"Besotted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... revenge bore its inevitable fruit of injustice and bitterness in the days of reconstruction that followed. How different it might all have been had Lincoln continued to live. How his great influence would have helped in the solution of the nation's problems after the war. A besotted wretch snuffed out the most important life on earth ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... hour more the steamship puffed and exhausted her steam, while the high officials paced the wharf shaking their fists at the besotted stokers, who ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... pang of dread lest his confession should cut short this very happiness,—a pang of the same dread that had kept his love mute through long months. A rush of self-consciousness told him that he was besotted to have said all this. Maggie's manner this morning had been as unconstrained ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... sweat of our brows without diminution; if it prepares our table; if it makes our cup to overflow, and above all this, in providing for our children, anoints our heads with that oil which takes away the greatest of worldly cares; what man, that is not besotted with a covetousness as vain as endless, can imagine such a constitution to be his poverty? Seeing where no woman can be considerable for her portion, no portion will be considerable with a woman; and so his children will not only find better preferments without his brokage, but more freedom ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... dealt out alike to rich and poor, high and low. Though the foreigners laughed at the fables of the priests and ridiculed the monks, they yet were honest in their dealings with the people instead of taking by violence. As there are no people so besotted that they do not admire courage and honesty, so the Paisano looks upon the heretic as a man of a superior race ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... Besotted with whiskey,—unfitting to tell, Even Satan himself avoiding the "smell;" Before then we part, I would bid you adieu, Reform ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... on the warm afternoons, they bask up and down the thoroughfares in the gaudiest of orange and scarlet bandannas. But their day is fast passing away; and in place of the simple, happy creatures of a few years gone, we find the discontented and besotted ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... kindled on the kitchen-floor tvas now remembered, and corroborated the inferences which were drawn from this spectacle. And yet that the mischief had been thus limited, that the besotted wretch who lay helpless on his bed and careless of impending danger, and that the mother and her infant, should escape, excited some degree of surprise. Could the savages have been interrupted in their work, and obliged to ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the more remarkable as his relations with Congress and the Committee were fast approaching a crisis. If McClellan failed-and by the showing of his own despatches, there was every reason to expect him to fail, so besotted was he upon the idea that no one could prevail with the force allowed him—the Committee who were leaders of the congressional party against the presidential party might be expected promptly to measure strength with the Administration. And McClellan failed. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... held it not according to conscience to kill Injuns as they did, and so refused. And so, friend, they drove me from their doors; seeing which, and perceiving the poor creatures were in a manner besotted, and bent upon their own destruction, and the night coming on fast, I turned my steps and ran with what speed I could to friend Bruce's, telling him the whole story, and advising that he should despatch a strong body ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Court, I am doubtful of some such thing; but I seemed wholly strange to him in it, but will make my use of it. We told me also how loose the Court is, nobody looking after business, but every man his lust and gain; and how the King is now become besotted upon Mrs Stewart, that he gets into corners, and will be with her half an hour together kissing her to the observation of all the world; and she now stays by herself and expects it, as my Lady Castlemaine did ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... America has been the chief agent in placing the lower classes in a condition which adapts them to a higher spiritualized life. I say lower classes, because under the system of monarchical governments, the peasants and laborers of Europe have been kept in a state of besotted ignorance, developing chiefly in the animal propensities, and not fitting themselves for the higher enjoyments of the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... this besotted race is not satisfied with seeing its multitudes swept away by the great epidemics whose causes are unknown, and of the justice or wisdom of which the human mind cannot conceive. It must also be ever at war. There has not been a moment since ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... attempts a reform.] One more attempt at reform was to be made, this time by one of the Senate's own members, but only to be once more defeated by rancorous party-spirit and besotted urban pride. Marcus Livius Drusus was son of the man whom the Senate had put forward to outbid Caius Gracchus. He was a haughty, upright man, of an impetuous temper—such a man as often becomes the tool of less courageous but more dexterous intriguers. M. Scaurus had been impeached for taking ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... and to contend with evils, and in the rules of living and believing well: and often rouse it up, and exercise it in this noble study; but in an ordinary soul it must be by intervals and with moderation; it will otherwise grow besotted if continually intent upon it. I found it necessary, when I was young, to put myself in mind and solicit myself to keep me to my duty; gaiety and health do not, they say, so well agree with those grave and serious meditations: I am at present in another state: ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... all something in common: they keep their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic BOURGEOIS. In fact, a besotted and brutalized France at present sprawls in the foreground—it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste, and at the same time of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo. There is also something else common to them: a ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in an age, when in the unequal contest with sovereign wrong, every man is ground to powder who is not either a born slave, or who does not willingly and at once offer up the yearnings of humanity and the dictates of reason as a welcome sacrifice to besotted prejudice and loathsome power. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... window or consult my navel or 'meditate while at stool' or cut my finger I will get new material with much less hardship. The last thing a composer or writer or painter needs is material; it is from excess of material he is the besotted creature he is. He may lack leisure or energy or ability or an active colon, but no masterpiece ever was or conceivably could be thwarted from ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of the besotted boy, on whom at their marriage she had bestowed the title of king, began at once to justify the enterprise and to play into the hands of all his enemies alike. His father set him on to demand the crown matrimonial, which would at least have assured him the rank and station of independent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution; that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and unmerciful; all History teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts too well, to profit by even so humble an example as the 'No Popery' riots ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... required more courage than Appleton possessed, though he determined to look at the rooms on his next visit, so he stole down the path and went about his business, wondering why in the world he had done such a besotted thing as to take a walk among the furnished lodgings of the ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... work of art historically is to play the science-besotted fool. No more disastrous theory ever issued from the brain of a charlatan than that of evolution in art. Giotto did not creep, a grub, that Titian might flaunt, a butterfly. To think of a man's art ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... same time, however, it was hoped that something might be made of this liberty of conscience. All were not equally sunk in the horrible superstition, and those who were yet faithful to Church and King might be set against their besotted brethren. Liberty of conscience might thus be turned to account. While two great parties were "by the ears, and pulling out each other's hair, all might perhaps be reduced together." His Majesty was warned, nevertheless, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... are strictly adhered to; and though his ceremonies and rites are unique in their barbarity, yet when properly handled he is capable of becoming a useful and intelligent member of the community. Great tact is necessary in the education of the aboriginals. Neglect turns them into lazy, besotted brutes who are of no use to anybody; too kind treatment makes them insolent and cunning; too harsh treatment makes them treacherous; and yet without a certain amount of bullying they lose all respect for their master, and when they deserve a beating and do not get it, misconstrue ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... without feeling the force and sanctity of which, they neither could have risen, nor can oppose to their enemy resistance which has any hope in it; but I will ask, of any man who is not dead to the common feelings of his social nature—and besotted in understanding, if this be not a cruel mockery, and which must have been felt, unless it were repelled with hatred and scorn, as a heart-breaking insult. Moreover, this conduct acknowledges, by implication, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and his melancholy keeping from Court, I am doubtful of some such thing; but I seemed wholly strange to him in it, but will make my use of it. He told me also how loose the Court is, nobody looking after business, but every man his lust and gain; and how the King is now become besotted upon Mrs. Stewart, that he gets into corners, and will be with her half an houre together kissing her to the observation of all the world; and she now stays by herself and expects it, as my Lady Castlemaine ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the gale which came down upon the Roebuck, while her captain was besotted and helpless in his berth. Mr. Lincoln did all that a skilful seaman could do, and while the wind and the waves were the only perils against which the schooner had to contend, there was no serious ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... a few hours ago. In the natural exhilaration of the sweet mountain air, and the silence broken only by the singing of the birds, his fears fell from him. There must be some mistake which Phebe would clear up. It was nothing but the accusation of a besotted brain which ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... have made slavery perpetual in the Republic; but the pampered frenzy of the slave oligarchy defied all remedies, and hurried it headlong into the bloody conspiracy which was to close forever its career of besotted ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... afford the means of civilized habits; no literature worthy of the name; no colleges, or even common schools of any value; no industry and enterprise, and every motive for it crushed by arbitrary and tyrannical institutions: the mind degraded and besotted, inconceivably so, and preoccupied also with the vilest superstition, the most inveterate prejudices, and the most arrogant bigotry. Who can measure the vast disproportion? What mind sufficient to balance extremes so ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... he said, and dragged forth the rickety-legged chair that he might prop it against its back, for the moment looking less drunk and less a vagabond in his eagerness to do his work justice; there lurking somewhere, perhaps, in his besotted being, that love which the artist soul feels for ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... But what drove him mad? Surely it was not his high elevation that turned his head, for if it had been, his madness would never have taken this particular direction of flying from his honors. No! it is as I have always suspected. He heard, in some way, of the girl's English lover, and he, with his besotted devotion to her, was just the man to be morbidly, madly jealous, and to do some such idiotic thing as he has done, and get himself murdered and burned to ashes for his pains! Yes; and it serves ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... awakened some vague recollections in the mind of Rudolph. Wishing to enlighten them, he went and opened the door. He found himself face to face with a fellow whom he recognized at once, so fully and plainly was the stamp of crime marked on his youthful and besotted face. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... mean manner, which reassured him. "Look here," said I, "if I were to make trouble for you in Paris I'd be the most besotted fool in France, and you ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... a lethargic, a luxurious, a self-indulgent, a self-seeking, a world-besotted professing Church, and asks: 'Are these the people on whose hearts a cross is stamped?' Do these men—or rather let us say, do we live as becometh the Gospel which proclaims the divinity of self-sacrifice, and that the law of a perfect human life is perfect self-forgetfulness, even as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the last time I sacrifice any of my good hours to you. Not because you are old, and therefore think you are wise, when you are not; not because you are blind and besotted and damned—a trunk of a tree filled with dry rot that presently a clean wind will blow away; not because your opinions, and the opinions of all like you, have long ago been proven the lies and idiocies that they are; not even because you haven't one single ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... than property—a fair, honorable, impartial administration of justice; and of the chivalrous race of the south it may be expected that they will do justice, though the heavens fall! God forbid that the world should point to this trial as a proof that we are so besotted by passion and interest that we cannot discern the most obvious distinctions and that on a slave question with a jury of slave-holders there is no possible chance of justice! Many, I assure you, will be ready to fasten this charge upon us. It is my hope, my ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... do not expect it—you are too much besotted by her," pursued Nowell; "but I conjure you to cast off this wicked and senseless passion, which, unless checked, will lead you to perdition. You have heard what abominable rites are practised at those unholy meetings called Devil's Sabbaths, and how can you say that some ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of retailing further follies," said Caius Nepos at last; "we all know that a madman, a vain, besotted fool wields now the sceptre of Julius Caesar and of great Augustus. The numbers of his misdeeds are like the grains of sand on the seashore, his orgies have shamed our generation, his debauches are a disgrace ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... contemptible even to those whom it amuses, that forbids them to regard the novelist as a serious or right-minded person. If they do not in some moment of indignation cry out against all novels, as my correspondent does, they remain besotted in the fume of the delusions purveyed to them, with no higher feeling for the author than such maudlin affection as the frequenter of an opium-joint perhaps knows for the attendant who fills his pipe with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that the end of the little play was murder; that its motive was a sacrilegious robbery—the theft of a diamond cross from the body of a woman lying dead in a church; that the man was a drink-besotted ruffian; that the woman was his illicit partner; that the atmosphere was assuredly brutal. Material eyes saw all this. Material senses reasoned that, given all these qualities, such a play must be horrible, and unduly strenuous. But intuition ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... and culture. His mind dwelt upon low and vile subjects. He grew restless of home restraint and surroundings, and finally left the parental roof. Wandering from city to city he grew rapidly worse, sinking into deeper depths of vice, until finally he became a base, besotted, wretched creature. Broken down in health by his sins, he could no longer enjoy even the worst sensual pleasures, and with no taste for or capability of appreciating anything higher he was most wretched indeed. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the father, digging his heels into the comfortable flanks of his mule with some human impatience, "or art THOU, too, a lazy renegade? Thinkest thou, besotted one, that the heretic will spare thee more work than the ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... are desperate and besotted enthusiasts, who devote their lives to the advancement of religion—-somewhat like Templars, only they are never known to pause in the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted as to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... afterwards. It was foolish to tell him these things, but one is tempted to tread on their ignorance, their bigotry; all they say and do is based on hatred of life. Iconoclast and peasant! He sent some religion-besotted slave to break ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... been deterred by the fear of opposition from saying so. Hooker's over-anxious friends have now turned into a public scandal what was generally understood as an exoneration, by intentionally distorting what was said into an implication that Hooker was so besotted as to be incapable of command. What I have written of his marching the army to this field and to the field of Gettysburg is a full answer to such unnecessary perversion. Let these would-be friends of Hooker remember that this calumny is of their ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... told us, the Lord God had witnessed with Divine commiseration, and had determined that the light of Christian love should shine upon their darkness, and that Almighty wisdom should dissipate their besotted ignorance. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that these men had committed the atrocities reported at Termonde and Roosbeek, at Malines and Louvain. At close range it was easy to see that the prevalent conception of the "barbarians" was the purest kind of rot—the picture created and fostered by the Allied press, of a vicious and besotted beast with natural brutality accentuated by alcoholic rage. With such men as individuals it seemed to us that neutral observers could have no quarrel. To the Kaiser's privates who have been fighting ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... associate of thieves quivered, as if it had been a sun-stroke. When she passed out of sight he bit the half-crown till it bent, and hid it away in his breast. "I'll never part with ye," said he, "never;" unmindful of poor Dorothea, going about her work tearful and forlorn. Gentleman Jim, uneducated, besotted, half-brutalised as he was, had yet drunk from the cup that poisons equally the basest and noblest of our kind. A well-dressed, good-looking young man, walking on the other side of the Square, did not fail ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... reserved for John Randolph, whom he thought an abomination too odious and despicable to be described in words, "the image and superscription of a great man stamped (p. 211) upon base metal." "The besotted violence" of Randolph, he said, has deprived him of "all right to personal civility from me;" and certainly this excommunication from courtesy was made complete and effective. He speaks again of the same victim as a "frequenter of gin lane and beer alley." He indignantly charges ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... nails cut into his palm. "Let me understand for once and for all, for I confess I cannot understand all this. You say he is to go, and that I am not to go! Is it, then, God's will and God's justice that because this man for twenty years has led a life of besotted sin and indulgence, and because I for sixty years have feared God and loved my neighbor, that he is to be chosen and ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Before she had finished the verse the Rectangle was subdued and tamed. It lay like some wild beast at her feet, and she sang it into harmlessness. Ah! What were the flippant, perfumed, critical audiences in concert halls compared with this dirty, drunken, impure, besotted mass of humanity that trembled and wept and grew strangely, sadly thoughtful under the touch of this divine ministry of this beautiful young woman! Mr. Maxwell, as he raised his head and saw the transformed mob, had a glimpse of something that Jesus would probably do with a voice like ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... subject,"—was at once kept in total ignorance of all; and yet, as ambassadorial John constantly gave out to Clements and Maria, in an amiable nervous state of natural acquiescence. Next day, then, the besotted father was about to be packed post for Yorkshire; the important letter, with its enclosed bank note, was already written and sealed, as like the governor's hand as possible; a license had been long ago provided, and the clergyman ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... felt it his duty to speak to the Judge upon the subject. This gentleman—his name was S. P. Escott—held, with others, that, for the good name of the community, steps should be taken to abate the infantile, futile activities of the besotted legatee. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... little that invites discussion. Johanna is the central sun of the system, and in the romantic light that goes out from her the others seem rather pale and uninteresting. Father Thibaut impresses one in the Prologue as a little too refined, intelligent and far-sighted for the role of besotted superstition and misunderstanding which he subsequently plays in the cathedral scene. La Hire and the Duke of Burgundy and the Bastard of Orleans, who preserves only a suggestion of the rugged soldier that once bore his name, are there only to illustrate the divine magic of the Maid. Two of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... hint; conceiving that the divine Sophia must often have regretted our friend Fellamar when once she was bound to the oaf, and that Jones was capable of a resentful jealousy. By midnight I had to call a chair for my besotted challenger, and when the Avenger was there safely bestowed, I asked him where the men should carry him? His tongue being now thick, and his brains bemused, he could not find the sign of his inn in his noddle. So, the merry devil prompting me, I gave the men the address of his ancient ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... care of its affair. Within three nights afterward all his battles were taking a rest, for already his worshipers in the tap-room were so infatuated with the great tale of the Royal Audience that they would have nothing else, and so besotted with it were they that they would have cried if they could ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the most ancient and powerful of the kingdoms of India, fell into the hands of the English, owing to the ambition, bigotry, and besotted cruelty of the ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... splendid design; and he and his friends proved themselves to have reached the level of that true enlightenment which distinguished the close of the eighteenth century. But the Vonckists, as they were called, formed but a small minority compared with the besotted mass; and, overwhelmed by fanaticism on the one hand, and despotism on the other, they were unable to act effectually for the public good. Vander Mersch, a soldier of fortune, and a man of considerable talents, who had ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... (seizing his advantage).—"I don't! It's imbecile and besotted devotion! Tell me, when may I come to ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the truth in the love of it. 'We beheld' refers to the narrower circle; 'we all received' to the wider sweep of the whole Church. There is no exclusive class, no special prerogative. Every Christian man, the weakest, the lowliest, the most uncultured, rude, ignorant, foolish, the most besotted in the past, who has wandered furthest away from the Master; whose spirit has been most destitute of all sparks of goodness and of God—receives from out of His fulness. 'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.' And every one of us, if we will, may have dwelling in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... and century's corruption, no such scruple ever came. What consideration need any man or any woman waste upon a husband? What possible disgrace could come to a woman in having a lover? And did not the frantic jealousy of the besotted old husband, his continual attendance, his perpetual spying, most effectually remove any further consideration there ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... besotted idiot! I am lost, spelled; the victim of sorcery I cannot fight against. What am I to do, what am I to do? Surely I can keep my steps from going near her. If I were to swear now that I will never set eyes ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... do (which was almost all the year round), he passed his time in reading books of knight-errantry, which he did with that application and delight, that at last he in a manner wholly left off his country sports, and even the care of his estate; nay, he grew so strangely besotted with these amusements that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of that kind, by which means he collected as many of them as were to be had; but, among them all, none pleased him like the works of the famous Feliciano de Sylva; for the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men.—Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the starlit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof and house and board. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... way, foolish that you are, but beware of the beer and the spirits. Now you are beginning to know this language, and when you are drunk you talk, and do you think that there are no spies here? That girl, Saga, is great-niece to Nam, and you are besotted with her. Be careful lest you bring us ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... to go out. Deering had stood with bloodshot eyes fixed on Nell while Girty searched the loft, and as they passed the girl on their way to the open air, the renegade looked at Girty as he motioned with his head toward her. His besotted face ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... you lose without hope of any gain; you give without hope of any return, and you imitate foolishly the noble deeds of us anchorites, as an impudent monkey thinks, by smearing a wall, to copy the picture of a clever artist. What, then, are your reasons, O most besotted of men?" ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... Berthelini; "we shall feed upon insults. I have an eye, Elvira: I have a spirit of divination; and this place is accursed. The landlord has been discourteous, the Commissary will be brutal, the audience will be sordid and uproarious, and you will take a cold upon your throat. We have been besotted enough to come; the die is cast - it will ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forenoon was somewhat chilly, yet the benches in the center of the square were more than half-filled by men plainly "down on their luck." Some of these men, of course, were hopelessly besotted or vicious, and Uncle Sam had no use for any of these in his Army uniform. There were other men, however, on the seats, who looked like good and useful men who had met with hard times. Most of these men on the benches had not breakfasted, and had no assurance ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... not here omit those two main plagues and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... coral reefs of the ocean, or moulder in the howling wastes of the "overland passage;" just as the bones of the unbelieving Israelites whitened the sands of the desert. Of those who have reached the "land of" golden "promise," how many have died in despair, or worse still, are living so besotted by vice, so lost to all power of virtuous resolutions, that they shall never more see the happy homes from which they so thoughtlessly wandered, never more hear the soft accents of loving friends; never more worship God, in a peaceful ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... a fool, Leopold," she cried, feeling that indeed, between her father and this madman, her life had ceased to be safe. She looked round her helplessly. Three or four besotted fools lying helpless across the tables, and all the village dancing and making merry some two hundred metres away, her father—implacable, as she well knew, where her conduct was concerned—and this madman ready to kill ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... merriment went round again. Nor was Frona above touching lips to the jelly glass in fellowship; and she contributed her quota by singing "Annie Laurie" and "Ben Bolt." Also, but privily, she watched the drink saturating the besotted souls of Cornell and the Virgin. It was an experience, and she was glad of it, though sorry in a way for Corliss, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Nobody is so besotted as to ask, "Does dram-drinking pay?" There is not a sane man or woman in America who would hesitate in the reply, and the answers would all be ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... say, Doyle," said Dr. O'Grady, "that you've been such a besotted idiot as to let that American escape out of this without paying over ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... mile down the side hill. Bullet, his nostrils wide, his ears back, raced parallel in the boulder-strewn stream-bed, wonderful in his avoidance of bad footing, precious in his selection of good, interested in the game, indignant at the wayward Dinkey, profoundly contemptuous of the besotted mule. At a bend in the canon interposed a steep bank. Up this we scrambled, dirt and stones flying. I had just time to bend low along the saddle when, with the ripping and tearing and scratching of thorns, we burst ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... offers of assistance to get them thither, the travellers in general did not heartily and truly believe, after all, that there was any such country as the Happy land; or at least, the paltry and transient pleasures of the wilderness so besotted them, the thoughts of the dark and shadowy valley so frightened them, that they thought they should be more comfortable by banishing all ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... have seen. It happened that through his own fault young Richard was all but penniless. The pious, nonconformist soul of Sir Geoffrey Lupton—the wealthy uncle from whom he had had great expectations—had been so stirred to anger by Richard's vicious and besotted ways that he had left every guinea that was his, every perch of land, and every brick of edifice to Richard's half-sister Ruth. At present things were not so bad for the worthless boy. Ruth worshipped him. He was a ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... after they leave school. In our attempt then to give a girl pleasure and freedom from care we succeed, for the most part, in making her pitifully miserable. She finds "life" so different from what she expected it to be. She is besotted with innocent little ambitions, and does not understand this apparent waste of herself, this elaborate preparation, if no work is provided for her. There is a heritage of noble obligation which young people accept and ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... discouraged. A few patriotic nobles stood apart from their caste, and strengthened his hands, as Lafayette and Lincourt strengthened Louis XVI. They even drew up a plan of voluntary emancipation; formed an association for the purpose and gained many signatures; but the great weight of that besotted serf-owning caste was thrown against them, and all came to naught. Alexander was at last walled in from the great object of his ambition. Pretended theologians built, between him and emancipation, walls of Scriptural interpretation; pretended philosophers built walls of false political ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Pray tell that besotted —— to let the opera sink into its native obscurity. I did it in a fit of d——ble good nature long ago, for Hullah, who wrote some very pretty music to it. I just put down for everybody what everybody at the St. James's Theatre wanted to say and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... indifference to her. That poor little Daisy! The image of the baby swam vividly before her. What a terrible fate to be left in the hands of the public-house woman! Who knew what would happen to it? What if, in her drunken fury at the absence of Becky and Joseph, she did it a mischief? At the best the besotted creature would not take cordially to the task of bringing it up. It was no child of hers—had not even the appeal of pure Jewish blood. And there it lay, smiling, with its beautiful blue eyes. It had smiled ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... all description in its revolting and hideous pathos. These blind, besotted men hovered about these wrecks of womanhood much in the manner of hungry animals. They plied them with drink, and sought to win their favors by ribald jesting and talk as obscene as their condition of drunkenness would permit them, while the women accepted ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... will it end? Ay—how will it end? It is not to be supposed that we can long be blinded by such a flimsy humbug as a transfer to Southern possession of these vessels 'for the Chinese trade!' Are the English mad, demented, or besotted, that they suppose we intend to endure such deliberate aid of our enemies? When those vessels 'for the Chinese' are afloat, and our merchants begin to suffer, let England beware! We are not a people to stop and reason nicely on legal points, when they are enforced in the form of fire and death. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hear that it was easy to be honest? Do you find that in your Bible? Easy? It is easy to be an ass and follow the multitude like a blind, besotted bull in a stampede; and that, I am well aware, is what you and Mrs. Grundy mean by being honest. But it will not bear the stress of time nor the scrutiny of conscience. Even before the lowest of all tribunals,—before a court of law, whose business ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... get the start of us, Helen, if we don't look sharp,' observed Huntingdon. 'They'll make a match of it, as sure as can be. That Lowborough's fairly besotted. But he'll find himself in a fix when he's ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... herself every minute to look after Pere Bru, and place some dainty bit on his plate. It was even touching to see this glutton take a piece of wing almost from her mouth to give it to the old fellow, who did not appear to be very particular, and who swallowed everything with bowed head, almost besotted from having gobbled so much after he had forgotten the taste of bread. The Lorilleuxs expended their rage on the roast goose; they ate enough to last them three days; they would have stowed away the dish, the table, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... push to get her to the top. In the passage she dragged herself along, hanging on my arm, helplessly bent like an old woman. We issued into an empty street through a half-open door, staggering like besotted revellers. At the corner we stopped a four-wheeler, and the ancient driver looked round from his box with morose scorn at our efforts to get her in. Twice during the drive I felt her collapse on my shoulder in a half faint. Facing us, the youth in knickerbockers remained as mute as a fish, and, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... To their besotted perceptions this scene was like a play in a Bowery theater, and now that the dramatic denouement had come, they lost their interest and sauntered away singly or in little groups. In a few moments there were only three figures left in the light of the flaming torch, They were those of the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... ex cathedra feeling came back upon him while he was speaking; his tone, gradually becoming rounder and more sonorous, showed this. Was he so besotted by sacerdotal confidence as to fancy that he could win that grim penitent to come to him ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Jane Eyre found Mr. Rochester. But it was with no reasonable, thankful human creature with whom Emily had to deal. After a few long moments, those still standing in the passage saw her stagger out, white, with singed clothes, half-carrying in her arms, half-dragging, her besotted brother. She placed him in her bed, and took away the light; then assuring the hysterical girls that there could be no further danger, she bade them go and rest—but where she slept herself that night no ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Fairfax, this is an infernal world! A vile, disgusting, despicable, besotted ass of a world! Existence in it is not worth accepting; and the sooner we spurn it from us the better we shall assert our claim to the dignity and wisdom of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the besotted soul who cannot bend the knee of humble adoration before nature's altar, where sacrifices are offered to the Jehovah, pavilioned in invisibility. There is an ardent love of nature as far removed from gross materialism or subtle pantheism on the one hand as from stupid ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... much she joys From him to take it. Envy seiz'd the rest, And sullen murmurs through the comrades ran: Above the rest, were Thestius' sons,—their arms Out-stretching, clamor'd thus with a mighty noise;— "Let not thy beauteous form thy mind deceive, "When from thy eyes the donor of the spoil, "Besotted with thy love, shall far be mov'd. "Woman! restore the prize, nor hope to hold "Our intercepted claims."—Speaking they rob Her of the gift, him of the right to give. Nor passive stood the warlike youth, his teeth He gnash'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... patriarch, spoke thus to a justice of peace before a large assembly of people: "Friend, take care what thou dost; God will soon punish thee for persecuting His saints." This magistrate, being one who besotted himself every day with bad beer and brandy, died of an apoplexy two days after, the moment he had signed a mittimus for imprisoning some Quakers. The sudden death with which this justice was seized was ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... warmly. "First, the stupidity of guilt, the blind besotted folly which so often betrays the murderer. It is not the commission of a crime only that is horrible; think of the hideous state of the criminal's mind after the deed is done. And it is at that time, immediately after the crime ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... in a loud voice. "Why? Because I love it. I'm besotted by it. It's like strong drink to me. I doubt if there's a man in England who enjoys himself more than I do when I'm writing. The worst of it is, that it won't come out—it's beautiful enough when I think of it, but I can't get it down. It's my second ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... drunken fool!" she yelled to her besotted spouse, "aren't yer ashamed of yerself? Wot! let out babby for a whole night for nuthin'? It's lucky I've my wits about me, an' I say Liz sha'n't 'ave ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... knew father, how crooked and deformed soever his sonne were, that would either altogether cast him off, or not acknowledge him for his owne: and yet (unlesse he be meerely besotted or blinded in his affection) it may not be said, but he plainly perceiveth his defects, and hath a feeling of his imperfections. But so it is, he is his owne. So it is in my selfe. I see better than ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... historic revolutions, the great social reformations, ancient or modern, present themselves from this height as just as important—as just as unimportant—as the visions of saintly fanatics or the amours of besotted rakes. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... reappeared at the door with the case, which Gaites was by this time not surprised to find inscribed with the name and address of Miss Phyllis Desmond. He remained watching it, while the men got it on the platform, so wholly inattentive to Birkwall's plot that the most besotted young author could not have failed to feel his want of interest. Birkwall then turned his vision outward upon the object which engrossed his friend, and started with an "Oh, hello!" and slapped him on ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... You and I were real pinched in our aims and longings in the offset. Do you remember how you always wanted learning and college, and how I actually was besotted about traipsing around the world? Such dreams as we managed to make up! I have the old geography now with pin points all up the side of the Alps where you and I counted the height and then said we didn't believe it! Well, you've found success without college, and I've ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... woman considerably his senior, the landlady of a third-rate lodging-house. This business was evidently sufficiently prosperous to enable him to exist without working and to maintain himself in a condition of perpetual semi-intoxication. This besotted wretch practically lived at the 'Cricketers'. He came regularly very morning and sometimes earned a pint of beer by assisting the barman to sweep up the sawdust or clean the windows. He usually remained ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... and the eccentric? rich enough to make the Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his consul's paper which commends him "To the charitable," the swarthy Italian with his few broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted by overseers from town to town, even the poor insane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble exception of your presence and your house, from the general bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that they were greeted with a voice which made them both remember and hope? What is vulgar, but to refuse the claim on acute and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... unsuperfluous even proportions, And she no whit encumbered with her store; And then the Giver would be better thanked, His praise due paid: for swinish gluttony Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous feast, But with besotted base ingratitude Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on? Or have I said enow? To him that dares 780 Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words Against the sun-clad power of chastity Fain would I something say;—yet to what end? Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... room. They are accustomed to it. One wonders, too, at the attraction this has for strangers. There is really nothing in the people, the place, or the onlookers worthy of a decent man's curiosity. The girls are, without exception, the nastiest, most besotted drabs that ever walked the streets. They haven't even the pride that clings to certain of their sisters who are in prison. The whole assemblage, with the exception of such stragglers as myself, who have a motive in studying it, is a mess of the meanest human rubbish that a great ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the old Sheikh, as for the eighth time she changed her costume, and with the tip of her henna pink finger skilfully removed a too liberal application of kohl from about her right and lustrous eye, whilst chatting with her maid. "Truly, I say, the man is either besotted with love, or suffering from some strange malady. Nigh upon the passage of ten days and nights, and yet he bends not the woman to his will, and she more luscious than a peach from the southern wall. Thinkest thou it's ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the present time, You are bent on error and confusion in your government. Your virtue is subverted; You are besotted by drink [1]. Although you thus pursue nothing but pleasure, How is it you do not think of your relation to the past, And do not widely study the former kings, That you might hold ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... soft French Nobles Chain'd up in ease and numbd securitie (Their spirits shrunke up like their covetous fists, And never opened but Domitian-like, 165 And all his base, obsequious minions When they were catching though it were but flyes), Besotted with their pezzants love of gaine, Rusting at home, and on each other preying, Are for their greatnesse but the greater slaves, 170 And none is noble but who scrapes ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... more evil which will be avoided by having a child sleep alone. Many a mother has seriously injured her child by pressure. I do not here allude to those monsters in human nature, whose besotted habits have been the frequent cause of the suffocation and death of their offspring, but to the more careful and tender mother, who would sooner injure herself than her own child. Such mothers, even, have been known to dislocate or fracture a limb
