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More "Stupid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a respectable custom; but a mighty stupid one. A fellow oughtn't to be labelled like one of a class. Might as well catalogue children, and done with it, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and so on through the list of Thayers. Then, when he came to years of discretion, he could pick for himself. Do you suppose ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... pretend to assert, that this is the condition in which one half of the human race should be encouraged to remain with listless inactivity and stupid acquiescence? Kind instructors! what were we created for? To remain, it may be said, innocent; they mean in a state of childhood. We might as well never have been born, unless it were necessary that we should be created to enable man ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... sounds into his respirator. Rip had him, and he knew it. "He thought even a stupid Planeteer had sense enough to obey radiation safety ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... sparkling glance, and wave of the hand, as she cantered off, contrasting with his slow bend, and immobility of feature, she could not help saying that Meta's life certainly was not too charming, with her fanciful, valetudinarian father, and that stupid, idealess brother. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... construction of Cargo Hold One. For one thing, it was huge. For another, it was heavily insulated. For a third, it was built like a tank for holding liquids. All very well and good; possibly someone wanted to carry a cargo of cold lemonade or iced tea. That would be pretty stupid, maybe, but it ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... shot silk, dear." Then she woke with a start, sorry to lose the dream; specially annoyed that she had not heard what the carman—outside with her father—had begun to say about the thing Phoebe was speaking of. She forgot what that was, and it was very stupid ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... public assemblage, and rivet all their minds-can make a jury cry quicker than any other man-can clear the worst criminal that ever committed crime-and he's good-hearted too-can draw the most astonishing comparisons to confound the minds of stupid jurors, and make them believe the d—dest nonsense that ever man invented. Yes, sir-when he makes a speech, everybody goes to hear him, for he says what he pleases, and old Judge Withers, whose will is as arbitrary as Julius Caesar's, and has got the obstinacy of Tom Boyce's mule, dar'n't attempt ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... composition which has retorted beforehand upon its actual or possible detractors. In the poem itself, and in the prefatory matter adjoined to it, Shelley takes critics very severely to task: but criticism has its discerning and temperate, as well as its 'stupid ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... between such neighbouring states as Connecticut and Massachusetts, both of them thoroughly English and Puritan, and in all their social conditions almost exactly alike, it used often to be said that there was no love lost. These unspeakably stupid and contemptible local antipathies are inherited by civilized men from that far-off time when the clan system prevailed over the face of the earth, and the hand of every clan was raised against its neighbours. They are pale and evanescent survivals from the universal primitive ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... English. Their language is so easy that most of the foreigners acquire it readily. You know how stupid I am about languages, yet I have already picked up the names of most common things. There are only twelve letters, but some of these are made to do double duty, as K is also T, and L is also R. The most northern ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... wind-thrills; In the startled wild beasts that bore oft, each with eye sidling still Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill {330} That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with awe: E'en the serpent that slid away silent—he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers: And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low, With their obstinate, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Rosamonde. They were to have married, but Rosamonde died too soon. When she was dying, she gave him a curl of the beautiful brown hair that he used to kiss. "Au revoir, dear love," she whispered; "it will be very stupid in Heaven until you come. Remember that I am waiting for you and be faithful. If your love for me fades, you will see that curl ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the President called a hasty meeting of his Cabinet. And such a Cabinet! I wish you could have seen them, Louis, with me in the centre playing on them like an advocate before a jury. They were the most dreadful men I ever met, bourgeois and stupid and ugly to a degree. Two of them were commission-merchants, and one of them is old Dr. Gustavanni, who kept the chemist's shop in the Piazza Royale. They were quite silly with fear, and they begged me to tell them how they could avert ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... of his seeking; but he had formed a plan to carry off the Lady Eveline himself, for he was a wild rover, this same Randal; and so he came disguised as a merchant of falcons, and trained out my old stupid Raoul, and the Lady Eveline, and all of us, as if to have an hour's mirth in hawking at the heron. But he had a band of Welsh kites in readiness to pounce upon us; and but for the sudden making in of Damian to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... its own philosophy, manners and ideals, all of them cold, stiff and without spontaneity. It was an over-perfect machine which went like clockwork. The world was judged with a narrow and somewhat stupid self-confidence. The ideal dwelt in the word of Confucian writings, divorced from their true meaning, and so badly interpreted that they ceased to be understood aright. The meticulous, bureaucratic and hieratic administration of the Tartars was a perfect system of government. The machine was ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... had sat in that place now for three years neither scorched by the short hours of sunlight, nor chilled by winter's frost and snow. The wild long-haired sheep of the mountain came down to drink at noon, and timidly gazed with their stupid eyes at the immovable figure; and at evening the long-bodied, fierce-eyed wolves would steal stealthily among the rocks and come and snuff the ground about his feet, presently raising their pointed heads with a long howl of fear, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... grave complaints made about the light-hearted way in which Jerry handled his cases, and his practice fell off. He was conversing with a very stupid judge, lately elevated to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... "Io non voglio perdere gli uomini perle femminelle."[38] If the Black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the White party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "were for themselves"; and whoever it may be who is singled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... consultations and countless reports, Marlanx removed his headquarters to the Tower. He had fondly hoped to be in the Castle long before this. His rage and disappointment over the stupid miscarriage of plans left no room for conjecture as to the actual state of his feelings. For hours he had raved like a madman. Every soldier who fell into his hands was shot down ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... stupid by drinking, or incapable of performing duty by illness; as also a ship when crank, and birds ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... which we scatter sentences of imprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank bed, and flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as nothing compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or else a virtue to be embraced as St Francis embraced it. If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let him be poor. If he is ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... regulating intercourse during pregnancy also reacts injuriously upon the mental capacity of the child, tending to give it a stupid, animalized look; and, there is also good reason to believe, aids in ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... at least slightly, both Mills and Blunt. To me he gave a stare of stupid surprise. He addressed ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... aside ... "Lysia! ... Lysia! ..." he shouted noisily,—then, receiving no answer, he flung himself down on the vacant couch of roses, and gathering up a handful of the crumpled flowers, kissed them passionately,—"The witch has flown!" he said, laughing again that mirthless, stupid laugh as he spoke—"She doth love to tantalize me thus! ... Tell me! what dost thou think of her? Is she not a peerless moon of womanhood? ... doth she not eclipse all known or imaginable beauty? ... Aye! ... and I will tell thee a secret,—she is mine!—mine from the dark tresses ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... had ever guessed all this, or had dreamed of accusing Margaret of romance. No one capable of testing her character had known her. In latter days she had now and again dined in Gower Street, but her sister-in-law, Mrs Tom, had declared her to be a silent, stupid old maid. As a silent, stupid old maid, the Mackenzies of Rubb and Mackenzie were disposed to regard her. But how should they treat this stupid old maid of an aunt, if it should now turn out that all the wealth of the family ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... "'Ah, you stupid thief!' says she, 'haven't I illigant nails o' my own?' and with that she gave him a dab of her claw, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... "I don't know what is the matter with my brain," she said in relieved contempt of her own confusion of mind. "Of course, it is ever so much easier. What a stupid I am not to see ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... in a few months no doubt we shall hear of little Miss H—— singing away as a prodigy, and in a few years the voice, health, and strength will all be gone, and probably the poor little life itself have been worn out of its fragile case. Stupid barbarian! After rehearsal drove to Bannisters.... In the evening, at the theater, the play was "The Provoked Husband." The house was very full; I played fairly well. I was rather tired, and Lady Townley's bones ached, for I had been taking a ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... my young friend," said Myerst. "Have your own stupid way. But I said I'd tell you the plain truth. Well, the plain truth is that I know no more of the absolute murder of your father than I know of what is going on in Timbuctoo at this moment! I do not know who killed John Maitland. ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... you mustn't go to sleep out here; it isn't quite heaven yet, and you will take cold. Honestly, girls, isn't it a sort of wonderment to you how the people up there can employ their time? In spite of me I cannot help feeling that it must be rather stupid; think of never being able to lie down and take ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... of your principles," she went on, almost angrily, "your stupid, canonical and dry-as-dust little principles, you've let your ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... laughing, "my efforts failed. I used even strategy. Held out the temptation of your delightful Creole dishes and all that. Nothing was of any avail. They were all business and I had to be all business too, the whole day long. It was horribly stupid." ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... clean dumb waiter. This unlimited supply of untrained savages, (for that is what they really are) is anything but a luxury to me. Their ignorance, dirt, and stupidity seem to me as intolerable as the unjust laws which condemn them to be ignorant, filthy, and stupid. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... terrors for me even in mixed company. But the joke was not the really serious thing about The Foundations, a play that starts (some years hence) with a mob of starving people yelling outside the house—dear, stupid, kindly Lord William Dromondy's house. Lord William was a god of an infantry captain in the great War, and his four footmen—particularly James, the first of them—though revolutionaries at heart, are ready ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... my stupid fumble very nicely, laughing merrily while saying, "If you like mountains and moonlight, Mr. Gordon, and don't mind the lack of a chaperon, get a stool for yourself, too." What was more, she offered me half of the lap-robe when ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... animals of the emigrant train could be seen rearing and plunging, while the men stood too appalled to do anything except gaze in stupid ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... stern eyes were turned another way, yet she felt that they had recognized her; but it passed on, without seeming to notice her. "Uncle Stillinghast!" thought May, while her little fluttering heart felt an icy chill pass over it; "what will Uncle Stillinghast think? Oh, how stupid I was, not to wait until they all got by, then look for the place myself. Oh dear, dear! I hope he ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... you a jolly good hiding one day. But you know I can't, you dear old thing. I'm writing this in the orchard, where the H.Q. horses live, and Jezebel is standing sleepily in the shade of her tree. She looks intensely stupid. She occasionally tries to flick away a fly with her short tail. Occasionally she sighs deeply, with that blubbery, spluttery noise that all horses make when ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... in yellow: I took her in to dinner, and I remember she loosened my clams for me so I could get them. But the only real person at the table was a girl across in white, a sublimated young woman who was as brilliant as I was stupid, who never by any chance looked directly at me, and who appeared and disappeared across the candles and orchids in a ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... conviction, though I am sure that adequate reasons can be given. Here I must be content to state this ultimate conviction as a 'theological superstition', or, as I should prefer to put it with a little more certainty, as a matter of faith. The alternative is to treat the world as a stupid, and possibly ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... fancy yourselves men of pleasure; you fancy yourselves men of fashion; you fancy yourselves men of taste; in fancy, in taste, in opinion, in philosophy, the newspaper legislates for you; it is there you get your jokes and your thoughts, and your facts and your wisdom—poor Pall Mall dullards. Stupid slaves of the press, on that ground which you at present occupy, there were men of wit and pleasure and fashion, some five-and-twenty ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the beginning, and when the physician is called the condition is dangerous. Usually the patient complains but little. There is a slight headache, low fever, no heat in the head, patient is pale most of the time, has little appetite, vomits occasionally and desires to sleep. He is nervous, stupid and lies on his side curled up with eyes away from the light. This disease appears mostly in delicate children, who are poor eaters and fond of books; usually in those inheriting poor constitutions. The mortality is very high. Parents who have thin, pale sallow children with dainty appetites, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Silas Murford, the custom-house clerk—a fat, stupid-looking old fellow whose chin rested on his shirt-front and whose middle rested on his knees, the whole of him, when seated, filling Tim's biggest chair. Tim prized this volume most, for when Silas began to talk, the sheepish look would fade ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... order to ascertain at some future time whether my figures were correct or not. When I obtained the invoices I could tell whether I had made a failure or not in the act of taking a trial balance. I was not satisfied that I was so utterly stupid as my employer made me ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... turned up, His Excellency sat in the car and reflected as he usually did at this time on the things that had happened during the day. The correspondent came to his mind and the man's stupid question, "When does Your Excellency hope for peace?" Hope? Was it credible that a man who must have some standing in his profession, else he never would have received a letter of recommendation from headquarters, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... free-thinker, a fine talker once, What turns him now a stupid silent dunce? Some god, or spirit he has lately found; Or chanced to ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... flowers; she continually visualized two figures near together, talking quietly, earnestly, confidentially. Why had she allowed Jennings to lead her astray? She might have been in that spacious room, too, if she had not been stupid. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... rich slaveholder, lived near Clarksville, Pike co., Missouri, some years since. He whipped his slave Billy, a boy fourteen years old, till he was sick and stupid; he then sent him home. Then, for his stupidity, whipped him again, and fractured his skull with an axe-helve. He buried him away in the woods; dark words were whispered, and the body was disinterred. A ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... time when I saw him coming between his two satellites. There was a faun in him—a northern faun, of course, a wild man of the woods, unrestrained, but innocent, leading two bears, one under each arm! Yes, something of that kind. Not a troll, you understand, for they are stupid and malignant." ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... was killed," he corrected. "'Murder' is a stupid, vulgar word. Yes, my dear, you are his heiress. He was your uncle, and he left you something over six million dollars. That is to say he left us ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... worn with strife, tired of stupid misunderstanding, persecution and unkind fate, came to him. And there they lived in common. The necessity of discipline and order naturally presented itself, so they made rules that governed conduct. The day was divided up into periods ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... because in many cases the task of providing for helpless children and an idle, lazy, husband, is imposed on the patient wife and mother; and, with this sudden elevation to citizenship, which the mass of stupid, ignorant negroes look upon as entitling them to great honor, I regard the future state of the negro woman, without the ballot in her hand, as deplorable. And what is said of the ignorant black man can as truthfully be said of the ignorant white man; they all regard woman ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the dance at Uncle Roger's, she wanted to go; she had been stupid enough, she said, not to think of asking anyone to take her. It was too ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... will agree with me, that it was not because the people of Salem Village were more ignorant, stupid, or weak-minded than the people of other places, that the delusion made its appearance or held its sway among them. This is a vital point to the just consideration of the subject. I do not mean justice to them so much as to ourselves and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... other matters. You reproach me very justly for my stupid oversight; I forgot to tell you which name appeared to me best for your book; the fact is, I flew off into ecstasies about the work itself, and gave you, I believe, a tirade about the "Tempest" instead of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the orientals regard us with a contempt in comparison with which our contempt for them is feeble. Our bloodiness, our newness, our lack of reverence, our land-greed, our break-neck speed and lack of appreciation of leisure make Vandals of us. On the other hand, we are very stupid about recognizing the intelligence of orientals. We have been accustomed to think that there is a great gulf between ourselves and other races; and this persists in an undefinable way after scores of Japanese have taken high rank in our schools, and after ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... chance," said he, "and the stone was well aimed, but it is not the first partridge that I have killed in this way. They are so stupid you may even run them down at times; I hope to get another before the day is over. Well, there is no fear of starving to-day, at all events," he added, as he inspected the contents of his cousin's hat; "twelve nice fresh eggs, a bird, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... past believing. It was altogether beyond him. He lay, with his eyes glued to the point round which they had gone, stupid with the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... after having lost my sails, I was accused of having the intention to give India to that country. Afterwards their Highnesses knew to the contrary. Although I know but little, I cannot conceive that any one would suppose me so stupid as not to know that though India might belong to me, yet I could not keep it without ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... few days' experience of life, the boy had already learned one great truth: that every man is exactly what he looks. The face always reveals or betrays. And in this face, wild with the wildness of storms and skies, there was nothing but the stupid innocence of one ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... "Meanwhile the stupid old hippo, who usually wanted nothing more than his grub and his bath, lumbered around looking for further trouble. He found it; he interfered between the wild asses and the zebras, and soon the whole bunch, both sides, were bombarding him with their hind feet. He squealed and groaned ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... attach too great significance to appearances. The owl, a very stupid bird, is noted for its ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... man over on the dunes compared to his, should he powerfully press them? What if Captain Billy had given his life to the doing of a duty belonging to another? The Tempter now took on a virtuous, unselfish guise. Think what the girl's life might be! Could any true love, even such stupid love as Billy might bear her, stand in the way? No; Billy would be the first to relinquish ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... something else. Public receptions are more democratic than stupid state dinners—are more in keeping with the spirit of the institutions of our country, as you would say if called upon to make a stump speech. There are a great many strangers in the city, foreigners and others, whom we can entertain at our receptions, ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... change color. He is too self-poised; besides, he is too honorable. But he saw ME. He rose immediately and came to speak to me. He shook hands. He looked at my face under my pink-lined hat. He saw it as it was; but bless him! that stupid wife of his holds him fast with his own honor. Ned Temple is a good man. Sometimes I wonder if it would not have been better if he, instead of Lyman—Well, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... had no desire to hear more. She had winced: the woman had been touched to smarting in the girl: enough. She attempted the subject once, but faintly, and his careless parrying threw her out. Clara could have bitten her tongue for that reiterated stupid slip on the name of Whitford; and because she was innocent at heart she persisted in asking herself how she could be guilty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... into a chair and was staring at Ranson with the stupid, wondering gaze of a dumb animal in pain. During the moments in which the two men eyed each other Ranson's smile disappeared. Cahill raised himself slowly as though ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... stared at the captain, his hand squeezing and unsqueezing on the whiskey bottle. "A man who can't read his own instruments?" The doctor laughed. "Perhaps you too have failed to see the point? Like that stupid general who sits out there waiting for the ...
— Test Rocket! • Jack Douglas
... Patsy mannie," cried his father quickly, coming from behind the crowd where he had been standing dazed and stupid. "Stand back there! Let me have ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... legislation they did not want, was to buy the necessary votes. Perhaps one-third of the members of the Legislature, according to Roosevelt's estimate, were purchasable. Others were timid. Others again were either stupid or honestly so convinced of the importance of "business" to the general welfare that they were blind to corporate faults. But Theodore Roosevelt was neither purchasable, nor timid, nor unable to distinguish between the legitimate ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... you feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its exasperating demand of time from the mind—time—life! Live! We only live in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive complacencies—or irritations. We have to take the air or else our thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. A thousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comes drowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a man's day is his own—even at the best! And then come those false friends, those Thug helpers, the alkaloids ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... not be called a clever dog stealer, because he had no notion of how to preserve that which he stole. Putting aside their brutality, his methods were incredibly stupid; but when, five minutes later, he lay listening in his bed, the only reflection that his stupid mind brought him was that he had succeeded admirably. No further sound came from the walled-in yard; and it appeared ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... The same Fairy, who had assisted at the birth of little Riquet with the Tuft, was here also; and, to moderate the Queen's gladness, she declared, that this little Princess should have no wit at all, but be as stupid as she was pretty. This mortified the Queen extreamly, but some moments afterwards she had far greater sorrow; for, the second daughter she was delivered of, ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... spirit of revolt pervaded the whole nation. Men began to investigate the rights of the subject, and to scrutinize the prerogative of kings. "The Netherlanders were not so stupid," many were heard to say, with very little attempt at secrecy, "as not to know right well what was due from the subject to the sovereign, and from the king to the subject; and that, perhaps, means would yet be found ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... an elderly woman, with grave, set features, an expression of sense and firmness, but a keen dark eye that raised question of her temper. Miss Lovina Perkins was her style, being half-aunt to the unpleasant-colored baby she now tended, rolled up in a flannel shawl, and permitted to be stupid undisturbedly, since its ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Rainham penitently; "I had a stupid sort of idea that you were mixed up in the business somehow. I thought so even before I saw the sketch, because I couldn't understand whom else she could have been looking for at the dock. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... think it was the limit! As if God cared anything about people of that sort! I think that man ought to be arrested, putting notions into poor people's heads! It's just such talk as that that makes riots and things. My father says so! Getting common, stupid people all worked up about things they can't understand. ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... that a man who one moment could be so light, the next could be so dull. Soon you began to be irritated. Then you were bored. When you reached the end—if you ever reached the end—you wondered if the man was mad, or if he was merely stupid. But he was neither mad nor stupid. He was a genius, who, so far, declined to allow himself to be managed. When he became manageable, he would cease to be a genius—in the sense in which the word is here being used. Then, if he wrote at all, he would write what the plainest ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... but though a friend is allowed to be capable of affording us a far greater happiness than any or all of these, yet how few are solicitous to procure themselves a friend, or, when they have, to secure his friendship? Nay, some men are so stupid as to prefer their very slaves to their friends. How else can we account for their want of concern about the latter when either in distress or sickness, and at the same time their extreme anxiety for the recovery ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... the farmer, to prosecute his business unmolested; shielded by the same laws which protect them from the attacks of malicious libellers out of the theatre, and the insults of capricious Ignorance or stupid Malevolence within. "Reproof," says Dr. Johnson, "should not exhaust its power upon petty failings;" and "the care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. On this principle the editors will unalterably act. And, since they have ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... "bad luck" or in contempt, "a poor ignorant creature." The Lowland Scotch has donsie, "unfortunate, stupid."—Notes and Queries, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... require in the Person I am to teach, is, that he be of a docible Wit, and not too young of age; than that the Organs of Speech be rightly constituted in him; for stupid Persons are capable of no Teaching, whose Age is yet too tender; nor do they mind enough, nor know how Teaching will be for their Use and Benefit; but those whose Organs of Speech are altogether unfit, ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... much loose talk of our immunity from immediate and direct invasion from across the seas. Obviously, as long as the British Navy retains its power, no such danger exists. Even if there were no British Navy, it is not probable that any enemy would be stupid enough to attack us by landing troops in the United States from across thousands of miles of ocean, until it had acquired strategic bases from which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... consisted of fifteen cows, and they expected to remain in that desolate country two or three months, making cheese and butter. Our little saeterjenta had the heart of a poet, although her brother seemed stupid, and even liberal presents of money did not wake him up or make him interesting. I do not suppose that this child had ever been twenty miles from the humble cabin in which she was born, but the wide, wide world had been opened to her through the books she had studied at school. She could talk a little ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... stronger than most foreign critics realize. But whether it be strong or weak, one thing is certain: a power which has been supreme for two centuries will not surrender without a struggle. The Prussian Junkers may be politically stupid, but they have not lost the fighting spirit, and they will not give way to the 'mob.' Before Prussian reaction capitulates, it will play its last card and seek salvation in ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... advanced Roumanians of the plain also apply this term to their countrymen who live among the Roumanian mountains or, in Serbia, amid the heights of Po[vz]arevac and Kraina. It signifies a stupid fellow, one from ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... to use words. They're such poor things when it comes to telling about Him. He is so much more than anything that can be said about Him. His will is so wise and thoughtful and far-reaching and loving. Strange how stupid you have been in insisting so strenuously and blindly on having your own way. His plan, His thought about everything concerning you, is so superb. And He asks me to be His follower. What joy! What if the way be a bit rough; it's following ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... he had always remembered her words to him as they stood face to face in the chilly whiteness of an English bridal chamber in midwinter! "It's no use, dear, I don't want any of this sort of thing. It seems to me coarse and stupid, and I don't want the bother of a dozen babies. I married because I wanted the position of a married woman, and a nice presentable man to go about with in society. Besides, things were not satisfactory at home, and I wanted a man to keep me, and all that. But I don't see why ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... fancied this to be queerly assumed in order to inform me that he was not unaccustomed to services such as I rendered him. There was that about him. I mean to say, when he sharply rebuked me for clumsiness or cried out "Stupid!" it had a perfunctory languor, as if meant to show me he could address a servant in what he believed to be the grand manner. In this, to be sure, he was so oddly wrong that the pathos of it quite drowned what I might otherwise have felt ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... gift manifested itself in Hazlitt precociously in the study of human nature. He characterized some of his schoolmates disdainfully as "fit only for fighting like stupid dogs and cats," and at the age of twelve, while on a visit, he communicated to his father a caustic sketch of some English ladies who "require an Horace or a Shakespeare to describe them," and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... throw, and then no more until the contest," Jack announced placatingly, when he spied a lone bull standing just before a thicket of chaparral and staring at them with stupid resentment that his siesta had been disturbed. "A kiss for luck, ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... their own country, but appear to have been no very worthy accession to the University of Glasgow. We know of no word of complaint against them from Smith, but they were a sore trial both to Hutcheson and to Reid. Reid says he always felt in lecturing to those "stupid Irish teagues" as St. Anthony must have felt when he preached to the fishes,[46] and Hutcheson writes a friend in the north of Ireland that his Irish students were far above taking any interest in their work, and that although he had "five or six young gentlemen from Edinburgh, men of ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... ordered a halt, and set myself to harangue them for such unsoldierly conduct. But I might as well have talked to a troop of drunken Yahoos. For, some of them grinned in my face like monkeys; others looked as stupid as asses; while the greater part chattered like magpies; each boasted what a clever fellow he was, and what mighty things he could do, yet reeling all the time, and scarcely able to sit his horse. Indeed our guide, a fat ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... "It is very stupid to argue with him. Surely he cannot expect to find my views changing on account of the duration of ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... There is no argument which could more clearly demonstrate the terror of those who make use of it than this. The burlaki {260} drag their bark against the current. There cannot be found a burlak so stupid that he will refuse to pull away at his towing-rope because he alone is not able to drag the bark against the current. He who, in addition to his rights to an animal life, to eat and sleep, recognizes any sort of human ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... old boy," I said—I don't often use the language of affection—"did you never hear that all that stupid story was cleared up; that everyone knows you ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... was surprised to note that von Schoenvorts often permitted Benson to take command; but I reconciled this by the fact that Benson appeared to know more of the duties of a submarine commander than did any of the Stupid Germans. ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wringing forth a tear; but I did not think it was decreed that at my age I should really make love to a Russian serf, however charming. So off they went to the railway station, leaving me in a very dull, stupid, melancholy mood. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... the Committee of Public Safety appeared again before the magistrate, they found themselves treated with the greatest possible courtesy—in fact, rather as envoys and ambassadors than prisoners. In short, the magistrate had received his orders; and with no more to do than might come of a long stupid speech, which might have been written by Dickens in mockery, he discharged the prisoners, who went back to their meeting-place and at once began a due sitting. It was high time. For this third day the mass was fermenting indeed. There was, of course, a vast number ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... did not know the countersign, and I had to tell him so. The private soldier is sometimes zealous and often stupid, and occasionally both; and in the pause that followed my answer I heard the click of his rifle. In that second of time I remembered a story which I had heard the day before of a sentry at Modder, who, when the guard came up in the dark to relieve him, made the usual ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... little crowd of inquisitive idlers and infants that remained obstinately on the pavement hoping against hope that the afternoon's marvellous series of social phenomena was not over. She scorned the slatternly, stupid little crowd for its lack of manners. Yet she ought to have known, and she did know as well as any one, that though in Bursley itself people will pretend out of politeness that nothing unusual is afoot when ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... his art and his judgment required, for the following reason: the houses of the Uberti, Ghibellines and rebels against the people of Florence, had been pulled down and thrown to the ground, and a square had been made on the site, and the stupid obstinacy of certain men prevailed so greatly that Arnolfo could not bring it about, through whatsoever arguments he might urge thereunto, that it should be granted to him to put the Palace on a ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... Whispering his "Ave Mary," as he heard The pealing vesper-bell. But still the knight, Unmindful of the sacred hour announced, Disdainful or unconscious, held his course. "Would that I also, like yon stupid wight, Could kneel and hail the Virgin and believe!" He murmured bitterly beneath his breath. "Were I a pagan, riding to contend For the Olympic wreath, O with what zeal, What fire of inspiration, would I sing The praises of the gods! How may my lyre Glorify these whose very life I ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... whom see Philo Judus. We are told in one place a few lines further on that the merman is of humankind; and in another that he is a kind of fish (Night dccccxlv). This belief in mermen, possible originating with the caricatures of the human face in the intelligent seal and stupid manatee, is universal. Al-Kazwini declares that a waterman with a tail was dried and exhibited, and that in Syria one of them was married to a woman and had by her a son "who understood the languages of both ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... are very big and blubbering, show a person to be credulous, foolish, dull and stupid, and apt to be enticed to anything. Lips of a different size denote a person to be discreet, secret in all things, judicious and of a good wit, but somewhat hasty. To have lips, well coloured and more thin than thick, shows a person to be good-humoured in all things ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... He was a stupid, heavy, good-natured Englishman. He stuttered a little, and had a peculiar habit of wedging the monosyllable "why" into his conversation at times when it served no other purpose than to fill up the pauses caused by his stuttering; but this ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... of purpose to crystallize her, she cannot absorb even the gravest of warnings; not from unwillingness or stupid obstinacy, but from sheer inability to grasp any novelty. That her beloved master and mistress—either or both—should not have the best of everything and plenty of it is, at this advanced stage in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... it was to say pleasant things. It was easy—too fatally easy. When I discovered how popular this made me I kept on. I continued for myself what I had really begun for others. Insensibly I acquired skill. I was not stupid. I had rather a gift for character—and could say exactly the thing to each one to flatter them the most. I found that I took pleasure in the exercise of such cleverness. There was a feeling of power in it—playing with the foibles and weaknesses of men and women. I did not see that I was often ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... individuals to a town throughout the North who think much as the present speaker does about him and his enterprise. I do not hesitate to say that they are an important and growing party. We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in. Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... "No;—but Sicily is stupid generally. It's all ridiculous, Philip. Except for the name of the thing, one can get just as good nearer home. I could get better sport at Appledore last summer, than in any place I've been ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... anything in particular, unless it was noted for Squire Walker, as Mount Vernon was noted for Washington, and Monticello for Jefferson. No doubt the squire thought he was as great a man as either of these, and that the world was strangely stupid because it did not find out how great a man he really was. It was his misfortune that he was born in the midst of stirring times, when great energy, great genius, and the most determined patriotism are ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... which I was to take a path that would lead me to a group of trees, where I should find the Headquarters of the 16th Battalion. When I got to the quarry I found many roads there, and whether it was that the information I had received was incorrect, or that I was more than usually stupid, I do not know. I wandered up and down for a long time, tripping over bits of wire and slipping into holes, before I was able to get to the top of the hill and look over in the direction of the German lines. At last I found a track which had evidently been used by men going up to the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... before the "coup d'etat" pronounced Bonaparte the "Guardian of Order" and Thiers and Berryer "Anarchists," and as early as December 27, 1851, after Bonaparte had silenced those very Anarchists, cries out about the treason committed by "the ignorant, untrained and stupid proletaires against the skill, knowledge, discipline, mental influence, intellectual resources an moral weight of the middle and upper ranks." The stupid, ignorant and contemptible mass was none other than ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... "Stupid!" "Silly creature!" "The girl's a blockhead!" "Where's her eyes, I wonder?" shouted the carpenters, after the manner of carmen and stage drivers, when you narrowly escape being run over by their carelessness, at ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... me any more, I flatly forbid it. I believe you don't like my books, and want to make me say I won't give you any more if you make me any more socks; and then you will make me some more in order not to get the books. No, I will let you read my stupid books in manuscript and help me that way. If you like to make me a kettle- holder, you may, for I only have one just now, and I like to have two because I always mislay one; but I won't have people working their fingers out to ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... to-night the other guests were an elderly couple by the name of Bellamy and a rather stupid, middle-aged bachelor,—Mr. Crosby. These with the two Van Reypens and Patty made up the ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... suppose for a second that Irene is a nice girl; but between Rosamund—who, I must own, is very plucky—and this mite Agnes, who is devoted to her, she is quite quiet and amenable, and she is no doubt passionately fond of that stupid, inane little Agnes. Now, I mean to get Agnes from her. You must help me, Phyllis. How are we ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... respectable house and farm on the verge of the pretty little village of Lissoy, in West Meath. Here the schoolmistress who first put a book into Oliver Goldsmith's hands confessed, "Never was so dull a boy; he seemed impenetrably stupid." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... gratified to the utmost, by being shouldered about, and elbowed right and left, on all sides. Some of these had muddy sandals and umbrellas, and stained garments: having trudged in from the country. The faces of the greater part were as coarse and heavy as their dress; their dogged, stupid, monotonous stare at all the glory and splendour, having something in it, half ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... common in folk tales. Giants are often represented as not only big but also stupid, and as easily overcome by keen-witted human foes like "Jack the Giant-killer." It may be that traditions of pre- historic peoples have sometimes given birth to legends of giants. Another source of stories ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... that the painter, like many another man endowed with imaginative gifts, had little practical knowledge of affairs beyond a talent for spending money; and it is amazing how stupid a clever man can contrive to be when he is taken out of his sphere. For such men there is no safety save in keeping out of debt, and once the balance was on the wrong side of his account, Fenton, self-poised as he was, lost his head. It troubled and worried him to be in debt even ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... pretence of buying something. She'll probably have some perfumery sent from there—to-morrow, I think.—Bah! it's sickening, isn't it? It's their affair. Well! what about my letter? Is it what I told you that makes you so stupid? You played the prude—I didn't know—Oh! yes, yes, now I remember; that's what it is—What was it you said to me about the little one? I believe you didn't want anyone ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... a little hastily, but will scarcely perceive it and will think it of little consequence. But his attacks will grow stronger; your words will grow more hasty; there will be frettings and worryings; and you will be so stupid that you will not be aware of your backsliding. Do not cease your watching and praying even if you have no temptations. Alas, how many have gone down under this cunning device of Satan! This is a scheme he ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... the Spirit, this speech was quite unexpected, And he stood in a sort of stupid dismay; And before his few scattered thoughts were collected, She rightly concluded—he'd Nothing to Say. Then she lifted her skirts with a masterly hand, And out of the puddles and ruts kept them well up,— Thus showed that she had the most perfect command Of the crinoline mysteries ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... a wretchedly thin field out again yesterday," said Mrs. Hoopington. "Why you didn't bring one or two hunting men down with you, instead of that stupid Russian ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... applicability or non-applicability of the Christian precept to his own case was too difficult a question to be discussed lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by Alexey Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all that had been said, what stuck most in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured Turovtsin—"Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!" Everyone had apparently shared this feeling, though from politeness they had not ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Nessus said. "How stupid of me not to think of it, for in the desert we make all our rope of twisted slips of hide. If you will stand sentry here, my lord, I will ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... said Bert. "Though how any one can get to like a doll, with such stupid eyes as they have, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... this a little hard to do at first, but he confessed that it grew easier as he saw more of Miss Casey. He attributed his reform to her entirely. She had made the semi-political, semi-social organizations to which he belonged appear stupid, and especially so when he lost his money playing poker in the club-room (for the club had only one room), when he might have put it away for her. He liked to talk with her about the neighbors in the tenement, and his chance of political advancement to the ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... churchman. But the Dominican who kept Philip's conscience, Gasparo de Cordova by name, was, fortunately for the favourite, of a very tender paste, easily moulded to the duke's purpose. Dull and ignorant enough, he was not so stupid as to doubt that, should he whisper any suggestions or criticisms in regard to the minister's proceedings, the king would betray him and he would lose his office. The cautious friar accordingly held his peace and his place, and there was none to dispute ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dead. It was soon discovered that Pierre had only swooned. Water was dashed upon his face. He revived and stared about vacantly. Slowly what had happened dawned upon his mind, but he seemed stupid, saying nothing. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... not so easy to say. She was of course reconciled, she sobbed, to Evelyn marrying some day: only plain and stupid girls were left to be old maids: but it must not happen for years and years and years to come, and when it did, it must be to some one much older than herself, some one she did not greatly care for: in short, Evelyn was to marry only to escape the ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... always pretendest to be stupid when I want to borrow a little bit of thy wisdom. Thou art like the rich man who tells the beggar that he has no money. By the way, I must not forget that I always send money to the poor children on my birthday. Come, tell me which of the heaps I shall send to-day—these small coins, ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... minute, trying to screw up courage to speak to her. She wanted to ask her if she had seen the advertisement. She did not know why she wanted to ask her this, but she wanted to. How stupid not to be able to speak to her. She looked so kind. She looked so unhappy. Why couldn't two unhappy people refresh each other on their way through this dusty business of life by a little talk—real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would have liked, what ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... said Miss Elizabeth, quietly. "People are very stupid. They don't know what will freshen themselves up. They think the trouble is with the confectionery, and so they try macaroon and pistachio instead of lemon and vanilla. Fresh people are better than fresh flavors. But I think ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... "What! Marion forgotten?" I exclaimed, "Marion forgotten! and by me!" No, never! never! while memory looks back on the dreadful days of the revolution; when a British despot, not the NATION, (for I esteem them most generous,) but a proud, stupid, obstinate, DESPOT, trampling the HOLY CHARTER and constitution of England's realm, issued against us, (sons of Britons,) that most unrighteous edict, TAXATION without REPRESENTATION! and then, because in the spirit of our gallant fathers, we bravely opposed him, he broke up the very ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... that when he was jogging with me lazily, and rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I patted his neck and said, "Stubbs, I am surprised you don't canter when you know how much I like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only getting stupid and going to sleep," he would give his head a comical shake or two and set off directly, while Charley would stand still and laugh with such enjoyment that her laughter was like music. I don't know who had given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as naturally ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles leaves me without a single one. In the early days you used to bother me with looking after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very long for me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... purposes, as to say that the sea-comb is sought for the adornment of the hair, the fish named sea-hawk to catch birds, the fish named the little boar for the hunting of boars, or the sea-skull to raise the dead. My reply to these lying fabrications, which are as stupid as they are absurd, is that I have never attempted to acquire these playthings of the sea, these tiny trifles of the shore, either ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... as Fanny Brandeis, that was a stupid conclusion at which to arrive. How could she think it possible to shed her past life, like a garment? Those impressionable years, between fourteen and twenty-four, could never be cast off. She might don a new cloak to cover ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the other men came round, and Godfrey thought he had never seen more villainous faces. Some of them were heavy, stolid, and stupid; others were ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Swartboy made a long speech, in which the Kaffir was requested to report himself as a fool for having fallen into a pit,—that he had shown himself more stupid than the sea-cows, that had apparently ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... I have served for, Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest, I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches, I have given aims to every one that ask'd, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others, Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown, Gone freely with powerful ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... mesmerist, I elect to will the reader—that is, if natural slumber has not ere this put him beyond my control—across the frontier, into the back parlour of Mrs. L.'s tobacco store. There I am operating on a boy—such a stupid little Flemish boy that no amount of fluid could ever make him clever. How I came to treat him to passes I don't remember; probably I used him as an object-lesson to amuse Carry. All I recollect is that I gave him a key to hold, and made him ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... dear, you must make them tell me every least little thing that happens. You know they are such fly-aways that they'll only write me when they learn to swim, or shoot a wildcat, or get lost in the woods. I want to know all the stupid bits: what you have for dinner, how and where you sleep, how your camp looks, what you do from morning till night, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the murder of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really worthy one to ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... two to ten dollars. Once they had it a hundred and sixty dollars. "The devil is in the money!" exclaimed the horse-dealer; "I'm certain I counted right." "And so am I!" said the woman; "I can not be mistaken. It is you who have made the mistake. You always were a stupid old fool about money!" This she said with some degree of asperity, for she was evidently displeased at the whole proceeding. "A fool, eh? A fool!" muttered the old man; "you do well to call me a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... to learn to ride like that," announced Rosalie Breeze. "The idea of bouncing up and down in a stupid old side-saddle when we could just as well sit as Polly and Peggy do. Why, I never saw anything as graceful as those two girls in my life. Can't you show me how, Dawson? If you can't you can just make up your ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... getting on famously. That is Rose herself—as radiant as she appears on the stage, when the focus of a lorgnette has excluded all the stupid and ennuyantes figures that ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... clamor for a job; the satisfied, brutal egotism of Brome Porter, who lived as if life were a huge poker game; the overfed, red-cheeked Caspar, whom he remembered to have seen only once before, when the young polo captain was stupid drunk; the silly young cub of a Hitchcock. Even the girl was one of them. If it weren't for the women, the men would not be so keen on the scent for gain. The women taught the men how to spend, created the needs ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... be much wiser and more sagacious. But this his [77]Learned Antagonist utterly denies; Whole Nations, Flesh-Devourers (such as the farthest Northern) becoming Heavy, Dull, Unactive, and much more Stupid than the Southern; and such as feed much on Plants, are more Acute, Subtil, and of deeper Penetration: Witness the Chaldaeans, Assyrians, AEgyptians, &c. And further argues from the short Lives of most Carnivorous Animals, compared with Grass Feeders, ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... Susan," said he, looking reflectively in front of him, "that our lives are very seldom built with a hall through the middle and the rooms alike on both sides. I don't think we'd like it if they were. They would be stupid and humdrum. The right sort of a life should have its ups and downs, its ins and outs, its different levels, its outside stairs and its inside stairs, its balconies, windows and roofs of different periods and different styles. This is education. These things are the advantages ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... paid? And more than that, it had been given in a fraud. He had no money when he gave it, and no prospect of any but what he was to get from those worthless shares. Would anybody believe him that it was only a stupid blunder of his own? Yes, his partners might believe him; but, horrible thought, he had already implicated THEM in his fraud! Even now, while he was standing there hesitatingly in the road, they were entering upon the new claim he had NOT PAID FOR—COULD NOT PAY FOR—and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... that country. A national faith is so great a blessing, that we seldom find it granted a second time to those, who, by imitating the ingratitude of the Jews, have drawn upon themselves the like terrible chastisement. St. Vedast found the infidels stupid and obstinate; yet persevered, till by his patience, meekness, charity, and prayers, he triumphed over bigoted superstition and lust, and planted throughout that country the faith and holy maxims of Christ. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... platform of a railway-station waiting for a train. In all this time, the agitated, nervous presence of my Father, whose pale face was permanently drawn with anxiety, added to my perturbation, and I became miserable, stupid—as if I had lost my way in ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Gwen's scheme had been that Mrs. Masham should play the part Widow Thrale seemed to fill so easily. It had failed. The fact is that nothing but sympathy with vulgarity gives what is called tact, and in this case the Guardian Angel's scorn of the stupid reservations and distinctions of the servantry at the Towers had quite ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... to a speech about womanly women. And then—just as I was settling down with a sigh of well-earned relief to The Portrait of a Lady, a girl named Ackerly, a dough-faced, deadly, unintermittently stupid girl, who sits next to me in Latin because her name begins with A (I wish Mrs. Lippett had named me Zabriski), came to ask if Monday's lesson commenced at paragraph 69 or 70, and stayed ONE HOUR. She has ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... far as a foreigner may judge, the dialogue seems stilted and uniform, the characters, with certain obvious exceptions, rather types than persons. In the old fighting days it was necessary to praise Ghosts with extravagance, because the vituperation of the enemy was so stupid and offensive, but now that there are no serious adversaries left, cooler judgment admits—not one word that the idiot-adversary said, but—that there are more convincing plays ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... a stupid afternoon," said Muriel, on her return, "one of those tiresome duty visits that have to be paid now and then, ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... wretched, goes to the fire and puts a log on. Mrs. Dudgeon unbars the door and opens it, letting into the stuffy kitchen a little of the freshness and a great deal of the chill of the dawn, also her second son Christy, a fattish, stupid, fair-haired, round-faced man of about 22, muffled in a plaid shawl and grey overcoat. He hurries, shivering, to the fire, leaving Mrs. Dudgeon ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... them think it was respectable, they do serve lunches at some of them; of course they didn't know what kind of a place it was. And after they wuz made stupid drunk they didn't know ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... generation, and all the book and lecture privileges of the present time; and then there are the rising generation of apprentices—the sons of steam and of railroads. Among all it would be difficult to find a bad-shaped head, or a stupid face—as for a drunkard not one. It was once remarked to us by a gentleman at the head of a great establishment of this kind, that there was something about the labour of skilled workmen in iron that impressed itself upon their countenances, and showed itself ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... came, Findelkind sat by the edge of the bright pure water among the flowering grasses, and felt his heart heavy. Findelkind of Arlberg who was in heaven now must look down, he fancied, and think him so stupid and so selfish, sitting there. The first Findelkind, a few centuries before, had trotted down on his bare feet from his mountain pass, and taken his little crook, and gone out boldly over all the land on his pilgrimage, and knocked at castle gates and city walls in Christ's ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... grass shack of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderful pearl—glanced for a moment only; and carelessly he dropped it ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Tree Inn, and I see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable litter, among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting to be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village. A heavy animal,—the dullest animal in the stables,—with a stupid head, and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been, within the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of putting a possible accuser ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... and going to speak: but he stamped with his foot, and said, Begone! I tell you: I cannot bear this stupid romantic folly. ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... force the complacent aspect of a mind unabashed, but felt that he made a stupid show before that clear-headed, virtuously-living old, man of iron nerves. The alternative to flying into a passion, was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sore on the yacht and all the stupid folks on it; so she wanders out to windward of the worst smells, plants herself on the flattest rock she can find, and prepares to read. That's her pose when she looks up and discovers this male party with the ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... three animals that people persist in calling stupid, when they are only strong-minded and more intelligent than the other animals," said Kit Summers, quietly breaking into ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... exclaimed Clara, as soon as they were out of hearing. "Now we have to go along that horrid, stupid path that poor unfortunate is so fond of! If mamma had to go there herself, she would know ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... your hand—both hands; here is the ancestral bracelet—it shall pinch me no longer, neither my wrist nor my heart; here's the brooch you gave me—I won't be pinned to it any longer, nor to you neither; and there is your bunch of charms; and there is your bundle of love-letters—stupid ones they are;" and she crammed all the aforesaid treasures into his hands one after the other. So this was what she went ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... wait until after breakfast?" and Godfrey forced himself into a sitting posture. "I was out late last night, and drank too much wine. I feel confoundedly stupid, and the uproar that you have been making for the last hour at the door has given me an awful headache. But what is the matter with you, Tony? You look like a spectre. Are you ill? or have you, like me, been too ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... me, I cannot, will not give her up! No, I cannot!—no, I will not! Why should I not love her? Is she not pure as Mary herself? Ah, blessed is he whom such a woman leads! And I—I—have condemned myself to the society of swinish, ignorant, stupid monks,—I must know no such divine souls, no such sweet communion! Help me, blessed Mary!—help ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... that they are going to fight all over again—don't you understand? You are so stupid! What could they have had to quarrel about but me? O God! Thou art just! This is indeed punishment—too much punishment ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... infinitesimal gradations: some men are very short, others rather short, others medium-sized, others tall, and yet others again of portentous stature like Mr. Chang and Jacob Omnium. So, too, some men are idiots, some are next door to a fool, some are stupid, some are worthy people, some are intelligent, some are clever, and some geniuses. But genius is only the culminating point of ordinary cleverness, and if you were to try and draw up a list of all the real geniuses in the last hundred years, no two people ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... of that learned and not illiberal Barberini, Pope Urban the Eighth, under whose long reign the Copernican system was put on trial, who believed in that system as Galileo did, who read his books and talked with him; and who, when the stupid technicalities of the ecclesiastic courts declared the laws of the universe to be nonsense, gave his voice against the decision, though he could not officially annul it without scandal. 'It was not my intention,' said the Pope in the presence of witnesses, 'to condemn Galileo. If the matter ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... believe I looked very guilty. After sitting for a few minutes longer I got up to go, when to my horror the merchant rose also. The old ladies made no effort to detain him, but Miss Martha's face spoke volumes as we left the house. Half mad with vexation, I could hardly help asking him why he was stupid enough to come away just at the moment I had chosen for leaving; but he forestalled the inquiry by a voluntary explanation. He wished to speak to me. He had ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... reflection. One represents to you civilization stunted, repressed; he comprehends everything, the honor of the galleys, patriotism, virtue, the malice of a vulgar crime, or the fine astuteness of elegant wickedness. Another is resigned, a perfect mimer, but stupid. All have slight yearnings after order and work, but they are pushed back into their mire by society, which makes no inquiry as to what there may be of great men, poets, intrepid souls, and splendid organizations among these vagrants, these gypsies of Paris; a people ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... (its theme) have no terrors for me even in mixed company. But the joke was not the really serious thing about The Foundations, a play that starts (some years hence) with a mob of starving people yelling outside the house—dear, stupid, kindly Lord William Dromondy's house. Lord William was a god of an infantry captain in the great War, and his four footmen—particularly James, the first of them—though revolutionaries at heart, are ready to stand between their master and any other revolutionaries in London town. ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... deny to the latter great value and high consideration. It is nearer to us; beyond the control of foreign legislation; and undisturbed by those vicissitudes to which all inter-national intercourse is more or less exposed. The most stupid are sensible of the benefit of a residence in the vicinity of a large manufactory, or of a market-town, of a good road, or of a navigable stream, which connects their farms with some great capital. If the pursuits of all men were perfectly the same, although they would be in possession ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... what it almost amounts to now in Germany, and it is for this reason, no less than to escape military service, that so many millions of Germans have immigrated to this country. Unlike the vast majority of the bourgeois and lower classes, a kindly but stupid people, they were born with an alertness of mind and an energy of character which gave them the impetus to transfer themselves to a land where life might be harder but where soul and body could attain to a complete independence. Their present attitude is, however unconsciously, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... itself plainly, the Mazzinists noisily. Europe must be very stupid, not to understand the one; very deaf, not to hear ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... wife's cleverness, and good-natured men are pleased by his innocent boasting. The most pleasant of households may be found in cases where a clever, good-humoured, dexterous woman rules over a sweet-tempered but somewhat stupid man. She respects his manhood, he adores her as a superior being, and they live a life of pure happiness. But, sad to say, the husband is not usually good-humouredly willing to acknowledge his partner's superiority, and in that case the girl's doom ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... (H.) is made of this fungus, and its spores, rubbed up with inert sugar of milk powdered, and it proves an effective remedy against dull, stupid, sleepy headache, with passive itchy pimples about the skin. From five to ten grains of the trituration, diluted to the third decimal strength, should be given twice a day, with a little water, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the States General were with them, but the majority of the populace of the towns was with the Prince of Orange; and that populace was played off with great effect by the triumvirate of * * * Harris, the English Ambassador, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, the Prince of Orange, a stupid man, and the Princess, as much a man as either of her colleagues, in audaciousness, in enterprise, and in the thirst of domination. By these, the mobs of the Hague were excited against the members of the States ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at all, stupid?" said Cinq-Mars. "That is not thy business. I told thee to remain ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... soon to drop out of mind, and to be of no further consequence in the determination of conduct. But further, this misuse of reason, this inciting of the mind to memorise facts unrelated except by their mere accidental time or space relations, will if persisted in tend to render the individual dull, stupid, and unimaginative. ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... patiently to impart; he wondered, indeed, if she were not unduly frivolous even for a child of six; for she would refuse to study unless she could have the doll she called Bishop Wright with her and pretend that she taught the lesson to him, finding him always stupid and loth to learn. He hoped for better things from her mind as she aged, watching anxiously for the buddings of reason and religion, praying daily that she should be increased in wisdom as in stature. He had become so used to the look of her mother in her face that it now and then gave ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Play-master wrote a work of five-and-twenty volumes about the toy bird: it was so learned and so long, full of the most difficult Chinese words, that all the people said they had read it and understood it, or else they would have been thought stupid, and would have had their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... progeny, buoying them up in case the current should prove too strong and carry them down. If there are eggs still unhatched, the father, when disturbed, takes the little ones away to a safer spot, whilst the mother sticks to the nest. But they are rather stupid, for even the day after the eggs are hatched, on being disturbed by a casual passer-by, the old cock swims out into mid stream. He then calls to his tiny progeny to follow him, though they are utterly incapable of doing so, and generally come to hopeless grief in the attempt. Then ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of course, accounts for my getting no answer," said Holmes. "Dear me, how very stupid of me, to be sure! Good morning, miss, and many thanks for having relieved my mind." He chuckled and rubbed his hands when we found ourselves in the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Me-thinkes a Father, Is at the Nuptiall of his sonne, a guest That best becomes the Table: Pray you once more Is not your Father growne incapeable Of reasonable affayres? Is he not stupid With Age, and altring Rheumes? Can he speake? heare? Know man, from man? Dispute his owne estate? Lies he not bed-rid? And againe, do's nothing But what he did, being childish? Flo. No good Sir: He has his health, and ampler strength indeede ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... science were making them far more dangerous than they had ever been before. He believed that the evil and horror of war was becoming more and more tremendous with every decade, and that the free play of national prejudice and that stupid filching ambitiousness that seems to be inseparable from monarchy, were bound to precipitate catastrophe, unless a real international aristocracy could be brought into being to ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... unaccustomed to such encounters, and, although the space between us and the brow of the precipice, was not three feet wide, they all contrived to sway their bodies and heavy sacks in such a manner as to pass us safely, except one. He, more stupid or more unlucky than the rest, struck us a full broad-side as he went by jolting us hard against the hill, and well-nigh jolting himself down the craggy descent into the abyss below. One leg hung a moment ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Have I read the New Mirror so much (to say nothing of the graceful things coined under a bridge, and a thousand other pages flung from the inner heart) and not learned who has an eye for everything pretty? Not so stupid, Cousin Bel, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Poor old England still barges in whenever there is a fight going on, and gets her head knocked, and goes on fighting just the same, and never knows that she is heroic, but blunders on—simple-hearted, stupid, sublime! ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... answered, 'you are stupid. Do you imagine I should worry myself like this if I didn't?' She smiled through her tears. She knew from her father's tone that ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... and a foreigner, Mallet du Pan, exclaims,[3350] "What! twenty thousand families absolutely ignorant of the Coblentz plans and of its assemblies, twenty thousand families dispersed over the soil of Europe by the fury of clubs, by the crimes of brigands, by constant lack of security, by the stupid and cowardly inertia of petrified authorities, by the pillage of estates, by the insolence of it cohort of tyrants without bread or clothes, by assassinations and incendiarism, by the base servility of silent ministers, by the whole series of revolutionary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I can't see that you have any books on the old houses about here. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn't been much explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. My cousin's house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past—it must have been more of a place once." He stopped short, with the blush of a shy man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. "I'm an architect, you see, and I'm hunting up old houses ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... lose them one by one, This stupid coward throng? And never shall the wolf have done? They were at least a thousand strong, But still they've let poor Robin fall a prey! Ah, woe's the day! Poor Robin Wether lying dead! He follow'd for a bit of bread His master through the crowded city, And would have follow'd, had ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... "Pshaw! you stupid!" she said, with a bewitching pout, "if you had been a little more civil, you would have known that I am Mrs. Thornton's daughter—not Mr. Thornton's; that mamma is mamma, but papa ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... good thing I was not there at that time, for at the sight of tears in the faces of those dear women I would have been driven to sheer madness. I believe I would have taken a club to the hard-hearted or stupid Tescheron and murdered him with mince-meat minuteness in the presence of the gossipers lolling around the fireplace in the living-room. At the time of the tearful scene between mother and daughter, a dramatic passage that ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... made him come home to our nature, in a way that it feels but cannot talk of. And he seemed to be of the past somehow, although so young and bright and brave; of the time when greater things were done, and men would die for women. That he should woo three maids in vain, to me was a stupid old woman's tale. ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... sent under guard to the D———regiment for identification; and if he were found to be a Hans and not a Tommy—well, though he had tried a very stupid dodge he must have known what to expect when he was found out, if his officers had properly trained him in German rules ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... my gig; and I had my friend Mr. Brooke as a companion, who was likewise attended by a sampan and crew he had taken with him to Sarawak from Singapore. His coxswain, Seboo, we shall all long remember: he was civil only to his master, and, I believe, brave while in his company. He was a stupid-looking and powerfully-built sort of savage, always praying, eating, smiling, or sleeping. When going into action, he always went down on his knees to pray, holding his loaded musket before him. He was, however, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... set of stupid fools, To think the skipper knows by tasting, What ground he's on; Nantucket schools Don't teach such stuff; with all ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... said the captain's sister. 'See how lovely you all looked with your big guns and uniform when you entered Markton; and then see how stupid the parsons look by comparison, when they flock into ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... subsequent perusal of his own work, what an egregious blunder he had committed?"—"Very true," said I; "for if he wrote with a design to discredit the measures which he represents in such an odious light, nothing could be more stupid than not to commence his dialogue at a period which was subsequent to those measures. But he so entirely forgets himself, as to tell us, that he did not choose to attend a Senate which was held in one of Caesar's future ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... out what had been a fiddle, crushed to morsels in the great- coat, he blubbered aloud; and Cathy, when she learned the master had lost her whip in attending on the stranger, showed her humour by grinning and spitting at the stupid little thing; earning for her pains a sound blow from her father, to teach her cleaner manners. They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room; and I had no more sense, so I put ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... is wagging with the strong and untiring regularity of a pendulum, and a smirk of welcome and recognition is on her face. Roger's arm is round me, and we are holding each other's hands, but we are no longer in heaven. I could not tell you why, but we are not. Some stupid constraint—quite of earth—has fallen upon me. Where are all those most tender words, those profuse endearments with which I meant to ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... busy clearing the snow from the horses' hoofs. The driver, stupid or dazed, sat on the box, helpless as a parrot on ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... marry you for? For your face that she can never see? No! For your heart that is one with her own. Trust to her natural good sense—and, better than that, to the devoted love that you have inspired in her. She will see her stupid prejudice in its true light, when she feels it trying to part ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... an ass merely, he is a pompous and a stupid ass. (Laughs again to himself.) Now there is something very important that he ought to know, and he wouldn't let ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... on the other hand, while the nation stagnated and decayed in political nullity and indolent opulence, the theological monopoly of the nobility, stupid fatalism, wild and meaningless mysticism, the system of soothsaying and of mendicant prophecy gradually developed themselves, till they reached the height at which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... who are both now with God." The second wife, Elizabeth, survived her husband. Administration of his goods was granted to her as the widow of an intestate in May, 1695.[5] The fine old manor-house at Newton was pulled down by a stupid land-agent within the memory of man, but a stone has been found built into the wall of a house half-a-mile from the site, bearing the inscription "H^VE, 1689." This may well stand for H[enry and] E[lizabeth] V[aughan]. Newton probably passed to the poet's eldest son Thomas and ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... you are eighty years old," said Blucher, puffing his pipe, "and at that age few persons are able to sing. But I should really like to hear again a merry native song. I have not heard one for fifty years, for here, you see, Hennemann, people are so stupid and ignorant as not ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... laborers, and others wandered about with their hooks over their shoulders. There was a larger, less distinct crowd out on the tracks. Bannon ran through an opening in the fence, and pushed into the largest group. Here Peterson and Vogel were talking to a stupid-looking man with a ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... "Looks very stupid," commented Mrs. Rexford, hastily pulling in her head and speaking within the room. "But still, one must not lose a chance." Then with head again outside, she continued, "Do you understand me, my good girl? ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... closely connected with the development of the sympathetic feelings. The better we can imagine objects and relations not present to sense, the more readily we can sympathize with other people. Half the cruelty in the world is the direct result of stupid incapacity to put one's self in the other man's place. So closely inter-related are our intellectual and moral natures that the development of sympathy is very considerably determined by increasing width and variety ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... the second step that costs? The four fellows knew as well as you did—everyone except the tenderfoot novelist knows—that in nearly every instance, a freshly backed colt is like a fish out of water; stupid, puzzled, half-sulky, half-docile. It is at the second backing that he is ready to contest the question of fitness for survival; he has had time to think the matter over, and to note the one-sidedness ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... measures was very remarkable. Awkward as the people were, they were not stupid, and learned to work with unexpected rapidity. More wonderful was the change in their manners, appearances and the very expression of their countenances. Cheerfulness and gratitude replaced the gloom of misery ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the reader to enlarge upon this process of stupid or hypocritical purgation, whereby the writings of men like Doni and Straparola were stripped of their reflections on the clergy, while their indecencies remained untouched; or to show how Ariosto's Comedies were sanctioned, when his Satires, owing to their free speech upon the Papal Court, received ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... cedar, I have one thing more to say. We Americans have a country abounding in beautiful timber, of whose beauties we know nothing, on account of the pernicious and stupid habit of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... encouragement to come out openly on his side. They were Germans who lay on Burgoyne's left and Burgoyne sent Colonel Baum, an efficient officer, with five or six hundred men to attack the New Englanders and bring in the supplies. It was a stupid blunder to send Germans among a people specially incensed against the use of these mercenaries. There was no surprise. Many professing loyalists, seemingly eager to take the oath of allegiance, met and delayed Baum. When near ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... and yellow vests, and the bright cockades in their silk hats. Once when I was little, one of them let me go into a stall and feed some sugar to a splendid great horse named Black Beauty. I wished I could do it to-day, too! All the carriages which carry the Court ladies are stupid, I think, but the horses and ponies are jolly!" whereupon Philip and John went off into an animated discussion about the horses of the Royal Stables, and how much they envied the men who ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... it was. It was stupid of me not to look where I was going. I thought at the time that it was only a wrench, but it ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... what is really the trouble. I do not think women should run the country, but I do feel that we should have something to say about our ordinary day-to-day lives. Man-made laws are stupid enough, but a man-made society is intolerable. Just a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... supplies, and not always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce and the arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a state may stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and, at the same time, poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honour, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... large ball she is going to give some time in May for some charitable institution—a Cottage Hospital I believe; but come', she adds, suddenly springing up, 'we have spent quite too much time over my stupid self. Come back to the drawing-room and the chicks, I am sure they must be wondering where we are, and the tea and ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... because it is a disgusting fault; but the passage where the scheme of Redemption is arranged, where God enquires whether any of the angels will undergo death in order to satisfy his sense of injured justice, is a passage of what I can only call stupid brutality, disguised, alas, in the solemn and majestic robe of sonorous language. The angels timidly decline, and the Saviour volunteers, which saves the shameful situation. The character of God, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... cases, that is, when I am only stupid, and the thoughts rise heavily and pass gummous ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... may be with any of you here; whosoever you may be, however poor, however humble. Though your opportunities may be small, your station lowly, your knowledge little; though you may be stupid in mind, slow of speech, weakly of body, yet if you but make up your mind to say the thing which is true, and to do the thing which is right, you may be strong with the strength of God, and glorious ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... I am stupid, for I can't see it, mother. They are both pretty girls, but for amusing you and that sort of thing give me Phoebe. She is worth twenty of the other. As sharp as a needle, and plenty to say for herself. This is the kind ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... me; or only in such a sort that I was obliged to decline. Am I such a stupid visitor? Did I not play at bagatelle with L.? Did I not read eloquently out of Carlyle to you and C.? Did I not talk wisdom to you by the yard? Did I not let drop crumbs of philosophy by the wayside of our talk, continually? Above all, am I not the veriest woman, at heart, that ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... the labors of the field, cultivating sorgho, a kind of millet which forms the chief basis of their diet; and the most stupid expressions of astonishment ensued as the Victoria sped past like a meteor. That evening the balloon halted about forty miles from Yola, and ahead of it, but in the distance, rose the two ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... Days, father and daughter, were dependent on hired service, and such service in the form of Olga Cedarstrom was about as incapable and stupid as fate had ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... to speak: but he stamped with his foot, and said, Begone! I tell you: I cannot bear this stupid romantic folly. ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... their views; they had ideas that people in England nowadays were ashamed to confess to; and they had the impudence moreover, said his lordship, laughing, to pretend they knew more about the needs and dangers of this poor dear stupid old England than he who was born in it and owned a considerable slice of it—the more shame to him! From all of which Isabel gathered that Lord Warburton was a nobleman of the newest pattern, a reformer, a radical, a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... like it. They say, a young lady dares not speak to gentlemen, nor walk with them, nor have the least bit of a flirtation. How stupid it ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... evenings ago young Mr. Norris came in and then Mr. Ridgway. I thought they quite glowered at each other. And what one said the other sniffed about as if it was hardly worth saying. And Mr. Ridgway thought cards stupid, and Phil grew quite cross and said we would come home. It is very pleasant when there is no one there, we four can agree ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... tossed it into the grate, where it quickly shriveled on the coals. Eastman felt that he had happened in upon something disagreeable, possibly something shady, and he wanted to get away at once. Cavenaugh stood staring at the fire and seemed stupid and dazed; so he repeated his request rather sternly, "I think I've seen a German dictionary down there among your books. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Oly-koeks was already engaged in chopping wood near the kitchen door. The growling of the hound at his feet called the care-taker's attention to the master's coming, and, driving the ax into an obstinate stick of hickory, he donned his coat, drawing near the vehicle, where he stood in stupid wonderment as the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... that if I could remember how I had arranged it, I should not need to be begged and prayed for information. There comes into my mind, as in a dream, the image of a certain staircase; but I do not think this can be the one I then designed, for it seems so stupid. However, I will describe it." Later on he sends a little clay model of a staircase, just enough to indicate his general conception, but not to determine details. He suggests that the work would look better if carried ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Split Madigan! You're a coward, and—and a stupid coward. You don't know enough to betray your class and get the benefit of it, but you'd rather be mean than get credits, anyway. Nobody can count on you. Changeable Silk, that's what you are—changing color all the time, never standing firm! I hate ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... once in that direction. The dismal swamp had me under its spell, and meanwhile the patient buzzards looked at me. "It is almost time," they said; "the fever will do its work,"—and I began to believe it. It was too bad to come away; the stupid town offered no attraction; but it seemed perilous to remain. Perhaps I could not come away. I would try it and see. It was amazing that I could; and no sooner was I out in the sunshine than I wished I had stayed where I was; for having once ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... for a winter on the plantations, she registered her horror of slavery in advance, and resolved to keep a journal of her experiences and observations. The resulting record is gloomy enough. The swarms of negroes were stupid and slovenly, the cabins and hospitals filthy, the women overdriven, the overseer callous, the master indifferent, and the new mistress herself, repudiating the title, was more irritable and meddlesome than helpful.[29] The short sojourn was long enough. A few years afterward the ill-mated ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... more; as you love me, no more. Stupid I never was nor so secure yet To lead my patience to mine owne betraying: I shall find time and riper cause.— [Guard at dore. Now, frends, Are my ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... might have made a pastoral visitation every day in the week and been welcome. He had almost got ahead of the doctor in the eldest orphan's regard; for while the doctor had plenty of books, whole shelves of them, they were queer, stupid things, full of long, hard words, and never a battle or a shipwreck from one ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... on his side. They were Germans who lay on Burgoyne's left and Burgoyne sent Colonel Baum, an efficient officer, with five or six hundred men to attack the New Englanders and bring in the supplies. It was a stupid blunder to send Germans among a people specially incensed against the use of these mercenaries. There was no surprise. Many professing loyalists, seemingly eager to take the oath of allegiance, met and delayed Baum. When near Bennington he found in front of him ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... act of passing a small thicket of trees close by the roadside, when the first living being presented himself whom they had seen since their departure from Cumnor Place. This was a stupid lout, seemingly a farmer's boy, in a grey jerkin, with his head bare, his hose about his heels, and huge startups upon his feet. He held by the bridle what of all things they most wanted—a palfrey, namely, with a side-saddle, and all other garniture for a woman's mounting; and he ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... run faster. His impatience subdivided the distance into yards and feet. Now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. Perhaps his mother was dying, alone save for stupid Nan Berry. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... young woman," she continued; "we think her stupid. We cannot make anything of her. But there is no doubt poor Tardif means to ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... and unseemly manner. In a letter to Monsieur de Rohan, the Ambassador declared that while the Earls and the Counsel were pleading, their lordships guzzled and smoked; and that when they gave their votes condemning the two Earls, they were stupid with eating and "yvres de tabac"—drunk with smoking. This was probably quite untrue as a representation of what actually took place; but it would hardly have been written had smoking not been a common ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... the voice of Mats, near by, "do go back and tell me what terminology means. You don't know how terribly stupid I am...." ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... upon the company when Armstadt—Gian Maria's Swiss captain—entered and approached his master with the air of a man who is the bearer of news. He halted a pace or two from the Duke's high-backed chair, and stood eyeing Gian Maria in stupid patience. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... protest. It was a muddle of impressions: the picture of the poor soul with his clamor for a job; the satisfied, brutal egotism of Brome Porter, who lived as if life were a huge poker game; the overfed, red-cheeked Caspar, whom he remembered to have seen only once before, when the young polo captain was stupid drunk; the silly young cub of a Hitchcock. Even the girl was one of them. If it weren't for the women, the men would not be so keen on the scent for gain. The women taught the men how to spend, created ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Ruth explained with an assumed whimper, "and poor Hans is about distracted. He is afraid to go peddling alone with his secret writ large in both Dutch and English on his foolish face. I have told him I will go lame or no lame. Fortunately he is hard of hearing and stupid as an owl in broad daylight. You might be less like me than you are, and Hans would not know. We have much to be ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... fool! That Johnson! You blame me, Haljan, for the killing of Captain Carter? You need not. Johnson offered to try and capture you. Take you alive. He killed Carter because he was angry at him. A stupid, vengeful fool! He is dead, and I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the asteroid and in his ship at the same time. But every space tug man has had long experience as an anchor setter before he's allowed to be in a position where he is capable of killing someone besides himself if he makes a stupid mistake ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the behaviour of the man Ivan. He was in fact a thoroughly bad sort, lazy, stupid, sullen, and brutal to his horses. He was supposed to take orders from the other Russian, but he refused to obey him or any one. Only when by signs I could make clear what I wanted could I do anything with him; then I could sometimes put enough peremptoriness ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... reason why it should be begun at any other, except that it will be the harder every hour it is postponed. The spiritual loss and injury caused to the child by their waiting till they fancy him fit to reason with, is immense; yet there is nothing in which parents are more stupid and cowardly, if not stiff-necked, than this. I do not speak of those mere animal parents, whose lasting influence over their progeny is not a thing to be greatly desired, but of those who, having a conscience, yet avoid this part of their duty in a manner of which a good motherly ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... harmless, and only asks to be let alone and allowed to browse on gum-leaves. Its flesh is uneatable except by an aboriginal or a victim to famine. Its fur is difficult to manipulate, as it will not lie flat, so the koala should have been left in peace. But its confiding and somewhat stupid nature, and the senseless desire of small boys and "children of larger growth" to kill something wild just for the sake of killing, has led to the koala being almost exterminated in many places. Now it is protected by the law, ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... have accepted and backed. But he said, "Io non voglio perdere gli uomini perle femminelle."[38] If the Black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the White party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "were for themselves"; and whoever it may be who is singled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... news of his lost father soon roused the prince from the stupid fit into which he had fallen. He followed in amazement the sound of Ariel's voice, till it led him to Prospero and Miranda, who were sitting under the shade of a large tree. Now Miranda had never seen a man before, except ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... her come again, and I '11 let you off... only, please, don't show your stupid phiz inside my tent, and leave us in peace; do ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... "How stupid you are!" retorted Edgar; "he deals in them wholesale. Mother says it's a famous trade. He has a cigar-holder with an amber mouthpiece and a woman all naked carved in meerschaum. Just think, the other day he came and told mother his wife was ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... had been willing basely to tergiversate and to expose yourself to their taunts." "I wonder that they were thrown into agitation respecting this matter alone, since they were not less severely hit in other places. It is a stupid assertion that the conference was broken off in consequence of this ground of offence. For those who now, by rabidly laying hold of one ground, after a certain fashion subscribe to the rest of the doctrine, would ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... but of the use money makes of you One thing to entertain and another to be entertaining Possessory act of readjusting my necktie Process which is called weighing a thing in the mind Simple enjoyment being considered an unworthy motive Society that exists mainly to pay its debts gets stupid Talk is always tame if no one dares anything Tastes and culture were of the past age Unhappy are they whose desires are all ratified World has become so tolerant that ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... Basil wrote home. He had not fired his musket a single time. He saw nothing to shoot at, and he saw no use shooting until he did have something to shoot at. It was terrible to see men dead and wounded, but the fight itself was stupid—blundering through a jungle, bullets zipping about, and the Spaniards too far away and invisible. He wanted ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... seems to thrill the skylark or the nightingale. Though the circumstances of her marriage were of such a romantic kind, and she seems to have been deeply attached to her husband through life, M. Valle-bregue appears to have been a stupid, ignorant soldier, and, as is common with those who make similar matrimonial speculations, to have had no eyes beyond helping his talented wife to make all the money possible and spend it with the utmost freedom afterward. ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... reddened, slammed his fist down on the desk. "Dammit, man, are you blind and deaf? Or just plain stupid? Didn't you hear me a moment ago? You may not live through the Hearings. You could go, just like that, any minute. But this is 2134 A.D., not the middle ages. It would be so utterly, hopelessly pointless to let ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... Cavalcanti's lovely ballata, down to the Portrait and such sonnets as Love-sweetness, Farewell to the Glen, and A Match with the Moon, there is not one single poem that does not display some careless error or some stupid misprint. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the captain arrived on board the Mayflower they found Jones too stupid with liquor to listen to any plans, and too short-handed when he had been made to understand to carry them out with half the dispatch the ardent spirit of Standish prompted, so that all they effected was to have two of the larger pieces hoisted out of the hold, and one landed ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... was descending the stairs, on her way to the kitchen, where she found the fugitive man- at-arms seated on a rough settle, his head and wounded arm resting on the table, while groans of pain, weariness, and impatience were interspersed with imprecations on the stupid awkward girls who ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have told you how stupid it sounds, these disconnected bits, little descriptions, detached conversations. Sometimes I think I shall never use them after all." He ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... be easier, stupid, to invent the story from beginning to end, if I wanted to impose on any one?" asked Mr Johnson, with pretended indignation. "However, as I have more than once observed, I have an especial objection ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... whiteness is now quite clear, and in front of me. All this day it has slowly passed before me. I asked Joseph Kleist if he saw a piece of newspaper just beyond the trench. He stared at me solemnly—he is a stupid fool—and said, "There is ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... a long time since I heard so much truth about myself," said the Duke. "I own I am both stupid and awkward, but then, by gad, I am willing ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... silent march of an army halted at intervals by messages from inside the city, which seemed to be of a most ominous character. No Muscovite figures could be distinguished except those of a few beggars covered with rags, who watched with stupid astonishment the army file past; and as some few of these appeared to be begging alms, our soldiers threw them bread and a few pieces of money. I cannot prevent a sad reflection on these unfortunate creatures, whose condition ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... of the Middle Ages was practicable, just because the rational treatment of all subjects by the humanists had trained the historical spirit. In the fifteenth century this spirit had so far penetrated the history even of the individual cities of Italy that the stupid fairy tales about the origin of Florence, Venice, and Milan vanished, while at the same time, and long after, the chronicles of the North were stuffed with this fantastic rubbish, destitute for the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... who have been indifferent and not availed themselves of their small voting privilege, by which we might have established the same class of school in our village, will now regret their negligence, at least every time they have to send three miles for a doctor. Thus, stupid people, blind to their own interest, punish themselves. I regret not being able to send a fuller report of the good that woman's use of the ballot, in a limited form, has done for us in this State. The voting in the town-hall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... but stupid, to lament the departure of childhood's joys. It is as if something precious and valued had been forcibly torn from us, and we go sorrowing for lost treasure. But these things fall off from us naturally; we do not give them up. We are never called upon to give them up. There is no pang, no sorrow, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that brings them safe to land; Let stupid mortals know That waves are under his command, And all the winds ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... up your time to my wretched, unimportant little stupid affairs! And what return have ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... about the priests when consecrating the elements at mass, repeating in Latin the words 'Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain: wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain.' He often remarked in later years how they would apply in derision the term 'good Christian' to those who were stupid enough to believe in Christian truth, and to be scandalised by anything said to the contrary. No one, he declared, would believe what villanies and shameful doings were then in vogue, if they had not seen and heard them with their own eyes and ears. But the truth of his testimony ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... don't you have many fires over here?" he demanded of Mrs. Pitt. "We have 'em all the time at home. It must be stupid here without 'em!" ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... "How criminally stupid of me!" I cried, still determined to be consistent and find an explanation. "I clean forgot to buy a loaf at Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I must have left it lying ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... predict that the stupid folly which has characterized your course will, within six months, drive from you every scholar ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... says my mother; 'that is what I intend to do, my dear Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don't be stupid.' ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... because there's nothing to show. He has cultivated that sibylline look until people think he's a wonder. But he's simply a stupid ignoramus." ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... sent to me! Oh, I know you for what you are,—my Dragon Maid, my bride! Have I not sought you all these years, tracing your face on rocks and sand-beds of my hills, hanging my prayers to every blossoming tree? Come, you are mine at last; here is your master! We will escape together while the stupid old ones sleep! Come, soul of my ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... shining examples of goodness and bravery. The women of the tale are of course all beautiful and devoted members of their various households. The men of the tale vary between the competent and the incompetent; the lazy and idle, and the industrious; the cunning, and the stupid. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... doing me any more, I flatly forbid it. I believe you don't like my books, and want to make me say I won't give you any more if you make me any more socks; and then you will make me some more in order not to get the books. No, I will let you read my stupid books in manuscript and help me that way. If you like to make me a kettle- holder, you may, for I only have one just now, and I like to have two because I always mislay one; but I won't have people working their fingers out to knit ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... examined this point, the clearer it appeared to him, who had known his friend's only son from an infant, and had always felt much interested in him. As a child, and a boy, William Stanley had been of a morose temper, and of a sluggish, inactive mind—not positively stupid, but certainly far from clever; this claimant, on the contrary, had all the expression and manner of a shrewd, quick-witted man, who might be passionate, but who looked like a good-natured person, although his countenance was partially disfigured ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... to say, in relation to the religious character of a Mason, that he should not be "a stupid atheist, nor an irreligious libertine." A denier of the existence of a Supreme Architect of the Universe cannot, of course, be obligated as a Mason, and, accordingly, there is no landmark more certain than that which excludes every ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... which they upheld their individual rights than for the scriptural skill with which they unmasked the sophistry of a delusive theory; for all their reasonings were enervated and vitiated by their stupid admission of the claims of the chair of Peter as the rock on which the Church was supposed to rest. [358:3] This second effort of Rome to establish her ascendancy was, indeed, a failure; but the misinterpretation of Holy Writ, by which ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... very nice for you to be running after Mrs. Ianson's wools, but I can't see anything amusing in fancy-work. And as for dawdling round this square and Russell Square with Jane Ianson and Fido—pah! I'd quite as soon be changed into a lapdog, and led along by a string. How stupid London is! Oh, Tittens, to think that you and I have never lived in the country since we were born. Wouldn't you like to go? Only, then we should never ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... back," began Rose Stribling in a tone as soft as her metallic voice could produce. "It's been an age since I've seen you—not since the night of that stupid dinner at the Berkeleys', and I'm so much interested in the news ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the reason, you know it," she continued, her tone full of courage. "I am willing to throw myself at your feet now, but all the same I was hardly treated. I was made the scapegoat of your stupid promise. You kept me in ignorance of things a wife should know. You even encouraged me to believe you a coward, when a single word from you would have changed everything. Therefore, I say that it is you who are responsible for what I nearly did, and what I should have done ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rather steep hill, he threw himself on the grass under the shade of a tree. "It's going to be awfully slow and stupid here," he muttered, "and it will be a month or two before we can return. I hoped to be back in time to join the Montagues in climbing Mont Blanc, and here I am tied up between these mole-hill mountains and city law-offices. How shall I ever get ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... of Naples, his great opponent bent all the resources of a fertile intellect to retrieve his position, and even under the gloom of disaster threw a gleam of light into the dark continent. While his adversaries were merely generals or admirals, hampered by a stupid education and a narrow nationality, Bonaparte had eagerly imbibed the new learning of his age and saw its possible influence on the reorganization of society. He is not merely a general. Even when he is ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... goin' to have pop-corn to-night all so fast!" he says, doggedly, in the midst of a momentary lull that has fallen on a game of whist. And then the oldest Mills girl, who thinks cards stupid anyhow, says: "That's so, Billy; and we're going to have it, too; and right away, for this game's just ending, and I shan't submit to being bored with another. I say 'pop-corn' with Billy! And after that," she continues, rising and addressing the party in general, "we must have ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... stopped. Two or three men acting in concert might have lifted it bodily off the floor, or have jammed it into a corner. But few human heads are capable of remaining cool under excitement. Those who are not present think how stupid must have been those who were; those who are reflect afterwards how simple it would have been to do this, that, or the other, if only they had thought of it ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... feet and charged again, shouting his war cry: "I kill! I kill! I kill!" and again Tarzan met him with a sudden hold that the stupid bull, being ignorant of, could not possibly avert—a hold and a throw that brought a scream of delight from the interested audience and suddenly filled the girl with doubts as to the man's madness—evidently he was quite safe among the apes, ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... passing the barracks, he happened to hear the cheers of the prisoners and had entered in order to learn what was the matter. "No," he said once more, "you will not; yon must not suppose that we shall be so stupid as to allow you to escape. Do not rejoice therefore at the approach of the French and your countrymen for I tell you, and I swear by the Holy Mother of God, if the French should enter the city victoriously, our last step before evacuating it would be to kill every one of you. Do you ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... is a mighty impudent thing.' BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, could you have no redress if you were to prosecute a publisher for bringing out, under your name, what you never said, and ascribing to you dull stupid nonsense, or making you swear profanely, as many ignorant relaters of your bon-mots do[1267]?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; there will always be some truth mixed with the falsehood, and how can it be ascertained how much is true and how much is false? Besides, Sir, what ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Masturbation. The keynote of preventing the habit is, carefully to watch the child from its earliest infancy. We know that not infrequently stupid or vicious nursemaids, wet-nurses, and even governesses ignorantly or deliberately induce the habit in children under their charge. This, of course, must be prevented. Even children of the age of nine, ten, eleven years should not be left alone, but always ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... opening oration by one of the learned professors of the University, which was voted by the savants to be a masterpiece of erudition and eloquence, but which the young people present found intolerably dull and stupid. And when the great man sat down a ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... has been wiser, then. How can men be such stupid owls as to fall in love with me! Can't they see I'm ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... no means a stupid scholar, and Ronald was so earnest a little teacher that the progress made was really astonishing. The tinker found a good many jobs in the village, and stayed nearly a fortnight, and by that time Susan could spell little words very nicely, and no longer read a-s-s, ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... married and living in Cincinnati. Twins! Heigh-ho! What a world! The visit was hardly a success. At half after five she was on her way back to the court-house steps. Stupid ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... "I think gambling is just plain stupid. I mean some sort of legitimate business—buying and ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... of that district became a Christian, and he and the queen, with one or two others of the royal household, used to attend school with the children every day, and their diligence in studying the A B C was beyond all praise. But they were terribly stupid. The children beat them easily, showing how true is the saying that 'youth is the time to learn.' The king was always booby, and Makarooroo was ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... decidedly clever, but which the audience—distinguished audience I ought to have said—probably didn't, as they did not applaud that, while they did some things I said which were incomparably more stupid. This was in November, and I ought to have written to you about it before, my dear Lizzie, but for one thing I am very much occupied, and for the other (shall I confess it?) I was rather puzzled that I had not heard from you ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... hands and soles of their feet were dyed dark-brown with henna. Captain Lyon viewed with amazement and pity the dress of these poor little girls, borne down as they were with finery; but that of the youngest boy, a stupid looking child of four years old, was even more preposterous than that of his sisters. In addition to the ornaments worn by them, he was loaded with a number of charms, enclosed in gold cases, slung round his body, while in his cap ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the strutting, cruel-faced cut-throat who was our guard, and who shoved his bayonet at us and shook his dirty fist in our faces to try to frighten us. I looked at his stupid, leering face and heavy jowl, and the sloped-back forehead which the iron heel had flattened with its cruel touch. He could walk out of the door and out of the camp, at will, while I must sit on a chair without ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... he couldn't be with her, of course. How stupid of you to remember, Katie. Why can't you make up your mind to enjoy yourself when you ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... other. But he was a little vexed, for he was a young man with great capacity for pleasure, and it pleased him that morning to be with his friend. The thought of two ladies waiting lunch did not deter him; stupid women, why shouldn't they wait? Why should they interfere with their betters? With his ear on the ground he listened to Rickie's departing steps, and thought, "He wastes a lot of time keeping engagements. Why will he be pleasant to fools?" And then he thought, "Why has ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... it. That's stupid, too; as stupid as all the rest." He rose from the chair he had dropped into, and went toward the door of the next room. "I must beautify my person with a clean collar and cuffs. I'm going down to make a call on the Back ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... excellence in the presentation of plays. As we become slowly civilized we will constantly demand more artistic excellence. There will always be a class satisfied with the lowest form of dramatic presentation, with coarse wit, with stupid but apparent jokes, and there will always be a class satisfied with almost anything; but the class demanding the highest, the best, will constantly increase in numbers, and the other classes will, in all probability, correspondingly decrease. The church ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to dine at the barracks with some stupid men. Not that I mind his going," she added, hastily. "I wish he'd stay away for a month. Of course he's a very good sort, and all that, but he's deadly monotonous. Uncle, really, as a matter of curiosity, before I ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very stupid effort to be funny," returned Margaret. "Sometimes women will laugh because they are expected to, and they did that afternoon. Everything was simply cut and dried. It always is at Mrs. George B. Slade's. I never knew a woman ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Thus Shakespeare is not exactly proved to have been a Danish scholar. There is no difficulty in supposing that 'a clayver man,' living among wits, could pick up French and Italian sufficient for his uses. But extremely stupid people are naturally amazed by even such commonplace acquirements. When the step is made from cleverness to genius, then the dull disbelieve, or cry out of a miracle. Now, as 'miracles do not happen,' a man of Shakespeare's education could not have written the plays attributed to him by his ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... such are his gracious intentions, and you may depend with full assurance on the word of Belisarius. So long as Heaven has condemned us to suffer, patience is a virtue; but if we reject the proffered deliverance, it degenerates into blind and stupid despair." "I am not insensible" replied the king of the Vandals, "how kind and rational is your advice. But I cannot persuade myself to become the slave of an unjust enemy, who has deserved my implacable hatred. Him I had never injured either by word or deed: yet he has sent against me, I know ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the more graceful, though the effect inside is tame and flat in comparison. This is owing partly to its lesser size and height, and partly to our hard, transparent atmosphere, which lends no charm or illusion, but mainly to the stupid, unimaginative plan of it. Our dome shuts down like an inverted iron pot; there is no vista, no outlook, no relation, and hence no proportion. You open a door and are in a circular pen, and can look in only one direction,—up. If the iron pot were slashed through ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... The Highland troops to the right went almost mad. Lord John Murray, their commander, had fallen, and not a tenth of their number remained unwounded; but the broadswords wrought small havoc against the spiked branches of the log barricade. Obstinate as he was stupid, Abercrombie kept his men at the bloody but futile attempt till the sun had set behind the mountains, etching the sad scene with the long painted shadows. Already almost two thousand English had fallen,—seven hundred killed, the rest wounded. The French ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... many hundreds that has, to my idea, much merit (a charming composition of Homer singing, signed Jourdy); and the only good that the Academy has done by its pupils was to send them to Rome, where they might learn better things. At home, the intolerable, stupid classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the least erudite country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession, the least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down, and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove them away from natural beauty, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... happen to know that the game is not worth the candle. The wasp gets into the jam in hearty and hopeful efforts to get the jam into him. IN the same way the vulgar people want to enjoy life just as they want to enjoy gin—because they are too stupid to see that they are paying too big a price for it. That they never find happiness—that they don't even know how to look for it—is proved by the paralyzing clumsiness and ugliness of everything they do. Their discordant colours ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... little log-cabins, and was received with genuine backwoods hospitality by the proprietor, who had married an Osage squaw. Williams was not only very hungry, but very tired; and, after enjoying an abundant supper, he became stupid and sleepy, and expressed a wish to lie down. The generous trapper accordingly conducted him to one of the cabins, in which there were two beds, standing in opposite corners of the room. He immediately threw himself upon one, and was soon in a ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... "Giants".—These are stupid, mischievous, evil and cunning in Saxo's eyes. Oldest of beings, with chaotic force and exuberance, monstrous ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... always generates in those, who are to defend unjust acquisitions against lawful authority; and when he comes home, with riches thus acquired, he brings a mind hardened in evil, too proud for reproof, and too stupid for reflection; he offends the high by his insolence, and corrupts the low ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... I awoke, I found the Indians wrapped in their blankets, and lying asleep all around me. The excitement of the night had passed off, and brought its corresponding depression. They were very docile and stupid, and it was with some difficulty I could arouse them for the duties of the day. I asked several of them what had become of the Sioux prisoners, but could get no other answer than, “Guess him must ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... denied a youth of the mattresses. "My dear Hench, you make no distinctions. I've been talking about the boy's people and his bringing up and the way he acts, whereupon you fly off on a tangent and coolly conclude things about the boy himself. It is not only unkind, but stupid." ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... I find every chance in my favour. The bride will arrive here on the day of our wedding: my servant will be one witness; some stupid old Welshman, as antediluvian as possible—I leave it to you to select him—shall be the other. My servant I shall dispose of, and the rest I ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the fact that he was a very stupid host. Barnes, after staring at Dickie Lang for a moment, had retired to his work, leaving Gregory alone with his guest in the middle of the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... that such a thing as a chicken ever comes out of such a thing as an egg? If only one chicken were hatched in a century, we would go from here to the Himalaya mountains to see the miracle of that chicken coming out of that egg. You put an egg under a very stupid old hen, and all the hen does is to keep that egg warm, and leave it alone; after twenty days there comes out a chicken. How in the world did that chicken ever frame that body? How did it build the skeleton ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... poems. One merit they possessed. If a French painter lacked force and originality, he could at least portray with elegance and charm a group of fine ladies angling in an artificial pool. Elegance, indeed, redeemed the eighteenth century from imitative dullness and stupid ostentation: elegance expressed more often in perfumes, laces, and mahogany than in paint or marble. The silk-stockinged courtier accompanying his exquisitely perfect bow with a nicely worded compliment was surely as much ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... raised above the daily cares, the troubles, and the sorrows of life. As the drama, with the arts which are subservient to it, may, from neglect and the mutual contempt of artists and the public, so far degenerate, as to become nothing better than a trivial and stupid amusement, and even a downright waste of time, we conceive that we are attempting something more than a passing entertainment, if we propose to enter on a consideration of the works produced by the most distinguished ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... sentimental heart-break over Katy, though he did miss her company sadly in a town where there were no amusements, not even a concert-saloon in which a refined young man could pass an evening. If he had been in New York now, he wouldn't have minded it. But in a place like Metropolisville, a stupid little frontier village of pious and New Englandish tendencies—in such a place, as Smith pathetically explained to a friend, one can't get along ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... been my lot to meet, and to whom, as to her husband, I owe much for kindness generously shown when I was poor and had but few friends—she asked me if I had been to the Hall of Science, Old Street. I answered, with the stupid, ignorant reflection of other people's prejudices so sadly common, "No, I have never been there. Mr. Bradlaugh is rather a rough sort of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... before long, imprisonment and the bow-string put an end to his dangerous career. But though the boy Sultan had escaped with his life, and had now reached the age of sixteen years, he never attained to an imposing presence. He has been described as 'a monster of a man, deformed in body and mind, stupid, logger-headed, cruel, fierce as to his visage,' though this would seem to be an exaggeration, since another account speaks of him as 'young and active, addicted wholly to the delight of hunting and to follow the chase of fearful and flying beasts.' In order ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... footed it right merrily. Juchhe! Juchhe! Juchheisa! Heisa! He! So fiddle-bow was braying. Our swain amidst the circle press'd, He push'd a maiden trimly dress'd, And jogg'd her with his elbow; The buxom damsel turn'd her head, "Now that's a stupid trick!" she said, Juchhe! Juchhe! Juchheisa! Heisa! He! Don't be ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... about them,—very much. Perhaps she has heard of the two spoons crossed, and doesn't know that that was a stupid vulgar practical joke. Our crest is a knight's head bowed, with the motto, 'Desperandum.' Soon after the Conquest one of the Desponders fell in love with the Queen, and never would give it up, though it wasn't any ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... win, Cynthia. It was stupid of the jury to be so slow in arriving at the inevitable verdict. But stupid people are as lethargic as silly ones are swift. How shall we get to the carriage? We can't go out by the public exit. I hear the crowd is quite enormous, and won't ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... and that I hae whiles carried a bit book, or maybe a bit letter, quietly atween them, and made believe never to ken wha it cam frae, though I kend brawly. There's whiles convenience in a body looking a wee stupid—and I have aften seen them walking at e'en on the little path by Dinglewood-burn; but naebody ever kend a word about it frae Cuddie; I ken I'm gay thick in the head, but I'm as honest as our auld fore-hand ox, puir fallow, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... is a joke," cried Pencroft, "it is a very stupid one! To come home and find no staircase to go up to your room by—that's nothing for weary ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... [7] and God give me the grace to do so. We must neither imagine nor think that we can of ourselves bring about this suspension. That is what I say must not be done; nor must we allow the understanding to cease from its acts; for in that case we shall be stupid and cold, and the result will be neither the one nor the other. For when our Lord suspends the understanding, and makes it cease from its acts, He puts before it that which astonishes and occupies it: so that without making any reflections, it shall comprehend in a ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... "he is neither to look sillily, like a stupid pedant; nor unsettledly, with an uncouth morgue, like a new-come-over cavalier; not over sparing in your courtesies, for that will be imputed to incivilitie and arrogance; nor yet over prodigal in jowking or nodding at every step, for that ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... head is extended upon the neck and the angle between the jaw and the lower border of the neck is opened as far as possible to relieve the pressure that otherwise would fall upon the throat. In dumminess, or immobility, the hanging position of the head and the stupid expression are rather characteristic. In pleurisy, peritonitis, and some other painful diseases of the internal organs, the rigid position of the body denotes an effort of the animal to avoid pressure upon and to protect the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... are; and poor Drake is no better than the rest. Ah, well, it does not matter to me—now. Thank goodness it is over! Though one can always count upon Drake; he is too thorough a gentleman to make a scene or bully a woman. Heaven knows I am sorry to break with him, and I wish that old stupid hadn't made such a fool of himself; for Drake and I would have got on very well. But as things are——As father says, it's impossible. I wonder whether they are coming back; I am ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Constantinople. When they were leaving, the Sultan gave the Emperor a gigantic carpet, and the Emperor gave the Sultan a gold walking-stick, an exact imitation of the stick Frederick the Great used to lean on, and sometimes, very likely, apply to the backs of his trusty but stupid lieges. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... said the dying voice. "You'd a done a many stupid things—if I 'adn't stopped yer. An' I'm a-goin'. You'll never ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... your pardon, Mr. Robinson," said May humbly. "I know I have been very rude—I am constantly saying stupid things." ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... to see any sense in this. How can a right to the land be based upon a difference in the quality of the land? How can varieties of soil engender a principle of legislation and politics? This reasoning is either so subtle, or so stupid, that the more I think of it, the more bewildered I become. Suppose two pieces of land of equal area; the one, A, capable of supporting ten thousand inhabitants; the other, B, capable of supporting ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... her pleasure showing in her eyes. "Oh, that would be nice, Cousin Charlotte," she cried. "I do want to learn so much, but—but you have such a lot to do already, and we are very backward, and I am so—so stupid." ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... foolish days when I wished to conquer you, and make you humble yourself to me, I vowed by my mother's love that I'd not tell you, or let Borrow tell, a fact about myself which might win your favour. It was a bad vow to make: a stupid vow. But a vow by my mother's love I could not break, any more than you can break one to your father's memory. I'll abide by it: but trust me till Khartum, and there you shall know what I can't tell you now. I always hoped you would find ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... cases as in a plague, the best remedy is cito longe tarde: (for to such a party, especially if he be apprehensive, there can be no greater misery) to get him quickly gone far enough off, and not to be overhasty in his return. If he be so stupid that he do not apprehend it, his friends should take some order, and by their discretion supply that which is wanting in him, as in all other cases they ought to do. If they see a man melancholy given, solitary, averse from company, please ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... scattered cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark, whom we could see without hearing; terrified pigs scampering homewards; families sitting out in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with a stupid indifference; men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out tomorrow's work; and we riding onward, high abode them, like a whirl-wind. It was amusing, too, when we had dined, and rattled down a steep pass, having ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... must be cool, collected, and watchful; he must understand the buffalo, observe the features of the country and the course of the wind, and be well skilled, moreover, in using the rifle. The buffalo are strange animals; sometimes they are so stupid and infatuated that a man may walk up to them in full sight on the open prairie, and even shoot several of their number before the rest will think it necessary to retreat. Again at another moment they will be so shy and wary, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
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