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More "Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... This was the idiot Grisha. Whence he had come, or who were his parents, or what had induced him to choose the strange life which he led, no one ever knew. All that I myself knew was that from his fifteenth year upwards he had been ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... up, even though we treated her so shabbily. That's why I just said I hoped that the girls would appreciate Grace. I'd hate to think that some stupid ill-natured freshman, it's more likely to be a freshman than any one else, would behave like an idiot and spoil her first year at Harlowe House." There was an expression of anxious ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... struck in haste, and they travelled down the Rhine. When their boat was detained at Marsluys, all three sat writing in the cabin—Shelley his novel, Mary a story called 'Hate', and Claire a story called 'The Idiot'—until they were tossed across to England, and reached London after borrowing passage-money ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... record its matter or style. But history does record, that some years afterwards the Duke paid a hundred guineas to get it back again,—and that, on getting it, he instantly burned it, exclaiming, that, when he wrote it, he must have been the greatest idiot on the face of the earth. Doubtless, if we had seen that letter, we should have heartily coincided in the sentiment of the hero. He was an idiot when he wrote it, but he did not think that he was one. I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... window-pane that he might see more clearly. 'Ay, that is he by the driving! So he squanders money along the king's highway, the triple idiot! gorging every man he meets with gold for the pleasure of arriving—where? Ah, yes, where but a debtor's jail, if ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it follows that the death penalty as a punishment even for the worst crimes is morally untenable; for either the culprit is really irredeemable, that is to say, he is an irresponsible moral idiot, in which case an asylum for the insane is the proper place for him; or he is not irredeemable, in which case the chance of reformation should not be taken from him by cutting off his life. The death penalty is the last lingering ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... idiot minds. The coursing of cosmic-ray particles. The wrenching of Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields. Old and sluggish memories were renewed, memories meant to be buried for ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... Quarles, "to my mind, Judge, there ain't no manner of doubt but whut prosperity has went to his head and turned it. He acted to me like a plum' distracted idiot. A grown man with forty thousand pounds of solid money settin' on the side of a gutter eatin' jimcracks with a passel of dirty little boys! Kin you figure it out any other way, Judge—except that ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... 'un," said Paul. "We hadn't been going a fortnight before he asked me to accept half salary, swearing he would make it up, with a rise, as soon as business got better. Like an idiot, I consented." ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... listless, aimless as the green Idiot fishes of my aquarium, Who loiter down their dim tunnels and come And look at me and ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... and I know that I am rather good-looking,' she once said to Nina, 'and I am glad, for, as a rule, people like pretty things better than ugly ones, but I am not an idiot to think that looks are everything, and I don't believe I am very vain. I used to be though, when a child, but Harold gave me so many lectures upon vanity that I should not do credit to his teachings were I now to be proud of what ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... say, the only explanation of a godless life, unless the man is an idiot, is that there lie beneath it, as formative principles and unspoken assumptions, guiding and shaping it, one or both of these two thoughts: either 'There is no God,' or 'He does not care what I do, and I am safe to go on for evermore in the present fashion.' It might seem as if a man ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thought of the threat of more kicking, in the room afterwards, his heart went hot and faint, and he panted, remembering the one that had come. He had been forced to say, "For my girl." He was much too done even to want to cry. His mouth hung slightly open, like an idiot's. He felt vacant, and wasted. So, he wandered at his work, painfully, and very slowly and clumsily, fumbling blindly with the brushes, and finding it difficult, when he sat down, to summon the energy to move again. His limbs, his jaw, were slack ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... writer only,[*] not the tenderness of the idiot who will always be deceived, not the softness towards other people's troubles which cause all my misfortunes to come from my holding out my hand to weak people who are falling into disaster. In 1827 I help a working ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... but—well, then the Sabbath-day she has all along respected; and I am almost sure that our regular halts on that day, although ordered by Pedro, were suggested by Manuela. Of course, praying and Sabbath-keeping may be done by hypocrites, and for a bad end; but who, save a consummately blind idiot, would charge that girl with hypocrisy? Besides, what could she gain by it all? Pshaw! the idea is ridiculous. Of course there are many more good qualities which I might enumerate, but these are the most important ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... the brain the more easily influenced. She couldn't have so impressed an idiot, or an illiterate, unreceptive man. Let me tell you how a ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... infernal jackass. The inscription on the gate of hell ran through his mind. He thought he would make his life— his desolate, broken life—a perpetual exile, like Dante's. At the same time he ground his teeth, and muttered: "Oh, what a fool I am! Oh, idiot! beast! Oh! oh!" The pipes reminded him to smoke, and he took out his cigarette case. The Italians looked at him; he gave all the cigarettes among them, without keeping any for himself. He determined to spend ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... outgrows. His crowning fact is that dynamite will loosen stumps and break rock. Therefore, all that is not dynamite is not proper man-stuff. Woman, to this sort, is something between "an angel and an idiot." She must be guarded from herself in all that has to do with thought and performance. As panderer and caterer, she emphatically belongs. Young men grasp this. If they reach middle age with it, only an angel ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... them then, but Albert came back after his three years' service, with two of his front teeth gone, and we all know that Jeno now is little better than an idiot. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... hall, but she turned and spoke through the doorway. "I've only asked you not to be an idiot. I merely beg, for all our sakes, that if something precious is flung down at your feet you'll have the common sense to stoop and pick ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... desperately flings himself down and lets death bury him, that is the one picture suggested by the text. The other is of that same wilderness, but across it a mighty king has flung up a broad, lofty embankment, a highway raised above the sands, cutting across them so conspicuously that even an idiot could not help seeing it, so high above the land around that the lion's spring falls far beneath it, and the supple tiger skulks baffled at its base. It is like one of those roads which the terrible energy of conquering ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... finest looking Indian women I have ever met,—tall, straight, lithe and dignified. But, crawling about on the floor on all fours, was the most piteous travesty of the human form I have ever seen. It was an idiot boy, sixteen years of age. He had neither the comeliness of a beast nor the intellect of a man. His name was Hootz-too (Bear Heart), and indeed all his motions were those of a bear rather than of a human being. Crossing ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... their ears and looked at me. Penny let his jaw drop in amazement and, leaving his mouth open, maintained an expression like that of the village idiot. I stared, flabbergasted, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the foremost of all bowmen! Dhritarashtra's son (Duryodhana) listened not to the words repeatedly spoken by me and Vidura and Drona and Rama and Janardana and also by Sanjaya. Reft of his senses, like unto an idiot, Duryodhana placed no reliance on those utterances. Past all instructions, he will certainly have to lie down for ever, overwhelmed by the might of Bhima!'—Hearing these words of his, the Kuru king Duryodhana became of cheerless heart. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... December, the leaders of the Right used freely to say of Louis Bonaparte: "He is an idiot." They were mistaken. To be sure that brain of his is awry, and has gaps in it, but one can discern here and there thoughts consecutive and concatenate. It is a book whence pages have been torn. Louis Napoleon has a fixed idea; ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... not the only possible reason for this would be intended outrage, murder, and suicide; but though Valorbe is a robustious kind of idiot, he does not seem to have made up such mind as he ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... one reason Donald was such a favorite with his classmates. There was not a fellow in the school who had more friends. To be sure they called him "slow coach", "old tortoise", "fatty", and bestowed upon him many another gibing epithet, frankly telling him to his face that he was a big idiot. Nevertheless they did not conceal from him that he was the sort of idiot ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... of bag of it. It was rather a good idea to keep the idiot scared and quiet, and a devilish hard thing to get out of—head away from the string. My dear Kemp, it's no good your sitting glaring as though I was a murderer. It had to be done. He had his revolver. If once he saw me he would ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... wound, but the burning of things is in itself neither good nor bad. A large number of houses deserve to be burnt, most modern furniture, an overwhelming majority of pictures and books—one might go on for some time with the list. If our community was collectively anything more than a feeble idiot, it would burn most of London and Chicago, for example, and build sane and beautiful cities in the place of these pestilential heaps of rotten private property. I have failed in presenting Mr. Polly altogether if I have ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... I shouldn't wonder if mental complications followed. I have seen cases like that at the Bicetre, where operations on an alcoholic patient produced paresis. The man got well," he added harshly, as if kicking aside some dull formula; "but he was a hopeless idiot." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... qualities, although they are born of the same parents at the same time and brought up under similar conditions and environments? How can heredity explain such cases? Suppose a man has five children; one is honest and saintly, another is an idiot, the third becomes a murderer, the fourth a genius or prodigy, and the fifth a cripple and diseased. Who made these dissimilarities? They cannot be accidents. There is no such thing as an accident. ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... of the wider kind. Men debated whether she had a soul, made cynical proverbs about her, called her the "weaker vessel," and debarred her from political and economic equality, classing her up to this very moment in rights with the idiot, the imbecile, and the criminal. Worse than this, they gave her a spurious homage, created a lop-sided chivalry, and caused her to accept as her ideal goal of womanhood the achievement of beauty and the entrance into wifehood. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... not, though thou wert dead to-morrow. But tell me this, why hidest thou, *with sorrow,* *sorrow on thee!* The keyes of thy chest away from me? It is my good* as well as thine, pardie. *property What, think'st to make an idiot of our dame? Now, by that lord that called is Saint Jame, Thou shalt not both, although that thou wert wood,* *furious Be master of my body, and my good,* *property The one thou shalt forego, maugre* thine eyen. *in spite of What helpeth ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... kill," repeated Dr. Silence. Then, after another pause, during which he was clearly debating how much or how little it was wise to give to his audience, he continued: "And if the Double does not succeed in getting back to its physical body, that physical body would wake an imbecile—an idiot—or perhaps never ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of order to be here! I won't put up with much more of it, and so I'll tell him. I shall dress as I like, and do as I like, even if I haven't got a handle to my name. Sir Richard, indeed!— a pattern for me to follow! Next time the fat old idiot say's that to me, I'll throw the books ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... been found, with the boy whom I had first seen, wandering in the garden. He was apprehended for a thief, brought into the house, and not until Dr. Mayhew had been summoned, had it been suspected that the poor creature was an idiot. Commiseration then took the place of anger quickly, and all was anxiety and desire to know whence he had come, who he might be, and what his business was. He could not speak for himself, and the answers of the boy had been unsatisfactory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... having pitched her tent in their hunting-grounds; several of his friends were near neighbours. He had a dim but horrid recollection of having been on that occasion unlike himself, ill at ease, burning in the face, talking with idiot loquacity of his adventures in the Baltic provinces, and finding from time to time that he was addressing himself exclusively to Mrs Wallace. The other lady, when he joined them, had completely lost the ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... shoulders riz, and exclaimed:—"Ah! Is it possible, this! That these disdaineous females and this ferocious old woman are placed here by the administration, not only to empoison the voyagers, but to affront them! Great Heaven! How arrives it? The English people. Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?" Another time a merry, wide-awake American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it out, and had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in vain to sustain exhausted natur' upon Butter-Scotch, and had been rather extra Bandolined and Line-surveyed through, when as the bell was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... "ANOTHER IDIOT" wishes to know if there is such an appointment in the gift of the Crown as the office of "Court Sweep." Why, certainly; and, on State occasions, he wears the Court Soot, and his broom is always waiting for him at the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... 16 he writes: 'I sat from two till five staring at my picture like an idiot, my brain pressed down by anxiety, and the anxious looks of my dear Mary and the children.... Dearest Mary, with a woman's passion, wishes me at once to stop payment, and close the whole thing. I ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... contempt. You certainly admire and emulate to a certain extent the fashionable Society women of England, but the ordinary English girl you treat with indifference, and speak of with contumely. You look upon her as a badly-dressed idiot. That may strike your ears as a sweeping assertion, but my ears have tingled over and over again by hearing that very sentiment coming from your own pretty mouths. Now, as we are alone, let me say a word or two on that point. You ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... toward the lady. I may say that I love her truly and deeply. But there is something in the current that runs through my veins that cries out against any form of the calculable. I do not know what I want; but I know that I want it. I'm talking like an idiot, I suppose, but I'm sure of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Some idiot has invented a "cat teaser" to put on fences to keep cats from sitting there and singing. It consists of a three-cornered piece of tin, nailed on the top of the fence. We hope none of our friends will invest in the patent, for statistics ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... at least, lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her lurking dread of being flung on the beach, by age. Only ten minutes ago he had uttered a tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy. And now she had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel. What an idiot she had been! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... travelling to Africa and hunting lions scared him stiff and when they went into the house, and while the serenade of honour was still going on outside, he made the most frightful scene with Tartarin-Quixote, calling him a crazy dreamer, a rash triple idiot and detailing one by one the catastrophes which would await him on such an expedition. Shipwreck, fever, dysentery, plague, elephantiasis and so on... it was useless for Tartarin-Quixote to swear that he would be careful, that he would ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... himself of the secret before making off? At first I saw no room to doubt it. But your young friend's account of himself sent me to Falmouth, and at Falmouth I began to have my doubts. My earliest inquiries there were addressed to the pedagogue—the Reverend Something-or-other Stimcoe—a drunken idiot, who yielded no information at all; and to his wife, a lady who persisted in regarding me as sent from heaven for no other purpose than to discharge her small debts. From her, again, I learned nothing. But from a talk with one of her pupils—his name was Bates, if I ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... one who had done so much to promote the happiness of some little friends I had at home would be valued beyond measure; that I knew at least half a dozen youngsters who were as well acquainted with the "Little Match Girl," and the "Ugly Duck," and the "Poor Idiot Boy," as he was himself, and his name was as familiar in California as it was in Denmark. At this he grasped both my hands, and looking straight in my face with a kind of ecstatic expression, said, "Oh, is it possible? Do they really read my books in California? so far away! Oh! ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... do, despite all quaint peculiarities of the attire, the customs, or the opinions of their respective ages, with which they were imbued. The spirit of truth and poetry redeems, ennobles, hallows, every external form in which it may be lodged. We may "pshaw" and "pooh" at Harry Gill and the Idiot Boy; but the deep and tremulous tenderness of sentiment, the strong-winged flight of fancy, the excelling and unvarying purity, which pervade all the writings of Wordsworth, and the exquisite melody of his lyrical poems, must ever continue to attract and purify the mind. The very ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... to the appearance of Dodeth's own race. There could be no question of the genetic linkage between the two species, but, in spite of the physical similarities, their actions were controlled almost entirely by instinct instead of reason. They were like some sort of idiot parody of ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett
... watches the spiral of smoke. It wavers and unwinds. A finger writing; an idiot flower. Then it opens up into a large smoke eye. Smoke eyes drift casually away. An odor crawls into the air. Sing Lee's eyes close gently and his thin body moves as ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Jeff declared, indignantly, "to walk in on people like this, without a word of warning! Nobody but an idiot would expect people just coming home from their honeymoon to want to find their house filled up ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... unhappy boy was standing gave way—a loud scream rent the air, echoing through the cliffs—and in another instant all that remained of him was a lifeless, mangled corpse. The poor fellow's story is soon told. He was an idiot, and having wandered from his mother's side, had reached the fatal spot, no one knew how, and thus met a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... at first that she could not "parade around that church and stand up there before the minister. I'd feel like a reg'lar idiot, Louis." ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... "Seemly, idiot?" she stormed at him. "I swear, as I've a soul to be saved, that in spite of all this, I know that man to be a traitor and a Jacobite—that it was the letter from the king he sought, whatever he may pretend ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... latter, and the proceeds of the book were to go toward the expenses of a trip to Germany, decided on in the spring of 1798. The bulk of the volume was Wordsworth's, and was typically Wordsworthian, ranging from such simple ballads of humble incident as "Goody Blake" and "The Idiot Boy" to the magnificent blank verse of "Tintern Abbey"; Coleridge's share consisted of a brief poem called "The Nightingale," two short extracts from "Osorio," and "The Rime of the ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... average idiot, aren't you?" said I. "Oh, yes; I've been squatting in the wet by that infernal river, too. You ought to get three months, ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... also seems to make Mark out an absolute idiot. Just suppose for a moment that, for urgent reasons which neither of you know anything about, he had wished to get rid of his brother. Would he have done it like that? Just killed him and then run away? Why, that's practically suicide—suicide ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... the dickens did old Wharton marry her? He's an old ass, and he's getting just what he might have expected. She's twenty-five and beautiful; he's seventy and a sight. I've a notion to chuck the whole affair and go back to the simple but virtuous Tenderloin. It's not my sort, that's all, and I was an idiot for mixing in it. The firm served me a shabby trick when it sent me out to work up this case for Wharton. It's a regular Peeping Tom Job, ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... where's the man that's worthy of their bed? If no disease reduce her pride before, Lavinia will be ravish'd at threescore. Then she submits to venture in the dark; And nothing now is wanting—but her spark. Lucia thinks happiness consists in state; She weds an idiot, but she eats in plate. The goods of fortune, which her soul possess, Are but the ground of unmade happiness; The rude material: wisdom add to this, Wisdom, the sole artificer of bliss; She from herself, if so compell'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... another, demanded her husband Collati'nus, and Spu'rius, her father, to come to her; an indelible disgrace having befallen the family. 16. They instantly obeyed the summons, bringing with them Valerius, a kinsman of her father, and Junius Bru'tus, a reputed idiot, whose father Tarquin had murdered, and who had accidentally met the messenger by the way. 17. Their arrival only served to increase Lucre'tia's poignant anguish; they found her in a state of the deepest desperation, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... rumours passed from lip to lip, growing in sensation and absurdity as they went. A report, telegraphed by an anonymous idiot from Liverpool, to the effect that six air-ships had appeared over the Mersey, and demanded a ransom of L10,000,000 from the town, was eagerly seized on by the cheaper evening papers, which rushed out edition after edition on the ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... swim by wriggling his feet in the water as though they were a tail. The hardships, the privations, the terrors, and for the past few weeks the lack of proper nourishment had reduced Erich Obergatz to little more than a gibbering idiot. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... explained to Hyacinthe, pride of knowledge making him quite amiable, "a most precious wood that grows in warm countries, thou great goblin. Smell it, idiot. It is sweeter than cedar. It is to make a cabinet for the old Madame ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... usual, it's all my fault. When we moved the other day, we left our oil behind in the stable, and I knew the wagon needed oiling when I got down to Kenniston's. I was just going to do it when you drove up, and then, like an idiot, I forgot it." ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... young idiot!" I said. "And I should advise you not to go gassing about like this, round the decks. Take my tip, and turn-in and get a sleep. You're talking dotty. Tomorrow you'll perhaps feel what an unholy ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... Abou's son. Here, in England, you would cruelly designate him as something between a madman and an idiot, but the Easterns look not thus upon those who possess not their ordinary faculties. Through Helfa, Abou had seen many wonderful things, and now he was ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... she perceived that the purpose of morning light was to pick out surfaces of mahogany and orange velvet and glass, and that only an idiot would ever leave this place and go about begging dirty garage men to fill her car ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... prattle and thy mincing gait. All thy false mimic fooleries I hate; For thou art Folly's counterfeit, and she Who is right foolish hath the better plea; Nature's true Idiot I ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... very stove round which they were gathered, stood one with a haggard eye and vacant gaze, and at his feet clung two half-naked infants; a quarter of an hour before he was a hale man, a husband, with five children; now, he was an idiot and a widower, with two. No tear dimmed his eye, no trace of grief was to be read in his countenance; though the two pledges of the love of one now no more hung helplessly round his legs, he heeded them not; they sought a father's smile—they ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... The Friend, the custom amongst German children of making presents to their parents on Christmas Eve, (a custom which he unaccountably supposes to be peculiar to Ratzeburg,) represents the mother as 'weeping aloud for joy'—the old idiot of a father with 'tears running down his face,' &c. &c., and all for what? For a snuff-box, a pencil-case, or some article of jewellery. Now, we English agree with Kant on such maudlin display of stage sentimentality, and are prone to suspect that papa's tears ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... I came to quarter myself on Madame Barbiere and her idiot son, and how I ultimately learned from the lips of the latter the strange story of his own immediate fall from reason and the dear ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... what signifies the life of man? For ninety-nine and a half per cent. of every man's life is made up of these light nothings; and unless there is potential greatness in them, and they are of importance, then life is all 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' Small things make life; and if are small, then it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the world is that old idiot comin' here for? To talk about the minister, I s'pose. How on earth did Laviny ever come to let ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... at the girl in the middle row. What beautiful hair she had! What an idiot she was to give up four years of her life to this round of work and play and pretence of living! Oh, to go back to Germany—to see Bertha and her mother again, and hear the father's 'cello! Hermann had ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... An idiot of a woman has written to me to get her a place as governess in an 'European or Arabian family in the neighbourhood of Thebes!' Considering she has been six years in Egypt as she says, she must be well fitted to teach. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the back of your hand," Honoria replied, warming to her subject. "They hardly repaid felling for firewood. It made me wretched. Some idiot threw down a match, I suppose. There had been nearly a month's drought, and the whole place was like so much tinder. There was an easterly breeze too. You can imagine the blaze! We hadn't the faintest chance. Poor, old Iles lost his head completely, and sat down with his feet ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... said Maitland savagely, then checking his rage, "but I ought to thank you for getting me out of the grip of that frantic idiot. What is this ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... concentrated significant gaze of the crew. Five pairs of eyes speaking as one, all saying "idiot" plainly, the boy's eyes conveying an expression too ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... although they were the only people on the pier, from force of habit he dropped his voice. "The mamaloi has more power than the Church." He straightened and looked out toward the ship. "Here's her idiot with your trunk. My office is the first house on the left after you leave the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... evaded him as adroitly as she before had evaded her mistress. It was so ludicrous to see her duck down behind her mistress and make use of her as a bulwark, that the uncouth man roared with laughter. "You needn't fear, you idiot," he said good-naturedly. "I'm not going to hit you. I know very well that you're a little devil, but I don't for a moment think you'll put any dirt into ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... long. He thought I was the real goods, liked me because I was not stupid, and liked me a bit, too, I think, for myself. Of course I had not the slightest intention of joining him in a life of sordid, petty crime; but I'd have been an idiot to throw away all the good things his friendship made possible. When one is on the hot lava of hell, he cannot pick and choose his path, and so it was with me in the Erie County Pen. I had to stay in with the "push," or do hard labor on bread and water; and to stay ...
— The Road • Jack London
... "Among the idiot pranks of Wealth's abuse, None seem so monstrous, none have less excuse, Than those which throw an heritage away Upon the lawless chance of desperate play; Nor is there among knaves a wretch more base Than he who steals ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Right, you unplumbable old idiot! Do you think you can come into this cave and hide anything from me under that transparent face of yours? The minute you came in and hemmed and hawed, and said as you had nothing to do you guessed you'd have a go with the firesticks—I knew. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... let it stay there. The agony was great, and the language that poured from the patient was of an extremely lurid character. But he had wonderful grit, and I had to laugh when he began abusing himself for being such an idiot. He then allowed a native woman to cover the entire hand with a huge poultice, made of the beaten-up pulp of wild oranges—a splendid antiseptic. But it was a week before he could use his hand again, and his temper was something abominable. However, we managed ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... nonsense! and you give yourself away just a few lines above, when you assert that you are too proud to confer a favour on me, and read Greek Testament with me. What a funny chap you are! Can't you see, you idiot, what a pleasure you give me? We shall have to compromise, and I'll have to make some concession to your pride. Neither —— nor I know much about your section, but we could help you in your first part papers. Of course, he could do it miles better than I can; but, all the same, ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... tres occupee." After a great deal of this sort of thing, Rust was spurred up to suggest that he also was weary, and that nothing could be more delightful than to sit beside Madame upon those sands and to bewail with her the woes of their common country. The idiot did not reflect that a woman of Madame's taste in dress does not usually mess up her Paris frocks with nasty sea sand. Madame sighed. It was a charming picture, but, alas, quite impossible. Rust still further spurred by ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... indeed, my child, How I do love thee. 'Tis a good young man, And wealthy—no fool, like his brother. Fool, Said I?—a madman, ape, dolt, idiot, ass, An honourable ass to give the land His weak sire left him, to our Basil—Ha! He'll give none back, I think !—no! no! Come, girl! Wouldst thou be foolish, too? I would not marry For money only, understand—no! ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... which made her morning costume more charming than that of the evening, and never did she look so well as when arrayed for a walk. On this occasion she had certainly done her best. But he, poor blind idiot, saw nothing of this. The white gauzy fabric which had covered Isabel's satin petticoat on the previous evening still filled his eyes. Those perfect boots, the little glimpses of party-coloured stockings above them, the looped-up skirt, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... such a harmless idiot that we laughed with him. But we were silenced at once by a shout from above us, and a command to "Stop that noise." I looked up and saw a man in semi-uniform and wearing an officer's sash and sword stepping from one rock to another ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Of lavish fancy paints each flattering scene Where beauty seems to dwell, nor once inquire Where is the sanction of eternal truth, Or where the seal of undeceitful good, To save your search from folly! wanting these, Lo! beauty withers in your void embrace, And with the glittering of an idiot's toy Did fancy mock ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... ridiculous that I should be so dull and stupid. She says she fears we are 'fated to misunderstand each other.' I defy such a blind stupid fate. I used to have some brains and tact before I came to this place, and I scarcely think I've become an idiot. I am determined to win that girl's friendship, and I intend to follow her career and watch the rare and beautiful development of her character. That one hour in the garden yesterday taught me what an inspiration her exquisite ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... for a four-year-old child! A burden to the world, a burden to himself, to live on for years after the mind is dead! To be an idiot for ever! It would be good for him if he could be made ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... "You idiot!" He gripped my shoulders. His eyes were gleaming, his face haggard, but his pale lips twitched with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... coming down to see what was the matter. I hear from the Brigade that some doddering idiot has cut our wire. Who in ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... "Dense little idiot!" sighs Giddy. "She cannot understand poor Carol's passion, and yet he kissed her in the hansom. It was like Eleanor to tell me. She always gives herself away. I pity those refreshingly young people who can never keep anything to themselves." Giddy waves up to the ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... at all for it, and the more wholly unreasonable, the better still; that the motive should lie in the feeling itself and not in the object of it—and that the affection which could (if it could) throw itself out on an idiot with a goitre would be more admirable than Abelard's. Whereupon everybody laughed, and someone thought it affected of me and no true opinion, and others said plainly that it was immoral, and somebody else hoped, in a sarcasm, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... your own. Be as much so as you please; I have always respected your right. Only when I have kept myself in durance on purpose to leave you an open field, don't, by way of thanking me, come and call me an idiot." ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... demanded Beulah incisively. "He's tied to the bedpost and I have my gun. I can shoot as straight as you can. What harm can he do me in five minutes? Don't be an idiot, Dan." ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Koritza, saying that they compelled people to complain to the foreign consuls, the recruiting officer replied: 'We shall imprison every blessed man who steps over the threshold of a consulate. You mean to say you will go to that big idiot the British consul. That fool of a consul must think himself very lucky for England is a friendly power, otherwise we would have killed him!'" He had, in fact, reported their conduct, and they seem to have been aware of this. The letter continues: ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... ye sittin' there for, ye old idiot?" said he savagely. "I do b'lieve ye've larned to sleep on the donkey. Ha! there's two of ye together, an' the wooden one's the best. Wouldn't I just like to be yer leftenant, my boy? an' I'd come to know why you don't go on your beat. Why, ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... long breath, and determined to put the subject out of her mind until after dinner, so that Sir Elmer Cartwright need not think her a complete idiot. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... sans qu'un mot d'entre ses levres sorte, Regarde le roi d'Arle et d'une telle sorte, Avec un si superbe eclair, qu'il l'interdit; Et Ratbert, furieux sous ce regard, bondit Et crie, en s'arrachant le poil de la moustache —Je te trouve idiot et mal en point, et sache Que les jouets d'enfant etaient pour toi, vieillard! Ca, rends-moi ce tresor, fruit de tes vols, pillard! Et ne m'irrite pas, ou ce sera ta faute, Et je vais envoyer sur la tour la plus haute Ta tete au bout d'un pieu se ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... is impossible for me to recollect, at this distance of time. All that I can say is this: that, as on the one side for a man to come to his patron's table with a design to affront either him or his friends supposes him a perfect natural, a mere idiot; so on the other side it would be extreme severe, if a person whose education was far distant from the politeness of a court, should, upon the account of an unguarded expression, or some little inadvertency in his ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... know it, Uncle Steve." This was an affectionate term of familiarity which Duncan sometimes used in addressing Patricia's father. "I was afraid of it when you proposed it, but I allowed myself, like an idiot, to be influenced by you. I tell you, Langdon, she won't stand for it; not for a minute. I have made her angry, many times before now, but I have never known her to be quite ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... came upon a yokel sitting on a stile. As the gentleman was not quite sure of his road, he thought he would make inquiries of the local inhabitant; but at the first glance he jumped too hastily to the conclusion that he had dropped on the village idiot. He therefore decided to test the fellow's intelligence by first putting to him the simplest question he could think of, which was, "What day of the week is this, my good man?" The following is the smart answer that ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... begin to think he's a beastly idiot. That fellow was bragging to me the other day that he bullied his sisters into fagging for him when he was at home. I think that's enough for me." And so holidays again came to an end, to Nettie's secret delight. She hated parting ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... enough to put a barrier between me and her. Was I jealous? Did I seem huffy? What an idiot I must have been! Why, old man, I can't do any thing or say ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... could make columns of fun out of it. The general theme is age-old, being not different from the themes of most other novels in that respect. A half-idiotic spendthrift (he ends as very nearly an actual idiot) not merely wastes his own property but practically embezzles that of his wife and daughter; the wife dies and the daughter is left alone with an extravagant establishment, a father practically non compos, not a penny in her pocket after she has ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... some of the golden acorns fell out of his pocket. So bright were they, they shone like sunbeams in the room. In spite of the fool's entreaties the brothers picked them up and gave them to their father, who hastened to present them to the king, telling him that his idiot son had gathered them in the wood. The king immediately sent a detachment of his guards to the forest to find the oak which bore golden acorns. But their efforts were fruitless, for, though they hunted in every nook and corner of the forest, they ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... moody madness muttering in the corner; for years a barren fixture there; head lopped over, gnawing his own lip, vulture of himself; while, by fits and starts, from the corner opposite came the grimace of the idiot ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... woman she must be," he said to himself. "A genuine,—but I'm an egregious idiot,—a blanked blunderer. A pretty scrape I am in! Why didn't I wait until they declared themselves? And Miss Van Deusen! She must think me a fool. But ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... the little idiot says!" he remarked to himself. "Nobody made anything of me when ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... part of man. If woman, like the infant or the defective classes, be incapable of self-government, then republican society may exclude her from all participation in the enactment and enforcement of the laws under which she lives. But in that case, like the infant and the idiot and the unconsenting subject of tyrannical forms of government, she is ruled and not represented by man. This much I desire to say in the beginning in reply to the broad assumption of those who deny women the suffrage by saying that they are already represented by their fathers, their ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Alexis the bear Mishka took his station. By order of Prince Boris he had been kept from wine for several days, and his small eyes were keener and hungrier than usual. As he rose now and then, impatiently, and sat upon his hind legs, he formed a curious contrast to the Prince's other supporter, the idiot, who sat also in his tow-shirt, with a large pewter basin in his hand. It was difficult to say whether the beast was most man or the man most beast. They eyed each other and watched the motions of their lord with equal jealousy; and the dismal whine of the bear found ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... right you'd have been tuerto now. Not that your eyes are anything to be stuck up about, though; they're neither brown nor green, nor any other recognized color; just a sort of mixture—like Pedro's estofados. Your mouth, now—you always had a homely sort of mouth, too big by far. And you were an idiot to shave off your mustache. You might let it grow again, now that you're where you could have it trimmed once in awhile, but I suppose it would take a month and look like a nail-brush in the meanwhile! And then ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... common attribute of persons who are partially idiotic. Father Murchison was moved to think of these poor creatures who will often, so strangely and unreasonably, attach themselves with persistence to those who love them least. Like many priests, he had had some experience of them, for the amorous idiot is peculiarly sensitive to the attraction of preachers. This bowing movement of the parrot recalled to his memory a terrible, pale woman who for a time haunted all churches in which he ministered, who was perpetually endeavouring to catch his eye, and who always ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... woman was making fun of her, or if she was quite as silly as she appeared. But if Delia would only do the work and do it half-way right, Janice told herself she did not care if Delia was actually an idiot. At least the new ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... Juliet's remarks, and Emily was anxious to know what kind of things "scavengers" might be, and when Mr. Rowles could be spared from the lock he brought a punting pole, and after a good deal of trouble fished up the bucket. He called Juliet a little idiot; and Philip remarked that girls never could do anything, especially London ones, who are always so conceited ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... down to see what was the matter. I hear from the Brigade that some doddering idiot has cut our wire. Who in the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... surprise, she said, "You are bad—all of you. If the women could vote we would cease to have trouble. It may please you all to know that since that idiot Pole has mortgaged his farm to Swallow and bought out the butcher at the mills, he has repented of his Democratic wickedness and says, 'After all the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... a harmless idiot that we laughed with him. But we were silenced at once by a shout from above us, and a command to "Stop that noise." I looked up and saw a man in semi-uniform and wearing an officer's sash and sword stepping from one rock to another and breaking ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... very wise; We always are with others' eyes, 50 And see so clear! (our neighbor's deck on) What reef the idiot's sure to wreck on; Folks when they learn how life has quizzed 'em Are fain to make a shift with Wisdom, And, finding she nor breaks nor bends, Give her a letter to their friends. Draw passion's torrent whoso will Through sluices smooth to turn a mill, And, taking solid toll of grist, Forget ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... wisdom he was really wise. No reading or study had contributed to disenchant the fairyland around him. Everything furnished him with an opportunity of mirth; and though some thought him, from his insensibility, a fool, he was such an idiot as philosophers should wish ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... opportunity to gratify her vengeance soon occurred. Messalina, according to Tacitus, was guilty of the inconceivable madness of marrying Silanus, one of her paramours, while her husband lived, and that husband an emperor, which story can not be believed without also supposing that Claudius was a perfect idiot. Such a defiance of law, of religion, and of the feelings of mankind, to say nothing of its folly, is not to be supposed. Yet such was the scandal, and it filled the imperial household with consternation. Callistus, Pallas, and Narcissus—the favorites who ruled ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... "You unsuspecting little idiot," she said, giving me a tender little shake that robbed the words of their harshness, "can't you see ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... where some of the deep chords of human nature are swept with a hand which is strong even while it falters. We see throughout (I THINK) that Elizabeth has not, and never bad, a mind perfectly sane. From the time that she was what she herself, in the exaggeration of her humility, calls 'an idiot girl,' to the hour when she lay moaning in visions on her dying bed, a slight craze runs through her whole existence. This is good: this is true. A sound mind, a healthy intellect, would have dashed the priest-power to the wall; would have defended her natural affections from his grasp, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Mrs. Walraven, with that indolent smile shining in her lazy, wicked black eyes. "The little fool sets her trap, and walks into it herself, like the inconceivable idiot she is. It reminds one of the ostrich, this advertisement—pretty Mollie buries her head in the sand, and fancies no one sees her. Now, if Guy only plays his part—and I think he will, for he's absurdly and ridiculously in love with ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... written a book. Either I'm an idiot, or blinded by conjugal conceit, or else Barty's book—which I've copied out myself in my very best handwriting—is one of the most beautiful and important books ever written. Come and dine with me ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... hard upon the Barnacles,' said Gowan, laughing afresh, 'they are darling fellows! Even poor little Clarence, the born idiot of the family, is the most agreeable and most endearing blockhead! And by Jupiter, with a kind of cleverness in him too that would ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... muttered something in a rather surly fashion, whereupon the gentleman, who had not yet spoken, leaned forward, and said angrily, "You told us you knew this neighbourhood. You are an idiot!" ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... case. Yes! poor Portuguese Jew exiled in Holland, yes! that he who is convinced without a vestige of doubt, without the faintest hope of any saving uncertainty, that his soul is not immortal, should prefer to be without a soul (amens), or irrational, or idiot, that he should prefer not to have been born, is a supposition that has nothing, absolutely nothing, absurd in it. Was he happy, the poor Jewish intellectualist definer of intellectual love and of happiness? For that and no ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... However, when they pressed me close I told them every whit; and some thought that I had spoken falsely and derided me and others that I was daft and hare-brained and my words were the wild pratings of an idiot or the drivel of dreams. The youngsters made abundant fun of me and laughed to think that I, who never in my born days had sighted a golden coin, should tell how I had gotten so many Ashrafis, and how a kite had flown away ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... thump with his clenched fist upon his knee. "Why, why, why?" he cried. "Give me a reason—a decent reason. You are not a child—you are not a minor, nor an idiot. You are not obliged to drop me because your mother told you to. Such a reason ...
— The American • Henry James
... doctor, still quite cool, "it is a great pity; she is a hopeless idiot. However, it could not be helped; and, after all, she has seen the Great ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... 's under—just about a minute— I take advantage of the fact to say His fishy carcase has no virtue in it The gunning idiot's worthless hire ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... it of ours?' said others. 'Let the idiot go,' and went away. But the rest gathered up stones and mud and threw at him. At last, when he was bruised and cut, the hunter crept away into the woods. And it was evening ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... the article of Wild Oats. Accordingly, as the first step toward respectability, I eschewed coloured waistcoats and gave out that I was a marrying man. No man under forty, unless he is a positive idiot, will stand forth as a theoretical bachelor. It is all nonsense to say that there is anything unpleasant in being courted. Attention, whether from male or female, tickles the vanity; and although I have a reasonable, and, I hope, not unwholesome regard for the gratification of my other ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... worse, Both are but losers out of purse. For when upon their ungot heirs 585 Th' entail themselves, and all that's theirs, What blinder bargain e'er was driv'n, Or wager laid at six and seven? To pass themselves away, and turn Their childrens' tenants e're they're born? 590 Beg one another idiot To guardians, e'er they are begot; Or ever shall, perhaps, by th' one, Who's bound to vouch 'em for his own, Though got b' implicit generation, 595 And gen'ral club of all the nation; For which she's fortify'd no less Than all the island, with four seas; Exacts the tribute of her dower, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... able to walk, when your face is as white as a sheet and you are gasping for breath! Idiot!... What have you been doing in the Palais de ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that text by saying the Bible means unfermented liquor"—Mr. Gresley became purple. "Does it? Then how about the other place where we hear of new wine bursting old bottles. What makes them burst? Fermentation, of course, as every village idiot knows. No, I take it when the Bible says wine it means wine. Wine's fermented liquor, and what's unfermented liquor? ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... I not to cry,' she sobbed, 'when the merciful God has punished me with such an idiot of a husband? He will do nothing himself and takes away my courage ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... magistrates, then, who should be blamed when particularly monstrous judicial errors crop up, such, for instance, as the quite recent condemnation of Dr. L—— who, prosecuted by a juge d'instruction, of excessive stupidity, on the strength of the denunciation of a half-idiot girl, who accused the doctor of having performed an illegal operation upon her for thirty francs, would have been sent to penal servitude but for an explosion of public indignation, which had for ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... more ado. Didn't Schomberg tell you precisely where I conceal the fruit of my rapines? Pah! Don't you know he would have told you anything, true or false, from a very clear motive? Revenge! Mad hate—the unclean idiot!" ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... 'Idiot!' cried she, 'if you had only brought me one of the roses, or a handful of earth, I should have had them in my power. But there is no time to waste. I shall have to go with ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... "What an idiot question!" said Malcourt with weary patience. "All you've got to do is to cuddle yourself less, and go out into the fresh ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience. And the strange thing that I mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted. For near a fortnight I did not go beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work run ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... save si li pa ka tini coul" (I know not if He has not color), answered Maximilien. "But what I well know is that if He has not eyes, He cannot see.... Fouinq!—how idiot!" ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... how! But I was too small a personage, and too poor a devil, to be worth a serious thought of Miss Brandon. As soon as she felt sure that her abominable tricks had set my head on fire, and that I had become an idiot, a madman, a stupid fool—on that very day she laughed in my face. Ah! I tell you, she played with me as if I had been a child, and then she sent me off as if I had been a lackey. And now I hate her mortally, as I loved her almost criminally. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... quaint peculiarities of the attire, the customs, or the opinions of their respective ages, with which they were imbued. The spirit of truth and poetry redeems, ennobles, hallows, every external form in which it may be lodged. We may "pshaw" and "pooh" at Harry Gill and the Idiot Boy; but the deep and tremulous tenderness of sentiment, the strong-winged flight of fancy, the excelling and unvarying purity, which pervade all the writings of Wordsworth, and the exquisite melody of his lyrical ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... of night; If this same were a church-yard where we stand, And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs; Or if that surly spirit, melancholy, Had bak'd thy blood, and made it heavy—thick, (Which else, runs tickling up and down the veins, Making that idiot, laughter, keep men's eyes, And strain their cheeks to idle merriment, A passion hateful to my purposes;) Or if that thou could'st see me without eyes, Hear me without thine ears, and make reply Without a tongue, using conceit alone. Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... Gone? gone! My Constance! My Psyche! I've driven her into the wild street! O my God! William! William! Constance! Which door? I won't go, Constance—I won't. I will do anything you ask me. What was that she said?—Good-bye! God in heaven!—William! you idiot! where are ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... for oneself is to be in [Greek text], or in plain English, an idiot; nor do I see any safer check against general vigour and clearness of thought, with consequent terseness of expression, than that provided by the curricula of our universities and schools of public instruction. If a ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely, There's not a string attuned to mirth But has its chords ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... I was going to say. I am an abject idiot, which, all things considered, is not remarkable.—Ever ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... midst of his frenzy, suddenly quieted down. This was the idiot butcher of whom people had been chattering. No use to ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... did not care; a mad resentment surged up in him. He would not obey this idiot at any price. He raised his head, and looked the officer straight in the face with eyes full ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... he was broadside on), I fired. The report rang out like thunder, making a thousand echoes in the quiet hills. I saw him go down all of a heap as though he were stone dead. Then, alas! whether it was the kick of the heavy rifle, or the excited bump of that idiot Gobo, or both together, or merely an unhappy coincidence, I do not know, but the rotten beam broke and I went down too, landing flat at the foot of the tree upon a certain humble portion of the human frame. The ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... said he, hastening his pace, till even the master's long strides did not sweep more rapidly over the snowy ground. "You have made a fatal experiment. I should not be surprised if you made her a maniac or an idiot." ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... "Any idiot knows that; but how do you make them into a pudding? If we spoil one, you know, we shan't have any opportunity of trying a second time, so ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... their huts; those industriously disposed weave mats, and, whether lazy or not, they never allow their tongues and lungs a moment's rest. The slaves, male and female, draw water, cut fuel, or go to the distant plantations for yams and bananas; whilst the youngsters romp, play and tease the village idiot—there is one in almost every settlement. Briefly, the day is spent in idleness, except, as has been said, for a short ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... place. That folly had wholly gone. There—I have written those words, but I have no sooner written than I repent them. It is not a folly for a boy to be honestly in love, as I was in love with Barbara. I was silly, if you please—a moon-struck, calf-loving idiot, if you like—but in all that hot noon of my madness there never was an unclean thought in my mind nor an unclean prompting of the body. However, all that was past and done with. My liver was washed clean of that passion; it had not left a ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... marrying a doll or a fool was always abhorrent to me: I know that a pretty doll, a fair fool, might do well enough for the honeymoon; but when passion cooled, how dreadful to find a lump of wax and wood laid in my bosom, a half idiot clasped in my arms, and to remember that I had made of this my equal—nay, my idol—to know that I must pass the rest of my dreary life with a creature incapable of understanding what I said, of appreciating what I thought, or of sympathizing ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... afraid of the flies that flew round him: nor would abstain from the meanest theft if he was either hungry or dry, or would murder his dearest friend for a farthing; and also was in every particular as wanting in his understanding as an infant or an idiot. These truths are so evident that all must agree to them; though some may dispute about the quantity and the degree: for they may think, that a very little virtue is sufficient for happiness; but for ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... encouraged by her parents to study so much that her brain gave way, and she is now an idiot. This is a sad result, but the parents must find some consolation in the thought that they have made their ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... mind's eye into that great omnibus. The society is mixed, for king and beggar, genius and idiot, sit side by side: they must go without their property and money; they have only the service-book and the gift out of the saving's bank with them. But which of our deeds is selected and given to us? ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... "You insufferable little idiot," Brinnaria hurled at her, "you never could stand a flogging, you'd die of it most likely. To a certainty you'd be ill, and have to be sent off to be nursed and kept away for a month or more to recover. I won't have Causidiena ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and want till you're gray, and longer," retorted the little man. "So we might as well move on. Tummas, you idiot, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... I says, not feeling agreeable. "Here's my programme. You go up to 22 Market Street, and ask the agent. Then he'll say he don't know. Then you'll tell him he's a three-cornered idiot, because you'll admire the truth, and come back and ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... the man Walcott, discharged from prison, has been secretly conveyed away by one whom you know, after I had been deceived in a most shameful manner with a story of his death in prison. I saw her on the day before his release—her and his child—waiting to appropriate him, and like an idiot I believed her lies. I know not where they hide together, but.... I seek until I find. If you know, take my advice, and separate them. I go prepared. You proved last time that my husband stabbed me. That was very clever on your part; but you will not be able to prove the like thing ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... sit up, thought better of it and lay back again with eyes closed, while Markham moved on tiptoe around the room putting things to rights, all the while swearing silently. What in the name of all that was unpleasant did this philandering little idiot mean by trying to destroy herself on the front lawn of his holiday house? Surely the world was big enough, the air broad enough. He glanced at her for a moment, then crept over on tip-toe and peered at her secretively. He straightened and scratched ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... everyone else in the Belt has. A single mistake can kill out here, and the fear that it will be some fool who makes a mistake that will kill hundreds is always with us. We've learned to live with that kind of fear; we've learned to take steps to prevent any idiot from throwing the wrong switch that would shut down a power plant or open an air lock at ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... had something. All that time I had a memory that I counted sacred. All that time, like an idiot child, I was clasping in my hand a farthing, which I believed, which I stated, to be a shining piece ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... very things that Mrs. Leonard holds up as the proper ends in the life of women are political ends and nothing else; that the education of the child, that the preservation of the purity of the home, that the care for the insane and the idiot and the blind and the deaf and the ruined and deserted, are not only political ends but are the chief political ends for which this political body, the state, is created: and those who desire the help of women in the administration ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... son. Here, in England, you would cruelly designate him as something between a madman and an idiot, but the Easterns look not thus upon those who possess not their ordinary faculties. Through Helfa, Abou had seen many wonderful things, and now he was ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... of the hair. When next the street-boy sorrowfully exclaims on your passing that 'it's no wonder the barbers all 'list for soldiers,' or some puny idiot at your club—a lilliputian model of popular 'manhood'—sniggers to his friend behind his coffee as you come in: call to mind pictures of certain brave 'tailed men' of old, at the winking of whose eyelid your tiny club 'man' would have ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... happy event which transformed the popular Mrs. Smithers into the charming Mrs. John Pedagog all went well at that lady's select home for single gentlemen. It was only proper that during the honey-moon, at least, of the happy couple hostilities between the Idiot and his fellow-boarders should cease. It was expecting too much of mankind, however, to look for a continued armistice, and the morning arrived when Nature once more reasserted herself, and trouble began. ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... began to sneak away from the indignant soldier. The poor idiot burst out crying and howling, and the ostler came forward, pulling his forelock, and saying, "You'll not be hard on 'em, sir. 'Tis all sport. There, Sammy, don't be afeared. Gentleman means ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he is, to be sure!" she said, as she watched him hurrying down the hall to his room with his disinfectants. "Sir Jack told me he was a milksop and not half worthy of Bessie, and he was right. I think him an idiot. Leeks, indeed! Won't he smell, though, when the leek gets warmed through and begins to fume! Phew!" and the little nose went up higher than its wont as Flossie returned ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... withstanding the disagreeableness of life that if an unpleasant thought entered it, it passed out again a moment later. Except for a few of life's fundamental facts, such as that his check book was in the right-hand top drawer of his desk; that the Honorable Freddie Threepwood was a young idiot who required perpetual restraint; and that when in doubt about anything he had merely to apply to his secretary, Rupert Baxter—except for these basic things, he never remembered anything for more than a ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... too beauteous to be wed; For where's the man that's worthy of their bed? If no disease reduce her pride before, Lavinia will be ravish'd at threescore. Then she submits to venture in the dark; And nothing now is wanting—but her spark. Lucia thinks happiness consists in state; She weds an idiot, but she eats in plate. The goods of fortune, which her soul possess, Are but the ground of unmade happiness; The rude material: wisdom add to this, Wisdom, the sole artificer of bliss; She from herself, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... worry them—I'm so certain they've got bothers of their own." The faltering scratches ceased again. "I wish I weren't such an idiot about writing: all the words get frightened and scurry away when I try to catch them." He glanced back at her with a smile as she bent above her task like a school-girl struggling with a "composition." ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... witless fellow named Tilton seems to have been a familiar figure on the streets of the old town. Mr. Brewster speaks of him as "the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton," as if one should say, "the well-known statesman, Daniel Webster." It is curious to observe how any sort of individuality gets magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where everything lacks perspective, and nothing is trivial. Johnny Tilton ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Thou know'st, indeed, my child, How I do love thee. 'Tis a good young man, And wealthy—no fool, like his brother. Fool, Said I?—a madman, ape, dolt, idiot, ass, An honourable ass to give the land His weak sire left him, to our Basil—Ha! He'll give none back, I think !—no! no! Come, girl! Wouldst thou be foolish, too? I would not marry For money only, understand—no! no! That I abhor, detest, but in my life I never ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... poetic atmosphere and stir the imagination in ways distinctly different from those of prose. Wordsworth's obstinate adherence to his theory in its full extent, indeed, produced such trivial and absurd results as 'Goody Blake and Harry Gill,' 'The Idiot Boy,' and 'Peter Bell,' and great masses of hopeless prosiness in his long ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the hunt lunch. Get them out, Jerry, you idiot! Get them out! Great heavens! what's the matter with her Ladyship? Is ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... de Burgh, and Peter de Roche.' Well, say it then, you dreadful little idiot!" (The ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... merry enough, but I hated being laughed at! At any rate, I could see no humor in Mr. Sothern's jokes at my expense. He played my lover in "The Little Treasure," and he was always teasing me—pulling my hair, making me forget my part and look like an idiot. But for dear old Mr. Howe, who was my "father" in the same piece, I should not have enjoyed acting in it at all, but he made amends for everything. We had a scene together in which he used to cry, and I used to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... as if she longed to scratch my eyes out. She needn't have been so very vexed at my being taken for her daughter. I'm not a scarecrow, or a village idiot." ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... September. Ann had an offer from Dr. Wilbur of Syracuse to teach at the great idiot asylum. She disliked it, but decided to go. Poor dear! so beauty-loving, timid, and tender. It is a hard trial; but she is so self-sacrificing she tries to like ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... "Hey, you idiot!" followed the howl, and the young corporal saw Hinkey, a new recruit in the regiment and company, take off his hat and rub a rising lump on the top of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... Cyrus. "I cannot think what has come over me: I cannot speak to my grandfather any more; I cannot look him straight in the face. If this fit grows on me, I am afraid I shall become no better than an idiot. And yet, when I was a little boy, they tell me, I was sharp enough at talking." To which the other lads retorted, "Well, it is a bad business altogether: and if you cannot bestir yourself for your friends, if you can do nothing for us in our ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... of intellectual development is seen in comparing the world-renowned philosopher Humboldt and the idiot figured by Spurzheim. The contrast of coronal and basilar development is seen in comparing the benevolent negro Eustace, who received the Monthyon prize for virtue in France with the skull of the cannibal ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... a moment—idiot, I think it was—no, no, it was fool or stupid. Yes; his majesty said that the man who had thought of the vin de Melun was something ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... here that one must believe, my dear child. Do you see this obscure hole, do you think of the resplendent Grotto, of the triumphant Basilica, of the town built, of the world created, the crowds that flock to Lourdes! And if Bernadette was only hallucinated, only an idiot, would not the outcome be more astonishing, more inexplicable still? What! An idiot's dream would have sufficed to stir up nations like this! No! no! The Divine breath which alone ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... suffered to feed at his expense. Thus contempt grew up with me, and I had nothing to check it; for when I looked around I saw not one living thing that I could respect. This father of mine had the sense to think I was no idiot. He was proud (poor man!) of 'my talents,' namely, of prizes won at school, and congratulatory letters from my masters. He sent me to college. My mind took a leap there; I will tell you, prettiest, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... locked upper-chambers, and a most ghostly garret,—with the "Devil's footsteps" in the fields behind the house, and in front of it the patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one of them was an idiot from that day forward, and another, after a dreadful season of mental conflict, took holy orders and became renowned for his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Cecile in violent French. It was to the effect that she was to hold herself up and not stoop like an idiot. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... interrupt her. "I don't. I think he is an egregious young idiot; but before taking action it's well to get a clear idea of the facts. By the way, how do you ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... simply knocked on the head, while the more harmless and fantastic varieties are turned into priests and prophets and become the founders of the earlier religions. A somewhat similar state of affairs of course prevailed among civilized races up to within the last three-quarters of a century. The idiot and the harmless lunatic were permitted to run at large, and the latter, as court and village fools, furnished no small part of popular entertainment, since organized into vaudeville. Only the dangerous or violent maniacs were actually shut up; consequently, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... what about my letter? Is it what I told you that makes you so stupid? You played the prude—I didn't know—Oh! yes, yes, now I remember; that's what it is—What was it you said to me about the little one? I believe you didn't want anyone to touch him! Idiot!" ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... at the smoke when we let drive, An', before we know, 'e's 'ackin' at our 'ead; 'E's all 'ot sand an' ginger when alive, An' 'e's generally shammin' when 'e's dead. 'E's a daisy, 'e's a ducky, 'e's a lamb! 'E's a injia-rubber idiot on the spree, 'E's the on'y thing that doesn't give a damn For a Regiment o' British Infantree! So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan; You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man; An' 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air— You big ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... among them prepared to follow. Two seamen deserters sprang out from the ranks of the mutineers. One stalwart forest rancher, however, tripped his comrade up, and sat upon his prostrate form shouting, "You'll stop just where you are, you blame idiot! You couldn't do nothing if you got there. Hardly room for them two fellows already where they can ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... we, who life bestow, ourselves must live: Kings cannot reign, unless their subjects give; And they who pay the taxes, bear the rule: Thus thou, sometimes, art forced to draw a fool: But so his follies in thy posture sink, The senseless idiot ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... extremely interesting. After these true, or warranted true histories, we read a novel not half so romantic or entertaining, the Widow Barnaby in America, and then we tried a Swedish story,—not by Miss Bremer,—of smugglers and murderers, and a self-devoted lady, and an idiot boy, the best drawn and most consistent character in the book. After—no, I believe it was before—the Rose of Tisleton, we read Ellen Middleton, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton, grand-daughter of the famous Duchess-Beauty of Devonshire, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... habits of the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether they are Lepidoptera or Steptopotera; but as for telling how you can get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike them,—why Linnaeus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did. These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a great deal. He always kept up his exercise; and I never heard that he was ill. If any other ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... stayed there, you blithering idiot!" says Fouillade. "You don't suppose we'd got wings to fly away with, and still less that we should have legged ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... forgot to make any speed laws over there, and if a chap gets in your way and you knock him silly they arrest him for obstructing traffic, you know. Over here if a chap really starts to go any place in a hurry some bally idiot ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... of it, sir," said Stuart, "but the way you put it, just must be right. I was an idiot not ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... for the victims, the grave tones of the dailies rumbling with compassion as if they were the national bowels. All this lasted a whole week of industrious sittings. A pressman whom I knew told me "He's an idiot." Which was possible. Before that I overheard once somebody declaring that he had a criminal type of face; which I knew was untrue. The sentence was pronounced by artificial light in a stifling poisonous atmosphere. Something edifying was said by the judge weightily, about the retribution ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... an idiot, whose disconnected and meaningless words he carefully set down, and then put them together in such manner as to make prophecies, and then waited patiently to see them fulfilled. Luther believed that he had actually seen the devil, and had discussed points of theology with him. ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... days as he likes for the rest of his life!" he exclaimed fiercely. "Idiot—ass that I have been, and that I am, to offer that which at any hour may belong to some ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... said coldly, pushing him gently back, "I think you are a triple idiot." I then hurried away towards the staircase, and all Duquesnel's shouting was in vain. I ran down the stairs ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... in a low tone, and assuming a quite unnecessary look of vacuity for the benefit of the husband, who gazed across the dim-lit room at them, "don't behave like an idiot; faithful wives never let their husbands see them looking like that at another man's fingers. What do you think of our monsher? He's a pretty enough fellow, if you'll not give me ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... "Some new idiot discovered in the hills," he said, "or some disreputable tramp with a good imagination. You shall have it, Bittra," he said, coming over, and gently stroking her hair. He looked down fondly upon her, and said, suddenly ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... ibiso. Ice glacio. Ice, an glaciajxo. Iceberg glacierego, glacimonto. Icicle pendglacio. Icelander Islandano. Idea ideo. Ideal idealo. Identical identa. Identify identigi. Idiocy idioteco. Idiom (a peculiar expression) idiotismo. Idiom (general sense) idiomo. Idiot idiotulo. Idle senokupa. Idleness senokupeco. Idol idolo. Idolatry idolservado. Idolize amegi, adori. If se. Ignis fatuus erarlumo. Ignite ekbruligi. Ignoble malnobla. Ignominy malnobleco. Ignorance nescio. Ignorant of, to ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... borrow money of her! I tell you, my marriage has wrecked my prospects. It's no use talking to me of my wife's virtues. She is a millstone round my neck, with all her virtues. If I had not been a born idiot I should have waited, and married a woman who would have been of some use to me; a woman ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... around, trying to find my notes and pen, I heard a gulp and a sob from Martha's bedroom, and popped in to find her with her head buried in the pillow. The little idiot was crying because ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... gaze squarely. She noted now for the first time how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: "And that is the king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable conquest to overcome so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? There are cut-throats in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would scorn the action. Now shall I fetch my mother, sire? the commander of that great army which you overcame? As the hour is late, she is by this time tipsy, but ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... children, lived also in the same apartment with her youngest son, and in the same hut with her other relations. She did not, however, interfere, as in Greenland, with the management of her son’s domestic concerns, though his wife was half an idiot. She was always badly clothed, and even in the midst of plenty not particularly well fed, receiving everything more as an act of charity than otherwise; and she will probably be less and less attended to in proportion as she stands more in ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... odd, stiff-looking old man, with a beard, whose marked profile is of the old cheat; he is observing the escape of the man on the opposite side of the picture, and the woman at his side, whose face is turned upwards, one-half an idiot, and all-wicked. We cannot help thinking that we have seen these two characters. It is, perhaps, the skill of the painter that has so represented the class that we have the conviction of the individuals. So far the scene is prepared for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... a little while, and then a grin spread from ear to ear. It was the same chief in whose house I had seen the idiot ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... the Christian system, in its adaptation to all God's intelligent creatures! So lovely in its simplicity, that the child—nay, even the poor Bushman of Africa, or the half-idiot native of New South Wales—is able readily to comprehend how God, for Christ's sake, can blot out all iniquities and transgressions; while the noblest intellect admires and adores its vast and extensive ramifications of mercies. Blessings numerous and unbounded are developed, reaching, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... nervy," Jeff declared, indignantly, "to walk in on people like this, without a word of warning! Nobody but an idiot would expect people just coming home from their honeymoon to want to find their house filled up ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... discover that they can see themselves reflected in the varnish of the carriage, and begin to dance and make grimaces, that they may have the pleasure of seeing their antics repeated in this mirror. A crippled idiot, in the act of striking one of them who drowns his clamorous demand for charity, observes his angry counterpart in the panel, stops short, and thrusting out his tongue, begins to wag his head and chatter. The shrill cry raised at this, awakens ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... married! Then why didn't the idiot propose her to me at once instead of the other, for whom I have a feeling of the greatest pity, poor little soul, with her pearl-gray dress, her sprig of flowers, her now sad and mortified expression, and her eyes which twinkle like those of a child ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... berries of the Winter's-bark; while numbers of the latter are seen, flitting to and fro, or poised on whirring wings before the bell-shaped blossoms of the fuchsias. [Note 3.] From the deeper recesses of the wood at intervals comes a loud, cackling cry, resembling the laugh of an idiot. It is the call-note of the black woodpecker. And, as if in response to it, a kingfisher, perched on the limb of a dead tree by the beach, now and then ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... motive has been good, the intention pure, the occupation of Rome by the Austrians being imminent and the French intervention the only means (with the exception of a European war) of saving Rome from the hoof of the Absolutists. At the same time if Pius IX. is the obstinate idiot he seems to be, good and tenderhearted man as he surely is, and if the old abuses are to be restored, why Austria might as well have done her own dirty work and saved French hands from the disgrace of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... many years served as a model of intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua conventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of patent hair-restorers. There are typographical errors in the almanacs published ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Gaunt House, if the grandson and heir of the great Marquis of Steyne, the descendant of a hundred Gaunts and Tudors, should marry Miss Birch, the schoolmaster's daughter! It is true she has the sense on her side, and poor Plantagenet is only an idiot: but there he is, a zany, with such expectations and ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have been angry and made an idiot of myself," said Mr Morgan to his wife, who was standing looking from a safe distance through the curtains at the three ladies, who were holding a consultation with their servant out of the window of the solemn chariot provided ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... to pay for my coat and waistcoat with money which a woman had earned; and I should like it the less, because things at home, in my own house, were out of order." And then again she thought of it all. "I should be an idiot to do that. Everybody would say so. What! to give up my whole career for a young man's love,—merely that I might have his arm round my waist? I to do it, who am the greatest singer of my day, and who can, if I please, be Countess of Castlewell to-morrow! That were losing the world for love, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... the Elements of Comparative Anatomy," 1864.) When strong enough I am sure I shall read it with greatest interest. I could not resist the last chapter, of which I have read a part, and have been much interested about the "inspired idiot." (175/2. In reference to Oken (op. cit., page 282) Huxley says: "I must confess I never read his works without thinking of the epithet of 'inspired idiot' applied to our own Goldsmith.") If Owen wrote the article "Oken" (175/3. The article on ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Right here and here"—Sandy's forefinger was going rapidly from point to point, and Levi's stubby digit was laboriously following—"are the workshops, the school rooms, the kitchens and conservatories. Why, sir, even the idiot children can be utilized. They love flowers and animals; we must find their one gleam and guide their poor feet on the way. Good food, honest hours of work, systematic exercise and proper amusement—why, sir, from this ground floor we are to send men and women out into the world ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... every sort of iniquity was charged. One day he was an idiot; another day, the most cunning of intriguers; at one moment, an overbearing tyrant anxious to rush into war; at another, a coward fearing war. It must be confessed that this was mainly drawn from the American partizan press; but ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... done all I could to stave off the blundering idiot; but I guess you are in for it! The jig ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... fellow like Clowes—what does he here?—but for my beard, and that he'd scarce expect to meet Charles—" Fownes checked himself, scowling. "Charles Nothing, a poor son of a gun of a bond-servant. Have done with such idiot schemes, man," he admonished. "For what did you run, if 't was not to bury yourself? And now you 'd risk all for a petticoat." Taking from his pocket the razor, he threw it into the bushes that lined the road, saying as he ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... outside. Biddy's great soft eyes spoke to mine, spoke, and told me all the truth about myself. How I loved her, Biddy O'Brien, and no one else on earth! How I would die for her, and let all the rest die, if need be, yes, even Monny Gilder, to whom I had been idiot enough to write that letter! If I could save Biddy, what did anything beside matter? But—yes, it did matter. I must save them all. And the light that had lit up my dim soul gave me inspiration. Because I loved Biddy, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... "What a quaint, old-fashioned name! I shall invent some others. I shall tell my cook to make some gooseberry-idiot, or strawberry-donkey.... My play, I think. A ducky ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... "You won't enjoy the performance at all." He began now to pay for the joy he had taken in her companionship. He knew the weakness of every actor, and suffered with them and for them. Royleston from the first tortured him by mumbling his lines, palpably "faking" at times. "The idiot, he'll fail to give his cues!" muttered Douglass. "He'll ruin the play." The children scared him also, they were so important to Helen at the close of ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... but if you'd only stayed and voted by ballot like everyone else, then nobody would have known who'd given the odd one. It was most stupid of you to rush away. You're rather an idiot, Gwen Gascoyne!" ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... judgments and beyond which we should try to look if we would understand the actions of others? You give the name of silence to the words spoken by my reason and you wish to be judged by a blind and senseless power! But that idiot power mercilessly condemns all the faults committed in its name! That power, which is making me tremble now with excitement, will tell you that you could have done nothing worse! Do you understand? Nothing, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... A bigger idiot than I could have understood the move. I was to be hauled before Judge Wilson by means of mandamus proceedings, and, as he was notoriously a G.S. judge, and was coming to Ash Fork solely to oblige Mr. Camp, he would unquestionably ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... as these with the young gentleman who has survived her? If he is not a born idiot he will decline to believe your shocking aspersions on the memory of his mother; and—seeing that you have no proofs at this distance of time to meet him with—there is an end of your money-grubbing in the golden Armadale diggings. Mind, I don't dispute that the old lady's heavy debt of obligation, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... living for us two thousand years later, in debates which were ostensibly concerned with mere provincial trivialities. When such was the atmosphere created, no wonder that those who stayed away were held up to obloquy in an expression (ιδιωτης {idiôtês}) of which our English 'idiot' is ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... wild animal, was a man of about seventy years of age, in a state of nudity. A small piece of red blanket was thrown over his shoulders, barely covering them. His whole body was encrusted with filth, and his nails had grown like claws. His vacant look showed him to be a poor, helpless idiot. Beside him a large wood fire was kept burning. The ashes of this fire, strewn around him for the sake of cleanliness, are carried away for medicinal purposes by the thousands of pilgrims who visit him. Men and women ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
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