"Know nothing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "take care your tongue do not get you into trouble. Speak lower, an you will talk about things you know nothing about. You love kings and lords better than some folk," ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... friendship. They consort with certain companions and perhaps very earnestly admire them, because they possess intellectual gifts, but of friendship, such as we two, Morris and I (for that was his real name) understood it, they know nothing.' ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... and flown, there were thirteen at the table when little Ben first sat in the high chair. But the Franklins were not superstitious, and if little Ben ever prayed that another would be born, just for luck, we know nothing of it. His mother loved him very much and indulged him in many ways, for he was always her baby boy, but the father thought that because he was good-natured he was also lazy ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... adequate idea on my absolute and utter homeliness. The dates in the old family Bible show that I am in the decline of life, but I cannot recall a period in my existence when I felt really young. My very infancy, those brief months when babes prattle joyously and know nothing of care, was darkened by a shadowy presentiment of what I was to endure through life, and my youth was rendered dismal by continued repetitions of a fact painfully evident "on the face of it," that the boy was growing homelier and homelier every day. Memory, that ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... his head: "They'd better know nothing about the letter," he answered at last. "It was ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... the disorder, its nature and progress, its complications. They propose simple and efficacious remedies, using not infrequently technical terms which are certainly unknown to them before. They manifest the thoughts of others, reveal family secrets, answer questions put in languages of which they know nothing. To deny facts attested by thousands of witnesses of various nations belonging to various religious denominations or professing no religion whatever, is not the spirit of science. It it estimated that 100,000 spiritist books and pamphlets are sold yearly in the ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... Atkins to me how could we teach them religion, who know nothing of it ourselves? How can we talk to our wives of God, Jesus Christ, heaven, and hell? Why they would only laugh at us, who never yet have practiced religion, but on the contrary all manner of wickedness. Will Atkins, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... "I know nothing about it!" cried the Baroness. "Please to put on a log." Felix complied with her request and sat watching the quickening of the flame. Presently his sister added, "And you propose ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... that scarcely one of those girls having attained the age of fourteen could look a man in the face with modesty and propriety? An air of bold, impudent flirtation, or a loose, silly leer, was sure to answer the most ordinary glance from a masculine eye. I know nothing of the arcana of the Roman Catholic religion, and I am not a bigot in matters of theology, but I suspect the root of this precocious impurity, so obvious, so general in Popish countries, is to be found in the discipline, if not the ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... ordinary sense as a function of the brain, and memory in general as a function of all organised matter. Speaking of the psychical life, he says, "Thus the cause which produces the unity of all single phenomena of consciousness must be looked for in unconscious life. As we know nothing of this except what we learn from our investigations of matter, and since in a purely empirical consideration, matter and the unconscious must be regarded as identical, the physiologist may justly define memory in a wider sense to be a faculty ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... made a great mistake, sir," said the detective. "I know nothing more of the murders than ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... write about India? Major Jones said to me the other day, "Why on earth is Smith writing about India—what does he know? he is just out; why! I've been here over ten years and have just learned I know nothing." ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... 'I know nothing of East Side.' Her absolute unconsciousness of his spiritual tumult, her stolidity before this spectacle of his triumphant genius, her matter-of-fact acceptance of his racial affinity, her refusal to be impressed by the heroism of a Hebrew pianoforte solo, all she said and did not ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... there was no such man, and never was such a man. They will say so at the Department now! Perhaps they do not know. It will not be the first thing in the service of which the Department appears to know nothing! ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... had just been introduced to her shortly before her father's death, and have scarcely exchanged a dozen sentences with her. It is said that her father died in debt, but of course in regard to that I know nothing certainly. At parting, she told me that she meant to leave the coast and go to stay with a relative ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... Very well. I know nothing in a soldier, after boasting, that pleases me less than complaining. But there is a certain cold, careless way of speaking of ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... [We know nothing of Lamb's visit to Birmingham. He is hardly likely to have stayed with any of the Lloyd family. The attack on Gifford was probably the following sonnet, printed in The Examiner for October 3 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... "I saw that, Frank, and can swear to it; but that's all I did see. I know nothing of ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... with her,' interrupted Vetranio, looking round superstitiously to the frail form on the couch. 'I know nothing of the mysteries that the Christians call their "Faith", but I believe now in the soul; I believe that one soul contains the fate of another, and that her soul ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the exact means by which Sir William received his injuries, I know nothing. There is the evidence! It may or may not be true. The most serious part of the case, so far as Lady Ruth was concerned, lay in the facts as to her husband's removal from the White Lodge. In an unconscious state he was driven almost twelve miles ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... alteration in the planes of the equator and the ecliptic suggested by an hypothesis in the Quarterly). I am too ignorant to form one. The reasoning seems conclusive, taking the scientific part for granted, but of that science, or any other, I know nothing. This I can truly say, that the essays in general please me very much. That I am very glad to see those concerning Chatterton introduced there;—and very much admire, the manner, and the feeling, with which you have treated Psalmanazar's story. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... fathers. Jeremiah said, "Pass over the isles of Chittim, and see; and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing. Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods?" Hinduism in its present form is comparatively modern; but the people generally know nothing of its history, and they regard it as an inheritance from the most ancient times. It comes to them as the gifts of gods and sages, which it would be sacrilege to reject. There is much in the religion itself to bind the people to it. Its numerous ceremonies, sustained ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... we read a book which contains incredible or impossible narratives, or is written in a very obscure style, and if we know nothing of its author, nor of the time or occasion of its being written, we shall vainly endeavour to gain any certain knowledge of its true meaning. (124) For being in ignorance on these points we cannot possibly know the aim or ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... clerk, he is not the landlord; he ranks above the clerk, and represents the landlord, who is seldom seen. Instead of going to the clerk for information, as we do at home, you go to the portier. It is the pride of our average hotel clerk to know nothing whatever; it is the pride of the portier to know everything. You ask the portier at what hours the trains leave—he tells you instantly; or you ask him who is the best physician in town; or what is the hack tariff; or how ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by no means implies that the two variables above-named— matter and consciousness—stand in the relation of cause and effect, antecedent and consequence, to one another. For on this subject we know nothing. ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... We know nothing of Shamas-Vul as a builder, and but little of him as a patron of art. He seems to have been content with the palaces of his father and grandfather, and to have been devoid of any wish to outshine them by raising ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... physical space, and that it does thus correspond to private spaces, what can we know about it? We can know only what is required in order to secure the correspondence. That is to say, we can know nothing of what it is like in itself, but we can know the sort of arrangement of physical objects which results from their spatial relations. We can know, for example, that the earth and moon and sun are in one straight line during an eclipse, though we cannot ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... the case, you have no right to have that signpost at the end of the lane," I retorted. "I am not in a mood to walk eight miles for a shelter in a country I know nothing about. Cannot you ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... under such circumstances. Then Mr. Hamilton says: 'The employer has unlimited opportunity of appropriating to himself all the result of their labour, leaving to them only so much as is absolutely necessary to prevent them from starving.' That is a state of things which I know nothing about, and I don't believe ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... happened, Kate," Merry sobbed, entreatingly. "We know nothing but what you have told us. Tell us all. It is so startling, so awful, that we can not comprehend such a thing happening where we left everybody in the most ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... know nothing of the passage of time or of day or night. The light always shines just as you see it now, and we sleep whenever we are tired and rise again as ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... what's the good? Here's my heart broken, that's all; and Elsworthy standing gaping like a gaby as he is. There aint nothing as don't go contrairy, when folks is tied to a set of fools!" cried the indignant matron. "As for pretty, I don't know nothing about it; I've got too much to do minding my own business. Them as has nothing to think of but stand in the shop and twiddle their thumbs, ought to look to that; but, ma'am, if you'll believe me, it aint no fault of mine. It aint my will to throw her in any young gentleman's ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... I came shall be fulfilled," said Crosby. "You gentlemen know nothing of me, nor I of you, except that you stand by the side of your new-made king. For that I can honour you; on your side, pray give ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... confess. et 4 ca. calls this schooling meliculosam necessitatem, and elsewhere a martyrdom, and confesseth of himself, how cruelly he was tortured in mind for learning Greek, nulla verba noveram, et saevis terroribus et poenis, ut nossem, instabatur mihi vehementer, I know nothing, and with cruel terrors and punishment I was daily compelled. [2126]Beza complains in like case of a rigorous schoolmaster in Paris, that made him by his continual thunder and threats once in a mind to drown himself, had he not met by the way ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... leave, I will not say you nay," observed the Colonel. "But I know nothing of the required preparations. Madam Pauline and Alice had better say what they and the maidens in the house can do in the course ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... own day. There is also a Spring, which appears to me to be one of the most beautiful works that he painted in fresco, and it is a great pity that time has consumed it so cruelly. For my part, I know nothing that injures works in fresco more than the sirocco, and particularly near the sea, where it always brings a ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... trifles and commonplaces, and that simply from the fact that I have nothing better to write about. To me, at least, they seem nothing but trifles. For you they may possess an occult significance of which I know nothing. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... means Bootan. Of Bottia we know nothing, but it is probably meant to indicate the capital. Dermain may possibly be some corruption of Deb raja, the title of the sovereign. It is obvious from this passage, that Couche must have been to the south of Bootan, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... that benighted land to Christian America, where you can sit under your own vine and fig tree and no one molest or make you afraid. Oh, my dear black brothers and sisters, you are indeed a fortunate and a blessed people. Your masters have many troubles that you know nothing about. If the banks break, your masters are sure to lose something. If the crops turn out poor, they lose by it. If one of you die, your master loses what he paid for you, while you lose nothing. Now let me exhort you once more to ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... "I know nothing as to man's province, or of woman's province either. By province, you mean custom and conventional rule; and conventional rule means falsehood. I have known you but a week or two, and I love you dearly. You, of course, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... nothing. With greater justice, however, we may say, that of such terms as perfection and existence we know too little to speculate in this way. Existence may be an imperfection for all we can tell; we know nothing about the matter. Such arguments are but endless petilianes principii, like the self-devouring serpent resolving themselves into nothing. We wander round and round them, in the hope of finding some tangible point at which we can seize their meaning; but ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the painter restored her, and at last the arrangements were made. As Mrs Dobbs Broughton's dear friend, Madalina Demolines had said, Mrs Dobbs Broughton liked a fevered existence. "What will Dobbs say?" she exclaimed more than once. And it was decided at last that Dobbs should know nothing about it as long as it could be kept from him. "Of course he shall be told at last," said his wife. "I wouldn't keep anything from the dear fellow for all the world. But if he knew it at first it would be sure to get ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... old man said, 'Winters are best of all—when it's fierce outside, and there's nothing but yourself to amuse yourself with!' That's the man. And he said: 'I like the blows, too. I've been on the sea all my life, and I don't know nothing about it to speak on.' He has a sense of what it ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... to intelligent persons language is, or ought to be, a better instrument of description than any picture. 'But what, Stranger, is the deficiency of which you speak?' No higher truth can be made clear without an example; every man seems to know all things in a dream, and to know nothing when he is awake. And the nature of example can only be illustrated by an example. Children are taught to read by being made to compare cases in which they do not know a certain letter with cases ...
— Statesman • Plato
... you are no brutal, dastardly idiot like your brother I frightened to death: let us understand one another. Sir, I will make away with her for you—the girl—here close 175 at hand; not the stupid obvious kind of killing; do not speak—know nothing of her nor of me! I see her every day—saw her this morning. Of course there is to be no killing; but at Rome the courtesans perish off every three years, and I can entice her thither—have indeed begun 180 operations already. There's a certain lusty, blue-eyed, florid-complexioned ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... you your happiness, old man. What a contrast to his former frugal habits and his very hard life! Taught now in quite another school, he will know nothing but the pleasures of ease. Perhaps he will jib at it, for indeed 'tis difficult to renounce what has become one's second nature. However, many have done it, and adopting the ideas of others, have changed their use and wont. As for Philocleon's son, I, like all wise and judicious men, cannot ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... knew it all along! The first direct question shows his ignorance of his own job. Listen, old thing. Thanks to us, you are now actuating a machine of whose construction you know nothing, that that machine may, over wires of whose ramifications you are, by your very position, profoundly ignorant, deliver a power which you can never realise, to localities beyond the extreme limits of your mental horizon, with the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... latitude given—69 deg. 14'—shows even, if it is correct, that he went far into the bay at the mouth of the Kara river. Here Pet fell in with his comrade Jackman, from whom he had parted on the coast of Kola, and of whose voyage during the interval we know nothing. When the vessels met they were both damaged by ice. As, in addition, the sea to the north and east was barred by compact masses of ice, the captains, after deliberating with the inferior officers, determined ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... "I know nothing of your future," I hastened, "save that, arguing from your youth, it will probably be a long one. It was your past that I was sent to ask concerning. The commandant sent me. Since you speak French, my mission is over. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... portion of a vast land which was like to nothing they had ever seen—the region later to become the great cattle-range of America. It reached, although they could know nothing of that, from the Spanish possessions on the south across a thousand miles of short grass lands to the present Canadian boundary line which certain obdurate American souls still say ought to have been at 54 degrees 40 minutes, and not where it is! From the ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... "I know nothing about it, except what I have read. They say that the country is healthy; but it stands to reason that this cannot be so while you have got rivers with swamps and jungles and such heat as this. However, we ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... medicinal, offered of Hermes. I have passed into the precinct, the labyrinth closes around me, Path into path rounding slyly; I pace slowly on, and the fancy, Struggling awhile to sustain the long sequences, weary, bewildered, Fain must collapse in despair; I yield, I am lost and know nothing; Yet in my bosom unbroken remaineth the clue; I shall use it. Lo, with the rope on my loins I descend through the fissure; I sink, yet Inly secure in the strength of invisible arms up above me; Still, wheresoever I swing, wherever to shore, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... pale. She seemed somewhat uneasy, and yet had no idea of quitting her post. She was talking in a low voice to the engine driver and stoker of our train. I tried to get some information from her. "Mon Dieu, monsieur," she said, "I know nothing, except that the guns have been firing all day long since yesterday, and even at times during the night. The sound comes chiefly from the direction of G. Some soldiers, who went by just now with carts, told me the Prussians got into the town yesterday, but that it ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... knowing that the question had ever been entertained before, "No, I like it well enough." It would have suggested many things to a philosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman told ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... victim of some practical joke, and if there were not a crowd of listeners hidden somewhere, who, after enjoying his discomfiture, would suddenly make their appearance, holding their sides. This fear restored his presence of mind. "Well, then," he replied, huskily, "this is my reason. I know nothing respecting my parents. This morning, a man with whom you are well acquainted, assured me that I was—your son. I was completely stunned at first, but after a while I recovered sufficiently to call here, and found that you had ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... taken with great secrecy, for Yemuka and Tayian were very desirous that Temujin should know nothing of the league which they were forming against him until their arrangements were fully matured, and they were ready for action. They did not, however, succeed in keeping the secret as long as they intended. They ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... not love and caress in her tones, then I could not detect the counterfeit. I reiterate, if I should live a thousand years, I should know nothing of women, nothing. We men are but toys with them. As in life and in sex man is in nature's plan no master, no chooser, but merely an incident; so, indeed, I believe that he is thus always with a woman—only ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... have denied it. "But," says he, "the evils for which these sciences are the palliative, have increased since the time of the Druids, in a proportion that heavily overweighs the benefit of improved therapeutics." We know nothing either of the diseases or the remedies of the Druids. But we are quite sure that the improvement of medicine has far more than kept pace with the increase of disease during the last three centuries. This is proved by the best possible evidence. The term of human life is decidedly longer ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Chief. 'We know the Great Spirit; but we know nothing of the other gods of the white men. Sleep now; for your strength and activity will be tried to-morrow.' And Henrich lay down, and slept ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... and sister know nothing of what you have undergone. Had they, their suffering and alarm would have been great. But do not flatter yourself that the arrest of Count Monte-Leone is unknown to them. One of the Neapolitan papers informed them yesterday of that fact; and I do not hide ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... begin to feel like a babe in the woods," he confessed. "I suspect you are the only one of us who knows anything about woodcraft. I know nothing about it, I am sure Chris doesn't, and I suspect the captain is far more at home reefing a top-sail. You have got to be our guide ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... allude. To them, money is a thing of course; it pours in upon them with the regularity of the succeeding seasons. Rent-day comes of itself, and there is the money; dividend-day is as sure as Christmas, and there lie the receipts. These are the people who know nothing of the commodity with which they are so well endowed, or, at most, their knowledge is but skin-deep. They take and spend, just as they sit or walk. Both seem natural processes; they have performed them since they were born. Their money is a bit of themselves—an extra and uncommonly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... solemnly; 'but in many respects you are headstrong and disobedient like him. I placed you in a profession, and besought you to make yourself master of it by giving it your undivided attention. This, however, you did not do, you know nothing of it, but tell me that you are acquainted with Armenian; but what I dislike most is your want of candour—you are my son, but I know little of your real history, you may know fifty things for what I am aware: you ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... full of their examinations! Do you think Jack will pass? He is such a stupid old dear! I always feel as if I knew the most, yet I know nothing—actually nothing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... doesn't know nothing. Here he is once per day and charging for it. And he only brings his repairs ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... be long. Of course we know nothing here, and I don't expect we shall, till the order comes for us to start. This is not the time of year when one expects to be on the move; and if we do go, it is pretty certain that it is because Kitchener has made up his mind for a dash forward. You see, if ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... hope in the grave, nor to derive it from the skies. Its root is in the heart of man: it lifts its head above the stars. Desire and imagination are inmates of the human breast. The heaven 'that lies about us in our infancy' is only a new world, of which we know nothing but what we wish it to be, and believe all that we wish. In youth and boyhood, the world we live in is the world of desire, and of fancy: it is experience that brings us down to the world of reality. What is it that in youth ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... shouldn't say that. I am happier than they are, now, Hugh,—now that you are better,—with all their means of happiness. They know nothing of our quiet enjoyments, they must live in a whirl or they would think they are not living at all, and I do not believe that all New York can give them the real pleasure that I have in such a day ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... in Boston where he published a tiny volume, Tamerlane and Other Poems, by a Bostonian (1827). Failing to win either fame or money by his poetry he enlisted in the army under an assumed name and served for about two years. Of his army life we know nothing, nor do we hear of him again until his foster father secured for him an appointment to the military academy at West Point. There Poe made an excellent beginning, but he soon neglected his work, was dismissed, and became an Ishmael again. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... about an inch and a half: it shows evidence of the boring process in rings. It is of hard porphyry and of a pinkish hue, and resembles somewhat a weight for a digging stick I saw in 1841 in the hands of a Bushwoman: I saw one at a gateway near Kasonso's. The people know nothing of its use except as a charm to keep ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... a blind rock, that she was instantly dashed in pieces. In the confusion and terror of the moment I got hold of a plank, and, careless for the rest, thought only upon saving myself, so that even now I know nothing of the fate of my companions. I was quickly driven forth by the billows; and this was fortunate for me, for otherwise I should have been crushed among the timbers of the ship or torn in pieces by the jagged rocks upon which ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... all that any definition can do. As Mill points out, we know nothing of cause except as an antecedent—nothing of effect except as a consequent. Of certain phenomena, one never occurs without another, which is dissimilar: the first in point of time we call cause, the second, effect. One who had many ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... are the others? Zounds! there you stand gossiping! Don't you know—do you know nothing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... theory of a higher feminine spirituality is a pleasing one for women—but is it true? The insuperable difficulty to its acceptance arises, in the first place, from the fact that we can know nothing at all of the spiritual condition of the human beings among whom mother-kin was held first to have been practised. But we must go further than this in our doubt. Can we accept for any period a spiritual ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... heard of him; I know nothing of those gentry. But if you really like music, I will play you something worth ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... "I know nothing but that he has disappeared. We missed him in the midst of the hunt. We returned to the rectory in the evening, expecting ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... after Waterloo would be a most valuable thing to have. Though he was on the wrong side of the door when Rizzio was being murdered, we should still like to have the wrong side described in the right way. Upon this principle I, who know nothing of diplomacy or military arrangements, and have only held my breath like the rest of the world while France and Germany were bargaining, will tell quite truthfully of a small scene I saw, one of the thousand scenes that were, so to speak, the anterooms of that ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... are alike," he said, with an impatient shrug. "They know nothing of the world, and place no faith in those who are competent to advise them. I had given you credit, my charming cousin, for ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... If we were to know nothing of this assembly but by its title and function, no colours could paint to the imagination anything more venerable. In that light the mind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that of the virtue and wisdom ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Dotage is a state which many much magnify and commend: so is simplicity, and folly, as he said, [4075]sic hic furor o superi, sit mihi perpetuus. Some think fools and dizzards live the merriest lives, as Ajax in Sophocles, Nihil scire vita jucundissima, "'tis the pleasantest life to know nothing;" iners malorum remedium ignorantia, "ignorance is a downright remedy of evils." These curious arts and laborious sciences, Galen's, Tully's, Aristotle's, Justinian's, do but trouble the world some think; we might ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... over the whole kingdom. The main feature of his military reform seems to have been in the division of his forces into three bodies, only one of which was liable to be called upon for service at a time, except in great emergencies. In regard to tactics, or changes in armor and mode of fighting, we know nothing; for war as an art or science did not exist in any Teutonic kingdom; it was lost with, the fall of the Roman Empire. How far Alfred was gifted with military genius we are unable to say, beyond courage, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... bear it in mind," was the reply. "But, pray you, if I may ask— seeing I know nothing—is this lady that I shall serve an evil woman, that ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... judicious father. This vain custom is perhaps not so fatal as the other, but it produces many evils. Coldness of the extremities may certainly exist where nothing of the kind has been practised; but while rejoicing that I, experimentally, know nothing of it, I cannot help recollecting that the bounding pulse which plays so joyously through my veins was never impeded in any part; and feeling this, I would no more expose a girl to one infliction than I would ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... know nothing of all this," said Holmes quietly. "We have not heard your story, and we cannot tell how far justice may originally have been on ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... certain place he had selected, a stone ridge with a spring gushing out of the side of a cliff. This was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. They reached the stone ridge about dusk. "Carson," said Willis, "tell us what to do, I know nothing about fighting these wild devils." Kit Carson told him to put his soldiers to piling stone and make a breastwork to hide behind. He told Willis to send some of the soldiers to the spring and build up a wall several feet all around it and put some of the soldiers ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... up. These ladies, now? It's a most unpleasant thing to have to go and break news like this. You know nothing about them, sir?" ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... the writing-rooms or scriptoria, apparently six in number, eastward of the church; and the bird's-eye view (fig. 33) the library built over them. Unfortunately we know nothing of the date of its construction. It occupied the greater part of the north side of a cloister called "petit cloitre" or Farmery Cloister, from the large building on the east side originally built as a Farmery (fig. 33, B). It ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... on our part, knew nothing about him or the men, money, or ordnance at his command. We knew nothing of the country which had been patiently fortified by the best skilled military engineers in Europe. We know nothing of his rocky, well-fortified country, which lies behind that which we have already attacked. Our generals, instead of being supplied with maps covering every inch of country within the enemy's borders, have to gather information at the bayonet's point ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... "I don't know—I know nothing but that those fiends were after me to get it, and I knew that they would kill me if they could only get a chance. A heated hare sees nothing but ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... and always have done so—abundance of food, clothing, &c., and of what they regard as of the best quality. They have more than heart can wish: their eyes, as it were, stand out with fatness. They know nothing of want: they know nothing even of inconvenience—except for some hapless moment, when a neighbor gets a little ahead of them in the fashion of their dress, their equipage, or their tables. Then a feeling of envy—peradventure a half expressed ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... regions, where, on the strength of a little knowledge of the human frame, cartloads of puerile ignorance and anile vulgarity, not to mention obscenity, are uttered in the name of truth by men who know nothing whatever of the things that belong to the deeper nature believed in by the devout and simple, and professed also by many who are perhaps yet farther from a knowledge of its affairs than those who thus treat them with ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... different bodies. It is impossible, perhaps, to speak on this point without committing oneself beyond what present facts will sustain; and yet it is equally impossible, and perhaps would be impolitic, not to reason upon the subject. Although we know nothing of what an atom is, yet we cannot resist forming some idea of a small particle, which represents it to the mind; and though we are in equal, if not greater, ignorance of electricity, so as to be unable to say whether it is a particular matter or ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... all stand in awe of that which we cannot explain, of that which, if it be not in our own experience, is certainly recorded in the experience of others, of that of which we know and can know nothing? ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Vulgar people know nothing of the necessaries required in good society, and the credit they give is as short as their pedigree. Six years after my birth, there was an execution in our house. My mother was just setting off on a visit to the Duchess of D; she declared it was ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... severely her husband was inclined to visit faults which she, poor lady, had not courage to grapple with. 'Better not disturb yourself about the brooch to-night,' she added; 'we will have another search for it to-morrow, and I am sure the girls know nothing about it.' ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... late. Why did you not come sooner? You could have known me five years ago as easily as to-day. But, believe me, we should not tire ourselves with speaking of time that has gone. Remember Lohengrin. If you love me, I am for you like the swan's knight. I have asked nothing of you. I have wanted to know nothing. I have not chided you about Mademoiselle Jeanne Tancrede. I saw you loved me, that you were suffering, and it was enough—because I ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... your mind and your heart... and your heart," I repeated, "I cannot allow such a difficult, complex, and responsible matter as the organization of relief to be left in your hands entirely. You are a woman, you are inexperienced, you know nothing of life, you are too confiding and expansive. You have surrounded yourself with assistants whom you know nothing about. I am not exaggerating if I say that under these conditions your work will inevitably lead to two deplorable consequences. To begin with, our district will be left unrelieved; ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sadly. "I used to think I knew life, but I come to the belief in the end that I know nothing. Who could have guessed that he would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "I know nothing about art," he said, a little roughly. "Your work seems to me clever—a little grotesque, perhaps; a little straining after the hard, plain things which threaten. Nothing of the idealist in your work, ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... asked. "I know nothing about it. I've given you my personal opinion only. Seems to me, though, it's the best way of showing that ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for the delicacy with which he painted females. He was also famous as an encaustic painter, and was employed by Praxiteles to apply his art to his statues. The glorious art of these masters, as far as regards light, tone, and local colors, is lost to us, and we know nothing of it except from obscure notices and later imitations. It is not thus necessary to speak at length of the various schools of painting in Greece, their works being all lost, the knowledge of the characteristics peculiar to each school would be at the present day perfectly ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... at the time when atomic energy is first being used. They will have detectors for the Deadly Radiations—detectors we know nothing of, today, for a detection instrument must be free from the thing it is intended to detect, and today everything is radioactive. It will be a day or so before they discover what is happening to them, and not a few will die ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper |
