"Boor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the other hand, believed this mystic passion to be genuine love. Coming to visit her at Nohant, he was revolted by the clownish husband with whom she lived. It gave him an esthetic shock to see that she had borne children to this boor. Therefore he shrank back from her, and in time ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po; Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor Against the houseless stranger shuts the door; Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies, A weary waste expanded to the skies. Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart untravell'd fond turns to thee; Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Chianti or Barolo. There was a sort of buffet built into the forward bulkhead; and by a most surprising chance this was unhurt, save for a great star in the mirror behind it. Even its brass rail was intact. Some idle boor must have observed this solid little piece of man's handiwork, and then, I suppose, struck at the mirror with his axe—a savage and blackguardly act. But here, at all events, was our ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... insulted him, but he knew in his heart now that the girl's father had meant nothing of the kind. Of course the girl had forgotten him long since. If he ever came to her mind as a fugitive memory it would be in the guise of a churlish boor as impossible ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... and prejudiced of mind. He looks down upon the townsman as a huckster in private and a shuffler in public life, and this feeling of contemptuous enmity is fully returned by the cit, who regards the free proprietor in the light of a boor and a bully. Moreover, it rankles in the Houseman's breast that no Stockader pays a farthing of head-money to the treasure-chest of the Doomsmen. Now and then some well-to-do proprietor may suffer loss from cattle thieving and rick ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of maintaining their militia forces in the country was said to be this:—A horseman was quartered in the house of a boor, or husbandman; if the man will work himself and his horse with the boor, to help him in his husbandry, then the boor gives the man and his horse entertainment freely, and hath their work for it, which is more worth than their meat, and the boor will ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... kindly. This American woman thought him the ideal gentleman, although the mistress of the estate on which she visited called him a boor and ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... Kirst in Wuensch Street, Rose and Mary, two wide-awake, mischievous lassies who are the heroines of the book. Young Ernst von Schiller, the second son of the prematurely deceased poet, is their playmate; they make fun of August von Goethe as he goes a-wooing; they quarrel with the sour-visaged boor, Arthur Schopenhauer, as they go in and out of his mother's house, the novelist's; old Madam Kummerfeld, a former actress who in her youth had as Juliet inspired the Leipsic student Goethe, is their teacher in the art of sewing as well as making a courtly bow—which ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... his son-in-law. Don Juan, who was rich as well as proud, and so adored his daughter that he thought a duke at least would come from Madrid to ask her hand in marriage, was furious, called him an impudent fellow, and swore that sooner than let her marry such a boor he ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... manner with the poor which Frank inherited from his father, he was still (despite many a secret, hypocritical vice, at war with the character of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk; and the boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged in eulogistic comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he diverged into some compliments on the young gentleman himself. Randal drew his hat over ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... once the Spartans led to fight, And made them conquer in the muse's right; So would our poet lead you on this day, Showing your tortured fathers in his play. To one well-born the affront is worse, and more, When he's abused, and baffled by a boor: With an ill grace the Dutch their mischiefs do, They've both ill-nature and ill-manners too. Well may they boast themselves an ancient nation, For they were bred ere manners were in fashion; And their new commonwealth has set them free, Only from honour and civility. Venetians do ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... liberal Education, it is one hundred to one, but he turns out a Gentleman of Merit, Learning, Worth, and Politeness; whereas it would certainly require more than Herculean Labour to chissel a French Paisan, a primitive Westmoreland, or Devonshire Boor, not only into the Form of an elegant, but even into that ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... miserable hole. During that time I have lost the natural gaiety of my disposition. I have lost, or almost lost, the manners of good society. If I ever get into better society again, I shall hardly know how to behave myself. I have become a boor, and the comrades in Berlin or Hanover would treat me with perfect disdain if I should venture to approach them on a footing of equality. The tone prevalent in our Casino is enough to demoralize almost anybody in ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... always of perilous exposure in one so young and of her sex. On more than one occasion did Ralph, in the course of the dinner, remark the indignant fire flashing from her intelligent eye, when the rude speech of some untaught boor assailed a sense finely-wrought to appreciate the proper boundaries to the always adventurous footstep of unbridled licentiousness. The youth felt assured, from these occasional glimpses, that her education had ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... other harvest-home and feast, Than claims the boor from scythe released, On these scorched fields were known! Death hovered o'er the maddening rout, And, in the thrilling battle-shout, Sent for the bloody banquet out A summons of his own. Through rolling smoke the Demon's eye Could well each destined guest espy, Well could ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... vengeance. He lets things take their course. He lets Catherine marry Edgar Linton and remain married to him. He lets Isabella's passion satisfy itself. He lets Hindley Earnshaw drink himself to death. He lets Hareton sink to the level of a boor. He lets Linton die. His most overt and violent action is the capture of the younger Catherine. And even there he takes advantage of the accident that brings her to the door of Wuthering Heights. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... friends, recounts his first meeting with Morris in 1867. 'He didn't care for parsons, and he glared at me when I said something about good manners. Leaning over the table with his eyes set and his fist clenched he shouted at me, "I am a boor and the son of a boor".' So ready as he was to challenge anything which smacked of conventionality or pretension, he was not quite a safe poet to lionize or ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... primitive state, and is not cultivated as are the others. Physical laughter requires no previous experience, no exercise of judgment, and therefore has no connection with the intellectual powers of the mind. The lowest boor may laugh on being tickled, but a man must have intelligence to be amused by wit. The senses which are the least discriminating are the least productive of humour, little is derived from that of smell or of taste, though we may ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... another daughter of Leopold, with the Count of Workla, represented Persians. Marianne, a third daughter, and Prince Maximilian of Hanover were North Holland peasants. Peter presented himself as a Friesland boor, a character, we regret to say, which the tzar could personify without making the slightest change in his usual habits, for Peter was quite a stranger to the graces ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... thief!" muttard my master, as he was laying on his sophy, after being so very ill; "I've poisoned myself with his infernal tobacco, and he has foiled me. The cursed swindling boor! he thinks he'll ruin this poor Cheese-monger, does he? I'll step in, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... besetting sins of the American people,—their well-known love of "bigness," their tendency to ask "How much?" rather than "Of what kind?" There is a lack of discrimination in the daily bill of fare served up by the American press that cannot but disgust the refined and tutored palate. It is only the boor who demands a savoury and a roast of equal bulk; it is only the vulgarian who wishes as much of his paper occupied by brutal prize-fights or vapid "personals" as by important political information ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... dy ce sel i a now si zed the weep on and all though the boor ly vil ly an re tain ed his vy gor ous hold she drew the blade through his fin gers and hoorl ed it far be hind her dryp ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... her? Why should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last obliged tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted? And he had been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and risked his life, to prove what? What had he proved? Nothing? What would the people say? What would his friends say? What ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... a man behave in a rude and uncivil manner to his father or mother, his brothers or sisters, his wife or children; or fail to exercise the common courtesies of life at his own table and around his own fireside, you may at once set him down as a boor, whatever pretensions he ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... "You boor!" she hissed. "You base underbred clod! Is this your care and your hospitality? I would rather wed a branded serf from my father's fields. Leave go, I say——Ah! good youth, Heaven has sent you. Make him loose me! By the honor of your mother, I pray ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her peasant sketches was naturally over-estimated by those who, never having studied the class, could not conceive of a peasant except conventionally, as a drunken boor. The very just portrait of Cecilia Boccaferri, the conscientious but obscure artist in Le Chateau des Desertes, might seem over-flattered to such as imagine that all opera-singers must be persons of riotous living. The types she prefers ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... lavish it on pleasure to make thee gay, and fit for luckier lovers: take that best part of me, and let this worst alone; it was that first won the dear confession from thee that drew my ruin on—for which I hate it—and wish myself born a poor cottage boor, where I might never have seen thy tempting beauty, but lived for ever blessed in ignorance.' At this the tears ran from his eyes, with which the softened Sylvia mixed her welcome stream, and as soon as she could speak, she replied (with half cunning ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... whether education is not the process of shifting the emphasis from rights to privileges. I have a right, when I go into the town, to keep my seat in the car and let the old lady use the strap. If I insist upon that right I feel myself a boor, lacking the sense and sensibilities of a gentleman. But when I relinquish my seat I feel that I have exercised my privilege to be considerate and courteous. I have a right to permit weeds and briers to overrun my fences, and the fences themselves to go to rack, and so ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... was not pretty, but she had an expressive original little face and her manners were charming. Janet Oglethorpe was a boor beside her. It was doubtful if she had ever been aggressive in manner or rude in her life; although she never hesitated to give utterance to the extremest of her opinions or to maintain them to the bitter end (when she sometimes sped home to have ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and Mrs. Van Winkle Ruggles were at first inclined to snub the new boarder, considering him a country boor whose presence in their select society was almost an insult. The captain did not seem to notice their hints or sneers, although ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the profession about which I was inquiring might be trying to a tenderly reared girl, and that he ought to give me advice and warnings. But this Thing bearing a gentleman's repute; this bat-brained darling of a society that I'm not thought good enough to enter, had insulted me like a boor under my own roof; and he would probably boast of it like a boor to others as base as himself! The poverty of ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... nights, he thinks and thinks and thinks how to do everything just right. And what's the result? He gives the public the best operetta, the very best pantomime, excellent artists. But do they want it? Have they the least appreciation of it? The public is rude. The public is a great boor. The public wants a circus, a lot of nonsense, a lot of stuff. And there's the weather. Look! Rain almost every evening. It began to rain on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up through the whole of June. It's simply awful. I can't get any audiences, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... "Boor!" thought George. But he could not actively resent the slight. He glanced round at the walls; he was in a prison. He was at the mercy of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... be guessed, was greeted with shouts of laughter, and then another brigadier took up the word: "Well, Cyrus," said he, "our friend here has certainly met with an absolute boor: my own experience is somewhat different. You remember the admonitions you gave us when you dismissed the regiments, and how you bade each of us instruct his own men in the lessons we had learnt from you. Well, I, like the rest of us, went off at once and set ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... you vell, how you runs de goat shleeve down mit de gards and sheats dat boor poy vat ish blay mit you. Yoh, sir, you ish ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... sternly in his daughter's agitated and flushed countenance as he uttered the words. 'Perhaps,' he sarcastically continued, without giving her time to reply—'perhaps you deem yourself marriageable at the matron-like' age of nineteen, and have selected some country boor for my son-in-law?' ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... these powerful leaders were directing all their energies was still counted an amateur in politics, irascible and indiscreet. He was laughed at in the cities as a boor and condemned in New England as an ignoramus, though Harvard College, under some strange inspiration, was soon to award him the doctorate of laws. Having come to power by means of a combination of South and West, ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... the keyhole, outside which she waited and listened. It was long before he would reply, and when he did it was to say sternly at her from within: 'I am ashamed of you! It will ruin me! A miserable boor! a churl! a clown! It will degrade me in the eyes of all the ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... life had made each one's better nature visible to the other, and had led to the formation of a friendship full of mutual appreciation of the other's best qualities. Now it is just possible that if they had not known one another, Hawbury might have thought the Baron a boor, and the Baron might have called Hawbury a "thundering snob;" but as it was, the possible boor and the possible snob each thought the other one of the finest fellows in ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... a wold in Vester Haf, There builds a boor his hold; And thither he carries hawk and hound, ...
— Ellen of Villenskov - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... cotton umbrellas, rasped his chair over the bare boor into a corner of the room, and sat hunched over an imaginary rat hole, for all the world like a gawky Quaker apprentice. And this was a candidate for the Senate of the United States, who on the morrow was to meet in debate the renowned ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... resolve this puzzle? He the birthday-wit, For so we thought him—keener yet, if aught is so— Becomes a dunce more boorish e'en than hedge-born boor, If e'er he faults on verses; yet in heart is then 15 Most happy, writing verses, happy past compare, So sweet his own self, such a ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... substitute for love in the home." (c) Culture is better than money. If a man grows up in ignorance and vulgarity, shut out from the world of art, literature and science, and all that refines and elevates the mind—a rude, uncultured boor—he pays too great a price for any money he may scrape together. (d) Humanity is better than money. The rich man who leaves Lazarus untended at his gates, who builds about him walls so thick that no cry from the suffering world ever ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... that if he was satisfied with the article that was his affair, but that the article had certainly not been written with a view to pleasing him. And he turned his back on him. The virtuoso thought him a kindly boor and went away laughing. But Christophe remembered having received a card of thanks from another of his victims, and a suspicion flashed upon him. He went out, bought the last number of the Review at a news-stand, turned to his article, and read... At first he wondered if he were going mad. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... in him the well-to-do boor whom Angel had knocked down at the inn for addressing her coarsely. A spasm of anguish shot through her, and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... autumn; and that hour of late sunset which is on the verge of night. Under its rich glow lies the sleeping Iphigenia, draped in folds upon folds of white, and her attendants; while Cymon, who is as unlike the boor of tradition as Spenser's Colin Clout is unlike an ordinary Cumbrian herdsman, stands hard-by, wondering, pensively wrapt in so exquisite a vision. Altogether, a great presentment of an immortal idyll; so treated, indeed, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... and winked at, when, if it were not for my fortune, I very much doubt whether one of these, my exceeding good friends, would give me a dinner to save me from starvation. Why I had rather be the veriest boor that holds a plough, or a cobbler at his last, than to be, as Shakspeare says, 'the thing I am.' I am heartily sick of it, and could almost turn my back upon the world, and lead a hermit's life. To be always ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... orbits. Colours variegated more Nor Turks nor Tartars e'er on cloth of state With interchangeable embroidery wove, Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom. As ofttimes a light skiff, moor'd to the shore, Stands part in water, part upon the land; Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor, The beaver settles watching for his prey; So on the rim, that fenc'd the sand with rock, Sat perch'd the fiend of evil. In the void Glancing, his tail upturn'd its venomous fork, With sting like scorpion's ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... lily hand, and shmile on him zo shveet: "Vith sodge a sagrifice," she zaid, "you brove your lof indeet! And I dakes you—on your zolem vort mit shmoking to ged rid, Pe off and purn your bipes and dings!" vich—boor yong man, he—did! Dree sblendid bipes he sacrificed, in china, glay, and vood, He vatched zem craggle in ze vlames—I vonder how he could! And mit zem vent his brime zigars of pest Havana prandt, Imborted hier vrom Hampurg, in his own ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... soon before he had let this thing grow in his imagination; but oh, if it had but come a bit sooner! If it had only been on the way over to the Y.M.C.A. hut instead of on the way back that letter would never have been written! She would have set him down as a boor perhaps, but what matter? What was she to him, or he to her? Well—perhaps he would have written a letter briefly to thank her for her offer of knitting, but it would have been an entirely different letter from the one he did write. He ground his teeth ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... merry-andrew, zany, harlequin, droll, punch, mime, farceur, scaramouch, grimacier jackpudding; boor, lout, gawk, gawky, lubber, put, bumpkin, churl, carl, tike; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... myself only with facts. And the great fact of all is the contemptibleness of average humanity. I will submit for your reverent consideration the name of a great American philanthropist—Cornelius Vanderbilt. Personally he was a disgusting brute; ignorant, base, a boor in his manners, a blackguard in his language; he had little if any natural affection, and to those who offended him he was a relentless barbarian. Yet the man was a great philanthropist, and became so by the piling up of millions of dollars. Of course he did that for his own vulgar ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... empty noddle in clouds, the Vulcanian epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of Science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that phosphor will ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... him with almost boisterous cheerfulness. "Ah! Tamiya comes early; a flattering acknowledgment of last night's reception." To Iemon's deprecatory speech and apology—"Don't talk folly, after the manner of a country boor. Iemon San is a man of the world; and will give this Kwaiba credit for being the same. What does it amount to? A matter of a little too much wine.... Hana! Hana! The Master of Tamiya is present. Cut some bean paste, ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... his crutches, and raised himself painfully. "Stop!" cried a thrilling and passionate voice,—"stand still! Of what stuff are you made to sit here and see a man, mangled and maimed in your cause and for your defence, insulted and outraged at the bidding of a drunken boor and a cowardly traitor?" The voice, the beautiful face, the intensity burning through both, electrified every soul to which she appealed. Hands were stretched out to draw back the crippled soldier; eyes that a moment before were turned away looked kindly ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... recovered myself somehow, stumbled round behind her, walked on her train and finally arrived at her left side, conscious in every red-hot atom of me that I was making a spectacle of myself and that the whole company was enjoying it. I must have seemed to them an ignorant boor; in fact, I had been about a great deal among people who knew how to behave, and had I never given the matter of how to conduct myself on that particular occasion an instant's thought, I should have got on without ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... "I have acted towards you like a boor and a ruffian, as indeed I am; but let this plead for me, that I have ever been used to the roughness of the camp, bereft of gentler influences. I ask ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... groom boor'ish ness noon noon'tide school gloom'i ly spool bloom'ing soothe room'i ness groove ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... by suffering sly familiarities to their women folk, and by wearing their personal and family dignity in sole leather, may know something of the humiliating experiences of this new monarch. He was a feeble fellow, but his son and successor, Frederick William I, "a shrewd but brutal boor," so Lord Rosebery calls him, and there could not be a better judge, amazed Europe by his taste for collecting tall soldiers, by his parsimony, his kennel manners in the treatment of his family and his subjects, and leaves a name in history as the first, greatest, and the unique ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... it in some high pursuit to which gain was only an incident, or they are exceptional cases. But of course Bagley isn't even a fair type of the regular money-grinder—he's a speculator in anything, and a boor compared with even the average ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of germination, growth, and bloom, without once dropping the figure or introducing an incongruous epithet. It is not only a child, but a child of the Black Forest, uttering its hopes, its anxieties, and its joys in the familiar dialect. The beetle, in his eyes, becomes a gross, hard-headed boor, carrying his sacks of blossom-meal, and drinking his mug of XX morning-dew; the stork parades about to show his red stockings; the spider is at once machinist and civil engineer; and even the sun, moon, and morning-star ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... world, And smitten Athos blazed! Then, Phoebus, sinking to the earth, His course complete, and waning Luna, offerings received. The changing seasons of the year the superstition spread Throughout the world; and Ignorance and Awe, the toiling boor, To Ceres, from his harvest, the first fruits compelled to yield And Bacchus with the fruitful vine to crown. Then Pales came Into her own, the shepherd's gains to share. Beneath the waves Of every sea swims Neptune. Pallas guards the shops, And those impelled by Avarice ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... consolations; but it cannot have been pleasant to this old roue, converted though he was—this refined man of fashion—to see his son grow up an outcast, and a Tony Lumpkin; for whatever he may have thought of his natural gifts, he must have known how mere a boor ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... and then unto Master Silas: "Silas! to the business on hand. Taste the fat upon yon boor's table, which the constable hath brought hither, good Master Silas! And declare upon oath, being sworn in my presence, first, whether said fat do proceed of venison; secondly, whether said venison be ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... minutes, then said in a hesitating, ashamed tone, "My troubles have made me a boor. I beg your pardon. You've been tremendously ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... exercise of the arms of knight-errantry, righting wrongs, succouring widows, and protecting damsels of that sort that used to ride about, whip in hand, on their palfreys, with all their virginity about them, from mountain to mountain and valley to valley—for, if it were not for some ruffian, or boor with a hood and hatchet, or monstrous giant, that forced them, there were in days of yore damsels that at the end of eighty years, in all which time they had never slept a day under a roof, went to their graves as much maids as the mothers ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Boers of the Cashan Mountains, otherwise named "Magaliesberg". These are not to be counfounded with the Cape colonists, who sometimes pass by the name. The word Boer simply means "farmer", and is not synonymous with our word boor. Indeed, to the Boers generally the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. Those, however, who have fled from English law on various pretexts, and have been joined by English deserters ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... clove to me like a pestilence. The neighbours turned their faces from me, my former friends fled from me, the timid greeted me from afar and turned aside; even a mere peasant boor or a Jew, though he bowed, would, as he passed by, smite me with a sneering laugh. The word 'traitor' rang in my ears and echoed through my house and over my fields; that word from morn till dark hovered before me like a spot ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... about to enter a wigwam, he utters the word or sound "Quay" in a peculiar tone; the word repeated from within is considered as an invitation to enter. Should he neglect to announce himself in this way he is considered as ill-bred—an unmannerly boor. The left-hand side of the wigwam as you enter is considered the place of honour; here the father of the family and chief squaw take their station, the young men on the opposite side, and the women ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... we sat for hours that day consuming tea and innumerable cigarettes, I was no nearer the solution of the problem at sunset than at dawn. And had I but known it, all the time I was vainly urging this stolid boor to reconsider his decision, help was arriving from a totally unexpected quarter. I discussed a cheerless and silent meal with my companions, and we were turning in that night when Stepan strolled in, cool and imperturbable as usual. He even divested himself of furs ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... lover! It was too amazing. Brangwen went home despising himself for his own poor way of life. He was a clod-hopper and a boor, dull, stuck in the mud. More than ever he wanted to clamber out, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... years old, Yet so outrageous rank and full was grown That France was wholly overspread with shade, And bitter fruits lay on the untilled ground That stank and bred so foul contagious smells That not a nose in France but stood awry, Nor boor that cried not FAUGH! ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... downstairs was the private secretary, who tried good-naturedly to point out the family portraits on the staircase wall. But Fenwick scarcely replied. He stalked on, his great black eyes glancing restlessly from side to side; and the private secretary thought him a boor. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... exclaimed, "it was more because I was blocked by that boor of a Chevet yonder, and it angered me to have this young gamecock ever at hand to push in. What think you you were employed for, fellow—an esquire of dames? Was there not work enough in the camp yonder, that you must be testing your ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... is she, madam," Peregrine answered, "towering high above her little mynheer, who outwardly excels her in naught save the length of nose, and has the manners of a boor." ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... GORDIUS, a boor, the father of Midas (q. v.), who was proclaimed king of Phrygia because he happened, in response to the decree of an oracle, to be the first to ride into Gordium during a particular assembly of the people; he rode into the city on a waggon, to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... clear eyes turned from her friend and gave me a glance ten times more tragic than the five acts of her tragedy. I saw that my exclamation had been repeated to her, and that a universal anathema was thundered at the rustic boor, at the barbarian impudent enough to dare to be witty by Monsieur Mery's side, and to affect to be insensible to the sublime beauties of "Cleopatre." However, all was not yet lost; I had unconsciously another way of conquering Madame de Girardin's favor. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... State dependents, but they might easily be helped to acquire an interest in the soil. The native who has his patch of settled land with unassailable title would be loth to risk his all for the chimerical advantages of insurrection. The native boor who has worked land for years on sufferance, without title, exposed to eviction by a more cunning individual clever enough to follow the tortuous path which leads to land settlement with absolute title, falls an easy prey to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... attention of any individual. The return of the huntsmen and hounds relieved me from my embarrassment, and with some difficulty I got one clown to relieve me of the charge of the horses, and another stupid boor to guide me to the presence of Sir Hildebrand. This service he performed with much such grace and good-will, as a peasant who is compelled to act as guide to a hostile patrol; and in the same manner I was obliged ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... still very far removed from the modern ideal; the knight may be considered to stand half-way between the boor and the gentleman: he is polite, at least, to some women, while the gentleman is polite to all, kind, gentle, sympathetic, without being any the less manly. Nevertheless there was an advantage in having some conception of gallantry, a determination and vow to protect ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... force the peasant of Samogitia to servile work, when the latter had an opportunity of drawing a good profit from the results of his labor in the neighboring marts of Memel, Liban, Riga, Mittau, Venden, etc.? No, must we answer to our readers. There might have been seen a boor's wife dressed in sky blue lined with fox fur, and drawn to church in a comfortable kolaska, by two excellent, plump, Samogitian ponies; and neither did the father of the family exhaust his strength in night watches ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... indefinite, from its vastness; and incommunicable;—not for lack of power, but for lack of an omnipotent volition, to move his strength. His own world is full before him; the fulcrum set; but lever there is none. To such a man, the giving of any boor's resoluteness, with tendons braided, would be as hanging a claymore to Valor's side, before unarmed. Our minds are cunning, compound mechanisms; and one spring, or wheel, or axle wanting, the movement lags, or halts. Cerebrum must not overbalance cerebellum; our brains should be ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... did any one else with brains and an awakened mind that soared above mere conventional manners. And yet I once had an Eastern woman of great wealth, (recently acquired), and of great pretensions to social "manners," at whose table Muir had eaten, inform me that she regarded him as a rude boor, because, forsooth, he was unmindful of these trivial and unimportant conventions when ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... his household were going to Church, and they beheld a knight who had raised the signal for combat. "Verily," said Arthur, "by the valour of men, I will not go hence until I have my horse and my arms to overthrow yonder boor." Then went the attendants to fetch Arthur's horse and arms. And Peredur met the attendants as they were going back, and he took the horse and arms from them, and proceeded to the meadow; and all those who saw him arise and go to do battle with the knight, went upon the tops ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... will ever see. As they sit after dinner he hands the olives to his friend, and suddenly checks himself, saying, I forgot, you never touch the 'after-feed.' Then he throws up both eyes and hands, and affects to look aghast at the mistake. 'Really,' he says, 'I shall soon become us much of a boor as the people of this country. I hear nothing now but mowing, browsing, and 'after-feed,' until at last I find myself using the latter word for 'dessert.' He says it prettily and acts it well, and although his wife ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... said Achilles, "must, I ween, be the daughter of the large-bodied northern boor, living next door to him upon whose farm was brought up the person of an ass, curst with such ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... see any one who is looking out of his window or door, both improper practices, especially the latter.' When a gentleman speaks to one much older than himself, or to a lady, he not only raises his hat quite off his head—for none 'but an ignorant boor or a fier Anglais' ever does otherwise—but holds it in his hand until requested to replace it. When you ask your way, even of a street-porter or an apple-woman, it is necessary slightly to half-raise the hat, and address them as Monsieur or Madame, 'which is the way ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... DAUBIGNY, And dragged the unsophisticated girl Into the whirl of fashionable life, For which her singularly rustic ways, Her breeding (moral, but extremely rude), Her language (chaste, but ungrammatical), Would absolutely have unfitted her. How different to this unreflecting boor ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... varied collection of curiosities. The pictures were chiefly oil-paintings covered with dark varnish, in frames of dingy yellow. Winter scenes with white trees; very red sunsets, like raging conflagrations, a Flemish boor, more like a turkey-cock in cuffs than a human being, were the prevailing subjects. To these must be added a few engravings, such as a portrait of Khozreff-Mirza in a sheepskin cap, and some generals with three-cornered ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a great deal, but it will do nothing in regard to sin. It will alter the type of the disease, because the cultured man's transgressions will be very different from those of the illiterate boor. But wise or foolish, professor, student, thinker, or savage with narrow forehead and all but dead brain, are alike in this, that they are sinners in God's sight. I would that I could get through the fence that some of you have reared round you, on the ground of your superior enlightenment ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... soon as public business admitted of Marius's departure, Metellus would grant his request. Still further entreaties are said to have wrung from the impatient proconsul, whose good advice had been wasted on a boor who did not know his place and could take no hints, the retort that Marius need not hurry; it would be time enough for him to canvass for the consulship when Metellus's own son should be his colleague.[1057] The boy was about twenty, Marius forty-nine. The ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the slightest interest to me," she returned, "whom you're rude to, or how you spend your spare time. The habits of an ill-mannered boor are not of great importance, are they?" She turned her back on him, and parted the undergrowth with her ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... philosophy of life of his own, except the true philosopher. The most ignorant boor has some conception of his object in living, and definite ideas as to the easiest and wisest way of attaining that object. The man of the world is often, unconsciously to himself, a philosopher ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... who had first spoken was on the point of making an angry reply, but his companion exclaimed with a laugh, "Let the boor alone to do his business; by the look of his face 'twill bring him pretty close to the hangman's rope!" and, taking no further notice of us, they ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... said he, "thou shalt arise from thy never-to-be-lamented-sufficiently-lowliness; thou shalt leave the homely occupations of that rude boor unto whom it beseemeth thee to give the appellation of father, and shalt attain to the-all-to-be-desired greatness of my love, even as the resplendent sun condescends to shine down upon the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... chepe for vs 24 De la venyson, Of the venyson, Soyt de porc sengler, Be it of wylde boor, Soyt de serf ou de bisse; Be it of herte, of hyndecalf; Sy latourne au noir poiure Dyght it with broun pepre 28 Quand tu larras achatte. Whan thou shalt haue bought it. Va en la poillaillerie, Goo into the pultrie, Achatte ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... of the human voice and of musical instruments. There is even a great difference between the disciplined, and therefore differentiated ear of a cultured person, and the undisciplined, and therefore less differentiated ear of a boor. Similar specializations of structure and function pertain to the other senses; but ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dressing-gown And bends her mirror on the moon, But trembling on the mirror dark The sad moon only could remark. List! the snow crunches—he draws nigh! The girl on tiptoe forward bounds And her voice sweeter than the sounds Of clarinet or flute doth cry: "What is your name?" The boor looked dazed, And "Agathon" ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... no ungentle boor: he spoke them fair and graciously. "Tell me, child," he said, "what is your name? No harm shall come to you at my hands, whosoever ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... caitiff, Noticing the swain is poor (Courtesy with him is native, Not like you, suburban boor), Bows, and says in accents sunny, 'Pass along, Sir—make good speed; I'm convinced you've got no money And I do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... situated in a less interesting country, and because the effect desired is very rarely given, there being far greater difficulties to contend with. But one word more, before setting off for the south. Though, as we saw before, the gentleman has less national character than the boor, his individual character is more marked, especially in its finer features, which are clearly and perfectly developed by education; consequently, when the inhabitant of the villa has had anything to do with its erection, we might expect to find indications of individual and peculiar feelings, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... smile weakly, as though they had heard a good joke on SHERIDAN, and retire slowly toward their homes, evidently exhausted by the oppressive virtue of the intolerable Yankee boor, whom M'VICKER plays so well that the respectable portion of the audience is almost inclined to overlook the wretchedness of the part in admiration of the skill of ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... ignobile vulgus [Lat.]; vermin, riffraff, ragtag and bobtail; small fry. commoner, one of the people, democrat, plebeian, republican, proletary^, proletaire^, roturier^, Mr. Snooks, bourgeois, epicier [Fr.], Philistine, cockney; grisette^, demimonde. peasant, countryman, boor, carle^, churl; villain, villein; terrae filius [Lat.], son of the land; serf, kern^, tyke, tike, chuff^, ryot^, fellah; longshoreman; swain, clown, hind; clod, clodhopper; hobnail, yokel, bog-trotter, bumpkin; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... If in the boor’s garden the King eats a pear, His servants rapacious the tree will uptear; For every five eggs he gives bounteously, more Than five hundred fowls will ...
— Little Engel - a ballad with a series of epigrams from the Persian - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... continued the unfeeling boor, "the rich Klaus has become the very careful and thrifty. I wonder if the churchwarden means to give him the bell-purse money for ever!"[1] Well, Liar, how gets on the stick trade? Will you soon be able to patch your coat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... My address—mail reaches me from time to time, by aforesaid vessel—is P.O. Box 14, Blue Harbor, Me. ME stands for Mid Equator, but the abbreviation is sufficient. Blue Harbor is my own literal translation of the native Bluar Boor. Box 14 refers to the native system of delivering messages. P.O. has, I think, something to do with the P. & O. steamers, which, however, do not very ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... onion. He exists in concentric layers. He is born a bulb and grows by external accretions. The number and character of his involutions certify to his culture and courtesy. Those of the boor are few and coarse. Those of the gentleman are numerous and fine. But strip off the scales from all and you come to the same germ. The core of humanity is barbarism. Every man is a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... naturally indignant at such outrage and robbery, made attacks upon the boors to recover the cattle, but with this difference between the Christian boor and the untutored savage: the boors murdered women and children wantonly, the Caffres never harmed them, and did not even kill men, if they could obtain possession of their ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat |
