"Dunce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... penknife, or a pencil-case, or some such article dear to the heart of youth; the second prize entitled the winner to wear for an hour or two a sort of conical paper cap, on the front of which was written, in tall letters, this modest admission: I AM A DUNCE! The competitor who took prize No. 2. wasn't generally an object ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in astronomy, stand up. "Where does the sun rise?" "Please, sir, down in our meadow; I seed it yesterday!" "Hold your tongue, you dunce; where does the sun rise?" "I know—in the east!" "Right, and why does it rise in the east?" "Because the 'east makes everything rise." "Out, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... is well up to, inasmuch as they form part of previous roles, but the teeth and hair, the upright position, the power of speech, though all tolerably familiar, give him more trouble—for he is very stupid—a regular dunce in fact. Then comes his newer and more complex environment, and this puzzles him—arrests his attention—whereon consciousness springs into existence, as a ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... if you are a bigger dunce than you seem; but," added Fred, turning toward the Shawanoe, "have you seen ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... least that 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 ...
— Progress and History • Various
... a farmer's lad, ten years old, tall and stout for his age, and able to do a great many more things than some city boys of fourteen. He could ride and drive, keep the stable in order, and even handle a plough. Nor was he a dunce; for, thanks to an evening school, which some of his Sunday teachers had opened in the village, he had learned to read and write very fairly. He had a comfortable place at farmer Jolly's; but there was plenty of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... They pass for having put a priori obstacles in the way of progress: they might rather be reproved for too much belief in progress obtained by a priori means. They would have shouted with laughter at a dunce who—in a review I read, but without making a note—declared that he would not believe his senses except when what they showed him was capable of explanation upon some known principle. I have seen such stuff ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... 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 of the skies." He respected ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... character. Not less so was the mother of the Duke of Wellington, whom her son strikingly resembled in features, person, and character; while his father was principally distinguished as a musical composer and performer. [118] But, strange to say, Wellington's mother mistook him for a dunce; and, for some reason or other, he was not such a favourite as her other children, until his great deeds in after-life constrained her ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... on 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 for ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... 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 ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... 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 ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... better than the idlest boys, who, growing bolder with impunity, waxed louder and more daring—eating apples under the master's eye, pinching each other in sport or malice, and cutting their autographs in the very legs of his desk. The puzzled dunce, who stood beside it to say his lesson out of book, looked no longer at the ceiling for forgotten words, but drew closer to the master's elbow and boldly cast his eyes upon the page. If the master did chance to rouse himself and seem alive ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... geometrician. The transcendental curve, perfectly drawn, may work upon his gentler mood. I happen to have in my portfolio the very thing to please him. Fortune serves me well in this special circumstance. Among my boys, there is one who, though a regular dunce at everything else, is a first rate hand with the square, the compass and the drawing pen: a deft-fingered numskull, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... art of nosing out the occult. Divination is of as many kinds as there are fruit-bearing varieties of the flowering dunce and the early fool. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... St. Veronica and the legend connected with her name, a 'vernicle'; being a napkin with the Saviour's face portrayed on it; Simon Magus 'simony'; Mahomet a 'mammet' or 'maumet', meaning an idol{95}, and 'mammetry' or idolatry; 'dunce' is from Duns Scotus; while there is a legend that the 'knot' or sandpiper is named from Canute or Knute, with whom this bird was a special favourite. To come to more modern times, and not pausing at Ben Johnson's 'chaucerisms', Bishop Hall's 'scoganisms', from Scogan, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... insupportable," cried she, stamping with her little satin-slippered foot upon the carpet. "You excuse this gray-headed dunce merely to vex me, and to remind me that I am an orphan without ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... full of fleas, Like gnats they swarm, like flies they buzz and breed. Thought works in silence: Wisdom stops to think. No ass so obstinate as ignorance. Oft as they seize the ship of state, behold— Overboard goes all ballast and they crowd To blast or breeze or hurricane full sail, Each dunce a pilot and a captain too. How often cross-eyed Justice hits amiss! Doomed by Athenian mobs to banishment, See Aristides leave the land he saved: Wisdom his fault and justice his offense. See Caesar crowned a god and Tully slain; See ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... happened one evening, when she insisted that some of Sterne's writings were very pathetick. Johnson bluntly denied it. 'I am sure (said she) they have affected me.' 'Why (said Johnson, smiling, and rolling himself about,) that is, because, dearest, you're a dunce[350].' When she some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said with equal truth and politeness; 'Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... well as original, I assure you I shall be ashamed of it, bring down my foot and crush it out of existence; its novelty shall not avail (with me at least) to save its ugliness from annihilation. If I thought otherwise, I admit that a round dozen of vultures would be none too many for the liver of a dunce who could not see that ugliness was only aggravated ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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
... fleece: They're, maybe, right; but as for me This ride is quite another matter. Of service only on the platter, My death is quite a certainty. Adieu, my dear old piggery!" The porker's logic proved at once Himself a prophet and a dunce. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... want to be revenged on John Green, 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 fellow's back. John ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... Earthquake shock! —What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,— All at once, and nothing first,— Just as bubbles do when ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and 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 of lustrous grace! To state, to family what a disgrace! ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... I can say my lesson, and Mr. Garland will think I'm a dunce," said he to himself, with ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... 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, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... self-defensive style. He is said about this time to have in his walks carried arms, and had a large dog as his protector; but none of the dunces had courage enough to assail him. Dennis, who was no dunce, might have ventured on it—but he had become miserably infirm, poor, and blind; and Pope had heaped coals of fire on his head, by contributing a Prologue to a play which was ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... motion a strengthening interchange of action and reaction. Though a fool's mouth be stuffed with proverbs, he still remains as much a fool as before. He is past preaching to who does not care to mend. As the brave Schiller affirms, "Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce." Eternal contact with nutritious wisdom can teach no lesson, nor profit at all one who has not a cooeperative and assimilative mind. The anchor is always in the sea, but it never learns to swim. Philosophic precepts address the reason; but the springs of motive and regeneration are in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... opinion in after life. But the study of grammar is not so enticing that it may be disparaged in the hearing of the young, without injury. What would be the natural effect of the following sentence, which I quote from a late well-written religious homily? "The pedagogue and his dunce may exercise their wits correctly enough, in the way of grammatical analysis, on some splendid argument, or burst of eloquence, or thrilling descant, or poetic rapture, to the strain and soul of which not a fibre in their ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that you received the Holy Spirit by the Law. As long as you were servants of the Law, you never received the Holy Ghost. Nobody ever heard of the Holy Ghost being given to anybody, be he doctor or dunce, as a result of the preaching of the Law. In your own case, you have not only learned the Law by heart, you have labored with all your might to perform it. You most of all should have received the Holy Ghost by the Law, ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... does not remember the first letter received in one's childish days, written in a fair round text for childish eyes, or perhaps even printed by the kind and painstaking correspondent for the little dunce of a recipient. Who has not slept with such a letter carefully hoarded away under the pillow, that morning's first light might give positive assurance of the actual existence of our treasure. Nor is the little urchin the only glad supporter of our admirable postal institutions. Manly ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... how it seethes again and glows! Go in and comfort her, thou dunce! Where such a dolt no outlet sees or knows, He thinks he's reached the end at once. None but the brave deserve the fair! Thou hast had devil enough to make a decent show of. For all the world a devil in despair Is just the ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Brooks!" exclaimed his teacher in pleased surprise when the dunce of the school spoke his piece without omitting a single word. The other boys had laughed when he rose, for they expected a bad failure. But when the rest of the class had tried, the teacher said Tommy had done the best of all, and gave him ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... he went to a school in {13} the city, taught by a Mr Bromley on Lancaster's system. 'What kind of a boy was Joe?' was asked of an old lady who had gone to school with him sixty years before. 'Why, he was a regular dunce; he had a big nose, a big mouth, and a great big ugly head; and he used to chase me to death on my way home from school,' was her ready answer. It is easy to picture the eager, ugly, bright-eyed boy, fonder of a frolic with the girls than ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... 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 ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... spoke, or when his writing was the mirror of his speech, or in some simple fairytale, had he words exact enough to hold a subtle ear. He alarmed me, though not as Henley did for I never left his house thinking myself fool or dunce. He flattered the intellect of every man he liked; he made me tell him long Irish stories and compared my art of story-telling to Homer's; and once when he had described himself as writing in the census paper 'age 19, profession genius, infirmity talent,' the other ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... Rogue will have this wench now, when all's done, some such youth will carry her, and wear her, greasie out like stuff, some Dunce that knows no more but Markets, and admires nothing but a long charge at Sizes: ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... clever girl—not like Norma. Norma had always stood first in her classes, had borne off prizes and medals, but with Blanche it was otherwise. No amount of coaching ever sufficed to pull her through ah examination, or to remove her from the middle of her class. Blanche was a dunce confessedly; she hated books, and the acquisition of knowledge by labor. If people told her things and took the trouble to explain them, she remembered them sometimes; sometimes not. To accomplishments she took as a duck to water—danced beautifully, was a fair ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... mainland high and dry on. Steed appeareth none, nor pilot! Little dog, if it be thy lot To essay the dismal track Where Odysseus half hung back, How wilt thou conciliate That grim mastiff by the gate? Sure, 'twill puzzle thee to fawn On his muzzles three that yawn Antrous; or to find, poor dunce, Grace in his six eyes at once— Those ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the grounds, when you've seen the parade, How delicious it is to drink pink lemonade; And look at the elephant twirling his trunk, And laugh at the capers cut by the monk; Watch the old clown who is acting a dunce, And try hard to see three rings going at once; Gaze at the ringmaster cracking his whip, And watch the tight-rope artist skip. I saw that circus, Yes Sirree! Saw about enough ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... might have spent the full term there, but, as already noted, his teacher had found him "addled." He was always, according to his own recollection, at the foot of the class, and had come almost to regard himself as a dunce, while his father entertained vague anxieties as to his stupidity. The truth of the matter seems to be that Mrs. Edison, a teacher of uncommon ability and force, held no very high opinion of the average public-school methods and results, and was both eager to undertake the instruction ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... my dear Doctor, you will let me, with the mass of readers, have clearer wits than the dunces—then why should I not know what you are as soon as, or sooner than Bavius, &c.—unless a dunce has a good nose, or a ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... with Badger about something or other; so when they approached the Sultan, Burton 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; but a little later the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... one April-fool's day, concluded to get up an April-fool on a grander scale than usual. They procured an old pair of pants, a shirt, pair of boots, gloves, a dunce's cap, and a "false-face" or mask. They took these articles to their father's barn, and by stuffing them with straw and putting a few extra touches of paint on the mask, they made a hideous looking Guy. To the back ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... the horns of a dilemma. Either our young chieftain must be a dunce, or we are rearing the Clever ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in 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 to a shoemaker, and while in this employment he endured ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... was so successful, that the produce enabled Jem to purchase a bat and ball, which, besides adding to his natural arrogance (for the little pedant actually began to mutter against being eclipsed by a dunce, and went so far as to challenge Joe Kirby to a trial in Practice, or the Rule of Three), gave him, when compared with the general poverty, a most unnatural preponderance in the cricket state. He ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... idiot, imbecile, natural; simpleton, dolt, dunce, defective, witling, dotterel, driveler, blockhead, beetlehead, ninny, ignoramus, numskull, booby, clodpate, nincompoop, ass, wiseacre, dunderhead, halfwit, oaf, dullard, coot, mooncalf; zany, harlequin, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Diddy and the Fair, but the Master saw what he had done. "Come here, Larry McQueen, and bring your slate," he said. "Sure, I'll teach you better manners. Get up on this stool now, and show yourself." He put a large paper dunce-cap on Larry's head, and made him sit up on a stool before the ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... cried Jack, with eager eyes. 'I see!' cried Tom, 'I see! You go and seek another mouse, And leave this mouse to me.' 'Indeed, I won't!' cried Jack at once; 'You surely take me for a dunce! ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the Martin readily concurr'd, A church-begot, and church-believing bird; Of little body, but of lofty mind, Round-bellied, for a dignity design'd, And much a dunce, as Martins are by kind. Yet often quoted Canon-laws, and Code, And Fathers which he never understood; But little learning needs in noble blood. For, sooth to say, the Swallow brought him in, Her household chaplain, and her next of kin: 470 In superstition silly to excess, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... 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
... would like it, Alfred, and even if she wouldn't you know she ought to go; Amelia herself knows," she continued, without looking at me, "that she is quite a dunce for her age, and will need to work very hard in order to make up for lost time. So, your father and I have decided," she added conclusively, "that you shall go to boarding-school, Amelia, as early next month as you can ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... distinguishing the poetical elements in which the genius is shown. The critic should frankly analyse; but mostly he does not. He tells us, for instance, that Walt Whitman is the "Adam of a new poetical era," or else that he is "a dunce of inconceivable incoherence and incompetence"; but usually he does not show us the precise data upon which either conclusion is based. Cannot profundity of thought, ardour of emotion, power and charm of expression, be actually demonstrated as present or absent in a poet, when ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... as plain as sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius linguae: in English—illiterate, a dunce, a ninny.' ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... fly, didn't jump With flapping arms from stake or stump, Or, spreading the tail Of his coat for a sail, Take a soaring leap from post or rail, And wonder why He couldn't fly, And flap and flutter and wish and try— If ever you knew a country dunce Who didn't try that as often as once, All I can say is, that's a sign He never would do for ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... 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 lay hands on, in English, all through his youth, and his ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... crew needs especial remark, Though he looked an incredible dunce: He had just one idea—but, that one being "Snark," The good ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... I 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 ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... Yes! Gustave, the former "dunce," the one they had called "Good-luck" because his father had made an immense fortune in guano. Not one bit changed was Gustave! The same deep-set eyes and greenish complexion. But what style! English from the tips of his pointed shoes to the horseshoe scarfpin in his necktie. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "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 ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... took the subject in hand and tossed it up and 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 ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet dunce-cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke-bonnet. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Just how it would end; but no one would believe me, For all were quite ready to fall at his feet." "Indeed, you are wrong," said the Lily-belle proudly, "I cared nothing for him; he called on me once, And would have come often, no doubt, if I'd asked him, But though he was handsome, I thought him a dunce." ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... were not his own by finessing and trick, He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleas'd he could whistle them back. Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame; 110 Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please. But let us be candid, and speak out our mind, If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave, 115 What a commerce was yours, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... would either remain true to their political faith and lose their economic support, or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... get an exhibition! I who had been licked once a week for bad copies, and had been told by every teacher I had had anything to do with that I was a hopeless dunce. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... charge of the nurse-maid, educated at a fashionable day-school, brought into society before fifteen, living in the whirl, the bustle, the luxury, and the unhomeliness of a hotel, what could you expect of Miss Flora but that she should be, at seventeen years of age, a butterfly in her habits, a clever dunce as regards solid knowledge, and a premature woman of the world in her tastes and manners? The apartments which the Briggs family occupy at the Fifth Avenue Hotel are magnificently decorated and furnished, but they do not constitute a home. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Lord! of fine thoughts such a brood in us 45 To split and divide into heads multitudinous, While charms that surprise (it can ne'er be denied us) Sprout forth from each head, like the ears from King Midas. Were a genius of rank, like a commonplace dunce, Compell'd to drive on to the main point at once, 50 What a plentiful vintage of initiations[342:3] Would Noble Lords lose in your Lordship's orations. My fancy transports me! As mute as a mouse, And as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... her 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 ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... suit; and another comes, who, without knowing why or wherefore, finds himself in 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 ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... discovering a method by which even defective and idiot children might be raised by "education" to the normal stature of the human mind. It fired Godwin himself with a zeal for education. "Folly," said Helvetius, "is factitious." "Nature," said Godwin, "never made a dunce." The failures of education are due primarily to the teacher's error in substituting compulsion for persuasion and despotism for encouragement. The excellences and defects of the human character are not due to occult causes ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Oxford. About forty years ago terrible things were done in the church of that village. The vicar was a Goth. There was a very beautiful chantry chapel on the south side of the choir, full of magnificent marble monuments to the memory of various members of the Dunce family. This family, once great and powerful, whose great house stood hard by on the north of the church—only the terraces of which remain—is now, it is believed, extinct. The vicar thought that he might be held responsible for the dilapidations of this old chantry; ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... hunted sex, to parcel out fair women into classes; and some are flyers and some are runners; these birds are wild on the wing, those exposed their bosoms to the shot. For him there is no individual woman. He grants her a characteristic only to enroll her in a class. He is our immortal dunce at learning to distinguish her as a personal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Dunces, is, with probably intentional ambiguity, written in the first person singular but ends by referring to "the Writers of the following Poem" (p. viii). One hand seems responsible for the preface, but we can only conclude that a Dunce collaborating with other Dunces produced the poem. Four days after its publication Pope wrote to Broome that it was "by James Moore and others," and a few weeks later wrote to Bethel that "James Moore own'd it but was made by three others, and he will disown it whenever ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... 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 Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... — that she may always keep a good table. I give her my new carriage and horses — that she may visit her friends in comfort. I give her my family bible — that she may live above the ill tempers and sorrows of life. I give my son Peter a hornbook — for I am afraid he will always be a dunce. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... 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
... 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
... to smile but hid her face in the sofa-pillow, and hoped Dotty did not see her. She found she must hit upon some other plan. Dotty could not be made to feel the terrors of growing up a dunce. ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... fellow, that his father was heard to say, if it pleased God to remove any one of his children by death, he hoped it would be Isaac. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the commentator, called his boy 'a grievous dunce.' Cortina, a renowned painter, was nicknamed, by his associates, 'Ass' Head,' on account of his stupidity, when a boy. When the mother of Sheridan once went with him to the school-room, she told the teacher that he was 'an ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... be nothing but a horseman all his life. When I told him that, he got interested and fin'ly showed us some books he was trying to study, but he can't see sense in the grammar. Gussie promised to help him, but she never has much time for such things, and he thinks she thinks he's a plumb dunce. I promised to ask her if that's the way she felt, but he said I mustn't; so I did the next best I could think of—I told him Cherry would study grammar with him. She uses the same book he has in ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... which Michael Angelo uses of Perugino. Behold, the Christians despising the Dunce Greeks, as the Infidel modernists despise the Dunce ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... 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
... Parkynses, and I am astonished you do not acquiesce in this Scheme which would keep me in Mind of what I have almost entirely forgot. I recommend this to you because, if some plan of this kind is not adopted, I shall be called, or rather branded with the name of a dunce, which you know I could never bear. I beg you will consider this plan seriously and I will lend it all the assistance in my power. I shall be very glad to see the Letter you talk of, and I have time just to say I hope every body is well ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... himself, and transacting the business entrusted to him with entire satisfaction to all concerned. These long, and often lonely, trips increased his independence and so encouraged his habit of silence that many of the village people began to think him a dunce. ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... well remember the morning he first entered our school. He was then about twelve years of age; but owing to his carelessness and inattention, he had made but slight progress in study. I learned afterward that he had so long borne the names of "dunce" and "blockhead" in the school he attended in his own village that he supposed himself to be really such, and made up his mind that it was useless for him to try to be anything else: and I think when our teacher first called him up for examination ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... had not run away, and he ran until he reached his uncle's. His uncle, when he saw him in such a plight, said: "Oh! what is the matter?" "Uncle!" said the boy, "the same innkeeper has changed the tablecloth, too, for me." The uncle was on the point of giving the dunce a good thrashing; but afterward, seeing that it was a child, he calmed his anger, and said: "I understand; but I will give you a remedy by which you can get back everything from that thief of a landlord. Here it is! It is a stick. ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... a dunce onyway," said the boy. "He canna spell an easy word like 'examination,' an' he had twenty-two mistakes in his dictation test," he went on, and she was quick to note the air of ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... my little man, Is very hard to get? Will it make it any easier For you to sit and fret? Then wouldn't it he wiser Than waiting like a dunce, To go to work in earnest, And ...
— New National First Reader • Charles J. Barnes, et al.
... you have written the letter I now hold in answer to mine, —would your ideas, your language have been the same,—had some one whispered in your ear (what may prove true), Mademoiselle O. d'Este M. has six millions and does intend to have a dunce for a master? ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... man dared to contradict my opinions I called him a dunce, a rascal, a villain, and frightened him out of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... 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
... the 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 eye like ...
— Under the Window - Pictures & Rhymes for Children • Kate Greenaway
... arithmetic, and could, indeed, keep her butter accounts by dint of much counting on slim sunburnt fingers and puckering of her pretty white forehead; but alas! all attempts to attain more elegant accomplishments remained fruitless—Roseen was a thorough little dunce. Much to the relief of all parties, she returned to Monavoe at the end of twelve months, and thereupon devoted her energies to the more homely acquirements in which she had since become an adept. She could do anything with those deft fingers of hers: her butter ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Duns Scotus (who taught at Oxford and died in 1308), were Realists, and the Scotists were as Realists opposed to the Nominalists, who, as followers of Thomas Aquinas, were called Thomists. Abuse, in later time, of the followers of Duns gave its present sense to the word Dunce.] ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... thank you. But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of judging, vitiate your faculty of tasting. Recognize the importance, the inestimable virtues, of that quality which you have piqued yourselves on despising,—that sympathy which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... that was hurt. Had she taken the teasing of the meaner girls in a wiser spirit, she knew they would not have sent her the dunce cap. They continued to tease her because they knew ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... what a dunce I am! I'm afraid I'm very ungrateful. But you see I seem to have done with such things. And yet the money is going to be of some ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... the lowest place. The heir to an Earldom, who had failed at the last examination, was pointed out a few minutes afterwards, dining in solitary grandeur at a raised table, above the reverend scholars who had turned him back as a dunce. I had just arrived at the University, and had just been congratulated on entering "a venerable seminary ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... They were fancy portraits of characters, most of which were familiar to my mind. There were Guy Fawkes, Punch, his then Majesty the King, Bogy, the Man in the Moon, the Clerk of the Weather Office, a Dunce, and Old Father Christmas. Beneath each sketch was a stanza of my ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the thread around his ugly spindle once, 4 Snaps off the last bit of the life of that Imperial dunce. But Lachesis, her hair adorned, her tresses neatly bound, Pierian laurel on her locks, her brows with garlands crowned, Plucks me from out the snowy wool new threads as white as snow, Which handled with a happy touch change colour as they go, Not common wool, but golden wire; the ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... alcoholic is introduced first, and gets ahead of the other in starting the process. Now, when the result is the tendency of an ovum, itself invisible to the naked eye, to tip towards this direction or that in its further evolution,—to bring forth a genius or a dunce, even as the rain-drop passes east or west of the pebble,—is it not obvious that the deflecting cause must lie in a region so recondite and minute, must be such a ferment of a ferment, an infinitesimal of so high an order, that surmise itself may never succeed even in attempting ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... expression, and note the air of pleased attention with which even her Uncle Ralph listened to his ceaseless flow of words. "I knew he was older than Abbie, and that this was his third year in college. What could I have expected from Uncle Ralph's son? A pretty dunce he must think me, blushing and stammering like an awkward country girl. What on earth could Abbie mean about needing my help for him, and being troubled about him. It is some of her ridiculous fanatical nonsense, I suppose. I wish she could ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... you are on my side," cries his ward exultantly. She tucks her arm into his. "And as for all that talk about 'knowledge'—don't bother me about that any more. It's a little rude of you, do you know? One would think I was a dunce—that I knew nothing—whereas, I assure you," throwing out her other hand, "I know quite as much as most girls, and a great deal more than many. I daresay," putting her head to one side, and examining ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... Hohenlinden, Lochiel, etc., should have been at the very top of the tree. Somehow he wants audacity, fears the public, and, what is worse, fears the shadow of his own reputation. He is a great corrector too, which succeeds as ill in composition as in education. Many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce, and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity. Yet Tom Campbell ought to have done a great deal more. His youthful promise was great. John Leyden introduced me to him. They afterwards quarrelled. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... tear, all its peauties to paint— "But, among oder tings fundamentally wrong, It vill cure de Proad Pottom[1]—a common complaint Among M.P.'s and weavers—from sitting too long. Should symptoms of speeching preak out on a dunce (Vat is often de case), it vill stop de disease, And pring avay all de long speeches at vonce, Dat else vould, like tape-worms, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... by dark hair, and made striking by a pair of those long-lashed eyes that are always brown. And in character he was the most remarkable. Though two years our senior, he deliberately lagged behind the boys of his own age, and remained the oldest member of our form. Thoughtless masters called him a dunce, but abler ones knew him to be only idle. And Pennybet cared little for either opinion. He had schemed to remain in a low form; and that was enough. It was better to be a field-marshal among the "kids" than a ranker among his peers. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... ever did—more good than those three kicks. But," continued Lord Castleton, "when one flatters a boy for his cleverness, even Eton itself cannot kick the conceit out of him. Let him be last in the form, and the greatest dunce ever flogged, there are always people to say that your public schools don't do for your great geniuses. And it is ten to one but what the father is plagued into taking the boy home and giving him a private tutor, who fixes him into a prig forever. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... offer still greater obstacles to social contacts. The idiot and the imbecile are obviously debarred from normal communication with their intelligent associates. The "dunce" was isolated by village ridicule and contempt long before the term "moron" was coined, or the feeble-minded segregated in institutions and colonies. The individual with the highest native endowments, the genius, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... dunce, Morgan? Without doubt, at the end of that cave is a way up into the castle; and though the passage be too narrow for all my troop, three men and a captain will suffice to lay faggots and light them at the door. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... neat as a new 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
... him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... smile when he saw the villagers tumbling through their doorways. They couldn't have done anything that would have suited him better. Had there been a single one among the prairie dogs that wasn't a dunce he would have run away from his hole, outside the village, to hide somewhere until Benny ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... a girl like Kitty Malone not to be popular; and the other girls valued her, and thought themselves highly privileged to be in the same class with her, dunce as she was. ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... "Is it possible that I am a dunce? I never thought so! Certainly no one must know it. Am I unfit for office? It will never do to say that ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to carry this, that he may be more welcome to you, he says. Were it to be sent unsealed, the characters we write in would be Hebrew to the dunce. I desire you to return it; and I'll give you a copy of it upon demand; for I intend to keep it by me, as a guard against the infection of your company, which might otherwise, perhaps, some time hence, be apt to weaken the impressions I always desire ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... have opened it; and, just as the General and his friends argue, must have seen the assignment. I omitted to state the fact of Talbott's seeing the assignment, because its existence was so necessarily connected with other facts which I did state, that I thought the greatest dunce could not but understand it. Did I say Talbott had not seen it? Did I say anything that was inconsistent with his having seen it before? Most certainly I did neither; and if I did not, what becomes ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... young wife, very fond of her husband, and very proud of her baby; a good housewife, who delighted in making the house snug and cozy for John, when he came home after his day's work. She called him "a dear old darling of a dunce," or "her little goosie." She sheltered Edward Plummer in her cottage for a time, and got into trouble; but the marriage of Edward with May Fielding cleared up the mystery, and John loved his little Dot more fondly than ever.—C. Dickens, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... with meekness, and strangle a natural oath? Can he leave all his wrongs to the future, and carry his heart in his cheek? Can he do an hour's work in a minute, and live on a sixpence a week? Can he courteously talk to an equal, and brow-beat an impudent dunce? Can he keep things in apple-pie order, and do half-a-dozen at once? Can he press all the springs of knowledge, with quick and reliable touch? And be sure that he knows how much to know, and knows how not to know ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw; You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are, But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR. Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce, I myself — you mayn't believe it — helped to run a paper once With a chap on Cambaroora, by the name of Charlie Brown, And I'll tell you all about it if you'll take ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... a dunce at many things," she replied. "The reason I came was because I knew that you were living in these parts, and I had a fancy ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... chief or his squaw looking at him, he assumed the role of a dunce, and it must be confessed he played it with unquestionable fidelity to nature. He probably afforded considerable amusement to the royal couple who could have had no suspicion that the hopeful youth was ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... colleague," he exclaimed, "must have carried them off. He constantly does this, out of jealousy of my reputation; but I will be even with him yet! Such splendid instruments! They will almost work of themselves, and are capable of imparting some skill even to him, dunce as he is!... I shall be back in an hour or two; he must rest, sleep, have nothing to excite him, nothing to inflame the wound; and when the operation is well over, we shall see! May the Lord ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... distance till they suddenly emerged on a small clearing by a river bank, in which a rough native camp had been pitched. The tents of grass occupied by the hunters being of a peculiar conical shape, like the pointed caps that used to be labeled "Dunce." ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... here again, you idler and good-for-nothing? What will become of you, you dunce? What will become ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... to the shallowness 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 |
