"Ignorance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the colored people could be induced to credit the idle stories circulated of a promised land, where their wants would be supplied, and their independence secured, without exertion on their part. It was going to the extent of ignorance and credulity to credit them; and yet evidences of an undoubted character was furnished your committee as to this matter. It is one of the factors in a movement the end of which we cannot now forecaste. There are in the State ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... whereabouts. Attention was unimpaired. He reacted well to the intellectual tests, with the exception of the arithmetical problems, which he did poorly. Replies to ethical questions showed a rather low grade of morality, perhaps due somewhat to ignorance more than to anything else. In his conduct on the ward he was absolutely normal following June 17. He spent his time reading and in conversation with the other patients. He was perfectly satisfied in his surroundings, frank in his conversation with those about ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... suffered and may in the future. But medical experts—" he laid especial stress on the word—"are much more alive to the danger of mistake than formerly. This was a case where the danger was not considered, either through carelessness, ignorance, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South; and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... an ugly temper; and yet she had magnanimous traits too. These contradictions, which in his reverie he felt rather than formulated, made him smile, as he stood on his balcony bathed by the morning air and sunlight, in fresh, strong ignorance of the whole mystery of women's nerves. These caprices even charmed him. He reflected that he had gone on doing the Vervains one favor after another in spite of Florida's childish petulancies; and he resolved that he would ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... breathed though it was by tender lips, and launched in ignorance of the barb which carried it to his heart, Mr. Sutherland recoiled and cast an anxious look upon the door. Then with forced composure he quietly said: "If you who are so much nearer his age, and, let me hope, his sympathy, do not ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... Potter's Field taking tithe of our city life, ten per cent each year for the trench, truly the Lost Tenth of the slum. Our country had grown great and rich; through our ports was poured food for the millions of Europe. But in the back streets multitudes huddled in ignorance and want. The foreign oppressor had been vanquished, the fetters stricken from the black man at home; but his white brother, in his bitter plight, sent up a cry of distress that had in it a distinct note of ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... a deeper note and annoyed him with its uncertainties she had spared him awkwardness by making him feel the transition a casual natural thing, instead of a personal and characteristic weakness. She had loved every stage of innocence and ignorance and adorable silliness he had passed through and he had grown closer to her through the medium of each, because nothing in life was so clear as her lovely wiseness and fine perceptive entirety of ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... obviously, was put in such a manner that it provided the answer in advance. Besides, had the people been allowed to reply in all liberty, their response was in any case not of much value since France was scarcely more competent than I was; the combined ignorance of ten millions is not the equivalent of one man's wisdom. A people may be consulted and, in an extreme case, may declare what form of government it would like best, but not that which it most needs. Nothing but experience can determine this; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Examine it carefully with hand-lens and microscope, and then prophesy what warmth and light will bring forth. "Watch the unfolding life of plant and animal, and then come from your planet-yearning back to earth, with a humbleness born of a realisation of our vast ignorance of the commonest things ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... asked many questions concerning the physician who had once taught school at Azalia; and the conversation of the two ladies finally took a range that covered all New England, and, finally, the South. Each was surprised at the remarkable ignorance of the other; but their ignorance covered different fields, so that they had merely to exchange facts and information and experiences in order to entertain each other. They touched on the war delicately, though Miss Tewksbury had never ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... often appear between the phylogenetic "trees" of various writers have cast an undue discredit upon the science and have led many zoologists to ignore palaeontology altogether as unworthy of serious attention. One principal cause of these discrepant and often contradictory results is our ignorance concerning the exact modes of developmental change. What one writer postulates as almost axiomatic, another will reject as impossible and absurd. Few will be found to agree as to how far a given resemblance is offset ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... heaven swings above earth. But how long, gentle Master, shall such as this be declared thy Father's ways? How long shall superstition and idolatry retain the power to fetter the souls of men? Is there no end to the black curse of ignorance of Truth, which, after untold centuries, still makes men sink with vain toil and consume with disease? And—are those who sit about Peter's gorgeous tomb and approve these things unerring guides to a right knowledge of God, to know whom, the Christ ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... generation that no longer wished to be the anvil, but to wield the hammer. Two men came to the front, King William I. and the hero of the Saxon forest. Resolutely they united the forces of the nation, which at first opposed them from ignorance, and broke down the selfishness and dogmatic positivism of the popular representatives. A victorious campaign settled matters with Austria, who did not willingly cede the supremacy in Germany, and left the German Imperial confederation without forfeiting her place as ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... compendious and the most concise, and is substantially copied in the Second and Third Amendments of the Federal Constitution. Modern legislation on the subject has found little to improve, although, with the ignorance of constitutional history too often found in modern statutes, we do find State laws which recognize martial law as a really existent domain of English and American jurisprudence. As our greatest jurists have often enough declared: "martial law" is nothing ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... has been made and here is the conclusion, twice proved. Full-grown Cats can find their way home, in spite of the distance and their complete ignorance of the intervening ground. They have, in their own fashion, the instinct of my Mason-bees. A second point remains to be cleared up, that of the swinging motion in the bag. Are they thrown out of their latitude by this stratagem, are or they not? I was thinking ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the other hand, he thirsted to know what had passed between the advocate and the count. His ignorance on this single point aroused his curiosity. However, as he could not withdraw he resolved to keep close watch upon his language and remain constantly on ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... twilight; and long before the week was at an end, we had vowed eternal vows, and sworn everlasting constancy. We had not, to be sure, discovered any great powers of mind in our enslaver; but how interesting is even ignorance, when it comes from such a beautiful and smiling mouth! We had already formed happy plans of moulding her unformed opinions, and directing and sharing all her studies. The little slips which were observable in her grammar, we attributed to want of care; and the accent, which was very powerful, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... considerable in Germany, and the resort of all the people of quality, as well as of the merchants. This is also a fortified town, but I avoid ever mentioning fortifications, being sensible that I know not how to speak of them. I am the more easy Under my ignorance, when I reflect that I am sure you'll willingly forgive the omission; for if I made you the most exact description of all the ravelins and bastions I see in my travels, I dare swear you would ask me, What is a ravelin? and, What ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... the fierce outburst of nature. Perhaps she did not understand, or appreciate, it, for she had never seen anything like it before, and in this case ignorance might have been akin ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... ex-convict,—the unfortunate past, calling aloud upon the future, the emancipating future! that is what that stranger was, that is what he did on that platform! At his word, which at certain moments was as the thunder, prejudices, fictions, abuses, superstitions, fallacies, intolerance, ignorance, fiscal infamies, barbarous punishments, outworn authorities, worm-eaten magistracy, discrepit codes, rotten laws, everything that was doomed to perish, trembled, and the downfall of those things ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... for this attention from myself and Mrs. Motley. We were at that time hunting up children for the Sabbath school; and in our charitable work were not unwilling to visit the most degraded. We told Graffam and his wife so; and told them, moreover, that we were desirous to rescue their children from ignorance and infamy. I had a bundle of clothes for the children, which I offered to Mrs. Graffam, on condition that she would keep them clean; never allowing them to be worn in their own dirty hut, but saved expressly for ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she was even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in ignorance of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to the frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... and ruin, and beyond the reach of vulgar creditors, one of whom, by the way, she knew to be her own excellent husband. The Princess was probably not aware of that fact, for she had always lived in sublime ignorance of everything connected with money, even since her husband's death; and when good Pompeo Sassi tried to explain things, telling her that she was quite ruined, she never listened to what he said. If the family had debts, why did he ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the ignorance of this music among piano teachers and students is a crying shame. What modern piano sonata have we to-day, to compare with his? I know of none. And the songs—are they not wonderful! I love the man and his music so much that I am doing what lies in my power ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... with animation, "I meant not to be illiberal; but I will not because I cannot see a man's motives for active interference in the affairs of others, always be ready, merely on account of such ignorance, to jump to a conclusion that they must ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... nobles kept in their castles a host of servants. These were slaves, subject to the caprices of their master. Russian women were kept in seclusion. There was an Asiatic stamp imprinted on civil and social life. "Thanks to the general ignorance, there was no intellectual life in Russia: thanks to the seclusion of women, there was no society." By degrees intercourse with Western Europe was destined to soften, in some particulars, the harsh outlines ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that those who have found, or think that they have found, an inimical design in any pleasantries in which I may have indulged while describing the customs and manners of by-gone days—have betrayed a thin-skinnedness, and an ignorance of the true glory of Connecticut history, when they imagine that her fair fame can be seriously tarnished by the fly-specks of certain customs—at no time without their vigorous opponents—and long since rendered obsolete by the ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... statements made here touching these things, may pronounce the following judgment: "It is astounding that such statements should be possible in our time. The most elementary conceptions of natural science are distorted in such a manner as to denote positively inconceivable ignorance of even the rudiments of science. The author uses such terms, for instance, as 'heat' in a way that would lead one to infer that he had let the entire wave of modern thought on the subject of physics ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... athlete, a picker up of pence from the chinks in the pavement, and Dea would perhaps not have had bread every day. It was with deep and tender pride that he felt himself the protector of the helpless and heavenly creature. Night, solitude, nakedness, weakness, ignorance, hunger, and thirst—seven yawning jaws of misery—were raised around her, and he was the St. George fighting the dragon. He triumphed over poverty. How? By his deformity. By his deformity he was useful, helpful, victorious, great. He had but ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the name of any particular religion are unscientific and inaccurate and not much more reasonable than Aladdin and his wonderful lamp, or Jack and the Beanstalk. They pre-suppose an amount of childlike credulity and ignorance on the part of the worshipper, which can only be explained to his mind by the primitive state of the people for whom they were ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... would have called them, meet daily and talk great nonsense and do nothing; which does not prove their principles to be good, while it demonstrates their intellect to be contemptible. No offence to the Signor Conte del Ferice, but I think ignorance has marked his little party for its own, and inanity waits on all his councils. If they believe in half the absurdities they utter, why do they not pack up their goods and chattels and cross the frontier? If they meant ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... importance of exposure to new conditions for several generations is insisted on in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 7, also p. 131. In the latter passage the author guards himself against the assumption that variations are "due to chance," and speaks of "our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation." These statements are not always ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... the hidden leaders made their appearance and were immediately seized and haled to the square, where the work of execution was resumed. Six or eight of these were beheaded, many were hung, and the servants of the slaughtered lords, who happened to come to the town in ignorance of the frightful work, were dragged from their horses and, booted and spurred as they had come, were haled ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... Mr. Eden sat down and examined the little boys and girls. When he sat down Susan winced. How angry he will be at their ignorance! thought Susan. But Mr. Eden, instead of putting on an awful look, and impressing on the children that a being of another generation was about to attack them, made himself young to meet their minds. A pleasant smile disarmed their fears. He spoke to them in very simple ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... like to those, The shepherds, who first heard in Bethlehem's field That song: till ceas'd the trembling, and the song Was ended: then our hallow'd path resum'd, Eying the prostrate shadows, who renew'd Their custom'd mourning. Never in my breast Did ignorance so struggle with desire Of knowledge, if my memory do not err, As in that moment; nor through haste dar'd I To question, nor myself could aught discern, So on I ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... whole length of the door-crack, indicating that they were not yet free of company, and that probably some domestics, male and female, were finishing their stories and conversations, whilst leaving their masters in complete ignorance as to their whereabouts. Akaky Akakiyevich went on in a happy frame of mind. He even started to run, without knowing why, after some lady, who flew past like a flash of lightning. But he stopped short, and went on very quietly as before, wondering why he had quickened his pace. Soon ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... spectators, whose attention seemed about equally divided between sundry kettles and troughs of manyalla, boiled venison, marrow, frozen tallow, and similar delicacies, and the discussion of some controverted point of marriage etiquette. Owing to my ignorance of the language, I was not able to enter thoroughly into the merits of the disputed question; but it seemed to be ably argued on both sides. Our sudden entrance seemed to create a temporary diversion from the legitimate business of the evening. The tattooed ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... resembled Oceanica and northern Asia in its ignorance of iron, in its Stone Age civilization, and its retarded social and political development. Such affinities as it shows were predominantly Pacific or trans-Pacific.[767] On its Atlantic side, it stood out in striking contrast to the contemporaneous civilizations and races ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... only ignorance, but love, combines to adulterate the tradition. Every man wishes to give his own country an interest in anything great. What an effort has been made to suck Sir T. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and of the good Bishop's later meditations and of his consequent questionings and investigations, Catia unhappily was in ignorance. Her ignorance, moreover, led her now into employing on her husband the final weapon in her woman's ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... of the Negro," delivered at Monteagle, Tenn., and published in this volume, is a sample. Dr. Haygood states "four root objections" to negro education: 1—Ignorance; 2—Stinginess; 3—Prejudice; 4—Fear that education will "spoil the negro as a laborer" and bring him into "social equality" with the whites. The author shows the absurdity of ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 5, May, 1889 • Various
... that Sir Richard's readers may be disappointed to find that, unlike Mr. Grant Allen, there is no excursus on the origin of Tree-worship, and therefore that, perhaps, through ignorance, I have omitted something. Sir Richard did write in the sixties and seventies on Tree-alphabets, the Ogham Runes and El Mushajjar, the Arabic Tree-alphabet,—and had theories and opinions as to its origin; ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... of the island, and are a fine hardy race, and show wonderful sagacity in the pursuit of game. Besides the horses we rode, we had several spare ones in case ours should knock up. One man had especial charge of Solon, who, from his ignorance of the nature of the wild beasts we were likely to meet with, it was supposed might otherwise get into trouble. I need not specify exactly the locality of my grandfather's estate; indeed, few of my readers would remember the odd-sounding names of the various places through which we passed. I know ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the island since he had been deserted. Sometimes he had thought of building a vessel and making his way to some civilised port; but the want of proper tools for cutting down large timber, and his ignorance of nautical affairs, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... open the secret door of his mind, to add to the strange store of facts he had gathered there. He wanted nothing from Atkins, who knew less of the Rev. Francis Heath than he did himself, and he had to sustain his role of ignorance of the country. The two men stayed late, and it seemed to Coryndon that when men talk they do more than talk, they tell many ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... the table. That boy was Frederick Douglass. What was possible for me is possible for you. Don't think because you are colored you can't accomplish anything. Strive earnestly to add to your knowledge. So long as you remain in ignorance, so long will you fail to command ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... these waste lands, and by a gentle and cautious plan for the resumption of lands that have been fraudulently alienated, that it ought ever to be attempted to be accomplished. Men of speculative and sanguine dispositions, and others, either from ignorance of the subject, or with views of recommending themselves to your favor, may confidently hold forth specious grounds to encourage you to hope that a great and immediate accession to that branch of your revenue might be practicable. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... speculation during the Middle Ages, but probably not any more in proportion than exists at the present day. We were either not acquainted with, or failed to appreciate properly, until comparatively recent years, the other side of medieval accomplishment. Our ignorance led us into misunderstanding of what these generations really did. It was our own fault, because during the Renaissance practically all of these books were edited and printed under the direction of the great scholars of the time in fine editions, but during the eighteenth century nearly ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... impulses and repulsions, nor yet in assent, denial, or suspension of judgement; but will in one word go about deaf and blind, thinking himself to be somewhat, when he is in truth of no account. Is there anything new in all this? Is not this ignorance the cause of all the mistakes and mischances of men since the human ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... my first illness damages my class work. I can never go on in my profession, there is no future for me but suffering." From this wrecking thought it was an easy step to condemnation of his father for his fatherhood, which, with his near-enmity toward his mother for her "criminal ignorance" in rearing him, introduced a sordidly demoralizing element into his mind which forever viciously tinctured memories and relations which should have been his sacred helpers. The normal mind can select well its world—miserably ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... her, holding her hands still. She knew how futile it was to affect ignorance of truths in that moment of unreserve; she knew that her mind and its feelings were as clear to Lionel as though she had been made of glass, and she spoke freely in her open simplicity. She knew, probably, that his deepest love and esteem were given to her. Lionel ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Troop of Georgia right, in his messages and measures against the Cherokees? If the Court at Barnstable was right in imprisoning the Indians for attempting to get their rights, as they understood them, and made their ignorance of the law no excuse, were not the Courts of Georgia justifiable in their condemnation of the Cherokees, for violations of laws enforced against the will ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... make painful personal acquaintance with the subject. And I assure you, sir, that the indignation which has long been simmering in whispers over tea tables in the seclusion of scented boudoirs, amongst those same delicate dames whom you have it in your mind to keep in ignorance of the source of most of their sufferings, mental and physical, is fast approaching ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... history of four great migrations is preserved in the annals of Mexico, which are worthy of more detailed examination than we can bestow upon them. The great body of these people live apart from the other races of their countrymen, in small villages, full of ignorance, suspicion, and bigotry, and displaying an apparent phlegm, from which it would seem impossible to arouse them. This phlegmatic temperament lessens the credit of the men with the females, who uniformly prefer the European, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... of Mother twinkled, but the children still stared, waiting. They had never heard of this phrase about the wedge. Indeed Jane Anne shared with Jimbo total ignorance of the word at all. Like the audience who read his books, or rather ought to have read them, they expected something different, yet ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... conscripts and from all requisitions. People thus disposed, they said, to second civic and administrative views, could not be humored too much..... This discouraging state of things simply results from the weakness, inexperience, ignorance, apathy and immorality of the public functionaries who, since the 18th of Fructidor, year V., swarm, with a few exceptions only, among the constituted authorities. Whatever is most foul and incompetent is in office, every good citizen being frightened to death."—Ibid. (Letter ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Kingthorpe cottage, to be realized for Urania. He estimated these roughly as worth between six and seven thousand pounds, and he considered seven thousand pounds an ample fortune for his only daughter. Urania was in happy ignorance of the modesty of his views. She imagined herself an heiress on a ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... whether it has not been fomented by combinations of men, who, careless of consequences, and disregarding the unerring truth that those who rouse can not always appease a civil convulsion, have disseminated, from an ignorance or perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies, and accusations ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... demeanour, which Lady Maud only attributed to the novelty of her situation, her ignorance of the world, and her embarrassment under this overpowering condescension, the good-tempered and fussy daughter of Lord de Mowbray proceeded to re-assure Sybil, and to enforce on her that this perhaps unprecedented descent from superiority was not a mere transient courtliness of the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... these terrors is traced to the general ignorance of certain facts in Nature—ignorance, namely, of the constitution and condition of our minds and bodies, of the means by which the world came into existence and is still maintained, and, lastly, of the causes ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... the Americans trying to advance during the night, that was utterly out of the question, since under those trees a pall lay that might hide any number of deadly traps, into which they, in their ignorance, ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... possession of their vocabulary by inquiring of them how particular objects and ideas are styled; for with the exception of the names of the most common things, they are totally incapable, as a Spanish writer has observed, of yielding the required information, owing to their great ignorance, the shortness of their memories, or rather the state of bewilderment to which their minds are brought by any question which tends to bring their reasoning faculties into action, though not unfrequently the very words which have been in vain required of them will, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... to the Utah village with the request that their chiefs would come and have a talk with him. They obeyed his summons, and when they were seated in Council with their "Father Kit," he explained to them how that the soldiers had taken prisoner their brave through mistake and ignorance. He informed them, that his countrymen did not wish to do their tribe any injury, and he trusted that they would overlook the affair; advising them that the best way to show to the white men that their intentions were honest would be ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Her ignorance seemed to Mr. Renshaw so plainly to partake more of the nun than the provincial, that he hesitated to explain to her that he meant ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... what is fallacious (a case which, as I shall show, may sometimes occur), he must still be heard with greater credit than a bad man. But with bad men, on the other hand, dissimulation sometimes fails, as well through their contempt for the opinion of mankind, as through their ignorance of what is right; hence they assert without modesty, and maintain their assertions without shame; and, in attempting what evidently can not be accomplished, there appears in them a repulsive obstinacy and useless perseverance; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... mental exercise," he said proudly, before marching slowly down the big room like a mathematical general surveying the field where he was to do battle next day with the enemy in the shape of sloth and ignorance. ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... possess Miss Vane's entire ignorance of all the facts in detail. From point to point he paused; he began really to be afraid she would do herself an ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... invested with the crown and the sceptre of Charlemagne. Charles had decided to journey by sea and to visit Henry VIII on the way, an arrangement of which Cardinal Wolsey was aware, although he had kept Henry in ignorance of it, according to those curious mental processes of his mind where his young monarch was concerned. Shakespeare, in the play of "King Henry VIII," describes the meeting of the two kings, which occurred at Canterbury, "at a grand jubilee in honor of ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... less at his words than at the queer note of resentment in his voice. He was evidently surprised and slightly aggrieved at his own ignorance. ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... peculiar manner, and now that the future, amid the hopeful calm which it sometimes assumes, will sometimes almost frown upon me with lowerings of fear? Fear it is, not of others, but of myself, and fear of the ignorance or precipitancy of my yet but very partially regulated mind. Oh for that other fear which only "is a fountain of life, preserving from the snares of death!" Oh for that love which casteth out the slavish fear, and maketh one with what it loves—first ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... me, believing he had said enough, but I was stupefied by my ignorance, shyness and doubt. "Do you mean," I blurted out, "that you will give up marrying her—that I can have her in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Is this ignorance, think you, in Giotto, and pure artlessness? He was now a man in middle life, having passed all his days in painting, and professedly, and almost contentiously, painting things as he saw them. Do you suppose he never saw fire cast firelight?—and he ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... just inside the door. Apart from anything else, the room itself had a certain awe-inspiring quality for her. She had never before been in a lawyer's office. She was fully possessed with the rural and feminine ignorance and holy fear of all legal appurtenances. From all her traditions, this office door should have displayed a grinning man or woman trap, which she must ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... express how much I owe her. She was ignorant in worldly knowledge, and only a poor slave; but in her simple and earnest faith, she knew much of the science of the saints. With a mother's tenderness, she shielded me from spiritual ignorance and error, and led my soul to the green pastures of the ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... attention seemed centred upon the shore-end of the new cable which was so soon to form yet another direct link between Berlin and London, was in ignorance of anything connected with ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... of moment, from their not considering how those men acted who in ancient days had to determine under like conditions. For the weakness of the present race of men (the result of their enfeebling education and their ignorance of affairs), makes them regard the methods followed by the ancients as partly inhuman and partly impracticable. Accordingly, they have their own newfangled ways of looking at things, wholly at variance with the true, as when the ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... relationship (in our author's Ostend you assume, till corrected, that all couples are married); the intervention of the local gendarmerie, headed by a British detective; the arrest of half the party (including the aunt, arrived in perfect health and ignorance en route for England) on a nameless charge in connection with Emily's suspected abduction—all this is in the best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... them as to their position, we discovered that they were in total ignorance of the number in the herd, as they had merely heard them roaring in the distance. They could not approach nearer, as a notoriously vicious rogue elephant was consorting with the herd. This elephant was well known to the natives from a peculiarity in having only ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... needed to completely shatter the last remnant of my superstitious belief in the divinity of Issus. She is only a wicked old woman, wielding a mighty power for evil through machinations that have kept her own people and all Barsoom in religious ignorance for ages." ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which showed such a remarkable ignorance of the world, especially in view of the fact that he was a New York boy, suggested to the waitress that perhaps he had ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... made him sit at the piano, and talked to him about music. He asked him many questions, and made him solve several little problems of harmony. Georges did not know much about it, but his musical instinct supplied the gaps of his ignorance; without knowing their names, he found the chords Christophe wanted; and even his mistakes in their awkwardness showed a curiosity of taste and a singularly acute sensibility. He did not accept Christophe's remarks ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... art of steering by the stars, pressed his shallop out beyond sight of land, into the trackless sea after the fall of night. Such a one braved, beside the ordinary dangers of the deep, the uncouth and mythical terrors with which world-wide ignorance and superstition had invested it. The sea was thought to be the domain of fierce and ravenous monsters, and of gods quite as dangerous to men. Prodigious whirlpools, rapids, and cataracts, quite without any physical reason for existence, were thought to roar and roll ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... in the least by the agents used. Alcohol is called a stimulant. We take a weak solution of alcohol and try it in the same way; but we find that almost instantly the living matter contracts into a ball-like mass. Now, we may through ignorance suppose that alcohol acts as an astringent, and so we try to stimulate it with the same harmless agent before used, but no impression is made on it; it does not move; it is dead matter. These are demonstrable facts, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... bring suit for half the proceeds—an unduly expensive arrangement for the man that has a good claim. If he would save, there are agents of unsound financial schemes ready to take advantage of his ignorance. If he would borrow, there are {24} chattel-mortgage sharks ready to burden him with a debt at ruinous interest. If he would buy, there are instalment dealers ready to tempt him into buying more than he can afford, and ready to charge two prices for ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... Phil, but had to give them up as useless, lacking strength and opportunity for the endeavour. But the long winter would make up for the neglect of the short summer, and she left off worrying over their lapse into ignorance, contenting herself with reading to them on Sundays, and, what was more important still, making them read ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... appears that Mahometanism is not much indebted to its too famous founder: it owes to him a principle, viz. the unity of God, which, merely through a capital blunder, it fancies peculiar to itself. Nothing but the grossest ignorance in Mahomet, nothing but the grossest non-acquaintance with Greek authors on the part of the Arabs, could have created or sustained the delusion current amongst that illiterate people—that it was themselves only who rejected Polytheism. Had but one amongst the personal enemies of Mahomet been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... done to arrange, to connect, to harmonize, that it is almost incredible that stronger marks of Athenian manufacture should not remain. Whatever occasional anomalies may be detected, anomalies which no doubt arise out of our own ignorance of the language of the Homeric age; however the irregular use of the digamma may have perplexed our Bentleys, to whom the name of Helen is said to have caused as much disquiet and distress as the fair one herself ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... who was subject to all the instinctive terrors of the common people, and who often repeated that she would much rather die than appear before the court—she imagined herself seated in the dock, between two gendarmes, in a court-room, surrounded by all the unfamiliar paraphernalia of the Law, her ignorance of which made them objects of terror to her. Throughout the week her ears heard footsteps on the stairs coming to ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Alice Parks, though she lived in New York City. Likewise with a growing feeling of his profound social ignorance, he successively admitted that he did not know Cornelia Baxter, Frances Bowen or Harry Fall. Whereupon Miss Barrons abandoned him to converse with Charles who did know Alice Parks who was so attractive and Harry Fall who had such a ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... abuses among us of great consequence, the reformation of which is properly your province, though, as far as I have been conversant in your papers, you have not yet considered them. These are, the deplorable ignorance that for some years hath reigned among our English writers, the great depravity of our taste, and the continual corruption of our style. I say nothing here of those who handle particular sciences, divinity, law, physic, and the like; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... signify in reality, "What do you mean?" "I do not understand"—which shows at once the great difficulty of arriving at the truth. This must often be the case; for what is more natural, than that when a savage is asked the meaning of a thing, and knows not, but that he should express his ignorance? How often this expression of ignorance has been registered as the denomination of some animal or thing, we leave the reader to conjecture. Moreover, there are many words totally obliterated from their dialects, which thus undergo constant alteration. This in part arises from the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... groan that the others in sympathy with him joined in lamentation, and the rawest of the assembly bubbled in unison. I exclaimed, "Praise be to God! those far off are present in their knowledge, and those near by are distant from their ignorance. If the hearer has not the faculty of comprehending the sermon, expect not the vigor of genius in the preacher. Give a scope to the field of inclination, that the orator may have room to strike the ball of eloquence ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... theologians, who, without special scientific knowledge, have appreciated the weight of scientific arguments, have long since given it up. But, as Goethe has remarked, there is nothing more terrible than energetic ignorance; [9] and there are, even yet, very energetic people, who are neither candid, nor clear-headed, nor theologians, still less properly instructed in the elements of natural science, who make prodigious efforts to obscure the effect of these plain truths, and to conceal ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... a calculation on the uncertain data we possess may at once be abandoned as a hopeless task. No better proof can be given of the uncertainty of our authorities, of our imperfect knowledge of the Hebrew weights of money, and, above all, of our total ignorance of the relative value which the precious metals bore to the commodities of life, than the estimate, made by Dr. Prideaux, of the treasures left by David, amounting to eight hundred millions, nearly the capital of our ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... papers accumulated on the writing-table, and had been lying unclaimed at the custom-house for several weeks now—how many she did not know, and she spread out her fingers, with a funny little movement, to show her ignorance. She had only remembered it a day or two ago; the dues would no doubt be considerable. If it were not too much trouble ... she would be so grateful; she would rather ask ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... ran that he really gained a majority of the votes, but that the tribune who presided, with the connivance of some of his colleagues, basely falsified the returns.[703] It is a story that cannot be tested on account of our ignorance of the precautions taken, and therefore of the possibilities of fraud which might be exhibited, in the elections of this period. At a later period actual records of the voting were kept, in case a decision should be doubted;[704] and had an appeal to a scrutiny been possible at this time, Gracchus ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... name they bear, are written. They tell of the turning of the wheel of Fortune, and of the instability of earthly, especially political, things. Providence is only brought in because the writers would still be ashamed of undisguised fatalism, of the avowal of their ignorance, or of useless complaints. Gioviano Pontano ingeniously illustrates the nature of that mysterious something which men call Fortune by a hundred incidents, most of which belonged to his own experience. The subject is treated more humorously ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... and prayer book, and after a while, when I began to pick up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair way to recovery, and must as soon as possible hurry my departure; whereupon, without naming any reason, he took snuff and looked at me sideways. I did not affect ignorance; I knew he must have seen Olalla. 'Sir,' said I, 'you know that I do not ask in ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my nursery playmates; and so did my acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence with mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more of mortality than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; but perhaps she would come back. Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance! Gracious immunity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength! I was sad for Jane's absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would come again. Summer and winter came again—crocuses and roses; why ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... measure at least, health governs the happiness of the home. Steele says: "All a woman has to do in this world is contained within the duties of a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother." But how many girls grow to womanhood untaught; enter wifehood in ignorance, and assume motherhood wholly unprepared for the duties that are thrust upon her. It would be out of place in a work of this nature, a family table book, to take up all the questions involved in such a subject; we can only leave with you a word of warning. Before puberty ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... men and women who honestly rejoice in doing evil. These four classes acting together might conceivably produce a rather pernicious democracy; alien hysteria, blood-craze, and the like, reinforcing local ignorance, sloth, and arrogance. For example, I read a letter in a paper sympathising with these same Doukhobors. The writer knew a community of excellent people in England (you see where the rot starts!) who lived barefoot, paid no taxes, ate nuts, and were above ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... extensive, a few printed Bibles and MS. extracts forming the whole of their literature. It has been thought that missionaries would here find a fair field for their exertions; but, unfortunately, the most promising places in the East are, by some mistake, either of ignorance or ambition, left wholly destitute of Christian teachers. While the pledges of Government are compromised in India, and its stability threatened, by the daring attempts to make converts at the presidencies, and other considerable places, where success is attended with great noise and clamour, many ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... about him," Lalage broke in passionately. "It's only your ignorance and your jealousy ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the admiralty, and was succeeded by Ellenborough at the board of control. Ellenborough retained his former office of lord privy seal, which Wellington was holding in reserve with a view to strengthening the government. But the public of those days remained in entire ignorance of their intentions until the meeting of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... flesh and blood just as a man of thirty or forty is, and although I consider what is called sowing wild oats foolish as well as a most ungentlemanly pastime, still, I equally don't believe in the innocence of ignorance, at least not for ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... fertility. The kapala gave as reasons for this practice scarcity of food and woman's fear of dying. Both seem incongruous to fact and primitive ideas, and perhaps his view would better be accepted only as an indication of his ignorance in the matter. The young people are taught to dance by the blian before they are married, and take lessons ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... them that the Grantline camp was on the Mare Imbrium. It would delay them for a time, but our lie would soon be discovered. We must escape from them, get away and back to Grantline. With Miko dead—a distress signal to Earth—and Potan in ignorance of Grantline's location, the treasure would be safe until help arrived ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... universally agreed, that by far the greatest part of the diseases to which mankind are subject, have been brought on by intemperance, imprudence, and the neglect of precautions, which often arises from carelessness, but much oftener from ignorance ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But we also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong man shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated—without haste, but without remorse. * * * * * "Well, what I mean by Education is learning ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... not a specific mention of any unfavorable or discreditable matter occurring in department stores, or affecting the interests of the proprietors of those stores, is allowed to get into print. Thus it is that the general public are studiously kept in ignorance of the abominations incessantly going on ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... fact is vouched for. In answer to a query from a worthy farmer, "to what cause he attributed the present depressed state of agriculture?" Cobden unhesitatingly replied, "to over-production." Cross-questioning of this kind would speedily prove the emptiness and ignorance of the man.] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various |
