"Asinine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and crossed, still possessed of his devil of inspiration. It would be unfair to him to say that he did not struggle to resist it, for he did, because it was fairly and egregiously asinine; yet struggling, his feet trod the path to which ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... fought to straighten the smile bending his lips. He picked up the pitcher and poured beer into the glasses. It all seemed so absurd; these grim-faced men acting out an asinine tableau. ...
— The Terrible Answer • Arthur G. Hill
... they have not been ostentatiously displayed or importunately obtruded. I could have written longer notes, for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment. The work is performed, first by railing at the stupidity, negligence, ignorance, and asinine tastelessness of the former editors, and shewing, from all that goes before and all that follows, the inelegance and absurdity of the old reading; then by proposing something, which to superficial readers would seem specious, but which the editor rejects with indignation; ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... absurdly known as dumb animals, and am glad now that the chemist's was closed last night before I decided whether to go there or not. BALAAM himself would have been proud to own your animal. It roused me from my bed this morning with what was unmistakably a very fine asinine rendering of the first few bars of "The Yeoman's Wedding," but unfortunately it lost the swing of it before the end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... with sudden gravity. "And he had asses' ears. I'm afraid this mess we're all in shows that we did an asinine thing in coming down here after the doubloons. What is wealth compared to ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... bilk, Each morn the patient quaff'd a frothy bowl Of asinine new milk, Robbing a shaggy suckling of a foal Which got proportionably spare and skinny— Meanwhile the neighbors cried "Poor Mary Ann! She can't get over it! she never can!" When lo! to prove each prophet was a ninny The one that died was the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a recommendation," he answered, "and may be as far away as—any other engagement—of mine, that is." And in saying it poor Stuyvesant realized it was an asinine thing. So, alack, did she! An instant agone she was biting her pretty red lips for letting the word escape her, but his fatuity gave her all the advantage in spite of herself. It was the play ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... to the far end of the mantel, and began, figuratively, to kick himself. He had often declared that a man in love was the biggest mule on earth, and now here he was, the king of them all, a genuine descendant of Balaam's mount with all his asinine qualities, but lacking ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... to-night. Willie." Tush! "A French Widow of eighteen, unencumbered," and so forth and so on. Rot, bally rot; and here he was on the way to join them! "Will the lady who sang from Madame Angot communicate with gentleman who leaned out of the window? J.H. Burgomaster Club." Positively asinine! The man opposite folded the paper and stuffed it into his pocket, and its disappearance ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... which Katherine showed me because it touched her, was the production of an effusive idiot. I don't trust sentimentalists; they seldom have much honesty or justice. Katherine Liddell is a little soft too, but she is by no means so asinine as the others I have had. Wait, however—wait till some man takes her fancy; that is the divining-rod to show where the springs ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... I'm a joke," he said, with a melancholy grin; "they always expect me to say something asinine, and get ready to laugh before I speak. What ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... original thoughts were delivered in a crude state—imperfect, obscure, half developed, and not producible to a popular audience. He was aware of this himself; and, though he claims everywhere the faculty of profound intuition into human nature, yet with equal candor he accuses himself of asinine stupidity, dulness, and want of talent. He was a disproportioned intellect, and so far a monster: and he must be added to the long list of original-minded men who have been looked down upon with pity ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... that he had acted like a petulant child. To have shown his hand so openly, simply because the Barone had beaten him in the race for the motor-boat! And Nora would understand that he was weak and without backbone. Harrigan himself must have reasoned out the cause for such asinine plays as he had executed in the game of checkers. How many times had the old man called out to him to wake up and move? In spirit he had been across the lake, a spirit in Hades. He was not only a fool, but a coward likewise. He ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... footing for the metaphysical theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and the schoolmen. In England, Milton was of opinion that the youth of the universities were, even so late as his time, still presented with an "asinine feast of sow-thistles." These retrogressions in school and university serve to show how exceedingly difficult it is to contrive any system of education, middle or upper, which will work itself when the contrivers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... giggled. "Look here," said Dick, "if we stand here till midnight discussing Major Campbell's age we won't get home to tea, and then Aunt Mary will send out a search party, and we'll look pretty asinine. Long John's getting baity, he'll bolt in a minute. Take the reins, Mollie. Don't eat all the strawberries, and tell Aunt Mary that cherry jam is my ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... burro, cuddy^, ladino [U.S.]; reindeer; camel, dromedary, llama, elephant; carrier pigeon. [object used for carrying] pallet, brace, cart, dolley; support &c 215; fork lift. carriage &c (vehicle) 272; ship &c 273. Adj. equine, asinine. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... like you, heard of the hex of the white feather. I have traced it down to several families, but none could tell me anything about it that was factual. Half of the stupid fools made up stories as they went along—some concocting the biggest bunch of asinine tales that I've ever heard. But you, Peter, are a descendant of the Scheinbergers. I know for a fact that Otto Scheinberger practiced the white feather hex and passed the power on down to your father. From there it stopped. However, there must be some record of it in your family. You are in possession ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... are so many mistakes made by other people that affect nobody but themselves that Don Quixote might tire of tilting at them. The more asinine the speaker the louder is his bray, and the more surely do we encounter him in social and domestic haunts. To dispute with him is to strengthen the stakes, and twist harder the cords of his belief in himself. In recognizing the truth, so ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... noticed," he remarked affably, "that under Allan's most asinine speeches there usually lurks a substratum of truth. Are you really going to write a serious ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and pushed on at a pace which suited none of my company, human or asinine. We had got ahead about a mile, when shouts from behind opened a scene perfectly ludicrous. There was the little mule trotting up the road at most unusual speed, impelled by my friend's shouts and the big stones with which he was pelting the miserable beast. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... owners of the soil; with far greater reason we in the far East might shout, "China for the Chinese", "Japan for the Japanese". I will quote Mr. T. S. Sutton, English Secretary of the Chinese-American League of Justice, on this point. "The most asinine whine in the world," he says, "is that of 'America for the Americans' or 'China for the Chinese', etc. It is the hissing slogan of greed, fear, envy, selfishness, ignorance and prejudice. No man, no human being who calls himself a man, no ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement—or one will have to pay dearly for it!—"He praises me, THEREFORE he acknowledges me to be right"—this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... it were not for such hypocritical and asinine legislation as this, we might forget the history of New England witchcraft, and the hanging of Quakers in sight of the spot where this law was enacted as an improvement on a still worse, but practically ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... ingenious coquetry so as to make around the legs patterns which make them look as if they were wearing open-worked stockings. When they are white, the end of the tail and the mane are dyed with henna. Of course this is only in the case of thorough-bred animals, of the aristocracy of the asinine race, and is not indulged in with the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... very easy for you, middle-aged reader, sitting over this page in the broad daylight, to call me by all manner of asinine and anserine unchristian names, because I had these fancies running through my head. I don't care much for your abuse. The question is not, what it is reasonable for a man to think about, but what he actually does think about, in the dark, and when he is alone, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various |
