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Dunces Quotes

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Dunces Quotes

“For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.”

WellsMotivationIntentionInventionMotiveTortureDunces
Book:Reader! Walk Up at Once (it Will Soon be Too Late) and Buy at a Perfectly Ruinous Rate a Fable for Critics: Or, Better, (I Like, as a Thing that the Reader's First Fancy May Strike, an Old Fashioned Title-page, Such as Presents a Tabular View of the Volume's Contents) a Glance at a Few of Our Literary Progenies (Mrs. Malaprop's Word) from the Tub of Diogenes; a Vocal and Musical Medley
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“Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.”

ShouldHumansPersonsFeelingsWould BeHuman BeingsPleasureAnimalChangedFoolPromiseCreaturesConscienceIntelligentSelfishSatisfiedBeastConsentAllowanceBeing SelfishRascalsDunces
Book:The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill
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“I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils governed by foolish servants. I have known great ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who preferred none but dunces. I have known men of valor cowards to their wives. I have known men of cunning perpetually cheated. I knew three ministers who would exactly compute and settle the accounts of a kingdom, wholly ignorant of their own economy.”

MenPersonsThreeKnownEconomyWifeFameAccountsAffairFoolishWitKingdomsIgnorantMinistersSettlingServantCowardCouncilCunningDistinguishedCheatedValorInconsistencyPublic AffairsDunces
Author:Horace Walpole
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“Trying to find this industry's tendency to celebrate the physical is a waste of time. So I'm happy to play the game. But I am also thirsty for input. I'm not a dunce whose only skill is knowing how to take a photograph, you know? And at the end of the day, I think it makes me slightly less replaceable.”

ThinkingKnowsTryingEndsPlayGamesKnowingIndustrySkillsWastePhotographTendenciesCelebrateThe End Of The DayWasting TimeInputThirstyAnd At The End Of The DayDunces
Author:Olivia Wilde
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“...And another item from the growing file of people who voluntarily wear dunce caps... You'll be talking cordially to someone and make an offhand reference, 'I recently read where--' and they'll cut you off and say, 'Oh, I don't read'... This is a tragedy on so many different levels. First, because they don't read, they don't know enough to keep it to themselves. Next, and this is the most amazing part, they use a demeaning tone like I'm the stupid one for wasting time with books.”

PeopleKnowsFirstsBookDifferentEnoughUseNextLevelsTalkingCuttingGrowingStupidTragedyToneWasting TimeItemsFilesCapsMost AmazingDifferent LevelsDemeaningDunces
Author:Tim Dorsey
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“New Hampshire has always been cheap, mean, rural, small-minded, and reactionary. It's one of the few states in the nation with neither a sales tax nor an income tax. Social services are totally inadequate there, it ranks at the bottom in state aid to education--the state is literally shaped like a dunce cap--and its medical assistance program is virtually nonexistent. Expecting aid for the poor there is like looking for an egg under a basilisk.... The state encourages skinflints, cheapskates, shutwallets, and pinched little joykillers who move there as a tax refuge to save money.”

MeanLittlesStatesMovingNationsSocialPoorTaxesProgramBottomAidsMedicalIncomeWelfareEggsExpectingRefugeAssistanceCapsInadequateIncome TaxSaving MoneyReactionariesSocial ServiceHampshireNew HampshireDuncesSales TaxCheapskates
Author:Alexander Theroux
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“It is useless to check the vain dunce who has caught the mania of scribbling, whether prose or poetry, canzonets or criticisms,--let such a one go on till the disease exhausts itself. Opposition like water, thrown on burning oil, but increases the evil, because a person of weak judgment will seldom listen to reason, but become obstinate under reproof.”

PersonsReasonEvilWaterGoes OnDiseaseJudgmentCriticismWeakIncreaseCaughtOilChecksBurningUselessVainProseOppositionThrownManiaObstinateDuncesReproof
Author:Sarah Josepha Hale
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“What am I then...? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts....their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.”

PeopleHas BeensDifferentAgeNamesIndividualWiseHeardChildhoodPerspectiveBearsInnocentOld AgeMaturityCollectivesDunces
Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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