"Nincompoop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sit down quietly under the taunt of wanting experience. But we have soldiers, and soldiers should have military education as well as red coats, and be led by properly qualified officers, instead of Lord Nincompoop's youngest sons. As it is in the army, so it is in the State. Places given away, here and there, to incompetent heads; nobody being responsible, no unity of idea and purpose anywhere—the individual interest always in the way of the general good. There is a noble ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... to Justice Day. A nincompoop, fond of drinking, but with just a shade more brains than Abel Day, who is "a thorough ass" (act i. 1).—T. Knight, The Honest ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 'You're a slaverin', quaverin', melon-carryin' nincompoop. There's no more chance of getting information out of you than out of ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... of Killiecrankie, in which that nobleman, having been again and again rejected by the Lady Henrietta Addison, kidnapped the obdurate fair one, and imprisoned her in a crag-castle in the Highlands. Having kept her for a week in deferential durance, and shown her that he was not the inefficient nincompoop she had taken him for, he threw open the prison gate, and said to her: "Go! I set you free!" The moment she saw the gate unlocked, and realized that she could indeed go when and where she pleased, she also realized that she had not the least wish to go, and flung herself into her captor's arms. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... between two of the men, on the subject of the apparent anomaly. A forecastleman, addressing a petty officer, inquired how she could hail from San Francisco, then belonging to the United States, and fly the Peruvian flag. "Why, look ye, you nincompoop," was the reply, "can't there be more'n one Jack Jones on the purser's books, and wherefore shouldn't there be more than one San Francisco in the chart of the world? Doesn't it stand to reason, seeing it's a saint's name, and they're all Catholics along that coast, that they should ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... "to think after the way we have brought her up, after all our care of her, that she should go and fall in love with a dancing, dandified nincompoop, all powder and patches. Why damme! the wench is run stark, staring mad. Egad! a nice situation for a loving and affectionate father to ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... In his teeth the villain held the bell-rope, which he kept jerking about with his head, raising such a clatter that my ears ring again even to think of it. On his lap lay the big fiddle, at which he was scraping, out of all time and tune, with both hands, making a great show, the nincompoop! of playing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... (originally the name for an imperfectly formed foetus) was used as a term of reproach, like dodypol, nincompoop, ninny, dunderhead, &c. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various |
