"Brained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gasping, inarticulate cry of warning but in that instant Jessamy moved his head an inch or so and the heavy pewter tankard that should have brained him flew harmlessly by and rolled clattering a good twenty ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... stroke of business, the defeat of a social rival, the success of a philanthropic undertaking. There is no normal human being who does not exhibit such limited volitional units. The most idle and purposeless of vagrants, the most scatter-brained school-boy, the most volatile coquette, may, for a time, be dominated by some desire which calls into its service other desires and thus ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... the closing admission that when he first came before the electors of Chelsea, he "was only between three-and four-and-twenty years of age, and was perhaps at that time rather scatter-brained," are all the allusions to the remote past which the speech contains; but there is every reason to believe that it was taken as satisfactory. Mr. Gladstone wrote that the comments of the Conservative ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... o'clock Hope fell into a doze, while resting in an arm-chair; but he was suddenly aroused from this by an exclamation from Sir Frank, who had remained wide awake, smoking cigar after cigar. In a moment the artist was on his feet, alert and quick-brained. ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... grand we are!" his plated friend replied, If our destiny is Salad, or the Sausage boiled or fried? Though we breed strife 'twixt England, and America, and France, If we're chopped up, or boiled, or brained where is our great advance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you chuck away a chance Of peace in pig-stye, or at sea, to play ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... could have brained him. "All right, you Philadelphia lawyer," he grumbled. "Besides yourself, Carol, is there ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... putting things in confusion, Philopoemen, considering those light-armed men would be easily repelled, went first to the king's officers to make them sensible what the occasion required. But they not minding what he said, but slighting him as a hare-brained fellow, (as indeed he was not yet of any repute sufficient to give credit to a proposal of such importance,) he charged with his own citizens, and at the first encounter disordered, and soon after put the troops to flight with great slaughter. Then, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... President Jackson, it will be remembered, proved the death-blow, and the nullification excitement soon thereafter subsided. Mr. Trumbull told me that he distinctly recalled John C. Calhoun, his commanding presence and splendid argument, as he addressed the large assemblage. As a clear-brained logician—whose statement alone was almost unanswerable argument—he thought Mr. Calhoun unsurpassed by any statesman our country had known. Mr. Trumbull added that at the close of Mr. Calhoun's speech before mentioned, amid great enthusiasm, "Hayne! ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... a shallow-brained, clownish fellow, and after saddling up, as he led the coyote into the open to mount, he imitated a drunken vaquero. Tipsily admonishing the horse in Spanish to behave himself, he vaulted into the saddle and clouted his mount over the head with his hat. The ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... flagrant example of what is nothing less than spiritual miscegenation—that's it!—why didn't I think of that phrase before—spiritual miscegenation. A rattle-brained boy, with the connivance of a common magistrate, effects a certain kind of alliance with a person inferior to him in every point of view—birth, breeding, station, culture, wealth—a person, moreover, who will doubtless be glad to relinquish her so-called ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... husky with concentrated wrath and whisky, what he intends to do the next time the damnable Boer rises to fight. The old British pioneer may have whelped a few million good fighting stock in his time, but this class of animal is no lion's whelp; it is a thing all mouth and no manners, a shallow-brained, cowardly creature, always howling about the Boer, but too discreet to go out and fight him, though ready at all times to malign him, to ridicule him as a farmer or a fighter, and it is a perfect bear's feast to this hybrid animal to get hold of a gullible ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... to manhood hoary-headed in wisdom, or to childhood yet in soft-brained ignorance, darkness is an unpleasant fact, to be got over in the best way possible—to be got over at all events, and at any cost, and to be turned into luminosity by every expedient that can be used. Wax-tapers, to throw their soft, luxurious light on my lady's delicate face, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... ringing in his ears, drove him mad. Up he whirled the Krag again, up, up, by the muzzle; and down upon that villainous skull he dashed it with a force that would have brained an ox. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... excellent pastime. On the other hand, we regard it as our duty as gentlemen to offer you our assistance, and thereby put a stop to what might become a senseless and insulting jest, which if our feather-brained friends had their way might even ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... most heartily, Mr. O'Connor," the colonel said. "What seemed at first a very wild and hare-brained enterprise, if you don't mind my saying so, certainly turned out a singular success. It would have seemed almost impossible that you, a young ensign, should be able to exercise any authority over a great body of ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... Mona, who adhered rigorously to her promise, and wrote her weekly report of her sister's health to her absent brother-in-law long after Nan was fully capable of performing this duty for herself. Mona had always been considered the least feather-brained of the family, and she certainly fulfilled her trust ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... this island! They say there's but five upon this isle: we are three of them; if 5 th' other two be brained like ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... troop or in rallying a body of skirmishers, that all those of a similar color ridden by members of his staff were successively shot, though his always escaped. On more than one occasion he brought victory out of doubt, or saved his little army in retreat, by an act of hare-brained bravery. Such was the "Uncle Tomas" of the Navarrese, the darling of the mountaineers, the man who would very likely have brought final victory to their cause had not death cut him off in ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... your jets, you space-brained jerks!" snorted Winters. He turned back toward the hatch, but there was noticeably ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... always been a mystery to her, and now, as Sabina sat near her, she crossed her feet, which were encased in a pair of the Princess's slippers, and looked at her as she had often looked before, wondering how such a reckless, scatter-brained, almost penniless woman could have remained the great personage which the world always considered her to be, and that, too, without the slightest effort on her part ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... with a half-indulgent, half-humorous glance. "Anything to get rid of you. It's a crack-brained scheme, and could only originate with a young man whose affections ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... comprehension. His mind had no more real depth than a looking-glass with a crack in it, and its images were disjointed and confused. There are many such men, but few possess unlimited means of carrying their crack-brained ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of possibility, for our reasoning faculties are like powder, which, though it catches fire easily, will never catch fire at all without a spark. The book of the Spanish nun has all the properties necessary to make a man crack-brained; but for the poison to take effect he must be isolated, put under the Leads, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... came in dreams to spoil the paradise. Three nights he came fighting Ugh-lomi. In the morning after these dreams Ugh-lomi would walk up and down, threatening him and swinging the axe, and at last came the night after Ugh-lomi brained the otter, and they had feasted. Uya went too far. Ugh-lomi awoke, scowling under his heavy brows, and he took his axe, and extending his hand towards Eudena he bade her wait for him upon the ledge. Then he clambered down the white declivity, glanced up once from ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... 14:23; Heb 11:6). This now puts him more out; this is a taking of his gods away from him. This is to strip him of his raiment, such as it is, and to turn him naked into the presence of God. This, I say, puts him out and out. These wild-brained fellows, quote he, are never content, they find fault with us as to our state; they find fault with us as to our works, our best works. They blame us because we are sinners, and they find fault ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a brother who was the wisest of all Beings—Prometheus called the Foreseer. But Epimetheus himself was slow-witted and scatter-brained. His wise brother once sent him a message bidding him beware of the gifts that Zeus might send him. Epimetheus heard, but he did not heed the warning, and thereby he brought upon the race ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... were happening all over the country. Wild-brained martyrdom was succeeded by uprising and organization. Then, in natural order, followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It was bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way. It has been the manner ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the present day, wished to abolish private property, and establish "an equal division of unequal earnings," while others declared and acted out their belief in the coming end of the world. Eventually Cromwell had to deal with these crack-brained enthusiasts in a decided way, especially as some of them threatened to assassinate him in order to hasten the advent of the personal reign of Christ and his saints ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... said Millicent unblushingly—that was her strong point, blushing in the right place, but not in the wrong—"Mr. Oscard is associated with Mr. Meredith, is he not, in this hare-brained scheme?" ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... They formed a complete line in front of us. General Carr, being desirous of striking their village, ordered the troops to charge, break through their line, and keep straight on. This movement would, no doubt, have been successfully accomplished had it not been for the rattle-brained and dare-devil French Lieutenant Schinosky, commanding Company B, who, misunderstanding General Carr's orders, charged upon some Indians at the left, while the rest of the command dashed through the enemy's line, and was keeping straight on, when it was observed that ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... "Trust him or his brother William? Rather look for faith and honesty in the Fiend himself. Nathless, I may not slight them—yet awhile. It is watch and wait—now. And a trying task truly, for they are the shrewdest brained in the land." ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... and don't all of us who write news from down here in Washington give him the worst of it in our despatches?... And what's the result? Mallard takes on flesh and every red-mouthed agitator in the country and every mushy-brained peace fanatic and every secret German sympathiser trails at his heels, repeating what he says. I'd like to know what the press of America hasn't done to ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... it all!" said Mr. Penny, interrupting with a flash of his spectacles, and at the same time clawing at something in the depths of a large side-pocket. "If so be I hadn't been as scatter-brained and thirtingill as a chiel, I should have called at the schoolhouse wi' a boot as I cam up along. Whatever is coming to me I really can't estimate ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... things take their course, all would have passed off with well-bred people; but she was incessantly apologising, and fussing, and fretting inwardly and outwardly, and directing and calling to her servants—striving to make a butler who was deaf, a boy who was hare-brained, do the business of five accomplished footmen of PARTS and FIGURE. The mistress of the house called for ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... gou'd on de sunny shed Was mighty proud of his pethy head, So he nuver pondered or studied or trained, An' now he's ol' an' rattle-brained. An' he ain't by 'isself in dat, in dat— An' he ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... in schemes that promised restitution of the wealth he had expended, or make his ruin perfect and complete. One adventure after another failed, cutting the thread of his career shorter every instant, and rendering him more hot-brained and impatient. He doubled and trebled his risks, and did the like, as may be guessed, to his anxieties and failures. He lived in a perpetual fear and danger of discovery; and discovery now was but another ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... with some home-made ones, manufactured out of hair-pins.... My little Dinkie, I notice, is going to love animals. He seems especially fond of horses, and is fearless when beside them, or on them, or even under them—for he walked calmly in under the belly of Jail-Bird, who could have brained him with one pound of his wicked big hoof. But the beast seemed to know that it was a friend in that forbidden quarter, and never so much as moved until Dinkie had been rescued. It won't be long now before Dinkie has a pinto of his own and will go bobbing off across the prairie-floor, I suppose, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... life. Suddenly, at the end of eight months, she ceased writing to him—a fact which after all, argued well for her sincerity; full of apprehension, he hastened to the capital and found her engaged to a young lieutenant,—a dashing, hare-brained fellow, covered all over with gilt embroidery, undeniably handsome, but otherwise of very little worth. At least that was Storm's impression of him; he may have done him injustice, he added, with his usual conscientiousness. A man who ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... at once urged the Professor to explain to me what Krespel had to do with violins, and particularly with Antonia. "Well," replied the Professor, "not only is the Councillor a remarkably eccentric fellow altogether, but he practises violin-making in his own crack-brained way." "Violin- making!" I exclaimed, perfectly astonished. "Yes," continued the Professor, "according to the judgment of men who understand the thing, Krespel makes the very best violins that can be found nowadays; formerly he would frequently let other people play on those in which ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... children's cries, a bird-throat, high above, from the heights of a tall pine would pour forth, as if in uncontrollable ecstasy, its rapture into the stillness of this radiant Normandy garden. The song appeared to be heard by other ears than ours. We were certain the dull-brained sheep were greatly affected by the strains of that generous-organed songster—they were so very still under the pink apple boughs. The cows are always good listeners; and now, relieved of their milk, they lifted eyes swimming with appreciative content ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... was barely of age, but already a computer in the Nautical Almanac office, then located at Cambridge, and we well knew work of that sort required brains of the best. Since Simon Newcomb's death an interesting story has been told about his heredity. His strong-brained father, measuring his own qualities with rigid introspection, discovering where he was weak and where capable resolved that whatever wife he chose should supplement in her personality the points to which he lacked. He would father sons and daughters who should come ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... hole-and-corner business, which had nothing whatever to do with France or the Emperor? I could not help thinking what a fool I had been, when I had a fine war before me and everything which a man could desire, to go off on a hare-brained expedition of this sort, as if it were not enough to have a quarter of a million Russians to fight against, without plunging into all sorts ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... an embarrassed silence. This was a new trait in Blake, one of the most jovial, whole-souled, rattle-brained fellows imaginable ordinarily, but now he seemed transformed. For years the regiment had been serving by itself. Now for the first time it was thrown into contact with the comparative strangers of the infantry. These gentlemen, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... to remember the sequence of events—the kind who never can tell whether the Exclusion Bill came before or after the Restoration. There will be the usual amount of specialized tastes, curiosity, timidity, laziness, and rattle-brained thinking. The questioning should probe these peculiarities, and stimulate the pupil's ambition to improve his preparation at its weakest point. Needless to say the questions should not be asked with the daily ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... Leander viewed, His colour went and came, as if he rued The grief which Neptune felt: in gentle breasts Relenting thoughts, remorse, and pity rests; And who have hard hearts and obdurate minds, But vicious, hare-brained, and illiterate hinds? The god, seeing him with pity to be moved, Thereon concluded that he was beloved. 220 (Love is too full of faith, too credulous, With folly and false hope deluding us); Wherefore, Leander's fancy to surprise, To the rich ocean for gifts he flies: Tis wisdom to give much; ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... At this moment, a mad-brained ruffian of quality, with a splendid equipage, came driving by with four in hand, and exclaimed as he flew past, in an affected tone,—"All! Tom, my dear fellow,—why where the devil have you hid yourself of late?" The speed of his cattle prevented the possibility ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... cultivated person in England, but, before the death of Shenstone, had heard of the rare beauty of his home of Leasowes. Lord Lyttleton, who lived near by, at the elegant seat of Hagley, brought over his guests to see what miracles the hare-brained, sensitive poet had wrought upon his farm. And I can fancy the proud, shy creature watching from his lattice the company of distinguished guests,—maddened, if they look at his alcove from the wrong direction,—wondering if that shout that comes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... check on the inconsiderate zeal of hot-brained patriots in bestowing the honours of the Pantheon on the undeserving. MIRABEAU was, consequently, dispantheonized; and, in all probability, this temple will, in future, be reserved for the ashes of men truly great; ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... to ideas which a cultured man was scarcely supposed to harbor in his mind. "Magic," a synonym for jugglery; "Sorcery," an equivalent for crass ignorance; and "Occultism," the sorry relic of crack-brained, medieval Fire-philosophers, of the Jacob Boehmes and the St. Martins, are expressions believed more than amply sufficient to cover the whole field of "thimble-rigging." They are terms of contempt, and used generally only in reference ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... regulars were not invincible. No foe would, at Saratoga or Monmouth, see the backs of the men who had covered the redcoats' retreat from the field of Braddock's death, scaled the abatis of Louisburg, or brained Dieskau's regulars on the parapet of Fort ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... no other messenger that he must employ you?" said this erect, white-haired giant, who regarded her in a kindly way; "or is it that feather-brained fellow Calabressa who has got you to intercede for him? Rest assured. Calabressa will soon be in imminent peril of being laid by the heels, and ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... of her speech struck home; the seemingly soft-brained weakness that had forbidden the rape and pillage of the schooner stood in part explained. And as the light filtered through thick skulls and shone upon all but atrophied brains, a deep muttering swelled into the embryo of a throaty cheer that needed but ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... them in the garden, Pollio. Supper will be served in half an hour. Tomorrow, Beric, we will, after breakfast, renew this conversation that my feather brained young nephew has cut ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... tamper with his manhood, to confuse his identity, to render him among his own kindred and people perhaps tabooed, ostracised, despised—perhaps an object of pity. If he should succeed? Surely he had not come thus near success to suffer his splendid Yankee captain to be brained there before his eyes. Like a hawk he had watched every incident of the fight, and was on the alert to act the part of surgeon toward any who might be either wounded in the battery or taken prisoner. He had even resolved, in case of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... said that poets are crack-brained, and should be hung to the first tree. We will, therefore, treat these slanderers as ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... comes to 'cusing my mistiss' child of stealing and murdering. Suppose the sheriff was to light down here this minute, and grab you up and tell folks 'spectable witnesses swore you broke open your Uncle Mitchell's safe, and brained him with a handi'on? Would you think it friendly for people to say, if she didn't they will soon turn her aloose? Would that be any warm poultice to your hurt feelin's? It's the stinging shame and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... theme. There, alas! is my great lack—I have no poet. How wastefully on those who need them not are the most precious gifts bestowed! My uncle and godfather, Cardinal Ippolito—the saints rest his soul!—was a dull-brained barbarian and yet he had attached to his service that pearl of poets Ariosto, whom he had neither the intelligence to appreciate nor the justice to reward. What think you was Ariosto's meed for dedicating ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... pity she is so spoilt! A coquettish, hare-brained flirt: that is all that she is now, and she promised to be a sweet little woman two years ago! What business had she to be out walking with Hugo Luttrell? I should have heard of it if they were going to be married. I suppose she has had nobody to look after her. And yet Miss Murray always ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... by the beasts. And the smithy stood in the centre of the village! A stone's throw from the inn, and the thatch-roofed school, and the red painted church! He must have put up a hard fight, Stan. Three huge dark brown beasts, as big as cows' yearlings, were found brained. The body of big Stan had disappeared in the stomachs of the rest of the pack. The high leather boots and the hand that still gripped the handle of the sledgehammer were the only remains of the man. There was no blood, either. It had been lapped ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... offense was; and he may for aught you know have half murdered his master. You simply see a slave being flogged and you assault his owner. If the Jacksons lay complaints against you it is quite probable that you may have to leave the state. What on earth can have influenced you to act in such a mad-brained way?" ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... such nonsense to Jeanne. She is only a child like Rose, here. You girls get crack-brained ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... lay my hands on. The old boy'll think the end of the world has come." Razumov nodded from the couch, and contemplated the hare-brained fellow's gravity with a feeling of ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the simple good nature of a child, and at the same time an imaginative and enthusiastic temper, which seemed little to correspond with his labours at the forge or his combats in the field. Perhaps a little of the hare brained and ardent feeling which he had picked out of old ballads, or from the metrical romances, which were his sole source of information or knowledge, may have been the means of pricking him on to some of his achievements, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... gave a sudden awful cry, the cry of a lost soul shot into the night of eternity. The stillness had been so absolute, the cry broke that stillness so abruptly and so horridly, that the doctor, strong-brained, strong-nerved as he was, gave a violent start, and the ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... of this past day and night had been to her, they had left one curious mark on her face,—a hollow sinking of the lines about the mouth, as though years of pain had slowly crept over her. Suffering had not ennobled her. It is only heroic, large-brained women, with a great natural grasp of charity, that severe pain lifts out of themselves: weak souls, like Grey, who starve without daily food of personal love, contract under God's great judgments, sour into pettish discontent, or grow maudlin as blind devotees, knowing but two things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that rise through the tropic moonlight from the hot llanos, goes the ceaseless cry of humanity. Oh, if the god of the preachers were real, his heart must have long since broken! Upward it streams, this soul-piercing cry; up from the sodden, dull-brained toiler at the crashing loom; up from the wretched outcast woman, selling herself to low passions to escape the slavery of human exploitation; up from the muttering, ill-fed wreck, whose life has been cashed into dividends, whose dry, worthless hulk now totters to the scrap heap; up from the white-haired, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... earl turned, brained one of his foes with a sweep of his heavy axe, and, followed by Cuthbert, dashed to the assistance of the king. The weight of his horse and armour cleft through the crowd, and in a brief space he penetrated to the side of King ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... sympathetic tears from those who were to stay behind,—many messages left with them for wives, children, friends, and mistresses; and then this valiant handful pushed their boats from shore. It was a hare-brained venture, for, as young Debre had assured them, the Spaniards on the River of May were four hundred in number, secure behind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... "This scattered-brained young Ormond," said he to himself, "desires nothing better than to fight. Very natural—he has nothing to lose in the world but his bare life: neither money, nor landed property as I have to quit, in leaving the world—unequal ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... just as the pleasure nature gives in discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion become vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty. And when I consider the ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage, the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wanton an action; that our delights and our excrements are ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... glorious sights his Eyes have had; But finds too soon his want of Eloquence, The silly prattler speaks no word of sense; But feeling utterance fail his great desires Sits down in silence, deeply he admires, Thus weak brained I, reading thy lofty stile, Thy profound learning, viewing other while; Thy Art in natural Philosophy, Thy Saint like mind in grave Divinity; Thy piercing skill in high Astronomy, And curious insight in anatomy; Thy Physick, musick and state policy, Valour in warr, in peace good ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... stupid," said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, pointing to the animal. "She knows enough to pick out the best and the strongest. But she is rattle-brained." ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... from lapses of memory, his nerves are shattered, his judgment is not good, he forgets things and is irritable. He cannot hope to compete with the clear-brained individual who does ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... anybody who would be less affronted at being called hare-brained than our friend who has so tardily conveyed my message, and I am afraid now he has only given you a part of it. The omission appears to be, that I had set up an hotel on the Western road, that it would be opened next ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... are carried into Houses which are fired and burned with their Helpless Victims.—Men are nailed to the Outside of Buildings through their Hands and Feet and burned alive.—The Wounded and Dying are brained where they lay in their Ebbing Blood.—The Outrages are renewed in the Morning.—Dead and Living find a Common Sepulchre in the Trench.—General Chalmers orders the Killing of a Negro Child.—Testimony of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... ashamed that my letters contain so little news and are so uninteresting. This thing is so big and dreadful that it does not bear putting down on paper. I read the papers with the accounts of singing soldiers and other rubbish; they depict us as though we were a lot of hair-brained idiots instead of men fully realising our danger, who plod on because it's our duty. I've seen a good many men killed by now—we all have—consequently the singing soldier story makes us smile. We've got a big job; we know that we've got to "Carry On" whatever happens—so ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an ax one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... slight person together, P. Sybarite crouched, quivered, jumped for glory and the Saints—and all but brained himself on that impish and trickish grating. Clutching it and kicking footloose, he was stunned by the wonder of many brilliant new-born constellations swirling round his poor head to the thunderous music of the spheres, as rendered by the ash-can which, displaced by the vigour ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... body of demand for the article. And yet the supply does not come. Yes, and moreover, this great body of enthusiastic demanders are no mere poor and helpless people, ignorant fisher-peasants, half- mad monks, scatter-brained sansculottes—none of those, in short, the expression of whose needs has shaken the world so often before, and will do yet again. No, they are of the ruling classes, the masters of men, who can live without labour, and have abundant leisure to scheme out the ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... neglect this means of personal protection. "I can't imagine," said Lawrence, "that your aunt would ever think of such a thing as doing me a harm, or how those little shoes would prevent her, if she wanted to, but I suppose Aunt Patsy is crack-brained on some subjects, and so I thought it best to humor her, and ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the name of common sense can Jimjams be expected to show up against high-class yearlings like Ballarat and Tifftoff on the Goodwin Sands, T. Y. C.? The whole thing is only another instance of the hare-brained imbecility and downright puddling folly with which the cackling herd will follow any brazen-headed nincompoop who sets up to advise them on turf matters. Jimjams has just as much chance of winning this race as Mr. JEREMY has of being Archbishop of Canterbury. Verb. sap. At ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... through a long illness. I told your father when we heard of your going that you ought to be brought back and whipped; but the earl talked him over into writing to Captain Francis to tell him that he approved of this mad brained business, and a nice ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... some careless inattention to the state of their arms and ammunition, the placing of their horses at night, the position of their camping ground, and the posting of their night watches. The Indian is a vigilant and crafty foe, by no means given to hair-brained assaults; he seldom attacks when he finds his foe well prepared and on the alert. Caution is at least as efficacious a protection ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... of descent as that,"—and he pointed to the ladder down which we believed her to have come—"to leave a house of which she had been an inmate for a year, baffles me, I can tell you. If it were not for those marks of blood which betray her track, I would be disinclined to believe any such hare-brained adventure was ever perpetrated by a woman. As it is, what would'nt I give for her photograph. Black hair, black eyes, white face and thin figure! what a description whereby to find a girl in this great city of New York. ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... the fern-hole, was in a fern thicket next the clover field. It was small and damp, and useless except as a last retreat. It also was the work of a woodchuck, a well-meaning, friendly neighbor, but a hare-brained youngster whose skin in the form of a whip-lash was now developing higher horse-power in ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... dreamed that he cared for Rachel until he married her. Mind you, he never pretended to love me. It is every bit one-sided, and I don't care if it is. I am glad that a frivolous, shallow-minded, rattle-brained thing like me had sense enough to fall in love with the most glorious man that ever came into her life. I shouldn't have made him half as good a wife as Rachel does—I really feel as if they were made for each other—but he would have made a woman of me. I'm honestly ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... won't discuss it," said he. "I simply wish you to know that both of us have appreciated your friendship for Van. He is a scatter-brained young dog, but he is all we have, and we believe in time he is going to make good. Eh, son?" Despite the words he smiled down at the ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... saying that whilst there are masters and experts in every art and science, only on matters of theology and Holy Scripture, the foundations of all arts and sciences, can few be found to speak well. Yet questions relating to them are discussed most flippantly at table, and in public places; the hare-brained youth, the uneducated labourer, and the dotard, give their opinions freely on the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Spencerian sociology. It is the more to be wondered at that an evolutionist like Dr. Brandes, in his impatience at the tardiness of social progress, should lose his philosophic temper and make common cause with a crack-brained visionary. The kind of explosive radicalism which Nietschke betrays in his cynical questions and explanations is no evidence of profundity or sagacity, but is the equivalent of the dynamiter's activity, transferred to the world of thought. His pretended ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... profession a schoolmaster. There was a certain air of exaggerated earnestness of demeanour about him, and a wildness of expression in his flashing coal-black eyes, that caused me to set him down as being somewhat crack-brained. His name, I soon ascertained, was Algernon Marcus Wilde, and he was among the first of the emigrants to speak to me. He came to me, on the morning after I joined the ship, with a complaint as to the quality and quantity of the food served ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... you seek for good legislation, in the first place you will see the cleverest members of the community laying down the laws for the rest. And in the next place, the better class will curb and chastise the lower orders; the better class will deliberate in behalf of the state, and not suffer crack-brained fellows to sit in council, or to speak or vote in Parliament. (20) No doubt; but under the weight of such blessings the People will in a very short time be reduced ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... one whose art and wisdom are nought to this rabbit-brained generation; but it was given to me to find my meat and drink within his pages and to see my own youthful impressions reflected and crystallized with the brilliance of genius in his ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... for their country. Mrs. Kent's two boys are in the trenches, actually fighting, not just parading round in uniform like you. She goes every day and works in the office of the Red Cross and tries to keep every tangle straightened out. She's not jealous of me—she despises me for a little feather-brained pinhead. She thinks I am even worse than I am. She thinks I am as bad as you would like me to be! Naturally enough, she judges ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... you are a crack-brained jackanapes, with your damned fantastics!" bellowed Mac, angry in his turn. "What do you mean,—you, who are a perfect little saint in your life,—what do you mean by thrusting all these foul heresies at me, as if you were a veritable citizen of Sodom, or a rejuvenized Faust, who have just replenished ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... their safety ... For her own father and mother she was not seriously concerned, for they were too old travellers not to allow for unexpected delays, and had moreover prophesied more than once that such a scatter-brained party would be certain to miss their train; but Mrs Asplin with her exaggerated ideas of distance, her terror of the sea, her nervous forebodings of evil—how would she endure those long waiting hours? With her imaginative eye, Peggy saw before her the scene in the drawing-room at the vicarage, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... faithful she will be faithful. Do you imagine that a woman who insists on her lover carrying her off can so easily turn away from the man of her choice? I know her well; I have had long talks with her, she and I alone: she is feather-brained, given to pleasure, entirely without prejudices and those stupid scruples which spoil the lives of other women; but a good sort on the whole; devoted to my uncle, with no deception about her; but at the same time extremely jealous, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Snawley was about to speak. 'Let us cut this matter short, and not bandy words here with hare-brained profligates. This is your son, as you can prove. And you, Mr Squeers, you know this boy to be the same that was with you for so many years under the name of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... era—some twenty millions of years ago—the earth, basking in the warmth of a tropical climate, had produced a luxuriant vegetation and a swarming progeny of gigantic small-brained animals for which the exuberant vegetation provided abundant and easily acquired sustenance. They were a breed of huge, clumsy, and grotesque monsters, vast in bulk and strength, but of little intelligence, that wandered heavily on the land and gorged lazily on the abundant ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... all means. 'Tis a spot well chosen by yon devil's spawn, and for his own ends. By your eyes you are honest in purpose—a fool's purpose—and a hare-brained carrying out of it. You are being used as a tool by Lapierre. You will not believe this—not yet. Later—perhaps, when it is too late—but, that is your affair—not mine. At the proper time I will crush Lapierre, and if you go down in the crash you will have yourself to thank. I have warned you. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... realm, review its crimes, politics, discoveries, and inventions, and are entertained by their jesters, who, I have it on the authority of a current advertisement, all democratically smoke the same kind of tobacco. 'You know 'em all, the great fun-makers of the daily press, agile-brained and nimble-witted, creators of world-famed characters who put laughter into life. Such live, virile humans as they must have a live, virile pipe-smoke.' There are, to be sure, some who find in this agile-brained and nimble-witted mirth an element of profound melancholy; it seems often a debased ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... intended removal grew out of anxiety respecting the children, and his own desire that they might be where they could enjoy the advantages of schools, &c.—sneered almost to his face at what he termed his crack-brained notions; and subsequently, in relating to another person the conversation he had had with Mr. Garie, spoke of him as "a soft-headed fool, led by the nose by a yaller wench. Why can't he act," he said, "like other men who happen ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... spelt in several ways) was far from among the worthiest of his family, but distinctly the most entertaining. His ideas were certainly 'spacious' enough for the great days in which he lived, though he was too crack-brained and full of self to fall into line with his betters, whose deeds still bear rich fruit. 'He was,' says Fuller severely, 'one of good parts, but valued the less by others, because ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... by what I had done, as his arm relaxed and he fell prone, while, freed now from one adversary whose axe would the next moment have brained him, Hannibal grasped his remaining enemy with both hands, raised him up, and dashed him ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... do you see that dull-brained fellow?" said Etienne, lowering his voice, and glancing at Finot. "He has neither genius nor cleverness, but he is covetous; he means to make a fortune at all costs, and he is a keen man of business. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... made reckless by the lawless atmosphere of a roof garden, decided upon utter abandonment of his life's traditions. He resolved to shatter with one rash, dare-devil, impulsive, hair-brained act the conventions that had hitherto been woven into his existence. Carrying out this radical and precipitous inspiration he nodded slightly to the stranger as ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... happiness will dawn rather when all other people become like philosophers. In the meantime, it is the height of moral and political folly to act as if that day had arrived or else could be ushered in by morning. Spinoza had nothing but contempt for facile-tongued, feather-brained Utopians. He loved humanity too sincerely to mislead humanity or himself that way. And so we find in Spinoza's Ethics as in his Tractatus two systems of morals—one for the many who are called, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... time for them to disband. Flood, who had now again joined the patriotic party, was strongly opposed to this. He pressed forward his motion for "simple repeal," and was supported by Lord Bristol, the Bishop of Derry, a scatter-brained prelate, who had been bitten by a passion for military glory, and would have been perfectly willing to see the whole country plunged into bloodshed. A better and more reasonable plea on Flood's ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... they fail to reproduce their kind, they have failed in their purpose; they are unconsciously ruled by the philoprogenitive passion; it is their raison d'etre, for it they are fed, clothed, trained, bred. Existing for the race, they enjoy existence merely in the preliminary canter. Small brained, short-visioned, they lose sight of the race and desire the preliminary canter, with its excitements and promises, to ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... once, a fellow a little older than I, and not so reckless and hare-brained, and together we had been sinking a prospect hole that promised to be one of the best I ever struck. We had been at work two or three months, and I was just as sure there was a big fortune in that hole as I could be of anything. ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... it might have been done for a comparatively small amount, some hare-brained Socialists suggested that the town should buy the Gas Works, but the project was wrecked by the inhabitants, upon whom the mere mention of the word Socialist had the same effect that the sight of a red rag is popularly supposed to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Morosini, who was a friend of the Giustiniani, and who, like many another strong-brained Venetian, knew the taste of unsatisfied longings, yet kept a brave heart for the records of the Republic. And as he spoke there came to some of them who knew their annals well a stinging memory of the tale—which was no legend—of that pathetic ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... his stick and centered the old man's wavering gaze. "Don't lie," he said softly. "If yuh lie tuh me, yuh feather-brained old cockroach, I'll just natch'lly beat your face off! I want yuh tuh go home; just clamp your mind on that, Sam Meeker! If yuh think you're goin' tuh throw your money away over that bar, yuh want tuh separate yourself from the idea mighty quick. I won't stand fer foolishness. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... during her passive period? And now that she was active, a volcano in full activity hurling forth hot streams of treachery on two most harmless heads, she, the insignificant, the base-born, the empty-brained, was actually going to be able to ruin the plans of the noblest ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to this one. Many believed that the whole idea of the telegraph was rank folly. They thought of Morse and the telegraph very much as people had thought of Fulton and the steamboat, and made fun of him as a crazy-brained fellow. ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... a regular dolt; I can't bear him. A hare-brained fellow, a regular gad-about! Without any kind of occupation, eternally ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... awoke from a profound natural sleep, clear-eyed and clear-brained. His first act was to telephone to a florist's to send their largest crimson ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... that way, Brenda's way," he said. "She's scatter-brained; you can't get round that. Going off after the dance in that ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... not accomplish, nevertheless Donaldson did more things never even undertaken by any other aeronaut that any man who has ever lived. Indeed, much of his work would be deemed by mankind at large downright absurd, hair-brained, foolhardy, and reckless to the point of actual madness; and yet no man ever possessed a saner mind than Donaldson; no man was ever more fond of family, friends, and life in general, or normally more reluctant to undertake what he regarded as a needlessly hazardous ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... life. But there is something else truer still, and it is this—f or painters, practise and observation are everything; and when theories and poetical ideas begin to quarrel with the brushes, the end is doubt, as has happened with our good friend, who is half crack-brained enthusiast, half painter. A sublime painter! but unlucky for him, he was born to riches, and so he has leisure to follow his fancies. Do not you follow his example! Work! painters have no business to think, ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... he then said in a low tone, "'Work out your own salvation', it is the only way! Fulfil the expression of your whole heart and soul and mind, and never heed what opposing forces may do to hinder you. You are so clear-brained, so spiritually organised, that I cannot imagine your doing anything that shall not create a power for good. You are sometimes inclined to be afraid of the largeness of your own conceptions in the picture you are dreaming of,—I can see that,—but do not fear! The higher ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Here is another, in the lonely seas around the pole, where the ghostly ice-mountains go drifting through the gray mists, patiently wrestling with the awful powers of nature, to snatch its secret from the hoary deep, and bring it home in triumph. Hard fisted, big boned, tough brained, and stout hearted, scared at nothing, beaten back by no resistance, baffled, for long, by no obstacle, this race works as though the world were only one vast workshop, and they wanted all the tools and all the materials, and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... great matters, generally on philosophy or theology, but in vain will you seek to draw her into conversation on the little matters of ordinary chit-chat. She lives in a small circle of friends, where she can say and do as she pleases. Her son is a poor, weak-brained creature, perpetually annoying the whole neighbourhood by beating on a huge drum night and day. She has a daughter married to Chlessindur, the celebrated sculptor, but who resembles but little her talented mother. Madame Georges Sand has had a life of wild storms, with few ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... have waited; it would not have been so dreadfully long to May or June. Charlotte, how can a man who does such a hare-brained thing as this be deemed trustworthy in an important work like that of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... welded together, with a rush and a buzz like a cannon-ball. Thoughts? Ah! my friend, I had none. Who can think even in a high wind? And here the wind of our going would have brained an ox. Only one desperate instinct I had, one little forlorn remnant of humanity—to shield the love of my heart. So my arms never left her; and we fell together. I dreaded nothing, feared nothing, foresaw no terror in the inevitable mangling ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... men lived, as Ned put it, on the fat of the land, in addition to the other luxuries. Figgy duff, a luxury hitherto reserved for Sundays, being also served out to them. Bill was regarded as a big-brained benefactor of the human race; joy reigned in the foc'sle, and at night the hatch was taken off and the prisoner regaled with a portion which had been saved for him. He ate it ungratefully, and put churlish and inconvenient questions ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... slightest difficulty, and could use a lot of language in saying nothing at all. I could see all that at the time, but I suppose I was too pleased with my own sharp business brains, and sick enough, although I did not know it, of my sharp-brained, business companions—dear Lord! I remember them well. It's easy enough to have brains as they call it, but it is not so easy to have a little gaiety or carelessness or childishness or whatever it was she had. It is good, too, to feel superior to ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... present to console? The party was completed by John Myner, the Englishman; by the brothers Stennis—Stennis-aine, and Stennis-frere, as they used to figure on their accounts at Barbizon—a pair of hare-brained Scots; and by the inevitable Jim, as white as a sheet and bedewed with the sweat ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brief chance to see what the three poachers looked like, Thad was able to size them up along different lines. He believed that Si and Ed were both shallow brained bullies, with revengeful natures; but that Cale Martin, while known as a desperate man, was really more so through his association with such rascals as these, than for any other cause. And Thad chanced to know just why he had ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... intention at present is, to take orders in the Church of England; and you hope I will approve of your plan: but I must tell you honestly, that this is a most ridiculous hair-brained conceit. Before you can be qualified for the smallest living, you must study nine years at Oxford; you must eat at a moderate computation, threescore of fat beeves, and upwards of two hundred sheep; you must consume a thousand ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... endure any more talk about it. I am convinced, as from the first, that Squire's story was true; and the fragments of Cromwell's despatches genuine, though (as Critics pointed out) partially misquoted by a scatter-brained fellow, ignorant of the subject, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... of this there is no more striking example than the story that ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK has prepared for the world this autumn. She calls it The Encounter (ARNOLD), and it is all about the struggle between "the Nietzschean attitude of mind in Germany," as exemplified in an egotistical, crack-brained genius named Ludwig Wehlitz, and the ideals of civilized Christianity exemplified in several other more agreeable persons. You will own that this is at least a propos. The whole thing is, of course, quite charmingly told. All the characters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... was the scapegrace of the school, and the most trying scapegrace that ever lived. As full of mischief as a monkey, yet so good-hearted that one could not help forgiving his tricks; so scatter-brained that words went by him like the wind, yet so penitent for every misdeed, that it was impossible to keep sober when he vowed tremendous vows of reformation, or proposed all sorts of queer punishments to be inflicted upon himself. Mr. and Mrs. Bhaer lived in a state of preparation ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... compared with Thomas!—content to live what he called his life, be a benefactor to men, chiefly in ridding their fancies of the goblins of aspiration, then die his death, and have done with the business; while poor misguided, weak-brained, hypochondriacal Thomas could be contented with nothing less than the fulfilment of the promise of a certain man who perhaps never existed: "The Father and I will come to him and ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... man's anger defeated his purpose; for the shout attracted the attention of Gascoyne, who saw the spear coming straight towards Henry's breast. He interposed the shovel instantly, and the spear fell harmless to the ground. At the same time, with a back-handed sweep, he brained a gigantic savage who at the moment was engaging Henry's undivided attention. Bounding forward with a burst of anger, Gascoyne sought to close with Keona. He succeeded but too well, however; for he could not check himself sufficiently to deliver an effective blow, but went crashing against ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... next to me at a Pasdeloup concert in the Cirque d'Hiver, how many years ago I do not care to say. A casual exclamation betrayed my nationality, and during the intermission we drifted into easy conversation. Within five minutes he held me enthralled, did this big-souled, large-brained Irishman from the County Tipperary. We discussed the programme—a new symphonic poem by Rimski-Korsakoff, Sadko, had been alternately hissed and cheered—and I soon learned that my companion mourned a French mother and rejoiced ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... separation was the effect of chance, not of dissension. I do not know how far our destinations in life may throw us together, but if opportunity and inclination allow you to waste a thought on such a hare-brained being as myself, you will find me at least sincere, and not so bigoted to my faults as to involve others in the consequences. Will you sometimes write to me? I do not ask it often; and, if we meet, let us be what we 'should' be, and what ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... had got out comes back and looks in to see if everything is straight. Not a bit of it again. Other door of the cab was open and—no Goddard. But the policeman was lying back in the corner and when they struck a light and looked, they found he was stone dead. Goddard had brained him with the irons on his wrists. No one ever saw him from that day to this. He must have known London well—they say he did, and he was a noted quick runner. Being nightfall and rather foggy as it generally is in those parts he got clear off. ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... feather-brained, lily-livered fellows, is he? So much the better for my purpose. Look you here, Tom; bring Vane to-morrow evening to Spring Gardens, and there's a guinea ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... prayer-meetings and haunted taverns of the town, whose fault was that? His new associates were not depraved. Their only crime was that they were not Protestants. Even Elias Abdul Messih, the cause of all this outcry, was a respectable man, only scatter-brained and light-hearted. He was a Christian, not a Muslim or an idolater, so what was there to justify such ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... honest Lockwood's faithful search after his master, there had no doubt been an end of Esmond here, and of this his story. The marauders were out riffling the bodies as they lay on the field, and Jack had brained one of these gentry with the club-end of his musket, who had eased Esmond of his hat and periwig, his purse, and fine silver-mounted pistols which the Dowager gave him, and was fumbling in his pockets ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... that age of turbulent extravagance, the Prince of Marcillac was known, where he was known at all, merely as a hare-brained youth who carried the intolerance and insolence of amatory youth past the confines of absurdity, and it is amusing to find Balzac, who was twenty years his senior, and who was buried in the country, describing him—surely by repute—as the ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... travels from city to city earning a scant livelihood by his own playing and his daughter's dancing. Chance or fate leads them to throw in their fortunes with a band of enthusiastic adventurers, who, headed by a young hare-brained patriot, elected as their leader, have determined to storm the Vatican, and demand the person of the Pope, that they may convey him to America, there to convene an assemblage of all true Christians (or 'New Christians'), ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... a thin and rotten tick of straw spread on the cell floor. One thin and filthy blanket constituted the covering. There was no chair, no table—nothing but the tick of straw and the thin, aged blanket. I was ever a short sleeper and ever a busy-brained man. In solitary one grows sick of oneself in his thoughts, and the only way to escape oneself is to sleep. For years I had averaged five hours' sleep a night. I now cultivated sleep. I made a science of it. I ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... she seems borne along, despite and above herself. For my own part, as my lungs inflate themselves with this pure, dry, bracing air, exquisitely redolent of health, and testifying at once to a total exemption from noxious exhalations or mephitic vapors, I grow tete-montee, rattle-brained; my laugh echoes through these stony chambers, wild snatches of song hover on my lips, odd conceits flit through my brain, I joke, I dash forward with haste; my excitement endows me with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... in spite of the truce still existing, the English, since the accession of King John, had at several points resumed hostilities. The disorders and dissensions to which France was a prey, the presumptuous and hare-brained incapacity of her new king, were, for so ambitious and able a prince as Edward III., very strong temptations. Nor did opportunities for attack, and chances of success, fail him any more than temptations. He found in France, amongst the grandees of the kingdom, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and valuable part. It is not the legal or religious formality which sanctifies marriage, it is the reality of the marriage which sanctifies the form. Fielding has satirized in Nightingale, Tom Jones's friend, the shallow-brained view of connubial society which degrades the reality of marriage to exalt the form. Nightingale has the greatest difficulty in marrying a girl with whom he has already had sexual relations, although he is the only man who has had relations with her. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... marched as victors, but they remembered how they had formerly skulked as hunted guerrillas, and also, how Mendez had scourged the dissident villages. They found bodies hanging to trees. At Morelia a citizen who cried "Viva la Libertad!" had been brained with a sabre. It was the hour for reprisals. And Regules exacted suffering of the mocho, or clerical, towns that had sheltered the "traitors." Requisitions for arms, horses, and provisions marked his path. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... then shot a man with his rifle; he shot the man in the head. He also brained a boy that was about fourteen years old. The boy came running up to our wagons, and Brother Knight struck him on the head with the butt end of his gun and ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... impulsive young Billy; and Ronald, knowing it, feels guilty also. Poor little Billy, who was as a son to Michael! There was no mistaking the emotion in his face just now, when I merely laid my hand on his. Oh, impetuous scatter-brained boy!... Dear heavens! I wish he ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... the airmen are busy venturing through fog and puffs of exploding shells to get one small fact of information. We used to regard the looping of the loop of the Germans overhead as a hare-brained piece of impudent defiance to our infantry fire. Now we know its means ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... echoed Losely, shifting his hold from the top of his switch to the centre, and bringing the murderous weight of the lead down on the palm of his other hand, "that, if his eye had quitted mine for a moment, I think I must have brained him, and been—" ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
