"Foolery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... month's article) Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still Losing true life for ever and a day Through ever trying to be and ever being— In the evolution of successive spheres— Before its actual sphere and place of life, Halfway into the next, which having reached, It shoots with corresponding foolery Halfway into the next still, on and off! As when a traveller, bound from North to South, Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France? In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain? In Spain drops cloth, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... thousand pounds rent to his Landlady Cleveland. My Lord Angier, who bought of Sir George Carteret for eleven thousand pounds, the Vice-treasurership of Ireland, worth five thousand pounds a year, is, betwixt knavery and foolery, turned out. Dutchess of York and Prince Edgar, dead. None left but daughters. One Blud, outlawed for a plot to take Dublin Castle, and who seized on the Duke of Ormond here last year, and might have killed him, a most bold, and yet sober ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... 'If the young man comes to be a teacher here, let him understand, at once, that we don't want any foolery about the boys. They have the brimstone and treacle, partly because if they hadn't something or other in the way of medicine they'd be always ailing and giving a world of trouble, and partly because it spoils their appetites and comes cheaper than breakfast ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... not comprehend the behaviour of his mistress, I cannot say; certain it is, he went home well contented with the success he imagined he had gained towards winning her heart. But, in reality, she was disgusted with his foolery, and ceased paying any more visits to her female friend, in order to avoid the sight of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... Dubbin—a toping wretch—and she is a too incongruous mixture, with her Edinburgh lingo and her Whitehall arrogance. Besides, the whole notion of a mock ghost was vulgarised by Wilmot's foolery, who ought to have been born a saltimbanque, and spent his life in a fair. No, I ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... men take the right course to escape his hellish snares? This, therefore, is the reason why the truly humbled is opposed, while the presumptuous goes on by wind and tide. The truly humble, Satan hates; but he laughs to see the foolery of the other. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... getting angrier and angrier at his finicking tone. Why the devil couldn't he bluster like a proper man instead of sitting there and making his damned allusions? But if he wanted that sort of foolery he should have it! "Ah! your people are leaving you?" he said, in an ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... those birds were not to be had for nothing; and Cluffe, who loved money as well, at least, as any man in his Majesty's service, would have seen the two tribes as extinct as the dodo, before he would have expended sixpence upon such tom-foolery, had it not been for Dangerfield's investments in animated nature. 'The hound! as if two could not play at that game.' But he had an uneasy and bitter presentiment that they were birds of paradise, and fifty other cursed ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... from the undiscerning critics who persisted in seeing in their nonsense a hidden meaning, a cynical, political, or other intent, veiled under the apparent foolery. Lear takes occasion to deny this in the preface to one of his books, and asserts not only that his rhymes and pictures have no symbolical meaning, but that he "took more care than might be supposed to make the subjects ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... you they wouldn't believe you; so what does it matter to me whether you blab or not? Talk sense, Blanco: theres no time for your foolery now; for youll be a dead man an hour after the Sheriff comes back. What possessed you to steal ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... attitude. Formal logic excited Shakespeare's disdain even more conspicuously. In the mouths of his professional fools he places many reductions to absurdity of what he calls the "simple syllogism." He invests the term "chop-logic" with the significance of foolery in excelsis.[26] Again, metaphysics, in any formal sense, were clearly not of Shakespeare's world. On one occasion he wrote of the topic round which ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... never took the trouble to come here to see me, wrote books about me. Those who did come were more impudent than those who stayed away. Their idea of learning all about a creature was to dig up its home, and frighten it out of its wits, and kill it; and after a few moons of that sort of foolery they claimed to know all about us. Us! whose ancestors knew the world millions of years before the ignorant Humans came on the earth at all." The Platypus spluttered out more dirty ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... quarters, and having neither the power nor opportunity to meddle with the details of an execution. The incident, in a word, is worth as much and as little as the abominable story of the subsequent pact with Lucifer or the foolery of the mystic marriage. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... sublime hopes of the future, nature, man,—so great, though so little,—so dear, though incomplete. Returning to Rome, I find the news pronounced official, that the viceroy Ranieri has capitulated at Verona; that Italy is free, independent, and one. I trust this will prove no April-foolery, no premature news; it seems too good, too speedy a realization of hope, to have come on earth, and can only be answered in the words of the proclamation made yesterday ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... sane European policy, as distinguished from oligarchic and dynastic foolery, is the establishment of the natural map of Europe. There exists no school of thought that can claim a moment's consideration among the Allies which aims at the disintegration of the essential Germany or the subjugation of ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... more terrifying than the way in which the phenomena of the ecstatic—which have often been seized upon by sentimental theorisers as proofs of spiritual exaltation—may be plainly seen to bridge the gulf between the innocent foolery of ordinary hypnotic patients and the degraded and repulsive phenomena of ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... are lighter than may become a divine, and partly more biting than may beseem the modesty of a Christian, and consequently exclaim that I resemble the ancient comedy, or another Lucian, and snarl at everything. But I would have them whom the lightness or foolery of the argument may offend to consider that mine is not the first of this kind, but the same thing that has been often practiced even by great authors: when Homer, so many ages since, did the like with the battle of frogs and mice; Virgil, with the ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... disgust. "I'm glad your father didn't live to see you in all the glory of your gracelessness," he said. "Your father was a man, every inch of him. Do you get it? A man. I think he'd have whaled all this musical and artistic tom foolery out of you." ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... some preposterous suggestion about selling wheat," he admitted. "If you think, however, that you can alter our entire business principles by a piece of foolery like this, you are making the ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... grappled by a trembling hand, and a husky voice demanded, "What message did she really send? I can't stand foolery." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Daisy, Daisy," said he, shaking her shoulders gently, "this religious foolery is spoiling you. Don't you go and make yourself stupid. Why I don't know you. What is all this ridiculous stuff? You ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... arise," said Queen Berengaria, "and be assured all will be better than you think. Rise, dear Edith. I am sorry I have played my foolery with a knight in whom you take such deep interest. Nay, wring not thy hands; I will believe thou carest not for him—believe anything rather than see thee look so wretchedly miserable. I tell thee I will take the blame on myself ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... male as Tibby—was enough to stop the foolery. The barrier of sex, though decreasing among the civilized, is still high, and higher on the side of women. Helen could tell her sister all, and her cousin much about Paul; she told her brother nothing. It was not prudishness, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... Galuchet, and have the old man administered and take the sacrament. It was all the same to me, you may suppose; but I said I thought Adams was the fellow to consult. He was jawing away about watered copra and a sight of foolery. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘you’re pretty sick. Would you like to see Galoshes?’ He sat right up on his elbow. ‘Get the priest,’ says he, ‘get the priest; don’t let me die here like a dog!’ He spoke kind of fierce and eager, but sensible enough. There was nothing to say against that, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the girl?" said Arundel, tired of this foolery. "I prithee no more, sweet Prudence, but conduct me at once to Eveline. Consider how long it is since ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... harder to dispose of than falling stock; and your young lords of manors and commanders of cruisers have stomachs like usurers; no per centage will satisfy them; it must be all, or nothing! There was no such foolery in the days of thy worthy father! The honest trafficker brought his cutter into port, with as innocent a look as a mill-boat. We had our discourses on the qualities of his wares, when here was his price, and there was my gold. Odd or even! It was ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... bright music, like a comic opera of Gilbert and Sullivan. There is life and movement; but it is a scenic and burlesque life. There is wit, criticism, and caricature;, but it does not cut deep, and it is neither hot nor fierce. There is some pleasant tom-foolery; but at a comic opera we enjoy this graceful nonsense. We see in every page the trace of a powerful mind; but it is a mind laughing at its own creatures, at itself, at us. Lothair would be a work of art, if it were explicitly presented as a burlesque, such as was The Infernal Marriage, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... At the same time, they have their use, where they do not create their ridicule. On the Continent, life is idle; and the idlers are more harmlessly employed going to those pageants, than in the gin-shop. The finery and the foolery together also attract strangers, the idlers of other towns; it makes money, it makes conversation, it makes amusement, and it kills time. Can it have better recommendations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... is not always plainly dressed, but takes airs of quality, and rises above her original condition, so as to attire herself gracefully in magnificent apparel. In her manners she mingles elegance with foolery, force with delicacy and grandeur, or even haughtiness with plainness and modesty. If, sometimes, to please the people, she gives a loose to farce, it is only the gay folly of a moment, from which she immediately returns, and which lasts no longer than a slight intoxication. The first might ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... which would utilise his brains, but without success. And the club hummed with the unimaginable stories related by disappointed and dignified middle-aged men whose too eager patriotism had been rendered ridiculous by the vicious foolery of Government departments. No! He had some work to do and he was doing it. People were looking to him for decision, for sagacity, for initiative; he supplied these things. His work might grow even ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... first term I'd make use of in describing Vick's character would be Touch-me-not. I believe there's a flower called that—noli me tangere—or some such name. Well, that's Vicky Van. She'd laugh and jest with you, and then if you said anything by way of a personal compliment or flirtatious foolery, she was off and away from your side, like a thistle-down in a summer breeze. She was a witch, a madcap, but she had her own way in everything, and her friends did ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... That wonted to praise The rhymes and the lays Of poets laureate: Whose verse did decorate, And their lines 'lustrate Both prince and potentate. These from their graves See asses and knaves, Base idiot slaves, With boastings and braves Offer to upfly To the heavens high, With vain foolery And rude ribaldry. Some of them write Of beastly delight, Suffering their lines To flatter these times With pandarism base, And lust do uncase From the placket to the pap: God send them ill-hap! Some like quaint pedants, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... he; "that fellow must be made of steel. They'll go on somewhere; stick about half the night playing poker, or some such foolery." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said Mr. Macdermott, simply and fervently. "At processions, you know. It's a great Catholic day—like August 15th—I forget why. Some Catholic foolery. The birthday of the Virgin Mary, I fancy. Anyhow we throw stones.... I wonder will there be ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... Terrace, asking me to put my name down to the Ballantyne Memorial Committee. I have sent him a pretty sharp answer in favour of cutting down the memorial and giving more to the widow and children. If there is to be any foolery in the way of statues or other trash, please send them a guinea; but if they are going to take my advice and put up a simple tablet with a few heartfelt words, and really devote the bulk of the subscriptions to the wife and family, I will go to the length of twenty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this foolery, You found out what I am when you were a boy. None of this hysterical excitement. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... war zones. At any rate there was never any risk of my playing Balaam and blessing the enemy. This war is tragedy and sacrifice for most of the world, for the Germans it is simply the catastrophic outcome of fifty years of elaborate intellectual foolery. Militarism, Welt Politik, and here we are! What else could have happened, with Michael and his infernal War Machine in the very centre of Europe, ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... is asked, "what a Conjunction is?" that there are conjunctions copulative, conjunctions disjunctive, and as many other frivolous varieties of the species as any one chooses to hunt out "with laborious foolery." Our author hit upon his parent-discovery in the course of a law-suit, while he was examining, with jealous watchfulness, the meaning of words to prevent being entrapped by them; or rather, this circumstance might itself be traced to the habit of satisfying his own ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... "What foolery is this? Are we in the midst of the Carnival, that a workman ventures upon such a ridiculous masquerade? Throw off your ugly bear's skin instantly or I will crisp your bristles for you in ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... are either Panthea or Pergamus abiding to this day by their masters' tombs? or either Chabrias or Diotimus by that of Adrianus? O foolery! For what if they did, would their masters be sensible of It? or if sensible, would they be glad of it? or if glad, were these immortal? Was not it appointed unto them also (both men and women,) to become old in time, and then to die? And these once dead, what would become of ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... carnal indulgences unsanctioned by the priest and his empty ceremonies. Fools! NATURE, and her laws, and her promptings, and her desires, spurn the trammels of form and custom, and reign triumphant over the hollow mummery of the parson and his pious foolery. ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... mouth down whatever you do, and a young fellow—' She stopped. She could not even tell a bird about Reddin. She danced among the shut daisies, wild as a fairy, and when the sun rose her shadow mocked her with delicate foolery. In her hand, and in that of the shadow, bobbed the ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... in foolery had been set at the Duke's House, but Nell out-did them, with her broad-brimmed hat as large as a cart-wheel and her quaint waist-belt; for was not her hat larger by half than that at the rival house and ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... of Youth to Bjoernson's The Newly Married Couple (1865), a slighter, but, as it seems to me, a more amusing comedy.] but it excludes it from the larger European view. Oddly enough, Ibsen believed, or pretended to believe, that The League of Youth was a "placable" piece of foolery, which could give no annoyance to the worst of offenders by its innocent and indulgent banter. Perhaps, like many strenuous writers, he underestimated the violence of his own language; perhaps, living so long at a distance from Norway and catching ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... woodcock is no longer silent, its tongue is loosened, it breathes its tale of love, and, with joyful notes, proclaims its happiness morning and night; and yet there are those who would make us believe that the tender passion is useless, that love is tom-foolery, or that it does not exist. To these blind blasphemers, who thus deny its power, I would respectfully say, Come to Le Morvan, and observe the woodcock, and then dare to say that love is an untruth. Why, love ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... is no appearance of fancie in him, vnlesse it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises, as to bee a Dutchman to day, a Frenchman to morrow: vnlesse hee haue a fancy to this foolery, as it appeares hee hath, hee is no foole for fancy, as you would haue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... preparation, it will be, as has been every other Woman's Rights Convention, a failure. Could I see it made up of women whose dress would indicate their translation from cowardice to courage; from slavery to freedom; from the kingdom of fancy and fashion and foolery to the kingdom of reason and righteousness, then would I hope for the elevation of woman, aye, and of man too, as perhaps I have never yet hoped. What should be the parts and particulars of such dress, I am incapable of saying. Whilst the "Bloomer dress" is unspeakably better than the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sweeten him. I think it would draw another third volume of Dodsley out of me; but you say you don't want any English books? Perhaps, after all, that's as well; one's romantic credulity is for ever misleading one into misplaced acts of foolery. Crab might have answered by this time: his juices take a long time supplying, but they'll run at last,—I know they will,—pure golden pippin. His address is at T. Robinson's, Bury, and if on Circuit, to be forwarded immediately—such my peremptory superscription. A fearful rumour has since ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... What a cursed foolery is a dream! The host was actually sitting there vis-a-vis with the lawyer, at the other end of the long table; for Mistress Boris had so laid the places. And as the magistrate's place remained empty, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... pupil of Praddy's!! He mucked his school and 'varsity career, thought next he'd like to be an architect or a scene painter. My dad recommended Praddy as a master. He worked in the Praed studio, but got the chuck over some foolery. Then as he couldn't face his poor old Governor, he enlisted in the Bechuanaland Border police, came out to South Africa and got let in for this show. The doctors and nurses give him about a month and he doesn't know it. He can't talk much owing to his jaw being tied up—usually ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... observes) qui sceleratum non habent ortum, that have not a wicked beginning; aut qui vi et dolo eo fastigii non ascendunt, as that plebeian in [3635]Machiavel in a set oration proved to his fellows, that do not rise by knavery, force, foolery, villainy, or such indirect means. "They are commonly able that are wealthy; virtue and riches seldom settle on one man: who then sees not the beginning of nobility? spoils enrich one, usury another, treason a third, witchcraft a fourth, flattery ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... feel that it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I feel it is so even on your own account, and ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... door, and went on: "People always say such foolery, miss. I'll make answer hencefor'ard, 'Of course a lady like Miss Everdene can't love him'; I'll say it out in plain ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... distinguished soldier, and is now the owner of a fine property at home, I don't see what trouble he can have had. He may possibly, for anything I know, have had some boyish love affairs, but I don't think he is the sort of man to allow his whole life to be affected by any foolery of that sort. He ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... ignis." He left them in a cloud of words, of which Dr Thorpe understood about half, and Isoult much less. John, being a little wiser, was called upon for a translation. "Hang me if I know what the fellow is a-writing about!" testily cried Dr Thorpe. "Jack, do thou put this foolery into decent English!" ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... boire!"—then laughing heartily, and crying, "Vive la gaite!" then resuming his task, looking into the glass with grave face, on which, however, a grin would soon break out anew, and all his pranks would be repeated with variations. He turned this foolery to philosophy, by observing that mirth contributed to goodness of heart, and to make us love our fellow-creatures. Conversing with him in the evening, he affirmed, with evident belief in the truth of what he said, that he would have no objection, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with this tom- foolery, I shall be glad if you will come to the club; any of you who have got guns had better look them up; they'll be wanted before this is over. We'll meet these dirty skinflints with cold lead ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... long-winded ceremonial nothingnesses, and intricate Belleisle cobwebberies, we seize this one poor speck of human foolery in the native state, as almost the memorablest in that stupendous business. Stupendous indeed; with which all Germany has been in travail these sixteen months, on such terms! And in verity has got the thing called "German Kaiser" constituted, better or worse. Heavens, was a Nation ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Lady Kitty, smiling lazily at the foolery. But as she paused between sentences, Patty put in parentheses of her own, and when finished the ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... "What damned foolery have you been up to NOW?" he demanded. "Can't I move a step without stubbing my toe on you? Why the devil ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... had been serious, these men would never have recoiled before the mere danger of a stick of hardwood. The American woodsman is afraid of nothing human. But this was a good-natured bit of foolery, a test of nerve, and there was no object in getting a broken head for that. The reptilian gentleman alone grumbled at the abandonment of the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... dirty cur," said his mother. "I ran off like a fool when I heerd of your good fortune, and see the condition that baggage left me in—my teeth knocked in and my eye knocked out, and all for your foolery, because you ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... "God! what foolery is this? The girl's fainting. Never mind. Here, landlady, bring a light! Lead the way. She's not too heavy to carry. Upstairs with you. What a snail you ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... philosophers, Dan could not apply his philosophy to himself. "It's the dead finish," he said dejectedly; "never struck anything like it before. Twice over too," he added. "First tinware and now this foolery "; and he kicked savagely at the offending tin, sending a shower of raisins dancing out into ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... himself at the door of the counting-room. The rest hour was over and Constans's place was at the tan-pit. How was the work to get done if everybody shirked their part of the common task? A message in a bottle. What foolery was this? Nevertheless, Messer Hugolin extended his hand to receive the roll, and, removing the waxed string that bound it, knit his brows over the enclosure—half a dozen sheets of writing. Constans was about to retire discreetly, but Messer ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... as that increases so does a tenacious knowledge of his rights; yet, he feels the prejudice that cuts and slights him in his progress, that charges him with the impudence of a negro, that calls his attempts to be a man mere pompous foolery." ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... so far is through our not having the sense to keep quiet—worrying them with guns and such foolery. And losing our heads, and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn't any more safety than where we were. They don't want to bother us yet. They're making their things—making all the things they couldn't bring with them, getting things ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... was superstitious and she said 'no, cos niggers are edicatted dese days en dey don believe in all dat tom-foolery. Dey neber would benn so foolish if de white folks did not tell us all dat rot.'" Mary neither reads or writes and is not superstitious according to her admission. What do you think of it. I am afraid that I do not agree ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... as the mob of Montreuil, proved much less docile, and cried out that they did not want to go to school to the English. Their debates consisted of endless successions of trashy pamphlets, all beginning with something about the original compact of society, man in the hunting state, and other such foolery. They sometimes diversified and enlivened these long readings by a little rioting. They bawled; they hooted; they shook their fists. They kept no order among themselves. They were insulted with impunity by the crowd which filled their galleries. They gave long and solemn consideration ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the slain knight Wolfram: his foolery is but the disguise of his revenge, and thus he rails over the body of his brother: "Dead and gone! a scurvy burden to this ballad of life. There lies he, Siegfried—my brother, mark you—and I weep not, nor gnash ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... looking forward to that life of dull foolery," thought she, as the mossy bastions of Besancon drifted from her horizon—she was journeying up alone, Janet staying on with one of the Saint Berthe women as chaperone. "It is foolery and it is dull. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... say, when Plummer once had to take one of Wotherspoon's classes; some foolery about a second aorist. Thank goodness, I don't understand the profound dispute.—Oh, do look at ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... him where he had received it? He told me at a goldsmith's 14 days since: He did not remember his name. I asked why he should remove his own money? His answer was, He did remove it for two or three days, till this foolery was over. When I saw I could get nothing further from him, I discoursed with him touching the remainder of the money and the jewels. Says he, Sir Thomas, do not trouble yourself, you will lose the jewels and the rest of the money by this course; and, says ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... doctor was gone, Caesar said to Grannie, "Cut out the bridesmaids and the wedding-cakes and the fiddles and the foolery, and let the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... had a grim sense of humour, and enjoyed nothing more than really elaborate foolery. Such as, for example, the celebrated ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... to bury you in. Half you will get for the land you spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought. Now I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I feel that it is so even on your own account, and particularly on Mother's account. The eastern forty acres I intend to keep for Mother while she lives; if you will not cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support her; at least it will rent for something. Her dower in the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... he found him,—that might be the end of Swan. If not, Warfield could hurry Lorraine away before Swan could act in the matter. A whimsical thought of Swan's telepathic miracle crossed his mind and was dismissed as an unseemly bit of foolery in a matter so grave as Lorraine's safety. And yet—the doctor had received a message that he was wanted at the Quirt, and he had arrived before his patient. There was no getting around that, however impossible ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Day. The festival of the foolery of riches when Spring is everywhere and the sun ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... an infernal mess with your foolery," he said sulkily, "and when you do, you needn't come to me to ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... rend the Scripture, to poison and pervert it to the great injury of the poor, forsaken sheep of Christ. If I had only loved them enough I should have dealt quite differently with the pope and his Romanists, who with their laws and their prattle, their letters of indulgence, and the rest of their foolery, bring to naught out faith and God's Word. They make for us what laws they will, only to capture us, and then sell them to us again for money;[77] with their mouths they weave snares for money, and yet boast ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... something to occupy them in trains and on 'buses and trams. As a rule they care for no newspapers except the Sunday ones; what they want is the lightest and frothiest of chit-chatty information—bits of stories, bits of description, bits of scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery. Am I not right? Everything must be very short, two inches at the utmost; their attention can't sustain itself beyond two inches. Even chat is too solid ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... again!" he grumbled. "Bother! What's the good of going to the same place twice over? I call it foolery and rubbish." ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt
... hints how to address the large masses of the people. If he looked upon the world, as it then was, as a ship of fools, and represented every weakness, vice, and wickedness under the milder color of foolery, the people who read his poems singled out some of his fools, and called them knaves. The great work of Sebastian Brant was his "Narrenschiff." It was first published in 1497, at Basle, and the first edition, though ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... it is all real and rational, and not some glimpse of fairyland. This I cannot succeed in doing, and it is better so. I much prefer to believe that all this pomp, and vanity, and show, and mumbo-jumbo foolery has come from fairyland, than to believe it the performance of sane and sensible people who have mastered matter and solved the secrets ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... exists outside of Cape Cod another individual who would like to see Mr. Thomas Foolery move in state most perfect, just send him over here: he must be present on that day when the little Lord Mayor makes a great man of himself. A great man is the Lord Mayor on that day on which he sacrifices ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... she said, 'neither of you was to trouble me to-night: you have paid no regard to my wish for quiet! It is time the foolery should end! I am weary of it. A woman cannot marry a double man—or half a man either—without at least being able to tell which is which ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... you a pair of gloves," said her father, "that they get a good percentage of it down at the mission school. He is just the subject for a cunning priest, because he sincerely believes in their foolery. He belongs to a tribe now nearly extinct, I imagine—the martyrs, who in old-fashioned times died for all sorts ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... believe in such foolery, Mr. Warren? I had thought you too intelligent to believe in superstitious ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... cost me thee, Herbert—and cost me very dear? Art not ever from my sight? Wish I not often as I lay awake in the dark, that we were all in heaven and well over with the foolery of it? The angels keep Molly ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... at Uncle Steve's foolery, and said: "If they're weeping so you'd better take them some of my ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... then it is a fate that plagues me In this mans foolery; I may be murthered, While he stands on protection of his folly. ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... that I couldn't 'ave sung into a cocked hat. And we both know how to put on the toff a bit. Eh? Well, that's my ideer. Me and you, Grubb, with a refined song and a breakdown. Like we was doing for foolery yestiday. That was what put it into my 'ead. Easy make up a programme—easy. Six choice items, and one or two for encores and patter. I'm all right for ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... I, "this is too bad; go forward now and cut this foolery short. You will be too drunk to cook the dinner if ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... give him a start; then think how cheaply he had got Storborg, and saying straight out what he would give for it! When his father thought it was going wrong somehow with the business, and naught but foolery, she took him up. "How can you stand there and say such things!" Ay, she reproved him for using such words about his son; Isak was forgetting his place, it seemed, to speak so ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... go on with this foolery. Out of the question. Find some girl make you a good wife. Your aunt Mary's been meeting some people name of Bassington-Bassington, related Kent Bassington-Bassingtons... eldest daughter charming girl, just do ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... he exclaimed, when, he and the captain were alone, "isn't there EVER going to be any let-up to this tom-foolery? Are these women of ours ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... told her, "if you had tried this foolery, I would have choked you, and thrown what ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... art. Still the least of the witches retains somewhat of the Sibyl. Those other frowsy charlatans, those clownish jugglers, mole-catchers, ratkillers, who throw spells over beasts, who sell secrets which they have not, defiled these times with the stench of a dismal black smoke, of fear and foolery. Satan grows enormous, gets multiplied without end. 'Tis a poor triumph, however, for him. He grows dull and sick at heart. Still the people keep flowing towards him, bent on having no other God than he. Himself ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... work to lure you through your passions to perdition. But I know they are all fancies engendered by your heated brain, which in your calmer moments you will discard, as I discard them now. If I have any weight with you, I counsel you to drink no more, or you will commit some mad foolery, of which you will be ashamed hereafter. The discreeter course would be to retire altogether; and for this you have ample excuse, as you will have to arise betimes to-morrow, to set out for ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... has come to end this foolery! The time has come for everything that draws breath to rise up against these systematic, insane and stupid acts of destruction, perpetrated without any military excuse or strategic object. The reason why we are at last uttering a great cry of distress, we who are above all a silent people, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... never was a stranger wedding. For, wedding it was, though only two of those present knew it. When the ceremony was over, the cow-punchers gave one yell of congratulation and immediately abandoned their foolery for the night. Blankets were unrolled and ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... into the realm of pure foolery. It is a patent declaration: "This is only a play; laugh and we are content." Once more we venture to point a parallel on the modern stage, in the vaudeville comedian who interlards his dancing with comments ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... she, has the wench got thee over too? Come, my little dear, pull off thy gloves, I say; and off she pulled my left glove herself, and spied my ring. O my dear God! said she, if the wench has not got a ring!—Well, this is a pretty piece of foolery, indeed! Dost know, my friend, that thou art miserably tricked? And so, poor innocent, thou hast made a fine exchange, hast thou not? Thy honesty for this bauble? And, I'll warrant, my little dear has topped her part, and paraded it like any real wife; and so mimics still ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... matron, taking up the bundle and examining it. "Ye'n sweltered yoursen, I reckon, running that fool's race. An' here, they'n gi'en you lots o' good grogram and flannel, as should ha' been gi'en by good rights to them as had the sense to keep away from such foolery. Ye might spare me a bit o' this grogram to make clothes for the lad—ye war ne'er ill-natured, Bess; I ne'er ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... "'No foolery, Werbrust,' said du Tillet. 'You know the holders of his paper. Now, look here. There is business in it. Shares in this new concern of ours have gone up twenty per cent already; they will go up to five-and-twenty by the end of the quarter; you know why. They are going ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... witness the representation of a piece, called by the management, for some reason or other, "a faerie comedy." Now, I like a Burlesque, and I am fond of a Pantomime, but a mixture of blank verse and tom-foolery is rather too much for me, especially when that mixture is not redeemed by a plot of any interest. Nothing can be more absurd than the story (save the mark!) told in this particularly uninteresting play. It appears that a "Duke!" of Athens married the Queen of the Amazons, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various |
