"Imbecile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time in inquiring for Kabba Rega, whom I insisted upon seeing. After a short delay he appeared, in company of some of his bonosoora. He was in a beastly state of intoxication, and, after reeling about with a spear in his hand, he commenced a most imbecile attempt at warlike gestures. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... have met the monstrous mother in The Devil's Disciple, the horrible old woman who declares that she has hardened her heart to hate her children, because the heart of man is desperately wicked, the old ghoul who has made one of her children an imbecile and the other an outcast. Such types do occur in small societies drunk with the dismal wine of Puritan determinism. It is possible that there were among Irish Calvinists people who denied that charity was a Christian virtue. It is possible that among Puritans there were people who ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... might, but she resisted like a tigress at bay, and before he could drag her aside they heard the iron-barred door of the elevator glide open and clang shut. And there they stood in the strange place, the old man staggered with the realization of the future, the old woman imbecile with fear. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... real life; him, the ever present, the king of the Middle Ages, whose triumph we have seen on the cloister wall at Pisa, the lord "Death." His fleshless face peers from behind a bush at Zatzinger's stunted, fever-stricken lady and imbecile gentleman; he sits grinning on a tree in Orso Graf's allegory, while the cynical knights, with haggard, sensual faces, crack dirty jokes with the fat, brutish woman squatted below; he puts his hand into the basket of Duerer's ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... concocted against you, for which you can only get away, not by the thread of Ariadne but by Danae's shower of gold, and still give thanks that you are not kept in reserve for some needy occasion? The native, whom they pretend to regard as an imbecile, is not so much so that he does not understand that it is ridiculous to work himself to death to become worse off. A proverb of his says that the pig is cooked in its own lard, and as among his bad qualities he has the good one of ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... princess, I am partly responsible. Besides, since I'm English, they keep coming to me to have all the steps that are being taken explained; and they want the same explanation over and over again. Since the archduke came it has been very trying. I think that he is more of an imbecile than ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... therefore, that Lord de Versely did not neglect your interests. The de Versely property he could not leave you, but he did what he could in your favour. This will was signed, sealed, and attested, and is now in my possession; and as the old lady is very shakey, and something approaching to imbecile, I considered that in a short time I should have to congratulate you upon your succession to this fine property, which is a clear 8,000 ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... tottering imbecile. What's the matter with my legs?—my prophetic soul, it hurts! Oh, I see; that's where the old warrior's hoof caught me sideways. Now, I'll tell you what, I'm going to have another moose to take back ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Maria, the queen-dowager, had from her first arrival taken a dislike to her, and this aversion was increased when she saw that Matilda, Struensee, and Brandt, a young nobleman, exercised complete authority over the imbecile monarch, and directed the affairs of government at their pleasure. The queen-dowager had numerous and powerful friends, and these were likewise incensed at seeing Struensee at the head of the government, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... by she drew a long sigh, her face became the face of an imbecile, stupid, without expression, her eyes half-closed, her mouth half-open. Her head rolled forward as though she were nodding in her sleep, while a long drip of saliva trailed from her lower lip. Vandover's father ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Flaubert's Asiatic visions. He, too, dreamed of quintessentials, of the sheer power of golden vocables and the secret alchemy of art. He, too, promenaded his incertitudes, to use a self-revealing phrase of Chopin's. An aristocrat, he knew that in the country of the idiot the imbecile always will be king, and, "like many a one who turned away from life, he only turned away from the rabble, and cared not to share with them well and fire and fruit." His Kingdom of Green was consumed and became grey by the regard of his coldly ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... close there now," my friend remarked. "This fellow Merryweather is a bank director and personally interested in the matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog, and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon any one. Here we are, and they ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... against the future, party on party, dances on suppers and suppers on plays; to dine every evening at some place where they hadn't dined before; to meet lots of nice amusing people with demobilised minds who wouldn't talk to him about the war; to let himself go in bursts of exquisitely imbecile laughter; never to be quiet for an hour, never to be alone with himself, never to be long alone ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... command, and endeavored to prepare their minds for the revolution which he contemplated by representing to them that neither of the princes who had been proclaimed were fit to reign. John, he said, was almost an imbecile, on account of the numerous and hopeless bodily infirmities to which he was subject. Peter was yet a mere boy; and then, besides, even when he should become a man, he would very likely be subject to the same diseases with his brother. These men would ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... attack. The fiend makes preparation his favorite object of mockery, that he may fatally persuade us against our taking out waterproofs when he is well aware the sky is going to clear, foreseeing that the imbecile will turn this delusion into a prejudice against waterproofs instead of giving a closer study to the weather-signs. It is a peculiar test of a man's metal when, after he has painfully adjusted himself to what seems a wise provision, he finds all his mental precaution a little beside ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... father's golden girl involving us all in disaster. Let me cut the wretched history as short as I can. At first money was plentiful enough, and luck in that direction seemed to border on the marvelous. To give you an instance your father—imbecile that he was—swore he would test it in your own interests. He hunted round till he found the most hair-brained, wildcat company ever floated for the purpose of robbing moneyed fools, and invested ten thousand dollars in it as a life-dowry for you. It was the joke of all his gambling ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... with its own riches. Truth is one and poor, like the cruse of Elijah's widow. Imagination is the bold face that multiplies its oil: and thou, the old cracked pipkin, that could not believe it could be put to such purposes. Dull pipkin, to have Elijah for thy cook! Imbecile recipient of so fat a miracle! I send you George Dyer's Poems, the richest production of the lyric muse this century can justly boast: for Wordsworth's L.B. were published, or ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... imbecile, idiot, that I am!" he thought. "He was waiting to be questioned about this circumstance. He is so wonderfully shrewd that, when he saw me take the dust, he divined my intentions; and since then he has managed to ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... delicately balanced is the action along the verge of the sublime and grotesque, that it is both solemn and humorous, without violence to the propriety of the composition: the mad and merry fire of the Chorus, the imbecile mirth of old Cadmus and Tiresias, and the infatuation of Pentheus, who is ultimately induced to dress himself in female garb to gain admittance among the Bacchae, are made to harmonize with the terrible catastrophe which concludes the life of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the Cote Droit makes a still madder figure. An irrational generation; irrational, imbecile, and with the vehement obstinacy characteristic of that; a generation which will not learn. Falling Bastilles, Insurrections of Women, thousands of smoking Manorhouses, a country bristling with no crop but that of Sansculottic steel: ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... it!" Harleston replied and started toward the door. Half-way across the room he suddenly whirled around. "Lord, Carpenter. what an imbecile I am!" he exclaimed. "I fancy I've had the key-word all the while and never ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... the change and not the change, And those fixt eyes of painted ancestors Staring for ever from their gilded walls On him their last descendant, his own head Began to droop, to fall; the man became Imbecile; his one word was 'desolate'; Dead for two years before his death was he; But when the second Christmas came, escaped His keepers, and the silence which he felt, To find a deeper in the narrow gloom By wife and child; nor wanted ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... decorated with flags, flowers and bunting, and mottoes were festooned along the walls, one of which was "God Bless Our Homes," and another, "Imbecile Children Will Be the Product of Imbecile ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... the base successes—all these were present to him; it was with the din of these curses of the world, blasphemies against Heaven, shrieking in his ears, that he began to write his dreadful allegory—of which the meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate, and imbecile, and his passions are so monstrous, and his boasted powers so mean, that he is and deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance is better than his vaunted reason. What had this man done? what secret remorse was rankling at his heart? what fever was boiling in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... am forever your debtor for reminding me of that curious passage in my life. During the first year or, two after it happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled, established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from my mind—and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse, vulgar, and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plans were disconcerted by an event which, as Clara said, placed Marian in mourning in good earnest, namely, the death of her great aunt, old Mrs. Jessie Arundel, who had always lived at Torquay. For the last four or five years she had been almost imbecile, and so likely to die at any time, that, as it seemed for that very reason, every one took her death as a surprise when it ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... watch, still half bewildered, and pointing to the edge of the hill, where, in a condition seemingly of equal incertitude with himself, stood the imbecile. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... her step-daughter, the Duchess of Savoy. Not only them, but your imbecile-written promise to Strozzi that his wife would return to him as soon ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... countenance. Her forehead, much too large and too prominent, suggested water on the brain, and beneath that waxen cupola her face, noticeably too small and ending in a point like the nose of a mouse, made some people fear she would become, sooner or later, imbecile. Her eyes, which were light blue, and her lips, always fixed in a smile, did not contradict that idea. On the solemn occasion of her marriage she had the manner, air, and attitude of a person condemned to death, whose only desire is that it ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... necessary to keep us going—so did I and, as I believed, Leonora, imagine that the whole world ought to be arranged so as to ensure the keeping alive of heart patients. You have no idea how engrossing such a profession may become—how imbecile, in view of that engrossment, appear the ways of princes, of republics, of municipalities. A rough bit of road beneath the motor tyres, a couple of succeeding "thank'ee-marms" with their quick jolts would be enough to set me grumbling to Leonora against the Prince ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... snow-clad rocks and frozen soil, Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow, Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night; His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, 150 Insensible to courage, truth, or love, His stunted stature and imbecile frame, Marked him for some abortion of the earth, Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around, Whose habits and enjoyments were his own: 155 His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe, Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled, Apprised him ever of the joyless length Which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... (Thurlow Weed, who, it may be remembered, had objected to Welles's appointment to a Cabinet position when Lincoln suggested it to him in their consultation at Springfield before the inauguration) declared that "It is worse than a fault, it is a crime, to keep that old imbecile at the head of the Navy Department." And another critic expressed the uncomplimentary opinion that "If Lincoln would send old Welles back to Hartford, it would be better for the Navy and for ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... "Oh, that imbecile Gladys Brown! I know what you mean. I'd explained it a hundred times. If she'd the brains of a cow she'd have understood. No wonder I was cross. I should have been a saint if I wasn't, and no one can be a saint in the summer term. Did—did any ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in the next forty-eight hours Luigi was taken out and interrogated. After that, a gibbering imbecile, he went to live in Bughouse Alley. He has a strong constitution. His shoulders are broad, his nostrils wide, his chest is deep, his blood is pure; he will continue to gibber in Bughouse Alley long after I have swung off and escaped the torment of ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Accolon. Even here he never becomes the complaisant wittol, which late and rather ignoble works like the Cokwold's Daunce[57] represent him as being: and he never exhibits the slightest approach to the outbursts of almost imbecile ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... "Imbecile!" replied his neighbor. "It's Prince Villardo whom we saw last night in the play!" And the alcalde, in the character of giant-slayer, rose accordingly ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... what am I! those are the arms That are triumphant when the battle fails. O Julian, Julian! all thy former words Struck but the imbecile plumes of vanity; These, through its steely coverings, pierce the heart. I ask not life nor death; but, if I live, Send my most bitter enemy to watch My secret paths, send poverty, send pain - I will add more—wise as thou art, thou knowest No foe more furious than forgiven kings. I ask ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... With all party is family, country, and religion, the only spring of action. As York, whose ambition is coupled with noble qualities, prematurely perishes, the object of the whole contest is now either to support an imbecile king, or to place on the throne a luxurious monarch, who shortens the dear-bought possession by the gratification of an insatiable voluptuousness. For this the celebrated and magnanimous Warwick spends his chivalrous life; Clifford revenges the death of his father with blood-thirsty ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Badenhorst; old father; old mother; bedridden 15-year-old boy; water head; simple; old mother feeds it mouth to mouth[14]; "Die kind, leeraart, het ik nou al lang afgege aan de Heere Jesus!" (This child, Pastor, I have given to the Lord Jesus long ago.") She dotes on this imbecile, poor mother. Such a simple, homely, gladsome, believing old heart. "Ik ben velen een wonder geweest" ("I am a wonder unto many"); me certainly; daughter with sick girlie; "De Heere het haar ver ons terug gege" ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... history of social collapses due to demoralisation by indulgences following security and abundance. In the time of our Founders the signs of a world-wide epoch of prosperity and relaxation were plentiful. Both sexes drifted towards sexual excesses, the men towards sentimental extravagances, imbecile devotions, and the complication and refinement of physical indulgences; the women towards those expansions and differentiations of feeling that find expression in music and costly and distinguished dress. Both sexes became unstable and promiscuous. The ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... her free and graceful movements—all the charms which he had by heart, suited an Indian origin. He could readily imagine her the daughter of a chief and a hero. But this was not what he was required to believe. He had read lately the description of a brutal, half-imbecile savage, who had committed a peculiarly frightful and revolting murder, and he was told to recognize in this wretch the father of his darling. But it was just this which saved him. He would believe that Christian was Mrs. Costello's husband and Lucia's father, ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... rendezvous at the Big Cottonwood, and saw the meeting of the Grand Council. He had Murrell arrested, and he was tried, convicted and sent to the Tennessee penitentiary in 1834 for ten years. There he worked in the blacksmith shops, but by the time he got out, was broken down in mind and body, emerging an imbecile and an invalid, to ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... of the woman into whose hands my imbecile curiosity had put the clew was growing greater every minute. It seemed as if Olivia could not be safe now, day or night; yet what protection could I or ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... "It is youth which requires such things—and takes them. That is all imbecile London gossip. No, he would not run after her if she ran away. He is a proud man and he knows he would be laughed at. And he could not get her back from a ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Palmerston's recent treaty; but quite ineffectually. They had for their only ally, Lord Granville at Paris, and nothing can exceed the contempt with which the Palmerstonians treat this little knot of dissentients, at least the two elder ones, who (they say) are become quite imbecile, and they wonder Lord Granville does not resign. Palmerston, in fact, appears to exercise an absolute despotism at the Foreign Office, and deals with all our vast and complicated questions of diplomacy according to his own views and opinions, without the slightest control, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... they had found the old lady, and that she was imbecile; mind completely gone under stress of poverty and old age. Their opinion was ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... that, after the defeat at Towton, the queen had placed her husband, who was half imbecile, in a monastery at Edinburgh, and fled with her son, Prince Edward, to France; while the new king, Edward the Fourth, had taken full possession of the throne, and was publicly acknowledged as sovereign of England. He had declared his ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Idiots and imbecile persons likewise afford good evidence that laughter or smiling primarily expresses mere happiness or joy. Dr. Crichton Browne, to whom, as on so many other occasions, I am indebted for the results of ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... He resumed his grave, dignified air, in order to salute with a wave of his hand the phantom that had just appeared before him. It was the same that he had summoned one evening at the Hotel Steinbock, and treated there as an addle-brain, as a visionary, and even as an imbecile; but this time he gave him a more indulgent and gracious reception. He bore him no ill-will, he wished him well, he was under essential obligations to him, and Samuel ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... won at Arcola, but also at Solferino. Men who remembered Louis Napoleon when he mooned about the Blessington salon, and was supposed to be almost mentally deficient, used to say he deceived Europe twice; once when he made men think him an imbecile, and once when he made them think him a statesman. But he deceived them a third time; when he made them think he was dead; ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... which they act in criminal trials, viz., that "ignorance of the law excuses no one." As if it were in the nature of things possible that there could be an excuse more absolute and complete. What else than ignorance of the law is it that excuses persons under the years of discretion, and men of imbecile minds? What else than ignorance of the law is it that excuses judges themselves for all their erroneous decisions? Nothing. They are every day committing errors, which would be crimes, but for their ignorance of the law. And yet these same judges, who ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... his bed, blinking—and angry, too. He felt he had been wakened once too often by their imbecile quarrelling. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... must, therefore, be filled; to which, before I descend, it will be necessary, as was at first proposed, to speak of the origin of Florence, that it may be clearly understood what was the state of the city in those times, and by what means, through the labours of a thousand years, she became so imbecile. ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... excited at first great murmurs among the abler but less influential brethren. But the murmurs of the weak prove only the tyranny of the strong; and so completely in the course of time do institutions depart from their original character, that the imbecile riders of the black bulls now avowedly defended their position on the very grounds which originally should have unseated them, and openly maintained that it was very evident that the stout were intended to walk, and the feeble ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... Edward reeling by the roadside, was sometimes startled to hear the fragments of classical lore, or wild bursts of half-remembered poetry, mixing strangely with the imbecile merriment of intoxication. But when he stopped to gaze, there was no further mark on his face or in his eye by which he could be distinguished from the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... whether for weal or woe. Lady Chetwynde, do not call it nonsense—do not underrate its importance. Do not, I implore you, underrate me. Thus far you have tacitly assumed that I am a feeble and almost imbecile character. It is true that my abject devotion to you has forced me to give a blind obedience to all your wishes. But mark this well, Lady Chetwynde, such obedience itself involved some of the highest qualities of manhood. Something like courage and fortitude and daring was necessary ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... not the slightest effect in restoring peace to the minds of unscientific Frenchmen. M. Lalande's study was crowded with anxious persons who came to inquire about his memoir. Certain devout folk, 'as ignorant as they were imbecile,' says a contemporary journal, begged the Archbishop of Paris to appoint forty hours' prayer to avert the danger and prevent the terrible deluge. For this was the particular form most men agreed that the ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... wiping the sweat from his forehead. He wondered for an instant if she really looked troubled, or if he only imagined it. There was no doubt about how Vincent looked, as though he thought Mr. Welles, exulting over a blow with a mattock, an old imbecile in his dotage. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... brigadier, sinking down on the bundle. Then he turned and glared at me savagely. "Idiot!" he cried, labouring for his breath. "Espece d'imbecile. Ah! Nom d'un petit bonhomme. You were on the end. Why did you not head off those devils with ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... in 1496; the next year her only son and heir to the crown had followed; and within yet another year had died her favourite daughter, the Queen of Portugal. Her other children were all scattered with the exception of Juana, whose semi-imbecile condition caused her parents an anxiety greater even than that caused by death. As Isabella's life thus closed sombrely in, she applied herself more closely and more narrowly to such pious consolations ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the poet, the painter or the musician. The men who would experience any fatigue in putting into practice the instructions given in this Meditation are naturally predestined, just as he who cannot perceive the connection which exists between two different ideas is an imbecile. As a matter of fact, love has its great men although they be unrecognized, as war has its Napoleons, poetry its Andre Cheniers and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... beautiful Stella Monck on the same text? Ralph Dacre's death was quite as much of a mystery. And the kindly gossips are every bit as busy with Captain Monck's reputation as with His Excellency's. But I suppose her devotion to that wretched little imbecile baby ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... "Ach, idiot! Ach, imbecile! Ach, miserable! I tol' you he eggsplode. Stop your cry. Stop! It is an order. Do you wish I drow you in der water, eh? Speak. Silence, bube! Mommer, where ist mein stick? He will der grossest whippun ever of his ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... she says, in a clear, impassioned tone. "It is the will of an imbecile,—a madman. It shall not be." She has lost all self-restraint, and is trembling with fear and rage and a terrible certainty ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... have spread the story, with shrug and smirk, That the artist ne'er does a stroke of work; And so let him suffer, the imbecile! Be you silent! 'Tis you, I think, When the Cigale pierces the vine to drink, Drive her away, her drink to steal; And when she is dead—you ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... houses until they could have them as splendid as jewelled Mrs. Potiphar, and her palace, thirty feet front. Where were their heads, and their hearts, and their arms? How looks this craven despondency, before the stern virtues of the ages we call dark? When a man is so voluntarily imbecile as to regret he is not rich, if that is what he wants, before he has struck a blow for wealth; or so dastardly as to renounce the prospect of love, because, sitting sighing, in velvet dressing-gown and slippers, he does not see his way clear to ten thousand ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... we continue to listen to a wandering voice as| |imbecile as our condition?" said the speaker. "When | |this voice recently was removed from the counsels of| |our government, we thought, good easy souls, that we| |had got rid of it forever. Has Mr. Bryan proved ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... called "The Crime against Kansas"; and the excuses for the crime he denominated the apology tyrannical, the apology imbecile, the apology absurd, and the apology infamous. "Tyranny, imbecility, absurdity, and infamy," he continued, "all unite to dance, like the weird ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... so surprised that he could not hide it. He had expected to see a miserable-looking invalid, with imbecile writ large all over him; instead of whom he was confronted by a dignified, courteous gentleman, whose infirmity was only hinted at by a certain languor of ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... his father. He had submitted to the dire necessity of delivering an oration to the electors, at a public meeting in the neighboring town of Kirkandrew. A detestable atmosphere to breathe; a disorderly audience to address; insolent opposition to conciliate; imbecile inquiries to answer; brutish interruptions to endure; greedy petitioners to pacify; and dirty hands to shake: these are the stages by which the aspiring English gentleman is compelled to travel on the journey which leads him from the modest obscurity of private life ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... as if her jaw were detached and falling away from her face. As one great singer expresses it: "You should have the jaw of an imbecile when emitting a tone. In fact, you shouldn't know that you have one." Let us take the following passage from "The Marriage ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... dream! (He looks at his watch.) Twelve o'clock. The taxi ought to be here. (He takes two tickets from his pocket, looks at them, and puts them back. Then he commences to pace nervously up and down the room, muttering to himself)—Fool! Idiot! Imbecile! (He is not, so that you could notice it, any of these things. He is a very handsome man of forty. There is the blast of an auto-horn outside. He makes an angry gesture.) Too late! That's the taxi. (But he stands uncertainly in the middle of the floor. There is a loud pounding ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... bruised and held her white wrists. Even then she could not speak, though she smiled a little, faintly and forlornly and gratefully. She struggled to say one word, but it resolved itself into a cacophonous and inarticulate mumble, half-infantile, half-imbecile. ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the course of this week I was every day inspecting schools and asylums, the imbecile asylums at Caterham, Leavesden, and many others; and my smallpox wharves were also giving me much trouble, as Rotherhithe and the other places showed strong objections to them, which I was, however, able ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the Matron into the courtyard. Several men in bottle-green corduroys loitered there, and a tiny old woman shrivelled and imbecile, who ran to Anne the moment she appeared, holding her skirts high to her knees, skipping on one foot and ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the progress of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor laws; our medical experts exert their utmost skill to save the lives of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from weak constitutions would have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... "You imbecile child! You silly baby! You wicked, horrible, sacrilegious girl!" Brinnaria stormed. "You irreligious, atheistical, blasphemous wretch! To save your hide you'd desecrate the temple, pollute the Altar, anger Vesta, make all our prayers in vain, bring down curses without count on Rome and ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... innumerable wrinkles as in the very old. Surprised at her curtsey I stopped to speak to her, and finally went into her cottage and had tea and made the acquaintance of her husband, a gaunt old man with a face grey as ashes and dim colourless eyes, whom Time had made almost an imbecile, and who sat all day groaning by the fire. Yet this worn-out old working man was her junior by several years. Her age was eighty- four. She was very good company, certainly the brightest and liveliest of the dozen or ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... perhaps in England. Unrestricted and absolute power in the hands of a king was the only government he believed in. The king might be feeble, in which case he could delegate his power to ministers; or he might be imbecile, in which case he might be virtually dethroned; but his royal rights were sacred, his authority incontestable, and consecrated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... utmost the hunter had hoped for was to noose the creature round the neck. Moreover, it was done so quickly that the monster did not seem to fully appreciate what had occurred, but continued to strain and reach up at the toe in an imbecile sort of way. Instead, therefore, of drawing the noose tight, Little Tim dropped a second noose round the monster's neck, and drew that tight. Becoming suddenly alive to its condition, the grizzly made a backward plunge, ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... a Pantisocracy where all the virtues were to thrive. Lamb did something far more difficult: he played cribbage every night with his imbecile father, whose constant stream of querulous talk and fault-finding might well have goaded a far stronger man into practicing and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... harmless—quenched, conquered, disgraced, and brutal,—to the ground. Poor fugitive slave bill Court! It can only gnash its teeth against freedom of speech in Faneuil Hall; only bark and yelp against the unalienable rights of man, and howl against the Higher Law of God! it cannot bite! Poor, imbecile, malignant Court! What a pity that the fugitive slave bill judge was not himself the grand-jury, to order the indictment! what a shame that the attorney was not a petty jury to convict! Then New England, like ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... into your asylums for the blind, the deaf and dumb, the idiot, the imbecile, the deformed, the insane; go out into the by-lanes and dens of this vast metropolis, and contemplate that reeking mass of depravity; pause before the terrible revelations made by statistics, of the rapid increase of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... being to bear testimony against the impiousness of such a distinction and separation in the house of God. It is, however, but justice to Dr. Patton to observe that the case is not singular, the peculiar celebrity of his "Negro Pew" arising entirely from the imbecile and somewhat profane apology volunteered by Mr. Page. In point of fact, Dr. Patton and his people, as I ascertained in conversation with him on the subject, are rather in advance of their neighbours in kind feeling towards ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... Paynette, Berarde Gironin! I know them all, by Heavens! A fine! a fine! That's what will teach you to wear gilded girdles! ten sous parisis! you coquettes! Oh! the old snout of a judge! deaf and imbecile! Oh! Florian the dolt! Oh! Barbedienne the blockhead! There he is at the table! He's eating the plaintiff, he's eating the suits, he eats, he chews, he crams, he fills himself. Fines, lost goods, taxes, expenses, loyal charges, salaries, damages, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... man, whose flesh seemed salted cod-fish, dry as combustibles; head, like one whittled by an idiot out of a knot; flat, bony mouth, nipped between buzzard nose and chin; expression, flitting between hunks and imbecile—now one, now the other—he made no response. His eyes were closed, his cheek lay upon an old white moleskin coat, rolled under his head like a wizened ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Nohant—not "above" but a little aside from the conflict—turns instinctively to her peasant doggedly, placidly, sticking at his plow; turns to her peasant with a kind of intuition that he is a symbol of faith, that he holds the keys to a consolation, which the rest of us blindly grope for: "He is imbecile, people say; no, he is a child in prosperity, a man in disaster, more of a man than we who complain; he says nothing, and while people are killing, he is sowing, repairing continually on one side what they are destroying ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... seemed only half to understand. She stared at her son, swaying backwards and forwards in imbecile misery. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... and dropped backwards, trusting to my thick head for easy lighting. Then I heard a little fizz and sputter from below. At that my hair riz right up so I could feel the breeze blow under my hat. For about six seconds I stood there like an imbecile, grinning amiably. Then one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of grunt, and I sabed that they'd seen the original exhibit your Uncle Jim was ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... my lodgings. I was as soft-hearted and imbecile as a student at his first love-tryst. I did not wish to degrade this meeting to the level of a commonplace bachelor adventure. I wanted to keep the bloom and the fragrance of ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... long. But once only, the following night, I saw Clarimonde. She said to me, as she had said the first time at the portals of the church: 'Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done? Wherefore have hearkened to that imbecile priest? Wert thou not happy? And what harm had I ever done thee that thou shouldst violate my poor tomb, and lay bare the miseries of my nothingness? All communication between our souls and our bodies is henceforth for ever broken. Adieu! ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... reason, no. These are not the eyes of an imbecile or an idiot, but they are the eyes of a child. It is possible that when she fully recovers we may find her mind a perfect blank—a virgin page on which the story of her new life will have ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... loud-mouthed imbecile," said the mule-driver as he took the money. "And what was it you ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... and self-justifications, he was pouring a flood of broken phrases at her. She caught unintelligible references to narrow laws and the imbecile English, to impositions binding only upon the fools.... And then the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... one might have said that he had inherited something of this ancestral connection. He knew the Contrat Social, and the Nouvelle Heloise by heart, and all those philosophical books which prepared in advance the overthrow of our old usages, prejudices, superannuated laws and imbecile morality. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a large room and affords ample opportunity for a tete-a-tete. Of these opportunities I have availed myself to the fullest possible extent. And with what result, you will naturally ask? With the result, my dear, of making this man absolutely mad about me. He has become an utter imbecile. C'est tout dit. His incoherent raving would only bore you, so, like the kindhearted little person I am, I spare you this infliction. Suffice it to say that he is mine body and soul. I say nothing about his fortune, because that naturally goes ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... confinement. Had his own wife seen him at that moment it is doubtful whether she would have recognized her lord. Could it be possible that that frail, tottering, wasted form, and that blanched, sunken-eyed, imbecile-looking countenance were all that were left of the once formidable Robert Gourlay? The sight was one which might have moved his bitterest enemy to tears. His clothing, a world too wide for so shrunken a tenant, hung sloppy and slovenly about him, and it ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... before the strong stone building they inhabited was crushed. The next to it, but on higher ground, more than thirty feet above the natural level of the river, was a neat wooden cottage, inhabited by a very aged man and his helpless imbecile wife, equally aged with himself. This man, formerly a soldier, was a cabinet-maker, and amused his declining years by forming very ingenious articles in his line of business; his house was a model of curious nick-nackeries, and thus he picked up just ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... the biggest sensation that had come in its way for years, and the appearance of the paper created the most profound amazement throughout the town and district. Gable was described as a cunning scoundrel whose affectations of almost imbecile simplicity might easily have deceived intelligences less keen than those at the service of the Mercury, and neither Messrs. Billson and Hogan nor Master Mathieson hinted that their assailants were anything less than ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... told you about the fellow twice already," said Helen. "You have even met the fellow. He is very poor and his wife is an extravagant imbecile. He is capable of better things. We—we, the upper classes—thought we would help him from the height of our superior ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... The imbecile or weak-minded egotist is a frequent though unnecessary accomplice in nearly every crime, owing to his susceptibility to suggestion and incapability of understanding ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... three times things that Germinie had always grasped on the merest hint. She asked herself, when she saw how slow and torpid she was, if somebody had not exchanged her maid for another.—"Why, you're getting to be a perfect imbecile!" she would sometimes say to her testily. She remembered the time when Germinie was so useful about finding dates, writing an address on a card, telling her what day they had put in the wood or broached the cask of wine,—all of which were things ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... with disgust that while of yore, when I own I was guilty, you never spared me abuse—but now, when I am so virtuous, where is the praise? Do admit that I have become an excellent letter-writer—at least to you, and that your ingratitude is imbecile.—Yours ever, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... previously ranked lower than an almost imbecile man, and with no more voice in the laws they lived under than had lunatics or horses—it was miraculous what a power they had suddenly grown! The man at the ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Imbecile in politics as in war, he cannot retrieve it by cringing to party purposes. The desire that actuates our masses and demands able and earnest leaders has ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... man with his extra thumb, two persons in the town each had an extra toe upon one foot. We have already stated that the presidente of the village was a fool. He had plenty of companions. One of the men, who made himself quite useful to us was an imbecile; he crossed himself, kissed our hands, nodded his head, and told us the most surprising things in regard to the subjects whom he brought before us. In connection with each case he cried and carried on at a great rate, and finally ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... one of the great windows, and looked out at the stiffly embanked river and the formal gardens which lay beyond it. When he turned round, Madame de Cintre had risen; she stood there silent and passive. "You are not frank," said Newman; "you are not honest. Instead of saying that you are imbecile, you should say that other people are wicked. Your mother and your brother have been false and cruel; they have been so to me, and I am sure they have been so to you. Why do you try to shield them? Why do you sacrifice me to them? I'm not false; I'm not cruel. ...
— The American • Henry James
... make use of them if there is any resistance to that which he has undertaken. To the Directory, through their envoy Dottot, he says in substance, and not without vigour, "Do not sicken me with your imbecile arguments and lame, impotent conclusions. What I want to know is: What have you done with this France which I left you so glorious? I left you peace; I return and find war! I left you victories; I find reverses! I left you the millions of Italy; ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... earth could he not lock his door and so protect himself? His own answer that he might wish to be attacked was absurd. Why should he possibly wish to be attacked? And who would wish to attack him? Clearly, Lord Linchmere was suffering from some singular delusion, and the result was that on an imbecile pretext I was to be deprived of my night's rest. Still, however absurd, I was determined to carry out his injunctions to the letter as long as I was in his employment. I sat, therefore, beside the empty fireplace, and listened to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ordered for their dinner oysters, a duck, pork and cabbage, cream, a Pont l'Eveque cheese, and a bottle of Burgundy. It was an enfranchisement, almost a revenge; and they laughed at Cornaro! It was only an imbecile that could be tyrannised over as he had been! What vileness to be always thinking about prolonging one's existence! Life is good only on the condition that it ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... position it formed a rough and ready tent for his companion, who, meanwhile, carried up the provisions. Seated on the grass beside it they ate a little dried venison, which required no cooking—uttering only a monosyllable now and then with half-closed eyes, and sometimes with an imbecile smile, which terminated occasionally in an irresistible nod. The feebleness of the light, too, as well as the quietness of the hour, contributed not a little to this ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... all his gout, etc., is merely affected to prevent his being sent. In short, that he has changed all his plans and did not venture to stir one step. On the other hand, it is said, that he is become nearly quite imbecile." Meanwhile, although Sir Arthur Wellesley had obtained victories at Oporto and at Talavera, having been unsupported by the Spaniards he was obliged to retreat; and following on this, an expedition sent out by the British Government to Walcheren ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... gnawed with doubts and conjectures. In an imbecile frame of mind, he came to the I Hung court. Lin Tai-yue was, at the moment, sitting with Hsi Jen, and chatting with her. As soon as Pao-yue entered his quarters, he addressed himself to Hsi Jen, with a long sigh. "I was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... occasional passages of his pamphlets, we see that he could be pithy enough when he chose to descend from his Latinized abstractions to good concrete English; but that is only when he becomes excited. His face when in repose, we are told, appeared to be almost imbecile; he was constantly sunk in reveries, from which he was only roused by a challenge to conversation. In his writings, for the most part, we seem to be listening to the reverie rather than the talk; we are overhearing a soliloquy in his study, not a vigorous discussion ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... writing is carried to such a pitch in THE OLD BACHELOR, that husband and wife use imbecile connubial epithets to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Bishops to set their house in order, and some of the Prelates had been insulted and threatened in the streets of London. The vital question was, how were we to keep the Church from being liberalized? there was such apathy on the subject in some quarters, such imbecile alarm in others; the true principles of Churchmanship seemed so radically decayed, and there was such distraction in the councils of the Clergy. Blomfield, the Bishop of London of the day, an active and open-hearted man, had been for years engaged in diluting the high orthodoxy of the Church by the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... visionary to hold that all persons of every age, degree, and character, should be entitled to vote in all elections of all public officers. Idiots, infants, minors, and persons insane or utterly imbecile, have been, without scruple, denied the right as not having the sound judgment and discretion fit for its exercise. In many countries, persons guilty of crimes have also been denied the right as a personal punishment, or as a security ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... you old blighter," he said good-humoredly. "It was 4 on the road, and 3 at the mill, and I'm as sure of it as that you're an amiable imbecile." ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... Dr. Sarkantyus never ceased blackguarding the rioters for their imbecile suspicion of medical science, and tried to explain to Thomas Bodza how very much in error he was as to the contents ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... likewise those that are cowards. Men may be divided into these two well defined classes. As upon a single large tree there may be two boughs one of which beareth fruits while the other doth not, so from the self-same line of progenitors may spring persons that are imbecile as well as those that are endowed with great strength. O thou bearing the sign of a plough on thy banner, I do not, in sooth, condemn the words thou hast spoken, but I simply condemn those, O son of Madhu, who are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in upon her was that animated piece of ragged door-mat, Toozle. This imbecile little dog was not possessed of much delicacy of feeling, having been absent on a private excursion of his own into the mountain when the schooner arrived, he only became aware of the return of his lost, loved, and deeply-regretted mistress, ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... needed no miracles nor prophecies to enforce the conviction that a long procession of disasters was steadily advancing. With France rent asunder by internal convulsions, with its imbecile king not even capable of commanding a petty faction among his own subjects, with Spain the dark cause of unnumbered evils, holding Italy in its grasp, firmly allied with the Pope, already having reduced ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a woman of education! What on earth is a person like that doing in this galere?' Vida asked, as if Mrs. Fox-Moore might be able to enlighten her. 'Can't she see—even if there were anything in the "Cause," as she calls it—what an imbecile waste of time it is ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Esteban Briones, he came in, and say, 'Hola! Don Jorge has forgotten his pret-ty girl: he have left her over on the garden bench. Truly I have seen.' And they say, 'We will too.' And they go, and there is nossing. And they say, 'Imbecile and pig!' But he is not imbecile and pig; for he has seen, and Don Jorge has seen; and why? For it is not a girl, but what you call her—a ghost! And they will that Don Esteban should make a picture of her—a design; and he make one. And ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hostess a pair of them. I do not believe she cared particularly for them; but she is good natured, and the ranch is large, and they are rather amusing. At the time of my first visit the original pair had multiplied. Gazing on that yardful of imbecile-looking canines, my admiration for Noah's wisdom increased; he certainly needed no more than a pair to restock the earth. Redmond claimed there were twenty-two of them, though nobody else pretended to have been able to disentangle them enough for a census. They were ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... in PARADISE LOST; but there are certain common sentiments and touches of nature by which the whole nation is made to feel kinship. A little while ago everybody, from Hazlitt and John Wilson down to the imbecile creature who scribbled his register on the fly-leaves of BOXIANA, felt a more or less shamefaced satisfaction in the exploits of prize-fighters. And the exploits of the Admirals are popular to the same degree, and tell in all ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discord followed his energetic rule, by the end of which time the princes of the house of Merovaeus had become so feeble and inefficient that they were contemptuously called "do-nothings," and an ambitious officer of the crown, who bore the title of Mayor of the Palace, pushed aside his imbecile master, and gave to the Frankish monarchy a new royal line,—the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... century in novel for which there must always be a public as soon as it is presented to that public. And when this is said and endorsed by those who do not personally much care for the book, it is at once a sufficient testimony to the position of the author, and a vindication of the not absolutely imbecile position of those who thought that he might have written Waverley and its successors. The way in which Godwin in his later novels came down from the mountain-tops of theory and paradox just as he came down from those of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... lessen the hostility I might otherwise have felt toward my uncle. I was constrained to perceive that he labored under an intellectual feebleness and incertitude which disconcerted his expression, left his thoughts seemingly without purpose, and altogether convinced me that, if not positively imbecile in mind and memory, there were yet some ugly symptoms of incapacity growing upon him which might one day result in the loss of both. I had always known him to be a weak-minded man, disposed to vanity ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... immediately, and they noticed with astonishment the wonderful change for the better that had taken place in the man. For with the restoration of his mind all the evil lines of his face had been obliterated, as it were, and in the place of the doddering half-imbecile they found a genial, kindly, and distinguished gentleman who, with the utmost hospitality, brought chairs and begged them ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... overwhelms, fertilizes the soul. That it may deposit the seeds of future fertilization, I believe; but some time must elapse before they germinate: on the first retiring of the tide, the prospect is barren and desolate. I was absolutely inert, and almost imbecile for a considerable time, after the extraordinary stimulus, by which I had been actuated, was withdrawn. I was in this state of apathy when the rebellion broke out in Ireland; nor was I roused in the least by the first news of the disturbances. The intelligence, however, so much alarmed my English ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... up of the thing that he had supposed to be his imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled resolution to hunt him down and be the death of him, mercilessly expressed from head to foot, was, in the first shock, too much for him. Without any figure of speech, he staggered ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... seizure and sale of the property. When I pass through the streets and see men reading these horrible yellow posters, I am ashamed, as if my own honor and ruin were concerned. Some fools will stand there and read them aloud expressly to draw other fools about them—and what imbecile remarks they make! As if a man were not master of his own property! Your father ran through two fortunes before he made the one he left you; and you wouldn't be a Manerville if you didn't do likewise. Besides, seizures of real estate have a whole section ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... think I had confidently expected to find him there. It did not seem to me possible to go home without seeing my broker. I stood, uncertain, rattling at the heavy door with imbecile impatience. This act brought the police to the ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... sadly. "I'm afraid I should have said, Mr. Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately, an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... metaphors, and figures of every kind the same may be affirmed: whatever does not enlighten confuses. There are two extremes, against which we ought equally to guard: not to give a dry skeleton, bones without flesh; nor an imbecile embryo, flesh ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... did not, however, mark the crisis of the struggle. In the half century that followed, Constantinople suffered from weak or imbecile emperors while the Caliphate gained ground under able rulers and generals. In the first fifteen years of the eighth century the Saracens reached the climax of their power. Under a great general, Muza, they conquered Spain and spread into southern France. It was he who conceived the grandiose ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... in the Street is a better judge of literature than the Critic—the man who knows little than the man who knows more—wears (to my mind, at least) a slightly imbecile air on the face of it. It also appears to me that people are either confusing thought or misusing language when they confer the title of "supreme critic" on the last person to be persuaded. And, again, what is "the public?" I gather that Miss Corelli's story of Barabbas ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... path, across an angle of the park, without a dreary walk for Bevan impending over the end of their carouse, with never-wearied reminiscences of their boyhood—when sudden death stopped all proceedings, and left poor Bevan alone in the world, as it seemed to him—"in simplicity a child," and as imbecile in conflict with it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... rocher! Non! on a dit: Entrez, et, par la porte ouverte, Ils sont entres! la vie a la mort s'est offerte! On a livre la place, on n'a point combattu! Voila la chose; elle est toute simple; ils n'ont eu Affaire qu'a ce vieux miserable imbecile! Egorger un enfant, ce n'est pas difficile. Tout a l'heure, j'etais tranquille, ayant peu vu Qu'on tuat des enfants, et je disais: Pourvu Qu'Isora vive, eh bien! apres cela, qu'importe?— Mais l'enfant! O mon Dieu! c'est donc vrai qu'elle est morte! Penser que nous etions ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... alarm excited by the attitude of the government. Such a panic knew no distinctions of station, sex or age; it seized on citizens who cared nothing for the problems of administration, it was strong in proportion to the weakness of its victims, and gathered from the dark thoughts and wild words of the imbecile the poison which infected the sober mind and assumed, from the very universality of the sickness, the guise of a healthy effort at rooting out some deep-seated pollution from the State. The gloomy record of the religious persecutions of the past made it still more difficult for a ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... night—with none to help me—restraining him by all means I could devise from renewed attempts to precipitate himself into the river. At last I succeeded in bringing him back to the carriage. For the rest of the journey he was quiet; but he was imbecile—his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... of desiring to work only for the good of their country, they have disdained too much the advice of wise counsillors. With eyes fixed upon their established purpose, they trample under foot every obstacle; and every man who differs from their opinion is but a traitor or an imbecile: hence their lack of moderation, tact and prudence, and their excess of obstinacy and violence. To select one example among a thousand, what marvellous results would have been attained by an entente cordiale between two men ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... soul—nothing but an apathetic, but indescribably sweet feeling of rest, and a complete inactivity of all the senses except hearing. A moment came when even this sense forsook me, because I remember that I listened with imbecile intentness to the dead silence around me. Is this death? was my indistinct wondering thought. Then I felt as if mighty wings were fanning me. "Kind wings, caressing, kind wings!" were the recurring words in my brain, like the regular ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... paid half the attention to the improvement of the human animal which we do to that of the equine or the porcine, the experiment would not have been left untried so long. In-and-in breeding is a mistake, and can only commend itself, and that for selfish reasons, to the Aztec in physique and the imbecile in mind. The families which take most pride in their purity are the most degenerate; the stock which is the most robust and handsome is that which has in it a liberal infusion of foreign bloods. In my opinion, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... he said, vexed in spite of himself by this rebuff, "I know I have been an imbecile. I ought to have acted the cave man and paid no attention to her supplications and lies. I ought to have taken violent possession of her lips and breast. Then it would be finished, whereas now I must ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of those truly unfortunate cases which, so far as present knowledge goes, cannot be guarded against. Eunice, age 31, mentally 2, is a low-grade imbecile. There is not in the whole family, for generations back, a single case of feeble-mindedness, nor of disease that would undermine the nervous organization. Close scrutiny does not reveal a single assignable cause. She came, as an accident, to blight an otherwise ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... had something to think about—I've been a fool, Bella; the commonest, most easily gulled kind of imbecile!" ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Gets hold of Prussia, which hitherto, you observe, has always been spoken of as a separate country from Brandenburg. March 11, 1605—"squeezed his way into the actual guardianship of Preussen and its imbecile Duke, which was his ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... to come here, Dent." Tode turned with a malicious smile from his seat at the instrument board. "You didn't have to come. I take it that you are in love with Lucille, you poor imbecile, and still cherish dreams of winning her. We'll take up that matter in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... your gray hairs. A man laughed at my father for his scrupulous temperance principles, and said: "I am more liberal than you. I always give my children the sugar in the glass after we have been taking a drink." Three of his sons have died drunkards, and the fourth is imbecile ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser |
