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More "Silly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the corner of the house again came a black, leading a small Indian horse gaily caparisoned, and fitted with a lady's pillion, and immediately behind, Yorke, leading my own Fatima. I knew then we were about to start, and my heart began once more its silly thumpings. Yet would I not move from my seat, where I had assumed an attitude of indifference, until I suddenly heard behind me a cool and ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... and would sometimes take me out of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk. I remember, before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close together, near some dwarf apple trees, I must needs show my wit, by a silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their language as it does in ours. Whereupon, the malicious rogue, watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly over my head, by which a dozen ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... opportunity to renew the conversation. I have seen this fancy gradually coming on, and, fool that I was, was afraid to speak for fear of making things worse. I thought it might be only a passing whim, like those which flutter twenty times through girls' silly heads before they are married, and was unwilling to treat it as of any consequence. But does Anne mean to deceive me? It is not at all like her. She never did so before. No, she has courage enough for anything, and is incapable of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... life is more or less of a farce," he went on a little bitterly. "It's a silly show. The best we can do is to hold our personality intact. It doesn't appear that integrity has much to do ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... breast." Beau Nash completes the list of the ancient heroes, dying in 1761, at the age of eighty-eight—a man of singular success in his frivolous style; made for a master of the ceremonies, the model of all sovereigns of water-drinking places; absurd and ingenious, silly and shrewd, avaricious and extravagant. He created Bath; he taught decency to "bucks," civility to card-players, care to prodigals, and caution to Irishmen! Bath has never seen his like again. In English high life, birth is every thing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... tolerable livelihood: I should say that his provincial blasphemies and his city practise bring him a clear five hundred pounds a year at the least. But is it not the wages of iniquity? He has a few followers here, but only a few. He has recently done a very silly act; for he has, all at once, converted "Voltaire Villa" into a glass house, and the whole neighborhood can now see into the wigwam, where he dwells in true Red Indian ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Lord an' His mercies, that's all over! An' from what I hears, Miss Maryllia won't be wantin' no more London folks for a goodish bit o' time, an' we'll all 'ave peace to turn round an' look at ourselves an' find out whether we're sane or silly, for the two old leddies what is stayin' on give no trouble at all, an' that Mr. Gigg don't care what he gets, so long as he can bang away on the pianner an' make Miss Cicely sing, an' I will own she do sing lovely like the angels in ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... haughty, poetic, high-sounding labels to his works, and, like Charles Lamb, we sit open-mouthed at concerts trying to fill in his big sonorous frame with a picture. Your picture is not mine, and I'll swear that the young man who sits next to me with a silly chin, goggle-eyes and cocoanut-shaped head sees as in a fluttering mirror the idealized image of a strong-chinned, ox-eyed, classic-browed youth, a mixture of Napoleon at Saint Helena and Lord Byron invoking the Alps to fall upon him. Now, I loathe such ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... so glum, silly. You don't want Jews as background as well as foreground. A great Ghetto!' And ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... "No, silly! The two Stanton boys and their mother. One of them is in that 'wheeled contraption'. It's called a ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I'm silly, Lizzie," she said. "I'll stop now. Because of course they don't all get killed, or even wounded. He'd probably come out all right, and every one says the training is fine ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the center for a hub, and turn him about a number of times, as is done in "Blindman's Buff." He then walks about. The number of the space he stops upon, after repeating a silly verse to the end, is put upon his score card. If he goes outside the circle, even with one foot, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... stopped at Tadoussac on her return, and among the spectators who came down to the landing was a certain very pretty, conscious-looking, silly, bridal-faced young woman,—imaginably the belle of the season at that forlorn watering-place,—who before coming on board stood awhile attended by a following of those elderly imperial and colonial British who heavily flutter round the fair at such resorts. She had an air ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... lady gave advice And lectured little Polly, To see her stand with downcast eyes, You'd think she'd owned her folly. She did, and many a promise made; But when her aunt departed, Forgetting all, the silly maid Off to the ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman
... that he may be pleased, and not tell on them for doing evil things. They think, too, that the sugar sticks his lips together, so that when he wants to tell on them he can't get his mouth open! Isn't it all very silly and very sad? The shopkeepers, too, paste up a "god of riches," thinking that ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... are a silly child, my sweet Florette, and think that America is a magician. We must be patient. We do not even know all that her great president said. We are fed ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... posture on his hindquarters, his two front paws held squirrel-like over his breast. In this pose he was fully three feet tall. He probably weighed forty pounds, and in some ways he resembled one of those fat, good-natured, silly-looking dogs that go largely to stomach. But his brain was working with amazing celerity. Suddenly he gave the hard mud of the dam a single slap with his tail—and Baree sat up. Instantly he saw Beaver Tooth, and stared. Beaver Tooth stared. For a ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... As her temperament led her to share the desires she excited, she was really incapable of resisting an attack conducted with skill and ardour, and if the Duc de Vitry had not been so madly in love, which is the same as saying that he was hopelessly blind, silly, and dense to everything around him, he might have found a score of opportunities to overcome her resistance. We have already seen that she was so straitened in money matters that she had been driven to try to sell ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to be here, he could not rest. He loved each simple joy the country yields, He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep, For that a shadow lour'd on the fields, Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. Some life of men unblest He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head. He went; his piping took a troubled sound Of storms that rage outside our happy ground; He could not wait their ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... harmless critter, and he didn't know jest where he was going, nor why. He was mostly scared of things, and if you spoke to him quick he shivered first and then grinned idiotic so you wouldn't kick him, and when he talked he had a silly little giggle. He had been made that-a-way in a reform school where they took him young and tried to work the cussedness out'n him by batting him around. They worked it out, and purty nigh everything else along with it, I guess. Looney had had a pardner whose name was ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... cow worries me with its continual fog-horn, and I thought I would write to the owner (a small local dairy-farmer) to see if he could manage to find another field in which to batten this cow, where it could moo till it broke its silly tonsils for all I should care; so I indited this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... gloves did seem foolish, for it was a bitter December day when the blood had best had full swing in the veins, but he held out to me a hand pinched in a few square inches of yellow kid. The grasp was just as warm though, and I forgave that. When he threw aside his silly little overcoat and stood before me, so tall and strong, so clean-cut and faultless, from the part in his hair to the shine on his boot-tips, I ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... and repentance. She appeared as aloof from her surroundings as if she had been wafted to Arabia; and presently began to wash her face conscientiously and methodically, with the air of one who finds solitude better than the companionship of fools. Only when the judge had put his silly handkerchief into his pocket, and had strolled into the library under the pretence of hunting for a book which he had never left there, did the kitten close her eyes, lower her obdurate little head, and purr herself ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... droll extravagance with an earnest air—knaves munching up fools as horses oats.—Faith, very droll, indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I think I understand you now, sir. How silly I was to have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too, about having no confidence in nature. In reality you have just as much ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... and cook their own rations. The actual facts had little to do with the predetermination of the members. Stringfellow had written in his paper, the "Squatter Sovereign," three weeks before: "We hope no one will be silly enough to suppose the Governor has power to compel us to stay at Pawnee during the entire session. We will, of course, have to 'trot' out at the bidding of his Excellency,—but we will trot him back next day ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... to the superintendency Halkett had been a ward boss in the metropolis of the State. Thinking he saw his chance, he took it, and the blow knocked Callahan silly for the moment. Afterward there was a small free-for-all buffeting match in the narrow cab in which the fireman took a hand, and during which the racing 1010 was suffered to find her way alone. When it was over, Callahan spat out ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... The silly ring of her voice and the pathless tattle changed; she talked to suit her laden look. 'You hit it. I come from Dudley. He knows the facts. I wish to serve ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... talk among the three or four Europeans here at the beginning of the rumours of a revolt of organizing a defence among Christians only. Conceive what a silly and gratuitous provocation! There was no religion in the business at all and of course the proper person to organize defence was the Maohn, and he and Mustapha and others had planned using my house as a castle and defending that in case of a visit from ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... I; I'm a poet, if I had but, etc.—Who's silly now? rogues and lasses, tinderboxes and buzzards. O Lord, I am in a high vein of silliness; methought I was speaking to dearest little MD face to face. There; so, lads, enough for to-night; to cards with the blackguards. Goodnight, my ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... be silly and sentimental, or Mr. MacKenzie will think us a pair of fools.' She looked at him gaily. 'We're both very ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... sensibility by reason of his experience in the so-called creative medium of painting. It is, as we know, brain matter that counts in a work of art, and we have dispensed once and for all with the silly notion that a work of art is made by hand. Art is first and last of all, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Darkness. To the Darpan the educated natives looked as the means of bringing the oppression of their own countrymen to the knowledge of the public and the authorities. Government found it most useful for contradicting silly rumours and promoting contentment if not loyalty. The paper gave a new development to the Bengali language as well as to the moral and political ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... called Mary Ann. It's the last terror of cheap apartments. If she only had another name like a human being, I'd gladly call her Miss something. I went so far as to ask her, and she stared at me in a dazed, stupid, silly way, as if I'd asked her to marry me. I suppose the fact is, she's been called Mary Ann so long and so often that she's forgotten her father's name—if she ever had any. I must do her the justice, though, to say she answers to ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... moment he of the smoked glasses was saying to himself: "So that is what happened while I lay there like a log by the roadside, is it? Well, it's hard luck; but certainly I ought to be able to turn the information furnished by that silly ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... he, "but silly. Her testimony is no more to be relied upon than that of any other ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... to us; he is a tall, dark, fine, and clever-looking man. I remember his being so much struck with my likeness to Donna Maria, which I was not aware was the case. Pray, dear Uncle, may I ask you a silly question?—is not the Queen of Spain[8] rather clever? You know her, and what do you think of her? And do you know what sort of people are about poor little Queen Isabel?[9] Poor, good Donna Maria! I feel ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... have heard poor Dick's story I don't much wish to go to a public school; but Clarendon says that's a silly prejudice, for it was the same disposition which made him unhappy at home, that prevented the school from being of service to him. Yet I am afraid that I have not principle enough to go among so many boys and do what is right. It ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... thing you might do, Master Marner," added Dolly, meditatively: "you might shut her up once i' the coal-hole. That was what I did wi' Aaron; for I was that silly wi' the youngest lad, as I could never bear to smack him. Not as I could find i' my heart to let him stay i' the coal-hole more nor a minute, but it was enough to colly him all over, so as he must be new washed and dressed, and it was as good ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... is that?' thought Val. 'What silly brutes lawyers are! Not for months! I know one thing: I'm not going to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... interposing, "I will have no swaggering here.—Nephew, it will become you best to show no haste to take offence; and you, gentlemen, will do well to remember, that if you are in an inn, still you are the inn-keeper's guests, and should spare the honour of his family.—I protest your silly broils make me as oblivious as yourself; for yonder sits my silent guest as I call him, who hath been my two days' inmate, and hath never spoken a word, save to ask for his food and his reckoning—gives no more trouble than a very peasant—pays his shot like a prince royal—looks but at the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Sunni was as angry as possible. Then he reflected that it was silly to be angry with a person who ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... themselves with inappropriate talk. Woe is me that I may not give some specimens—some of their foresights of life, or deep inquiries into the rudiments of man and nature, these were so fiery and so innocent, they were so richly silly, so romantically young. But the talk, at any rate, was but a condiment; and these gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer. The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shied off into a corner and there during the evening he remained, gazing at the woman from "off yander," with scarcely courage enough to utter a word. Mrs. Mayfield inquired as to his church among the hills, and his countenance flared with a silly light and old Jasper ducked his head and snorted in the sleeve of his home-spun shirt. But the next morning Jim had the courage to appear at the breakfast table, still gazing; and later when Tom and his aunt went out for a walk, he followed ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... pop-cornful in Hampstead, one in Brixton, one in East Ham, and one in Islington, and London is a Pompeii in five minutes! Or was the American only bragging? Because anyhow, whom has he experimented on? I read it in the newspaper, though. London a Pompeii in five minutes. Makes the gods look silly! ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... little sprinklings of reason more than the rest, yet that they may the better manage it, even in this as well as in other things, they call me to counsel; and I give them such as is worthy of myself, to wit, that they take to them a wife—a silly thing, God wot, and foolish, yet wanton and pleasant, by which means the roughness of the masculine temper is seasoned and sweetened by her folly. For in that Plato seems to doubt under what genus he should put woman, to wit, that of rational creatures or brutes, he intended ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... of Virgil?" said Candide. "Why, I grant," replied Pococurante, "that the second, third, fourth, and sixth books of his 'AEneid' are excellent; but as for his pious AEneas, his strong Cloanthus, his friendly Achates, his boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, and some other characters much in the same strain, I think there cannot in nature be any thing more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... of a world-old problem. But I wonder how much of the honest patriotism which fills the book would survive a rationalism as perverse and shallow as Mr. SWIFT applies to traditional faiths. Does he imagine they have no better defences than those which he puts into the weak mouth of silly Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... 'It's my silly nervousness, dear. I thought I remembered perfectly where the album lay. How foolish of me! I quite tremble—anyone would think we ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... possible explanation of its continued existence was that the majority of his fellow workers were devoid of the power of reasoning. If these people were not mentally deficient they would of their own accord have swept this silly system away long ago. It would not have been necessary for anyone to teach them that ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Rodzianko, to whom I spoke at the Club only a fortnight before the abdication, said that everything would turn out all right. In fact, the Court, and people around it,—were much better posted; perhaps they felt something growing instinctively, as they were too silly to crystallize their fears in some concrete conception. Maroossia was in Tsarskoye Selo not long before the old Admiral's death; they said that the danger was expected from the "Town and Country Union." But all ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Rose, The green immortal Branch arose; } And in a solitary place } S. Mark, Bow'd to His Father His blest face. } c. 1, v. 35- If this calm season pleased my Prince, Whose fulness no need could evince, Why should not I, poor silly sheep, His hours, as well as practice, keep? Not that His hand is tied to these, From whom Time holds his transient lease But mornings new creations are, When men, all night sav'd by His care, Are still reviv'd; and well He may Expect them grateful with the day. So for ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... 'That's a silly word. In a natural world there is no place for the supernatural.' He grew testy. 'Can I ever teach you, Helen, not to employ words ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... was gruff, conveying the idea that women asked silly questions, but his gruffness did not hoodwink Elsie. He had ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... sure!" snapped Cochrane. "The first settlements in America were failures until the people started to work for themselves! Look at this planet we're leaving! How many people will come to work that silly diamond mine! How many will hunt to supply them with meat? How many will farm to supply the hunters and the miners with other food? And how many others will be along to run stores and manufacture things ..." He made an impatient ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... confoundedly silly Power must have looked, eh? Should like so much to have seen his face. He booked up next day,—very proper fellow. By-the-bye, O'Malley, I rather like the little girl; she is decidedly pretty, and her foot,—did you ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was startled. "How dreadful, and how silly! But why? I thought dueling had quite gone out in all civilized countries; and in any case, why fight about me? And who should fight? Surely you are only teasing me, ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... Than twenty silly ducking observants] [W: silky] The alteration is more ingenious than the arguments by which ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... off to the nearest French window, he stood staring out morosely—staring out at the silly little rockery, with the silly little pond at the foot of it, containing the silly little boat that never sailed anywhere. He was cross with himself and even more cross with her. Why couldn't she have behaved sensibly, instead of bursting like a rain-cloud without warning? ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Patten. "Make friends with them and sooner or later they'll let it slip out without meaning to. That is if they know anything about a lost village. And truly, Professor, we always thought that was just a lot of silly talk about there being an ancient Indian town near here. I've never seen it and I've never seen anyone else who has. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... sailors, doubtless, are superstitious. But I appeal to every master mariner here, whether the superstitious men are generally the religious and godly men; whether it is not generally the most reckless and profligate men of the crew who are most afraid of sailing on a Friday, and who give way to other silly fancies which I shall not mention in this sacred place. And I appeal, too, to public experience, whether many, I may say most, of those to whom seamanship and sea-science owes most, have not ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... states-men for their generall end In politique justice make poore men offend) Enforceth my offence to make it just. 65 What shall weak dames doe, when th' whole work of Nature Hath a strong finger in each one of us? Needs must that sweep away the silly cobweb Of our still-undone labours, that layes still Our powers to it, as to the line, the stone, 70 Not to the stone, the line should be oppos'd. We cannot keepe our constant course in vertue: What is alike at all parts? every day Differs from other, every houre and minute; I, every thought ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... everyone is talking Esperanto or some other universal language, the kids will have to study English. Can't you see them grinding over the Orations of William Jennings Bryan and wondering why the dickens anyone ever wanted to talk such a silly language? That's when we get our revenge, Clint. We won't be around to see it, but ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... menaces in Africa and Australasia, and the danger of a Russian advance in Central Asia hung like a thundercloud over the whole situation. [Footnote: Sir Charles wrote to Mr. Brett on November 15th, 1884: 'I told Herbert Bismarck when he was here that it was very silly of his father to get in the way of our Egypt plans, for France would not go to war about them, and therefore, after threatening, he would have to look on and see the things he ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... a vague gesture. "Did I say that I had picked him out yet, silly? But there must be ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... things into nothing and their reparation out of nothing again. See Lucr. I. 215—264, and elsewhere. Infinite secari: through the authority of Aristotle, the doctrine of the infinite subdivisibility of matter had become so thoroughly the orthodox one that the Atom was scouted as a silly absurdity. Cf. D.F. I. 20 ne illud quidem physici credere esse minimum, Arist. Physica, I. 1 [Greek: ouk estin elachiston megethos]. The history of ancient opinion on this subject is important, ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... difference between a living thump and a dead thump. That's what makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member—that makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid—so confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was thinking to myself, 'what's his leg now, but a cane—a whalebone cane. Yes,' thinks I, 'it was only ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... eyes laughing, yet as swiftly sobering again. "But it is foolish of us to waste time in such silly speeches. There is too much waiting attention. Fortunately this house is not without its secrets, for when built by my grandfather ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... to your brother, you have shewn yourself so silly, and so wise; so young, and so old; so gentle, and so obstinate; so meek, and so violent; that never was there so mixed ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... when thou wast a little naked cub. Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera—the Panther—and no man's plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan. Is it ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... "You silly! Of course it's you too! I remember every single thing you told me, and how terribly thrilled I was. This afternoon brought it all back. I shall never forget this, either. Not as ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Timothy's—"as light as—er—Taglioni, no fuss about it, no wanting this or wanting that;" and above all, Swithin dwelt on this, staring at Mrs. Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a good deal, "no silly nervousness!" To Aunt Hester he portrayed Irene's hat. "Not one of your great flopping things, sprawling about, and catching the dust, that women are so fond of nowadays, but a neat little—" he made a circular motion of his hand, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... may possibly have culminated in some name yet more foolish than that of this little green and gold volume. If so, the rival has proved too much for the trump of Fame to carry, and has dropped unnoticed. In the present case, the title does perhaps some injustice to the book, which is not a silly one, though it contains very silly things. It seems to be written from the point of view afforded by a second-rate New-York boarding-house, and by a person who has never come in contact with any refined or well-bred people. With this allowance, it is written in the interest of good manners ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... her head and smiled. "I would not venture to do such a thing," she said, "it was a mere slip of my hand. As cousin Pao-ch'ai wished to see the silly wild goose, I was pointing it out to her, when the handkerchief inadvertently flew out ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "Don't be absurd, you silly child," Guy said, kindly. "Of course I'll go out directly, and bring him in in five minutes, to laugh at you. Now go back to your room; there's nothing on earth to be ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... a wry face. "I don't mind assisting in the boy's education, but I draw the line at the girl. She's a silly. Why, she—" His face coloured with resentment. "It sounds crazy to say, but she does, for a fact, make eyes at every ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... eminent lawyers, under the ingenious falsehoods of fictitious pedigrees. In the last century, no sooner had a lawyer of humble birth risen to distinction, than he was pestered by fabricators of false genealogies, who implored him to accept their silly romances about his ancestry. In most cases, these ridiculous applicants hoped to receive money for their dishonest representations; but not seldom it happened that they were actuated by a sincere desire to protect the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... age as weakness of will consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will, sternness, and capacity for prolonged resolution, must specially be included in the conception of "greatness", with as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal of a silly, renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age—such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness In the time of Socrates, among men only of worn-out instincts, old conservative ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... asked the operative, with a sheepishly guileless air. "It was just a bit from an English musical comedy of two or three years back, I think. It's got a silly-sounding name—something like 'There's ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... itself was accompanied by more or less pointed opposition to the heedless importation of foreign views, and protests, sometimes vigorous and keen, sometimes flimsy and silly, were entered against the slavish imitation of things foreign. Endeavor was turned toward the establishment of independent ideals, and the fostering of a taste for the characteristically national in literature, as opposed to frank imitation and ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... told it, the offence she had committed seemed far greater than she had imagined. If Rosmore had deceived her! The thought burnt into her soul and sent the hot blood to her cheeks. Was she merely a silly wench, as were hundreds of others, won by a smooth tongue, stepping easily down into shame at the bidding of the first man whose words had enough flattery in them? Was there truth in what the trooper Watson had suggested? ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... thought it all foolishness, but resolved to go to their meetings until I found out all they believed. I continued to go until I began to understand a little of what they knew, not what they believed; and instead of spending my time telling others what a silly thing Christian Science is, I am now trying to find words to tell what a great and wonderful thing it is. I have been healed of so-called incurable spinal disease of ten years' standing by studying the Bible and Science and Health. Science and Health has been my only teacher, and I wish ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... work, foretells your entanglement in some silly affair growing out of a too great curiosity about other people's business. Beware of talking ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... upon as impudence; if modest, (then to be sure) he must be hypocritical; if his behaviour is grave, it is owing to a sullenness of temper; if affable, he is but little regarded; if strictly just, then cruel must be his character; but, if merciful and forbearing, then (of consequence) a silly, sheepish-headed fool! Now, I challenge all the ASS-TROLOGERS and CONJURERS, throughout the whole kingdom, to demonstrate that all the whimsey-headed opinions which different men retain of different actions, together with their being so vastly different ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... then. Man's sure to hit as hard as he can when his monkey's up; and that stick's just as heavy as you can have 'em without breaking bones. That's the sort o' stick as'll knock a man silly and give him the headache for a week, and sarve him right. If it was half-a-hounce ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... cried, "Out swords! Out swords! Kill, kill!" Seeing us start Witta laughed, and showed us it was but a great-beaked grey bird with a red tail. He sat her on his shoulder, and she called for bread and wine hoarsely, and prayed him to kiss her. Yet she was no more than a silly bird. But—ye knew this?' He ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... things as ghosts!" declared Betty, with excellent sense. "We are silly to even talk about them. Oh, there is something I want for my boat," and she pointed to a little brass lantern. "It will be just fine for going up on deck with," she proceeded. "Of course the electric lights, run by the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... interests." Honor and vital interests—could any words be more vague and indefinite? Are these not the very cases which interested nations are least competent to decide? A complete answer to that silly reservation is found in our hundred years' peace with Great Britain. As John W. Foster, that keen student of our diplomatic history, has said, "The United States can have no future dispute with England more seriously ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... sympathies are touched, they rush to the aid of the unfortunate; but when fortune smiles on others, they are somehow pained. "I do not say," he added, "this could happen to a thoughtful person; but it is no uncommon condition of a silly mind." (9) ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... pursued Jinny. "A bit silly, I think. Hoo stood an' hoo stared at us same as if we ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... appreciated my present eagerness and undertook that the periodical in question should do no less; then at the last, with his hand on the door, he said to me: "Of course you'll be all right, you know." Seeing I was a trifle vague he added: "I mean you won't be silly." ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... fashion—"but you are still the same old 'Lige Curtis! It was like you to go off and hide yourself in that idiotic way; it was like you to let the property slide in that stupid, unselfish fashion; it was like you to get real mad, and say all those mean, silly things to dad, that didn't hurt him—in your regular looney style; for rich or poor, drunk or sober, ragged or elegant, plain or handsome,—you're always ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... trunk, Nellie," replied Madge in a crestfallen manner. She was not nearly so grown-up or so sure of herself as she had been half an hour before. "I know it was silly in me not to have brought Tom's letter with me, but I was so sure that I knew just what it said. Perhaps we had better go on over to New York. Let's hurry. Perhaps that boat ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... that nebulous mass of whirling particles—the disorderly children—began to take definite form. The children seemed to begin to find their own way; in many of the objects they had at first despised as silly playthings, they began to discover a novel interest, and, as a result of this new interest, they began to act as independent individuals." Miss George's subsequent expression is: "They became extremely individual." "Thus ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... silly and vulgar idea of the beating and the fright—is what would occur to any one. You have not an ounce of brains, Remedios; to solve a serious question you can think of nothing better than a piece of folly like that. I have thought of a means more ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... fight, for a buffalo. If a traveler encounter him by daylight, he turns tail and sneaks out of sight like a scared greyhound. All the talk about his majestic roar is sheer twaddle. It takes a keen ear to distinguish the voice of the lion from that of the silly ostrich. When he is gorged he falls asleep, and a couple of natives approach him without fear. One discharges an arrow, the point of which has been anointed with a subtle poison, made of the dried entrails of a species of caterpillar, while ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... millions a-year less expenses than before, is a new doctrine in politics. We have heard much clamor of national savings and economy; but surely the true economy would be, to save the whole charge of a silly, foolish, and headstrong war; because, compared with this, all other retrenchments are baubles ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... her mother's glance and answered with a thoughtful calm; "I see no danger. I liked Kit before he went away, but our friendship was really not romantic. When father met us in Redmire Wood, a horribly silly impulse made me hide. I blush when I think about it and imagine I forgot I had grown up—Gerald and I used to hide when father was angry. Anyhow, I made Kit Askew hide and he was first to remember ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... child?" I says, "a human child?" Some folks have such a silly way of talking about their dogs—you ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... with Rodney. And that makes it all the worse! If she'd fallen in love with some other man and run off with him—well, that isn't pretty, but it's happened before and people have got away with it. But this running away on account of some silly idea that she's picked up from that votes-for-women mother of hers, running away from a man like Rodney, too, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... tears; and said one to the other, "In what is this little creature better than us, that she should be so much happier?" "Sister, said the eldest, a thought just strikes my mind; let us endeavour to detain her above a week, and perhaps the silly monster will be so enraged at her for breaking her word, that he will devour her." "Right, sister, answered the other, therefore we must shew her as much kindness as possible." After they had taken this resolution, they went ...
— Beauty and the Beast • Marie Le Prince de Beaumont
... gloomy room melancholy ideas began to take possession of their imaginations. They felt frightened. It was silly to stand talking so long, but a longing to see her kept them rooted to the spot. It was very hot—the lamp glass threw a round, moonlike patch of light upon the ceiling, but the rest of the room was drowned in steamy darkness. Under the bed a deep plate full of phenol exhaled an insipid ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... research and speculative thinking, but by the bedside of patients, the direct external calls on his judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him out of himself. It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly—it was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back through ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... startled from repose by the shrill squeal of some unlucky brute, complaining of the torture inflicted by the sharp teeth of its ill-natured mate or vicious neighbor; or, perhaps, the flutter of fans is suspended at the obstreperous neigh by which some anxious dam recalls the silly foal that has strayed from her side; or the dissonant creaking of a cramped wheel makes doleful interludes between the verses of the hymn. Here naughty boys, escaped from the confinement of the sanctuary, are wont to lounge in the wagons during prayer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of sorrow and repentance had passed over Madeleine, and found her, at the commencement of our narrative, the victim of consumption and internal anguish, the more keen because the more secret. The outward world believed her happy; many silly maidens, in moments of vanity, deemed they could have gained heaven if they were possessed of Madeleine's wealth, her jewels, her carriages, her dresses; but were the veils that shroud the hypocrisy of human joy raised for the warning of the uninitiated, many a noble heart like Madeleine's ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... He couldn't even choose a respectable shape for his hat! Come on! She did that because I took your part and said you ought to have come—little vixen!—else she would never have sent you that silly note. It's a most improper note, I call it; most improper for such an intelligent, well-brought-up girl to write. H'm! I dare say she was annoyed that you didn't come; but she ought to have known that one can't write like that to an idiot like you, for you'd be sure ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Hooker intends to make a kind of feint against Lee. Feints are old, silly tricks, almost impossible with large armies, and therefore very seldom feints are successful. Lee is not to be caught in this way, and the less so as he has as many spies as inhabitants, in, and around Hooker's camp. To cross the river on a well selected point, and, Hooker-like, attack the ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... and carefully transpose the split infinitives, and write alternative adjectives, and take words away out of their natural place in the sentence and generally put the Queen's English—yes, the Queen's English—on the rack. And who is a penny the better for it? The silly authors get no real praise, not even in the horrible stucco villas where their clique meet on Sundays. The poor public buys the Marvel and gasps at the cleverness of the writing and despairs, and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... position," she continued. "These are very democratic days, when silly people think that all men are equal. A lady is nevertheless still a lady, and a gentleman a gentleman, though one does not often meet them. I wish you to come and ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... case, Lord John's ear, though held for ten or twelve minutes, was not screwed up. I remember when I heard the story, thirty years ago, at once asking the question, "Which ear was it he held?" That sounded almost to myself as I asked it a silly question, but, as the reply showed, it was not. Lord Arthur replied, "That is curious. It is exactly the question I asked my uncle, and he, instead of treating it as trivial, answered as if it was a matter of the first importance, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I couldn't do ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... liquor. My father never loved it, and God knows what he was trying to forget. For that's the substance of it all, to forget. When you start out to the point of forgetfulness, you must keep it up; regret comes back threefold with soberness. It seems silly and weak for a man who has been buffeted as I have, who is supposed to gather wisdom and philosophy as a snowball gathers snow as it rolls down hill, to try to drown regret and disappointment in liquor. A man never knows how weak he is till he meets the one woman and she ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... he still determined to marry, but experience had taught him greater prudence—he decided that his next advances should be made with more caution. He would shun the great belles; fortune he must have, but he would adopt one of two courses; he would either look out for some very young and very silly girl, who could be persuaded into anything, or he would try to discover some rich woman, with a plain face, who would be flattered by the attentions of the agreeable Mr. Stryker. While he was making these reflections he was introduced to Elinor, and we are sorry to say it, she appeared ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... obstacles to her ever going to Canada. The secret of her future destiny she buried in her heart, until at the end of a year, the Almighty Himself commanded her to divulge it. When she did so, the communication entailed on her only mortification and humiliation. Her director rebuked her for indulging silly fancies; the Mother Superior asserted that if God granted her request, it would be only as a punishment for her presumption; others, whose judgment she equally deferred to, pronounced the project visionary and delusive, yet her great ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... the boy will make known the girl addicted to the vice. The bloodless lips, the dull, heavy eye surrounded with dark rings, the nerveless hand, the blanched cheek, the short breath, the old, faded look, the weakened memory and silly irritability tell the story all too plainly. The same evil result follows, ending perhaps in death, or worse, in insanity. Aside from the injury the girl does herself by yielding to this habit, there ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... on the sofa. "This Lenore is a glorious woman," cried he, in ecstasy; "simple, open—none of the silly enthusiasm of your German girls about her. Sit an hour with me, as of old, Anton Wohlfart, baronial rent-receiver in a Slavonic Sahara! I say, you are in such a romantic position, that my hair still bristles ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... are crying," exclaimed Samuel, thoroughly angry, "you are not only hard-headed, but also silly, simply silly! 'Long of hair but short of sense.' To cry and cry, and not know wherefore!" With this Samuel turned towards us, and began ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... me that Benedetto, who is considered a serpent of subtlety and a giant of cunning, is really but a very commonplace, silly rascal, and altogether unworthy of the experiments that will be made on his phrenological ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... back the primitive in a big rich way. The primitive is always a new and higher beginning to the man who understands it. Not yet has the producer learned that the feeling of the crowd is patriarchal, splendid. He imagines the people want nothing but a silly lark. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... into the house, and found the old man sitting over the fire, rubbing his hands, and half-crying about 'the few poor dollars,' that he said he had had stolen from him. Father had never seen him before, but he knew he had the name of being half silly, and question him as much as he liked, he could make nothing of him. The daughter said that they had gone to bed at dark the night her father was robbed. She slept up stairs, and he down below. About ten o'clock ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle—I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith, though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... are a lot more of them. One was a silly girl named Emily. She didn't do anything but have "hair a yard long I guess" and for that she had two lovers. I am going to get a hair tonic. That's how silly men were in Chaucer's day, before they learned how to play football, ...
— The Belles of Canterbury - A Chaucer Tale Out of School • Anna Bird Stewart
... sung; and he said, "My good Cesario, when I heard that song last night, methought it did relieve my passion much. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain. The spinsters and the knitters when they sit in the sun, and the young maids that weave their thread with bone, chaunt this song. It is silly, yet I love it, for it tells of the innocence of love ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sit together, All alone, in this great arm-chair:- Is it silly to mind it, darling, When Life is ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... is the young man talking about?" exclaimed Scarecrow, Nightmare and Shakejoint, one to another, with great appearance of astonishment. "A pair of flying slippers, quoth he! His heels would quickly fly higher than his head if he was silly enough to put them on. And a helmet of invisibility! How could a helmet make him invisible, unless it were big enough for him to hide under it? And an enchanted wallet! What sort of a contrivance may that be, I wonder? ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... laird's son about one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love; and Robert saw no reason why he should not rhyme as well as he, for the author had no more school-craft than himself. Writing of this song a few years later, he called it puerile and silly; and his verdict as a poetical one was correct. Still, considered as a song, this artless effusion possessed one merit of which he himself was probably not conscious: it was inspired by his feeling and not by his reading, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... boughte a sovereign Charm of Mother Shipton. Howbeit, on inducing her, much agaynst her Will, to open it, Nought was founde within but a wretched little Print of a Ship, with the Words, scrawled beneath it, "By Virtue of the above Sign." Father called her a silly Baggage, and sayd, he was glad, at any Rate, there was no Profanity in it; but, in Spite of Betty, and Polly, and Mother too, he is resolved to leave the House under the sole Charge of Nurse Jellycott. Indeed, there Will probably be more rather than less Work to do at Chalfont; ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... happy thoughts have been with you, my Djack. It all seems a blessed dream that we love each other. And I—oh, how could I have been so ignorant, so silly, not to know ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... some of the freaks in Blackwood's Magazine, and down comes young D'Israeli[39] to Scotland imploring Lockhart to make interest with my friends in London to remove objections, and so forth. I have no idea of telling all and sundry that my son-in-law is not a slanderer, or a silly thoughtless lad, although he was six or seven years ago engaged in some light satires. I only wrote to Heber and to Southey—the first upon the subject of the reports which had startled Murray, (the most timorous, as Byron called him, of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Little as I know of the world, I know that—at least for one like me. It may seem weak and silly to you, but, brought up as I had been, I was morbidly sensitive. You might have meant to be kind and sympathetic and all that, and yet have hurt me cruelly. I have been out with you enough to know how I am regarded. I don't complain. I suppose it is ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... was going to say what I please, I'd begin by callin' you a silly ox an' work up to the higher pressures at leisure. I'm trying to say solely what transpired. M'rover, for once you're ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... we one of the faculty here? I see how it is, friend. You have been reading some silly book about the disease, and have frightened yourself into the belief that you have some of its symptoms. I hope you haven't been doctoring yourself, likewise. What have ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Kitty. It's a silly gaim! We common people—we were fools. We thought those big people knew what they were up to—and they didn't. Look at that chap! 'E 'ad all Germany be'ind 'im, and what 'as 'e made of it? Smeshin' and blunderin' and destroyin', and there 'e 'is! Jest a mess of blood and boots and things! Jest ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... all wise people say against it. I know I am only a little girl, and my opinion may not be worth much, but I mean to stand up for it, whatever they say. I suppose every one has a right to her own opinion, and if others don't agree with me, they needn't; but I don't like them to call me "silly" because I don't think as they do. I am willing they should have their own opinions, but I want the same privilege,—isn't that fair? I don't like such nicknames as "Tom" and "Bob," or "Mollie" and "Sallie," but like such as "Charlie" or "Hattie," and I think ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... pseudonym seems to stretch a point. However, Mr. Whitten is now acknowledged as one of the foremost experts in London topography. He is not an archaeologist, he is a humanist—in a good dry sense; not the University sense, nor the silly sense. The word "human" is a dangerous word; I am rather inclined to handle it with antiseptic precautions. When a critic who has risen high enough to be allowed to sign his reviews in a daily paper calls a new book "a great human novel," you ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... she had first asked, then coaxed, and there, as a final effort, had screamed for a half hour. Mrs. Harcourt would, as usual, have quickly agreed at once to spend the Summer as Gwen wished, but it happened that other plans already made, rendered it impossible. The silly woman offered everything that she could think of to pacify Gwen, but Gwen declared that nothing would make up to her for the refusal to go ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... go, with your scraps of lustful poetry. But you cant deny what I tell you. Why, do you think I would put my soul in peril by selling drink if I thought it did no good, as them silly temperance reformers make out, flying in the face of the natural tastes implanted in us all for a good purpose? Not if I was to starve for it to-morrow. But I know better. I tell you, Blanco, what ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... young Marchioness of Hartletop. She was in slight mourning; for her father-in-law, the late Marquis, had died no t yet quite six months since. Very beautiful she was, and one whose presence at their houses ladies and gentlemen prized alike. She never said silly things, like the Duchess, never was troublesome as to people's conduct to her, was always gracious, yet was never led away into intimacies, was without peer the best-dressed woman in London, and yet gave herself no ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... as well as my brother." I believe he means me. I like his awe. The Duke of Richmond, taking me for his son, reproached himself to Lady Caroline Fox for not wishing me joy. She is so sorry she undeceived him! Charles Townshend has turned his artillery upon his own court: he says, "Silly fellow for silly fellow, I don't see why it is not as well to be governed by my uncle with a blue riband, as by my cousin ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... scruples, but exaggerated. As he put this conclusion into words in his own mind he felt happy, as at the doing of a good action; and he resolved to be nice to every one beginning with his father, whose manias, and silly statements, and vulgar opinions, and too conspicuous mediocrity were a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... proposition an' it can't be run on no schedule, an' each feller's got to travel the way he sees with his own two eyes. If he's got the spectacles of a thousand dollar eddication he's an a'mighty lucky feller, an' I'm guessin' they'll help him dodge a whole heap o' muck holes he'd otherwise bury his silly head in. So hang on, boy. Grip them darn fool notions so they ain't got a chance. If you let go—wal, you'll get a full-sized peek into a pretty fancy sort o' hell wher' ther' ain't any sort o' chance o' dopin' your visions out ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... grown so silly' she said, trying to smile. 'I hardly even understood last night;' and the voice died away in the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... confession to make—about something a little silly. Consequently I have postponed it till now, when it is too dark for ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... money, had but one idea, when once a widow—to go abroad. Whither? To Europe, vague and fascinating spot, where she fancied she would be distinguished by her intelligence and her beauty. She was pretty, vain and silly, and that voyage in pursuit of a part to play in the Old World caused her to pass two years first in one hotel and then in another, after which she married the second son of a poor Irish peer, with the new chimera ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... and silly dispatch went over the wires to the effect that during the trial of A. W. Howie for homicide (in which the jury consisted of six women and six men) the men and women were kept locked up together all night for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... that a man who could be so sensible, occasionally, as myself, could have patience to even think of such old-womanish nonsense. He said that years ago, when he was a silly boy, he used to pay attention to this foolish superstition himself, and would never upon any consideration start for a trip ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... "Silly lover, if thy Lily Like her sister lilies be, Thou must woo, if thou wouldst wear her, ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... and their execution. He should have heard, he said, 'the exhortation spoken by the bell-man from the wall of St. Sepulchre's church-yard; but the noise of the officers and the mob was so great, and the silly curiosity of people climbing into the cart to take leave of the criminals made such a confused noise that I could not hear them. They are as follow: "All good people pray heartily to God for these poor sinners, who now are going to their deaths; for whom this great ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... finished, the lords in Mansoul that are Diabolonians are at it day and night, and the other are like silly doves; they want heart to be concerned with their state and to consider that ruin is at hand. Besides you may, yea, must think, when you put all things together, that there are many reasons that prevail with Diabolus to make what haste ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... go walking is a great pleasure. Promeni estas agrable, to go walking is pleasant. Cxu estas facile rigardi la plafonon? Is it easy to look at the ceiling? Estas bone sin helpi, it is well to help oneself. Paroli al si estas malsagxe, to talk to oneself is silly. ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... afraid you can only think me very silly, my dear," she said, with a sort of humble dignity. "I wished to consult you, but I did not like to; but as you are here, and if you don't mind my asking you—a relation can often judge best what is advantageous—which ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... Toad, in great disgust. "Silly boyish amusement. I've given that up long ago. Sheer waste of time, that's what it is. It makes me downright sorry to see you fellows, who ought to know better, spending all your energies in that aimless manner. No, I've discovered the real thing, the only genuine ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... whole evening don't need to be spoiled for you just because I went and got a silly fit of blues on. You—you go get some live one like Gert and—and take her ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... said angrily. "I am going to talk plain to you. You are a fool, a downright, empty-headed silly fool. What you have destroyed in wanton carelessness would have kept the life in a man a whole day. Haven't you sense enough to see it's going to be nip and tuck if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish, a miserable cheat; there's no trust ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... not happen in court, and ninety per cent. of our woman witnesses are not to be quarrelled with. There are two occasions on which a quarrel may arise. The first, when we are trying to show a denying prisoner that her crime has already been proved and that her denials are silly, and the second, when we are trying to show a witness that she must know something although she refuses to know it, or when we want to show her the incorrectness of her conclusion, or when we want to lead ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... divide it, silly?" he replied. "I haven't a diamond to cut it, and if I crunch it with my foot it may all go to smithereens, and there will be nothing left. I'll lend it to you for a bit now and then, but you won't aim straight. ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... one way of doing it," said she. "But when there are more women like me we'll take things out of the hands of you silly men and run them ourselves. Now, young man, you've talked enough. Turn over ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... prose; and several smaller works, now collected under the general title of 'Opuscules Legales' (Minor Legal Writings). It was long supposed that he wrote the 'Tesoro' (Thesaurus), a curious medley of ignorance and superstition, much of it silly, and all of it curiously inconsistent with the acknowledged character of the enlightened King. Modern scholarship, however, discards this petty treatise from the list of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of which we might take, for instance, I suppose," said the Idiot, "the born idiot, the borrower, and the man who is knocked silly by the pole ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... love each other is in the evening,—and then Jerry has clubs and meetings, and Prudence is always sleepy. Look at Fairy and Gene. He is always at the drug store, and Fairy has nothing but parties and clubs and silly things like that to think about,—a big, grand girl like Fairy. And she is always looking covetously at other women's babies and visiting orphans' homes to see if she can find one she wants to adopt, because she hasn't one of her own. Always that sorrow behind the twinkle in her ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... do not advise you to try apple-catching, but give it as one of the few sportive games associated with Halloween. There are many foolish tricks practiced on that night, but they are intended for grown-up young men and maidens. They are most of them innocent, but very silly. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hand, it must be admitted, that the revolution, has had the effect of completely removing from the French character that silly veneration for high rank, unaccompanied by any commanding qualities of mind, which used to form a predominant feature in it. Yet it seems doubtful whether the equivalent they have obtained is more likely to promote their happiness. They have now an equally ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... fee; and he writes to his London friend, the merchant Hanbury: "I have had a great deal of trouble from the factious disputes and violent heats of a most impudent, troublesome party here in regard to that silly fee of a pistole. Surely every thinking man will make a distinction between a fee and a tax. Poor people! I pity their ignorance and narrow, ill-natured spirits. But, my friend, consider that I could by no means give up this fee without affronting the Board of Trade and the Council ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... so silly as to faint!" said Inez, with a little tinkling laugh. "But I faint in good hands—I am so grateful to you!" she went on, warmly, ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... she exclaimed. "Why did I never think of it. With a red flag and my hair down, I'd be in all the illustrated papers. It would put up my price no end. And I'd be able to get out of this silly job of mine. I can't go on much longer. I'm getting too well known. I do believe I'll try it. The shouting's easy enough." She turned to Joan. "Are you going to ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... spoke that this explanation was correct. The dull rabbits, the sleepy Persian cats, and the silly sheep had died outright of lethodyne; the cunning, inquisitive raccoon, the quick hawk, and the active, intense-natured weasels, all most eager, wary, and alert animals, full of keenness and passion, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... been built by the last proprietor, Northmour's uncle, a silly and prodigal virtuoso—presented little signs of age. It was two stories in height, Italian in design, surrounded by a patch of garden in which nothing had prospered but a few coarse flowers; and looked, with its shuttered windows, not like a house that ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... distracting her by running up and down the tree and howling, at last fell off at one of these collisions. He swam for some time beside her, and she tried to get the poor beast up on the tree, but he "acted silly" and wild, and at last she lost sight of him forever. Then she and her baby were left alone. The light which had burned for a few minutes in the deserted cabin was quenched suddenly. She could not then tell whither she was drifting. The outline of the white dunes ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... had confided her plans for a life of service to a man she barely knew, one hour after she had decided to leave him alone! Well, there was nothing to do now but make the best of it. Their talk had, as a matter of fact, shown that she had been a little silly about the charade. He had unsuspected depth. That had been made clear by his conversation about education, and it was unlikely that anyone who felt as strongly as he did could be wayward in a charade. So it might turn out all right, ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... also, as it appears, a case of true love, and may end in a silly marriage. I am not pleased when men or women in my service entertain serious thoughts of love or marriage; it occupies their thoughts and interferes with ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Edith with a smile, which, sweet as it was, I thought extremely silly. I blushed with vexation, when Ernest, lifting his grave eyes from his book, asked ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... persevering in character. Laying aside his pencil, he sat down on the marble floor, put on his most seductive expression, held out his hand gently, and muttered soft encouragements— such as, "Now then, Spunkie, come here, an' don't be silly—" and the like. But "Spunkie" still stood immovable ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... atmosphere not American, but merely Yankee. I will go far beyond him in reprobating the assumption and the incivility of my countryfolk to their cousins from beyond the sea; I grill in my blood over the silly rudeness of our newspaper articles; and I do not know where to look when I find myself in company with an American and see my countrymen unbending to him as to a performing dog. But in the case of Mr. Grant White ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very dissimilar, are, in France and Italy, produced from a redundance of it. Though those are the polite countries in Europe, women there set themselves above shame, and despise delicacy. It is laughed out of existence, as a silly and unfashionable weakness. ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... got fairly out. Littlefield, who was as reckless an Irishman as ever lived, swore he would set fire to the place; which he did, by returning through the hole we had made, and getting up into a loft, that was dry and combustible. But for this silly act, we might have escaped; and, as it was, we did get off for the rest of the night, being caught, next morning, nearly down, again, by the ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Penseroso." Henceforth neither praise nor blame could turn Handel from his appointed course. He was not yet popular with the musical dilettanti, but we find no more catering to an absurd taste, no more writing of silly operatic froth. ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... night, to keep the silly sheep, Hosts of angels in their sight came down from heaven's high steep. Tidings! tidings! unto you: to you a Child is born, Purer than the drops of dew, and brighter than the morn. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... of a viper and carefully keeping them warm, nourished them into life. A Swallow, observing what she had done, said, "You silly creature! why have you hatched these vipers which, when they shall have grown, will inflict injury on all, beginning ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... public except in shop-window photographs, now simper at us fifty-two times a year, or more, and are sometimes described as "the celebrated actress," though a few of them never get beyond the dignity of a single silly line in the book of a musical hodge-podge. Miss XXX smiles at us from her 40-h.p. "bloater car" which has cost a larger sum than eight years of her salary, and the simple-minded think she must be a great star to be able to afford such a luxury, not knowing that she herself ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... await this silly speculation. Thus, the Colossal Man, (who was under Law from B.C. 1491 to the Christian ra,) proves to have been a marvellously precocious Infant. He wrote the Song of Moses in the year of his birth. Nay, he built pyramids,—had a Literature, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... definition," said the Colonel. "And humour in Vance, though fantastic, is not without subtlety. There was much real kindness in his obvious design to quiz Lionel out of that silly enthusiasm for—" ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Polly is going to do next. I never get up in the morning but I dread what may happen before night. I don't even feel safe about her after she goes to bed, since the time she went into the woods in the middle of the night to try some trick or other with a dead cat, thinking, silly child, that in that way she could cure a wart she had on her thumb. But then," Mrs. Clark always adds, "Polly is always so good-tempered when she is scolded for doing wrong, and seems really to be ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... here; if you come, come with armed men, with muskets on their shoulders and swords by their sides, for that slight weapon that you carry would avail you nothing against the enemies you are likely to meet here. Go back, I tell you, the way you came. I may seem silly and mad, and mad and silly I am, but I can sing; few can sing like me. Now listen stranger, listen to my song." She burst forth again in the same wild strains which at first ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... ask. To say that God cannot appear to men is simply silly; for it is limiting God's Almighty power. He that made man and all heaven and earth, cannot he show himself to man, if he shall so please? To say that God will not appear to man because man is so insignificant, and this earth such a paltry little speck in the heavens, is to ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... the eight-leaved typified that of the believer for the Lord. The Rose also emblemed the Virgin Mary, and from her was reflected through countless works of art and many legends, all of which are 'tenderly beautiful,' and, it may be added, generally rather silly—as, for instance, that of the holy friar Josbert of Doel, who sang daily five hymns in honor of the Virgin; in reward of which, immediately after his death, there grew from his mouth, ears, and nostrils, five roses, each marked ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... she tried to laugh it off as being too absurd. She, Laura Murdock, with her ripe experience of the world and many adventures with men—to fall in love like a silly, sentimental schoolgirl! It was too ridiculous. How the Rialto would laugh if they knew. Of course, they never would know, for there was nothing in it. The Westerner probably did not care two straws for her. He ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... three first days to me And I'll be bound to gar them die. The first it sall be wind and weet, The next it sall be snaw and sleet, The third it sall be sic a freeze, Sall gar the birds stick to the trees, But when the Borrowed Days were gone, The three silly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... cried Sir Patrick, "one would think he had gone for a voyage round the world. You silly child! he will be back again the day ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... two silly creatures promised marriage to each other through the trick of a young scamp. But I did not believe that it was serious, nor, indeed, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... almost harshly, as he turned to the surgeon, "what idle doubts are these? Cannot men die in their beds, of sudden death, no blood to stain their pillows, no loop-hole for crime to pass through, but we must have science itself startling us with silly terrors? As for the servant, I will answer for his innocence; his manner, his voice attest it." The surgeon drew back, abashed and humbled, and began to apologize, to qualify, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Tom, with a gun in his hand too. Did I say that they all had guns, except Giles and some beater men, only that Tom's was single-barrelled? Then there were others whom I need not describe, stretching to left and right, and worst of all, perhaps, there was Giles's great black dog, a silly-looking beast which always seemed to have its mouth open and its tongue hanging out, and to be wagging a big tail like the fox's, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... apology, dear Madam, for this egotistic detail; I know you and your sister will be interested in every circumstance of it. What signify the silly, idle gew-gaws of wealth, or the ideal trumpery of greatness! When fellow-partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—if they are ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... recalling step by step every incident that had occurred in their lonely walk. She was repeating to herself his facile sentences, wringing and twisting them to extract one drop to assuage the strange thirst that was growing up in her soul. She was thinking—silly Clytie!—that he had never appeared so kind before, and she was thinking—sillier Clytie!—that no one had ever before felt as she ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... "How silly I am!" she thought, taking courage: "it is really the most beautiful bush I ever saw. I will pull it up by the roots and carry it home ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... old man had me puzzled for a minute with his silly chaffing. Stupid of me, too, because we'd just been talking ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... poet, if you have a politician, if you have a moralist inaccurate, you know that these are cases which, from the narrow bounds of our weak faculties, do not perhaps admit of accuracy. But what is an inaccurate accountant good for? "Silly man, that dost not know thy own silly trade!" was once well said: but the trade here is not silly. You do not even praise an accountant for being accurate, because you have thousands of them; but you justly blame a public accountant who is guilty of a gross inaccuracy. But what end could his being ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... despotism, and be allowed to keep his new clothes for a little while. And when the procession is done, every one disrobes, gives up his character with his body, and appears, as he originally was, just like his neighbor. Some, when Chance comes round collecting the properties, are silly enough to sulk and protest, as tho they were being robbed of their own instead of only returning loans. You know the kind of thing on the stage—tragic actors shifting as the play requires from Creon to Priam, from Priam to Agamemnon; the same man, very likely, whom ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... institutions, say they, let not any man of learning come here, nor any wise man, nor any man of prudence: for these things are reckoned evil by us. But whoever is unlearned, ignorant, and silly, let him come without fear! Thus they own that they can gain only the foolish, the vulgar, the ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... how and by whom the heavens were propped up and how the sun was made and fixed in its place, but the continuation is exceedingly silly. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... stayed on for another six months. He was now in his seventeenth year—a boy no longer. One evening, as he blew up his smithy fire, the glow of it fell on the form of a woman standing just outside the window and watching him. He had no silly fears of ghosts: but the thought of the buried woman flashed across his mind and he dropped his ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mr. Hammond what I said about his thinking me ugly. He might want to apologise to me, and that would be too humiliating. I was very childish to say such a silly thing.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... improvement. Here their lives are in safety. They are not liable to be impressed for soldiers, and forced to cut one another's Christian throats, as in the wars of their own countries. If some of the religious mad bigots, who now tease us with their silly petitions, have in a fit of blind zeal freed their slaves, it was not generosity, it was not humanity, that moved them to the action; it was from the conscious burthen of a load of sins, and a hope, from the supposed merits of so ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... tersely. "Page is silly with fear. I went over to help them ... but it's no use. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... fiendish temper, which was a grim anticipation of De Sade; he would even smile as he saw the noose tighten round the necks of the poor innocents he had beguiled to Tyburn. It was his boast that he had contrived robberies for the mere glory of dragging his silly victims to the gallows. But Moll, though she stood half-way between the robber and his prey, would have sacrificed a hundred well-earned commissions rather than see her friends and comrades strangled. Her temperament ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... excusable to anticipate the thirst of the morrow, for all through the Sunday idleness it cannot be slaked enough. It was a hot night, and the bar-room door stood open, and within, fronted by a crowd of their loudly talking, deeply drinking men-kind, those poor silly things stood drooping against the wall with their beer-pots dangling limply from their hands, and their mouths fallen open as if to catch the morsels of wit and wisdom that dropped from the tongues of their admired male companions. They did not look very bad; bad people never ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... evolved the noble army of caravanners, with Lady Grosvenor and Mr. J. Harris Stone at their head. The people who cannot appreciate Borrow are those who will not lift their eyes from the pavement to be rapt in admiration of a glorious sunset, to whom, indeed, Borrow would appear a silly enigma, or a boor. For, when "the Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work," comes that rare time when the spirit—unconsciously worshipping—is uplifted in an ecstasy of wonder and joy, who then can but pity ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... analyzed to think by analogy and by comparison, insisting that he tell you what a certain word or name or scene or experience or what not reminds him of, what it resembles, what he can compare it to, no matter how remote its connection, no matter how unrelated, how far-fetched or how silly the association may appear in his own eyes—in other words, we demand that he co-operate by suspending critical selection and judgment. Although, as I say, Freud's, Jung's, Prince's and other methods ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... To guard the village seignior's hall; For him, a shepherd, it would be A thriftier economy To keep small curs, say two or three, That would not cost him half the food, And yet for watching be as good. The fools, perhaps, forgot to tell If they would fight the wolf as well. The silly shepherd, giving heed, Cast off his dog of mastiff breed, And took three dogs to watch his cattle, Which ate far less, but fled in battle. His flock such counsel lived to rue, As doubtlessly, my friend, will ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... that Lord Chelford would see more clearly what was best for little Fairy. I am so very slow and so silly about business, and you so much my friend—I have found you so—that you might think only ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... unnecessary for me to give a formal contradiction to the silly fiction, which is assiduously circulated by fanatics who not only ought to know, but do know, that their assertions are untrue, that I have advocated the introduction of that experimental discipline which is absolutely indispensable to the professed ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... eyed her wonderingly. "You have thrown something much stronger than a man," he said—"you, a princess, that has gone to prison!—and for that silly notion of yours that ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... didn't get out and rub his hump, as a lot of gamblers do. They say he's quite a rich man, owing to that sort of silly superstition, but I can't resist him, either. And I feel it quite a feather in my cap of fascination that I've made the other one—the gloomy beggar—smile, though I've never given him a sou. He has quite a sense of humour, when you ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sweetness and repentance. She appeared as aloof from her surroundings as if she had been wafted to Arabia; and presently began to wash her face conscientiously and methodically, with the air of one who finds solitude better than the companionship of fools. Only when the judge had put his silly handkerchief into his pocket, and had strolled into the library under the pretence of hunting for a book which he had never left there, did the kitten close her eyes, lower her obdurate little head, and purr herself tranquilly ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr. Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... flaming godhead itself, or whether you guard in spirit that lost spark from it which has become entangled with your soul?—whether you really do believe the man-made law that licenses your mating; or whether you reject it as a silly superstition? To a business man, convention is merely a safe procedure which, ignored, causes disaster—he knows that whenever he ignores it—as when he drives a car bearing no license; and the ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... a great disappointment to me," he said, trying to look disappointed, but his back would wriggle. "This chain business—silly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... the Fabian Essayists attended an established place of worship regularly, the reply must be in the negative. Indeed, they were generally preaching themselves on Sundays. To describe them as irreligious in view of their work would be silly; but until Hubert Bland towards the end of his life took refuge in the Catholic Church, and Mrs. Besant devoted herself to Theosophy, no leading Fabian found a refuge for his soul in the temples of any established denomination. I may go further and admit that the first problems the Fabians ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... where I go," muttered its strange owner with what seemed an involuntary emphasis. Then as the Curator turned upon him in some surprise, he added with studied indifference: "I brought it from Switzerland when I was younger than I am now—a silly memento, but ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... ceased to be when oceans rolled between us; to call to witness his unchanging truth and mindfulness of bygone days, whole years of desolation. Give me but one word of recognition, brother—and never—no never, in the brightest moment of our youngest days, when, poor silly boys, we thought to pass our lives together—have we been half as dear and precious to each other as we shall be from this ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... there befell a mighty silly affair that had its consequence. Neil, as I have said, was himself a great narrator. I have heard since that he knew all the stories in the Highlands; and thought much of himself, and was thought much of by others, on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Children brought their aged parents, and mothers their little ones. Those blinded by ophthalmia were led by the hand. Those relieved from suffering were ready to kiss his feet, or even his shoes at the door. But it was a laborious and trying position. A thousand silly questions must be answered. Nor was there any certainty that the prescriptions would be followed, even if understood; and every Nestorian, though suffering under the most alarming disease, would sooner die than touch a spoonful ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... believes the inconceivable mystery of the trinity, ridicules the catholic Christian for believing in the mystery of transubstantiation; he considers him mad, impious, and idolatrous, because he kneels to worship some bread, in which he thinks he sees God. Christians of every sect regard, as silly stories, the incarnations of Vishnu, the God of the Indies; they maintain, that the only true incarnation is that of Jesus, son of a carpenter. The deist, who calls himself the follower of a religion, which he supposes to be that of nature, content with admitting ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... that she seemed so very silly. Incapable of finding any serious resource in her intellect, she had devoted her energies to outward things in a place where there was no one to applaud her efforts or flatter her vanity. Many women ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... tell me. I know how these things happen quite well. I have seen such things before; only I thought you a more sensible fellow. There was young Dalton of St. Cross; he goes abroad, and falls in with a smooth priest, who persuades the silly fellow that the Catholic Church is the ancient and true Church of England, the only religion for a gentleman; he is introduced to a Count this, and a Marchioness that, and returns a Catholic. There was ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... It is simply astonishing the number of the different varieties one sees. I've grown so wise I can tell each different tree by seeing it glisten, But if that test fails I simply put my ear to the tree and listen, And, well, I suppose it is only a silly fancy of mine perhaps, But do you know I'm getting to tell different trees by the sound of their saps. After I have noticed all the trees, and named those I know in words, I stand quite still and look all round to see if there are any birds, And ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... enemy's fleet by a miracle, and while it was still night proceeded straight to the tent of Themistokles. Here he called him out, and when they were alone together, he said: "We two, Themistokles, if we are wise, must cease our vain and silly rivalry with one another, and begin a more generous contest to preserve our country, you acting as general and chief, while I help and advise you. Already I perceive that you alone take a right view of the crisis, end desire to fight a battle in the narrow waters as quickly as ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... see that day. To die of a mortification is too good an end for such a rascal!" At the time that he thus addressed me, the whole mass of my blood was already fevered by the anguish I had undergone, my patience was wholly exhausted, and I was silly enough to be irritated beyond bearing, by his impertinence and vulgarity: "Look, you, Mr. Turnkey," said I, "there is one thing that such fellows as you are set over us for, and another thing that you are not. You are to take care we do not ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough of such moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his doubts and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... All our silly little jokes—things that have come to be dear little traditions between us—would be mockeries now." She raised her chin, and said suddenly, with a forced laugh: "I don't often have these brain-storms. They make me very foolish. We must see less ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... of believing by our volition seems, then, from one point of view, simply silly. From another point of view it is worse than silly, it is vile. When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... triumphant bleat for the open gate. Beelzebub, as the Turner mother had christened the mischievous brute, had been placed in the wrong stall and Beelzebub was making for freedom. He gave another triumphant baa as he swept between Dolph's legs and through the gate, and, with an answering chorus, the silly sheep sprang to their feet and followed. A sheep hates water, but not more than he loves a leader, and Beelzebub feared nothing. Straight for the water of the low ford the old conqueror made and, in the wake of his masterful summons, the flock swept, like a Mormon ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... naughty of us not to eat more when us isn't hungry for more. I think it would be like little pigs to eat more than they want. Little pigs would go on eating all day just 'cos they're too silly, and they've got ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... me, gentlemen, it is not patriotism, it is not a passion for justice, it is not loyalty to sister women, it is not a desire to better her country, which will make a woman neglect her husband. Society women, superficial, selfish, silly women, the butterflies of the ballroom, the seekers for every new sensation, the worldly-minded aspirants for social position, these are the women who neglect their homes; and not the brave, earnest, serious-minded, generous, unselfish ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... to become popular, and advising how the Commons' House should proceed, and how he would order the House of Lords. And he hath been endeavouring to have the king's nativity calculated; which was done, and the fellow now in the Tower about it.... This silly lord hath provoked, by his ill carriage, the Duke of York, my Lord Chancellor, and all the great persons, and therefore most likely ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... toward that helpless boy, such as we, perhaps, never could have had but for his baptism. Never will a member of that witnessing congregation see him, without a feeling of tenderness and something bordering on respect; he will not be merely "Silly Joe" to them; that element of truth in the heathen superstition, which leads heathens and pagans to regard an idiot as something sacred, will have its verification with regard to him; the children ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... interests to be conciliated and carried forward under one crown, two statesmen alone bear the burden of public affairs and are not overwhelmed by it. Was France less prolific of political capacities than Germany? The rather silly game of what are called "constitutional institutions" carried beyond bounds has ended, as everybody knows, in requiring a great many offices to satisfy the multifarious ambition of the middle classes. It seemed to Rabourdin, in the ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... ninth Satire; where I think I have shewn clearly enough, that without any prejudice either to one's Conscience or the Government, one may think bad Verses bad Verses, and have full right to be tir'd with reading a silly Book. But since these Gentlemen have spoken of the liberty I have taken of Naming them, as an Attempt unheard-of, and without Example, and since Examples can't well be put into Rhyme; 'tis proper to say one word to inform 'em of a thing of which they alone wou'd gladly be ignorant, and to ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... stars, more trim than day, Heav'n's Lily, and the Earth's chaste Rose, The green immortal Branch arose; } And in a solitary place } S. Mark, Bow'd to His Father His blest face. } c. 1, v. 35- If this calm season pleased my Prince, Whose fulness no need could evince, Why should not I, poor silly sheep, His hours, as well as practice, keep? Not that His hand is tied to these, From whom Time holds his transient lease But mornings new creations are, When men, all night sav'd by His care, Are still reviv'd; and well He may Expect them grateful with ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... to the affectation with which Sheridan appears to be consulted on all occasions, seems sufficiently to indicate what is to be expected. A part of this, however, is to be attributed to Sheridan's eagerness to display his personal importance, by which silly vanity I am told he has much offended the Duke of ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... my money," he perorated. "Stingaree, sir, is the greatest chap in all these Colonies, and deserves to be Viceroy when they get Federation. Thunderbolt, Morgan, Ben Hall and Ned Kelly were not a circumstance between them to Stingaree; and the silly old Bishop's a silly old fool to him! I don't care twopence about right and wrong. That's not the point. The one's a ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... even in a dream, How we brought home a silly little pup, With a big square head and little crooked legs That ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... sisters! what is the young man talking about?" exclaimed Scarecrow, Nightmare and Shakejoint, one to another, with great appearance of astonishment. "A pair of flying slippers, quoth he! His heels would quickly fly higher than his head if he was silly enough to put them on. And a helmet of invisibility! How could a helmet make him invisible, unless it were big enough for him to hide under it? And an enchanted wallet! What sort of a contrivance may that be, I wonder? No, no, good stranger! we can tell ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... your money. I don't care for money. I think you know enough of me through the newspapers to vouchsafe that. You are rich, and it is your chief misery. Listen! Whether you believe it or not, you are very unhappy. Let me read your horoscope. Your club life bores you; you are tired of our silly theatres; no longer do you care for Wagner's music. You are deracinated; you are unpatriotic. For that there is no excuse. The arts are for you deadly. I am sure you are a lover of literature. Yet what a curse it has been for you! When you see one of your friends drinking wine, you call him a fool ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... times. I remember thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects the leading actor in the greatest and stormiest drama known to real history's stage through centuries, should sit there and be so completely interested in those human jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... a silly Fellow, Cowardly, but very Inquisitive to know every Body's Business, generally spoils all he undertakes, yet without ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... other grander possibilities in the background. The reigning Pontiff was a very aged man. The Cardinal di Marliani was thought to stand very well at Rome. Who knew what might happen? It would have been too monstrous if the hope of such a marriage as this were to be endangered by a silly fancy for the pretty face and slim figure of ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... bouncing is ineffectual and silly, even in a grizzly bear. The only result was that he bruised his head and nose, tumbled among stones and stumps, and strained the rope so powerfully that the limb of the tree to which it was attached was violently shaken, and Little Tim was obliged ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... home-coming! All his weapons of the chase left on Moorish soil, not a lion with him, nothing but a silly camel! ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... He might either have made war on the Parthians, if he had had the courage to do so, or have maintained peace with them and recognized, as he had promised, the Euphrates as boundary; he was too timid for the former course, too vain for the latter, and so he resorted to the silly perfidy of rendering the good neighbourhood, which the court of Ctesiphon desired and on its part practised, impossible through the most unbounded aggressions, and yet allowing the enemy to choose of themselves the time for rupture and retaliation. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... extravagant, form the soul of their peculiar trade. For, note it down—the bonnet mania has not mounted upwards from the lower to the higher ranks of society; on the contrary, it has been a regular plant, sown as a trifling casual seed in the hotbed of some silly creature's brain, and then sending down its roots into many an inferior class. Any one who has crossed the British Channel, knows that the bonnet—as we understand the word in England—is not an article of national costume ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... hoc and this silly old man has been held up to all ensuing ages as an absurdly simple old fellow. But what after all if he should be right in part ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... he muttered musingly to himself, "which of those sisters this bit of cambric belonged to, marked with an E.—Ellen or Eliza—hum! They would die—silly things!—tried to stab me! Ho! what fun! Never left me even a miniature, either, for my collection. 'Bueno!' There's more fish in the sea—and under it too!" he concluded, with an unpleasant elevation of ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... of the indifference of virtuous young gentlemen to the condition of the city they live in, provided they live at the west end of it on money earned by someone else's labor. The notion that prostitution is created by the wickedness of Mrs Warren is as silly as the notion—prevalent, nevertheless, to some extent in Temperance circles—that drunkenness is created by the wickedness of the publican. Mrs Warren is not a whit a worse woman than the reputable daughter ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... for so long, told me some of his history. Elias P. Arden, his name is, and he is a senator. He has had a remarkable career, rising from nothing, and being the bravest, coolest, hardest man in the mining camps. He is colossally rich, and his daughter Lola is perfectly lovely, and married to a silly young Vinerhorn, who has a country ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... trooper of Cromwell's, who wrote ill of me, saying that I neither understood the subjects whereof I discoursed nor believed the things that I said, being both silly and pretentious. It would have been a pity if it had been true. There was also one Leigh Hunt, a maker of many books, who used one day a bottle of ink whereof the gall was transfused into his blood, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... I care. But to look and to stare like an idiot are two entirely different things. Just watch once and see the silly jig they dance around a lamp. It's nothing for them to butt their heads about twenty times. Some of them keep it up until they burn their wings. And all the time they stare and ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... d'Italie', with their pages, turrets, chatelaines; bull-fighters, Spanish ladies; vivandieres, beguiled away from their homes under the pale of the church, "near a stream of running water, by a gay and handsome chevalier," and many other such silly things—Amedee will remember them always! They bring back to him, clearly and strongly, certain happy hours in his childhood! They make him smell again at times even the odor that pervaded the Gerards' house. ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... the tidewater region of South Carolina, and certain parts of Virginia were the seats of the soundest political thought of the day. The men who did this sane, wholesome political thinking were quite right in scorning and condemning the crude unreason, often silly, often vicious, which characterized so much of the political thought of their opponents. The strength of these opponents was largely derived from the ignorance and suspicion of the raw country districts, and from the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... saints' calendar has been considerably enlarged in that pseudo-holy land. Nearly every week supplies a festival, with all its mummery of banners, and processions, and priests dressed as if for the altar-scene in "Pizarro," and squibs, and fireworks, and silly citizens kneeling in the dust, and hats off all round. Very much like a London Guy-Fawkes procession is the whole affair, and of about like influence upon ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... in the ancient days. They rustled like dry leaves. The blanket of one was black and that of the other was white. When they came out of the medicine lodge they went around among the huts and inclosures of those who were assembled, visiting the wives and the sweethearts of the silly men who had laughed at them in the morning; and everywhere the women smiled on the beautiful and well dressed youths. The next morning the men laughed and sneered at them no more, nor whispered in their ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... wonderful, the stupendous achievement of our friend, Mr. Thesiger Smith. (Loud cheers.) This is a proud moment in my life. I remember when I was a nipper in London, before any of you were born except our friend the doctor, I saw in a place called Cremorne Gardens a silly fellow of a Frenchman—present company excepted—try to fly with wings strapped to his arms. Of course he came a cropper and broke his back. I remember my dear old mother shaking her head and telling over to me that ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... tiring of the subject of the convicts. "Oh, it's an awfully fine place! There are wild cattle on the moor too, and they are no end of excitement; they go for you like anything if you rile them. You are in luck's way, old chap. I wish I was going too, instead of to some silly place in Norway where there's nothing to do when you get there but walk. I hate being shut up in a stuffy steamer too. I'm ill all the time—so are most of the people—and I don't see where the fun comes in. But my people are set on it, so I suppose I've got ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... "All sorts of silly things are to be found in Old England, Mr. Ten Eyck, as well as some that are wise. I believe London has one or two soothsayers; and I think I have heard elderly people say that the fashion of consulting them has somewhat increased, since the court ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... at one time or another in some place, been regarded as sacred and desirable. Brother and sister marriages were favored by Egyptian royalty, prostitution was a rite in Phoenician worship, phallic worship frankly held as a symbol that which to-day we hold profane (in a silly way), plural marriage was and is countenanced in a large part of the world to-day, marriage for love is held as foolish in most countries, even now. The practice of child restriction now prevalent in Europe and America would be looked at with ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... ridicule on the coronet and the ermine. But there was no extremity to which he was not prepared to go in case of necessity. When in a large company an opinion was expressed that the peers would prove intractable, "Oh, silly," cried Sunderland, turning to Churchill, "your troop of guards shall be called up to the House ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him felt as a check. But Blossius of Cuma, who was present, told him, that it would be a shame, and an ignominious thing, for Tiberius, who was the son of Gracchus, the grandson of Scipio Africanus, and the protector of the Roman people, to refuse, for fear of a silly bird, to answer, when his countrymen called to him; and that his adversaries would represent it not as a mere matter for their ridicule, but would declaim about it to the people as the mark of a tyrannical temper, which ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... yards in advance of his companion, paused at a short distance from the free, and being somewhat over-heated, took off his cap to wipe his brow, laughingly observing—"In good truth, Suffolk, we must henceforth be rated as miserable faineants, to be scared from our path by a silly wench's tale of deerstealers and wild huntsmen. I am sorry I yielded to her entreaties. If Herne be still extant, he must be more than a century and a half old, for unless the legend is false, he flourished in the time of my ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "there is all the information that I can obtain on the subject; and here, take the order, and go and see your friend the Duke. Tell him I will come and see him to-morrow, and give him what consolation you can; but yet do not act like a silly boy, and make too light of the business, for two reasons: first, because the matter is really serious—the good folks of London have an appetite for blood upon them just now, and will not be satisfied unless they see a head struck off every now and then; and next, because, if his ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... suddenly struck her as foolish and silly, and out of place in a country where the syllables of words sound sonorously, and time passes like a slow moving river with its banks unchoked with "hustle weeds." And from that day, or rather night, Jill gave up slang, and one ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... glad his father, forty fools avail him not:— One moon silvers all that darkness which the silly stars did dot." ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... minute, Mr. Tudor,' said Mrs. Davis, who was now smiling and civil enough; 'I will go upstairs myself; the silly girl is shamefaced, and does not like to come down'; and up went Mrs. Davis to see that her barmaid's curls and dress were nice and jaunty. It would not do now, at this moment, for Norah to offend her lover by any untidiness. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... ugly, vulgar, and silly, had given her husband no pleasures but those of paternity; she died young. Her libertine husband, fettered at the beginning of his commercial career by the necessity for working, and held in thrall by want of money, had led the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... immensely, was seized with sudden diffidence. He was a connoisseur in all matters of art. Suppose he should say right before Miss Pritchard, that she was only a silly tomboy, or whatever such a gentleman would say to express that idea? She ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... had been going through his mind like a silly chant since the first moment he had seen Nate Schirmer in the library. Poor Paul. Dan did all right for himself, he did—made quite a name down in Washington, you know, a fighter, a real fighter. The Boy with the Golden Touch (joke, son, laugh ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... Mackenzie says that he went to examine some women who had confessed, and that one of them, who was a silly creature, told him, "under secresie," "that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but, being a poor creature, who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would either ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... cigarettes. A number of scientific magazines lay about and a forbidding array of books on mechanics and chemistry overflowed the shelves. He threw open a cabinet filled with blue prints illustrating queer mechanical contrivances. They struck him as very silly and he slammed the thing shut in disgust, convinced that Congdon was a crank, or he wouldn't have indulged in such foolishness. In a drawer of the desk was an automatic pistol and a box of cartridges. At a country house where he once week-ended a burglar scare ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... when, if ever, it may be excusable to anticipate the thirst of the morrow, for all through the Sunday idleness it cannot be slaked enough. It was a hot night, and the bar-room door stood open, and within, fronted by a crowd of their loudly talking, deeply drinking men-kind, those poor silly things stood drooping against the wall with their beer-pots dangling limply from their hands, and their mouths fallen open as if to catch the morsels of wit and wisdom that dropped from the tongues of their admired male companions. They did not look very bad; bad ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... that its price bred fright among the holders of depreciating stocks. Agony, ruin, the demolition of firesides, resulted from this infamous "corner" wrought by a league of miserly zealots. But our young student of Wall Street annals will soon harden his nerves against any silly commiseration. As well soil the glory of Lexington or Bunker Hill by brooding over the pangs of those who were its victims. All great victories necessitate bloodshed. It is not every man who can wrest vast wealth ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... arm, I immediately recognised as Lord Nelson. He could not know who I was, but he entered at once into conversation with me, if I can call it conversation, for it was almost all on his side and all about himself, and in, really, a style so vain and so silly as to surprise and almost disgust me. I suppose something that I happened to say may have made him guess that I was somebody, and he went out of the room for a moment, I have no doubt to ask the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... "Poor old Somers has Clayton's tag receipts for the currency and cheques as usual. I'm sorry for the old man. We'll retire him, at any rate, pension or no pension. It was Wade's silly system, to trace all our money down with two sets of custodians, and then send it to bank by ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... those silly but presumptuous personages who thrust themselves upon the society of men occupying high positions, and feel their importance only in that reflected by this association; and ever too fond of being made the medium of slanderous reports, reflecting upon those whose self-respect and superior ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... been the character of General Joseph Reed, from documents decidedly authentic—so authentic as to have led to their partial destruction, by his vain and silly descendants, who imagined that truth could be extinguished, while vanity was kindling a spurious flame to consummate an imaginery[TN] apotheosis, for one whose actual deeds consigned him to the keeping of the furies and ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... less time with Mignon, Jerry was quick to feel rather than note the slight reserve Marjorie exhibited toward Mary. "Don't you believe they've made up," she declared to Irma Linton. "Mary may think they have, but they haven't. I guess Marjorie's grown tired of Mary's nonsense. I'm glad of it. She's a silly little goose, I mean Mary, and she's lost ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... "Scared silly!" commented Kirkwood. "Why?" Having spoken to his waiter, Calendar for some seconds raked the room with quick glances, as if seeking an acquaintance. Presumably disappointed, he swung back to face the girl, bending forward to reach her ears with accents low-pitched and confidential. She, on her ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... more milk of roses, I believe, upon my cheeks than tears; and why not? What should there be to her corresponding to an ignorant child's sense of pathos, in a little journey of about a hundred miles? Outside her door, however, there awaited me some silly creatures, women of course, old and young, from the nursery and the kitchen, who gave, and who received, those fervent kisses which wait only upon love without awe and without disguise. Heavens! what rosaries might be strung ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... around him. She was staring at him, but he could see in her vacant eyes that she had no conception of his secret, nor knew the extent of her revelation. Duffy had not dared to tell all! He burst into a coarse laugh. "What matters Duffy or the silly woman he'd try to ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... winsome Violet Is, forsooth, too holy. 'But the Touchmenot?' Go to! What! a face that's speckled Like a common milking-maid's, Whom the sun hath freckled. Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt; And the trillium Lily, In her spotless gown, 's a prude, Sanctified and silly. By her cap the Columbine, To my mind, 's too merry; Gossips, I would sooner wed Some plebeian Berry. And the shy Anemone— Well, her face shows sorrow; Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day, Dead and gone to-morrow. Then that bold-eyed, ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... all spent in street-car fare and postage-stamps; of miles and miles of walking through muddy, slushy streets; and at the sacrifice of my noon lunch, which I could have had done up for me at the boarding-house without extra charge, but which my silly vanity did not allow me to carry ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, Than does the embroider'd canopy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... the day, we had wine in one another's rooms after hall in the evening, and behaved like young fools, and threw oranges wildly at one another's heads, and generally enjoyed ourselves. It was all very silly and irrational, no doubt, but it was life, it was reality; while the pretended earnestness of those pallid Somerville girls is all an ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... that you silly child, returned Emily, but I am intruding upon school hours I fear, so if you will allow me Miss Leicester I will come ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... behavior! how much elegance there was in every movement of hers! I could not succeed in learning enough from her. When, after eating, she wiped her lips with the napkin, it was as if spirits were exchanging kisses with the mist. Oh, how interminably silly and clumsy I was beside her! My hand trembled when I had to take some dish. Terrible was the thought that I might perchance drop the spoon from my hand and stain her white muslin dress with the sauce. She, for her part, seemed not to notice me; or, on the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Nan uttered a laugh that was half a sob. "Silly! reach down that lantern, please. Stand on the box. I'll show you what sort of a baby ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... of all kinds are that they should be "fool proof," and it has been remarked that the writer of orders should always remember that at least one silly ass will try to misunderstand them. They must, therefore, be void of all ambiguity, and while containing every essential piece of information, and omitting everything that is clearly known already to the recipients, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... having struck down a rook, and finding the sport but tame, bethought herself suddenly of that noble heron, which she still perceived fluttering over Crooksbury Heath. How could she have been so weak as to allow these silly, chattering rooks to entice her away from that lordly bird? Even now it was not too late to atone for her mistake. In a great spiral she shot upward until she was over the heron. But what was this? Every fiber of her, from her crest to her deck feathers, quivered with jealousy and rage at ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fear into the silly brutes," said Harris, speaking calmly, although his own flesh was creeping just a little. "I suppose they've ripped their tether ropes to pieces. Well, we'll tie them down here, where they'll have company." And he led them back a short ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... bring in the example of the fortunate cast of Tiberius, within the fountain of Aponus, at the oracle of Gerion. These are the baited hooks by which the devil attracts and draweth unto him the foolish souls of silly people ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... son,—a handsome lad,— By some queer way or other, had Got quite the better of her heart; With him she always talked apart: Silly he was, but very fair; A greater buck was not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... case of all those who live in places where care is taken to propagate truth without knowledge; where men are forced, at a venture, to be of the religion of the country; and must therefore swallow down opinions, as silly people do empiric's pills, without knowing what they are made of, or how they will work, and having nothing to do but believe that they will do the cure: but in this are much more miserable than they, in that they are not at liberty to refuse swallowing what perhaps they had ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... am only a little girl, and my opinion may not be worth much, but I mean to stand up for it, whatever they say. I suppose every one has a right to her own opinion, and if others don't agree with me, they needn't; but I don't like them to call me "silly" because I don't think as they do. I am willing they should have their own opinions, but I want the same privilege,—isn't that fair? I don't like such nicknames as "Tom" and "Bob," or "Mollie" and "Sallie," but like such as "Charlie" or "Hattie," and I think ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... days. That man may be fooling them, but he isn't fooling me. Not a bit of it. He hasn't had a gun with him once when I have seen him, but just the same he is a hunter. I feel it in my bones. He knows those silly Ducks come in here every night for that corn he puts out. He knows that after they have been here a few times and nothing has frightened them, they will be so sure that it is a safe place that they will not be the least bit suspicious. Then he will hide behind those bushes he has placed close to ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... commented Mrs. Stornaway, still staring. "They live in a little house in a side street. They had very silly ideas about the girl. They thought she was a genius and sent her to the School of Art in Boston, but it wasn't long before her health failed her. Ah! I guess that must be the man talking to Mr. Baird and Annie. He looks as if he would ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... assumed astonishment. 'Why, which of you presumed to wear your mamma's brooch?' But he added almost immediately, 'I need not inquire further: I am sorry to say I have had some sad experience of deception in my eldest daughter, and have observed in her that silly vanity, that makes outside show a cover for inward defects. Go!' he added sternly to Mabel; 'I have nothing more to say to you to-night. It nearly sickens me to think that I have a daughter base enough to conceal faults, which she is not afraid ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... What have I to forgive? Heyday, if our true lovers come back to flurry us like this, we must hold 'em at a distance; we must send expresses out to stop 'em short upon the road, and bring 'em on a mile or two a day, until we're properly prepared to meet 'em. Kiss me, Puss. Forgive! Why, what a silly child you are! If you had vexed and crossed me fifty times a day, instead of not at all, I'd forgive you everything, but such a supplication. Kiss me again, Puss. There! Prospective and retrospective - a clear score between us. Pile up the fire here! Would you freeze the people ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... atrocity of imagination, stimulating a nature essentially base and weak in its desire to make itself conspicuous, would or could suggest such things. The silly youth who 'fired the Ephesian dome,' the vain idiot who set fire to York Minster, the miserable Frenchmen who have committed murder and suicide with a view of making their exit striking from a world in which their appearance had been contemptible, would all ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... shall ever separate me from you, dear, silly aunt," said my charmer, kissing first one of her relative's high cheek-bones, ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... arrested him for some silly thing, and he's hurt." She hurriedly recounted Allan's story, adding, in conclusion, "That black boy came all the way across ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... distinction of a good master, most assuredly not in the way of a vain silly hint of self-recomdation; but purely for the sake of giving a caution, too often neglected, against parents, or those charged with the education of youth, placing children, at the age when their muscles are most flexible, their limbs the most supple, and their ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... "the silly sirkar fears that perhaps Turkey may enter the war. Perhaps a jihad may be proclaimed. So much for fear! I know! I have known for a very long time! And I have not let ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... carving out more territory. "The moment we acted," said Mr. Hay, "the rest of the world paused and finally came over to our ground; and the German government, which is generally brutal but seldom silly, recovered its senses, and climbed down off ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... Marjorie. "I suppose she doesn't want to sit next to me. Well, she's punishing herself far more than me, silly girl! She must be dreadfully hungry, unless she's shamming a headache, and getting Nurse to give her bread and milk in the ambulance room. Perhaps she's busy with her costume. She never liked the idea of using my mackintosh ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... great and large sums of money and yearly profits, to the most pernicious example of your said lay subjects—and so the cures and promotions given unto such infants be only employed to the enriching of the said ordinaries; and the poor silly souls of your people, which should be taught in the parishes given as aforesaid, for lack of good curates [be left] to perish without doctrine ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... been, whenever he took a part in conversation, an empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this point the evidence is overwhelming. So extraordinary was the contrast between Goldsmith's published works and the silly things which he said, that Horace Walpole described him as an inspired idiot. "Noll," said Garrick, "wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." Chamier declared that it was a hard exercise of faith ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I heard Mr. Paul's voice down in the hall, and I thought he said something about fire. But Nurse said I was silly, and must go to sleep; but I couldn't till I knew you ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... to. It's my job. It's all I've got. Mamma hasn't another soul except me to depend on. And he's harmless—the old coot's as harmless as a child. Honest and true, Mag, if I ever told the truth that's it. He just stands around and is silly—just makes foolish breaks to hear himself talk—that's all. But what can I do? He keeps me in the company store, and Heaven knows he doesn't kill himself paying me—only $8 a week, as far as that goes, and then he talks and talks ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... persons do so because they lack the ability and learning to comprehend Phrenology, and are unable to combat the prejudices of the ignorant. I have never seen a so-called "Physiognomist" who was not an empirical mountebank of the purest stamp, and who did not trim his sails to pander to the silly sentiment which I have just exposed. The delineations of such persons are worse than valueless, because they are pure guess-work. They pursue a shadow while ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... grimly. 'Silly ass, why did he hit at that one? All he'd got to do was to stay in with Joe. Now it's up to you. Do try and do something, or we'll be ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... other happenings, which stirred up the turbid, foul life of these poor, sick, silly, unfortunate women. There were cases of savage, unbridled jealousy with pistol shots and poisoning; occasionally, very rarely, a tender, flaming and pure love would blossom out upon this dung; occasionally the women even abandoned an establishment with the ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... dirt from much handling. Children soon tire of the shallow sameness which characterizes the "moral" parts of most of these books, and skim lightly over them, selecting and devouring with eagerness those portions which relate the silly narrative of some love adventure. This kind of literature arouses in children premature fancies and queries, and fosters a sentimentalism which too often occasions most unhappy results. Through their influence, young girls ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... instructed as to the merits of this country and its war. When we remember the advantages which poor Russell enjoyed for acquiring information, his neglect of matters of importance seems amazing—until we find, in scores of petty personal matters and silly egotisms, a key to the whole. He is a small-souled man, utterly incapable of mastering the great principles involved in this war,—a man petrified in English conceit, and at the end of his art when, like ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... him! blind and dumb, Deaf and dumb, Twirl the carle so troublesome! Kinsman, once so full of glee, Kinsman, where's thy drollery, Where thy tricks, thou cunning one? All thy tricks are spent and past, To the devil gone at last Like a silly fop thou'lt prate, Like a washerwoman rate. Thou art but a simpleton. Now thou mayest—more shame to thee— Run away, because of me; Cupid, that young rogue, may glory Learning wisdom from thy story; Haste, thou sluggard, hence to flee As from glass is cut our wit, So, like lightning, 'twill ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... long time since any one did that to a silly old woman like me," she said musingly. "Was it you or your brother," she asked abruptly, "who nearly broke ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... be writing a third paper on the nerves; but I cannot proceed without making some experiments, which are so unpleasant to make that I defer them. You may think me silly, but I cannot perfectly convince myself that I am authorized in Nature or Religion to do these cruelties .... And yet what are my experiments in comparison with those which are daily done, and ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... suffering from a sharp fit of goose, such as attacks many boys who, because matters do not go exactly as they like at home, consider that they are ill-used, and long for what they call their freedom—a freedom which is really slavery, inasmuch as they make themselves the bond-servants of their silly fancies, and it takes some time to ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... know how small a part that is of life. We may all refer to our boyhood, and recollect the time when we thought the things about us were the type of all things everywhere. That was, perhaps, after all no silly princess who was for feeding the famishing people on cakes. History takes us out of this confined circle of child-like thought; and shows us what are the perennial aims, struggles, and distractions ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... made! How he tore up anything and everything within his reach! Iron fences which those silly, little fire-carriers had stuck into the ground to protect their crops; silly, little, brick walls which he knocked over with one push of his huge body; young, healthy trees which had been planted so carefully a few years back, and which he ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... time, and Scott was a mere beginner. He was probably even better pleased with the quality of the praise than with the quantity of the pudding. For though professional criticism, then in no very vigorous state, said some silly things, it was generally favourable; and a saying of Pitt (most indifferent, as a rule, of all Prime Ministers to English literature) is memorable not merely as summing up the general impression, but as defining what that impression ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... hands, as unable to bear the insufferable effulgence of his countenance? And would not a monarch of sense have been ready to kick the people who thus treated him like a fool? And every one has observed that there are silly women who are much gratified by coarse and fulsome compliments upon their personal appearance, which would be regarded as grossly insulting by a woman of sense. You may have heard of country-gentlemen, of Radical politics, who had seldom wandered beyond their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of Tokugawa legislation is furnished by its dictates in regard to the relations of the sexes. Although concubinage was tolerated in the Samurai class, for reasons relating to the continuance of the family-cult, Iyeyasu denounces the indulgence of the privilege for merely selfish reasons: "Silly and ignorant men neglect their true wives for the sake of a loved mistress, and thus disturb the most important relation.... Men so far sunk as this may always be known as Samurai without fidelity or sincerity." Celibacy, condemned ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... interested in the orphanage who give the children clothes and all their necessities, you know," Margaret reminded her brother. "Don't you remember when we talked this over before we said that what we'd do for them would be to give them some foolishnesses—just silly things that all children enjoy and that no one ever seems to think it worth while to give ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... table and took up our towels and napkins once more. "There's no mistakin' them signs, and you'd be a little fool if you wasn't to help him along. Men's all sort of bashful, some more 'n others, and it's a good thing to help along. I like the looks of that fellow—he'd be awful silly and soft ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he had put the phrase or word between inverted commas, and was anxious to disclaim any personal responsibility for it; as who should say "the 'hierarchy,' don't you know, as silly people call it." But then, if it was so absurd, why did he say the 'hierarchy'? A moment later he went on: "Her acting will give you as noble an inspiration as any masterpiece of art in the world, as—oh, I don't know—" and he began ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... she might lace or not just as she pleased. No one would look at her in any case since her kind, good-humoured, silly face was marked ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... African race. He writes in his journal for July 8 1858: "Motley called. I like him much. We agree wonderfully well about slavery, and it is not often that I meet any person with whom I agree on that subject. For I hate slavery from the bottom of my soul; and yet I am made sick by the cant and the silly mock reasons of the Abolitionists. The nigger driver and the negrophile are two odious things to me. I must make Lady Macbeth's reservation: 'Had he not resembled—,'"] The Governor must have looked back with regret to that period in the history of the colony ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... indeed! Well, I've lived longer than sixteen and a half years and I've noticed that it's the up-to-the-minute dame that gets away with it and holds onto it every time, just the same. And any woman silly enough to work the rag-bag game when her husband can afford seven yards of taffeta and a Butterick ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... noticed anything unusual. Poor Swallow was standing quite still, with his nostrils wide open, breathing hard and trembling all over. A good many horses were trembling, but the majority agreed with Jezebel: "It's only some silly nonsense on the part of those Human Beings ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... thing to delay the train was an elephant, who walked the track ahead of us and when the engine whistled only put on speed. Hypnotized by the tracks that reached in parallel lines to the horizon, with trunk outstretched, ears up, and silly tail held horizontally he set himself the impossible task of leaving us behind. The more we cheered, the more the engine screamed, the fiercer and less dignified became his efforts; he reached ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... were already white, before the winds and the waves and the humour of Indian chiefs and Spanish governors had decided whether they were to be unknown and useless martyrs or honoured heroes. Indeed, I believe this is the lesson: if it is for fame that men do brave actions, they are only silly fellows ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saw it all, going out without your hat and standing there like a silly fool cleaning that bit of paper. I wonder what the lightermen thought ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... that the incompetence of the Ministers and the disorders which have reigned during the past few weeks would culminate in their being abandoned without a word of warning being sent them. It is so silly to say that because men are soldiers and sailors they must be prepared to do their duty everywhere. There must have been times when even the Roman soldier at Pompeii ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... him about some silly men who killed the sparrows and other birds, and the next year their fruit and corn were eaten up by grubs. Even the leaves on the trees ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... heard it and he told daddy and daddy told me that to hear her sing made a man think he was in Heaven. So when Mrs. Lenox gave me this beautiful bird for my very own, of course, I named her Jenny Lind. Mrs. Lenox called her Cleopatra. Wasn't that a silly name for a bird? Mrs. Lenox must have liked it or she wouldn't have given it to anything. Isn't it the luckiest thing that everyone hasn't the same likes? Just suppose everyone had been like my father and my mother and all the little girls were named Mary Rose? I think it's the most ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... complaint through his own obstinacy. By way of honour to his memory, the record of his three years' wanderings has been made public. What is the expression of his gratitude to the English? One service he certainly rendered us: he disabused, if that were possible, the French of their silly and most ignorant notions as to our British government in India and Ceylon: he could do no otherwise, for he had himself been astounded at what he saw as compared with what he had been taught to expect. Thus far he does us some justice and therefore some service, urged to it by his bitter contempt ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... him several walking-sticks by this time. "Now suppose we were to swing round like this—I say, do move your chair. Like this. Confound it, I didn't notice that little table was in the way. Why do people put silly little vases of flowers on tables? Mop it up, will you? Of course FRENCH is here. You must keep your eye ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... but also unarmed. Ah! how many men earn sudden death and yet in the mystery of Providence escape it! I have often wondered at the persistency with which habit has fixed on women the exclusive reputation of gossipers. For I say unto you, brethren, that Woman, who with empty head and silly tongue toys with her neighbor's character unto its destruction, is not more full of gossip than her brother Man, who knows better and yet cannot stand the temptation of a sick man and a safe chance to chatter about matters with which he has no business. I am afraid like the idea of original sin ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... rapacities and their mutual lies, but the intensity of the spirit of party? what question, what interest, what idea, what need of mankind, is involved in any of these things? Their big, pompous armies, drawn up in great silly rows, their gold lace, their salaams, their hierarchies, seem a pastime for children; there's a sense of humour and of reality over here that laughs at all that. Yes, we are nearer the reality—we are nearer what they will ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... wants but peace and quiet: why hast thou disturbed her rest? How with silly dreams of freedom dost thou dare to fill thy breast? If thou rise against thy rulers, Hellas, thou must fight alone, E'en the bolster of a Sultan, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... reproaches because I had been late in coming to her; that she had put on her slippers in order that I might see her foot, but that she was no longer beautiful; that she could wish she were; that she had been at fifteen. She went here and there, silly with love, rosy with joy; and she did not know what to imagine, what to say or do, in order to give herself and all that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to the pavilion] Of course not. Thats why one loves her for doing it. Look here: chuck away your silly week-end novel, and talk to a chap. After a week in that filthy office my brain is simply blue-mouldy. Lets argue about something intellectual. [He throws himself into the wicker chair ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... was not long in presenting itself. They came one day to the establishment, and told the people that the "man of medicine" had come for the purpose of performing some extraordinary feat that would astonish them all. The silly creatures believed the story, and went to the borders of the lake, where they observed the sorcerer showing off a variety of antics very much to their amusement. The conspirators, seeing this part of the stratagem succeed, rushed into the house, and immediately despatched Mr. Corrigal and ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... to share the desires she excited, she was really incapable of resisting an attack conducted with skill and ardour, and if the Duc de Vitry had not been so madly in love, which is the same as saying that he was hopelessly blind, silly, and dense to everything around him, he might have found a score of opportunities to overcome her resistance. We have already seen that she was so straitened in money matters that she had been driven to try to sell her jewels that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... denied that Pepita Ximenez is possessed of discretion. No silly jest, no impertinent question in regard to my vocation, and, above all, in regard to my approaching ordination, has crossed her lips. She conversed with me on matters relating to the village, about ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... supposing a thing that couldn't be!" said John's neighbour. "Any man with half an eye in his head could have seen who she was. I wish I'd gone to the 'Lhambra. This is a damn silly play, this!" ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... will forget her sorrow when she sees so many things that are quite new to her. I'm afraid she'll think Ellen, and us boys, very silly, ignorant creatures, compared to her, who has seen so much of the world: upon my word, we must be ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... Thenardier's coarse voice recalled her to reality: "What, you silly jade! you have not gone? Wait! I'll give it to you! I want to know what you are doing there! Get ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... William, which had reached Paris a day or two after he himself quitted that capital for the camp. His letter, dated at Gera, is written in the most elaborate style of insult. The King of Prussia (said he) had sent him a silly pamphlet of twenty pages, in very bad French—such a pamphlet as the English ministry were in the habit of commanding their hireling scribblers to put forth—but he acquitted the King of having read this performance. ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... a very good grace indeed; but that a piece of paper simply, which could neither speak, hear, nor understand, should impart such information, was a source of astonishment and wonder to Obie and his train, who testified their emotion in no other manner than by looks of silly amazement, and repeated ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... method that must in some cases still be called in to the help of man, is death. In the new vision death is no inexplicable horror, no pointless terminal terror to the miseries of life, it is the end of all the pain of life, the end of the bitterness of failure, the merciful obliteration of weak and silly ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... cried the old lady, at the top of her voice, "your Monsieur Boullard was a madman, and a very silly madman at best; for who, allow me to ask you, ever heard of a human tee-totum? The thing is absurd. Madame Joyeuse was a more sensible person, as you know. She had a crotchet, but it was instinct with common sense, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of which are not resting on the truth, I would rather were not accompanied with prayer. Learning is a great thing, for it teaches us who know so little, and enlightens us; so when we have come to the knowledge of the truths contained in the holy writings, we do what we ought to do. From silly devotions, God ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... very silly, and does not indicate much self-esteem, but there is a deep meaning in it after all. A connection with Austria has always been disastrous to France. Louis XVI. died of his marriage with Marie Antoinette, and ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... "Because it is a silly thing, and I have always regretted allowing the man to publish it. He certainly called upon me and asked me a lot of questions, after which he went away and wrote that article. Ever since then I have felt like a conceited ass, who tried to make himself out more ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... scornful. Then she giggled. "I think a chaperon would look very silly tagging along behind on a camel.... Besides we've gone so far already. You took the liberty of rescuing me, you know, and then the sand storm and this breakfast a ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... were as sly and kept themselves as unobserved as possible. Four Yarmouth men—old sea-dogs, perhaps, who loved their pipe—were, in 1687, fined four shillings each for smoking tobacco around the end of the meeting-house. Silly, ostrich-brained Yarmouth men! to fancy to escape detection by hiding around the corner of the church; and to think that the tithingman had no nose when he was so Argus-eyed. Some few of the ministers used the "tobacco ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... away there in the Eastern pastures and deserts; and how he knows every one, though to a stranger's eye they are so like each other; and how even the dumb instincts and the narrow intelligence of the silly sheep recognise the shepherd, and will not be deceived by shepherd's garments worn to deceive, and will not follow the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... These silly outbursts never reach me and they never can; and they, therefore, utterly fail, and always will fail, of their aim; yet, my dear friend, there is nevertheless a serious side to such folly. For it shows the need of education, education, education. The religious editor ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... manuscript than I did the one that night. And there the phantom (I use the word out of deference to a public prejudice on this subject) most persistently remained until my task was finished, and, closing the portfolio, I abruptly rose. Did I see anything? That is a silly and ignorant question. Could I see the wind which had now risen stronger, and drove a few cloud-scuds across the sky, filling the night, somehow, with a longing that was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Coridon would kiss her then; She said, Maids must kiss no men Till they did for good and all; Then she made the shepherd call All the heavens to witness truth Never loved a truer youth. Thus with many a pretty oath, Yea and nay, and faith and troth, Such as silly shepherds use When they will not Love abuse, Love, which had been long deluded, Was with kisses sweet concluded; And Phillida, with garlands gay, Was made ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... there was dishes of sparklin' jelly things on the counter, that the girl said warn't much use—gone in no time; they were just meant to dress up the box. I called 'em brainless candies—just silly an' expensive, an' if you look around you'll find women can match 'em. An' along with 'em you can put the candied violets an' sugared rose leaves that only make a man out of pocket an' ain't a ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... his apprehended foolishness. Literature will have failed humanity if it is so blinded by the monstrous agony in Flanders as to miss the essential triviality at the head of the present war. Not the slaughter of ten million men can make the quality of the German Kaiser other than theatrical and silly. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... you know, are expected to go to the sea-shore or the Springs; and my sister and her two eldest daughters are so silly, as to fear that they will lose caste, if it is known that they could not go this ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... this is a nice 'ospitable way to treat a guest and a relation. 'Ere I am taken by a lot of silly children for a burglar. I, your own nephew, awnt, who 'ad come down stairs on the h'innocent h'errand of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... sound terribly silly to you," she said quietly. "I wonder if the Florida moon affects ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... friends departed. But yet of this one error hath there grown up such a harvest of these mass-mongers, the masses being sold abroad commonly in every corner, the temples of God became shops to get money: and silly souls were persuaded that nothing was more necessary to be bought. Indeed, there was nothing more gainful ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... little more ingenuity about choosing babies' names. She gets the last names out of the telephone book—you'll find Abbott on the first page—and she picks the Christian names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I've always hated it; but I rather like Judy. It's such a silly name. It belongs to the kind of girl I'm not—a sweet little blue-eyed thing, petted and spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through life without any cares. Wouldn't it be nice to be like that? Whatever faults I may have, ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... "Oh, you silly! You are building the same house every time, and taking it down again. How can you be so baby as to call that ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... sullener grew— The sun was too hot—the skies were too blue, The grass, he was certain, was damp where he lay, All things had conspired to annoy him that day, He could bear neither sunshine, the mirth that he heard, The hum of the bees, nor the chirp of a bird. How silly they seemed—it made him so cross— The pleasures of life were nothing but dross, So he hastened away in a fit of despair; All things were against him and "nothing was fair." And now, little people, does any one know A child who is cross, and always acts so? Who cries with a pout—"I say I shan't ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... systems, and when you do not hesitate, zealously and earnestly, to recommend such measures. Be assured, then, that posterity will not regard the abolitionists as Christians, philanthropists, or virtuous citizens. It will, I have no doubt, look upon the mass of the party as silly enthusiasts, led away by designing characters, as is the case with all parties that break from the great, acknowledged ties which bind civilized man in fellowship. The leaders themselves will be regarded as mere ambitious men; not taking rank with those whose ambition ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... enjoyed a favorable press and had a habit of saying things that looked silly, three years later, in print. The Senator was the new spokesman for ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
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