"Boor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I concern myself only with facts. And the great fact of all is the contemptibleness of average humanity. I will submit for your reverent consideration the name of a great American philanthropist—Cornelius Vanderbilt. Personally he was a disgusting brute; ignorant, base, a boor in his manners, a blackguard in his language; he had little if any natural affection, and to those who offended him he was a relentless barbarian. Yet the man was a great philanthropist, and became so by the piling up of millions ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... of the world! They cripple the heart, they blind the sense, they concentrate the thousand links between man and man, into the two basest of earthly ties—servility, and pride. Methinks the devils laugh out when they hear us tell the boor that his soul is as glorious and eternal as our own; and yet when in the grinding drudgery of his life, not a spark of that soul can be called forth; when it sleeps, walled around in its lumpish clay, from the cradle to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to keep as far in front as possible, that I might communicate with scouts, contrabands, and citizens. Many odd personages were revealed to me at the farm-houses on the way, and I studied, with curious interest, the native Virginian character. They appeared to be compounds of the cavalier and the boor. There was no old gentleman who owned a thousand barren acres, spotted with scrub timber; who lived in a weather-beaten barn, with a multiplicity of porch and a quantity of chimney; whose means bore no proportion to his pride, and neither ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... in her peasant sketches was naturally over-estimated by those who, never having studied the class, could not conceive of a peasant except conventionally, as a drunken boor. The very just portrait of Cecilia Boccaferri, the conscientious but obscure artist in Le Chateau des Desertes, might seem over-flattered to such as imagine that all opera-singers must be persons of riotous living. The types she prefers to present, if ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... him that way. That is why the task of misgoverning him has been so easy and has come so naturally to the Englishman. One of the chief grievances of the Irishman in the middle ages was that the man who robbed him was such a boor. Insult was added to injury in that the oppressor was no knight in shining armour, but a very churl of men; to the courteous and cultured Irishman a "bodach Sassenach," a man of low blood, of low cunning, caring only for the things of the body, with no ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... lover! It was too amazing. Brangwen went home despising himself for his own poor way of life. He was a clod-hopper and a boor, dull, stuck in the mud. More than ever he wanted to clamber out, to this ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... second occasion shall be born of a princess and shall be a prince, and so on, always rising, till he be absorbed into the Deity. But if he have borne himself ill, he who was the son of a gentleman shall be reborn as the son of a boor, and from a boor shall become a dog, always going down lower ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... spoke of, and by the common daylight we look at the picture, what a daub it looks! what a clumsy effigy! How many men and wives come to this knowledge, think you? And if it be painful to a woman to find herself mated for life to a boor, and ordered to love and honor a dullard; it is worse still for the man himself perhaps, whenever in his dim comprehension the idea dawns that his slave and drudge yonder is, in truth, his superior; that the woman who does his bidding, and submits to his humor, should be his lord; that she ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... slave-boy of his friend Pollio in one of his light pastoral poems, shrinks from mentioning real names and calls himself Corydon and the boy Alexis. But Aemilianus, whose rusticity far surpasses that of the shepherds and cowherds of Vergil, who is, in fact, and always has been a boor and a barbarian, though he thinks himself far more austere than Serranus, Curius, or Fabricius, those heroes of the days of old, denies that such verses are worthy of a philosopher who is a follower of Plato. Will you persist in ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... fellow-officers, while I went on questioning my cousin as to the Wynnes to their uttermost generation. Either he cared little about them, or he knew little, for he seemed much to prefer to tell queer stories about the court ladies, and my Lord Chesterfield's boor of a son, who had such small manners and such a large appetite, and of Sir Guy Carleton, whom he was about to join in Canada. He advised me to get a pair of colours as my aunt had once desired, and seemed surprised when I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... and the fate of nations depends more on them than on the intellect of its kings and legislators. A civil war in America will end in shaking the world; and that war may be caused by the vote of some ignorant prize-fighter or crazed fanatic in a city or in a Congress, or of some stupid boor in an obscure country parish. The electricity of universal sympathy, of action and reaction, pervades everything, the planets and the motes in the sunbeam. FAUST, with his types, or LUTHER, with his ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... thought that as he was on duty he was bound to obey, and tied up the ribbon of the sock. Then Kotsuke no Suke, turning from him, petulantly exclaimed: "Why, how clumsy you are! You cannot so much as tie up the ribbon of a sock properly! Any one can see that you are a boor from the country, and know nothing of the manners of Yedo." And with a scornful laugh he moved towards an ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... to be discreet and guarded in his life or it would be taken from him by one related to him, and of greater power. He could not brook the thought of Kamehameha's ascendency, for he was a man used to deference, a man of weight and dignity, while this new-found prince was a boor. He therefore made himself unpleasant by criticisms and carpings, by false interpretations of signs, by implications against his nephew, and finding that the young man did not retaliate, he resolved to ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... a marriage? I found, before long, that I was married to a boor. She could not comprehend one subject that interested me. Her dullness palled upon me till I grew to loathe it. And after some time of a wretched, furtive union—I must tell you all —I found letters somewhere (and such letters they were!) which showed me ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prejudiced of mind. He looks down upon the townsman as a huckster in private and a shuffler in public life, and this feeling of contemptuous enmity is fully returned by the cit, who regards the free proprietor in the light of a boor and a bully. Moreover, it rankles in the Houseman's breast that no Stockader pays a farthing of head-money to the treasure-chest of the Doomsmen. Now and then some well-to-do proprietor may suffer loss from cattle thieving ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... him with almost boisterous cheerfulness. "Ah! Tamiya comes early; a flattering acknowledgment of last night's reception." To Iemon's deprecatory speech and apology—"Don't talk folly, after the manner of a country boor. Iemon San is a man of the world; and will give this Kwaiba credit for being the same. What does it amount to? A matter of a little too much wine.... Hana! Hana! The Master of Tamiya is present. Cut some bean paste, and bring tea. Heat the wine. Matazaemon was so sober an ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... a dry wind stirred the dust here and there; the moon shone through a rift in the clouds and lighted the spot where the man slept. So I found myself tete-a-tete with this boor, who, not suspecting my presence, was sleeping on that stone bench as peacefully as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... myself somehow, stumbled round behind her, walked on her train and finally arrived at her left side, conscious in every red-hot atom of me that I was making a spectacle of myself and that the whole company was enjoying it. I must have seemed to them an ignorant boor; in fact, I had been about a great deal among people who knew how to behave, and had I never given the matter of how to conduct myself on that particular occasion an instant's thought, I should have got ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... refused to show me the way to Italy. He had taken off his Sunday coat and put on a white smock-frock. "Oho!" he said, as I rubbed my sleepy eyes, "do you want to pick your oranges here, that you trample down all my grass instead of going to church, you lazy lout, you?" I was vexed that the boor should have waked me, and I started up and cried, "Hold your tongue! I have been a better gardener than you will ever be, and a Receiver, and if you had been driving to town, you would have had to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the mountain district could obtain from the lips of the people their sacred and well-preserved lore, and even he not easily. The tales were narrated from time to time in the spinning-room, or in the so-called "Hell" of the boor or weaver, without any determinate connexion. The listener gathered mere fragments, and these not fully, when, thrown off his guard, he ventured to interrupt the speaker. Each narrator conceives his tale differently, and one individual is apt to garnish the experience of many, or what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... labouring peasants, live in miserable cabins, which afford them little more than shelter from the storms. The Boor of Norway is said to make all his own utensils. In the Hebrides, whatever might be their ingenuity, the want of wood leaves them no materials. They are probably content with such accommodations as stones of different forms and sizes ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... sat with his big jaw dropping. Stupid boor that he was, he could not have explained the terrifying effect which this wild music and those tense, uplifting faces had upon him, but he would have given anything to be back in his mother's kitchen, with the lamp lit and the dark, unfamiliar ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... has a philosophy of life of his own, except the true philosopher. The most ignorant boor has some conception of his object in living, and definite ideas as to the easiest and wisest way of attaining that object. The man of the world is often, unconsciously to himself, a philosopher of the first rank. He deals with ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... a democracy. The doors of respectability and honor turn on silver hinges. Gravity relaxes, fashion gives way, beauty smiles, and talent defers, before the man of money. He may be an ignoramus, but he possesses the golden alphabet. He may be a boor, but Plutus lends a charm which eclipses the grace of Apollo. He may have accumulated his wealth in a way which would make an intelligent hyena ashamed of himself, but he has accumulated it, and the past is forgotten. I do not mean to say that, as the general rule, wealth is thus associated, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... will do a great deal, but it will do nothing in regard to sin. It will alter the type of the disease, because the cultured man's transgressions will be very different from those of the illiterate boor. But wise or foolish, professor, student, thinker, or savage with narrow forehead and all but dead brain, are alike in this, that they are sinners in God's sight. I would that I could get through the fence ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... selfish dissipation of spending their blood-money; and what had she bought with it? Nothing, nothing. To spend it, only, she had wrecked her sex and her soul; to spend it for such trifles as children want—candy and common ornaments, a dance and a treat, a gift for some boor or forester or even negro she was misleading, or to establish a silly reputation for generosity: generous at the expense of human happiness, and of robbing people of liberty and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... dropping the figure or introducing an incongruous epithet. It is not only a child, but a child of the Black Forest, uttering its hopes, its anxieties, and its joys in the familiar dialect. The beetle, in his eyes, becomes a gross, hard-headed boor, carrying his sacks of blossom-meal, and drinking his mug of XX morning-dew; the stork parades about to show his red stockings; the spider is at once machinist and civil engineer; and even the sun, moon, and morning-star are not secure from the poet's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... said slowly, "I have acted towards you like a boor and a ruffian, as indeed I am; but let this plead for me, that I have ever been used to the roughness of the camp, bereft of gentler influences. ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... nights, has changed the spring into that riper summer-time which is on the verge of autumn; and that hour of late sunset which is on the verge of night. Under its rich glow lies the sleeping Iphigenia, draped in folds upon folds of white, and her attendants; while Cymon, who is as unlike the boor of tradition as Spenser's Colin Clout is unlike an ordinary Cumbrian herdsman, stands hard-by, wondering, pensively wrapt in so exquisite a vision. Altogether, a great presentment of an immortal idyll; ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... of traitor clove to me like a pestilence. The neighbours turned their faces from me, my former friends fled from me, the timid greeted me from afar and turned aside; even a mere peasant boor or a Jew, though he bowed, would, as he passed by, smite me with a sneering laugh. The word 'traitor' rang in my ears and echoed through my house and over my fields; that word from morn till dark hovered before ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... interrupted, gasping. "By God, am I married to a ploughman? Am I Vicomtesse of Lavedan, or the wife of a boor of the countryside? And is the honour of your daughter ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... me—'The clown at my elbow, who is drinking his tea out of a basin and eating his broad with unwashed hands, may be her husband: Heathcliff junior, of course. Here is the consequence of being buried alive: she has thrown herself away upon that boor from sheer ignorance that better individuals existed! A sad pity—I must beware how I cause her to regret her choice.' The last reflection may seem conceited; it was not. My neighbour struck me as bordering ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... with bitter meaning. "I know him: hateful, despicable hound! He is only trifling with you. He cares nothing for you; you are not to his taste. What! He, a Northern pale-faced boor, choose you, with your dark skin and black hair! Never! I know better. Only to-day I saw him with the woman he prefers—a fair beauty light-complexioned ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... dy ce sel i a now si zed the weep on and all though the boor ly vil ly an re tain ed his vy gor ous hold she drew the blade through his fin gers and hoorl ed it far be hind her dryp ping ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... Maximilian, "I should be worse than a boor did I not accept it. Here is my hand in token of ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... North of which she need not be ashamed. Even her mother and sister had remarked, in effect, "It is evident that Captain Lane has been accustomed to the best society." His esteem was not the gaping admiration of a boor to whom she had ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... meeting with Morris in 1867. 'He didn't care for parsons, and he glared at me when I said something about good manners. Leaning over the table with his eyes set and his fist clenched he shouted at me, "I am a boor and the son of a boor".' So ready as he was to challenge anything which smacked of conventionality or pretension, he was not quite a safe poet to lionize or to ask into ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... foreign potentates the same affection towards my person as you feel. It is not me but France they wish to see. I remember that when very young I received a visit from the czar Peter the Great, Peter the First I mean to say. He was not deficient in sense, but yet behaved like a boor: he passed his time in running over the academies, libraries, and manufactories: I never saw such an ill-bred man. Imagine him embracing me at our first interview, and carrying me in his arms as one of my valets ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... after the birth of Erasmus, therefore in the year 1483, Martin Luther came into the world in a peasant's cottage, at Eisleben, in Saxony. By peasant, you need not understand a common boor. Hans Luther, the father, was a thrifty, well-to-do man for his station in life—adroit with his hands, and able to do many useful things, from farm work to digging in the mines. The family life was strict and stern—rather too stern, as Martin ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... abruptly, "above all, my dear Vaudrey, do not fear to appear in the tribune more uncouth and assertive than you really are. In times when the word sympathetic becomes an insult, it is wiser to have the manners of a boor. Tact ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... acquaintance brought him, Martin did not know. Nor had he the curiosity to inquire about him of Ruth. In short, Brissenden struck Martin as anaemic and feather-brained, and was promptly dismissed from his mind. An hour later he decided that Brissenden was a boor as well, what of the way he prowled about from one room to another, staring at the pictures or poking his nose into books and magazines he picked up from the table or drew from the shelves. Though a stranger in the house he finally isolated himself ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... follow my unfavourable report of his conduct at Irkutsk. Although we sat for hours that day consuming tea and innumerable cigarettes, I was no nearer the solution of the problem at sunset than at dawn. And had I but known it, all the time I was vainly urging this stolid boor to reconsider his decision, help was arriving from a totally unexpected quarter. I discussed a cheerless and silent meal with my companions, and we were turning in that night when Stepan strolled in, cool and imperturbable as usual. He even divested himself ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... which Amaryllis wont to love, And waxen plums withal: this fruit no less Shall have its meed of honour; and I will pluck You too, ye laurels, and you, ye myrtles, near, For so your sweets ye mingle. Corydon, You are a boor, nor heeds a whit your gifts Alexis; no, nor would Iollas yield, Should gifts decide the day. Alack! alack! What misery have I brought upon my head!- Loosed on the flowers Siroces to my bane, And the wild boar upon ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... She had laughed at him ever since she could remember, and had ordered him about much as though he were a faithful dog always ready to do her bidding; but she had never quite realized what a clumsy boor he was till their handsome, dark-faced Trevlyn cousin had come amongst them, with his earnest eyes, his graceful movements, and his slim, attractive person. Cuthbert's manners, that in fine society would have been called rustic and unformed, were a great advance on anything ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... than as it was. The troubadour who knew his business would begin with praises of his beloved; she is physically and morally perfect, her beauty illuminates the night, her presence heals the sick, cheers the sad, makes the boor courteous and so forth. For her the singer's love and devotion is infinite: separation from her would be worse than death; her death would leave the world cheerless, and to her he owes any thoughts of good or beauty that he may have. ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... ill-hearted, down- looking blackguard! He would go for to offer for to presume for to dare to lay hands on an honest man's son's doug! It sets him weel, the bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep—"Ay, Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco fright; but I'll gie them up their fit for't; I'll show them, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... said in part: "I never heard or read a single sound argument against the suffrage of women in a democracy. There are a hundred arguments for it. The question now is one of organization, of agitation, of perseverance. In my judgment he who sneers at suffrage not only proclaims himself a boor and casts discredit on at least four women—his mother, his wife, his sister and his daughter—but he reveals a depth of ignorance that is pitiable. Let the appeal be to experience. Not one of the direful consequences predicted has come to pass where suffrage is enjoyed. Homes have not ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... RIGHTEOUSNESS SHEEP. The sow farrows pigs, They go to the spit of the lord. The hen lays eggs, They go into the lord's frying-pan. The cow drops a male calf, That goes into the lord's herd as a bull. The mare foals a horse foal, That must be for my lord's nag. The boor's wife has sons, They must go to look after my ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... recognize as a poet, should remain unenjoyed by us, whatever his language. Admiration is an art which we must learn. Many Germans say Racine does not please them. The Englishman says, 'I do not understand Goethe.' The Frenchman says Shakespeare is a boor. What does all this amount to? Nothing more than the child who says it likes a waltz better than a symphony of Beethoven's. The art consists in discovering and understanding what each nation admires in its great men. He who seeks beauty will eventually find it, and discover that the ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... gallant caitiff, Noticing the swain is poor (Courtesy with him is native, Not like you, suburban boor), Bows, and says in accents sunny, 'Pass along, Sir—make good speed; I'm convinced you've got no money And I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... time on his way over the meadow to make sure that she did not need his support. In spite of the utter unreasonableness of the affair, in some unaccountable way his sympathies were on the side of the miller. The fellow was a boor, of course, but, by Jove! he was a magnificent boor. It had been long since Gay had seen such an outburst of primitive feeling—long since he had come so close to the good red earth on which we walk and ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Bianca. "Oh, pardon me," he said. "I did not dream you stood so near. Else no such harsh sounds should have offended your fair ears. As for Messer d'Anguissola..." He shrugged as who would say, "Have pity on such a boor!" ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... he replied; for I love you and am giving you friendly advice, and, if I could, would persuade you not like a boor to say in my presence that I desire my beloved, whom I value above all ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... contend was the vicinity of the Boers of the Cashan Mountains, otherwise named "Magaliesberg". These are not to be counfounded with the Cape colonists, who sometimes pass by the name. The word Boer simply means "farmer", and is not synonymous with our word boor. Indeed, to the Boers generally the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. Those, however, who have fled from English ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... me, and I halted and turned, striving to remember decency and that I was conducting like a very boor. This was neither the time nor place to force a quarrel on any man.... And Lana was right. I had no earthly warrant to interfere if she gave me none; perhaps ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... disgrace was now but two years old, Yet so outrageous rank and full was grown That France was wholly overspread with shade, And bitter fruits lay on the untilled ground That stank and bred so foul contagious smells That not a nose in France but stood awry, Nor boor that cried not FAUGH! ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... one, but he turns out a Gentleman of Merit, Learning, Worth, and Politeness; whereas it would certainly require more than Herculean Labour to chissel a French Paisan, a primitive Westmoreland, or Devonshire Boor, not only into the Form of an elegant, but even into that ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... it was in the tree, and he had not been there for a week! Why had he not thought of it before? The fault was his, not hers. Perhaps she had gone away, believing him faithless, or a country boor. ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... Quaker meeting, face By face, in Flemish detail, we may trace How loose-mouthed boor, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Gosling. Boor! what's that to you? With Love's soft sorrows what hast thou to do? 'Tis here for consolation I must look. (Takes ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... speakest irreverently;" and then unto Master Silas: "Silas! to the business on hand. Taste the fat upon yon boor's table, which the constable hath brought hither, good Master Silas! And declare upon oath, being sworn in my presence, first, whether said fat do proceed of venison; secondly, whether said venison be ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... stars; and she knew it—she knew it very well. That I saw in her face. And she was Madama Flavia, and I was Pipistrello the juggler. What could I say to her? I could have fallen at her feet and kissed her or killed her, but I could not speak. No doubt I looked but a poor boor to her—a giant and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... stuttering boor (he reflected) was Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, confessedly the social triumph of his generation! This imbecile, without a syllable to say for himself, without a solitary adroit word within tongue's reach, wherewith to annihilate the hussy, was ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... trust himself to continue the dialogue. He had expected to meet a man of coarser grain; Mutimer's intelligence made impossible the civil condescension which would have served with a boor, and Hubert found the temptation to pointed utterance all the stronger for the ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... cottage on the roadside, the man whose face was blackened with powder, apparently because he was unable to bear transportation. He died in about half an hour after. On examining the corpse, it proved to be that of a profligate boor in the neighbourhood, a person notorious as a poacher and—smuggler. We I received many messages of congratulation from the neighbouring families, and it was generally allowed that a few such instances of spirited resistance would greatly ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... If in the boor’s garden the King eats a pear, His servants rapacious the tree will uptear; For every five eggs he gives bounteously, more Than five hundred ...
— Little Engel - a ballad with a series of epigrams from the Persian - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... Frenchman who was visiting your city for the first time, you would endeavor, as in the following example, to speak to him in his own idiom and put him at his ease by referring to the things with which he is undoubtedly familiar. It is only a "boor" who seeks to impose his own hobbies and interests upon a stranger, disregarding entirely the presumable likes ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... the Rev. Mr. Lyons in Tripoli, hired Sheikh Owad, a Moslem bigot, to teach him the Arabic grammar. He was a conceited boor; well versed in Arabic grammar, but more ignorant of geography, arithmetic and good breeding than a child. One day Mrs. Lyons passed through the room where he was teaching Mr. L. and he turned his head away from her and spat towards her with a look of unutterable contempt. It was ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... interesting country, and because the effect desired is very rarely given, there being far greater difficulties to contend with. But one word more, before setting off for the south. Though, as we saw before, the gentleman has less national character than the boor, his individual character is more marked, especially in its finer features, which are clearly and perfectly developed by education; consequently, when the inhabitant of the villa has had anything to do with its erection, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... lustyly; and thei rennen to gidre a gret randoum; and thei frusschen to gidere fulle fiercely; and thei breken here speres so rudely, that the tronchouns flen in sprotes and peces alle aboute the halle. And than thei make to come in huntyng, for the hert and for the boor, with houndes rennynge with open mouthe. And many other thinges thei don, be craft of hire enchauntementes; that it is marveyle for to see. And suche pleyes of desport thei make, til the takynge up of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... as gay a lady-love As ever clipt in arms a noble knight? Am I not blithe as bird the live-long day? It pleases me to bear what you call pain, Therefore to me 'tis pleasure: joy and grief Are the will's creatures; martyrs kiss the stake— The moorland colt enjoys the thorny furze— The dullest boor will seek a fight, and count His pleasure by his wounds; you must forget, love, Eve's curse lays suffering, as their natural lot, On womankind, till custom makes it light. I know the use of pain: bar not the leech Because his cure is bitter—'Tis such medicine Which ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... were not symbolized by more or less chimerical creatures, but by human faces. After careful search he discovered on some of the pillars of the middle doorway the Vices embodied in small carved groups: Lust, as a woman fondling a young man; Drunkenness as a boor about to hit a bishop; Discord by a husband quarrelling with his wife, while an empty bottle and a broken ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... spend more in a single evening's entertainment for people who don't need it than they give to the salvation of men in a whole year. I protest out of the soul that God gave me against such wicked selfishness. And I will protest if society spurn me from it as a bigot, a puritan, and a boor. For society in Christian America is not Christian in this matter—no, not after ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... many a secret hypocritical vice, at war with the character of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk; and the boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged in eulogistic comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he diverged into some compliments on the young gentleman himself. Randal drew his hat over his brows. There ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... old boor!" cried the prince, half amused, half angry. "Go on, now; we don't need any sermon ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... take the useless trifle, and lavish it on pleasure to make thee gay, and fit for luckier lovers: take that best part of me, and let this worst alone; it was that first won the dear confession from thee that drew my ruin on—for which I hate it—and wish myself born a poor cottage boor, where I might never have seen thy tempting beauty, but lived for ever blessed in ignorance.' At this the tears ran from his eyes, with which the softened Sylvia mixed her welcome stream, and as soon as she could speak, she replied (with half cunning and half love, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... is a mental characteristic which leads to frequent surprises among strangers from the distant cities. It consists in the wonderful inequality between his mental and social development. The same person who will be regarded as a boor in good society, will yet exhibit a rapidity and profundity of thought and intelligence—a depth and soundness of judgment—an acuteness in discrimination—a logical accuracy, and critical analysis, such as mere good society rarely shows, and such as books almost as ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... rich as well as proud, and so adored his daughter that he thought a duke at least would come from Madrid to ask her hand in marriage, was furious, called him an impudent fellow, and swore that sooner than let her marry such a boor he would rather she ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... of the court! the bullies of the Rhine! Stout Langdale's cheer is heard no more, and Astley's helm is down, And Rupert sheathes his rapier, with a curse and with a frown, And cold Newcastle mutters, as he follows in their flight, "The German boor had better far have ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Possibly, too, they were made available as musicians. I have a notion the Russians entertain the same superstitious devotion to cats that the Banyans of India do to cows, and the French and Germans to nasty little poodles. To see a great shaggy boor, his face dripping with grease, his eyes swimming in vodka, sit all doubled up, fondling and caressing these feline pets; holding them in his hands; pressing their velvety fur to his eyes, cheeks, even his lips; listening ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... not dare to press the matter and was compelled to dine, although half dead. His companions were so completely duped by Mauprat's assurance that they ate and drank merrily, treating the notary as a lunatic and a boor. They left Roche-Mauprat all drunk, singing the praises of their host, and laughing at the notary, who fell down dead upon the threshold of his house on dismounting ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... several pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen "Some More" of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually "begin to take an absorbing interest in them"—the vulgar boor. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wold in Vester Haf, There builds a boor his hold; And thither he carries hawk and hound, ...
— Ellen of Villenskov - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... destroyer was humiliated in the dust. Had she heard of the fire at the Castle Inn? How could she have done otherwise than hear of it in such a place as Mount Stanning? But had she heard that he had been in danger, and that he had distinguished himself by the rescue of a drunken boor? I fear that, even sitting by that desolate hearth, and beneath the roof whose noble was an exile from his own house, Robert Audley was weak enough to think of these things—weak enough to let his fancy wander away to the dismal fir-trees under the cold March ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... and cas How she deceyued was of Eneas For al his hestes and his othes sworn And said alas that euer she was born Whan she sawe that ded she must be And next I sawe the compleynt of Medee How that she falsed was of Iason And nyg[h] by venus sawe I sitte atheon And al the maner how the boor hym sloug[h] For whom she wepte and had pyne ynoug[h] Ther saw I also how ...
— The Temple of Glass • John Lydgate
... far away Went plodding home a weary boor; A streak of light before him lay, Falling through a half shut stable-door Across his path. He passed—for naught Told what was going on within: How keen the stars, his only thought— The air how calm, and cold and thin In ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... Before the temples of the Gods must bleed. 15 Hence of such Godhead, (traveller!) stand in awe, Best it befits thee off to keep thy hands. Thy cross is ready, shaped as artless yard; "I'm willing, 'faith" (thou say'st) but 'faith here comes The boor, and plucking forth with bended arm 20 Makes of this tool a ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... this reason the dwellers in the towns looked down upon him as one belonging to an inferior race. In all lands, in all ages, the countryman has been considered a proper butt by the most loutish townsman. The starving proletarian of the city pavement scoffed at the farmer as a boor. Voiceless, there was none to speak for him, and his rude, inarticulate complaints were met with jeers. Baalam was not more astonished when the ass he was riding rebuked him than the ruling classes of America seem to have been ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... she was swayed by a pure and mystic passion. De Seze, on the other hand, believed this mystic passion to be genuine love. Coming to visit her at Nohant, he was revolted by the clownish husband with whom she lived. It gave him an esthetic shock to see that she had borne children to this boor. Therefore he shrank back from her, and in time their relation ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... given him an education as good as that which the King of his country had given to its Crown Prince, being in the streets of Troy, playing on a hurdy-gurdy, was a difficulty I did not reflect on for a moment. The idea of being thought by that sweet girl a mere uneducated boor, was intolerable to me; and I threw it off by this desperate falsehood—false in its accessories, but true in its main facts—as one would resent an insult. Fortune favoured me, however, far more than I ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... and it and its inhabitants were made the target for the jests and witticisms of the people of Judea. The word "Nazarene" was synonymous with "lout"; "boor"; "peasant"; etc., to the residents of the more fashionable regions. The very remoteness of the town served to separate it in spirit from the rest of the country. But this very remoteness played an important part in the early ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... rough, but it was in a good-tempered fashion, and I felt as if I should like the captain in spite of a whisper from Walters which sounded like "boor." ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... protecting damsels of that sort that used to ride about, whip in hand, on their palfreys, with all their virginity about them, from mountain to mountain and valley to valley—for, if it were not for some ruffian, or boor with a hood and hatchet, or monstrous giant, that forced them, there were in days of yore damsels that at the end of eighty years, in all which time they had never slept a day under a roof, went to their graves as much maids as the mothers ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ability of a man than of a child to perceive the beauties of a picture; unless it is in his more extended knowledge of those truths in nature or life which the picture renders? How happens the cultivated gentleman to enjoy a fine poem so much more than a boor does; if it is not because his wider acquaintance with objects and actions enables him to see in the poem much that the boor cannot see? And if, as is here so obvious, there must be some familiarity with the things represented, before the representation can be appreciated, then, the representation ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... right." At the appointed time they were seated with other ladies in attendance at the side of the platform. Presently Rev. Dr. Mandeville, of Albany, arose, turned his chair facing them, his back to the audience, and stared at them with all the impudence of a boor, as if to wither them ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... door, both improper practices, especially the latter.' When a gentleman speaks to one much older than himself, or to a lady, he not only raises his hat quite off his head—for none 'but an ignorant boor or a fier Anglais' ever does otherwise—but holds it in his hand until requested to replace it. When you ask your way, even of a street-porter or an apple-woman, it is necessary slightly to half-raise the hat, and address them as Monsieur or Madame, 'which is ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... "No boor of the woods shall laugh at me!" He exclaimed, his eyes aflame with passion, "be the cause love or war. What mean all these sly tricks of speech and action?—this hurried message to the ear of Mademoiselle? By my faith, you did not even pause to wash the dust from ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... king was no ungentle boor: he spoke them fair and graciously. "Tell me, child," he said, "what is your name? No harm shall come to you at my hands, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... passes sleepless nights, he thinks and thinks and thinks how to do everything just right. And what's the result? He gives the public the best operetta, the very best pantomime, excellent artists. But do they want it? Have they the least appreciation of it? The public is rude. The public is a great boor. The public wants a circus, a lot of nonsense, a lot of stuff. And there's the weather. Look! Rain almost every evening. It began to rain on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up through the whole of June. It's simply awful. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... and the winds howl and beat; but, when all is past, everything comes out better and brighter than before,—not a bird is killed, not the frailest flower destroyed. But man comes, and in one day he will make a desolation that centuries cannot repair. Ignorant boor that he is, and all incapable of appreciating the glorious works of Nature, it seems to be his glory to be able to destroy in a few hours what it was the work of ages to produce. The noble oak, that has been cut away to build this contemptible ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at your elbow. The Atra cura of the poet is nothing to it, friend! It is a fiend which will not be driven away. It grins, and gibbers, and utters its gibes, day and night. Believe me, Surry,—I speak from experience—it is better for this world, as well as the next, to be a boor, a peasant, a clodhopper with a clear conscience, than to hold in your hand the means of all luxury, and so-called enjoyment, and, with it, the consciousness that you are blood guilty under almost ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... and chastened with a spirit that slept not on a watch, always of perilous exposure in one so young and of her sex. On more than one occasion did Ralph, in the course of the dinner, remark the indignant fire flashing from her intelligent eye, when the rude speech of some untaught boor assailed a sense finely-wrought to appreciate the proper boundaries to the always adventurous footstep of unbridled licentiousness. The youth felt assured, from these occasional glimpses, that her education had been derived from a different influence, and that her ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down at the inn for addressing her coarsely. A spasm of anguish shot through her, and she ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... are equal is a dogma which I'll prove at once," exclaimed a Tory boor; "Taxation hardly presses on the rich, And likewise presses hardly ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... 'villa', survives any longer; the peasant is wholly dismissed, and the evil moral conditions of him who is called by this name alone remain; so that the name would now in this its final stage be applied as freely to peer, if he deserved it, as to peasant. 'Boor' has had exactly the same history; being first the cultivator of the soil; then secondly, the cultivator of the soil who, it is assumed, will be coarse, rude, and unmannerly; and then thirdly, any one who is coarse, rude, and unmannerly{221}. So ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... laws than paper compacts. We are conquerors treading conquered soil. Our will alone is the source of law. The drunken boor who claims to be President is in reality an alien ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... With interchangeable embroidery wove, Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom. As ofttimes a light skiff, moor'd to the shore, Stands part in water, part upon the land; Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor, The beaver settles watching for his prey; So on the rim, that fenc'd the sand with rock, Sat perch'd the fiend of evil. In the void Glancing, his tail upturn'd its venomous fork, With sting like scorpion's ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... day, Arthur and his household were going to Church, and they beheld a knight who had raised the signal for combat. "Verily," said Arthur, "by the valour of men, I will not go hence until I have my horse and my arms to overthrow yonder boor." Then went the attendants to fetch Arthur's horse and arms. And Peredur met the attendants as they were going back, and he took the horse and arms from them, and proceeded to the meadow; and all those who saw him arise and go to do battle with the knight, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... drinking in the scene before him. Then he took a step forward which brought him perilously near the edge of the steep rock. His lips moved though no sound could be heard for the tumult of the falls which was rending the air. What connection had such a man with his surroundings? No boor or clown was he, for the simple dignity of face and manner marked him as one of ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... of satire stole into Rutli's light eyes. "My sweetheart, ven I vos dinks det, is der miller engaged do bromply! It is mooch better dan to a man dot vos boor and plint and grazy! So! Vell, der next day I pids dem goot-py, und from der door I say, 'I am det now; but ven I next comes pack alife, I shall dis village py! der lants, der houses all togedders. And den ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... the character of its successive masters, from the Hebrew merchant who had re-edified its walls after the sack of the town, and past the mysterious engraver of the runes, down to the long-headed, dirty-handed boor from whom he had himself acquired it at a ruinous expense. As for any alarm about its security, the idea had never presented itself. What had stood four centuries might well endure a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Tirai hat on the table, and seeing no other, sat in the Bombay chair; looked about him; idly examined the brand on the box of cigars and smiled. "Makes himself mighty comfortable," he remarked to himself. "Pity he appears such a boor." He glanced at the book on the armchair. Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie von Prof. Dr. Paul Deussen. "And a philosopher, eh!" Having little German he turned away and lighted his pipe. After a while he began to fidget, wondering ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... "What do you mean, Arsenius? I tell you that the fellow was an ignorant upstart, with the bearing of a boor and the voice of a peacock. I tell you also that there are a good many who are as guilty as he among the people, for I heard them with my own ears raise cheers for him when he had sung his ridiculous ode. I have half a mind to burn their ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ward," she began abruptly, in a whisper, "is the rudest, most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to him the other day I thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved abominably—like a boor—like a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor? Because I played a joke on him, is that any reason why he ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... him for a moment, puzzled and a little angry, and he guessed her thoughts. He was behaving like a boor; but it was better that ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... young boor. "Did you not know that? I thought all Europe knew it!" And he added a pantomime of a nature to explain his accusation to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their militia forces in the country was said to be this:—A horseman was quartered in the house of a boor, or husbandman; if the man will work himself and his horse with the boor, to help him in his husbandry, then the boor gives the man and his horse entertainment freely, and hath their work for it, which is more worth than their ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... he said; "think what this means! Think of your family—of your father and mother—of your friends and your future back home. Who are these people? They are nobodies. This man Worth is an ignorant, illiterate, common boor with no breeding, no education—nothing but a certain native cunning that has enabled him to make a little money. We have nothing in common ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... of old Rome, were equally available among ourselves. The conquerors of the world introduced their baths wherever they established their power; but we have repudiated the blessings of water in such a form, and now the Russian boor and the Finnish peasant, the Turk, the Egyptian, the basest of people, and the barbarians of Africa, shame even the inhabitants of England's metropolis; for every where but in our land, though the duty ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... which left nothing else outstanding might quench that craving definitively, or be rational in se. No otherness being left to annoy us, we should sit down at peace. In other words, as the theoretic tranquillity of the boor results from his spinning no further considerations about his chaotic universe, so any datum whatever (provided it were simple, clear, and ultimate) ought to banish puzzle from the universe of the philosopher and confer peace, inasmuch as there would then be for him absolutely ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... that a man of young Cardigan's evident intelligence and advantages could be such a boor, Shirley. However, I, for one, am not surprised. You will recall that I warned you he might be his father's son. The best course to pursue now is to forget that you have ever ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... is a very boor blace for zo famous a bainter. I do not understand it! But I have certainly done goot business ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... artist nor a critic, nor in any way qualified to be a judge of painting as painting; but of genius, who is not a judge? In any art it is recognisable, patent, obvious to all. There is no human clod, no boor who is utterly insensible to its influence. It needs no education to perceive its presence, though the ignorant could not tell you what that presence was. Genius is as the sun itself: as universally perceptible. Even the rustic clown feels the sun hot upon his face. Ask him what sun ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... bad rhymester, with a vice for alliteration; a wilful liar (as, for instance, 'The longest way round is the shortest way home'), a startling miser (as, 'A penny saved is a penny earned'), one ignorant of largesse and human charity (as, 'Waste not, want not'), and a shocking boor in the point of honour (as, 'Hard words break no bones'—he never fought, I see, but with ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... say," continued the unfeeling boor, "the rich Klaus has become the very careful and thrifty. I wonder if the churchwarden means to give him the bell-purse money for ever!"[1] Well, Liar, how gets on the stick trade? Will you soon be able to patch your coat out of your earnings? If you happen now to have a sixpence more than you want, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... coxcomb, and though coarse the boor, Though dulness haunts the rich and pain the poor, In this colossal city, Yet London is not Rome, O Shade!" I said. "A later JUVENAL should not find her dead To ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... this world, with souls o'erladen, be a Hades or an Aidenn? Will man, woman, boy and maiden, be less civilised, or more? That's the question, RAVENSTEIN! What boots a billion, less or more, If Man still is fool or boor? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... that province far away Went plodding home a weary boor: A streak of light before him lay, Fall'n through a half-shut stable door Across his path. He pass'd—for nought Told what was going on within; How keen the stars! his only thought; The air how calm and cold and thin, In the solemn midnight ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... cannot be written. He seemed to take interest and pride in his exhibition; yet when the utter and ludicrous miserability thereof made us laugh, he joined in the joke very readily. When the last picture had been shown, he caused a country boor, who stood gaping beside the machine, to put his head within it, and thrust out his tongue. The head becoming gigantic, a singular effect ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mrs. Blake, sweeping indignantly from the room; "the boy is a perfect boor. I trust he may show more honour to his father than he has ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... extricated him from the consequences of his disasters. His successors did not merely inherit his errors; they exaggerated, they caricatured them. They rode into power on a springtide of all the rampant prejudices and rancorous passions of their time. From the King to the boor their policy was a mere pandering to public ignorance. Impudently usurping the name of that party of which nationality, and therefore universality, is the essence, these pseudo- Tories made Exclusion the principle of their political constitution, and Restriction the genius ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Rokesle, bending toward her, "will you always be thus cruel? Do you not understand that in this world you are the only thing I care for? You think me a boor; perhaps I am,—and yet it rests with you, my Lady, to make me what you will. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell |
