"Bumpkin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nice, ladylike manners," she said on another occasion, when Laura, summoned to the drawingroom to see a visitor, had in Mother's eyes disgraced them both. "Now, you've no more idea how to behave than a country bumpkin. You sit there, like a stock or a stone, as if you didn't know how to open ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... told me by Mr. Crabb Robinson,[681] who was long connected with the Times, and intimately acquainted with Mr. W***.[682] When W*** was an undergraduate at Cambridge, taking a walk, he came to a stile, on which sat a bumpkin who did not make way for him: the gown in that day looked down on the town. "Why do you not make way for a gentleman?"—"Eh?"—"Yes, why do you not move? You deserve a good hiding, and you shall get it if you don't take care!" The bumpkin raised his muscular figure on its feet, patted his ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... many-colored as a Joseph, he strutted through bucolic surroundings as if he carried the top-knot of the mode in the Mall; he glittered in ribbons and trinkets, floundered rather than swam in a sea of essences, yet scarcely succeeded in amending, with all this false foppishness, the something bumpkin that was at the root of his nature. He was of a lusty natural with the sanguine disposition, and held himself as much above the most of his neighbors as he knew himself to be below the house of Harby. He was no double-face, friendly ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... great men is to try for it; and each one supposes it possible for him to become Governor of the State, or President of the Union. The idea of being educated to fill a humble office in life is hardly thought of, and every bumpkin who has a memory sufficient for the words ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... them. But which of our deeds is selected and given to us? Perhaps quite a little one, one that we have forgotten, but which has been recorded—small as a pea, but the pea can send out a blooming shoot. The poor bumpkin who sat on a low stool in the corner, and was jeered at and flouted, will perhaps have his worn-out stool given him as a provision; and the stool may become a litter in the land of eternity, and rise up then as a throne, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... will this never be done?" cries the Master. "Quel lourdaud! But why do I trouble you with French expressions, which are lost on such an ignoramus? A lourdaud, my dear brother, is as we might say a bumpkin, a clown, a clodpole: a fellow without grace, lightness, quickness; any gift of pleasing, any natural brilliancy: such a one as you shall see, when you desire, by looking in the mirror. I tell you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appearance of a city clerk. But the fellow had a keen look, and there was something in the lines of his thin, determined lips that gave one confidence. I saw that he did not reciprocate this feeling. Indeed, I think he rather despised me for a thick-headed country bumpkin. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... parvo, predecessor of the Spanish gracioso, the Lisbon courtier descended from Aeneas, the astronomer, unpractical in daily life as he gazes on the stars, the old man amorous, rose in buttonhole, playing on a viola, the Jewish marriage-brokers, the country bumpkin, the lazy peasant lying by the fire, the poor but happy gardener and his wife, the quarrelsome blacksmith with his wife the bakeress, the carriers jingling along the road and amply acquainted with the wayside inns, ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... like to do?" retorted the bumpkin. "A proper spiteful twoad such as he—why, he'll rumple all the color and booty out o' her wings, and sting her ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the young bumpkin I came in with this morning. I thought I was striding alongside an elephant in bulk and wild horse in speed," ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Kissam actually did come upon the discovery he says he did, at the period designated—nearly eight years ago—how happens it that he took no steps, on the instant, to reap the immense benefits which the merest bumpkin must have known would have resulted to him individually, if not to the world at large, from the discovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man of common understanding could have discovered what Mr. Kissam says ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... May—the more flauntingly to gallantrize it afterwards—rubbing his ballocks, spread out upon a table after the manner of a Spanish cloak. Wherefore it is, that none should henceforth say, who would not speak improperly, when any country bumpkin hieth to the wars, Have a care, my roister, of the wine-pot, that is, the skull, but, Have a care, my roister, of the milk-pot, that is, the testicles. By the whole rabble of the horned fiends of hell, the head being cut off, that single person only thereby dieth. But, if the ballocks be marred, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... and dice boxes, and Phaon—who had come to the conclusion that he had to deal with a light-headed bumpkin, who represented merely so much fair plunder—began to play with a careless heart. The landlord brought more and more flagons of wine, wine that was mixed with little water and was consequently very heady. But the game—with some veering of fortune—went ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... tank where the fish are kept,—not to speak of the miller's boy, who was already watching me. No matter where you are in the country, however solitary you may think yourself, you are certain to be the focus of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a laborer rests on his hoe, a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a little goat-girl, or shepherdess, or milkmaid climbs a willow ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Man's office—one whom he may consider a great man, a president perhaps of a big industry or of a railroad, or a senator—and shortly afterwards, Strong Man's own son comes into the room. Would he like to see his son abashed, awkward, spasmodically jerky, like the poor bumpkin who came the other day to ask about removing the ashes, or worse yet, bold and boisterous or cheeky; or would he like that boy of his to come forward with an entire lack of self-consciousness, and as his father ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... By Kuan Chung helping Duke Huan to put down the great vassals and make all below heaven one, men have fared the better from that day to this. But for Kuan Chung our hair would hang down our backs and our coats would button to the left; or should he, like the bumpkin and his lass, their troth to keep, have drowned in a ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... on the rail, taking it very leisurely, and calling out to Captain Nye that he was coming to pay him a visit. We drifted fairly into the Loriotte, her larboard bow into our starboard quarter, carrying away a part of our starboard quarter railing, and breaking off her larboard bumpkin, and one or two stanchions above the deck. We saw our handsome sailor, Jackson, on the forecastle, with the Sandwich-Islanders, working away to get us clear. After paying out chain, we swung clear, but our anchors were, no ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... bumpkin? Not he. The poor, dumb idiot took it all as a practical joke among friends. Naturally, just as he said, he thought I'd give you your money back. Glad you had presence of mind enough to go on through with the five-spot. It's fine business to be able to think on your feet, ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... in the wild, to come upon a bumpkin in cowhide boots crushing bark, to have him read within twenty minutes a cherished and well-hidden ambition which Brampton had not discovered in a month (and did not discover for many years) was sufficiently startling. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cattle and corn! Your proffered love I scorn! 'Tis known very well, my name is Nell, And you're but a bumpkin born.' 'Well! since it is so, away I will go, - And I hope no harm is done; Farewell, adieu!—I hope to woo As good as you,—and win her, too, Though ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... me for a country bumpkin instead of a great politician, and were inclined to make much of my excess of simplicity. Motioning my companion that it was time to be going, I expressed the great delight their company had afforded me, and took my leave, promising to pay them another visit at no very distant day. I now ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... you myself. You'll soon learn. It's not as if you was a bumpkin to teach! The man as can do anything, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... age, if ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape these unfavorable reflections of himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather a chilling rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or fine feeling in him. Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... artlessly joined to the lower half or two-thirds of a codfish, the monkey's head usually adorned with a handful of oakum or horse-hair. When this kind of thing was first exhibited by the lamented P. T. Barnum, it is just possible that some bumpkin really believed it to be a mermaid, but the invention has become so common of late that it is found in the curio-shops of every town, and as an eye-catching device is often put into show-cases by some merchant who deals in anything rather than mermaids. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... her condescension, and my extreme pleasure at having met with them. To say the truth, the compliment was so expressed, that the lady might easily appropriate the greater share of it, for Thorncliff seemed an arrant country bumpkin, awkward, shy, and somewhat sulky withal. He shook hands with me, however, and then intimated his intention of leaving me that he might help the huntsman and his brothers to couple up the hounds,—a purpose which he rather communicated ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... All this time his housekeeper, Goody Blount, as he called her, in her lace cap and ruffles, as precise and starch as an old picture, stood behind his chair with pleased solemnity, directing, with unruffled composure, the movements of the liveried bumpkin who this day was promoted to the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... hamlet, in a lonely spot by a woodside, I came upon a little lad of perhaps ten years old, who, his head hidden in his arms against a tree trunk, was crying bitterly. I asked him what was the matter, and, after a little trouble—he was better than a mere bumpkin—I learnt that, having been sent with sixpence to pay a debt, he had lost the money. The poor little fellow was in a state of mind which in a grave man would be called the anguish of despair; he must have been crying for a long time; every muscle in his face ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... I don't believe a bumpkin like you could manage all that. I believe you've still got the stuff on you, and if you don't give it up—why, we're all alone, and ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... bless me, why so pale—so faint At influx of good fortune? Certainly, No matter how or why or whose the fault, I save your life—save it, nor less nor more! You blindly were resolved to welcome death In that black boor-and-bumpkin-haunted hole Of his, the prig with all the preachments! You Installed as nurse and matron to the crones And wenches, while there lay a world outside Like Paris (which again I recommend) In company and guidance of—first, this, Then—all in good time—some new friend as fit— What if ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... works are good. This truth to prove Around the world I need not move; I do it by the nearest Pumpkin. "This fruit so large, on vine so small," Surveying once, exclaim'd a bumpkin— "What could He mean who made us all? He's left this Pumpkin out of place. If I had order'd in the case, Upon that oak it should have hung—— A noble fruit as ever swung To grace a tree so firm and strong. Indeed, it was a great mistake, As ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... long, but for about four hours it blew furiously. It was not yet at its height, and the ship was still carrying her close reefed maintopsail with reefed main trysail and fore topmast staysail, when a sharper lurch than usual threw a sudden strain upon the bumpkin to which the weather main brace was led, and in a moment it had snapped in two. The mainyard no longer supported by the brace, and pressed by the whole power of the straining topsail, flew forward and upward till it was bent nearly double, when with a loud crash it parted in the slings, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes |
