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Know nothing   /noʊ nˈəθɪŋ/   Listen
Know nothing

noun
1.
An ignorant person.  Synonyms: ignoramus, uneducated person.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Know nothing" Quotes from Famous Books



... knowledge. Morally, the discipline of a good school tends directly to form the habits I mentioned above. The pupils are trained to steady industry and perseverance, to scorn dishonest work, and to control temper. The girls who leave school so trained, though they may know nothing of cooking or housekeeping, will become infinitely better cooks and housekeepers, as soon as they have a motive for doing so, than the uneducated woman, who has learned only the technical rules ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... Lady; You know the danger too, and may prevent it, And if you suffer her to perish thus, As she must do, and suddenly, believe it, Unless you stand her friend; you know the way on't, I guess you poorly love her, less your fortune. Let her know nothing, and perform this matter, There are hours ordained for ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... man in black; "they are proud of showing hospitality to people above them, that is, to those who do not want it, but of the hospitality which you were now describing, and which is Arabian, they know nothing. No Englishman will tolerate another in his house, from whom he does not expect advantage of some kind, and to those from whom he does, he can be civil enough. An Englishman thinks that, because ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... to happen— As soon as the rains begin the yellow fever and smallpox will set in and all vessels leaving Cuban ports will be quarantined and the island will be one great plague spot. The insurgents who are in the open fields will live and the soldiers will die for their officers know nothing of sanitation or care nothing. The little Consul has just been here to see me and we have had a long talk and I got back at him. He told me he had seen the Franco-German war as a correspondent of The Tribune and I asked him if ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... Unfortunately, we know nothing concerning Dr. John Hall before his marriage to the poet's elder daughter Susanna on June 5, 1607, he being then thirty-two and she twenty-five. He cannot have been the son of Dr. John Hall, of Maidstone, Kent, whose translation ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... affairs, they are seldom without some grounds: Even in desperate cases, where it is impossible they should have any foundation, they are often affected, to keep a countenance, and make an enemy think we have some resource which they know nothing of. This appears to have been for some months past the condition of those people, whom I am forced, for want of other phrases, to called the ruined party. They have taken up since their fall, some real, and some pretended ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... he was apparently vigorous and well: no thought of anxiety clouded their future. When he died, he believed that he left his wife and children safe, at least, from pecuniary distress. It was not so. I know nothing of the details, but the outcome of all was that nothing was left for the widow and children, save a trifle of ready money. The resolve to which, my mother came was characteristic. Two of her husband's relatives, Western and Sir William Wood, offered to educate her son at a good ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... budget, by a sharp curtailment or even elimination of government functions, I have asked the question: "What present expenditures would you reduce or eliminate?" And the invariable answer has been "that is not my business—I know nothing of the details, but I am sure that it could be done." That is not what you or I would ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... confession, he gave me the slip of paper (written in cipher) which you will find inclosed in this. 'There is my note of the place where the diamonds are hidden,' he said. Among the many ignorant people who know nothing of ciphers, I am one—and I told him so. 'That's how I keep my secret,' he said; 'write from my dictation, and you shall know what it means. Lift me up first.' As I did it, he rolled his head to and fro, evidently in pain. But he managed to point to pen, ink, and paper, on a table hard ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... You will probably be asked by your companions all manner of questions about your home and your parents. Now, with regard to your mother, you know nothing about her beyond, possibly, the fact that she died when you were born; and that is quite as much as I consider it needful for you to know. But you may perhaps be glad to be made acquainted with her personal appearance; you may, possibly, at some future day—if you have not already experienced ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... handsome towards Pitt, nor at all calculated to promote Cleaver's interest; but it would then rest with you, and no inconvenience will certainly have arisen from the delay. From my delivering such a message in the present moment, I know nothing that could arise but a total interruption of all confidence where it is most necessary. To my feelings, nothing could justify such a proceeding but a direct breach of engagement; and, in the present instance, you have received a direct assurance of ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... Behave as if you know nothing either," she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use expecting him! And stay to dinner if you care ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... bought the place. I know nothing about them. They were here for a little while in the summer; but only to turn everything upside down in the house and grounds, and make changes. I cannot imagine what has brought them here, to the country, in the depth of winter. They had ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... separated by fields, and little groves and quaint farm-houses, the battle seems to get quite lost in the scenery. It spreads out into the landscape until it becomes one of the prettiest, quietest scenes that heart could wish. I know nothing so drowsily comfortable as the pictures in this gallery that show the battles of the seventeenth century,—the Grand Monarch's own particular epoch. This is a wide, rolling landscape with here and there little clusters of soldiers to add a touch of colour to the foliage of the woods; there ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... that length, which, rightly or not, shall be thought to be a perfect model of symmetry or consistency of parts, without the aid of writing materials; that, admitting the superior probability of such a thing in a primitive age, we know nothing analogous to such a case; and that it so transcends the common limits of intellectual power, as, at the least, to merit, with as much justice as the opposite opinion, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... a contemptuous mouth. "Oh yes!—because you like him! But you know nothing of him—nothing. How can you like him, not knowing him? He may be a real bad character. How would you like ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... secret, that if the culprit confessed, he would make intercession for her, but that, if she did not, she must take the consequences. Still no confession was made. For the first time, my confident friend looked downcast. "It will not do," he said to me; "the ring can not be recovered: they know nothing about it: probably it was lost. We can not fulfill our engagement; and, indeed, I wish," he added, "that we were ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... which we call Devil; to shew what he IS, and what he IS NOT, where he IS, and where he IS NOT, when he is IN US, and when he IS NOT; for I cannot doubt but that the Devil is really and bona fide in a great many of our honest weak-headed friends, when they themselves know nothing of the matter. ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... shine on I don't know of a worse one than the man who leaves one job before he has gotten another. That has especial reference to my profession, and has no reference whatever to a man seeking a divorce. When he wrote to his cousin for employment, his cousin replied, "I cannot engage you because you know nothing about the ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... people, wee went in all together. I made one of my men pass for Captain of the shipp that I said was lately arrived. Mr Bridgar beleev'd it was so, & all that I thought good to say unto him, endeavoring all along that hee should know nothing of the New England Interloper. Wee shot off severall Musquets in drinking healths, those of the vessell never being concern'd, wherby I judg'd they were careless & stood not well on their gard, & might bee easily surpriz'd. I resolved to vew them. Therefore, ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... at Alcala de Henares and baptised in the church of Santa Maria Mayor on the 9th of October, 1547. Of his boyhood and youth we know nothing, unless it be from the glimpse he gives us in the preface to his "Comedies" of himself as a boy looking on with delight while Lope de Rueda and his company set up their rude plank stage in the plaza and acted the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... comfortably provided for, the Master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a distant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of whom I really know nothing, except that the people under his charge bear all possible tokens of being tended and cared for as sedulously as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter bustling round the hearth ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Attakapa but from all others. Unsatisfactory as the linguistic evidence is, it appears to be safer to class the language provisionally as a distinct family upon the strength of it than to accept Sibley's statement of its identity with Attakapa, especially as we know nothing of the extent of his information or whether indeed his statement was based upon a personal knowledge of ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell

... discover that the thought that he had incurred her anger gave him concern. It could not have been so yesterday. It became so only since he had been vouchsafed this revelation of her true nature. "Bad cess to it now, it serves me right. It seems I know nothing at all of human nature. But how the devil was I to guess that a family that can breed a devil like Colonel Bishop should also breed a ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... fight, they are doubly alien when they reason. They are glib and fluent in the use of the terms which have been devised for the needs of thought and argument, but their use of these terms is empty, and exhibits all the intellectual processes with the intelligence left out. I know nothing more distressing than the attempt to follow any German argument concerning the War. If it were merely wrong-headed, cunning, deceitful, there might still be some compensation in its cleverness. There is no such compensation. The statements made are not ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... from where she stooped before the open ice-box door, "Paul, if there is anything in the world I know nothing about, it is pigs. I haven't the slightest idea what to do." She shut the heavy door with a bang more energetic than was necessary to latch it, and came back towards the stove with a raw, red piece of uncooked meat on ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... partake largely of the joys of life, but never to be burdened with its cares. Vain philosophy! The very hardships of the poorest laborer, whose whole existence seems one long toil, has something preferable to my best pleasures. Merely skimming the surface of life, I know nothing by my own experience of its deep and warm realities, ... so that few mortals, even the humblest and weakest, have been such ineffectual shadows in the world, or die so utterly as I must. Even a young man's bliss has not been mine. With a thousand vagrant fantasies, I have never truly loved, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... kind of him. Your uncle is a strange man; but his greatest weakness is his regard for you. It is best you should know nothing of your father; but if you wish ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... and Namur," Norgate replied, "and Antwerp. I know nothing more about it than I gathered from an article which I read not long ago in a magazine. I had always looked upon Belgium as being outside the pale of possible warfare, yet according to this article it seems to be bristling to the ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... no new idea with him, for he had spent much time and labor in figuring it all out to a fraction, barring hazards of which they could of course know nothing until ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... superb drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor, we should know nothing at all of many a portrait Holbein painted—all among the immediate friends of More and Erasmus on this first visit to England; nor, for that matter, of many a portrait painted in later years. And how little these can be trusted to tell the whole tale of achievement is shown by the ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... Captain Newport had speech with Master Ratcliffe, and while I know nothing for a certainty, there is in my mind a strong belief that he brought word from the London Company for such an election to be made. At all events, it is done, and now we shall see Jamestown increase in size, even as she would have done from the first month we landed here had Captain ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis

... death. Many other things there be, like vnto these, which they take for heinous offences. But to slay men, to inuade the dominions of other people, and to rifle their goods, to transgresse the commaundements and prohibitions of God, are with them no offences at all. They know nothing concerning eternall life, and euerlasting damnation, and yet they thinke, that after death they shall liue in another world, that they shall multiply their cattell, that they shal eate and drinke and doe other things which liuing men performe here vpon earth. [Sidenote: The Tartars ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... drew rein, and stood amazed at the figure and words of Don Quixote, to whom they replied: "Sir knight, we are neither monstrous nor wicked, but two religious men, Benedictines, travelling about our business, and we know nothing about this coach or ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... I cannot believe it of you.—All idle refinement!—Women may be as comfortable on board, as in the best house in England. I believe I have lived as much on board as most women, and I know nothing superior to the accommodations of a man-of-war. I declare I have not a comfort or an indulgence about me, even at Kellynch Hall," (with a kind bow to Anne), "beyond what I always had in most of the ships I have lived in; and they have ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... by Francis Bowen, in Jared Sparks's "American Biography" in which the orator is represented, in speaking of the bad literary taste prevalent among the boys of the time, as saying, "These lads are very fond of talking about poetry and repeating passages of it. The poets they quote I know nothing of; but do you take care, James, [Otis was addressing James Perkins, Esq., of Boston] that you don't give in to this folly. If you want to read poetry, read Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden and Pope and throw all the rest into the fire; these are all that are worth reading." ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... correspondence, for the benefit of his daughter. Of his childhood; of his school-days; of his life at Cambridge, and in his Yorkshire vicarage; of his whole history, in fact, up to the age of forty-six, we know nothing more than he has there jotted down. He attained that age in the year 1759; and at this date begins that series of his Letters, from which, for those who have the patience to sort them out of the chronological confusion in which his ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... was long believed that the author of one of Goldsmith's early works was Lord Lyttelton. '"Whenever I write anything," said Goldsmith, "I think the public make a point to know nothing about it." So the present book was issued as a History of England in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son. The persuasion at last became general that the author was Lord Lyttelton, and the name of that grave good lord is occasionally still seen affixed to it on the bookstalls.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... "I know nothing about that," he returned, a trifle more civilly than he had spoken. "I have naught to do with the Duke of Mayenne. If he is friends with your master, M. de Mar may not stay behind bars very long. But I have the governor's ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... not yet classified, said to be peculiar to the Peninsula, which inflicts so severe a wound as to make a strong man utter a cry of agony. But of all the pests the mosquitoes are the worst. A resident may spend some time in the country and know nothing from experience of scorpions, centipedes, land-leeches, and soldier ants, but he cannot escape from the mosquito, the curse of these well-watered tropic regions. In addition to the night mosquito, there is a striped variety of large size, known as the "tiger mosquito," ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... letter of the count's, in which he spoke of his design, she swore upon her thirteen years that he must carry her off too. I was far from conceding any such claim. It was always taken for granted that children know nothing; but at the opera, and in love, there are no children. The Count de Melun, by means of a bribe, had gained over the chambermaid. I was very culpable; I knew all, and had not informed my father. But my father wearied me somewhat; he preached ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... supposes memory which is fallible. All our anticipations assume the 'uniformity of nature,' which cannot be proved. And, finally, all our anticipations also neglect the possibility that new forces of which we know nothing may come into play. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... dear editor, to obtain clever, smart writers, who know nothing about Socialists and Internationalists, who therefore will not commit Le Sens Commun by advocating the doctrines of those idiots, but who will flatter the vanity of the canaille—vaguely; write any stuff they please about the renown of Paris, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... well,' said Bagheera, under his whiskers; 'for the time comes when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I know nothing of man.' ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... in Fu-nan considerably before 265 A.D. and that some time between 220 and 280 a king of Fu-nan sent an embassy to India. The name Fu-nan may include Champa. But though we hear of Hindu kingdoms in these districts at an early date we know nothing of their civilization or history, nor do we obtain much information from those Cham legends which represent the dynasties of Champa as descended from two clans, those of the cabbage ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... kill themselves," he said. "They would rather kill themselves in the old treadmill than stop and try to kill time. They have forgotten how to rest. They know nothing but to keep ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... without in the form of companions who sneer at his desire for improvement, controvert the statements made to him, and throw temptation in his way, his chance of cure must be enormously decreased. Of such cases I know nothing; for my experience lies solely among boys who have, outside their own hearts, little to hinder and very much to help. As I have dealt elsewhere with the question of aids to chastity, I will make only a brief reference to ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... "I know nothing about it, except what I have read. They say that the country is healthy; but it stands to reason that this cannot be so while you have got rivers with swamps and jungles and such heat as this. However, we have a good supply ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... responsibility for what has been done should rest with me, I have avoided saying anything about the book while it was in progress to any of Mr Tylor's family or representatives. They know nothing, therefore, of its contents, and if they did, would probably feel with myself very uncertain how far it is right to use Mr. Tylor's name in connection with it. I can only trust that, on the whole, they may think I have done most ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... Vanbrugh are bad enough. Those of Smollett are perhaps worse. But they do not approach to the Celadons, the Wildbloods, the Woodalls, and the Rhodophils of Dryden. The vices of these last are set off by a certain fierce hard impudence, to which we know nothing comparable. Their love is the appetite of beasts; their friendship the confederacy of knaves. The ladies seem to have been expressly created to form helps meet for such gentlemen. In deceiving and insulting their old fathers they do not perhaps exceed ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... not you who will criticise ours," he answered. "By your own confession, you know nothing whatever of architecture and sculpture, and when people know nothing they should either keep silence or ask for information in the best quarter. You have my authority for saying that the architects and sculptors of Berlin would have been better ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... him; and it's the block for us all, all save Gaston and Conde and Beaufort. Ah, Madame, Madame, loveliest in all France, 'twas your beautiful eyes. For the joy of looking into them, I have soiled a fresh quill, tumbled into a pit, played the fool! And a silver crown against a golden louis, you know nothing about politics or intrigue, nor that that old fool of a husband is making a decoy of your beauty. But my head cleared this morning. That paper must be mine. First, because it is a guaranty for my head, and second, because it is likely to fatten my purse. It will be simple to erase ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... that others may mature and carry out, and to lead young men, just commencing the business of planting, to look about and see if they may not make some improvements upon what they behold around them. This will not fail of being interesting to Northern men, most of whom know nothing of the cotton-plant, or the modes of its cultivation. It is interesting, too, that some of the most essential points are in perfect accordance with the great principles of soil culture throughout ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... senor! We have this place, and the things—but of the money I know nothing. My wife ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... righteousness. These however are terms far too feeble to express the affection towards it, which the believer feels. He prefers it to his chief joy; glories in it as all his salvation and all his desire, and determines to know nothing else. Divinely precious and infinitely perfect as it is, there is no part of it with which he can dispense. Less than this cannot reach his wretched case, nor impart the blessings that he wants. His polluted and never-dying soul needs it all: and, therefore, ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... (sharply). Pardon me—not quite so fast! You say you know nothing about the matter in dispute, and yet ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various

... said Lilias, sadly. And after a moment she added, "Last night the sound of her voice wakened me. She was praying for him; and it minded me of the 'groanings that cannot be uttered.' I am afraid Aunt Janet has troubles we know nothing about." ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson

... 1848.—My health is much revived by the spring here, as gloriously beautiful as the winter was dreary. We know nothing of spring in our country. Here the soft and brilliant weather is unbroken, except now and then by a copious shower, which keeps everything fresh. The trees, the flowers, the bird-songs are in perfection. I have enjoyed ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... life curious and valuable: but if you suffer from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you deserve to be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... of the modern novel. I champion Mr. Howells. Are you reading his story in the Century? I like it because it isn't like anybody else; and Mr. Cable, too, you should read, and Henry James and Miss Jewett; they're all of this modern school, that most Western people know nothing about. The West is so afraid of its own judgments. My friends go about praising the classics because they know it's safe to do so, I suppose, while I am an image breaker to them. Mr. Howells says the idea ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... York. They are coming to me from Vevay. Father, mother, and two daughters; and I believe a boy too. They will know nothing except farmwork, when they come; but they do make ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner

... to pack Dr. Jeffreys there into this wineglass. Only two facts remain written on my heart. The first is that there is trouble ahead of me, curious and unusual trouble; and the second, that permanently, continually, I, or a part of me, have something to do with Africa, a country of which I know nothing except from a few very dull books. Also, by the way—this is a new thought—that I have a great deal to do with you. That is why I am so interested in Africa and you. Tell me about Africa and yourself now, while we ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... tell, I cannot tell,' said the young girl with an expression of discouragement. 'I know nothing about it. I have searched everywhere, but I have never been able to find the least sign of that lovely clearing. It is not amongst the roses, nor the lilies, nor ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... The general opinion is, that its date is not later than the middle of the second century, and that it cannot be placed earlier than some twenty or thirty years or so before. In point of style, both as respects thought and expression, a very low place must be assigned it. We know nothing certain of the region in which the author lived, or where the first readers were to be found" ("Apostolic Fathers," pp. 99, 100). The Epistle is not ascribed to Barnabas at all until the close of the second century. Eusebius ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... arrival, when I was explaining these things to a listening circle seated on benches in the grassy street, one of the audience, a considerable tradesman, a Mameluco native of Ega, got suddenly quite enthusiastic, and exclaimed, "How rich are these great nations of Europe! We half-civilised creatures know nothing. Let us treat this stranger well, that he may stay amongst us and teach our children." We very frequently had social parties, with dancing and so forth; of these relaxations I shall have more to say presently. The manners of the Indian population also gave me some amusement for a long time. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... from the policy which the Government has pursued? Now, if the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton is right in saying that Turkey is a growing power, and that she has elements of strength which unlearned persons like myself know nothing about; surely no immediate, or sensible, or permanent mischief could have arisen to her from the acceptance of the Vienna note, which all the distinguished persons who agreed to it have declared to be perfectly consistent with her honour and independence. If ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... conveys to me that they opine I am merely cabbing it to the station en route for a "suburban hop." But I bear up under it all, and think of the magnificent banquet of which they, poor things, know nothing, and I am beginning to feel quite proud when a brute of a fellow in charge of a van catches his wheel in that of my cab and nearly pitches me out. I hurriedly decide to decline the next invitation I receive ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... mate!" said the Salmon to the Clam; "You are not wise, but I am. I know the sea and stream as well; You know nothing but your shell." Said the Clam, "I'm slow of motion, But my love is all devotion, And I joy to have my mate traverse lake and stream and ocean!" They wed, and cried, "Ah, this is Love, my own!" And the Clam ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... "You know nothing—nothing but what I have told you; and what I have told you is the truth. What I have not told you is mine to keep. You love me too well to probe it any further, I am sorry for the captain. He has an iron will and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... sir. He's in that state that when he wakes up he'll know nothing about what has taken place. It's you that ought to have the drink, to steady your hand for ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... seeing this they came to a small but deep and rapid river, which for a time checked their progress, for there was no ford, and the porters who carried Verkimier's packages seemed to know nothing about a bridge, either natural or artificial. After wandering for an hour or so along its banks, however, they found a giant tree which had fallen across the stream, ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... expenses incurred on her behalf. Mr. Nowell would in all probability appear in good time to relieve me from the responsibility, but in the mean while that poor soul upstairs was not to be distressed. I begged that she might know nothing of this ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... were over, Siegfried had slipped back to the ship and hidden his Cloak of Darkness. Then boldly he came back to the great hall, and pretending to know nothing of the games begged to be told who had been the victor, if indeed they ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor

... will be heard of again. A profane set, these, lodging in the CLEMENTINUM [vast Jesuit Edifice, which had been cleared out for them, and "the windows filled with dung outside," against balls]: there, with wines of fine vintage, and cookeries plentiful and exquisite, that know nothing of famine outside, they led an idle disorderly life,—ran races in the long corridors [not so bad a course], dressed themselves in Priests' vestures [which are abundant in such locality], and made travesties and mummeries of Holy ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... It was a significant glance, and said as plainly as so many words: "What do you think of it? You said there was no motive, and, provided Carboys fell heir to something of which we know nothing as yet, here are two! If that will was destroyed, one man would, as heir-at-law, inherit; ditto the other man if it was not destroyed and not invalidated by marriage. And here's the 'one' man singing the ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... duties of hospitality seriously to heart. But Rachel, charming, even when provoking, knew how to manage her adopted mother. There were whispered discussions between them, of which I, lying with closed eyes, was supposed to know nothing, and then Rachel would steal her graceful arm round Mrs. Hill's portly waist, and kiss her, and put her out of the room. Mrs. Hill was very good to me, and scrupulously left her poodle dog on the mat outside the door when she came to visit me; ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland

... must die, if he has not faith in another righteousness than that which is of the law, called his own: I say, he must die, if he has none other righteousness than that which is his own by the law. Thus also Paul confesses of himself: "I (saith he) know nothing by myself," either before conversion or after; that is, I knew not that I did any thing before conversion, either against the law, or against my conscience; for I was then, touching the righteousness which is of the law, blameless. Also, since my conversion, ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... Children know nothing of social caste. Caste is a disease of grown-ups. It is caused by uric acid in the ego. Children meet as equals—they respond naturally without so much as a thought as to whether they ought to love one another ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... know nothing about her Majesty's eminence in policy or philosophy: I don't pretend to understand such things. I speak as a practical man. And I never knew that foreigners had any policy: I always thought that policy was ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw

... impossible; and that he now thought it best to go with five or six regiments to the aid of Abercromby. He asked Wolfe to continue to communicate his views to him, and would not hear for a moment of his leaving the army; adding, "I know nothing that can tend more to His Majesty's service than your assisting in it." Wolfe again wrote to his commander, with whom he was on terms of friendship: "An offensive, daring kind of war will awe the Indians and ruin the French. Blockhouses and a trembling defensive ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... said, gently, "I know no more of the outcome than you do. I know nothing more concerning our future than do you—excepting, only, that we shall journey toward it together, and through it to the end, accomplishing the destiny which links us each to the other.... I know no ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... burghers were on the point of capitulating. The Yankees were put to the rout, with signal confusion, and have never since dared to show their faces in the place. The good people continue to cultivate their cabbages, and rear their oysters; they know nothing of banks, nor joint stock companies, but treasure up their money in stocking-feet, at the bottom of the family chest, or bury it in iron pots, as did their fathers ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... not proclaimed in this quarter of the town, and therefore you could know nothing of it, that the sultan's daughter was yesterday to go to the baths. I heard this as I walked about the town, and an order was issued that all the shops should be shut up in her way thither, and everybody keep ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... that that life would suit me better than any other. I'm fond of the country and a quiet life, and I don't like cities; but, then, I know nothing about farming, and I doubt whether I should succeed without being educated to it to some ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... to be of service to you," said Christine. "But I know nothing. I go out less and less. As for this notice, I smile at it. I have a friend upon whom I can count for everything. I have only to tell him, and he will put me among my own furniture at once. He has indeed already suggested it. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... store for you than you imagine! If you tell your secret now, they intend to prevent your telling it to any one else afterward! And unless you tell they intend to take terrible steps to compel you! As for me—they have discovered that after all I know nothing, and am of no further use to them! They have not said so, but it is very clear to me how the land lies. Professor Schillingschen is drunk to-night; he came home with his car and mouth bleeding, and has plied the whisky bottle freely ever since until he fell asleep an ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... tremulous advances to the teeth. "How pleasant to be a dog!" thought Mr. Lavender, "and know nothing of Germans and teeth. I shall be very unhappy till this is out; but Aurora recommended me, and I must not complain, but rather consider myself the most fortunate of public men." And, ruffling his hair till it stood up all over his head, while his loose eyebrow worked up and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... deliberately slandered me, which tales were repeated by others who knew nothing about the affair. The fact is that when I heard of the episode I immediately possessed myself of documents proving that not only did I know nothing whatever about the matter, but could not ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... they ought not to do, they always did. And I want to say something further. They never gave me any information, bad or good, about the state of the country. From first to last I never saw one single confidential Government report from the police or from any other source. I know nothing whatever ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... know nothing. I don't mean to tell nothing, anyway, so if you'll promise to be good I'll ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... that they have reason to believe that it is written by, this and that author, whose name is already well known to fame. It may be so, but I did not credit it a bit the more because thus assured of it. In most cases the people who go about dropping hints of how much they know on such subjects, know nothing earthly about the matter; but still the premises (as lawyers would say) make it be felt that the book is a serious one to meddle with. Not that in treating such a volume, plainly containing the careful and deliberate views and reflections of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... such efforts become 'flat and unprofitable;' for nothing is easier than to put words together in a form which conveys no meaning to the reader. It is a cheap kind of wit, asinine rather than attic, and can be exercised as well by those who know nothing of the subject as by those best acquainted with it. Indeed, it is greatly to be doubted whether one in a hundred of these witty persons know any thing of the matter; for if they possess sense enough to make them worthy of being ranked among reasonable men, it could be proved to them ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... Tatler I know nothing of, only they say the Dutchess of Montague has lately lost a bitch she call'd fidel, and has had it cry'd."—(Peter Wentworth to Lord ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... food and clothing. The wants of their minds are to him pressing realities, as much as are the wants of their bodies. Not so with the ignorant and debased neighbors, who live within stone's throw of his dwelling. They, from their own experience, know nothing better, and are quite content, both for themselves and their children, to live on in the debased condition in which we see them. If these wretched creatures are ever moved to seek a higher style of living and being, the movement must originate outside of themselves. It is a case ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... contemptuously incredulous; but the negro's advocacy gave a kind of courage to Aurelia, and availing herself of a slight relaxation of the fingers she withdrew her hand, and coming forward, said, "Indeed, madam, I know nothing, I was entirely deceived. Only hearing two voices in the dark alarmed me, so that I listened to my sister, and struck a light to discover the truth. Then all caught fire, and ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... western. Declare all below that line unknown. Hitherto, we have only been doing the work of destruction; but now scatter emblems of hippogriffs and anthropophagi on the outskirts of what is left in the map, obeying a maxim, not confined to the ancient geographers only—where you know nothing, place terrors. Looking at the map thus completed, we can hardly help thinking to ourselves, with a smile, what a small space, comparatively speaking, the known history of the world has been transacted in, up to the last four hundred years. The idea ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... be a God of whom I can know nothing, then he is not my God, the God of the Bible. For he is the God who has said of old, "They shall not teach each man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least unto the greatest." He is the God, who, through Jesus Christ our Lord, ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... "Weep not, mama," she said; "the teacher has gone on an errand of compassion to my poor perishing countrymen. They have never heard of the true God, and the love of his Son Jesus Christ, who died upon he cross to save sinners. They know nothing of the true religion, mama; and when they die they cannot go to the golden country of the blessed. God will take care of the teacher; do not weep, mama." Blessed faith in an omnipresent Heavenly Father! It gives even the unlettered Karen disciple, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... (fig. 34) shews the writing-rooms or scriptoria, apparently six in number, eastward of the church; and the bird's-eye view (fig. 33) the library built over them. Unfortunately we know nothing of the date of its construction. It occupied the greater part of the north side of a cloister called "petit cloitre" or Farmery Cloister, from the large building on the east side originally built as a Farmery (fig. 33, B). It was approached by ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... in retaliation. There was a story afloat that Kilpatrick made him get out of those fine boots, but restored them because none of his own officers had feet delicate enough to wear them. Of course, I know nothing of this personally, and have never seen Rhett since that night by the cooper-shop; and suppose that he is the editor who recently fought ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... rain was beating wildly on the casement, when the boy came back. "My lord hath given orders for the horses to be saddled," he said, "and the trysting-place is Woodhouselee. I heard one squire tell another in the hall, for as a rule we pages know nothing, and are only expected to do as we are bid. I know not if my lord means thee to ride with him, but I was ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... think I know nothing about navigation, do you?" exclaimed the man. "I'll soon show you what I know, and as this cabin is mine, unless you can keep civil tongues in your heads, out you shall go and ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... given myself up that the innocent men you have seized upon may be released," Max interposed. "They know nothing of it. I am ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... while slowly walking along, he now stopped as these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought sprang forth from these, a new thought, which was: "That I know nothing about myself, that Siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to me, stems from one cause, a single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to to dissect my self and peel off all ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse

... The law don't let children work lessen they're twelve, and only then if their mother is a widow and 'ain't got nothing and nobody to do for her. I don't like to tell a story if I can help it, and them what don't know nothing 'bout how things is can't understand, and say we oughtn't to do it. They'd do it, too, ifen they had to. After his father died I had to take Jimmy out of school and put him to work. There wasn't ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... throughout the Empire, and even when convinced, he was for buying the treasure and saying nothing about it to the Governor. It was not likely he would come in person to the Elsey, he argued, and, unless told, would know nothing about it. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... we should be very careful how we reject new truths, especially when they come from one of our number educated in our own medical schools, studied under our own masters. If the subject is one about which we know nothing, we had better say so when asked our opinion, and we should receive with respect what is respectfully offered by a man whom we know to be honest, a hard worker, eminent in his department by long and tedious labors. If he asks us to look over his evidence, do so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... marched, eating as they went food brought them by the peasants. In less than ten days they had gone two hundred miles, and entered the camp of Livius by night, so that the Carthaginian general might know nothing of their arrival. Next morning Nero insisted, against the opinion of the other generals, that battle should be given immediately, as he must return and meet Hannibal at once. In vain they protested that his troops were too tired ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... magnetism may be expressed by saying that the space within and around the whole earth is filled by lines of magnetic force, which we know nothing about until we suspend a magnet so perfectly balanced that it may point in any direction whatever. Then it turns and points in the direction of the lines of force, which may thus be mapped out for all ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... the mere assertion of William, and the authority of Normans who could know nothing of the truth of the matter, while they had every interest to misrepresent the facts—we have the positive assurances of the best possible authorities. The Saxon Chronicle (worth all the other ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... no idea," replied the doctor soothingly, "what poor mothers are obliged to let happen to their children. But don't believe that it causes them less pain than others. You see how many suffer that we know nothing about, ...
— Toni, the Little Woodcarver • Johanna Spyri

... female performer in Europe, though only twelve years old, and ... the high and mighty Wolfgang, though only eight, possesses the acquirements of a man of forty. In short, those only who see and hear can believe; and even you in Salzburg know nothing about him, he ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... our faculties of knowledge;" and then proceeds to show that the author did not hold the doctrine which these phrases "seem to convey in the only substantial meaning capable of being attached to them;" namely, "that we know nothing of objects except their existence, and the impressions produced by them upon the human mind." Having thus quietly assumed that "things in themselves" are identical with "objects," and "relations" with "impressions ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... "Oh, ho, you know nothing at all about what has been going on?" replied a fairly old man who called himself Colonel Ostrovsky. "In Urianhai an order has been issued from the Military Commissioner to mobilize all men over twenty-eight years of age and everywhere toward the town of Belotzarsk ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... thing, Jones, will be for us to assume we know nothing, to begin with, and start at the beginning. We shall easily get over the ground then, and it will be all the better to be sure of our footing. Let us take ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... for the engineering Hector and Achilles. Out of these two opinions, of necessity, must the five respectable members on the bench form their judgment; for of themselves they know nothing, having been purposely selected on account of their superior ignorance. Cross-examination makes the matter still worse. A cantankerous waspish counsel, with the voice of an exasperated cockatoo, endeavours to make the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... but he has strict notions. Had he learned my slip the other day he would have discharged me, perhaps had me arrested. Now, thanks to your prompt kindness, he knows and will know nothing of it." ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... it!" retorted Mr. Jack Smith of Liverpool, his boyish face flushing again, and as he spoke he disengaged the trinket from its neighbours, and jerked it pettishly overboard, "I know nothing of your Shaws or ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... "I know nothing more than yourself, dear Passerose," said Ourson. "I saw this little child asleep in the wood all alone. She awoke and began to weep. Suddenly she saw me and cried out in terror. I spoke to her and began to approach her; but she screamed again ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur



Words linked to "Know nothing" :   nonreader, illiterate person, aliterate person, illiterate, unskilled person, aliterate



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