"Idiotical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I said we. We have nothing to spend upon any one, so far as I know. I said I—the only person in the house who earns any money or is likely to do so, if Reginald goes on in this idiotical way." ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... too well justified by the facts," she replied seriously. "But only the most idiotic and ignorant of gossips could possibly say that of you. Every one who is any one knows that the Kyneston coronet does ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... underpinning of the bridge, and nothing was left but a few ties, the rails and the stringers. A half witted boy, who lived in Dunraven, had been fishing that day like "Simple Simon," and came tramping up to the office, telling Miss Marsh, in an idiotic way, that Peach Creek bridge had washed out. Just then she heard me "OS" the flyer and her office was the next one to mine. As the flyer did not stop at Dunraven, the baggageman and helper went home at six o'clock ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... that there was a special Providence that watched out for plumb fools and Americans. More recently, Von Papen, whom our Government asked to have withdrawn from his post as German military attache at Washington, referred to us affectionately as "those idiotic Yankees." Consequently, Germany now hopes to weaken our resolution by sending among us these tale-bearers, these prophets of disaster, on the chance that some of us will be fools ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... reward. But in men whose bitterness of longing grew out of hideous fault. The distinction of beauty—not a payment for prayers or chastity. The distinction of love ... above chests of linen and a banker's talent and patents of nobility.... Divine need. Idiotic. But what else, what ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... grand example to our pessimistic, socialistic friends and cheap demagogues of the sterling worth and noble, chivalric character of a "society man of wealth." He is a living type of "Bel a faire peur," without the idiotic sentimentality of that maudlin hero, and with ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... to kill him—even he might have value under certain circumstances, and no really efficient executive destroys value—but he had to be out of the way where his mob-rousing tongue could do no damage. The damned fool! What good would his idiotic idealism do him on a ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... not much fun of the healthy kind; fat, comfortable, middle-aged men laughed so heartily at the faintest indecent allusion that the singers grew broader and broader, and the hateful music-hall songs grew more and more risky as the night grew onward. By the way, can anything be more loathsomely idiotic than the average music-hall ditty, with its refrain and its quaint stringing together of casual filthiness? If I had not wanted to fix a new picture on my mind I should have liked better to be in a tap-room among honestly brutal costers and scavengers than ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... snout against Marston's cheek, and, in the excess of his joy, the lad threw his arms round the dog's neck and hugged it vigorously, a piece of impulsive affection which that noble animal bore with characteristic meekness, and which Grumps regarded with idiotic satisfaction. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in comparison such men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as became an old sailor, and so it seemed were Miss Mavis's, for when I mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... those she loved best, and in whose judgment she most confided, all the time reminding her of her mental weakness and inferiority? And as it has been, so it is. Woman is still believed intellectually inferior to man, by ninety-nine one hundredths of mankind. Poor, weak, silly, drunken, half-idiotic men, whose wives have to support them, will tell you in conscious pride of sex of woman's weakness of mind. I have heard little Lilliputian men, whose minds were as small as a baby's rattle-box, always harping on this worn-out string of woman's weakness of mind. It is an idea ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... Almost idiotic with the shock of my great grief I reeled and tottered away among the bowlders. Fooss came to find me; and when he found me he kicked me violently for some time. ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... entered into the body of a sinner of the last century. The antiquarian ghoul steals title-pages and colophons. The aesthetic ghoul cuts illuminated initials out of manuscripts. The petty, trivial, and almost idiotic ghoul of our own days, sponges the fly-leaves and boards of books for the purpose of cribbing the book-plates. An old "Complaint of a Book-plate," in dread of the wet sponge of the enemy, has been discovered by Mr. ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... (perhaps with more ridiculous "illustrations") of the poems which stirred their own tenderness or filial piety, and carry them to make their first acquaintance with great men, great works, or solemn crises through the medium of some miscellaneous burlesque which, with its idiotic puns and farcical attitudes, will remain among their primary associations, and reduce them throughout their time of studious preparation for life to the moral imbecility of an inward giggle at what might have stimulated their high emulation or fed the fountains of compassion, trust, and ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Scraggsy, poor old Scraggsy," he keened in a high falsetto voice and subsided on a crate of celery, the while he waved his legs in the air and affected to be overcome by his merriment. Scraggs turned the colour of a ripe old Edam cheese, while Mr. Gibney folded his hands and looked idiotic. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Saint-Prix, p.458. "At Orange, Madame de Latour-Vidan, aged eighty and idiotic for many years, was executed with her son. It is stated that, on being led to the scaffold, she thought she was entering a carriage to pay visits and so told her son."—Ibid., 471. After Thermidor, the judges of the Orange commission ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... little "Zoo"; but never again did he win the smallest hint of notice from the Gray Master. And ever that tireless pacing smote him with bitterest self-reproach. Half unconsciously he made it a sort of penance to go and watch his victim, till at last he found himself indulging in sentimental, idiotic notions of trying to ransom the prisoner. Realizing that any such attempt would make him supremely ridiculous, and that such a dangerous and powerful creature could not be set free anywhere, he consoled himself with a resolve that never again would he take captive ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... his clothes and his general soigne appearance, he stands before his glass every morning until he is satisfied. Had he (thought I) any accuracy of vision he would see himself the grotesque thing he is in that idiotic little cap. But his vision ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... employer, Mrs. Shuster. It was easy to see (knowing what we know of him now) that Caspian had decided at first sight to go for the girl, who has grown astonishingly pretty and attractive. I'm here to block his game. That's why I took on this idiotic job with Madam Shuster. It's enough to make a Libyan lion laugh! But I saw no other way of keeping near, to do the watchdog act—not being a gentleman or a millionaire like Caspian, able to live ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... lower front was a huge display of mirror, designed to stimulate the thirst for more symmetrical features. Denton caught the reflection of himself and his new friend, enormously twisted and broadened. His own face was puffed, one-sided, and blood-stained; a grin of idiotic and insincere amiability distorted its latitude. A wisp of hair occluded one eye. The trick of the mirror presented the swart man as a gross expansion of lip and nostril. They were linked by shaking hands. Then abruptly this vision passed—to return to memory ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the last. The police reported the finding of Bonnot's will, in which he says: "I am a celebrated man.... Ought I to regret what I have done? Yes, perhaps; but I must live my life. So much the worse for idiotic and imbecile society.... I am not more guilty," he continues, "than the sweaters who exploit poor devils."[12] His final thought, it is said, was for his accomplices, both of whom were women, one his mistress, the other the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... some time; and perhaps that time may not be far off.—Oh if men could only look at these national questions with calm scientific vision, understanding the laws that govern national and racial life! There would be none of these idiotic jealousies then; no heart-burnings or contempt or hatred as between the nations; there would be none of this cock-a-doodling arrogance that sometimes makes nations in their heyday a laughing-stock for the Gods. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... since I sprained my ankle. I wish I could come too. I wonder if I could hop round with my stick and look on. I do love to watch Aunt Mary drive; I learnt a lot from her last week before I sprained my ankle in that idiotic way." ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... of his idiotic actions, on the basis of an inflated and dishonest report of the battle which was sent to the empress, Nassau received a valuable estate, the military order of St. George, and authority to hoist the flag ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... Heaven's sake, don't go waving your arms about in that idiotic manner! Recollect every one can see you ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... music-room doorway, his absurd little nostrils sniffing the air. Then, deliberately, Simon Cameron walked to the doorway and sat down there, his huge furry tail curled around round him, staring with idiotic ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Loose 'un? Madame MELBA was charming as Mickie Ella, the Irish girl in Spain. M. LASSALLE appeared as Escamillo. the bull-fighter, in a novel, and doubtless a correct, costume, and his great Toreador song was vociferously encored. Then, finally, JEAN DE RESKE, who made of the usually idiotic Don Jose a fine acting as well as a fine singing part. It drew a big house, and would have been a pretty dish to set before an Emperor on Wednesday, if, on that occasion, the Opera itself were the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... idiotic motor tour," said Kew. "And go back to London, and talk Jay out of her 'bus-ism. I want her to leave it off, and let the Family discover her romantically enjoying some passable imitation of her Secret World. I want the Family never to know of all that lay between. I do ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... gotten!" he remarked as he rose. In the gate sat Bakahenzie. Birnier was conscious of an idiotic impulse to rush forward to greet him as an old and long lost friend. But remembering the dignity of his godhood he remained in the tent doorway, bidding the chief ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... myself. I was mismanaging this thing in the most idiotic way. Instead of this bovine silence, gay small-talk, the easy eloquence, in fact, of the brisk man of affairs should have been my policy. No wonder Smooth Sam Fisher treated me as a child. My whole bearing was that of a ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... audacity, unparalleled ingenuity. They play tricks from morning till night, and they all do it—the most virtuous, the most upright, the most sensible of them. You may add that sometimes they are to some extent driven to do these things. Man has always idiotic fits of obstinacy and tyrannical desires. A husband is continually giving ridiculous orders in his own house. He is full of caprices; his wife plays on them even while she makes use of them for the purpose of deception. She persuades him that a ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... superstitious age. Their heads, unlike those of dwarfs, are small and not ill-looking, but with very low foreheads and a general conformation strongly confirmatory of certain fundamental assertions of Phrenology. Idiotic they are not; but their intellect and language are those of children of three or four years, to whom their gait also assimilates them; but they have none of childhood's reserve or shyness, are inquisitive and restless, and articulate with manifest efforts and difficulty. To children of three to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... very strong. He is very useful to me as a means of locomotion, but otherwise no good feeling exists between us, for he is the most senseless, clumsy brute that I have ever come across in the animal kingdom. He is always treading on me and doing other idiotic and annoying acts. A few days ago he got entangled in the picketing ropes, and on my going to his assistance promptly fell forward upon me (he is the biggest horse I have seen in any Yeomanry Company) and nearly broke my instep. I have lately re-christened him ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... which give its pretty name to the Street of the Four Fountains and which consist of two extremely plain Virtues and two very dull old Rivers, diagonally dozing at each other over their urns in niches of the four converging edifices. They are not quite so idiotic under their disproportionate foliage as the conventional Egyptian lions of the Fountain of Moses, with manes like the wigs of so many lord chancellors, and with thin streams of water drooling from the tubes between their lips. But these are the exceptional fountains; there are few ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... knew it, and Mr Marlowe must have heard it; but she made a complete fool of him, brain and all. I don't know how she managed it, but I can imagine. She liked him, of course; but it was quite plain to me that she was playing with him. The whole affair was so idiotic, I got perfectly furious. One day I asked him to row me in a boat on the lake—all this happened at our house by Lake George. We had never been alone together for any length of time before. In the boat I talked to him. I was very kind about it, I think, ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... think I'd come back with tribute to pay for the spiders that fool Hanson and his men killed. Why, the ship's rays could wipe them all out, drill a hole in the ground—they didn't realize that. Thought that by holding Brady and that conceited Inverness for hostages, they'd be safe—and I'd be idiotic enough to not see this chance to get all the glory of the expedition for myself—instead of sharing it with those two. You're a quick thinker, ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... H. E., an unscrupulous tyrant, s. father and mother. His first appearance caused heaven at home, and an idiotic father. Education: At home. Career: A series of adventures. Was frequently ill, a poor sleeper, toy demolisher, throat exerciser, nurse distractor, and a general nuisance. Despite his shortcomings he ruled ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... herself to many utterances as idiotic as Ernest's, and Mary secretly wondered to find how shadowy and ridiculous such solid people showed in a strange land. They carried their ignorance and their parochial atmosphere with them as openly and unashamedly as they carried their luggage. She was not sorry to leave them, for she and her ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... he, aggressively, "do you know she's heard about that idiotic trip of mine to town that night? Fairfax told everybody, and somebody's wife told Mrs. Butler. It got me in a devil ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of horses with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker's assistant, who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic solemnity by dragging down the corners of the mouth. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to have felt) at much too great length; and the dragging in of an actual fairy at the end, to communicate to the heroine the exceedingly novel and recondite maxim that "Prudence is the mother of safety," is almost idiotic. If the thing has any value, it is as an example, not of a real fairy tale nor of a satire on fairy tales (for which it is much too much "out of the rules" and much too stupid), but of something which may save an ordinary reader, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... like myself, who had studied at the universities, fighting every inch of their way, till they had achieved success as physicians, lawyers, writers. She spoke passionately, often with the absurd acerbity of her mother. "It's a crime for a young man like you to throw himself away on that idiotic Talmud of yours," she said, pacing up ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... cobblers in the silly old novels, who, according to the authors, were prepared to trample down all good manners in the pursuit of utilitarian knowledge. The fact is, I begin to think that you have so muddled your head with mathematics, and with grubbing into those idiotic old books about political economy (he he!), that you scarcely know how to behave. Really, it is about time for you to take to some open-air work, so that you may clear away ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... and cross one who had no manners? He would have to call, if only to thank her for her note. No. He would do that in writing. Next week, perhaps, he might drop in and see Dorothea. But Hope and Channing should take the girl about, show her the city. Certainly Hope could not be so idiotic as to let clothes matter. In his sister's world clothes were the insignia of its order, and of late Hope had shown signs that needed nipping. He must see Hope. Next week would be time enough, but Hope and ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... nothing born but has to die. Ideal monasteries, once grown real, do seek bed and board in this world; do find it more and more successfully; do get at length too intent on finding it, exclusively intent on that. They are then like diseased corpulent bodies fallen idiotic, which merely eat and sleep; ready for 'dissolution,' by a Henry the Eighth or some other. Jocelin's St. Edmundsbury is still far from this last dreadful state: but here too the reader will prepare himself to see an Ideal not sleeping in the aether like a bird-of-paradise, but roosting as the ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... her head. "I'm only afraid she will be a laughing-stock and bring down ridicule on all of us. You and Father are perfectly idiotic about her. You might be expected to make a fool of yourself, but I am surprised at Father's interest ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... honourable renown in the last century, and may cite with pride her Varela, Musquiz, Gabarrus, Ulloa, Jovellanos, &c., was little cultivated or encouraged in that decay of the Spanish monarchy which commenced with the reign of the idiotic Carlos IV., and his venal minister Godoy, and in the wars and revolutions which followed the accession, and ended not with the death of Fernando his son, the late monarch—was almost lost sight of; though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... if I'd left you for someone else I should have been afraid to tell you? That I should have written an idiotic note like that? . . . How dared you wire to Penelope? It ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... sha'n't!" Bobby protested. "It's Quixotic and idiotic. You sha'n't spoil your own good life for the sake of Lorimer's bad one. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... said Parson Stump, despondently. "She—well, she—she isn't quite right. Poor creature! Do you understand? A simple person. Not idiotic, you know. Not born that way, of course. Oh no! born with all her senses quite intact. She was beautiful as a maid—sweet-natured, lovely in person, very modest and pious—very merry, too, and clever. But before ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... old girl," said Vane bending over and patting her neck; "but I s'pose it's only in keeping with everything else these days—it's not fairness that counts; it's just luck—fatuous idiotic luck. It's not even a game; it's a wild-cat gamble all over the world. And may Heaven help us all when the bottom does drop ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... out some day," said Enid. "I'm determined Patty's name shall be cleared. How any of you can be so idiotic as to connect her with it, I can't imagine. Never mind, Patty dear! We know you better than to believe such rubbish. Don't trouble your head about it, for it simply isn't worth worrying over. Everyone with a spark of sense will agree with me, and I'm sure Miss Harper will ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... seemed scarcely able to take care of themselves, and totally unfit for the training of ordinary children. It was the blind leading the blind, imbecility teaching imbecility. Some instances of the experiments of parental ignorance upon idiotic offspring, which fell under the observation of Dr. Howe, are related in his report Idiotic children were found with their heads covered over with cold poultices of oak-bark, which the foolish parents supposed would tan the brain and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mind, he could arrive at but one conclusion, after what Mr. Melton had told him. Amelius was concerned in the discovery of his deserted daughter; Amelius had taken the girl to her dying mother's bedside. With his idiotic Socialist notions, he would be perfectly capable of owning the truth, if inquiries were made. The unblemished reputation which John Farnaby had built up by the self-seeking hypocrisy of a lifetime was at the mercy of a ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... write to you such a great deal because I know how welcome a long letter will be, and yet I fear that I cannot make this one very long for the simple reason that I am feeling serious. Moods are like dresses. Some of them do not suit me at all. Seriousness not only spoils me, it makes me absolutely idiotic. Most people I know, however, prefer me like that because then I express my agreement with their opinions so very readily. But to be serious. I don't quite understand what you are going to do at ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... of bluish-white smoke issuing from it, through which I dimly caught the flicker of flames. To drop through the hatchway was the work of an instant, when I at once saw what was the matter. A large packing-case that had evidently been nearly full of straw was all in a blaze, and beside it, with an idiotic, drunken grin upon his face, stood the steward, unsteadily pointing with wavering finger to the open lazarette lantern, which could just be descried in the midst of the blazing mass. In his other hand the fellow held a filled but unlighted pipe, which, with a tumbler that ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... of the solemn union between man and woman? In this sense, marriage is a sacrament. But sometimes, alas! it is almost a sacrilege. As for civil marriage, it is a formality. The importance given to it in our society is an idiotic thing which would have made the women of other times laugh. We owe this prejudice, like many others, to the bourgeois, to the mad performances of a lot of financiers which have been called the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... garters around their legs; while the women placed many brass rings upon their fingers, bright plaid shawls about their shoulders, gay silk handkerchiefs over their heads, and beaded leggings upon their legs. How I regretted I had not brought along my top-hat—that idiotic symbol of civilization—for if I could have worn it on that occasion, the Indians at Fort Consolation would have been so filled with merriment that they would have in all probability remembered me for many a year as the one white man with a sense ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... a moment I wish you to meet Miss ——." I don't know what she said to me or what I said to her. I can remember that I tried to be clever, and experienced a growing conviction that I was making myself appear more and more idiotic. I am certain, too, that, in spite of my Italian-like complexion, I was as red as ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... observe decency, then sit in your hovel! If you haven't anything to wear, then don't have any fancies! You write verses, you wish to educate yourself—and you go about looking like a factory hand! Does education consist in this, in singing idiotic songs? You idiot! [Through his teeth and looking askance at MITYA] Fool! [Is silent] Don't you dare to show yourself in that suit up-stairs. Listen, I tell you! [To RAZLYULYAYEV] And you too! Your father, to all ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... know what you do? Do you know what you risk? [Is there nothing - nothing! - will make you spare me this idiotic, wanton prosecution?] ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... himself up there; it was too idiotic! A voice from the unseen had called him and his out into the day, and then nothing had happened! It had ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... disappointment; the thing which had been alive was dead, and so the sudden hope which had come with the new wonder died too. He supposed that he had been the prey of an absurd fancy created by the idle words of the doctor, or by an idiotic movement of his mind, which had cried to him on a sudden: "If the Valentine you love and revere is really gone away, what are you worshipping now?" Now, in his heavy disappointment he thought of this cry as a mad exclamation, and he sought to drown ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... torn it!" Tai-yue remonstrated laughingly. "But wait and I'll ask him about it! so come along all of you, and I vouch I'll make him abandon that idiotic frame of mind and that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... I am ashamed to say that there was a time when I was like other men, a slave to the idiotic convention which we call Class Distinction. But, since I read ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Idiotic of him, isn't it?" she remarked, continuing hastily, "but you haven't given me your serious opinion. I want you to make a cool ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... or idiotic a midshipman, if he but orders a sailor to perform even the most absurd action, that man is not only bound to render instant and unanswering obedience, but he would refuse at his peril. And if, having ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... him with a reasonable explanation or appeal he would have yielded it up. Yet here he was—looking angrily pale in the glass, his eyes darker than they should be, and with an unmistakable instinct to do battle for this idiotic gage! Was there some morbid disturbance in the air that was affecting him as it had Kilcraithie? He tried to laugh, but catching sight of its sardonic reflection in the glass became grave again. He wondered if the gillie had been really looking for anything his master had left—he ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and the Church of England did, "because," he reasoned, "if another differs from me, he weakens my confidence in my own scheme of faith, and so injures me." Now this speech is good just so far as it asserts social dependence in belief; it is bad, it is idiotic or insane, so far as it advocates the substitution of a factitious and artificial unity for one of spiritual depth and reality. The fruits of the tree of life are not to be successfully thieved. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is no worse than any other bad picture. If anyone is to be blamed, it should be the spectator who cannot distinguish between good cubist pictures and bad. Blame alike the fools who think that because a picture is cubist it must be worthless, and their idiotic enemies who think it must be marvellous. People of sensibility can see that there is as much difference between Picasso and a Montmartre sensationalist as there is between Ingres and the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... sharpened knife into his belt and plunged into the dense undergrowth. The snaky, moist lianas made progress next to impossible. They clung around our legs like live things, and I damned the Professor's idiotic craving for notoriety as we waded through the clammy creepers in search of the trail made by the party. The prickly rope-like vines seemed to be in league with the devil who was leading the aged scientist and his daughters ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... doubt I am, Madam. As a matter of fact, I am not clever at discussing public questions, because, as an English gentleman, I was not brought up to use my brains. But occasionally, after a number of remarks which are perhaps sometimes rather idiotic, I get certain convictions. Thanks to you, I have now got a conviction that this woman question is not a question of lovely and accomplished females, but of dowdies. The average Englishwoman is a dowdy and never has half a chance of becoming anything else. She hasnt any charm; and ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... for her mother, and as she went out of the room for a moment, insisted upon Mr. Gilton's trying to do it and see what fun it was. If Mr. Gilton lives to be a hundred he will never forget the mingled feelings with which he awkwardly tried to get that senseless ball into that idiotic cup. At last he stood up to go—it was after six o'clock—and they went with him to the door, and wished him Merry Christmas, and sent Merry Christmas to Mrs. Gilton, and said good-night several times, and he stumbled on through the snow, this time towards his own door. It had stopped ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... should, the tears started to his eyes as he explained to me that the capture of the ship would leave him and his frau absolutely penniless in their old age. I endeavoured to soften the blow to him as much as possible by sympathetically murmuring some idiotic platitude about "the fortune of war," but of course it was no good; the poor old fellow simply shook his head and ejaculated—"Ay—the fortune of war! It is all very well for you, young sir, who depend upon war to provide you with a career, to talk ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... pear-shaped heads; with old men's faces, with cherubs' faces, with monkeys' faces; cold and famished children, and warm and well-fed children; children conning their lessons and children romping carelessly; the demure and the anaemic; the boisterous and the blackguardly, the insolent, the idiotic, the vicious, the intelligent, the exemplary, the dull—spawn of all countries—all hastening at the inexorable clang of the big school-bell to be ground in the same great, blind, inexorable Governmental machine. Here, too, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... observed by Meniere:—A married couple, being cousins, who enjoyed excellent health, had eight children, of whom four were born deaf mutes, another was idiotic, another died when five years of age, and two others suffered from absolute deafness, which only ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... continued the voice, broken by panting pauses, as if the speaker was struggling into a garment. "I know this must seem strange. You see, I came on the coach as far as Bayport and then we lost a wheel in a rut. There was a—oh, dear! where IS that—this is supremely idiotic!—I was saying there happened to be a man coming this way with a buggy and he offered to help me along. He was on his way to Wellmouth. So I left my trunk to come later and took my valise. It rained ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... modern phraseology would have some difficulty in finding a head for every cap, there are perhaps some satirical stings which have not quite lost their point. The legitimate drama, so theatrical critics tell us, has not quite shaken off the rivalry of sensational scenery and idiotic burlesque, though possibly we do not produce absurdities equal to that which, as Pope tells us, was actually introduced ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... clever person, you're rather stupid. It would be simply idiotic to tell him what is sure to annoy him, when the thing's done and he can't ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... China. The Chinese had been long waiting for the arrival of the elephants, with their yellow flags floating from the howdahs, announcing, as did the flags of Lord Macartney's Mission to Peking, "Tribute from the English to the Emperor of China," and I suppose that there are governments idiotic enough to thus pander to Chinese arrogance. No doubt what has given rise to the report is the knowledge that the Government of India is bound, under the Convention of 1886, to send, every ten years, a complimentary mission from the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... everything I did was stupid that separated you from me. The natural action of my character would have been just to seize you again and carry you off resisting or unresisting to Arranstoun, but some idiotic sentiment of honor to ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... idiotic question," he said, as she paused before his desk, "but did you get anything at all out of my lecture except my bit of facetious advice to young girls about ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... should it trouble me? It's that old Russian woman who troubles me. I'd be idiotic to add to my miseries by thinking up any other torments while I'm around with her. Here we are at the Quai,—that's the hotel yonder. And I've talked one continuous stream ever since we left the Gare and you've never said a word. Begin right off and tell me something about yourself. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... bit I pulled myself together and I said: 'My dear little girl, what is this? What do you mean about your big sister Sarah?' Edward, I could not bring myself to say that idiotic Solly. In fact, I did think I must be mistaken and had not heard correctly. But Content just looked at me as if she thought me very stupid. 'Solly,' said she. 'My sister's name ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... am accursed? Ah! no, this is all my own fault! I let myself be caught in every trap. There is no one more idiotic or more infamous. I would like to beat myself, or, rather, to tear myself out of my body. I have restrained myself too long. I need to avenge myself, to strike, to kill! It is as if I had a troop of wild beasts in my soul. I would like, with a stroke ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... foot. Why had she been such a fool as to count on this poor old idiotic creature? Probably while Judy was hunting for her pipe, Mike had watched and waited in vain for ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... are not going to treat him as you would treat De Lacy and that idiotic Sims, I won't bring him!" And with that he flung out of ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Ruth coming out, tall and pale and graceful, from the shadow of the church porch into the blaze of the mid-day sunshine. He had not calculated either for that sudden disconcerting leap of the heart as her eyes met his. He had an idiotic feeling that she must be aware that he had run most of the way to church, and that he had contemplated the burnished circles of her back hair for two hours, without a glance at the fashionably scraped-up head-dress of Mabel Thursby, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... into the concrete familiar. There was the old glass still, with my notes on the albumens stuck in the corner of the frame, my old everyday suit of clothes pitched about the floor. And yet it was not so real after all. I felt an idiotic persuasion trying to creep into my mind, as it were, that I was in a railway carriage in a train just stopping, that I was peering out of the window at some unknown station. I gripped the bed-rail firmly to reassure myself. "It's clairvoyance, perhaps," I said. "I must ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... was traveling farther from her to whose aid he had rushed, impelled by motives so hot-headed, so innately, chivalric, so unthinkingly gallant, so exceptionally idiotic! ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... romance of two passionate hearts in such a vivid setting cannot but fail to make the eye kindle and the pulses throb. Compared to it, Lancelot and Elaine become cardboard puppets, Dante and Beatrice figures of clay utterly devoid of life, while Paolo and Francesca appear merely idiotic. ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... instinct was not to put on any of these things till he had been assured that they were there with the consent of Adam Ferris. But he realized that he had already used the razors, and besides it would be idiotic, in his present awkward position, to strain at any gnats after swallowing such a camel as the marriage ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... not only dress with taste, but talk with sense, the lords of creation will be glad to drop mere twaddle and converse as with their equals. Bless my heart!" cried Christie, walking about the room as if she had mounted her hobby, and was off for a canter, "how people can go on in such an idiotic fashion passes my understanding. Why keep up an endless clatter about gowns and dinners, your neighbors' affairs, and your own aches, when there is a world full of grand questions to settle, lovely things to see, wise things to study, and noble things to imitate. Bella, you must try the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the impatient exclamation on the old maid's lips. And so she stayed on with her, going about with a sort of fascinated, divinely stolid air, in the impassibility of profound adoration, buried in almost idiotic contemplation. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... of lawyers who, through the idiotic method of voting in use in modern democracies, are able practically to rule Great Britain, and who are powerful and influential in ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... in my last I explained to you how restive I had been getting at home, and how my idiotic mistake had annoyed my father and had made my position here very uncomfortable. Then I mentioned, I think, that I had received a letter from Christie & Howden, the lawyers. Well, I brushed up my Sunday hat, and my mother stood on a chair ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... for a moment thought of doing what you accuse me of; on my honour, I never did. I have been very foolish—very wrong—idiotic, I believe; but I have ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... returned to the parlour, Gowing was retailing his idiotic joke about the odd sock, and Carrie was roaring with laughter. I suppose I am losing my sense of humour. I spoke my mind pretty freely about Padge. Gowing said he had met him only once before that evening. He had been introduced by a friend, and as he (Padge) had "stood" a good dinner, Gowing ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... had hoped you would escape the slang habit. It is not a bit more manly than the cigaret or cigar. Some slang phrases, like "you're not in it" or "you're off your trolley" and others, may do in familiar conversation with friends, but "bunches of cold" or "cuts no ice" etc., are simply idiotic. When you write return me again the postal card that I may see what words I misspelled. It still keeps very mild here, but is snowing this morning. Nip and I have had some fine skating —like a mirror for over a mile here in front: but the ice is getting thin. I do ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... bards are sometimes rather free With feminine anatomy; Their catalogues erotic Of pretty girls' peculiar "points," Their eyes and limbs, and curves and joints, Are often idiotic. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... embarrassed me. 'Captain Martin' sounded idiotic. 'Insurgent Martin'—why, that's well and good. I wanted to end as I had begun, die as my father had died, as a rioter in a riot, as a ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... already know, we and our assistants happen to be in better position to study these things than is any one else at the present time. However, I will compromise with you. We can learn much in a month if you will really try, instead of wasting time in fuming around the ship and indulging in these idiotic tantrums. If you will buckle down and really study the problems confronting us for thirty days, we will set out at the end of that time, ready ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... not gentle; she could be the gentlest creature that ever lived, when it was a question of a child, or a bird, or— anything that was hurt, in short. When that little beggar fell down the other day and barked his idiotic little shins, the way she took him up, and kissed him, and got him to laughing, while he, Geoffrey, plastered him up; and it hurt too, getting the gravel out. When that violoncello note gets into ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... worked it out at her leisure, to the last link of the chain, the way their prettiness had set them trap after trap, all along—had foredoomed them to awful ineptitude. When you were as pretty as that you could, by the whole idiotic consensus, be nothing but pretty; and when you were nothing "but" pretty you could get into nothing but tight places, out of which you could then scramble by nothing but masses of fibs. And there was no one, all the while, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... "How idiotic!" she laughed. "Supposing you had not happened to meet me? You could scarcely have rung my bell at ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... child," laughed Mrs. Harvey. "I wouldn't have told you that if I'd thought you were going to remember it. And I think most of your ideas are perfectly idiotic," ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... looking at this from a newspaper standpoint, you know. You must remember it is not you who will decide the matter, but a jury of your very stupid fellow-countrymen. Now, you can never tell what a jury will do, except that it will do something idiotic. Therefore, it seems to me that the very first step to be taken is to find out who the guilty party is. Don't you see the ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... Larry! No immediate scandal. I haven't any one in view, and living as I do it isn't likely that I shall be tempted by some knightly or idiotic man, who wants to run away with a middle-aged woman and three children. I am anchored safely—at any rate as long as dad lives and your mother, and the children need my good name. Oh!" she broke off suddenly; "don't let us talk any more ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... that it compares with your Spanish accent, Edgar; that stands absolutely alone and unapproachable for badness. I don't worry about my mathematical stupidity a bit since I read Dr. Holmes, who says that everybody has an idiotic ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... his surveys. You've all seen him face this council. That only, gentlemen, is the spirit which can build the U. P. R. Let's push him up. Let's send him to Washington with those figures. Let's break this damned idiotic law for appointing commissioners to undo the work ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... looked black and miserable as they bent over their work, or slacked and glanced around them. Outside, the rain began to fall, and the sky was grey with cloud. The lights had to be switched on, and they cast a deceptive glow upon all work, and idiotic shadows of the moving fingers of the girls. Miss Summers glowered and rubbed the tip of her nose; and at each crack or rustle of a chair or a piece of material she glanced sharply up, as though she were ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... and pleaded, but it was no use. Not an inch would Mrs. Comstock budge. The night was warm and the carriage comfortable, the horses were securely hitched. She did not care to see what idiotic thing a pack of school children were doing, she would wait until the Sintons returned. Wesley told her it might be two hours, and she said she did not care if it were four, so ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... life of a Paris studio, would put the letters half-read, in his pocket, and would immediately forget all about them. After all, he couldn't interfere with Barty; he was the man at the helm, and mustn't be talked to. Also it was idiotic to keep a dog and bark yourself. Proverbial philosophy is a recognised sedative; Larry gave himself a dose or two, and straightway forgot Cousin Dick, forgot Ireland, forgot even that gratifying nomination ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... They are blinded by an idiotic vanity. What they want just now is a jolly good scare. This is the psychological moment to set your friends to work. I have had you called here to ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... thought; 'I hate this wood!' She saw it now, its snaky branches, its darkness, and great forms, as an abode of giants and witches. She groped and scrambled on again, tripped once more, and fell, hitting her forehead against a trunk. The blow dazed and sobered her. 'It's idiotic,' she thought; 'I'm a baby! I'll Just walk very slowly till I reach the edge. I know it isn't a large wood!' She turned deliberately to face each direction; solemnly selected that from which the muttering of the guns seemed to come, and started again, moving very slowly with her hands stretched out. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fancied, forsooth, that we would have by intuition the knowledge which they had acquired by costly experience! And when we complained of the expense and trouble involved in the selection and purchase of these extras, the intimation that we were unreasonably idiotic was freely bandied about by the very people who should ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... Camber's genius, having decided upon murder, must have arranged for an unassailable alibi. Very well. Are we now to leap to the other end of the scale, and to credit him with such utter stupidity as to place hanging evidence where it could not fail to be discovered by the most idiotic policeman? Preserve your balance, Knox. Theories are wild horses. They run away with us. I know that of old, for which very reason I always avoid speculation until I have a solid foundation of fact upon which ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... a childishness such as might have induced a stranger to pat him on the head—pausing, however, in the act, to wonder what manner of child was here. It was as if the spirit had gone out of him, leaving the body to flourish in a sort of vegetable existence. Not that Owen Warland was idiotic. He could talk, and not irrationally. Somewhat of a babbler, indeed, did people begin to think him; for he was apt to discourse at wearisome length of marvels of mechanism that he had read about in books, but which he had learned to ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not understand why Western sovereigns should permit their subjects to enjoy the same conveniences and amusements as themselves. "If I had a theatre," he said, "I would allow no one to be present at performances except my own children; but these idiotic Christians do not know how to uphold ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "there's one thing certain: Byram can't stay if there's going to be fighting here. I heard guns at sea this morning; I don't know what that may indicate. And here's this idiotic revolution started in Paradise! That means the troops from Lorient, and a wretched lot of bushwhacking and guerrilla work. Those Faouet Bretons that Buckhurst has recruited are a bad lot; there is going to be ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... answer for her not being so idiotic as to hate Boilers,' he returns with angry emphasis; 'though I cannot answer for her views about Things; really not understanding what Things ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... "If ever a compatriot of mine had gotten that idea into his—how you say?—pate, would he not carry it out to the idiotic limit, yes? He? He would try to walk without any feet whatever, and use all of them for other things. Already you have seen him doing the, the pugilat—the box—with every one ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... lightning. The wagon-load which headed the line had struck up a song, and were shouting at the top of their voices with a haggard joviality, a potpourri by Desaugiers, then famous, called The Vestal; the trees shivered mournfully; in the cross-lanes, countenances of bourgeois listened in an idiotic delight to these ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... old miser must have been idiotic; for soon forgetting what he had but just told us of his utter toothlessness, he was so smitten with the pearly mouth of Hohora, one of our attendants (the same for whose pearls, little King Peepi had taken such a fancy), that he made the following ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... ragamuffins led by Wat Tyler—so little was I impressed by its magnitude that I went to live at Edenburn. There I laid out a lot of money in rebuilding the house, spending over L2000 in additions. This was most idiotic of me, because I had not counted on the infernal devices of Mr. Gladstone to render Ireland uninhabitable for peaceful ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... His chief reliance is on the "fatal mistakes" made since the last election by the other party. There never was a year in which the party in power and the party out of power did not make bad mistakes—mistakes which, unlike eggs and fish, seem always worst when freshest. If idiotic errors of policy were always fatal, no party would ever win an election and there would be a hope of better government under the benign sway of the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... of anything quite so idiotic as is this howl directed against the possession of wealth. I myself am a poor man: if I do not earn a living each year, I go hungry or go in debt. But I would not trade off my chances of a competency and of wealth—a reasonable ambition ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... practical politics altogether as things are at present. The same men who spouted infinite mischief because a totally unforeseen and unavoidable epidemic of measles killed some thousands of children in South Africa, who, for some idiotic or wicked vote-catching purpose, attempted to turn that epidemic to the permanent embitterment of Dutch and English, these same men allow thousands and thousands of avoidable deaths of English children ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... especially at the present moment, when there was a daily,—he might almost say, an hourly,—expectation of the withdrawal of their Ambassador from Paris, that there must be no more craven yielding to delusive impulses of an idiotic patriotism—(loud cheers),—in a word, no more talk about closing the Tunnel on the paltry plea of "national security." (Prolonged cheering.) He was glad to hear those cheers. It was an endorsement of the standpoint that he and his Directors meant to take in the present crisis, which was, in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... meet him and slid to a halt with his saucer feet scattering gravel and the idiotic grin on his face. "I mair your retter and you owe me ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... Parliament where Chatham, with his powerful eloquence, Bedford with his subtle argument, Townshend with his wit, and the elder Fox with his indefatigable intrigue, were all contending for the mastery; this man, who seemed sometimes half-frenzied, and at other times half-idiotic, retained power, as if it belonged to him by right, and resigned it, as if he had given ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... said she liked me as much as ever, and didn't care about any one else, but didn't think she ought to marry me, and so on. I couldn't get her to say why for a long time, but at last it came out. Some one, that idiotic Englishwoman, I suppose, had put it into the dear girl's head that it was her duty not to ally herself with 'a reactionary' (I think that was the word) and in this case that meant poor harmless me. I argued till I must have been blue in the face, but ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... good enough for you for fifty years," I retorted. "And if you think you look sporty, or anything but idiotic, sitting there in a flowered kimono and swabbing out ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the few years in which she was the wife of Ataulfus, whom she seems really to have loved, became unbearable after the death of Constantius. At the mercy of her brother who was fast sinking, at the age of thirty-nine, into a vicious and idiotic senility, she, always a sincere Catholic in spite of her romantic marriage with the Arian Ataulfus, seems to have been forced into a horrible intimacy with him; at least we know that he obliged her to receive ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... meditations he felt intoxicated again, and Mr. Carlyon, who was watching him as he sat there in his chair reading the Times opposite him, wondered what made him suddenly clasp his hands and draw in his breath and smile in that idiotic way while he gazed ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... of form and tone in the cornices and bell handles; all is barren of proportion, concord, and meaning. Still, this poor woman, with her inartistic eye and foolish heart, loves this wretched shelter, and would pour out her idiotic tears if she were leaving ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... along with them!' she cried. 'He does not take his servants when he goes a-hunting: a child could read the truth. No, no; the plan is idiotic; it must be Ratafia's. But hear me. You know the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man may use an axe with his hands, and yet have idiotic fancies all the time bubbling and seething in his head. The power to hold in check the vagaries of imagination may be gone. From all sides they come creeping out in swarms, they swoop down on him like birds of prey—as if in revenge for having been driven away so often ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... The fools. The mad, idiotic fools. Resisting the police. An armed attack on the police. If they killed any of them——. Great God, was there ever such a pack of fools and madmen? It was no longer simple contraband. It was no longer playing up a ridiculous law. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... emotional, hysterical, bigoted, hateful, loving, and insane. They really believed the Bible to be the actual word of God—a book without mistake or contradiction. They called its cruelties, justice—its absurdities, mysteries—its miracles, facts, and the idiotic passages were regarded as profoundly spiritual. They dwelt on the pangs, the regrets, the infinite agonies of the lost, and showed how easily they could be avoided, and how cheaply heaven could be obtained. They told their hearers to believe, to have faith, to give their hearts ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... revoked them by a will, carefully placed, for subsequent discovery, between the pages of a put-away book, I still held an undaunted course. But, when Patrick, the disinherited spendthrift, took upon himself, for the thinnest reason, all the blame of his supplanter's evil doing and kept up this idiotic fraud till the girl of his heart, and indeed everyone who cared for him, turned their backs in disdain, then I confess to having felt that Miss SHARP was trying my forbearance too high. But even so the fact that I could not throw the book down unfinished seems to show that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... And he asks such odd questions, which I don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. He often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic he'll get it out of me. Has he asked ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley |
