The 3,274 occurrences of blockhead

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~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,443   ~   ~   ~

The blockheads who oiled your wheels yesterday have screwed up your patent axles too tightly; the friction is enormous; the hotter the metal gets, the greater grows the friction; your horse's work is quadrupled.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,444   ~   ~   ~

You drive slowly home, and severely upbraid the blockheads.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,826   ~   ~   ~

A dull, quiet man, whom you esteemed as a blockhead, may suddenly be valued very differently when circumstances unexpectedly call out the solid qualities he possesses, unsuspected before.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 276   ~   ~   ~

What blockhead thinks now of reading Milton, or Pope, or Gray?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,339   ~   ~   ~

And only a blockhead takes a dispute between man and wife seriously.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,145   ~   ~   ~

Stretch it, you blockhead.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,183   ~   ~   ~

O you blockhead!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,044   ~   ~   ~

Earnely[54] and Aylesbury[55] with all that race Of busy blockheads, shall have here no place; At council set as foils on Danby's[56] score, To make that great false jewel shine the more; Who all that while was thought exceeding wise, Only for taking pains and telling lies.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,104   ~   ~   ~

There is a treasury of merits in the Fanatic church, as well as in the Popish; and a pennyworth to be had of saintship, honesty, and poetry, for the lewd, the factious, and the blockheads: but the longest chapter in Deuteronomy has not curses enough for an Anti-Bromingham.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,883   ~   ~   ~

If God has not blessed you with the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock, and welcome: let your verses run upon my feet; and for the utmost refuge of notorious blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines upon me, and, in utter despair of your own satire, make me satirize myself.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,915   ~   ~   ~

Yet still he found his fortune at a stay: Whole droves of blockheads choking up his way; They took, but not rewarded, his advice; Villain and wit exact a double price.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 760   ~   ~   ~

You understand, blockhead?'

~   ~   ~   Sentence 239   ~   ~   ~

"Blockhead," he replied, "do you not see that the deficiency is at the top, and not at the bottom?"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 448   ~   ~   ~

"What do you mean, blockhead?" says he.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,086   ~   ~   ~

The Poet has one disadvantage more, That if his play be dull, he's damn'd all o'er, Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,013   ~   ~   ~

Meetuck," shouted Peter Grim, "give this old blockhead a taste o' your lingo, I never met his match for stupidity."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,455   ~   ~   ~

How his fellow-workmen were pitying him!--a poor blockhead of a bungler who had thus brought to a pitiful climax his failure to learn a simple trade.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 29,860   ~   ~   ~

"A greater instance of a man's being a blockhead."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 32,808   ~   ~   ~

In the following couplet, there is an ellipsis of the infinitive; for the phrase, "fool with fool," means, "_for_ fool _to contend_ with fool," or, "for one fool to contend with an other:" "Blockheads with reason wicked wits abhor, But _fool with fool_ is barb'rous civil war."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 41,666   ~   ~   ~

12.--Of some impenetrable blockhead, Horace, telling how himself was vexed, says: "_O te_, Bollane, cerebri Felicem!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 59,505   ~   ~   ~

--_Butler cor._ "A greater instance of a _man_ being a blockhead."--_Spect.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,555   ~   ~   ~

Otway alone, no longer the friend of Rochester, and perhaps no longer the enemy of Dryden, has spoken of the author of this dastardly outrage with the contempt his cowardly malice deserved: "Poets in honour of the truth should write, With the same spirit brave men for it fight; And though against him causeless hatreds rise, And daily where he goes, of late, he spies The scowls of sullen and revengeful eyes; 'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear, And serves a cause too good to let him fear: He fears no poison from incensed drab, No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's stab; Nor any other snares of mischief laid, _Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade_; From any private cause where malice reigns, Or general pique all blockheads have to brains."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,914   ~   ~   ~

The blockhead stands excused, for wanting sense; And wits turn blockheads in their own defence."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,629   ~   ~   ~

He was going to see what the world had to show him, poor incredulous blockhead, and he did not mean that occasional spirited persons shouting "Hi!" at him should stay his course.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,840   ~   ~   ~

Be off with all the old lies with which you have crammed your cranium.... You blockhead!"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,569   ~   ~   ~

And Blanche says to the footman, "Cease that chatter, blockhead, and do my bidding."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,910   ~   ~   ~

pox take some of our cits, the first thing after their death is to take care of their birth--let him bear a pair of stockings, he is the first of his family that ever wore one.... And you, Mr. Blockhead, I warrant you have not call'd at Mr. Pestle's the apothecary: will that fellow never pay me?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,625   ~   ~   ~

BLOCKHEAD, Churchill, applied to, i.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 9,409   ~   ~   ~

249, n. 2; attacks on authors, on, v. 275, n. 1; blockhead, a, ii.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 9,418   ~   ~   ~

173, n. 2: See above, _Amelia_, blockhead, and below, _Tom Jones; _Jonathan Wild_, compared with St. Austin, iv.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 16,100   ~   ~   ~

235; plodding-blockheads, ii.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 19,133   ~   ~   ~

94, n. 2; 'the wisdom of blockheads,' iii.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 19,477   ~   ~   ~

_Notes and Queries_, Athenian blockhead, i.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 24,942   ~   ~   ~

222; Goldsmith calls him a blockhead, ii.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 27,089   ~   ~   ~

425, n. 3; Morell, Dr., v. 350, n. 1; _Motion, The_, a caricature, v. 285, n. 1; 'mystery, the wisdom of blockheads,' iii.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 28,325   ~   ~   ~

'An Athenian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads,' i.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 29,667   ~   ~   ~

182; 'No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,' iii.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,134   ~   ~   ~

these blockheads know no better.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,274   ~   ~   ~

The doctor was a blockhead, a just-qualified general practitioner, and quite ignorant of mental science.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,277   ~   ~   ~

But, as I say, the doctor was a blockhead, and until the leg was healed Hapley was kept tied to his bed, and with the imaginary moth crawling over him.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 382   ~   ~   ~

Accordingly, they sometimes put down their thoughts in bits, in short, equivocal, and paradoxical sentences which appear to mean much more than they say (a splendid example of this kind of writing is furnished by Schelling's treatises on Natural Philosophy); sometimes they express their thoughts in a crowd of words and the most intolerable diffuseness, as if it were necessary to make a sensation in order to make the profound meaning of their phrases intelligible--while it is quite a simple idea if not a trivial one (examples without number are supplied in Fichte's popular works and in the philosophical pamphlets of a hundred other miserable blockheads that are not worth mentioning), or else they endeavour to use a certain style in writing which it has pleased them to adopt--for example, a style that is so thoroughly _Kat' e'xochae'u_ profound and scientific, where one is tortured to death by the narcotic effect of long-spun periods that are void of all thought (examples of this are specially supplied by those most impertinent of all mortals, the Hegelians in their Hegel newspaper commonly known as _Jahrb�cher der wissenschaftlichen Literatur)_; or again, they aim at an intellectual style where it seems then as if they wish to go crazy, and so on.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,335   ~   ~   ~

One could perhaps discriminate from behind between a blockhead, a fool, and a man of genius.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,336   ~   ~   ~

A clumsy awkwardness characterises every movement of the blockhead; folly imprints its mark on every gesture, and so do genius and a reflective nature.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,716   ~   ~   ~

I distrust all these gentry; I am suspicious of Tavannes' ambition; Vieilleville loves nothing but good wine; Cosse is too covetous; Montmorency cares only for his hunting and hawking; the Count de Retz is a Spaniard; the other lords of my court and those of my council are mere blockheads; my Secretaries of State, to hide nothing of what I think, are not faithful to me; insomuch that, to tell the truth, I know not at what end to begin."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 936   ~   ~   ~

Breslin was an honest, well-meaning farmer; the Major was furious to find such a man allied with Foy's foes--certain sign that other decent blockheads would do likewise.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,198   ~   ~   ~

Blockheads, with reason, wicked wits abhor, But fool with fool, is barbr'ous civil war, Embrace, embrace, my sons!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 399   ~   ~   ~

But men are blockheads,--dear, and affectionate, and generous blockheads,--benevolent, large-hearted, and chivalrous,--kind, and patient, and hard-working,--but stupid where women are concerned.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 544   ~   ~   ~

The man must have been an abject blockhead, as I believe most professional criminals are.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,742   ~   ~   ~

Another favourite Saying of theirs is, That Business was designed only for Knaves, and Study for Blockheads.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,964   ~   ~   ~

There were several Satyrs and Panegyricks handed about in Acrostick, by which Means some of the most arrant undisputed Blockheads about the Town began to entertain ambitious Thoughts, and to set up for polite Authors.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,089   ~   ~   ~

The Acrostick [4] was probably invented about the same time with the Anagram, tho' it is impossible to decide whether the Inventor of the one of the other [were [5]] the greater Blockhead.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 8,644   ~   ~   ~

It happens, I doubt not, more than once in a Year, that a Lad is chastised for a Blockhead, when it is good Apprehension that makes him incapable of knowing what his Teacher means: A brisk Imagination very often may suggest an Error, which a Lad could not have fallen into, if he had been as heavy in conjecturing as his Master in explaining: But there is no Mercy even towards a wrong Interpretation of his Meaning, the Sufferings of the Scholar's Body are to rectify the Mistakes of his Mind.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 8,647   ~   ~   ~

No one who has gone through what they call a great School, but must remember to have seen Children of excellent and ingenuous Natures, (as has afterwards appeared in their Manhood) I say no Man has passed through this way of Education, but must have seen an ingenuous Creature expiring with Shame, with pale Looks, beseeching Sorrow, and silent Tears, throw up its honest Eyes, and kneel on its tender Knees to an inexorable Blockhead, to be forgiven the false Quantity of a Word in making a Latin Verse; The Child is punished, and the next Day he commits a like Crime, and so a third with the same Consequence.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 9,072   ~   ~   ~

The dying Man had still so much the Frailty of an Author in him, as to be cut to the Heart with these Consolations; and without answering the good Man, asked his Friends about him (with a Peevishness that is natural to a sick Person) where they had picked up such a Blockhead?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 15,882   ~   ~   ~

Cicero, in order to accomplish his Son in that sort of Learning which he designed him for, sent him to Athens, the most celebrated Academy at that time in the World, and where a vast Concourse, out of the most Polite Nations, could not but furnish a young Gentleman with a Multitude of great Examples, and Accidents that might insensibly have instructed him in his designed Studies: He placed him under the Care of Cratippus, who was one of the greatest Philosophers of the Age, and, as if all the Books which were at that time written had not been sufficient for his Use, he composed others on purpose for him: Notwithstanding all this, History informs us, that Marcus proved a meer Blockhead, and that Nature, (who it seems was even with the Son for her Prodigality to the Father) rendered him incapable of improving by all the Rules of Eloquence, the Precepts of Philosophy, his own Endeavours, and the most refined Conversation in Athens.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 15,890   ~   ~   ~

The Story of Clavius [2] is very well known; he was entered in a College of Jesuits, and after having been tryed at several Parts of Learning, was upon the Point of being dismissed as an hopeless Blockhead, till one of the Fathers took it into his Head to make an assay of his Parts in Geometry, which it seems hit his Genius so luckily that he afterwards became one of the greatest Mathematicians of the Age.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 17,305   ~   ~   ~

I should have gone to him myself, if I had not been a Blockhead; a very great Man!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 22,376   ~   ~   ~

A Parent who forces a Child of a liberal and ingenious Spirit into the Arms of a Clown or a Blockhead, obliges her to a Crime too odious for a Name.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 22,404   ~   ~   ~

If his Man enters the Room without what he sent for, _That Blockhead_, begins he--_Gentlemen, I ask your Pardon, but Servants now a-days_--The wrong Plates are laid, they are thrown into the Middle of the Room; his Wife stands by in Pain for him, which he sees in her Face, and answers as if he had heard all she was thinking; _Why, what the Devil!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 26,322   ~   ~   ~

To want Sorrow when you in Decency and Truth should be afflicted, is, I should think, a greater Instance of a Man's being a Blockhead, than not to know the Beauty of any Passage in _Virgil_.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 26,663   ~   ~   ~

Something or other is always amiss when the Lover takes to some new Wench: A Settlement is easily excepted against; and there is very little Recourse to avoid the vicious Part of our Youth, but throwing one's self away upon some lifeless Blockhead, who tho' he is without Vice, is also without Virtue.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 381   ~   ~   ~

When he sees they pay him according as he pleases them, he brings out his pack of lies, for, unfortunately, no one has any check on the deceit, and he tells them about all the great bull-fights in which he has taken part in Toledo, and all about the bulls he has killed; and these blockheads from England make a note of it in their albums, and even some coarse hand may make a sketch of this imposter's head; all he cares for is that they should believe all his lies and give him a peseta on leaving.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,914   ~   ~   ~

Impertinent blockhead!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,984   ~   ~   ~

Mr. Gilpin's superior school of Elphin, in Roscommon, where he was considered "a stupid, heavy blockhead, little better than a fool, whom everyone made fun of."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 455   ~   ~   ~

"That is why," said the offended Provincial Architect, Dian (who despised the Counsellor of Arts, because he never made a good figure except in the esthetic hall of judgment as critic, never in the exhibition-hall as painter), "we moderns are, without contradiction, stronger in criticism; though in practice we are, collectively and individually, blockheads."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,663   ~   ~   ~

Furthermore, it does us good to see a fool who is more stupid than we, who has not the same gifts; why, then, one feels greater oneself and is grateful to heaven; even on that account I like to have a blockhead around.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,360   ~   ~   ~

JOHNSON--'He was a blockhead for his pains!'

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,667   ~   ~   ~

In vain his drugs, as well as birch he tried; His boys grew blockheads, and his patients died.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 499   ~   ~   ~

"What the devil!" he exclaims, "is there no one learned blockhead throughout the schools of misapplied science in the Christian world to make a tutor of for my Tristram--are we so run out of stock that there is no one lumber-headed, muddle-headed, mortar-headed, pudding-head chap amongst our doctors...but I must disable my judgment by choosing a Warburton?"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 903   ~   ~   ~

The blockhead talks nonsense, and your Majesty in your own person furnishes the best proof of it.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,563   ~   ~   ~

A blockhead Like yourself, say: cease.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 703   ~   ~   ~

Altamont indeed, who is an amorous blockhead, a credulous cuckold, and, (though painted as a brave fellow, and a soldier,) a mere Tom.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,082   ~   ~   ~

He is a blockhead, that Dmitri.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,405   ~   ~   ~

"Then, for God's sake, tell that blockhead sitting on the stone and whose horse has gone lame, to seize the bicycle of that peasant standing there, and follow us."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 169   ~   ~   ~

At first she was unintelligible, then he distinctly caught the words "idiot" and "blockhead."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,262   ~   ~   ~

At first she was unintelligible, then he distinctly caught the words "idiot" and "blockhead."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,650   ~   ~   ~

"What are you sniggering there at, you blockhead?"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,696   ~   ~   ~

"The girl's a blockhead!"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 8,100   ~   ~   ~

"What a blockhead I am," cried Uncle Ith, "not to take the papers!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 798   ~   ~   ~

LORD CHESTERFIELD 'Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.'

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,399   ~   ~   ~

You must know, his philosophical works are generally in dialogues, where people are brought in disputing against one another: Now the priests when they see an argument to prove a God, offered perhaps by a Stoic, are such knaves or blockheads, to quote it as if it were Cicero's own; whereas Cicero was so noble a freethinker, that he believed nothing at all of the matter, nor ever shews the least inclination to favour superstition, or the belief of a God, and the immortality of the soul; unless what he throws out sometimes to save himself from danger, in his speeches to the Roman mob; whose religion was, however, much more innocent and less absurd, than that of popery at least: And I could say more--but you understand me.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,462   ~   ~   ~

You may possibly find, if you endeavor to instil such belief into minds of but moderate cultivation, that your arguments will be met less by force of reason than by roaring of voice and excitement of manner; you may find that the person you address will endeavor to change the issue you are arguing, to other issues, wholly irrelevant, touching your own antecedents, character, or even personal appearance; and you may afterwards be informed by good-natured friends, that the upshot of your discussion had been to leave on the mind of your acquaintance the firm conviction that you yourself are intellectually a blockhead and morally a villain.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,606   ~   ~   ~

Did you ever, my reader, chance upon such a spectacle as this: a very commonplace man, and even a very great blockhead, standing in a drawing-room where a large party of people is assembled, with a grin of self-complacent superiority upon his unmeaning face?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,610   ~   ~   ~

I have seen this expression on the face of one or two of the greatest blockheads I ever knew.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,657   ~   ~   ~

Diligently instil into a boy that he is a stupid, idle, bad-hearted blockhead, and you are very likely to make him all _that_.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,111   ~   ~   ~

I am a great, coarse blockhead, compared to you.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,974   ~   ~   ~

The blockhead was frightened, and answered, 'I swear by your Honour's feet, I alone have not acted in this manner; all of us from fear of you have concealed our [handsome] female slaves in our chests.'

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,182   ~   ~   ~

What unfortunate blockhead ever comes to this enchanted city?"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,225   ~   ~   ~

He exclaimed, "O blockhead!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,629   ~   ~   ~

"Ay, ay--thou suspicious blockhead.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 787   ~   ~   ~

Addressing himself to James, he continued, in an insulting tone, "We don't go to get the game to _eat_, you blockhead, but only for the sport of killing it."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,578   ~   ~   ~

"Certainly," answered Charles; "but, if I was as much of a blockhead as you are, I'd be careful to keep my thoughts to myself."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,121   ~   ~   ~

"It's all a great big game, fixed up to try you and Pickering,-but principally you, you blockhead!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,508   ~   ~   ~

The following passage from it, however, must not be lost:-- * * * * * "What egregious blockheads must those animals have been who discover a resemblance to my style in Latin or other quotations.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 8,144   ~   ~   ~

"'Oh, you blockhead!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,857   ~   ~   ~

"Be ye where ye will, ye'll never be aught but a blockhead."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,015   ~   ~   ~

There was a charade on the word Blockhead, where your brother Charles and the two De Lanceys caricatured what they supposed to be Mrs. Tallboys' doctrines."

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