"Boorish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cigars I smoked. I watched him in silence while he cut off the end with a neat, precise stroke of his penknife, lit the cigar and blew a cloud of blue smoke out of his mouth. All the time I was staring at him I could feel Moira's eyes on me, and I knew that she was wondering what made me so boorish and morose. Or, perhaps, with a woman's keen instinct for ferreting out the things she shouldn't know anything about, she guessed just what was the matter. To tell the truth I was just beginning ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... he even made jokes in a Catonian manner; jokes that were not peculiarly witty, but somewhat gruff and boorish, yet significant of a resigned and self-contented mind. One morning he ordered Ratcliffe to take an iron-clad ship of war and attack the Sioux in Montana, seeing that he was in charge of the army and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... and fortune of the war, The help of England and the aide of Fraance, I only can call mine: and shall I then, Now in the sun-set of my daie of honour, When I should passe with glory to my rest And raise my Monument from my Cuntries praises, Sitt downe and with a boorish patience suffer The harvest that I labourd for to be Anothers spoile? the peoples thancks and praises, Which should make faire way for me to my grave, To have another object? the choice fruites Of my deepe projects ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... exterior appearance, you would not have given the peel of an onion for him, so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous in his gesture. He had a sharp pointed nose, with the look of a bull, and countenance of a fool: he was in his carriage simple, boorish in his apparel, in fortune poor, unhappy in his wives, unfit for all offices in the commonwealth, always laughing, tippling, and merrily carousing to everyone, with continual gibes and jeers, the better by those means to conceal his divine knowledge. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... in most cases appeared to have been more mischievous than malicious. It was probably due to a somewhat too liberal use of pillaged wine. In general, the worst charges against the Germans in France were that they had been exceedingly rude and boorish. There were, however, some instances which came to my notice where German officers had shown consideration for the civilians, had politely apologized for their unwelcome but "necessary" intrusion into French families, and had carefully paid ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... and cheerful; when alone with his wife he has scarcely a word to say; he moves about the house with the lofty indifference of a lord, and with a heartless disregard of every member of the household. At home he is cold and cross and boorish, in other women's parlors he is polite and considerate and engaging. He has a smile and a compliment for other women, none for his wife. If they attend an evening reception, he brings his wife there, and he takes her home; ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... tickled world a'dancing. In a word, as the progress of Christianization mellows those in manner whom it cannot mend in mind, much the same will it prove with the progress of genialization. And so, thanks to geniality, the misanthrope, reclaimed from his boorish address, will take on refinement and softness—to so genial a degree, indeed, that it may possibly fall out that the misanthrope of the coming century will be almost as popular as, I am sincerely sorry to say, some ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... she was a beautiful and refined woman with nothing in common with those who were about her. Indeed, this might be said of many women in the England of those days, for the men were rude and rough and coarse, with boorish habits and few accomplishments, while the women were the most lovely and tender that I have ever known. We became great friends, the Lady Jane and I, for it was not possible for me to drink three bottles of port after dinner like those Devonshire gentlemen, and ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he sir? Clo. He sir, that must marrie this woman: Therefore you Clowne, abandon: which is in the vulgar, leaue the societie: which in the boorish, is companie, of this female: which in the common, is woman: which together, is, abandon the society of this Female, or Clowne thou perishest: or to thy better vnderstanding, dyest; or (to wit) I kill thee, make thee away, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... was, indeed, weary of the interview. The exertion of the afternoon, the heated room, the wine and the ill temper into which he had fallen, deprived him of his usual wit, leaving him only boorish ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... return to England, Tyrrel, a brutal squire who was jealous of his popularity, conceived a violent hatred against him. When Miss Melville, Tyrrel's ill-used ward, fell in love with Falkland, who had rescued her from a fire, her guardian sought to marry her to a boorish, brutal farm-labourer. Though Falkland's timely intervention saved her in this crisis, the girl eventually died as the result of Tyrrel's cruelty. As she was the victim of tyranny, Falkland felt it his duty at ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... rise with the dawn, strong from sweet sleep, to guide the plough? One good thing must be scored down to the credit of the country girls of the day. They have done much to educate the men. They have shamed them out of the old rough, boorish ways; compelled them to abandon the former coarseness, to become more gentlemanly in manner. By their interest in the greater world of society, literature, art, and music (more musical publications probably are now sold for the country in a month than used to be in a year), they have ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... well-affected towards the young king at St. Germains, whose right to the throne was undeniable, and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, by far the greater part of the English people would have preferred, to the having a petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty, rapacity, boorish manners, and odious foreign ways, a thousand stories were current. It wounded our English pride to think, that a shabby High-Dutch duke, whose revenues were not a tithe as great as those of many of the princes of our ancient English nobility, who could not speak a word of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the situation, is proof of the variety of the life from which the Saga is drawn. More than that, there is here a rather cruel test of the heroics of Laxdla, of the story itself; the notable thing about this spectator and critic is that his boorish judgment is partly right, as the judgment of Thersites is partly right—"too much blood and too little brains." He is vulgar common sense in the presence of heroism. In his own way a critic of the heroic ideals, his appearance ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... feeling of anguish. Those vegetables, from the sale of which the market-gardener derived the largest profits, really belonged to him; the wine which his mother's offspring drank, the bread they ate, also belonged to him. The whole house, the entire fortune, was his by right; according to his boorish logic, he alone, the legitimate son, was the heir. And as his riches were in danger, as everybody was greedily gnawing at his future fortune, he sought a means of turning them all out—mother, brother, sister, servants—and ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... are known by the generic name of Arya, [449] and those coming from Hindustan into the Nerbudda valley as Pardeshi, while in the same locality the Brahmans and Rajputs of Central India are designated by the Marathas as Rangra. This term has the signification of rustic or boorish, and is therefore a fairly close parallel to Kamathi, if the latter word has the meaning given above. In the Thana District of Bombay [450] people of many classes are included under the name of Kamathi. Though they do not marry or even ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... strange character was that of an overgrown country lout with boorish manners and silly mind. He did not and would not go to school, and he asserts now that if he had done so he "would have become as big a fool as other people." A shiftless fellow, left to his own devices, he performed some wonderful feats, and among the many ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... visit Jack went out regularly once every four weeks. He fell very naturally into the ways of the house, and although his manner often amused Alice Merton greatly, and caused even her father to smile, he was never awkward or boorish. ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... air-squadrons were being Prussianized. The enemy pilot approached very closely and threw a missile at him. He could not be sure what it was, as the object went wide of the mark; but he was so incensed that he made a virage, and drawing a small flask from his pocket, hurled it at his boorish antagonist. The flask contained some excellent port, he said, but he was repaid for the loss in seeing it crash on the exhaust-pipe of ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... almost without knowing it, began to be thawed into a father. But the fear of a rival in the King's favour—some gallant soldier—and dozens of them were reported every week—made him resolve once more to bring his daughter's beauties into play. The king had seen her, and, in his boorish way, had expressed his admiration; and Gyllenborg felt assured, that if he should marry his daughter according to the King's wishes, his influence would be greater than ever; and, in fact, that the premiership would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... last day of their intended stay, an incident occurred which furnished a proper termination to their frolic. A rough, boorish fellow came to visit them, who evidently "hailed" from remote country districts, into which the civilizing influences of education had not penetrated. All his utterances, for his words should scarcely be dignified with the name ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... and overwhelmed in rebellion. It is your own forefather, MacIan with the broken sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is Charles refusing to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary of the magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the boorish moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet, giving his crown to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is Arthur, overwhelmed in Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in the mist, doubtful if ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... affable with all, he had eyes only for Virginia. The others he would willingly have dispensed with, especially the shipping clerk, whom he had sized up with one quick glance. He winced as he took note of the man's cheap, ready-made clothes and boorish manners. Decidedly he was quite impossible, but for the pleasure of a few moment's tete-a-tete with Virginia, he was ready to make any sacrifice—even to meet on equal social terms ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... of the movement in its palmy days—the brutal and cowardly baiting of a penalised class; the boorish insult to ideals held sacred by sensitive devotees; the deliberate cultivation of intra—parochial blood-feud; the savage fostering of hate for hate's own sake; the thousand squalid details of affray, ambuscade, murder, maltreatment, malicious injury to property—these, happily ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Conde, gentleman of France, and these be my sisters and servants," lied the outlaw, "and were it not that the ladies be with me, your answer would be couched in steel, as you deserve for your boorish insolence." ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... words with a cooing laugh, and taking my consent for granted, curled herself up in a corner of the sofa. I resumed my seat with a sigh. It would have been boorish ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... despite the ill form his ragged coat tried to give it. At a slap on the shoulder he turned about, showing to the merchant a ruddy, sea-tanned skin, light brown hair, gray eyes, and a chin and mouth hidden by a two months' beard, still too bristly to give him other than an unkempt, boorish look. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... fellow, who came trotting up with an old straw hat on his head. He was dressed in the coarsest brown homespun cloth. His face was rather sallow from fever-and-ague, and his tall figure, though strong and sinewy was quite thin, and had besides an angular look, which, together with his boorish seat on horseback, gave him an appearance anything but graceful. Plenty more of the same stamp were close behind him. Their company was raised in one of the frontier counties, and we soon had abundant evidence of their rustic breeding; dozens of them came crowding round, pushing between ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... did not think the thing too boorish to be pardoned. On the face of it it was rude to you—and the ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... invalidation of marriage, the frustration of the noblest and most divine ends of the institution; an essentially worse frustration, he dares to say in one place, than even that conjugal infidelity which "a gross and boorish opinion, how common soever," would alone resent or recognise. It is marvellous with what richness of varying language he paints to the reader the horrible condition of a man tied for life to a woman with whom he can hold no rational or worthy conversation. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... like reason, the members of the Legation kept silence, even in private, under the boorish Scotch jibes of Carlyle. If Carlyle was wrong, his diatribes would give his true measure, and this measure would be a low one, for Carlyle was not likely to be more sincere or more sound in one thought than in another. The proof that a philosopher does not ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... not be boorish at a common feast where there are many guests; the pleasure is greatest and the ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... palisades so near they could bandy words with the fighters on the galleries inside the walls. Among La Tour's fighters were Swiss mercenaries—men who fight for the highest pay. Did Charnisay in the language of the day "grease the fist" of the Swiss sentry, or was it a case of a boorish fellow refusing to fight under a woman's command? Legend gives both explanations; but on Easter Sunday morning Charnisay's men gained entrance by scaling the walls where the Swiss sentry stood. Madame La Tour rushed her men to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... courteous and genteel than is usual among persons of ordinary condition in a county so remote from London. He was extremely desirous that his son should be like him in this respect, and therefore he continually cautioned him against falling into that rough boorish manner of behaving which is natural to uneducated clowns, and makes them shocking to everybody but themselves. In this respect John was very compliant with his father's temper, and being put out apprentice to a peruke-maker, his obliging carriage endeared him so much, not only to his master and the ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... know whether Josephine is prouder of Fred or of David. Certainly her mind is comparatively at rest regarding them both, notwithstanding my second troy is not quite like other people. I do not mean that he is boorish or eccentric, merely that he is bookish and self-absorbed. He takes no interest in his personal appearance, and he avoids every young woman except his sisters. Fred is dandified, keenly fond of the social interests of the day and of the other sex. I foresee that he bids fair ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... or else making frantic passages of pretended love and coquetry. It upset the Englishman to see the impudence of this common peasant fellow grasping Roeselein by the waist, as he whirled her about in the boorish dance. Hence the clause to his question. She endured his inquiring gaze, as ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... but that this Millere He would his wordes for no man forbear, But told his churlish* tale in his mannere; *boorish, rude Me thinketh, that I shall rehearse it here. And therefore every gentle wight I pray, For Godde's love to deem not that I say Of evil intent, but that I must rehearse Their tales all, be they better or worse, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... and training of manners were ignored, even in well-to-do families. Children were left without control, and by excessive indulgence allowed to do just as they pleased; hence they became ill-behaved and boorish. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the majority was by no means favourably disposed towards the young general himself. His Greek refinement and his modern culture and tone of thought were but little agreeable to the austere and somewhat boorish fathers of the city; and serious doubts existed both as to his conduct of the Spanish war and as to his military discipline. How much ground there was for the objection that he showed too great indulgence towards his ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... could be convened for a special consultation, which, it was considered, the portents of the times demanded. Here was the aristocratic and haughty Brush, the host, and leading spirit of the party, with his florid face, cracking his jokes and ridiculing "the boorish settlers," in which he was sure to find a ready response in the boisterous laugh of Peters and other young supporters of the court and loyal party. Here, too, sat the fiery and profane Gale, the clerk of the court, with his thin, angular features, and forbidding brow, occasionally exploding with ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... gaped again; a few more words between him and one or two who were to go to Court the day after, but to me and some others not a syllable of any description was uttered, and when some more English were shewn in who were, I presume, as respectable as myself, his behaviour was quite boorish, he did not condescend to look towards the door. These things went on till a throng of Spaniards with Stars and orders came in; with these he appeared tolerably intimate, and also with three Englishmen who afterwards appeared. We were ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... I am sure my presence was a source of utter discomfort to the kind and venerable chevalier, and to his daughter. I was boorish and illiterate and Edmee was one of the most perfect women to be found in France. She found her happiness in her own family, and the sweetest simplicity crowned her mental powers and lofty virtues. Brute like, at that time I saw her only with the eyes of the body, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... conditions of a shepherd's lot. By this time the circle is complete, and a good supper and song are produced to ratify the general harmony. But now enters the element of discord which forms the pivot of the second scene. Mak, a boorish fellow shrewdly suspected of sheep stealing, joins them, and, after some chaffing, is allowed to share their grassy bed. In the night he rises, picks out the finest ram from the flock, drives it home, and hides it in the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Bellevale has ever received on a dark past," said Miss Finch, "if it is light. And how strangely he acts! Everybody notices it. Always so chatty and almost voluble before, and now—why, he's dreadfully boorish. You know how ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... canting. 'Prose they only know in graces, prayers, etc., and the value of these they estimate, as they do their plaiding webs, by the ell. As for the Muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet.' He was, in fact, ungracious towards his neighbours, not that they were boorish or uninformed folk, but simply because, though living at Ellisland in body, his mind was in Ayrshire with his darling Jean, and he was looking to the future when he should have a home and a wife of his own. His eyes would ever wander to the west, and he sang, to cheer him in his loneliness, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... determination to carry out whatever he has laid his hand to—will, if trained and taught what it is right to do, prove a superlatively good and useful man. He achieves, in fact, what is best upon the grandest scale. But leave him in boorish ignorance untrained, and he will prove not only very bad but very mischievous, (7) and for this reason, that lacking the knowledge to discern what is right to do, he will frequently lay his hand to villainous practices; whilst the very magnificence and vehemence of his character render ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... felt boorish. He had never liked and disapproved of Lady Sunderbund so much as he did at that moment. And he had no ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... your writers do consent that ipse is he; now, are you not ipse, for I am he?' "'Which he, sir?' "'He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you clown, abandon—which is, in the vulgar, leave the society—which, in the boorish, is company of this female—which, in the common, is woman—which together is, abandon the society of this female; or clown.... I will o'errun thee with policy; therefore tremble, and depart.'" —As You ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... place entirely under cover. The man who had given the note and the one who had refused to accept it were the only ones who knew of it. The girl saw only that this splendid horseman who had snatched her from under the very feet of the ladino had shown a boorish discourtesy. The savor had gone out of her adventure. Her heart was sick with disappointment ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... that name at baptism, than he insisted that this his only child—and he had no more afterwards—should be suckled by his own mother, and that in his tender years he should have his character formed in the house of his parents, rather than learn less gentle or even boorish ways and habits in the houses of peasants or common people. When he was well grown, he began to exercise him in painting, seeing him much inclined to such an art, and possessed of a very beautiful genius: wherefore ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... individuals and some newspapers have spoken of the enemy. I suppose there are few gentlemen who have not winced at such remarks. But let Mr. Methuen glance at the continental press and see the work of the supporters of the enemy. It will make him feel more charitable towards his boorish fellow-countrymen. Or let him examine the Dutch press in South Africa and see if all the abuse is on one side. Here are some appreciations from the first letter of P.S. (of Colesburg) in ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the little window, and who, several times, in despair, had threatened to shoot. Tsiganok would retort, coarsely and derisively, and the quarrel would end peacefully because the dispute would soon turn into boorish, unoffending abuse, after which shooting would ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... to be no subject, but them Bernilillo hold-ups snatches onto him in spite of his protests, an' passes him up onto the stage to the professor. They're plenty headlong, not to say boorish, them Bernilillo ruffians be; speshully if they've sot their hearts on anythin', an' pore Emil stands about the same show among 'em as a cottontail rabbit among a ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... ungentlemanlike; unladylike, unfeminine; wild, wild as an unbacked colt. untutored, unschooled (ignorant) 491. unkempt. uncombed, untamed, unlicked[obs3], unpolished, uncouth; plebeian; incondite[obs3]; heavy, rude, awkward; homely, homespun, home bred; provincial, countrified, rustic; boorish, clownish; savage, brutish, blackguard, rowdy, snobbish; barbarous, barbaric; Gothic, unclassical[obs3], doggerel, heathenish, tramontane, outlandish; uncultivated; Bohemian. obsolete &c. (antiquated) 124; unfashionable ; newfangled &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... classes already mentioned, there is another exceedingly large class of society, which, far from being boorish by nature, yet from circumstances lacks the cultivation which alone will bring the conduct into such training as will fit it practically for exhibition in society. To the persons comprising this class, it is not only a source of ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... complaints made by them against our mariners. I found him and the president of their factory very impatient, calling us insolent English, threatening that our pride would have a fall, with many other disgraceful and opprobrious words.[134] Such was the entertainment we received from that boorish general, named Garrat Reynes, in his own house. He had formerly shewn the like or worse to Mr Ball, on going aboard his ship at Banda: And four of our men, who took passage with him from thence to Cambello, were brought all the way in the bilboes, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... Standish, disarmed to some extent at the outset, for he felt it would be boorish and "bad form" to have a row with a man who seemed to hold him in high regard. "No, I won't have a drink. As a matter of fact, Don Carlos, I have called to see you in connection with—er—with a ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... commandments. Nothing escaped his blighting censure. At every sentence he overthrew an idol, or lowered my estimation of a friend. I saw everything with new eyes, and could only marvel at my former blindness. How was it possible that I had not before observed A's false hair, B's selfishness, or C's boorish manners? I and my companion, methought, walked the streets like a couple of gods among a swarm of vermin; for every one we saw seemed to bear openly upon his brow the mark of the apocalyptic beast. I half expected that these miserable beings, like the people of Lystra, would recognise ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cockayne continued, "it is quite refreshing, after the boorish manners of your London shopkeepers, to be waited upon by these polite Frenchmen. ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... distinctive quality of Japanese poetry is undoubtedly due to the air in which it flourished. It is never religious, and it is often immoral, but it is always suffused with a certain hue of courtliness, even gentleness. The language is of the most refined delicacy, the thought is never boorish or rude; there is the self-collectedness which we find in the poetry of France and Italy during the Renaissance, and in England during the reign of Queen Anne. It exhibits the most exquisite polish, allied with an avoidance of every shocking or perturbing theme. It seems to combine the ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... pronounced at all by the less educated Romans, since it is often wholly omitted in inscriptions, and has been lost in modern Italian. Cicero, Orator 161, says that the neglect to pronounce final s is 'somewhat boorish' (subrusticum), though formerly thought 'very refined' (politius). Even Lucretius sometimes disregards it in his scanning. In the ordinary literary Latin a large number of words has lost an original s; e.g. all the nouns of the -a ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... his hand and burst into his noisy, boyish laughter, so reminiscent of things rural and boorish, of the coarse, strong spirits of the happy-go-lucky, irresponsibles that work as field hands and wood-haulers. "By cracky, Grant, I just got sight of the remnants of that dig I gave you. It was a beauty, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... mountain village of Tagiamamanono. It was occupied by the rebel troops from the Island of Savai'i. Their chiefs were very courteous, and, of course, we were asked to "stay and rest and drink kava". To refuse would have been looked upon as boorish and insulting, so I cheerfully acquiesced, and Marchmont and I were escorted to a large house, where I formally presented him to our hosts as a traveller from "Peretania," whom I was "showing around Samoa". Any man of ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... as he keeps away from me," she retorted clearly. "He is coarse, vulgar, boorish, and I have far too much respect for myself to permit such a man to touch me, either upon the stage or off; to have him kiss me ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... should be taken at least once a week, and if the feet perspire they should be washed several times a week, as the case may require. It is not unfrequent that young men are seen with dirty ears and neck. This is unpardonable and boorish, and shows gross neglect. Occasionally a young lady will be called upon unexpectedly when her neck and smiling face are not emblems of cleanliness. Every lady owes it to herself to be fascinating; every gentleman is bound, for his own sake, to be presentable; but beyond ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... mention one more, called Flemengs, infidels, dun, heavy, and boorish; who are amongst the Franks what the Armenians are amongst us,—having no ideas beyond those of thrift, and no ambition beyond that of riches. They used to send us a sleepy ambassador to negotiate the introduction of their cheeses, butter, and salt-fish; but their government ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Oliver, that had you killed him after what happened I could not hold you guilty of having done more than punish a boorish ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... this or that practical task, suffuse your whole mentality with something more important than skill. They redeem you, make you well-bred; they make "good company" of you mentally. If they find you with a naturally boorish or caddish mind, they cannot leave you so, as a technical school may leave you. This, at least, is pretended; this is what we hear among college-trained people when they compare their education with every other sort. Now, exactly ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... with a piqued curiosity. For a moment, forgetting that here was a man who had rescued her from insult at considerable bodily risk, she saw him only as a man of curious, almost boorish brusqueness. Why this ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... rarely is. It is not Oscar Wilde's wax flowers of speech, nor the excessively stiff and conventionalized action of "Salome," that bores one with the Strauss opera of that name. It is not even the libretto of "Der Rosenkavalier," essentially coarse and boorish and insensitive as it is beneath all its powdered preciosity, that wearies one with Strauss's "Musical Comedy"; or the hybrid, lame, tasteless form of "Ariadne auf Naxos" that turns one against that little monstrosity. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... was a fine answer of Sophocles to a man who asked him, when in extreme old age, whether he was still a lover. "Heaven forbid!" he replied; "I was only too glad to escape from that, as though from a boorish and insane master." To men indeed who are keen after such things it may possibly appear disagreeable and uncomfortable to be without them; but to jaded appetites it is pleasanter to lack than to enjoy. However, he cannot be said to lack ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... up with it no longer; and in consequence I take the boorish liberty of suggesting that this is none ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... of this final assertion, I call you to witness the sticks at the door, Where they make it a daily, a 'manly' diversion, To ogle each woman, and sometimes do more, Who passes the hotel that's named by a saint, Where boorish bad manners give ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... speaking of Clarendon Beverley!" he exclaimed, almost fiercely. "These Yankees have no respect for any thing on earth, but their own boorish selves." ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... prosperous provinces, the people (revolutionary and excitable as their ancestors were) certainly appear happy and contented; the most uneducated of them are quick-witted and ready in reply, they are not boorish or sullen, they have more readiness—at least in manner—than the germanic races, and are, as a rule, full of gaiety and humour. These people do not want war, they hate the conscription which takes away the flower ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... Aytta van Zuichem was a learned Frisian, born, according to some writers, of "boors' degree, but having no inclination for boorish work". According to other authorities, which the President himself favored, he was of noble origin; but, whatever his race, it is certain that whether gentle or simple, it derived its first and only historical illustration from his remarkable talents and acquirements. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I can compare him. There were indeed among the ancients some, though very few, faithful and economical, but still they were stained by some vice or other; and among the chief faults which they had either by nature or habit, they were apt to be either rapacious or else boorish, and on that account contemptible; or else ill-natured and mischievous; or fawning too much on the powerful; or too elated with power, and therefore arrogant. But of any one so universally accomplished and prudent, I confess I have neither ever read nor ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... some cold tea into two little cups, when Monsieur Perrier made his appearance, his face begrimed and his shaggy hair uncombed. I had been used to the sight of rough men in Adelaide, on our sheep-farm, but I had never seen one more boorish. He stood in the doorway, rubbing his hands, and gazing at us unflinchingly with the hard stare of a Norman peasant, while he spoke in rapid, uncouth tones to his wife. I turned away my head, and shut my eyes to ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... come this length from London the dialect of the English tongue, or the country way of expressing themselves, is not easily understood—it is so strangely altered. It is true that it is so in many parts of England besides, but in none in so gross a degree as in this part. This way of boorish country speech, as in Ireland it is called the "brogue" upon the tongue, so here it is called "jouring;" and it is certain that though the tongue be all mere natural English, yet those that are but a little acquainted with them cannot understand one-half of what they say. It ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... son and her brother-in-law, Sicinius Clarus, and with this end in view threatened to exclude her sons, whose guardian he was, from the possession of any of their father's property, if she married elsewhere. She therefore suffered herself to be betrothed to Sicinius Clarus, 'a boorish and decrepit old man,' but put off the marriage, until her father-in-law's death released her from all embarrassment. Pontianus and Pudens succeeded to the property, and Pudentilla felt herself free to take a husband ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... wise, then, say, in the waning day, When the vessel is crack'd and old, To cherish the battered potters' clay, As though it were virgin gold? Take care of yourself, dull, boorish elf, Though prudent and safe you seem, Your pitcher will break on the musty shelf, And mine by ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... was what you wished to speak to me about. This was why you were so—so boorish and disagreeable in that shop. Tell me—was that the reason? Was that why you followed me there? Did you think—did you presume to think of preventing my buying what ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... charms of those beautiful and sprightly girls who sparkle like diamonds in all the memoirs of that time. Their political influence was but small. George the First and his successor pursued their unwieldy loves and enjoyed their boorish romps in a style not seductive to English gentlemen. Politics were surrendered to Walpole; and the consequence was that, although there was plenty of immorality under those gracious Sovereigns, yet the feminine element of Court life had no longer that connection with public policy ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... may prove so. But of this I am certain (for I know my countrymen) that until every other country in the Christian world, even to barbarian Muscovy and the hamlets of the boorish Germans, have its playhouse at the public charge, England will never adventure. And she will adventure then only because it is her desire to be ever in the fashion, and to do humbly and dutifully whatso she seeth everybody else doing. ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... By Respiration, and Chaos, and Air, I have not seen any man so boorish, nor so impracticable, nor so stupid, nor so forgetful; who, while learning some little petty quibbles, forgets them before he has learned them. Nevertheless I will certainly call him out here to the light. Where is Strepsiades? ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... been doubly bitter to exchange the happiness of his family circle, the splendour of an imperial court, the luxuries of enormous wealth, the refined society of statesmen, and the ennobling intercourse of philosophers for the savage wastes of a rocky island and the society of boorish illiterate islanders, or at the best, of a few other political exiles, all of whom would be as miserable as himself, and some of whom would probably have deserved ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Scottish wedding should be seen at a distance; the gay band of the dancers just distinguished amid the elderly group of the spectators,—the glass held high, and the distant cheers as it is swallowed, should be only a sketch, not a finished Dutch picture, when it becomes brutal and boorish. Scotch psalmody, too, should be heard from a distance. The grunt and the snuffle, and the whine and the scream, should be all blended in that deep and distant sound, which rising and falling like the Eolian harp, may have ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... townsman of our day. Further, there was a community of interests, and many people collected together in the fortified villages, with the result that little by little they attained to an importance never acquired by the boorish French peasants or the German serfs; they bore arms, they had a common treasury, they elected their own magistrates, and whenever they went out to fight, it was to ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... buildings) came finally, at the hands of that most rascally Greek, to an evil end; in a manner that, there being no trace or sign to be found of anything that was in any way good, the men who came after, although rude and boorish, and in particular in their pictures and sculptures, yet, incited by nature and refined by the air, set themselves to work, not according to the rules of the aforesaid arts, which they did not know, but according to the quality of ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... waiting taxicab, gave glaring proof of the dire result of his untimely call. From the garden, where Grace had fled to recover from the irritation of having been so grossly misunderstood, she saw the boorish young man depart. Privately she marveled that Arline should have so deceived herself in regard to her feelings for him. He was undoubtedly handsome, yet his regular features indicated a certain lack of strength and nobility which she thought totally marred his ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... of the saint. The mischief is that we like anything from a man of power. If he is insolent, we think it grand; if he is stupid, we think it a sort of condescension; if he is mild and polite, we think it marvellous; if he is boorish, we think it is simple-minded. It is power that we admire, or rather success, and both can be inherited. If a man gets a big position in England, he is always said to grow into it; but that ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mote, whit, iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. Bombastic, sophomoric, turgid, tumid, grandiose, grandiloquent, magniloquent. Boorish, churlish, loutish, clownish, rustic, ill-bred. Booty, plunder, loot, spoil. Brittle, frangible, friable, fragile, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... when there came to the hut of the witch a broommaker and a woodchopper, guided by a wandering minstrel. They were ambassadors from the city of Hellabrunn, which had been so long without a king that its boorish burghers themselves felt the need of a ruler in spite of their boorishness. To the wise woman the ambassadors put the questions: Who shall be this ruler and by what sign shall they recognize him? The witch tells them that their sovereign shall be the first person ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Cowperwood; and Bonhag hurried away, unintentionally forgetting, in his boorish incivility, to unlock the cell door, so that he had to open it in Aileen's presence. The long corridor, with its thick doors, mathematically spaced gratings and gray-stone pavement, caused Aileen to feel faint at heart. A prison, iron cells! And he was in one ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... endeavouring to make up the lost time. Mrs. Malling's round face shone again in her relief, and a sigh of content escaped her. Word was sent at once to the bride, and all was enthusiasm again. Then followed a terrible shock. Peter Furrer, more long-sighted than the rest, delivered it in a boorish fashion all ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... the forms of it. No one in France can doubt the powers of the commercial traveller; that intrepid soul who dares all, and boldly brings the genius of civilization and the modern inventions of Paris into a struggle with the plain commonsense of remote villages, and the ignorant and boorish treadmill of provincial ways. Can we ever forget the skilful manoeuvres by which he worms himself into the minds of the populace, bringing a volume of words to bear upon the refractory, reminding us of the indefatigable worker in marbles whose file eats slowly into a block ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... Timotheus[179] the son of Konon, whose success was attributed by his enemies to fortune, and they had paintings made in which he was represented asleep while Fortune was throwing a net over the cities, all which he took in a very boorish way, and got into a passion with his enemies, as if they were thus attempting to deprive him of the honour due to his exploits; and on one occasion, returning from a successful expedition, he said to the people, "Well, Fortune has had no share in this campaign, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... of the writer for the uncouth power of his sound-hearted and sound-limbed compatriots. This same love explains the contempt in which Thoma holds the sentimental depiction of parlor peasants which is so often met with in family magazines. He knows no glossing-over, and what is boorish in his peasants, he leaves boorish. But more and more he has developed from a satirist to a serious moralist of his native land. In his stories Wedding (1901) and Matt the Holy (1904) the satirical purpose predominates. But then, in his great novels, Thoma proceeds ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... a good deal of trouble just the moment before I ran against your chair, Miss Earle, and I hope you will excuse me on the ground of temporary insanity. Why, you know, they even let off murderers on that plea, so I hope to be forgiven for being careless in the first place, and boorish in the second." ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... our vices, they were gross and barbarous in theirs. They had neither so many ways nor so many means of sinning; but the sum of their moral turpitude was greater than ours. We have a sort of decency and good breeding, which lay a certain restraint on our passions; they were boorish and beastly, and their bad passions ever in full play. Civilization prevents barbarity and atrocity; mental cultivation induces decency of manners—those primitive times were generally without these. Who that knows them would wish such ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... emphatic manner. I had eaten nothing, not even a crust of the black bread, for fifty-four hours. Little wonder that I could scarcely keep my feet. My gaoler observed my condition, but said nothing, although he modified his customary boorish ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... years Frederick II grieved and disgusted his boorish but energetic old father by his dislike for military life and his interest in books and music. He was a particular admirer of the French and preferred their language to his own. No sooner had he become king, however, than he suddenly developed marvelous energy and skill in warlike enterprises. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... The presence of women always disconcerted him, and made him feel awkward and boorish. He had been too much of a student in higher art to acquire the smaller art of the drawing-room. He felt ill at ease in society, and seemed to have a fatal predilection for saying the wrong thing, and suffered ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... refrained from saying, and did not know what reply to give. I hated to appear boorish, besides it would not serve my purpose. My father being of Normandy, I deemed I would have nearly the accent of those people, so I ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... little small village which answers much to one of our small villages, such a one as Chesterton in all respects, and one could have thought it in England but for the language of the people. We went into a little drinking house where there were a great many Dutch boors eating of fish in a boorish manner, but very merry in their way. But the houses here as neat as in the great places. From thence to the Hague again playing at crambo—[Crambo is described as "a play at short verses in which a word is given, and the parties contend who can find most ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... owner? And what if I could persuade her to let me be the man? And at the very thought, my head began to swim in the delirium of hope and almost unimaginable anticipation. And I said: Dear Tarawali, is it the fault of the ocean gem, if its boorish owner flings it away, taking it for a bit of common glass, and ignoring its inestimable worth? There are other and better judges, who would give their very lives, only to be allowed to ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... many curved spines and cramped chests and inflamed throats and diseased lungs as there are among children. If parents knew more of art, and were in sympathy with all that is beautiful, there would not be so many children coming out in the world with boorish proclivities. If parents knew more of Christ, and practised more of His religion, there would not be so many little feet already starting on the wrong road, and all around us voices of riot and blasphemy would not come up with such ecstasy ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... was Bassaeus Rufus, a good man on the whole, but uneducated and boorish, having been brought up in poverty in his early youth. [Wherefore he had been disinclined to go on the campaign, and what Marcus said was incomprehensible to him.] Once some one had interrupted him in the midst of trimming a vine that wound about a tree, and when he did not come down at the first ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... all have the Spanish cortesia," says Frederick A. Ober, in the Century Magazine, when commenting upon the above opinions, "and are more like the polite Andalusians of the south of Spain than the boorish Catalans of the northeast. Even the lowliest laborer, unless he be one of the four hundred thousand illiterates, signs his name with a rubrica, or elaborate flourish and styles himself 'Don,' after the manner of the Spanish grandees, and the humblest innkeeper, ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... is made on this subject," said I, "is in comparing, as people generally do, a polished rascal with a boorish good man; but the polished rascal should be compared with the polished good man, and the boorish rascal with the boorish good man, and then we get the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... heard him, she ran lightly down the stairs as he heavily mounted them. Her heart was thumping so that she felt quite sick and faint. She could no longer run, but could only totter down towards the inevitable confrontation. It was there, and it was past—a plain, boorish "Evening." She managed the rest of the flight at a run; but when she was out of doors Sally turned to the darkness and could no longer restrain her tears of anguish. This was the end of her day. Laugh in the morning, cry before night. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... at times, not to feel them to be vitiated by their quite unconscious tendency to represent a point of of view. They were once called by a malign reviewer "the most detestable kind of tract," and though this is what the French call a saugrenu criticism, which implies something dull, boorish, and provincial, yet it is easy to recognise what is meant. It is not unjust to resent the appearance of the cultivated and sensitive Anglican, highly bred and graceful, who is sure to turn out hard and hollow-hearted, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a bullet through our skulls," he answered in boorish derision; and the man between ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Hochkirch, we were altogether ignorant of the manner in which you had gained your rank, and had thought that it was the result of favouritism. We now know your highly distinguished services, and how worthily you have gained each step; and we both sincerely hope that you will overlook our boorish conduct, and will endeavour to forget the manner in which we received your ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... where the gift is something so precious as a word; and when we receive one from another people, gratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself, should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices. We therefore protest against a useful and tuneful noun-substantive, a native of France, the word bouquet, being maimed into boquet, a corruption as dissonant to the ear as were to the eye plucking a rose from ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... Bob Wheeler had departed to his work that morning in a condition which his family, who were fond of homely similes, had likened to a bear with a sore head. The sisterly attentions of Emma Wheeler were met with a boorish request to keep her paws off; and a young Wheeler, rash and inexperienced in the way of this weary world, who publicly asked what Bob had "got the hump about," was sternly ordered to finish his breakfast in the washhouse. Consequently there was a full meeting after ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... come out!" he cried upon the moment. "I trust you have enjoyed your day's rest. And now give me your hand, sir; I regret beyond words my boorish conduct of this morning." ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... an occasion when it would have been boorish in me to refuse to meet them halfway. I even told them an excellent wheeze I had long known, which I thought they might not, have heard. It runs: "Why is Charing Cross? Because the Strand runs into it." I mean ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a very boorish way of thanking you for the premiere representation of your little poem. "To Delia in Girton" you call it, "recommending her to avoid the Muses, and seek the society of the Graces and Loves." An old-fashioned preamble, ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... sense to see your duties, Evan. You have an excellent sense, in the main. No one would dream—to see you. You did not, I must say, you did not make enough of your gallantry. A Portuguese who had saved a man's life, Evan, would he have been so boorish? You behaved as if it was a matter of course that you should go overboard after anybody, in your clothes, on a dark night. So, then, the Jocelyns took it. I barely heard one compliment to you. And Rose—what an effect ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mind the disquieting conversation that had just passed between Dominguez and myself; then, my gaze happening to wander aft to the solitary figure at the tiller, I sauntered aft and endeavoured to strike up a conversation with him. The fellow, however, proved to be so boorish and saturnine in his manner that I quickly abandoned the attempt and, pitching my half-smoked cigar over the rail, retired below and tumbled, "all standing," into the bunk that Dominguez had indicated as mine, where, despite the food for serious reflection that the occurrences of ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... General Butler, for a verbal infelicity in an order of imperative necessity and wholesome effect, has been befouled by language which no careful historian would apply to Tiberius or Louis XV. But enough of this. We should be glad to believe that these utterers of false witness were boorish men, in dark and desperate ignorance of the true bearing of our current affairs. We are unable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... His hair, worn in ailes de pigeon, and duly powdered every morning by the barber from the Ecole Polytechnique, described five points on his low forehead, and made an elegant setting to his face. Though his manners were somewhat boorish, he was always as neat as a new pin and he took his snuff in a lordly way, like a man who knows that his snuff-box is always likely to be filled with maccaboy, so that when Mme. Vauquer lay down to rest on ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... after generation that is not yet entirely erased. In the first half of the nineteenth century the knights of the shuttle—intellectual, disputatious, and lyrical—looked down with infinite contempt on the ignorant and boorish slaves of the pick. Poetry has, in consequence, little to say about the digger for coal. The song of "The Collier Laddie," attributed to Burns, is one of the very few pleasant pieces of verse associated with ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... ill-mannered, insulting, uncouth, bluff, coarse, impertinent, raw, unmannerly, blunt, discourteous, impolite, rude, unpolished, boorish, ill-behaved, impudent, rustic, untaught, brusk, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... dispirited and hungry, and hunger alone makes a man angry. He looked at the girl for whose sake he had raced all these miles of wild-goose chase, and a boorish longing to hurt her, to let her suffer rose ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... red-faced, boorish fellow, and his Adjutant sat beside him at the desk, for the Colonel was not particularly well up in his job. The Adjutant was tall, slightly bald, and fat-faced, and he leaned back throughout the interview with an air of sneering boredom, only vouchsafing laconic replies to his superior's ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... dudgeon, and he was left to curse his ill-timed jest. What a blundering fool he had been! Her first, timid little advance,—and he had met it with boorish, clownish wit! A scurvy jest, indeed! She was justified in ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... course has fallen short of its highest aim. For the acquisition of this spirit of respect, military training is superior to civil. One officer salutes another, the private salutes his officer, simply because the person saluted is an officer. It may be that he is disagreeable or boorish in manners, or even notoriously incompetent. This matters not: so long as he wears the epaulettes he is entitled to an officer's salute. Honor is shown, not to the transient owner of the title, but to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... other most famous of his numerous literary works are "The Rambler," "Rasselas," "The Lives of the English Poets," and his edition of Shakespeare. In person, Johnson was heavy and awkward; he was the victim of scrofula in his youth, and of dropsy in his old age. In manner, he was boorish and overbearing; but his great powers and his wisdom caused his company to be sought by many eminent men ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... eyes wander to his breadth of shoulder, straightness of back and even to the curl of his hair that cast its dancing shadows upon the wall in front of him. She had never had a man turn his back on her this way, and yet now the accomplished deed struck her in nowise as boorish or rude. He had paid her the tribute of a deep admiration, as clear and strong and unsullied as a racing mountain stream in spring time. The few words which he deemed necessary had passed between them. Then he had withdrawn himself from her attention. Not rude, the act ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... to be! But I trust you begin to see that even your strong hand couldn't control a woman's taste. Kidnapping! As intelligent a boy as you wanting to imitate these boorish movie——" ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... not counsel you to molest me, young man. The mistake you have committed in regard to myself may be pardoned in one of your evident inexperience; who, fresh from the boorish society of the country, finds himself, for the first time, amongst well-bred gentlemen. Of all here present you are probably the sole person ignorant that I am Sir Giles Mompesson. But it is scarcely likely that they ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... the means which she employs in the present war? Is it enough to explain this contrast, to allege that in spite of all their science the Germans are but slightly civilized, that in the sixteenth century they were still boorish and uncultivated and that their science, an affair of specialists and pundits, has never penetrated their soul ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Mrs. Sefton, indifferently. "Richard is always terribly boorish in appearance; and as to his manners, nothing will polish them. But what can you expect, when he affects the company of farmers? Neville is worth a hundred of him," she continued, as she rose, with a discontented expression, to give ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a neighbouring squire insupportably brutish and arrogant, tyrannical to his inferiors, and insolent to his equals. From the first he hated Falkland, whose dignity and courtesy were a constant rebuke to the other's boorish ill-humours, and rejected with scorn all proposals for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... now, hang me, if I don't think I have uttered more in her favor than her commander would say to help me to a recruit, though no lad in the three kingdoms should appear willing to try how a scarlet coat would suit his boorish figure." ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... can't help saying, though you know it already and will doubtless see it proved again and again. There are many deceivers in the world. Don't trust the outward look of things or people. Be cautious; yet conceal your caution under courtesy, for nothing is more boorish than open suspicion. And remember, too, not to think bad, either, from appearances alone. You may do injustice that way. Hold your opinion till the matter is tested. When appearances are fair, be wary without showing it; when they are bad, regard your safety but don't condemn. ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... drove to flight; Alarm'd at first by sudden dread, but soon, Resum'd their courage, his pursuit despis'd, They to the measur'd notes their agile feet Mov'd in the dance. The clown insults them more, Mimics their motions in his boorish steps, To coarse abusing adding speech obscene: Nor ceas'd his tongue 'till bury'd in a tree. Well may his manner from the fruit be known; For the wild olive marks his tongue's reproach, In berries most austere: to them transferr'd The rough ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... can scarcely be described. He dined with the Great Electress Sophia, afterwards first Queen of Prussia, and she wrote of him: "Nature has given him an infinity of wit. With advantages he might have been an accomplished man. What a pity his manners are not less boorish!" ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele |
