"Nincompoop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the elf and not the Ogress. But all the same they are deucedly unsympathetic towards the poor Ogre. The only sympathetic one I know is Beauty and the Beast; and even that is a mere begging of the question, for the Beast was a handsome young nincompoop of a ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Bostock looked uneasily at Ralph Martin, heavy, short, dark, lowering, untidy, often incomprehensible, and more often rude; with virtues concealed as if they were secret shames. Ralph was capricious. At moments he showed extraordinary talent as an engineer; at others he behaved like a nincompoop. He would be rich one day; but he had a formidable temper. The principal thing in favour of Ralph Martin was that he and Florence had always been "something to each other." Indeed of late years it had been begun to be understood that the match was "as good as arranged." It ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... subject of the apparent anomaly. A forecastleman, addressing a petty officer, inquired how she could hail from San Francisco, then belonging to the United States, and fly the Peruvian flag. "Why, look ye, you nincompoop," was the reply, "can't there be more'n one Jack Jones on the purser's books, and wherefore shouldn't there be more than one San Francisco in the chart of the world? Doesn't it stand to reason, seeing it's a saint's name, and they're all Catholics along ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... played outrageous billiards and who did not know who the latest reigning theatrical beauty was, and moreover, did not care a rap; who could understand a joke within reasonable time if he couldn't tell one; who was neither a nincompoop nor a mollycoddle. Thomas interested Killigrew more and more as ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... strange. Half the young men in town think they are in love with her, and most of them believe she could make them happy. Now, no one concedes physical beauty or allurement to Percy. He is as ugly as they grow, but he isn't stupid. He is just a nice, amiable, senseless nincompoop with a great deal of money and a tremendous ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... her 'scenes' she has a regular reception—for men only—of course! Ladies not admitted!" And Clara Winsleigh laughed. "Don't look so shocked for heaven's sake, Thelma,—you don't want your husband to be a regular nincompoop! He must have his amusements as well as other people. I believe you want him to be like a baby, tied to your apron-string! You'll find that an awful mistake,—he'll get tired to death of you, sweet ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... forgotten below; but when I turned my lantern there I seed Sam, who I thought miles astern, safe and snug in old Davy Jones' locker. Lord! shipmates, you could ha' knocked me down with a feather and club-hauled me for a nincompoop!" ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... effect that I was a humbug—that a man's pluck was brought out and his nerves improved by the noble art of hunting, which was beautifully scientific in its details, and which had the effect of causing a man to act like a man and look like a man—not like a woman or a nincompoop, as was too often ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... people had never had to pay for an army, they might sit down quietly under the taunt of wanting experience. But we have soldiers, and soldiers should have military education as well as red coats, and be led by properly qualified officers, instead of Lord Nincompoop's youngest sons. As it is in the army, so it is in the State. Places given away, here and there, to incompetent heads; nobody being responsible, no unity of idea and purpose anywhere—the individual interest ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... prepared. A distinguished traveler—Dickens, I think—was dashing off a letter at the centre-table, describing the weather and some of the odd fellows he had observed in his travels. "And," he wrote, "there is in the room at the present moment a long, lank, red-headed, empty-brained nincompoop, who looks as if he had not eaten a square meal for a month, and is stamping about for his dinner. Now he approaches me as I sit writing, and I hear his step pause behind my chair. The fool is actually looking over my shoulder, and reading these words"—A torrent of Scotch burst forth right here: ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... me tell you, there was a comical thing to start with. Lieutenant Hayter, one of Watson's men, was bid to the Council, but the nincompoop was huffed because he wasn't allowed precedence of the Company's captains. These naval men's airs are vastly amusing. He took himself off. Then Mr. Clive put the case; fight at once, or wait. Against the custom, he himself voted ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... earnestly at people as if he expected to meet with some one. "If I had got into this state," he sometimes said to himself, "because of being merely in love with a pretty face, I should consider myself a silly nincompoop; but it is such a terrible thing for so sweet and young a creature to be chained to a man who must in the nature of things, land her in beggary and break her heart." Thus he deceived himself as to his main ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... any one but his better half know that he regarded his Cousin Homer as an irascible old curmudgeon; and perhaps, on the other hand, had justified Mr. Ramsay in his own mind for referring in common parlance to his first cousin once removed as a stiff nincompoop who had married a sickly doll. Not that Mr. Horace Barker needed the money, by any means. He was well-to-do already, and lived in a more fashionable street than Saville Street, where he occupied a dignified-looking brown-stone house, from the windows of which his three little people—all ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... me laugh at you, then you can laugh at me; Then we'll josh together everything we see; Every one's a nincompoop to another's view; Laughter makes the sun ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... out right and left, and not a crown of it falls to thee! A thousand witlings without parts and without worth, a thousand paltry creatures without a charm, a thousand scurvy intriguers, are all well clad, while thou must go bare! Canst thou be such a nincompoop as all this? Couldst thou not flatter as well as anybody else? Couldst thou not find out how to lie, swear, forswear, promise, keep or break, like anybody else? Couldst thou not favour the intrigue ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... There was malice, vindictiveness, hatred in that look, and it expressed with exactness his sentiments toward young Bonbright Foote.... It did not express all of them, for, lurking in the background, unseen, was a deep contempt. Rangar despised Bonbright as a nincompoop, as he ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland |
