"Obtuseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what the Marysville bank could 'a' done if it wanted?" demanded Racey, aghast at the Dale obtuseness. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... immediate perception of this matter impossible for us. For, according to the laws of sensibility and the connected context of our perceptions, we should in an experience come also on an immediate empirical intuition of this matter, if our senses were more acute—but this obtuseness has no influence upon and cannot alter the form of possible experience in general. Our knowledge of the existence of things reaches as far as our perceptions, and what may be inferred from them according to empirical laws, extend. If ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... propriety in all respects. Mrs. Hopkins was disposed to take upon herself a large share of the conversation. The minister, on the other hand, would have devoted himself more particularly to Miss Susan, but, with a very natural make-believe obtuseness, the good woman drew his fire so constantly that few of his remarks, and hardly any of his insinuating looks, reached the tender object at which they were aimed. It is probable that his features or tones betrayed some impatience at having thus been foiled of his purpose, for Mrs. Hopkins ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... her own way. She wouldn't see at first the various little good turns which the other did her in her quiet, considerate way; but they were acknowledged at last with a look that made amends for all her former obtuseness; and in spite of their different natures and unequal social position, these two women soon came to feel, if not exactly drawn to one another, mutually interested in each other. At the same time, as Elizabeth was not blind to the diplomacy of the house, she had soon perceived ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... usual place by the fire, recalled her placid unperceiving presence, seated opposite to him during the long drowsy years; and he felt her kindness, her equanimity, where formerly he had only ached at her obtuseness. And from the chair he glanced up at the large discolored photograph on the wall above, with a brittle brown wreath suspended on a corner of the frame. The photograph represented a young man with a poetic necktie and untrammelled hair, leaning negligently against a Gothic chair-back, a roll of ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... really appreciated Charles—though she was dazzled by his fame at intervals—didn't really appreciate him to this day. Well, the loss was hers and the gain indubitably Felicia's, since the elder sister's obtuseness had left the younger sister a free field.—At thought of which Felicia ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a line in the hand which he calls the linea jecoraria, and the triangle formed by this and the linea vitae and the linea cerebri, rules the disposition of the subject, due consideration being given to the acuteness or obtuseness of the angles of this triangle. Cardan seems to have based his treatise on one written by a certain Ruffus Ephesius, and it is without doubt one of the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... sums up the highest product of Greek thought, and that represents a civilization which from the purely intellectual side has had no successor. Yet even here was almost absolute obtuseness and indifference, on the part of the aristocracy, to the intolerable bondage of the masses. "The people," as spoken of by their historians and philosophers, mean simply a middle class, the humblest member of which owned at least one slave. The slaves themselves, ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... with loathing should complacently ignore the signs, should complacently persevere in assuming himself to be agreeable and in pressing that assumption, she had to admit that the offer did not take her wholly by surprise. What bruised her was the insufferable obtuseness of the wording. How was it possible for a human being to sit down in good faith and pen such sentences without guessing ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tram-car wheels, or the deafening crash of ill-tuned instruments from the harmonies of Bellini or Wagner; that each of us would blush for such insensibility, and would conceal it—how is it we do not perceive that such obtuseness is habitual to us in moral matters? We see that we are capable of confusing virtuous persons and criminals, without any foreboding. How is it that so often in the case of judicial errors, the voice of the innocent did not resound in our ears, although ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... recollect," replied Kenyon, with a glance of friendly commiseration at my obtuseness, "that Miriam had utterly disappeared, leaving no trace by which her whereabouts could be known. In the meantime, the municipal authorities had become aware of the murder of the Capuchin; and from ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the time for the mere purpose of providing incident and adventure, and a strong local colour for his puppets—in a word, for the most ordinary and conventional purposes of the romantic novelist. Nor is this the only instance of such psychological obtuseness in his work. That, in spite of this initial and damning defect, he does succeed in producing a fine novel, is but one more proof of the amazing fecundity of his genius. None the less does the fact ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... teacher in aristocratic circles, where his refined manners made him personally liked. As he refused to take any but talented pupils, teaching was not so irksome to him as it might have been. Nevertheless one cannot but marvel at the obtuseness of the Parisians who put into the utilitarian harness an artist who might have enchanted them every evening with a concert, had their taste been more cultivated. He did play once, when he first arrived, but the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... committee held its first sitting. On Sir Matthew's right sat Lord Milford, a wealthy peer of independent political opinions and great obtuseness, by whose social prestige Sir Matthew was greatly impressed; on his left Mr. Doubleday, the leader of the Labour Party in the House of Commons. Ranged on either side, according to their importance, sat the various other ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... Burton says, 'Pray for my class,' and Miss Ames says, 'I love Jesus,' and Miss Hanley says, 'The Lord is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever,' it becomes improper. Will you pardon my obtuseness and ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... character and a career, is preserved and transmitted. And yet, with all our boasted civilization and progress, no rights are more frequently or grossly violated, no wrongs so little capable of redress, as those relating to literary property. Herein there is a singular moral obtuseness a want of chivalry, an inadequate sense of obligation—doubtless in part originating in that unjust legislation, or rather want of legislation, whereby international law protects the products of the mind and recognizes national literature ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... moment the Seigneur stood pondering the Earl's words and angrily wondering at his obtuseness. Then suddenly he knew he had been mocked, and he turned and ran after his enemy; but Leicester had vanished ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... give to the Supreme Father no dearer title than 'the widow's God.' But, on Lord Byron's death, men not devoid of tenderness, men otherwise generous and of fine feeling, acquiesced in insults to his widow with an obtuseness that ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... very aggravating—the more especially as I found myself making no way against his surly obtuseness—that I said, disregarding Herbert's ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Unless life is arranged for the mere benefit of the novelist, what right had these bits of last-century Europe here? Even the virtues of the South were some of them anachronisms; and even those that were not existed side by side with an obtuseness of moral sense that could make a hero of Semmes, and a barbarism that could starve prisoners ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... to be gone, out into the sunshine, out over the water to my glorious boat. But all hands lingered. Even Spider, my crew, lingered. No hint broke through my obtuseness of why they lingered. I have often thought since of how they must have regarded me, the newcomer being welcomed into their company standing at bar with them, and not standing for ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... follies surpass all anticipation, as they defy all powers of gravity. I console myself with the conviction that such is his slowness of perception, he does not see that he is the butt of every party; and such his obtuseness of feeling, that if he did see it, he would not mind it; but he is the heir to twenty-five thousand a year, and therefore, as R. said, he can afford ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... But more curious still is the impression which the memoirs convey that the writer himself had not the faintest conception that there was anything in the least degree unseemly in what he relates. There appears to be a sort of moral obtuseness in him in reference to these subjects, but to these subjects only.[676] The memoir closes with a beautiful expression of resignation to the Divine will, and of hopeful confidence about the future, in which he was no doubt perfectly ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Indiana's mournful head-shake seemed to deplore, in Undine, an unsuspected moral obtuseness. "It's the way you ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... at herself as much as Mrs. Cameron wondered at her, trying to decide whether it were ignorance, conceit, obtuseness, or what, which made her so self-possessed when she was expected ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... error tainted the whole system of worship among nations, it differed in the various races of men according to the variety of their character. Ferocity or mildness of manners, acuteness or obtuseness of understanding, activity or indolence of disposition, a burning, a cold, or a temperate climate, a smiling or dreary country, but chiefly the thousand differences of temper which are as marked among mankind as the almost in- finite ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... obtuseness of most of the nobility made it a relief to return to the usual habits of the Sorel household when the court had left Ulm. Friedmund, anxious to prove that his new honours were not to alter his home demeanour, was drawing on a block of wood from a tinted pen-and-ink sketch; ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... routine, and so much in sleep, we find it difficult to have any experience at all." We did not, however, tamely accept such a state of affairs, for we made various and restless attempts to break through this dull obtuseness. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... never been the King's lot to be handsome; but now the approaches of age were giving to his countenance a dignity which in youth it had lacked. This was part and parcel of a certain mental obtuseness or obstinacy: when his Majesty did not understand, majesty became sedentary in his face. Often when it was the duty, or the device, of his ministerial advisers to confuse his mind with explanatory details about things which lay far beyond it, they would presently become aware ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... Sleek hair, brisk glance, fleshy and yet alert, Red, full, and satisfied, Cased in obtuseness confident ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... churches increased, and in the sixth it had become prevalent. The common people, who had never been able to comprehend doctrinal mysteries, found their religious wants satisfied in turning to these effigies. With singular obtuseness, they believed that the saint is present in his image, though hundreds of the same kind were in existence, each having an equal and exclusive right to the spiritual presence. The doctrine of invocation of departed saints, which assumed prominence ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... cannot at the same time and in the same way be without it (e.g., if an animal is conscious, it is false that it is not conscious)—it has been contended that the speciousness of this principle is only due to the obtuseness of our minds, or even to the poverty of language, which cannot make the fine distinctions that exist in Nature. And as to Causation, it is sometimes doubted whether events always have physical causes; and it is often suggested that, granting they have physical causes, yet these are such as ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... gathered that he was comparatively young, and although I had argued otherwise with the Hare, had concluded therefore that he would continue to live his happy earth life until old age brought him to a natural end. Hence my obtuseness. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... by the merest chances, and yet reputations control the fashions. That is a little prologue that would fit the case of all sorts of people. Everywhere around one sees prejudices, scheming, and obtuseness; but little or no justice. Nothing can be done to stem this torrent of evil. It must run its course. It always has been and always ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... repudiation. At the time that Mr. Kelley thus volunteered himself as security for the State, (an act which was done contrary to the advice of his friends,) such was the unenlightened state of public opinion, such the moral obtuseness of some, nay, many men in power, that the chances were a hundred to one that no effective measure would be adopted to save the public credit—none ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... they may be molded by genius to make the many serve the few and to build up an autocracy. Nor are the lessons to be learned from history applicable only to individuals. The faults of an emperor are felt in every household of the community, and injure the State. Indifference and obtuseness at the capital entailed weakness on the frontier and in the provincial capitals. The barbarians grew defiant and aggressive, and defeated the imperial forces. The provincial governors asserted their independence, and founded ruling families. The empire became attenuated ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... at that time swarming with little black boys from the various White Nile tribes, who repaid the kindness of the missionaries by stealing everything they could lay their hands upon. At length the utter worthlessness of the boys, their moral obtuseness, and the apparent impossibility of improving them determined the chief of the Mission to purge his establishment from such imps, and they were accordingly turned out. Poor little Saat, the one grain of gold amid the mire, shared the ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... room was nice," Beryl felt that she showed much patience with Robin's obtuseness, "but didn't you see anything different in that room? Books and magazines! Country people don't sit and read magazines and knit on rose wool in the middle of the afternoon! Robin, that woman's a lady! And you notice she didn't ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... the irritated and evidently astonished Haviland, who, in his obtuseness, even now, could not perceive what objection his daughter could have to a match esteemed by him so advantageous. "What can this mean? Why, the girl must be demented! You to decide on the time! Why, reasonable ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... this character does not occur in other species now included in the genus. There are three species, occurring only in European waters, which form this genus and agree in the following characters. The outline of the body is more nearly rectangular than in other Flat-fishes from the obtuseness of the snout and caudal end, and the somewhat uniform breadth of the body. The surface is rough from the presence of long slender spines on the scales. There is a large perforation in the septum between the gill cavities, but ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... sure!" replied Spriggs, amazed at his pretended obtuseness: "and, I say, landlord, you can let us ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... impatience of the brutality and ignorance which Bartoline had contrived to amalgamate into one sentence. But Saddletree, like other prosers, was blessed with a happy obtuseness of perception concerning the unfavourable impression which he sometimes made on his auditors. He proceeded to deal forth his scraps of legal knowledge without mercy, and concluded by asking Butler, with great self-complacency, "Was ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... little he had to guide him in his judgment of her. He said to himself: "If I'd ever cared a straw for her I should know how to avoid hurting her now"—and his insensibility struck him as no better than a vulgar obtuseness. But he had a fixed purpose ahead and could ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... of his brother, Alexei, and at that I was not surprised. His weakness was that he was inpenetrably stupid, and it was quite impossible to make him understand anything that was not immediately in line with his own experiences—unusual obtuseness in a Russian. He was vain about his clothes, especially about his shoes, which he had always made in London; he was sentimental and very ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... small home events, and music. As it happened, the quartet had the lack of intuition to play a great deal of Haydn that autumn, and to Sylvia the cheerful, obvious tap-tap-tap of the hearty old master seemed to typify the bald, unsubtle obtuseness of the home attitude towards life. She herself took to playing the less difficult of the Chopin nocturnes with a languorous over-accentuation of their softness which she was careful to keep from the ears of old Reinhardt. But one evening he came in, unheard, listened ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... is equivalent to ee uttered feebly, as in the word diversity. This is the most common sound of i and of y. The vulgar are apt to let it fall into the more obscure sound of short u. As elegance of utterance depends much upon the preservation of this sound from such obtuseness, perhaps Walker and others have done well to mark it as e in me; though some suppose it to be peculiar, and others identify it with the short i in fit. Thirdly, a distinction is made by some writers, between the vowel sounds heard in hate and bear, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... dalliance and favour as a young girl can show, who has had her own way; with a young man willing to dispense with thought during the intervening space of time before a not overly agreeable ending; and under the auspices of an honoured hostess fee'd by the glitter of coin into a consenting obtuseness. With the night they set forth in the rain. The river bank was not far off, but such vulgar plunge from the edge of the coarse promiscuity of Hanagawado[u] was not to the taste of either. Then, as now, a ferry not far from the Adzuma bridge crossed to the pretty ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... in a train, of a wealthy, refined, and cultivated Churchwoman. "I said to my son when he set out," she observed, with a laugh, to her neighbour, "that it was far better for him to get shot than to die of diphtheria or something at home." If that sentiment, that obtuseness to the massive horrors of war even when a son was involved, is widespread, the outlook is dark. One fears that it ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... most wonderful skill. As for the various anachronisms, and the confusion of names, dates, and manners, over which Dr. Johnson exults in no measured terms, the confusion is nowhere but in his own heavy obtuseness of sentiment and perception, and his want of poetical faith. Look into the old Italian poets, whom we read continually with still increasing pleasure; does any one think of sitting down to disprove the existence of Ariodante, king of Scotland? or to prove that the mention of Proteus and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... not a word to say in reply. As if anyone could be more suffering than himself! He was full of a dumb ache. He marvelled at Keith's obtuseness. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... even Roxalanne—who had sat silently listening to a conversation that she was at times mercifully spared from following too minutely—flashed me a humorous glance. To the Vicomtesse alone who in common with women of her type was of a singular obtuseness—was the ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... be called selfishness, which is another term for thoughtlessness or want of consideration or perception, but it is not deliberate selfishness. This last is often found with fine perceptions and intuitive tact. It is rather a natural obtuseness, a want of thought on the subject. Such persons remember and connect their own sensations with the object, thinking little or nothing of the feelings they may themselves excite by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... workmanlike disgust for his own obtuseness. "I'm going back to the Tech when your railroad is finished and learn a few things. I couldn't think of anything but the old Erie Railroad scheme, when it was narrowed down from the six-foot gauge. They did it in one night; ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... even Mr. Swinburne can do more than justice. Yet there are some critics and not a few readers who cherish a grudge against him. They do not merely think that in the later stages of his temptation he showed a certain obtuseness, and that, to speak pedantically, he acted with unjustifiable precipitance and violence; no one, I suppose, denies that. But, even when they admit that he was not of a jealous temper, they consider that he was 'easily jealous'; they seem to think that it was inexcusable in him ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the green gloom of the impenetrable woods. One of these huge cascades would make the fortune of a Swiss valley, and we need no further efforts of our willing bearers in the cause of sight-seeing, but as neither words nor gestures prove intelligible to Western obtuseness, a brown coolie seizes each arm, and rushes us up a grassy hill to a huge cavern, hung with myriad bats, and containing a pool of crystal water. The simple minds of these kindly mountaineers shirk no trouble for the benefit of the stranger, who, though regarded ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... from frog spawn," adding, "I have no patience with these gorilla damnifications of humanity." Other criticisms, as those of George Eliot, whose Adam Bede he pronounced "simply dull," display a curious limitation or obtuseness of mind. ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... repeated Fitz, amazed at her obtuseness. "Don't you see that, if the child died, the block of stores belongs to my mother? But it makes no difference now," sighed Mr. Wittleworth, "for my mother, contrary to my advice, contrary to my solemn protest, sold out all her ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... said Clapperton, put out by the obtuseness of his fag, "the long and short of it is you're not to go. You know what's happened. Our side has been snubbed and cut out of the games by those fellows; and now they want to get us to come to their precious meeting to ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... interest—the Consul had merely stood security for him. And for this humble success he was now treading the path of shame! His steps echoed in Pelle's soul; Pelle did not know how he was going to bear it. He longed for his former obtuseness. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... obtuseness of mind on a question of interest, is to be found in the system of taxing the land. A Greek really views land somewhat as English labourers view game. The owner of the soil is absolute proprietor only during those months ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... head uplifted, peering on every side to catch sight of the mate whose voice had so resistlessly summoned him. Only his wide ears moved, waving inquisitively. His nostrils, ordinarily his chief source of information, were dulled almost to obtuseness by that subtly acrid perfume ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... least, if not for our beloved country,—these good old gentlemen went through the various formalities of office. Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels! Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers! Whenever such a mischance occurred,—when a wagon-load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their unsuspicious ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... vivacity and intelligence hourly encreased, and whose frame was endowed with an intense, and I fondly thought, a strong and permanent spirit of life. Who, after a great disaster, has not looked back with wonder at his inconceivable obtuseness of understanding, that could not perceive the many minute threads with which fate weaves the inextricable net of our destinies, until he ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... N. insensibility, physical insensibility; obtuseness &c adj.; palsy, paralysis, paraesthesia [Med.], anaesthesia; sleep &c 823; hemiplegia^, motor paralysis; vegetable state; coma. anaesthetic agent, opium, ether, chloroform, chloral; nitrous oxide, laughing gas; exhilarating gas, protoxide of nitrogen; refrigeration. V. be insensible ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... wrote wittily), "I have no desire to exult over you, yet I should show a lamentable obtuseness to the irony of things were I not to dedicate this little work to you. For its inception was yours, and in your more ambitious days you thought to write the tale of the little white bird yourself. Why you so early deserted the nest is not for me to inquire. It now appears that you were otherwise ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... He goes with the rest only so far as they travel his road, and his lagging is pretty sure to be atoned for by earnest endeavor in the end. With these are to be classed numerous other varieties: those who are "Hunkerish" on account of some strange spiritual obtuseness, or from misanthropy, or perverseness, or self-conceit, or a cold and sluggish temperament, or from weak, human sympathies governed by strong political prejudice,—together with those countless larvae and tadpoles, the small-fry of sons and nephews, of individuality yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Conway looked as if they thought he was arguing on after a defeat. 'Calcott is teaching her his own obtuseness!' thought James, in a pet; and he exclaimed, 'Is the aim to make men ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the precepts of religion, by education, and by the reception of those principles of self- reliance, without which they have not the moral perception requisite to enable them to appreciate the blessings of freedom; and this very ignorance and obtuseness is one of the most telling arguments against the system which produces it. The want of this previous preparation has been frequently shown, particularly in Kentucky, where whole bodies of emancipated slaves, after a few days' ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... his dissatisfied customer, "seeing you are not disposed to comprehend the necessities of my business, nor to respect my position, I will have nothing further to say to you upon the subject-not another word, now!" The dignified gentleman expresses himself in peremptory tones. It is only the obtuseness of his ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... from all perception of pleasure or of pain derivable from good verse or bad—the reckless reiteration of the same rhyme with but one poor couplet intervening—suggests rather the oversight of an unfledged poet than the obtuseness of a full-grown poeticule ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... expected," he writes, "that the Editor should convey to his readers the intellectual impressions which the execution of his task has produced on his mind. He confesses that they are mournful." Sir Richard was either a master of irony, or a man of singular obtuseness. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... national indifference originate in a physical or a moral cause, from an obtuseness in their corporeal formation or a perfection in their intellectual one, I do not pretend to decide; but whatever be the cause, the effect is enjoyed with great modesty. So little do the French pique themselves on this valuable stoicism, that they acknowledge being ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... gone to Mass, and the fool had taken shelter in the porch of the gallery, that there he might vent some of his ill-humour—or indeed indulge it—in pondering the obtuseness of woman and the insidiousness of Gonzaga, to whom he never doubted that this miserable ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... twice, and her maid came with her candle and her walking-stick: it was her habit of late to go to her room as soon as dinner was over, for she had no one to sit up with. Rickie was impressed by her loneliness, and also by the mixture in her of insight and obtuseness. She was so quick, so clear-headed, so imaginative even. But all the same, she had forgotten what people were like. Finding life dull, she had dropped lies into it, as a chemist drops a new element into a solution, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... alone. That, Mrs. Eliott felt, was a bad beginning. She could see that it struck even Johnson's obtuseness as unfavourable, for ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... then," said Dr. Wycherley, waxing impatient at their abominable obtuseness, "it is the premonitory stage of the precursory condition of an organic ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... provincial speech as I have heard it in the Midland or Mercian region. It is a just demand that art should keep clear of such specialties as would make it a puzzle for the larger part of its public; still, one is not bound to respect the lazy obtuseness or snobbish ignorance of people who do not care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of the ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... house of habitually inattentive men could any one talk such nonsense without reproof, but I look in vain through Hansard's record of this debate for a single contemptuous reference to Mr. Chamberlain's obtuseness. And the rest of his speech was a lamentable account of the time and trouble he would have to spend upon his constituents if the new method came in. He was the perfect figure of the parochially important person in a state of defensive excitement. No doubt his speech appealed to ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... of persons, in shunning this evil, go to the other extreme, and are very strict and pertinacious in regard to every requisition. With them, fault-finding and penalties abound, until the children are either hardened into indifference of feeling, and obtuseness of conscience, or else become excessively irritable ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the same thing—the same plunging without forethought, the same disregard for all that is conventionally deemed necessary. His courage is often praised, and rightly, though we ought not to forget that ignorance, and even obtuseness, were large ingredients in it. As far as they had any plan, it was to reach Switzerland and settle on the banks of some lake, amid sublime mountain scenery, "for ever." In fact, the tour lasted but six weeks. Their difficulties began in Paris, where only an accident enabled Shelley to ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Ezekiel, with patronizing recognition of his obtuseness. "I guess ez heow you ain't much on American. You folks orter learn the language if you ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... enigmatic saying that 'the things in books had always eluded him.' As one with a certain interest in books, I had remembered his words. And it seemed that, if I looked at life honestly, the things in books would elude me too. The problem occupied me for days. I was aghast at my own obtuseness, for I was unable to decide from Mrs. Carville's conduct what her real attitude towards us might be. I did not know whether she were wayward or not. I felt bitterly that such things could not happen in a book, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... at this obtuseness towards what she viewed as the dignified and ladylike mission of the well-born woman, not to be the bread-winner, but the preserver and steward, of the household. Here was poor little Caroline so ignorant as actually to glory in having been ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this Chinese obtuseness, or, as some would have it, opacity, in much the same way. Under the head of Natural Phenomena, he writes: "It is a question of more than ordinary interest to those who regard the Chinese people as a worthy object of study, What are the speculations of the working and uneducated classes concerning ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... fell entirely to Robert. At last Robert, by main force, as it were, got Wardlaw off into politics, but the new Irish Coercion Bill was hardly introduced before the irrepressible being turned to Catherine, and said to her with smiling obtuseness— ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... instinct had told him after the first words exchanged that the man was not only a cad, but a rank pretender. Still, in his desire for social knowledge, he had refused at first to listen to the voice of instinct and had been punished for obtuseness. The very thought of the little drawling outsider who had delighted in his sobriquet of "the Dook" made Hilliard feel sick, and he opened wide all the windows and doors when the contemptible creature went out of the house. "Wanted to turn ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... pretext, by which no one could have been deceived except willingly, was sufficient to turn his footsteps thither again. He explained to his mother—with a vagueness which she found somewhat puzzling, but ascribed to her own feminine obtuseness in matters of business—the reasons that imperatively demanded his presence in Patesville. With an early start he could drive there in one day,—he had an excellent roadster, a light buggy, and a recent rain had left the road in good condition,—a day would suffice ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... liar, but this fact would not have been evident to his enthralled listeners if his cowboy comrades, in base jealousy, had not betrayed him. The truth about his remarkable fabrications, however, had not become known to Castleton, solely because of the Englishman's obtuseness. And there was another thing much stranger than this and quite as amusing. Dorothy Coombs knew Monty was a liar; but she was so fascinated by the glittering, basilisk eyes he riveted upon her, so taken in by his horrible tales of blood, that despite her knowledge ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... person he was, and to speak of things beyond their ken. Playing this part, he would have enjoyed himself tolerably—nor the less because now and again he let his contempt for the company peep from under his complaisance—but for the obtuseness, or the malice of his friend; who, as if he had only one man and one idea in his head, let fall with every moment some mention of Colonel John. Now, it was the happy certainty of the Colonel's return next day that inspired his ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... notice of this remark of Rebecca's; but Shanty gave the old servant a piercing look, whilst all others present, with the exception of Salmon, felt almost fainting with impatience; but Salmon's mind seemed for the moment in such a state of obtuseness, as disabled him from catching hold of the link which was leading to that which was to interest him as much as, or even more than, any one present. The gipsy went on to say, that her cupidity was so much excited by these ornaments, ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... that it was over for a desire for more, had followed it with 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy.' His sister—these things run in families—had sung 'My Little Gray Home in the West'—rather sombrely, for she had wanted to sing the 'Rosary,' and, with the same obtuseness which characterised her brother, had come back and rendered two plantation songs. The audience was now examining its programmes in the interval of silence in order to ascertain the duration of the sentence still ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... "initiation," save that which the Ruler of the universe has implanted in every system and in every government. Yet we concede the right of others to think differently on these points, without being suspected of moral obtuseness or obliquity. Especially can we comprehend how a patriotic Frenchman should choose to accept all the conditions of his epoch, and embrace every opportunity of aiding in the task of correction ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... in the room, as if they had pumped all the air out of it. Wouldn't it be dreadful to produce that effect on people! But they never seem to be aware of it. I remember once meeting a famous Bore; I really must tell you about it, it shows the unbelievable obtuseness of such people." ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... unhappy girl had hitherto been sustained by no effort of volition of her own. From the moment when, discovering a friend in Oucanasta, she had yielded herself unresistingly to the guidance of that generous creature, her feelings had been characterised by an obtuseness strongly in contrast with the high excitement that had distinguished her previous manner. A dreamy recollection of some past horror, it is true, pursued her during her rapid and speechless flight; but any analysis of the causes conducing to that horror, her subjugated faculties were unable ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... both parties. Not to admit that the text of this Edition is in many places improved, from the suggestions of my Translators, by corrections of "Names of Persons, Places, and Things," would be to betray a stubbornness or obtuseness of feeling which certainly does not enter into ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... unfit for any office of trust and respectability. "I have, indeed," urged the mayor, "observed a natural obtuseness in this man; nevertheless, when he is allowed time to think, he judges by no ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... Glenby in a rage. What a blessing Sara had not married me in my absurd youth! She would have driven me wild with her sighs and her obtuseness and her everlasting pink-and-whiteness. But there—there—there—gently! She was a sweet, good-hearted little woman; she had made Jack happy; and she had contrived, heaven only knew how, to bring a rare ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... envied Henry James the conviction he seems to have had, all his life, that Europeans are a good deal more unlike other people than I ever found them. It may be obtuseness on my part, but I never could see that people who lived in the Basses-Pyrenees are any more cultivated or had any broader horizons than people who live in the Green Mountains. My own experience is that ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... His collection of modern art was a fine one—not large, but very perfect in its way, and he was delighted to see her appreciation of his treasures. Here at least was a point upon which they might sympathise. He had been a good deal worried by Sophia's obtuseness upon all artistic matters. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the possibility that Mrs Fanshawe had written of her guest never occurred to Claire's mind; that Erskine like herself discounted such a possibility. He replied with a matter-of-fact simplicity which left Claire marvelling at the obtuseness of mankind— ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Juliette still looked provokingly innocent. So her mother took a long step forward, for in truth she grew impatient with all this obtuseness in which, for reasons of her ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable qualities. She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They were lords of the only world she cared for, and they were ready to admit her to their ranks and let her lord it with them. Already she felt within her a stealing allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... no difficulty in tolerating him, then?—you have a respect for a political platitudinarian as insensible as an ox to everything he can't turn into political capital. You think his monumental obtuseness suited to the dignity of the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Charles the Second, just one hundred years before George the Third ascended the throne, the English colonies in America struggled manfully for prosperity against the unjust and illiberal commercial policy of Great Britain. With a strange obtuseness of perception in regard to the elements of national prosperity, which the truths of modern political economy now clearly illustrate to the common mind, the British government sought to fill its coffers from the products of colonial industry, by imposing upon ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... her, something bordering upon enthusiasm in the way she repelled an attempted incursion upon the forbidden ground. And withal she was so tender and sympathetic toward all mankind, that her wilful obtuseness on the subject of love bore to him the appearance of wanton cruelty. It did not occur to him that she might be acting in self-defence, fearing to give the slightest rein to a feeling which might, on very slight provocation, run away ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... a book is often obscurity; and an author whose meaning is got at only by severe mental exertion, and a straining of the mind's eye, is generally weak in the backbone of him. Occasionally it is the dullness of the reader, but oftener the obtuseness ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... he should give nothing but his name to the society. Uncle Jack—more euphoniously designated as "the celebrated philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esquire"—was honorary secretary, and the capital stated at two millions. But such was the obtuseness of the industrial classes, so little did they perceive the benefits of subscribing one-and-ninepence a-week from the age of twenty-one to fifty, in order to secure at the latter age the annuity of L18, that the company dissolved into thin air, and with it dissolved also Uncle Jack's L3,000. Nothing ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wide consideration and just appreciation of external conditions. That laws are silent amid the clash of arms, seems in his apprehension transformed to the conviction that at no time are they more noisy and compulsive. Upon this political obtuseness there fell a kind of poetical retribution, which gradually worked the Administration round to the position of substantially supporting Napoleon, when putting forth all his power to oppress the liberties of Spain, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Dicky. He caught the tension in the atmosphere, and looked from his mother to me with a helpless caught-between-two-fires-expression. With masculine obtuseness he put his foot in it in his ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... moment at last, when the prince, in spite of his obtuseness, had a qualm of doubt, and he looked sharply at Elena's former lover. Except his want of appetite, Andrea gave no outward sign of inward agitation; with the utmost calm he puffed clouds of smoke into the air, and smiled his habitual, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... former chapter, "that he was a man of courage":—And will add here, that where just occasions presented, or called it forth,—know no man under whose arm I would have sooner taken shelter;—nor did this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness of his intellectual parts;—for he felt this insult of my father's as feelingly as a man could do;—but he was of a peaceful, placid nature,—no jarring element in it,—all was mixed up so kindly within him; my uncle Toby had ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... conclusions, and since then had kept her heart alive by pitying her proprietor's obtuseness and want of refinement, pitying herself, and letting off her delicate and ethereal emotions in imaginative occupations, day-dreams, and night-sighs, which perhaps would not much have disturbed William if ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy |
