"Silly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a great disappointment to me," he said, trying to look disappointed, but his back would wriggle. "This chain business—silly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... the Fabian Essayists attended an established place of worship regularly, the reply must be in the negative. Indeed, they were generally preaching themselves on Sundays. To describe them as irreligious in view of their work would be silly; but until Hubert Bland towards the end of his life took refuge in the Catholic Church, and Mrs. Besant devoted herself to Theosophy, no leading Fabian found a refuge for his soul in the temples of any established denomination. I may go further and admit that the first problems the Fabians ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... where I go," muttered its strange owner with what seemed an involuntary emphasis. Then as the Curator turned upon him in some surprise, he added with studied indifference: "I brought it from Switzerland when I was younger than I am now—a silly memento, but ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... ceased to be when oceans rolled between us; to call to witness his unchanging truth and mindfulness of bygone days, whole years of desolation. Give me but one word of recognition, brother—and never—no never, in the brightest moment of our youngest days, when, poor silly boys, we thought to pass our lives together—have we been half as dear and precious to each other as we shall be from this ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... there befell a mighty silly affair that had its consequence. Neil, as I have said, was himself a great narrator. I have heard since that he knew all the stories in the Highlands; and thought much of himself, and was thought much of by others, on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Children brought their aged parents, and mothers their little ones. Those blinded by ophthalmia were led by the hand. Those relieved from suffering were ready to kiss his feet, or even his shoes at the door. But it was a laborious and trying position. A thousand silly questions must be answered. Nor was there any certainty that the prescriptions would be followed, even if understood; and every Nestorian, though suffering under the most alarming disease, would sooner die than touch a spoonful ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... believes the inconceivable mystery of the trinity, ridicules the catholic Christian for believing in the mystery of transubstantiation; he considers him mad, impious, and idolatrous, because he kneels to worship some bread, in which he thinks he sees God. Christians of every sect regard, as silly stories, the incarnations of Vishnu, the God of the Indies; they maintain, that the only true incarnation is that of Jesus, son of a carpenter. The deist, who calls himself the follower of a religion, which he supposes to be that of nature, content with admitting ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... that she seemed so very silly. Incapable of finding any serious resource in her intellect, she had devoted her energies to outward things in a place where there was no one to applaud her efforts or flatter her vanity. Many women ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... tell me. I know how these things happen quite well. I have seen such things before; only I thought you a more sensible fellow. There was young Dalton of St. Cross; he goes abroad, and falls in with a smooth priest, who persuades the silly fellow that the Catholic Church is the ancient and true Church of England, the only religion for a gentleman; he is introduced to a Count this, and a Marchioness that, and returns a Catholic. There was ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... It is simply astonishing the number of the different varieties one sees. I've grown so wise I can tell each different tree by seeing it glisten, But if that test fails I simply put my ear to the tree and listen, And, well, I suppose it is only a silly fancy of mine perhaps, But do you know I'm getting to tell different trees by the sound of their saps. After I have noticed all the trees, and named those I know in words, I stand quite still and look all round to see if there are any birds, And ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... enemy's fleet by a miracle, and while it was still night proceeded straight to the tent of Themistokles. Here he called him out, and when they were alone together, he said: "We two, Themistokles, if we are wise, must cease our vain and silly rivalry with one another, and begin a more generous contest to preserve our country, you acting as general and chief, while I help and advise you. Already I perceive that you alone take a right view of the crisis, end desire to fight a battle in the narrow waters as quickly as ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... see that day. To die of a mortification is too good an end for such a rascal!" At the time that he thus addressed me, the whole mass of my blood was already fevered by the anguish I had undergone, my patience was wholly exhausted, and I was silly enough to be irritated beyond bearing, by his impertinence and vulgarity: "Look, you, Mr. Turnkey," said I, "there is one thing that such fellows as you are set over us for, and another thing that you are not. You are to take care we do not ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough of such moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his doubts and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... All our silly little jokes—things that have come to be dear little traditions between us—would be mockeries now." She raised her chin, and said suddenly, with a forced laugh: "I don't often have these brain-storms. They make me very foolish. We must see less ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... silly when I throw the ink-pot at him. I've gone mad when I kick him out of my shop. You speak to that young man nefer again, Rachel, my tear; you nefer look at him. Then, by-and-by, I marry you to the mos' peautiful young man with the mos' loafly moustache and whiskers. You leaf it to your poor ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... of believing by our volition seems, then, from one point of view, simply silly. From another point of view it is worse than silly, it is vile. When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... triumphant bleat for the open gate. Beelzebub, as the Turner mother had christened the mischievous brute, had been placed in the wrong stall and Beelzebub was making for freedom. He gave another triumphant baa as he swept between Dolph's legs and through the gate, and, with an answering chorus, the silly sheep sprang to their feet and followed. A sheep hates water, but not more than he loves a leader, and Beelzebub feared nothing. Straight for the water of the low ford the old conqueror made and, in the wake of his masterful summons, the flock swept, like a Mormon ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... naughty of us not to eat more when us isn't hungry for more. I think it would be like little pigs to eat more than they want. Little pigs would go on eating all day just 'cos they're too silly, and they've got ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... me, gentlemen, it is not patriotism, it is not a passion for justice, it is not loyalty to sister women, it is not a desire to better her country, which will make a woman neglect her husband. Society women, superficial, selfish, silly women, the butterflies of the ballroom, the seekers for every new sensation, the worldly-minded aspirants for social position, these are the women who neglect their homes; and not the brave, earnest, serious-minded, generous, unselfish ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... to become popular, and advising how the Commons' House should proceed, and how he would order the House of Lords. And he hath been endeavouring to have the king's nativity calculated; which was done, and the fellow now in the Tower about it.... This silly lord hath provoked, by his ill carriage, the Duke of York, my Lord Chancellor, and all the great persons, and therefore most likely ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... toward that helpless boy, such as we, perhaps, never could have had but for his baptism. Never will a member of that witnessing congregation see him, without a feeling of tenderness and something bordering on respect; he will not be merely "Silly Joe" to them; that element of truth in the heathen superstition, which leads heathens and pagans to regard an idiot as something sacred, will have its verification with regard to him; the children ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... interests to be conciliated and carried forward under one crown, two statesmen alone bear the burden of public affairs and are not overwhelmed by it. Was France less prolific of political capacities than Germany? The rather silly game of what are called "constitutional institutions" carried beyond bounds has ended, as everybody knows, in requiring a great many offices to satisfy the multifarious ambition of the middle classes. It seemed to Rabourdin, in the ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... ninth Satire; where I think I have shewn clearly enough, that without any prejudice either to one's Conscience or the Government, one may think bad Verses bad Verses, and have full right to be tir'd with reading a silly Book. But since these Gentlemen have spoken of the liberty I have taken of Naming them, as an Attempt unheard-of, and without Example, and since Examples can't well be put into Rhyme; 'tis proper to say one word to inform 'em of a thing of which they alone wou'd gladly be ignorant, and to ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... stars, more trim than day, Heav'n's Lily, and the Earth's chaste Rose, The green immortal Branch arose; } And in a solitary place } S. Mark, Bow'd to His Father His blest face. } c. 1, v. 35- If this calm season pleased my Prince, Whose fulness no need could evince, Why should not I, poor silly sheep, His hours, as well as practice, keep? Not that His hand is tied to these, From whom Time holds his transient lease But mornings new creations are, When men, all night sav'd by His care, Are still reviv'd; and well He may Expect them grateful with ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... to the affectation with which Sheridan appears to be consulted on all occasions, seems sufficiently to indicate what is to be expected. A part of this, however, is to be attributed to Sheridan's eagerness to display his personal importance, by which silly vanity I am told he has much offended the Duke of ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... my money," he perorated. "Stingaree, sir, is the greatest chap in all these Colonies, and deserves to be Viceroy when they get Federation. Thunderbolt, Morgan, Ben Hall and Ned Kelly were not a circumstance between them to Stingaree; and the silly old Bishop's a silly old fool to him! I don't care twopence about right and wrong. That's not the point. The one's a ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... even in a dream, How we brought home a silly little pup, With a big square head and little crooked legs That ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... sisters! what is the young man talking about?" exclaimed Scarecrow, Nightmare and Shakejoint, one to another, with great appearance of astonishment. "A pair of flying slippers, quoth he! His heels would quickly fly higher than his head if he was silly enough to put them on. And a helmet of invisibility! How could a helmet make him invisible, unless it were big enough for him to hide under it? And an enchanted wallet! What sort of a contrivance may that be, I wonder? No, no, good stranger! we can tell ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... your money. I don't care for money. I think you know enough of me through the newspapers to vouchsafe that. You are rich, and it is your chief misery. Listen! Whether you believe it or not, you are very unhappy. Let me read your horoscope. Your club life bores you; you are tired of our silly theatres; no longer do you care for Wagner's music. You are deracinated; you are unpatriotic. For that there is no excuse. The arts are for you deadly. I am sure you are a lover of literature. Yet what a curse it has been for you! When you see one of your friends drinking wine, you call him a fool ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... times. I remember thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects the leading actor in the greatest and stormiest drama known to real history's stage through centuries, should sit there and be so completely interested in those human jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... a silly Fellow, Cowardly, but very Inquisitive to know every Body's Business, generally spoils all he undertakes, yet without ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... other grander possibilities in the background. The reigning Pontiff was a very aged man. The Cardinal di Marliani was thought to stand very well at Rome. Who knew what might happen? It would have been too monstrous if the hope of such a marriage as this were to be endangered by a silly fancy for the pretty face and slim figure of ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... bouncing is ineffectual and silly, even in a grizzly bear. The only result was that he bruised his head and nose, tumbled among stones and stumps, and strained the rope so powerfully that the limb of the tree to which it was attached was violently shaken, and Little Tim was obliged ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... home-coming! All his weapons of the chase left on Moorish soil, not a lion with him, nothing but a silly camel! ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... silly man," says the widow playfully, "until I am told it. But I am glad Florence is once more friendly with poor Arthur; he is positively wrapped up in her. Now, has that interesting tableau we so nearly interrupted given you a distaste ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... He might either have made war on the Parthians, if he had had the courage to do so, or have maintained peace with them and recognized, as he had promised, the Euphrates as boundary; he was too timid for the former course, too vain for the latter, and so he resorted to the silly perfidy of rendering the good neighbourhood, which the court of Ctesiphon desired and on its part practised, impossible through the most unbounded aggressions, and yet allowing the enemy to choose of themselves the time for rupture and retaliation. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... extravagant, form the soul of their peculiar trade. For, note it down—the bonnet mania has not mounted upwards from the lower to the higher ranks of society; on the contrary, it has been a regular plant, sown as a trifling casual seed in the hotbed of some silly creature's brain, and then sending down its roots into many an inferior class. Any one who has crossed the British Channel, knows that the bonnet—as we understand the word in England—is not an article of national costume ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... hoc and this silly old man has been held up to all ensuing ages as an absurdly simple old fellow. But what after all if he should be right in part ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... he muttered musingly to himself, "which of those sisters this bit of cambric belonged to, marked with an E.—Ellen or Eliza—hum! They would die—silly things!—tried to stab me! Ho! what fun! Never left me even a miniature, either, for my collection. 'Bueno!' There's more fish in the sea—and under it too!" he concluded, with an unpleasant elevation of ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... of the indifference of virtuous young gentlemen to the condition of the city they live in, provided they live at the west end of it on money earned by someone else's labor. The notion that prostitution is created by the wickedness of Mrs Warren is as silly as the notion—prevalent, nevertheless, to some extent in Temperance circles—that drunkenness is created by the wickedness of the publican. Mrs Warren is not a whit a worse woman than the reputable daughter ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... for so long, told me some of his history. Elias P. Arden, his name is, and he is a senator. He has had a remarkable career, rising from nothing, and being the bravest, coolest, hardest man in the mining camps. He is colossally rich, and his daughter Lola is perfectly lovely, and married to a silly young Vinerhorn, who has a country ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... trooper of Cromwell's, who wrote ill of me, saying that I neither understood the subjects whereof I discoursed nor believed the things that I said, being both silly and pretentious. It would have been a pity if it had been true. There was also one Leigh Hunt, a maker of many books, who used one day a bottle of ink whereof the gall was transfused into his blood, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... I care. But to look and to stare like an idiot are two entirely different things. Just watch once and see the silly jig they dance around a lamp. It's nothing for them to butt their heads about twenty times. Some of them keep it up until they burn their wings. And all the time they stare and ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... silly," his aunt rejoined sharply. Then she looked him over. "Yes, you must have some control over him, for he lets you remain in the army, though an army is one of ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... "You silly woman! Is that all? I shall have a cold in my head. Bitter weather. He's dog-tired after yesterday—processions, three speeches, kindergarten, lecture on 'the moon,' article on cooperation. That's his style." It was also Grodman's style. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... d'Italie', with their pages, turrets, chatelaines; bull-fighters, Spanish ladies; vivandieres, beguiled away from their homes under the pale of the church, "near a stream of running water, by a gay and handsome chevalier," and many other such silly things—Amedee will remember them always! They bring back to him, clearly and strongly, certain happy hours in his childhood! They make him smell again at times even the odor that pervaded the Gerards' house. ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... the tidewater region of South Carolina, and certain parts of Virginia were the seats of the soundest political thought of the day. The men who did this sane, wholesome political thinking were quite right in scorning and condemning the crude unreason, often silly, often vicious, which characterized so much of the political thought of their opponents. The strength of these opponents was largely derived from the ignorance and suspicion of the raw country districts, and from the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... saints' calendar has been considerably enlarged in that pseudo-holy land. Nearly every week supplies a festival, with all its mummery of banners, and processions, and priests dressed as if for the altar-scene in "Pizarro," and squibs, and fireworks, and silly citizens kneeling in the dust, and hats off all round. Very much like a London Guy-Fawkes procession is the whole affair, and of about like influence upon ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... in the ancient days. They rustled like dry leaves. The blanket of one was black and that of the other was white. When they came out of the medicine lodge they went around among the huts and inclosures of those who were assembled, visiting the wives and the sweethearts of the silly men who had laughed at them in the morning; and everywhere the women smiled on the beautiful and well dressed youths. The next morning the men laughed and sneered at them no more, nor whispered in their ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... wonderful, the stupendous achievement of our friend, Mr. Thesiger Smith. (Loud cheers.) This is a proud moment in my life. I remember when I was a nipper in London, before any of you were born except our friend the doctor, I saw in a place called Cremorne Gardens a silly fellow of a Frenchman—present company excepted—try to fly with wings strapped to his arms. Of course he came a cropper and broke his back. I remember my dear old mother shaking her head and telling over to me that ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... tiring of the subject of the convicts. "Oh, it's an awfully fine place! There are wild cattle on the moor too, and they are no end of excitement; they go for you like anything if you rile them. You are in luck's way, old chap. I wish I was going too, instead of to some silly place in Norway where there's nothing to do when you get there but walk. I hate being shut up in a stuffy steamer too. I'm ill all the time—so are most of the people—and I don't see where the fun comes in. But my people are set on it, so I suppose I've got ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... "All sorts of silly things are to be found in Old England, Mr. Ten Eyck, as well as some that are wise. I believe London has one or two soothsayers; and I think I have heard elderly people say that the fashion of consulting them has somewhat increased, since the court ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... at one time or another in some place, been regarded as sacred and desirable. Brother and sister marriages were favored by Egyptian royalty, prostitution was a rite in Phoenician worship, phallic worship frankly held as a symbol that which to-day we hold profane (in a silly way), plural marriage was and is countenanced in a large part of the world to-day, marriage for love is held as foolish in most countries, even now. The practice of child restriction now prevalent in Europe and America would be looked at with ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... ridicule on the coronet and the ermine. But there was no extremity to which he was not prepared to go in case of necessity. When in a large company an opinion was expressed that the peers would prove intractable, "Oh, silly," cried Sunderland, turning to Churchill, "your troop of guards shall be called up to the House ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him felt as a check. But Blossius of Cuma, who was present, told him, that it would be a shame, and an ignominious thing, for Tiberius, who was the son of Gracchus, the grandson of Scipio Africanus, and the protector of the Roman people, to refuse, for fear of a silly bird, to answer, when his countrymen called to him; and that his adversaries would represent it not as a mere matter for their ridicule, but would declaim about it to the people as the mark of a tyrannical temper, which ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... yards in advance of his companion, paused at a short distance from the free, and being somewhat over-heated, took off his cap to wipe his brow, laughingly observing—"In good truth, Suffolk, we must henceforth be rated as miserable faineants, to be scared from our path by a silly wench's tale of deerstealers and wild huntsmen. I am sorry I yielded to her entreaties. If Herne be still extant, he must be more than a century and a half old, for unless the legend is false, he flourished in the time of my ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "there is all the information that I can obtain on the subject; and here, take the order, and go and see your friend the Duke. Tell him I will come and see him to-morrow, and give him what consolation you can; but yet do not act like a silly boy, and make too light of the business, for two reasons: first, because the matter is really serious—the good folks of London have an appetite for blood upon them just now, and will not be satisfied unless they see a head struck off every now and then; and next, because, if his ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... suddenly struck her as foolish and silly, and out of place in a country where the syllables of words sound sonorously, and time passes like a slow moving river with its banks unchoked with "hustle weeds." And from that day, or rather night, Jill gave up slang, and one ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... glad his father, forty fools avail him not:— One moon silvers all that darkness which the silly stars did dot." ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... minute, Mr. Tudor,' said Mrs. Davis, who was now smiling and civil enough; 'I will go upstairs myself; the silly girl is shamefaced, and does not like to come down'; and up went Mrs. Davis to see that her barmaid's curls and dress were nice and jaunty. It would not do now, at this moment, for Norah to offend her lover by any untidiness. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... ugly, vulgar, and silly, had given her husband no pleasures but those of paternity; she died young. Her libertine husband, fettered at the beginning of his commercial career by the necessity for working, and held in thrall by want of money, had led the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... immensely, was seized with sudden diffidence. He was a connoisseur in all matters of art. Suppose he should say right before Miss Pritchard, that she was only a silly tomboy, or whatever such a gentleman would say to express that idea? She ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... had been going through his mind like a silly chant since the first moment he had seen Nate Schirmer in the library. Poor Paul. Dan did all right for himself, he did—made quite a name down in Washington, you know, a fighter, a real fighter. The Boy with the Golden Touch (joke, son, laugh ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... Mackenzie says that he went to examine some women who had confessed, and that one of them, who was a silly creature, told him, "under secresie," "that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but, being a poor creature, who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would either ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... cigarettes. A number of scientific magazines lay about and a forbidding array of books on mechanics and chemistry overflowed the shelves. He threw open a cabinet filled with blue prints illustrating queer mechanical contrivances. They struck him as very silly and he slammed the thing shut in disgust, convinced that Congdon was a crank, or he wouldn't have indulged in such foolishness. In a drawer of the desk was an automatic pistol and a box of cartridges. At a country house where he once week-ended a burglar scare ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... when, if ever, it may be excusable to anticipate the thirst of the morrow, for all through the Sunday idleness it cannot be slaked enough. It was a hot night, and the bar-room door stood open, and within, fronted by a crowd of their loudly talking, deeply drinking men-kind, those poor silly things stood drooping against the wall with their beer-pots dangling limply from their hands, and their mouths fallen open as if to catch the morsels of wit and wisdom that dropped from the tongues of their admired male companions. They did not look very bad; bad ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... that its price bred fright among the holders of depreciating stocks. Agony, ruin, the demolition of firesides, resulted from this infamous "corner" wrought by a league of miserly zealots. But our young student of Wall Street annals will soon harden his nerves against any silly commiseration. As well soil the glory of Lexington or Bunker Hill by brooding over the pangs of those who were its victims. All great victories necessitate bloodshed. It is not every man who can wrest vast wealth ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... arm, I immediately recognised as Lord Nelson. He could not know who I was, but he entered at once into conversation with me, if I can call it conversation, for it was almost all on his side and all about himself, and in, really, a style so vain and so silly as to surprise and almost disgust me. I suppose something that I happened to say may have made him guess that I was somebody, and he went out of the room for a moment, I have no doubt to ask the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... "Poor old Somers has Clayton's tag receipts for the currency and cheques as usual. I'm sorry for the old man. We'll retire him, at any rate, pension or no pension. It was Wade's silly system, to trace all our money down with two sets of custodians, and then send it to bank by ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... those silly but presumptuous personages who thrust themselves upon the society of men occupying high positions, and feel their importance only in that reflected by this association; and ever too fond of being made the medium of slanderous reports, reflecting upon those whose self-respect and superior ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... been the character of General Joseph Reed, from documents decidedly authentic—so authentic as to have led to their partial destruction, by his vain and silly descendants, who imagined that truth could be extinguished, while vanity was kindling a spurious flame to consummate an imaginery[TN] apotheosis, for one whose actual deeds consigned him to the keeping of the furies and ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... less time with Mignon, Jerry was quick to feel rather than note the slight reserve Marjorie exhibited toward Mary. "Don't you believe they've made up," she declared to Irma Linton. "Mary may think they have, but they haven't. I guess Marjorie's grown tired of Mary's nonsense. I'm glad of it. She's a silly little goose, I mean Mary, and she's lost ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... "Scared silly!" commented Kirkwood. "Why?" Having spoken to his waiter, Calendar for some seconds raked the room with quick glances, as if seeking an acquaintance. Presumably disappointed, he swung back to face the girl, bending forward to reach her ears with accents low-pitched and confidential. She, on her ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... more milk of roses, I believe, upon my cheeks than tears; and why not? What should there be to her corresponding to an ignorant child's sense of pathos, in a little journey of about a hundred miles? Outside her door, however, there awaited me some silly creatures, women of course, old and young, from the nursery and the kitchen, who gave, and who received, those fervent kisses which wait only upon love without awe and without disguise. Heavens! what rosaries might be strung ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... around him. She was staring at him, but he could see in her vacant eyes that she had no conception of his secret, nor knew the extent of her revelation. Duffy had not dared to tell all! He burst into a coarse laugh. "What matters Duffy or the silly woman he'd try to ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... winsome Violet Is, forsooth, too holy. 'But the Touchmenot?' Go to! What! a face that's speckled Like a common milking-maid's, Whom the sun hath freckled. Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt; And the trillium Lily, In her spotless gown, 's a prude, Sanctified and silly. By her cap the Columbine, To my mind, 's too merry; Gossips, I would sooner wed Some plebeian Berry. And the shy Anemone— Well, her face shows sorrow; Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day, Dead and gone to-morrow. Then that bold-eyed, ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... all spent in street-car fare and postage-stamps; of miles and miles of walking through muddy, slushy streets; and at the sacrifice of my noon lunch, which I could have had done up for me at the boarding-house without extra charge, but which my silly vanity did not allow me to carry ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, Than does the embroider'd canopy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... the day, we had wine in one another's rooms after hall in the evening, and behaved like young fools, and threw oranges wildly at one another's heads, and generally enjoyed ourselves. It was all very silly and irrational, no doubt, but it was life, it was reality; while the pretended earnestness of those pallid Somerville girls is all an ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... that you silly child, returned Emily, but I am intruding upon school hours I fear, so if you will allow me Miss Leicester I will come ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... behavior! how much elegance there was in every movement of hers! I could not succeed in learning enough from her. When, after eating, she wiped her lips with the napkin, it was as if spirits were exchanging kisses with the mist. Oh, how interminably silly and clumsy I was beside her! My hand trembled when I had to take some dish. Terrible was the thought that I might perchance drop the spoon from my hand and stain her white muslin dress with the sauce. She, for her part, seemed not to notice me; or, on the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Nan uttered a laugh that was half a sob. "Silly! reach down that lantern, please. Stand on the box. I'll show you what sort of a baby ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... of all kinds are that they should be "fool proof," and it has been remarked that the writer of orders should always remember that at least one silly ass will try to misunderstand them. They must, therefore, be void of all ambiguity, and while containing every essential piece of information, and omitting everything that is clearly known already to the recipients, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... having struck down a rook, and finding the sport but tame, bethought herself suddenly of that noble heron, which she still perceived fluttering over Crooksbury Heath. How could she have been so weak as to allow these silly, chattering rooks to entice her away from that lordly bird? Even now it was not too late to atone for her mistake. In a great spiral she shot upward until she was over the heron. But what was this? Every fiber of her, from her crest to her deck feathers, quivered with jealousy and rage at ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fear into the silly brutes," said Harris, speaking calmly, although his own flesh was creeping just a little. "I suppose they've ripped their tether ropes to pieces. Well, we'll tie them down here, where they'll have company." And he led them back a short ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... bring in the example of the fortunate cast of Tiberius, within the fountain of Aponus, at the oracle of Gerion. These are the baited hooks by which the devil attracts and draweth unto him the foolish souls of silly people ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... son,—a handsome lad,— By some queer way or other, had Got quite the better of her heart; With him she always talked apart: Silly he was, but very fair; A greater buck was not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... case of all those who live in places where care is taken to propagate truth without knowledge; where men are forced, at a venture, to be of the religion of the country; and must therefore swallow down opinions, as silly people do empiric's pills, without knowing what they are made of, or how they will work, and having nothing to do but believe that they will do the cure: but in this are much more miserable than they, in that they are not at liberty to refuse swallowing what perhaps they had ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... am only a little girl, and my opinion may not be worth much, but I mean to stand up for it, whatever they say. I suppose every one has a right to her own opinion, and if others don't agree with me, they needn't; but I don't like them to call me "silly" because I don't think as they do. I am willing they should have their own opinions, but I want the same privilege,—isn't that fair? I don't like such nicknames as "Tom" and "Bob," or "Mollie" and "Sallie," but like such as "Charlie" or "Hattie," and I think ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... days. That man may be fooling them, but he isn't fooling me. Not a bit of it. He hasn't had a gun with him once when I have seen him, but just the same he is a hunter. I feel it in my bones. He knows those silly Ducks come in here every night for that corn he puts out. He knows that after they have been here a few times and nothing has frightened them, they will be so sure that it is a safe place that they will not be the least bit suspicious. Then he will hide behind those bushes he has placed close to ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... commented Mrs. Stornaway, still staring. "They live in a little house in a side street. They had very silly ideas about the girl. They thought she was a genius and sent her to the School of Art in Boston, but it wasn't long before her health failed her. Ah! I guess that must be the man talking to Mr. Baird and Annie. He looks as if he would ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... assumed astonishment. 'Why, which of you presumed to wear your mamma's brooch?' But he added almost immediately, 'I need not inquire further: I am sorry to say I have had some sad experience of deception in my eldest daughter, and have observed in her that silly vanity, that makes outside show a cover for inward defects. Go!' he added sternly to Mabel; 'I have nothing more to say to you to-night. It nearly sickens me to think that I have a daughter base enough to conceal faults, which she is not afraid ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... What have I to forgive? Heyday, if our true lovers come back to flurry us like this, we must hold 'em at a distance; we must send expresses out to stop 'em short upon the road, and bring 'em on a mile or two a day, until we're properly prepared to meet 'em. Kiss me, Puss. Forgive! Why, what a silly child you are! If you had vexed and crossed me fifty times a day, instead of not at all, I'd forgive you everything, but such a supplication. Kiss me again, Puss. There! Prospective and retrospective - a clear score between us. Pile up the fire here! Would you freeze the people ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... atrocity of imagination, stimulating a nature essentially base and weak in its desire to make itself conspicuous, would or could suggest such things. The silly youth who 'fired the Ephesian dome,' the vain idiot who set fire to York Minster, the miserable Frenchmen who have committed murder and suicide with a view of making their exit striking from a world in which their appearance had been contemptible, would all ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... shall ever separate me from you, dear, silly aunt," said my charmer, kissing first one of her relative's high cheek-bones, ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... arrested him for some silly thing, and he's hurt." She hurriedly recounted Allan's story, adding, in conclusion, "That black boy came all the way across ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... distinction of a good master, most assuredly not in the way of a vain silly hint of self-recomdation; but purely for the sake of giving a caution, too often neglected, against parents, or those charged with the education of youth, placing children, at the age when their muscles are most flexible, their limbs the most supple, and their ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... "the silly sirkar fears that perhaps Turkey may enter the war. Perhaps a jihad may be proclaimed. So much for fear! I know! I have known for a very long time! And I have not let ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... carving out more territory. "The moment we acted," said Mr. Hay, "the rest of the world paused and finally came over to our ground; and the German government, which is generally brutal but seldom silly, recovered its senses, and climbed down off ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... Marjorie. "I suppose she doesn't want to sit next to me. Well, she's punishing herself far more than me, silly girl! She must be dreadfully hungry, unless she's shamming a headache, and getting Nurse to give her bread and milk in the ambulance room. Perhaps she's busy with her costume. She never liked the idea of using my mackintosh ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... great and large sums of money and yearly profits, to the most pernicious example of your said lay subjects—and so the cures and promotions given unto such infants be only employed to the enriching of the said ordinaries; and the poor silly souls of your people, which should be taught in the parishes given as aforesaid, for lack of good curates [be left] to perish without doctrine ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... been, whenever he took a part in conversation, an empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this point the evidence is overwhelming. So extraordinary was the contrast between Goldsmith's published works and the silly things which he said, that Horace Walpole described him as an inspired idiot. "Noll," said Garrick, "wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." Chamier declared that it was a hard exercise of faith ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I heard Mr. Paul's voice down in the hall, and I thought he said something about fire. But Nurse said I was silly, and must go to sleep; but I couldn't till I knew you ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... to. It's my job. It's all I've got. Mamma hasn't another soul except me to depend on. And he's harmless—the old coot's as harmless as a child. Honest and true, Mag, if I ever told the truth that's it. He just stands around and is silly—just makes foolish breaks to hear himself talk—that's all. But what can I do? He keeps me in the company store, and Heaven knows he doesn't kill himself paying me—only $8 a week, as far as that goes, and then he talks and talks ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... persons do so because they lack the ability and learning to comprehend Phrenology, and are unable to combat the prejudices of the ignorant. I have never seen a so-called "Physiognomist" who was not an empirical mountebank of the purest stamp, and who did not trim his sails to pander to the silly sentiment which I have just exposed. The delineations of such persons are worse than valueless, because they are pure guess-work. They pursue a shadow while ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... grimly. 'Silly ass, why did he hit at that one? All he'd got to do was to stay in with Joe. Now it's up to you. Do try and do something, or we'll be ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... other happenings, which stirred up the turbid, foul life of these poor, sick, silly, unfortunate women. There were cases of savage, unbridled jealousy with pistol shots and poisoning; occasionally, very rarely, a tender, flaming and pure love would blossom out upon this dung; occasionally the women even abandoned an establishment with the ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... dirt from much handling. Children soon tire of the shallow sameness which characterizes the "moral" parts of most of these books, and skim lightly over them, selecting and devouring with eagerness those portions which relate the silly narrative of some love adventure. This kind of literature arouses in children premature fancies and queries, and fosters a sentimentalism which too often occasions most unhappy results. Through their influence, young girls ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... instructed as to the merits of this country and its war. When we remember the advantages which poor Russell enjoyed for acquiring information, his neglect of matters of importance seems amazing—until we find, in scores of petty personal matters and silly egotisms, a key to the whole. He is a small-souled man, utterly incapable of mastering the great principles involved in this war,—a man petrified in English conceit, and at the end of his art when, like ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... him! blind and dumb, Deaf and dumb, Twirl the carle so troublesome! Kinsman, once so full of glee, Kinsman, where's thy drollery, Where thy tricks, thou cunning one? All thy tricks are spent and past, To the devil gone at last Like a silly fop thou'lt prate, Like a washerwoman rate. Thou art but a simpleton. Now thou mayest—more shame to thee— Run away, because of me; Cupid, that young rogue, may glory Learning wisdom from thy story; Haste, thou sluggard, hence to flee As from glass is cut our wit, So, like lightning, 'twill ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... long time since any one did that to a silly old woman like me," she said musingly. "Was it you or your brother," she asked abruptly, "who nearly broke ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... be writing a third paper on the nerves; but I cannot proceed without making some experiments, which are so unpleasant to make that I defer them. You may think me silly, but I cannot perfectly convince myself that I am authorized in Nature or Religion to do these cruelties .... And yet what are my experiments in comparison with those which are daily done, and ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... suffering from a sharp fit of goose, such as attacks many boys who, because matters do not go exactly as they like at home, consider that they are ill-used, and long for what they call their freedom—a freedom which is really slavery, inasmuch as they make themselves the bond-servants of their silly fancies, and it takes some time to ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... know how small a part that is of life. We may all refer to our boyhood, and recollect the time when we thought the things about us were the type of all things everywhere. That was, perhaps, after all no silly princess who was for feeding the famishing people on cakes. History takes us out of this confined circle of child-like thought; and shows us what are the perennial aims, struggles, and distractions ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... made! How he tore up anything and everything within his reach! Iron fences which those silly, little fire-carriers had stuck into the ground to protect their crops; silly, little, brick walls which he knocked over with one push of his huge body; young, healthy trees which had been planted so carefully a few years back, and which he ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... time, and Scott was a mere beginner. He was probably even better pleased with the quality of the praise than with the quantity of the pudding. For though professional criticism, then in no very vigorous state, said some silly things, it was generally favourable; and a saying of Pitt (most indifferent, as a rule, of all Prime Ministers to English literature) is memorable not merely as summing up the general impression, but as defining what that impression ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... silly, lady mine. You are so great and wise and clever that I can not bear to hear you say foolish things. And I want us to talk about how you are going to help me to be a great painter, and how we will sit together ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... hands, as unable to bear the insufferable effulgence of his countenance? And would not a monarch of sense have been ready to kick the people who thus treated him like a fool? And every one has observed that there are silly women who are much gratified by coarse and fulsome compliments upon their personal appearance, which would be regarded as grossly insulting by a woman of sense. You may have heard of country-gentlemen, of Radical politics, who had seldom wandered beyond their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of Tokugawa legislation is furnished by its dictates in regard to the relations of the sexes. Although concubinage was tolerated in the Samurai class, for reasons relating to the continuance of the family-cult, Iyeyasu denounces the indulgence of the privilege for merely selfish reasons: "Silly and ignorant men neglect their true wives for the sake of a loved mistress, and thus disturb the most important relation.... Men so far sunk as this may always be known as Samurai without fidelity or sincerity." Celibacy, condemned ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... interested in the orphanage who give the children clothes and all their necessities, you know," Margaret reminded her brother. "Don't you remember when we talked this over before we said that what we'd do for them would be to give them some foolishnesses—just silly things that all children enjoy and that no one ever seems to think it worth while to give ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... table and took up our towels and napkins once more. "There's no mistakin' them signs, and you'd be a little fool if you wasn't to help him along. Men's all sort of bashful, some more 'n others, and it's a good thing to help along. I like the looks of that fellow—he'd be awful silly and soft ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... intonation, mechanical and ironic, as though he had put the phrase or word between inverted commas, and was anxious to disclaim any personal responsibility for it; as who should say "the 'hierarchy,' don't you know, as silly people call it." But then, if it was so absurd, why did he say the 'hierarchy'? A moment later he went on: "Her acting will give you as noble an inspiration as any masterpiece of art in the world, as—oh, I don't know—" and he began ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... she might lace or not just as she pleased. No one would look at her in any case since her kind, good-humoured, silly face was marked ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... African race. He writes in his journal for July 8 1858: "Motley called. I like him much. We agree wonderfully well about slavery, and it is not often that I meet any person with whom I agree on that subject. For I hate slavery from the bottom of my soul; and yet I am made sick by the cant and the silly mock reasons of the Abolitionists. The nigger driver and the negrophile are two odious things to me. I must make Lady Macbeth's reservation: 'Had he not resembled—,'"] The Governor must have looked back with regret to that period in the history of the colony ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... indeed! Well, I've lived longer than sixteen and a half years and I've noticed that it's the up-to-the-minute dame that gets away with it and holds onto it every time, just the same. And any woman silly enough to work the rag-bag game when her husband can afford seven yards of taffeta and a Butterick ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... noticed anything unusual. Poor Swallow was standing quite still, with his nostrils wide open, breathing hard and trembling all over. A good many horses were trembling, but the majority agreed with Jezebel: "It's only some silly nonsense on the part of those Human Beings ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... thing to delay the train was an elephant, who walked the track ahead of us and when the engine whistled only put on speed. Hypnotized by the tracks that reached in parallel lines to the horizon, with trunk outstretched, ears up, and silly tail held horizontally he set himself the impossible task of leaving us behind. The more we cheered, the more the engine screamed, the fiercer and less dignified became his efforts; he reached ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... were already white, before the winds and the waves and the humour of Indian chiefs and Spanish governors had decided whether they were to be unknown and useless martyrs or honoured heroes. Indeed, I believe this is the lesson: if it is for fame that men do brave actions, they are only silly fellows ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saw it all, going out without your hat and standing there like a silly fool cleaning that bit of paper. I wonder what the lightermen thought ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... that the incompetence of the Ministers and the disorders which have reigned during the past few weeks would culminate in their being abandoned without a word of warning being sent them. It is so silly to say that because men are soldiers and sailors they must be prepared to do their duty everywhere. There must have been times when even the Roman soldier at Pompeii ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... him about some silly men who killed the sparrows and other birds, and the next year their fruit and corn were eaten up by grubs. Even the leaves on the trees ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... heard it and he told daddy and daddy told me that to hear her sing made a man think he was in Heaven. So when Mrs. Lenox gave me this beautiful bird for my very own, of course, I named her Jenny Lind. Mrs. Lenox called her Cleopatra. Wasn't that a silly name for a bird? Mrs. Lenox must have liked it or she wouldn't have given it to anything. Isn't it the luckiest thing that everyone hasn't the same likes? Just suppose everyone had been like my father and my mother and all the little girls were named Mary Rose? I think it's the most ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... complaint through his own obstinacy. By way of honour to his memory, the record of his three years' wanderings has been made public. What is the expression of his gratitude to the English? One service he certainly rendered us: he disabused, if that were possible, the French of their silly and most ignorant notions as to our British government in India and Ceylon: he could do no otherwise, for he had himself been astounded at what he saw as compared with what he had been taught to expect. Thus far he does us some justice and therefore some service, urged to it by his bitter contempt ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... him several walking-sticks by this time. "Now suppose we were to swing round like this—I say, do move your chair. Like this. Confound it, I didn't notice that little table was in the way. Why do people put silly little vases of flowers on tables? Mop it up, will you? Of course FRENCH is here. You must keep your eye ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... but also unarmed. Ah! how many men earn sudden death and yet in the mystery of Providence escape it! I have often wondered at the persistency with which habit has fixed on women the exclusive reputation of gossipers. For I say unto you, brethren, that Woman, who with empty head and silly tongue toys with her neighbor's character unto its destruction, is not more full of gossip than her brother Man, who knows better and yet cannot stand the temptation of a sick man and a safe chance to chatter about matters with which he has no business. I am afraid like the idea of original sin ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... rapacities and their mutual lies, but the intensity of the spirit of party? what question, what interest, what idea, what need of mankind, is involved in any of these things? Their big, pompous armies, drawn up in great silly rows, their gold lace, their salaams, their hierarchies, seem a pastime for children; there's a sense of humour and of reality over here that laughs at all that. Yes, we are nearer the reality—we are nearer what they will ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... wants but peace and quiet: why hast thou disturbed her rest? How with silly dreams of freedom dost thou dare to fill thy breast? If thou rise against thy rulers, Hellas, thou must fight alone, E'en the bolster of a Sultan, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... reproaches because I had been late in coming to her; that she had put on her slippers in order that I might see her foot, but that she was no longer beautiful; that she could wish she were; that she had been at fifteen. She went here and there, silly with love, rosy with joy; and she did not know what to imagine, what to say or do, in order to give herself and all that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to the pavilion] Of course not. Thats why one loves her for doing it. Look here: chuck away your silly week-end novel, and talk to a chap. After a week in that filthy office my brain is simply blue-mouldy. Lets argue about something intellectual. [He throws himself into the wicker chair ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... was not long in presenting itself. They came one day to the establishment, and told the people that the "man of medicine" had come for the purpose of performing some extraordinary feat that would astonish them all. The silly creatures believed the story, and went to the borders of the lake, where they observed the sorcerer showing off a variety of antics very much to their amusement. The conspirators, seeing this part of the stratagem succeed, rushed into the house, and immediately despatched Mr. Corrigal and ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... to share the desires she excited, she was really incapable of resisting an attack conducted with skill and ardour, and if the Duc de Vitry had not been so madly in love, which is the same as saying that he was hopelessly blind, silly, and dense to everything around him, he might have found a score of opportunities to overcome her resistance. We have already seen that she was so straitened in money matters that she had been driven to try to sell her jewels that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... denied that Pepita Ximenez is possessed of discretion. No silly jest, no impertinent question in regard to my vocation, and, above all, in regard to my approaching ordination, has crossed her lips. She conversed with me on matters relating to the village, about ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... supposing a thing that couldn't be!" said John's neighbour. "Any man with half an eye in his head could have seen who she was. I wish I'd gone to the 'Lhambra. This is a damn silly play, this!" ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... will forget her sorrow when she sees so many things that are quite new to her. I'm afraid she'll think Ellen, and us boys, very silly, ignorant creatures, compared to her, who has seen so much of the world: upon my word, we must be ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... Thenardier's coarse voice recalled her to reality: "What, you silly jade! you have not gone? Wait! I'll give it to you! I want to know what you are doing there! Get ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... William, which had reached Paris a day or two after he himself quitted that capital for the camp. His letter, dated at Gera, is written in the most elaborate style of insult. The King of Prussia (said he) had sent him a silly pamphlet of twenty pages, in very bad French—such a pamphlet as the English ministry were in the habit of commanding their hireling scribblers to put forth—but he acquitted the King of having read this performance. ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... a very good grace indeed; but that a piece of paper simply, which could neither speak, hear, nor understand, should impart such information, was a source of astonishment and wonder to Obie and his train, who testified their emotion in no other manner than by looks of silly amazement, and repeated ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... method that must in some cases still be called in to the help of man, is death. In the new vision death is no inexplicable horror, no pointless terminal terror to the miseries of life, it is the end of all the pain of life, the end of the bitterness of failure, the merciful obliteration of weak and silly ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... cried the old lady, at the top of her voice, "your Monsieur Boullard was a madman, and a very silly madman at best; for who, allow me to ask you, ever heard of a human tee-totum? The thing is absurd. Madame Joyeuse was a more sensible person, as you know. She had a crotchet, but it was instinct with common sense, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of which are not resting on the truth, I would rather were not accompanied with prayer. Learning is a great thing, for it teaches us who know so little, and enlightens us; so when we have come to the knowledge of the truths contained in the holy writings, we do what we ought to do. From silly devotions, God ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... very silly, and does not indicate much self-esteem, but there is a deep meaning in it after all. A connection with Austria has always been disastrous to France. Louis XVI. died of his marriage with Marie Antoinette, and ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... "Because it is a silly thing, and I have always regretted allowing the man to publish it. He certainly called upon me and asked me a lot of questions, after which he went away and wrote that article. Ever since then I have felt like a conceited ass, who tried to make himself out more ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... scornful. Then she giggled. "I think a chaperon would look very silly tagging along behind on a camel.... Besides we've gone so far already. You took the liberty of rescuing me, you know, and then the sand storm and this breakfast a ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... were as sly and kept themselves as unobserved as possible. Four Yarmouth men—old sea-dogs, perhaps, who loved their pipe—were, in 1687, fined four shillings each for smoking tobacco around the end of the meeting-house. Silly, ostrich-brained Yarmouth men! to fancy to escape detection by hiding around the corner of the church; and to think that the tithingman had no nose when he was so Argus-eyed. Some few of the ministers used the "tobacco ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... away there in the Eastern pastures and deserts; and how he knows every one, though to a stranger's eye they are so like each other; and how even the dumb instincts and the narrow intelligence of the silly sheep recognise the shepherd, and will not be deceived by shepherd's garments worn to deceive, and will not follow the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... These silly outbursts never reach me and they never can; and they, therefore, utterly fail, and always will fail, of their aim; yet, my dear friend, there is nevertheless a serious side to such folly. For it shows the need of education, education, education. The religious editor ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... manuscript than I did the one that night. And there the phantom (I use the word out of deference to a public prejudice on this subject) most persistently remained until my task was finished, and, closing the portfolio, I abruptly rose. Did I see anything? That is a silly and ignorant question. Could I see the wind which had now risen stronger, and drove a few cloud-scuds across the sky, filling the night, somehow, with a longing that was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Coridon would kiss her then; She said, Maids must kiss no men Till they did for good and all; Then she made the shepherd call All the heavens to witness truth Never loved a truer youth. Thus with many a pretty oath, Yea and nay, and faith and troth, Such as silly shepherds use When they will not Love abuse, Love, which had been long deluded, Was with kisses sweet concluded; And Phillida, with garlands gay, Was made ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... there was dishes of sparklin' jelly things on the counter, that the girl said warn't much use—gone in no time; they were just meant to dress up the box. I called 'em brainless candies—just silly an' expensive, an' if you look around you'll find women can match 'em. An' along with 'em you can put the candied violets an' sugared rose leaves that only make a man out of pocket an' ain't a ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... his apprehended foolishness. Literature will have failed humanity if it is so blinded by the monstrous agony in Flanders as to miss the essential triviality at the head of the present war. Not the slaughter of ten million men can make the quality of the German Kaiser other than theatrical and silly. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... you know, are expected to go to the sea-shore or the Springs; and my sister and her two eldest daughters are so silly, as to fear that they will lose caste, if it is known that they could not go this ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... this is a nice 'ospitable way to treat a guest and a relation. 'Ere I am taken by a lot of silly children for a burglar. I, your own nephew, awnt, who 'ad come down stairs on the h'innocent h'errand of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... sound terribly silly to you," she said quietly. "I wonder if the Florida moon affects ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... friends departed. But yet of this one error hath there grown up such a harvest of these mass-mongers, the masses being sold abroad commonly in every corner, the temples of God became shops to get money: and silly souls were persuaded that nothing was more necessary to be bought. Indeed, there was nothing more gainful ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... little more ingenuity about choosing babies' names. She gets the last names out of the telephone book—you'll find Abbott on the first page—and she picks the Christian names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I've always hated it; but I rather like Judy. It's such a silly name. It belongs to the kind of girl I'm not—a sweet little blue-eyed thing, petted and spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through life without any cares. Wouldn't it be nice to be like that? Whatever faults I may have, ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... "Oh, you silly! You are building the same house every time, and taking it down again. How can you be so baby as to call that ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... sullener grew— The sun was too hot—the skies were too blue, The grass, he was certain, was damp where he lay, All things had conspired to annoy him that day, He could bear neither sunshine, the mirth that he heard, The hum of the bees, nor the chirp of a bird. How silly they seemed—it made him so cross— The pleasures of life were nothing but dross, So he hastened away in a fit of despair; All things were against him and "nothing was fair." And now, little people, does any one know A child who is cross, and always acts so? Who cries with a pout—"I say I shan't ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... systems, and when you do not hesitate, zealously and earnestly, to recommend such measures. Be assured, then, that posterity will not regard the abolitionists as Christians, philanthropists, or virtuous citizens. It will, I have no doubt, look upon the mass of the party as silly enthusiasts, led away by designing characters, as is the case with all parties that break from the great, acknowledged ties which bind civilized man in fellowship. The leaders themselves will be regarded as mere ambitious men; not taking rank with those whose ambition ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... enjoyed a favorable press and had a habit of saying things that looked silly, three years later, in print. The Senator was the new spokesman for ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault |
