"Empty-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... starved your powers of mind. It may be that you find little pleasure in your steady reading, and see no immediate results from it; never mind, read on, lest you become in middle life one of those amiable, empty-headed women who can give neither help, nor comfort, nor advice, worth the taking. How many old maids, and young maids too, tied by home duties, allowed their minds to get thin and empty: when, at last, they were set free they were silly and inconsequent; no ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... times, when I see the crowd of young, empty-headed fortune-seeking jackanapes, who dare to aspire to your ladyship's hand ... I have asked myself whether perchance I had the right to remain silent, whilst they poured their farrago of nonsense into your ear. I ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... change had come over her whole being, one of those subtle changes that a moment of crisis can produce. The fickle, light-hearted girl had disappeared, the injured woman came to the front. There is this peculiarity about Australian girls. Outsiders consider them empty-headed and frivolous, for they have a light, lackadaisical manner of spending their lives, but lying dormant beneath is a nature with a purpose which once roused is relentless in its desire for exacting satisfaction. May Goodchild ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... the new teacher with all the might that her pinched little twelve-year-old body could bring to bear. She saw only the snippish, opinionated, young peacock, and the self-assurance which came from the empty-headed ability to tie a ribbon well. She was so occupied with resenting the young teacher's feeling of vast superiority that she failed to understand, as did the Farnshaw child, that along with all that vainglorious assumption went a ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Miss Sherwood, and that I shall think it a crying shame if so beautiful and intelligent a girl is suffered to fall into the clutches of this stupid baronet who is laying siege to her—this pompous, empty-headed Sir Frederic Beaumantle." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... all the silvery light of her resplendent genius. Read the pages of the old play in unsympathetic mood and they may look musty and worm-eaten, but imagine Oldfield as the sprightly Lady Betty Modish, the elegant Wilks as Sir Charles Easy, and Cibber[A] himself in the empty-headed role of Lord Foppington, and, presto! everything is changed. The yellow leaves are white and fresh, the words stand out clear and distinct, and it takes but a slight flight of fancy to hear the dingy auditorium of Drury Lane echoing and re-echoing with laughter. For 'twas at Drury Lane ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... another. For the first, Vincent Dunbar answered exceedingly well; but for the second, he was wholly unfit. In spite of her little weaknesses, Frances had too much sense not to see that the young lieutenant was an empty-headed coxcomb, and not at all the man with whom she hoped to spend her years of discretion—when she arrived at them—after an ample enjoyment of the delights that youth, beauty, and wealth are calculated to procure ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... objections to women are traditional. They take no account of the vast change that is coming about. Because women were once empty-headed, it is assumed they are all still so en masse. The defect of the female mind? It is my belief that this is nothing more nor less than the defect of the uneducated human mind. I believe most men among the brutally ignorant exhibit the very faults ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... It was a member of that same congregation, by the way, a stuffy old dame whose wealth footed up to millions, who once remarked to me in all confidence that she had no doubt the aristocracy of heaven was composed of Presbyterians. Poor, old, empty-headed prig! What could I do but assure her that I held the same comforting conviction! Well, through influential friends in Pekin I was introduced to the eminent Chinese statesman, Wang Fo, of delightful memory. Our conversation turned on religion, and then I made the most ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the true sense of the word, but he was no empty-headed fop, paying that amount of overdue attention to the fair, which, at times, becomes ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... untutored, unschooled, misguided, unenlightened; Philistine; behind the age. shallow, superficial, green, rude, empty, half-learned, illiterate; unread, uninformed, uneducated, unlearned, unlettered, unbookish; empty-headed, dizzy, wooly-headed; pedantic; in the dark; benighted, belated; blinded, blindfolded; hoodwinked; misinformed; au bout de son latin, at the end of his tether, at fault; at sea &c (uncertain) 475; caught tripping. unknown, unapprehended, unexplained, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... day lamenting his growing old, a pert young fellow asked him what he would give to be as young as he. "I would be content," cried Foote, "to be as foolish." Jerrold made a similar reply to an empty-headed fellow who boasted of never being seasick. "Never!" said Douglas; "then I'd almost have your head ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... own ears when she mumbled out something about Mrs. Murry thinking she could do very much better for herself; but I asked her one question after another till I had it all out of her. It just shows one how foolish and empty-headed these girls are. I told her she was no better than a weather-cock. If you will believe me, that horrid old woman was quite another person when Alice went to see her the other night. Why, I can't think, but so she was. She told the girl how pretty she was; what a neat figure she ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... wife, and I forbid you. I cannot understand this passion. I thought you suffered the company of that empty-headed fop as you suffered your lap-dogs—the trivial appendage of a fine lady's state. Had I supposed that there was anything serious in your liking—that you could think him worth anger or tears—should have ordered your life differently, and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... provocation; hungry hope reawakened in his heart; here was a girl - pretty, simple at least, if not honestly stupid, and plainly not averse to his attentions: it seemed to him once more as if love might here be waiting him. Had he but known the truth! for this facile and empty-headed girl had nothing more in view than a flirtation; and her heart, from the first and on to the end of her story, was engaged by another man. Burns once more commenced the celebrated process of "battering himself into a warm affection;" and the proofs of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when he had tossed and turned on his uneasy bed, and risen unrefreshed, he hired a horse, for he had none in town, and went for a long ride. Coming back he turned into Rotten Row. He could not tell why he did so, for such places, affected by the gay, empty-headed votaries of fashion, were little consonant to his present state. He was barely in it when a lady's horse took fright: she was riding alone, with a groom following; Lord Hartledon gave her his assistance, led her horse until the animal was calm, and rode side by side ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... chosen. Certainly, at first, the choice of Blanche Evers seemed highly incongruous; it was difficult to imagine a young woman less shaped to minister to Gordon's strenuous needs than the light-hearted and empty-headed little flirt whose inconsequent prattle had remained for Bernard one of the least importunate memories of a charming time. Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose—the prettiest of little geese, perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; but she was not ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... of Blois, the chateau, and the town were guarded, Christophe was prepared to find spies and traps everywhere; and he therefore resolved to conceal the importance of his mission and the tension of his mind under the empty-headed and shopkeeping appearance with which he presented himself to the eyes of young Pardaillan, the officer of the guard, and the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... more than I could swallow. What did he want to poke his nose in my affairs for? Was it any concern of his which tailor I employed? The sight of this empty-headed dandified "masher" embittered me, and I reminded him rather brutally of ten shilling he had borrowed from me. But before he could reply I regretted that I had asked for it. I got ashamed and avoided meeting ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... matters little what so insignificant a fellow says or does," observed Morton. "The story can hardly last out the usual nine days; and if we all behave well, we can allow these empty-headed fellows to amuse themselves for that time at ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... cleanliness, while the extravagance of a pair of white gloves meant a diminution in food which it was not pleasant to contemplate. Then, too, he felt savage disgust at the elegant costumes and smart cabriolets owned by empty-headed fops with insufferable airs of conquest, who looked at him askance, and to whom he could not prove the genius that was in him, or give voice to his belief that some day he would dominate them all. The restlessness and discomfort, and at the same time ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... that the talents which had gained her distinction in the literary and even in the dramatic world, should be consecrated to less secular employment. Her vivacity during the earlier years of their acquaintance exposed her to an occasional rebuff. "She does not gain upon me, sir; I think her empty-headed," was one of his remarks; and it was to her that he said, according to Mrs. Thrale, though Boswell reports a softened version of the remark, that she should "consider what her flattery was worth, before she choked him ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... group, consisting of a couple of men, four women, and five or six children of various ages. As we drew nigh, the whole party, without rising, uttered a wild scream of welcome, accompanied by that loud laughter which always seems to escape so readily from this light-hearted and empty-headed people. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... of youth, of any youth, not completely empty-headed, frivolous or superficial, or was this the result of a distinct inheritance of two very different and opposing personalities, of so different nationalities and with an addition of even tartar blood? I don't know. ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... quick, shocked sense of having blundered egregiously; and worse, he had a further sense of Mrs. Oldham's words being fraught with some ugly and hidden meaning. In her voice there had been manifest an unsuspected quality which had revealed her for the moment as not all frivolous fool or spoiled and empty-headed doll; but a tyrant and oppressor, crueller and more menacing ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... that it was not; but, then, what is the business for me? But if you had seen Kurbyev! Do not, pray, fancy him as some empty-headed chatterer. They say I was eloquent once. I was simply nothing beside him. He was a man of wonderful learning and knowledge,—an intellect, brother, a creative intellect, for business and commercial enterprises. His brain seemed seething with the boldest, the most unexpected ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... about her years of adultery, but we can not understand the cause of her passion; for however powerful the demoniac nature of Alexander VI may have been, it must by this time have lost much of its magnetic strength. Perhaps this young and empty-headed creature, after she had once transgressed and the feeling of shame had passed, was fascinated by the spectacle of the sacred master of the world, before whom all men prostrated themselves, lying at her feet—the ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... the truth; you are not cured of them. But before I go any further let me tell you that all this is not mere feminine curiosity on my part. I want you to trust me and I will trust you equally. Believe me when I say that if I love to make fun of empty-headed noodles, I can always respect a good heart because it is a rarity. The lady I want to speak to you about is my dear friend and she ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Life of Johnson, April 15, 1778.] was certainly, according to Croker, Hannah More. Another ill-natured sentence about a Bath lady ["He would not allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing, 'She does not gain upon me, sir; I think her empty-headed.'"] whom Johnson called "empty-headed" is also ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... creep into the mind of Bob Gareth-Lawless a fearsome doubt remotely hinting that she might end by becoming an awful bore in the course of time—particularly if she also ended by being less pretty. She chattered so incessantly about nothing and was such an empty-headed, extravagant little fool in her insistence on clothes—clothes—clothes—as if they were the breath of life. After watching her for about two hours one morning as she sat before her mirror directing ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Riel. They know he is a liar and a coward. He leads brave men astray and then runs away and leaves them to suffer. This thing he did many years ago." And Cameron proceeded to give a brief sketch of the fantastic and futile rebellion of 1870 and of the ignoble part played by the vain and empty-headed Riel. ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... me to call on the Marquis of Villarel was the fact that after all I was a discovery of Dona Rita's, her own recruit. My fidelity and steadfastness had been guaranteed by her and no one else. I couldn't bear the idea of her being criticized by every empty-headed chatterer belonging to the Cause. And as, apart from that, nothing mattered much, why, then—I would get ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the preceding, was the elder daughter of M. Letellier, a wealthy silk merchant of Paris. Empty-headed and fond of gaiety, she was carried away by the attentions of M. Malignon, an idle young man who went everywhere in Paris society, and to whom she was foolish enough on one occasion to grant an assignation. Madame ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... out, dear. What do you think you want?" Valentia answered herself; "It's Foster, of course! That dull, empty-headed, commonplace, hard-up, handsome boy. You can't marry him. He's just twenty-two, and has only a miserable allowance, and is in an expensive regiment, and you, darling, will only have three hundred a year. I should love to see you happy in your own way ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... foot now on horseback, as occasion best served. Which she and many other ladies perceiving, made merry together more than once, to see a man of his years and discretion in love, as if they deemed that this most delightful passion of love were only fit for empty-headed youths, and could not in men be either harboured or engendered. Master Alberto thus continuing to haunt the front of the house, it so happened that one feast-day the lady with other ladies was seated before her door, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... aggressively burst into a guffaw of derisive laughter. "Miss Loomis is just one of those admirable women," said he, "that empty-headed idiots prate about. I wish other people had half her sense." A luckless way of essaying the defence of the absent, for it reflected on many ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... question. She could not positively declare that she would under no circumstances become a wife, but at the same time she was firm in her heart never to have a husband. So she followed the politician's common plan: she compromised. She allowed her hand to be sought by every empty-handed and empty-headed and hollow-hearted prince or noble in Europe, determined that each in his turn should go empty away; and so she played off princes against her own people, until the course of years had left no doubt that she had become, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 'spice-up.' A conference that may change the map of Europe will be crowded off any front page any day by young Mrs. Poultney Masters making a speech in favor of giving girls night-keys, or of some empty-headed society dame being caught in a roadhouse with another lady's hubby. Spice: that's what we're looking for. Something to tickle their jaded palates. And they despise us when we break our necks or our hearts ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... answer—could not meet his earnest gaze. Dark as it was she felt, rather than saw, the glow of his deep blue eyes. She could not mistake the tenderness of his tone. She had so believed in him. He seemed so far above the callow, vapid, empty-headed youngsters the other girls were twittering about from morn till night. She felt that she believed in him now, no matter what had been said or who had said it. She felt that if he would but say it was all a mistake—that no woman had crossed his threshold, all Camp Sandy might ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... an author as before. What is the result? There is more imagination in any number of a penny journal than in half-a-dozen of the Royal Academy rooms in the season. No author can live by his work and be as empty-headed as an average successful painter. Again, consider our implements of music—our pianofortes, for example. Nobody but an acrobat will voluntarily spend years at such a difficult mechanical puzzle as the keyboard, and so we have to take our impressions ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... that you were too big to let social prejudices stand in the way of the progress of real womanhood. I knew that we were actually a live club, come together with a genuine aim to do real good. I can see now that we are going to accomplish something worth while. We are not going to be merely a set of empty-headed, silly women with nothing to do. Oh, I tell you that I have some great plans, now that at last we are really started out right. Now, we can outline our plans of work among women less fortunate than we ourselves. We can find places ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... nature. The corporation would seem either to have a charming sympathy for it, or to look upon it with that good-natured indifference so happily illustrated while eating its oysters and drinking its whiskey. An empty-headed corporation is sure always to have its hands very full, which is the case with yours at this moment. Having the people's money to waste, its own ambition to serve, and its hat to fill with political waste paper-what more would you ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... sea-shell complexion. I absently swallowed the abomination she handed me, for I was looking at her over the teacup and wondering how an exquisite-minded gentleman like Dale could forsake her for a Lola Brandt. It was not as if Maisie were an empty-headed, empty-natured little girl. She is a young person of sense, education, and character. She also adores musical comedy and a band at dinner: an excellent thing in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... any part in what was after all the most solemn and serious contract of his whole lifetime. And, to say the truth, Edie quite agreed with him on that point, too. Though her moral indignation against poor, useless, empty-headed old Mr. Walters didn't burn quite so fierce or so clear as Ernest's—she regarded the fat old parson, indeed, rather from the social point of view, as a ludicrously self-satisfied specimen of the lower stages of humanity, than from the political point of view, as ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... all these lallapaloozer papa's boys and some of their fathers,—all those empty-headed swells that are ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing 'She does not gain upon me, Sir; I think her empty-headed.' He was, indeed, a stern critick upon characters and manners. Even Mrs. Thrale did not escape his friendly animadversion at times. When he and I were one day endeavouring to ascertain, article by article, how one of our friends[153] could possibly spend as much ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... well enter into my grief at the desertion of my poor people, for how was it with those at Walwyn, deprived of the family to whom they had been used to look, with many widows and orphans made by the war, and the Church invaded by a loud- voiced empty-headed fanatic, who had swept away all that had been carefully preserved and honoured! Should he ever ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... l'ouvrage! Here is the book; here is your role: read." And I read. He did not commend; at some passages he scowled and stamped. He gave me a lesson: I diligently imitated. It was a disagreeable part—a man's—an empty-headed fop's. One could put into it neither heart nor soul: I hated it. The play—a mere trifle—ran chiefly on the efforts of a brace of rivals to gain the hand of a fair coquette. One lover was called the "Ours," a good and gallant ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... an empty-headed creature with strange notions. She never laid an egg without making a ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... established their so-called Arab-French schools, excellent institutions which are largely attended, and would produce far better results but for the halo of sanctity with which boys in every country—but particularly in half-civilized ones—are apt to invest the most flagrantly empty-headed of mothers. In Tunisia, as soon as the youngsters return home, these women quickly undo all the good work, by teaching them that what they have learnt at school is dangerous untruth, and that the Koran and native ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... to settle down in this stupid village," she laughed tremulously, tears on her lashes, "at the ugly old Hall, and among these superficial empty-headed women?" ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris |
