The infirmity of human intelligence is short sight. In too many cases, the wiseacres are dunces of a sort, who lose sight of the simplicity of things, and stifle and obscure it with formulae and trivialities. It is the small things that one learns from books, not the great ones.
Wit, who never once Forgave a brother, shall forgive a dunce.
Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce.
How much a dunce that has been sent to roamExcels a dunce that has been kept at home!
The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please.
For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions,Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.
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.
I've had about enough of morons and half wits, dolts, dunces, dullards and dumbbells … and you, you chowder-head yokel, you blithering hayseed — you've had enough of me?
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.