steamers sailed from Liverpool, and Ellan was so near to that port, perhaps I would not mind . . . just ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... of science, sits 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 of ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... possession of that office to which so many people laid claim: and here the old saying is aptly introduced, 'A pound of good luck is worth a ton of merit.' Thou, who, in comparison to me, art doubtless an ignorant dunce, without rising early or sitting up late, or, indeed, exerting the least industry: without any pretension more or less than that of being breathed upon by knight-errantry, seest thyself created governor of an island as if it was a ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... intellectual superiors; and as the virtues are solely the product of education—a rogue being only a dunce considered from another point of view—they are our moral superiors likewise. Why should they not be? It is a land not of log and pine-board schoolhouses grudgingly erected and containing schools supported by such niggardly tax levies as a sparse and ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... dunce of the party, was set down at home, and the Banks Islanders were again found pleasant, honest, and courteous, thinking, as it appeared afterwards, that the white men were the departed spirits of deceased friends. A walk inland at Vanua Lava ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most testing of all school examinations, the war, have shown us that we must revise all our old notions as to cleverness and stupidity. We know now that, short of real mental deficiency, there is or ought to be no such personage as the dunce. Just as the criminal is generally a man of unusual energy and mental power directed into wrong channels, so the dunce is a pupil whose special powers and aptitudes have not revealed themselves in the routine of school life. And just as the criminal points to serious ...
— Progress and History • Various
... 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 ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... all the afternoon in the City, an' it was pretty warm—a hot April followin' on a raw March. I stood waitin' for the six o'clock car an', my grief, I was tired. My feet ached like night in preservin' time. An' I was thinkin' how like a dunce we are to live a life made up mostly of urrants an' feetache followin'. Yet, after all, the right sort o' urrants an' like that is life—an', if they do ache, 'tain't like your feet was your soul. Well, an' just before the car come, up ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... never seemed 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
... say so. I shall play as much as I wish, and when I want to know about any new or curious thing, I shall consult my Cyclo, instead of bothering other people with questions, or giving it up like a dunce;" with which crushing reply Frank departed, leaving Jill to pack and unpack her treasures a dozen times, and Jack to dance jigs on the lids of the trunks till ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... headed by the physician, and closely followed by the companion, with the hired nurses. Methought that the doctor looked on this wreck of mortality with grim satisfaction. "I knew it," said he, slowly; "and Doctor Phillimore is nothing more than a solemn dunce. I told him that she would not survive to be subjected to the consultation of the morrow. And how happens it," said he, turning fiercely to the companion and the nurses, "that my patient was thus left alone ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... 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 him with love of his country and pride in its traditions that ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... "Don't be a little dunce, Rose!" exclaimed Russ, with exasperation. "You know that nice Black Bear would not hurt them. And, anyway, I guess that baby was only a doll. That is what that soldier said when you told him about it. He said it was ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... windy-pated fellow, has ordered a monument for himself; and with a view to erecting it, these marbles are being dragged to Montepulciano; but I doubt whether we shall contrive to get them up there. The roads are too bad.' 'But,' cried I, 'do you believe that man was a poet—that dunce who had no science, nay, nor knowledge either? who only rose above the heads of men by vanity and doltishness?' 'I don't know,' he answered, 'nor did I ever hear tell, while he was alive, about his being called a poet; but his fellow-townsmen now decide he was one; nay, if he had but left a few ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... around myself that the disputes raged. Though beginning only with some trifle, they would soon go on to God knows what. Frequently, even I myself did not know to what they related. Anything and everything would enter into them, for my father would say that I was an utter dunce at the French language; that the head mistress of my school was a stupid, common sort of women who cared nothing for morals; that he (my father) had not yet succeeded in obtaining another post; that Lamonde's "Grammar" was a wretched book—even a worse one than Zapolski's; ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... not, but I'll warrant she'll not be a dunce with Purcell. And you must admit, doctor, that your George Frederick Handel is much beholden to our ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... calls you a dunce, And people suppose me clever; This could but have happened once, And we missed it, lost ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... that stick alone; Come, drop it now at once; Of all the cats I ever knew You are the greatest dunce." ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... I begged to stay on another half year, you know, because of the exam, but I failed again in that hateful arithmetic: I'm a perfect dunce over figures, father; I hope you don't mind. I can sing very well; my voice was better than any of the other girls, and that will give you more pleasure than if I could do all the sums in the world. They tried to teach me algebra, too. Such a joke; I once got an equation right. ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... right. You are the better scholar. Now what a dunce was I to think it Ovid! But hang me if ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of 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 wide the difference ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... 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
... You'd presently confess You thought that No was Yes. It's just your sort—provided there's no hurry— We like to worry. In twenty minutes, Sir, you wouldn't know Your father from JIM CROW, Or your illiterate self from LINDLEY MURRAY! And now then, dunce, Please move your boots, at once! If 'twere not for some twinges of the gout, I'd kick ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... bless each gray goose quill! May ev'ry Bavius have his Bufo still! So, when a Statesman wants a day's defence, Or Envy holds a whole week's war with Sense, 250 Or simple pride for flatt'ry makes demands, May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands! Blest 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, 255 Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb: Of all thy blameless life the sole ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... "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 and the most fortunate, to crush ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and that in the year 1759, he who, in less than thirty years afterwards, held senates enchained by his eloquence and audiences fascinated by his wit, was, by common consent both of parent and preceptor, pronounced to be "a most impenetrable dunce." ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... though rather younger than himself, had always been his counsellor and friend, and had also materially assisted in giving him the amount of knowledge he possessed in reading and writing. Had it not been for her, he confessed that he would have remained a sad dunce. ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new. His own reading had been multifarious. "Tristram Shandy" was one of his first books after "Robinson Crusoe," and Robertson's "America" an early favorite. Rousseau's "Confessions" had discovered to him that he was not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by the advice of a man who told him he would find in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... down the room with the husband; they were discussing politics. This interested the wife, and she joined in the conversation. Holberg turned round to her,—"I fancy the distaff speaks!" said he. This the wife could never forget. [Translator's Note: Rokkehoved, distaff, means also dunce in Danish.] ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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 it ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... two sons,—the elder a dunce, the younger, Lycophron (or wolf-heart), a youth of noble nature and fine intellect. He sent them on a visit to Proclus, their mother's father, and from him the boys learned, what they had not known before, that their father ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... not love his books. He said, "Catch me sitting on a stool The livelong day! I'd rather be A dunce than ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... not a dunce, I know; and if it weren't for that stupid boat he and William Macwha are building, he might be made a scholar of, I shouldn't wonder. George should have more sense than encourage such a waste of time and money. He's always wanting something ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... head-ache. My dearest, Fate has been very good to me, and I love my profession of letters. I am sure that of all educational processes there is none better than book-making; and the man who begins by making books must be a dolt, dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by writing them. So you may yet hope to see the morning that shall make your Valentine famous—for a fortnight. What man can hope to be famous for more than a fortnight in such a ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... murmured Madame, disengaging herself. "My foster son has been a dunce, but his reason ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... "What a dunce I am!" cried Heinz in amazement, pressing his hand upon his brow. "That's why your face was so familiar! By my saint! I am no knight if I did not see you then, before the battle waxed hot. It was close beside your Burgrave Frederick, who ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... knows on," drawled the old fellow, laughing until his old head seemed ready to topple from his shoulders. "No blood relation, any how, sir. You see, my wife's cousin's aunt's husband's brother Jerry was a cousin to Nicodemus Dunce, who, if I don't disremember, was related in some way to Isacker Pete's wife's sister, and she was this ere man's niece, or somethin' o' that sort, but we ain't blood ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... been so pampered by his mother, Anne de Coligny, that he reached the age of twelve years without having learned to read or write. When the over-tender mother died, the boy's father, Duke George, took his dunce-son's education in hand; but this gentleman was peculiar in his notions of the training of young minds. French and German he deemed unnecessary trivialities, and the Christian religion a banality. Instead of these prosaic lessons the boy was instructed in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian tongues, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... right astronomically, Mistress, then is he the greater dunce in respect of true learning, the which goes by the globe. Argal, 'twere ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... came in his way, or so much as cursed my ugly face, though it was easy to see that he didn't over-like me. When I was six years old I was sent to the village school, where I was soon booked for a dunce, because the master found it impossible to teach me either to read or write. Before I had been at school two years, however, I had beaten boys four years older than myself, and could fling a stone with my left hand (for if I am right-eyed I am left-handed) higher and farther than ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... "Guide to Conversation," that for utility and correctness of idiom surpasses all previous attempts of the same kind. With it in one hand, and a bagful of Napoleons or Zecchini in the other, the biggest dunce in London—nay, even a schoolmaster—may travel from Boulogne to Naples and back, with the utmost satisfaction to himself, and with substantial profit to the people of these barbarous climes. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... puts hands upon the dunce, kisses him close, grows sudden red, stammers, holds off, has the wit to make sure—and bundles out, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... behindhand in English. Fancy my calling you, upon a fitting occasion,—Fool, sot, silly, simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead, clumsy-pate, dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numpskull, ass, owl, loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, addle-head, tony, zany, fop, fop-doodle; a maggot-pated, hare-brained, muddle-pated, muddle-headed, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... 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 ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... was not established 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 ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... after him, too late to eat him, and the crowd cheered the fireman and me, I did feel warm about the waistcoat, and, for the first time this ever so long, life seemed not quite ended. I felt there was a little bit of good left, that even a poor dunce like me could do, and she could approve—if she can look down and see me, as I ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... usual amount of Latin, but obstinately rebelled at the Greek, and even in his college days would have none of it. He was distinguished there by the name of "The Greek Blockhead," and even his excellent professor was betrayed into saying that "dunce he was and dunce he would remain,"—"an opinion," says Scott, "which my excellent and learned friend lived to revoke over a bottle of Burgundy after I had achieved some literary distinction." He read everything he could ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... 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 happened. ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... scornfully chosen by Pope as dunce-hero of the Dunciad, had, for the past six years, been pilloried by Fielding; and, not unmindful of these onslaughts, he inserted in his new work a virulent attack on the late manager of the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... explained it by a paradox. Goldsmith was great in spite of his weaknesses, Boswell by reason of his; if he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer. He was a dunce, a parasite, a coxcomb, a Paul Pry, had a quick observation, a retentive memory, and accordingly—he has become immortal! Alas for the paucity of such immortals under so common circumstances; their number should be legion! That a fool may occasionally write interesting matter ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... was one of the dullest boys in Saint Dominic's, and it was a standing marvel how he ever came to be in the Fifth, for he was both a dunce and an idiot. But he had one ambition and one idea, which was that he could write poetry; and the following touching ballad from his pen he offered to the Dominican, and the Dominican showed its appreciation of real talent by ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Hartung.' 'Now a third time,' cried Kant: on which for a third time the unhappy Lampe would howl out—'not Hartmann, but Hartung.' And this whimsical scene of parade duty was continually repeated: duly as the day of publication came, the irreclaimable old dunce was put through the same manoeuvres, which were as invariably followed by the same blunder on the next. In spite, however, of this advantage, in the new servant, and his general superiority to his ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... athletic diversions of his fellow-scholars; but, at the same time, 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 his obeisance at his entrance and ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... form is my text. Last year it was Parry and Switzerland; 'ardly know where to go next. I should much like to try Monty Carlo, and 'ave a fair flutter for once, But I fear it won't run to it, pardner; my boss is the dashdest old dunce. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... revulsion of feeling toward the girl, who was undeniably involved in some exceptionally deep-laid plan, crept throughout his being. Not only does a man detest being used as a tool and played upon like any common dunce, but he also feels an utter chagrin at being baffled in his labors. Apparently he had played the fool, and also he had lost the vital evidence ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... "Shoot, you dunce, shoot before he gets up to you!" shouted Will. "If he gets one swipe at you with that paw, you'll land out in the Gulf of Alaska! ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... 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 ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 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 other than what they appear; which, if perhaps it shall not seem so philosophically ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... wit," said I, "but you speak like a dunce. We cannot make trees bow at our pleasure; but we can make a tree, which by nature bears sour and uneatable fruit, produce what is sweet and wholesome. This is effected by grafting into a wild tree a small branch, or even a bud, of the sort you wish. I will show you this method practically ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... me all at once, 175 This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... dunce, Camy. I doubt whether they'll take us at all!" The Doubtful Dromedary looked wistfully ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... wares Like a huckster at village fairs, And those mischievous fellows, Wetzel, Campanus, Carlstadt, Martin Cellarius, And all the busy, multifarious Heretics, and disciples of Arius, Half-learned, dunce-bold, dry and hard, They are not worthy of my regard, Poor and humble ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... we find," says Solomon Don Dunce, "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. Through all the flimsy things we see at once As easily as through a Naples bonnet— Trash of all trash!—how can a lady don it? Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff- Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff Twirls into trunk-paper the while ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "what are you doing?" "Why, spinning, you little dunce!" The Princess laughed: "'Tis so very funny, Pray let me ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... you in her arms with a saintly embrace, thanks you for your advice, and loves you the more for it; she wishes to be beholden to you for everything, even for her intellect; she may be a dunce, but, what is better than saying fine things, she knows how to do them! But she desires also to be your pride! It is not a question of taste in dress, of elegance and beauty; she wishes to make you proud of her intelligence. You are ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... men are to be fools, it were better that they were fools in little matters than in great; dulness, turned up with temerity, is a livery all the worse for the facings; and the most tremendous of all things is a magnanimous dunce. ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... buried by the side of Moliere, who died long before him. He was born July 8th, 1621, at Chateau Thierry. His father was keeper of the royal domains. While young, La Fontaine gave no promise of his after distinction. His teachers declared him to be a dunce. His father, who seems to have been an admirer of poetry, persuaded him to attempt to write verses, but he could not make a rhyme. Seeing at nineteen that he could not make a poet of his son, the old man resolved to make a priest of him. After eighteen months of trial ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... an unpleasant task to be gotten over with as soon as possible, taking no interest in her work, and when she came out her brain was a sluggish and unresponsive as one might expect. Well aware of her shortcomings, she made light of them, insisting laughingly that she was the dunce of the family and Virginia its genius. She would do the drudgery of housekeeping while her ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... augmented by the power of the imagination, the vivid character of the whole range of thought, including what is disagreeable. This applies, in various degrees, to every step in the long scale of mental power, from the veriest dunce to the greatest genius that ever lived. Therefore the nearer anyone is, either from a subjective or from an objective point of view, to one of those sources of suffering in human life, the farther he is from the other. And so a man's ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... up 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 of his ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... which is done well. Soon ripe, soon rotten. He that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. He who is impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own slave. Better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and be idle. One year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole college course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. The facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduate ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Shipman, and there's charity,' says Iky, 'but my mother sewed happiness on my waist this morning.' Did you ever hear of such a dunce as that ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... distance easily in seven hours), and, by Jove, there was no telling how much longer it would be possible to keep the guide. They had already quarreled with him several times, and threatened to discharge him. He was a stupid dunce, and a rascal and a cheat into the bargain. On the whole, it was a "rum" sort of a country to travel in. No game, no roads, no shops, no accommodations for man or beast! And who ever saw such houses for people to live in? Mere sheep-pens! Disgustingly ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... strict investigation, Which, as all spoke at once, and more than once Conjecturing, wondering, asking a narration, Alike might puzzle either wit or dunce To answer in a very clear oration. Dudu had never passed for wanting sense, But being "no orator as Brutus is,"[353] Could not at first ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... like Sir Walter Scott at the University of Edinburgh, was 'The Greek Dunce.' Both of these great men, to their sorrow and loss, absolutely and totally declined to learn Greek. 'But what the reason was why I hated the Greek language, while I was taught it, being a child, I do not yet understand.' The Saint was far ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... 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
... 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 or a rogue. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... the wider it is circulated. Whether it is worth your while to give up time to it is another question for you alone to decide; that it will do good for the subject is beyond all question. I do not think a dunce exists who could not understand it, and that is a bold saying after the extent to which I have been misunderstood. I did not understand what you required about sterility: assuredly the facts given ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... condition by his pallor and the hatred in his expression. Presently he felt a touch on his arm and heard his name pronounced by Lydia. Her voice calmed him. He tried to look at her, but his vision was disturbed; he saw double; the lights seemed to dunce before his eyes; and Lord Worthington's voice, saying to Cashel, "Rather too practical, old fellow," seemed to come from a remote corner of the room, and yet to be whispered into his ear. He was moving irresolutely in search ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... my little man, Is very hard to get, Will it make it any easier For you to sit and fret? And wouldn't it be wiser Than waiting, like a dunce, To go to work in earnest And learn ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... last of the crew needs especial remark, Though he looked an incredible dunce: He had just one idea—but, that one being "Snark," The good Bellman engaged ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... of Sterne by declaring that "Tristram Shandy" affected her to tears, Johnson rolled himself into contortions, made an exasperating grimace, and replied, "Why, dearest, that is because you are a dunce!" Afterward, when reproached for the remark, he replied, "Madam, if I had thought so, I surely would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are ye sure he's not a dunce?" Why, really one might ask the same thing in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... by many a grace, By shrugs and strange contortions of his face, How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, Excels a dunce that has been kept at home. The Progress of Error. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... whether he was alive or dead. But his work, Howell's, and even part of Gifford's, is chiefly 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... become of the fools?" he muttered. "He oughter been home two, three days ago, and we hain't seen a sign of him yet. Can't be Lew's such a dunce as to walk into the ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... my failure, if I do fail, rather to the inability and ill looks of my advocate, than to my cause. Again, thou art deprived of the force men of our cast give to arguments; for she won't let thee swear!-Art, moreover, a very heavy, thoughtless fellow; tolerable only at a second rebound; a horrid dunce at the impromptu. These, encountering with such a lady, are great disadvantages.—And still a greater is thy balancing, (as thou dost at present,) between old rakery and new reformation; since this puts thee into the same situation ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... always give me an hour and a half,' interrupted Kester eagerly. 'Of course, it is not good for him to have any more teaching; but he says he would hate to see me grow up a dunce—and—and'—swallowing down some secret emotion—' I think it would break my heart not to ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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
... 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 different opinion, it is ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... see that you're not such a big dunce as you look; I've been discouraged in trying to teach you, but you seem to be ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... well enough, but not studying-books," said Ivy, with a sigh, "and I don't see any good in them. If it wasn't for mamma, I never would open one,—never! I would just as soon be a dunce as not; I don't see ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mind—but those who have feeling minds, pain and pleasure altogether computed, have the 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 glad ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... know what other people think of, when they are going to be married,—I mean at the moment. Books are eloquent on the subject. For my part. I must confess, I thought of nothing. And let that encourage the next bride, who will imagine herself a dunce, because she isn't thinking of something fine and solemn. Perhaps I had so many ideas pressing in, in all directions, that the mind itself couldn't act. Be it as it may, I stood as if stupefied,—while old Mr. Price talked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... 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 son Thomas Napper, Esq.; most generously gave most of these manuscripts to ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... bitterest between the eighteenth century classicists and such poets as Wordsworth [Footnote: See the Prelude.] and Burns, but it is by no means stilled at present. Yeats [Footnote: See The Scholar.] and Vachel Lindsay [Footnote: See The Master of the Dance. The hero is a dunce in school.] have written poetry showing the persistence of the quarrel. Though the acrimony of the disputants varies, accordingly as the tone of the poet is predominantly thoughtful or emotional, one does not find any poet of the last century ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins |
