"Foolish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flickering giant-shadows, gathering near, Closed round me with a dim and silent fear. All dull, all dark; save when the leaping flame, Glancing, lit up a Picture's ancient frame. Above the hearth it hung. Perhaps the night, My foolish tremors, or the gleaming light, Lent power to that Portrait dark and quaint— A Portrait such as Rembrandt loved to paint— The likeness of a Nun. I seemed to trace A world of sorrow in the patient face, In the thin hands folded across her breast— Its own and the ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... was done, and some good, too, perhaps. For if I made an enemy of the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache by humbling him in the eyes of the one woman before whom he sought to shine, I established a bond 'twixt Roxalanne and myself by that same humiliation of a foolish coxcomb, whose boastfulness ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... the first time she had called him David, and the foolish joy at the little incident drove him to take her again to his arms. But with a steady purpose he refused to tell her. He had his reason and to give the reason would thwart his purpose. He meant to go to Lebarge and attend to the routine work there in connection with ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... them, he had come to have a sort of vague feeling that the company was privy to them; that it was almost an understood thing. The president's violence was the first intimation to reach him in the heart of his artificial consciousness that his action was at all in the line of those foolish peculators whose discovery and flight to Canada was the commonplace of every morning's paper; such a commonplace that he had been sensible of an effort in the papers to vary the tiresome repetition of the same old fact by some novel ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... Antoine physiognomy. The prize was evidently too valuable not to be turned to good account with the authorities; and he resolved on returning at the head of his brother patriots to present me as the first-fruits of his martial career. The dispute grew hot; my escort was foolish enough to clap his hand on the hilt of his sabre—an affront intolerable to a citizen, at the head of fifty or sixty braves from the counter or the shambles; the result was, a succession of blows from the whole troop, which closed in my seeing him stripped of every thing, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... questions which Margaret had to answer, the sort of questions every woman knows whom love has not passed over, questions which Margaret, with all her fine Lampton brains and common sense, did not think foolish, questions which she answered more easily and accurately than any ever set to her in college or university examinations. She answered them, too, with a fine understanding of human nature. Lampton brains were not to be despised, even ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... things is different. I got feelin's now what I never knowed I had before. Why, sometimes, when Neeter is rockin' leetle Bill, and singing and me settin' in the door, towards evenin', and everything fed up and happy, why, do you know, I feel jest like cryin'. Plumb foolish, ain't it?" ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... howled for a master forever lost; and only the swords went on quarrelling, and made such a clattering noise that the Japanese bonze rode at them on his monster and knocked them both right over, and they lay straight and still, looking foolish, and the little Nymphenburg maid, though she was crying, smiled and ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter, sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,—that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... I felt foolish and guilty. She would probably get roundly scolded if the grave Sisters learned of her talks with me, and very likely I should win their hearty contempt. But I did ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... added deception, falsehood, and gross ingratitude. Nor did the girl's contempt spare herself. Neither warning nor advice—and Lady Jim had been prodigal of both—had availed to open her eyes about the Westerner. She had been as foolish over him as a schoolgirl in the matter of a matinee idol. That she would have to lash herself for her folly through many sleepless hours of the ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... loyal slaveholders of the border states he made a proposal of compensated emancipation. To his great disappointment they rejected this. It was very foolish on their part, and he cautioned them that ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... seem impertinent, and I suppose I am young and foolish, but I don't care; I wouldn't be hard as nails, like some in this clinic, if it was to cost me my diploma. I came from the Pacific west—I am going back there as soon as I graduate—and a girl from there never can learn to bottle her feelings till she looks like a graven image. Besides, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the gallery is a fine copy in marble of the Laocoon, by Bandinelli, one of the rivals of Michael Angelo. When it was finished, the former boasted it was better than the original, to which Michael made the apt reply: "It is foolish for those who walk in the footsteps of others, to say they go ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... our author has not been foolish and unfair enough to portray the perversions and lapses of this particular type of Oriental faith and ethics; but his aim has been to set forth its essential principles and to show how they ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... hang them on the city gates for his mere amusement. He twice made the whole people of the city of Delhi emigrate with him to Daulatabad in Southern India, which he wished to make the capital, from some foolish fancy; and during the whole of his reign gave evident signs of being in an unsound state of mind.[11] There was at the time of his father's death a saint at Delhi named Nizamuddin Aulia, or the Saint, who was supposed by supernatural means to have driven ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... "Foolish children," said the queen, "it is well for you that your father does not hear you; he would crush you in his rage, and even to-day he would choose a king for you, Amelia; and for you, little Ulrica, he would seek a small margrave! Hark, ladies! ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... therefore, philosophers will differ in their opinions as long as there is any thing for man to learn. But this is right; for, how are false opinions to be corrected, except in being opposed by the opinions of other men? It is foolish, indeed, for men to quarrel and fight, because they differ in opinion. Man quarrels properly, when he is angry; and anger perhaps is almost always ultimately founded upon erroneous opinion. But, in nature, there is no opinion; there is truth ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... entitled to deposit their ballots. They mingled in the crowds about the polls, and became as violently agitated by partisan excitements as the men. Those who would have been quiet home bodies, had no such foolish liberty been allowed them, became zealous politicians; while others, to whom excitement of some kind was a necessity of life, turned to this, and became so wild with political furor as to unsex themselves,—if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... inform us, whether France, within its proper limits, is big enough for its ruler, on the one hand, and whether, on the other, the allied powers are either wicked or foolish enough to attempt the forcing on the French, a ruler and government which they refuse; whether they will risk their own thrones to re-establish that of the Bourbons. If this is attempted, and the European world again committed to war, will the jealousy of England at the commerce which ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... like to lean a little on one side: they cannot bear to have their channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get cool under; one shingly shore to play over, where they may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and another steep shore, under which they can pause, and purify themselves, and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. Rivers in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side of their life for play, and another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... light to illumine the valley of the shadow of death, is so dreadful that they do not mention the word death. When obliged to speak of those who have gone they say, "Non-pimatissit," which means, "He is not among the living." However, Astumastao and her aunt had none of these foolish notions, especially as, since the sad event, the aunt had eagerly drunk in air the information she could get from her niece, who now had none in the wigwam to crush her song or quiet ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... just. It's time you thought of your own place and your own children. It's time you gave up caring for the praise of foolish people, ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... have no more running away: I am sorry that you ever did so. It was my fault, altogether my fault; but it was foolish." ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... doctrines, and they cannot escape their share of responsibility for the whirlwind that is reaped. This applies alike to the deliberate demagogue, to the exploiter of sensationalism, and to the crude and foolish visionary who, for whatever reason, apologizes for crime or ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... morning; yet she was undoubtedly having her own way and living her own life in spite of remonstrances from bevies of friends, who saw no shadow of reason or common-sense in her sort of gardening. It would have been foolish enough for a young woman with a small living income to cultivate roses or violets or lavender, but this would at least have been poetic, while the arduous tilling of a soil where the only plants were little people 'all in a ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... perfectly sane person in all his sayings and doings, so far as I could see, there was still something in those wild brown eyes which suggested to me that, under exceptionally trying circumstances, he might surprise his oldest friends by acting in some exceptionally violent or foolish way. "A little cracked"—that in the popular phrase was my impression of the stranger who now made his appearance in ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... it ourselves; but it must in the end be all removed, whatever we have of the old Adam, as we heard above in the first chapter. This is the only sacrifice that pleases and is acceptable to God. From this you may perceive whereto our foolish and blind leaders have brought us, and how this text has been kept under the bench. Now you may say, If that is true, that we are all priests and ought to preach, what sort of an institution is there? must there then be no distinction among the people, and are the women, also, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... by her book!" Lionel exclaimed. "That isn't fair. Her book you may very likely consider foolish—not at all. I suppose her head is a little bit turned by the things that Quirk and those fellows have been writing about her; but that's only natural. And if she showed her hand a little too freely in trying to interest you in her novel, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... take this letter, See the old knight; but not a word to him. Stay, I forgot, my little rosy cousin Should be a woman now; thus—full of wiles, Glancing behind the man that trusts her love To his best friend, and wanton with the girls She troops with, in such trifling, foolish sort, To turn the stomach of initiate man. Fie! I care not to hear of her; yet ask If she be well. Commend me to my brother; Thou wilt not tarry—he will give thee gold, And haste to welcome me—go! At the inn We'll meet some two ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... who came to-night!—how fat all his body is! When we shall have eaten him, our bellies will be well filled... I was foolish to talk to him as I did;—it only set him to reciting the sutras on behalf of my soul! To go near him while he is reciting would be difficult; and we cannot touch him so long as he is praying. But as it is now nearly morning, perhaps he ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... detail his interview with Mr. Hickman. For the present it is sufficient to say, that he produced to that gentleman a letter of introduction from Lord Cumber himself, who removed all mystery from about him, by stating that he was an English artist, who came over on a foolish professional tour, to see and take sketches of the country, as it appeared in its scenery, as well as in the features, character, and costume of its inhabitants. He had also introductions to M'Clutchy, M'Slime, Squire Deaker, M. Lucre, and ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... to them, for the most part. But that feeling does not apply to young eagles, or even to young swallows and sparrows. The Tutor is by no means one of those ignorant, silly, conceited phrase-tinklers, who live on the music of their own jingling syllables and the flattery of their foolish friends. I think Number Five must appreciate him. He is sincere, warmhearted,—his poetry shows that,—not in haste to be famous, and he looks to me as if he only wanted love to steady him. With one of those two young girls he ought certainly to be captivated, if he is not already. Twice walking ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in his mind to say, but he hesitated before each one, doubting if that were the best. Paul kicked vigorously and shouted, "Come on! Come on! Aren't you ready to go, Mr. Mead?" Emerson's grave smile relaxed into a foolish grin, he lifted his hat to Marguerite, and he and ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself; he would ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... I am, more or less," Jack confessed. "I know him as a man utterly without principle. When he knows that it is a race between us to see which one can get to America first, so as to win the prize my foolish uncle left in such a haphazard way, there's absolutely nothing, I honestly believe, that Randolph wouldn't attempt in order to keep me from getting there in ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... A sea-bird, of which there are several species numerously spread over the northern world; from whence they come towards winter to the British shores, and remain till they have reared their young. It is sometimes called "the foolish Guillemot," from its stupidity; for when their companions are shot one after another, they have so little sense of danger, that they make a small circuit, and then return and settle in the same place, to ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... head quickly and started off to run; but at that moment it struck him that it would be foolish to run and give the alarm without being sure. The monk had declared the force to be the enemy, but the boy wished to see for himself, and, darting sidewise, he ran down the hill, bearing to his right, till by stooping he could keep under cover of the gorse-bushes and ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... meet. For another thing, they've had a heavy crop in Manitoba, Dakota, and Minnesota, and I suppose some folks have an idea they'll get in first before the other people swamp the Eastern markets. I think they're foolish. It's a temporary scare. Prices ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... period? Will a great constellation of artists redeem the ambitious sentimentalities and genteel skilfulness that find their fitting mausoleum in the Tate Gallery? Will our literature escape at last from pretentiousness and timidity, our philosophy from the foolish cerebrations of university "characters" and eminent politicians at leisure, and our starved science find scope and resources adequate to its gigantic needs? Will our universities, our teaching, our national training, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... see you in town, Mr. Titmarsh." Foolish mockery! If all the people whom one has met abroad, and who have said, "We hope to meet you often in town," had but made any the slightest efforts to realize their hopes by sending a simple line of invitation ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... early dream Remembrance never must awake: Oh! where is Lethe's fabled stream? My foolish heart be still, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... them a matter of pride and presumption. In Russia the fact that certain men knew the names and standing of their ancestors led to the most absurd consequences. The books of ancestry were constantly appealed to for the support of foolish pretensions, and the nobles of Russia strutted like so many peacocks in their insensate pride ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... sunset—the dove-like glimpse of Paradise in the tender light of early dawn—by which these obtain a power utterly unknown, undreamed of, unintelligible to a Pagan. If we had spoken to Plato—to Cicero—of the deep pathos in a sunset, would he—would either—have gone along with us? The foolish reader thinks, Why, perhaps not, not altogether as to the quantity—the degree of emotion. Doubtless, it is undeniable that we moderns have far more sensibility to the phenomena and visual glories of this world which we inhabit. And it ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... long; I can't realise it yet, but I know how I shall suffer. Oh, Nan, isn't it hard, after being so happy—after feeling so sure? I never had a doubt all these years except just this last week, and then I thought it was my own foolish imagining;—and now to have it end like this! I can't believe it! Are you sure, are you quite sure? It seems like a ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of falling, yet I climbed still higher because it occurred to me too venturesome for thy sake; thus thou often inspirest me with daring. It was fortunate that the wild wolves from the Odenwald[11] did not appear, for I should have grappled with them had I thought of thy honor. It seems foolish, but it's true.—Midnight, the evil hour of spirits, awakens me, and I lie at the window in the cold winter wind. All Frankfurt is dead, the wicks in the street lamps are on the point of expiring, and the old rusty weather-vanes ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... you are foolish to delay so long introducing him to her," said Gouger, finally. "I don't see that you ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... only aspiration not liable to censure,—who can in thought trace back these sharply-marked contrasts to that original unity which embraced them both, prepared the way for their development, and at length produced them? It would be foolish presumption to desire to lift this veil; we shall only endeavour to indicate in brief outline the beginnings of Italian nationality and its connections with an earlier period—to direct the guesses of the discerning reader rather than to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... him a different man," she added. "But what have you been doing to get wet like that? Dear, dear, dear! I do call it foolish of yer! Well, sir, get out o' them nasty wet things, or I shall have you to nurse ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... going out into the great world of Petersburg, his own master at last. He was going into the world of light, of gayety, of wealth; of the army, the court, of—of Nathalie Dravikine! Ay, it was true! That little love—that first, foolish love—lived in him still, having survived all the changes of his past changing years. Was it then to die, now, when his passion was about to be fired afresh by the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... It was foolish but, for the small comfort I got out of it, I turned on the light and looked inside my wedding-ring. Time has worn it a bit but the letters which spell "My Lady of the Decoration," spelled again the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... know very well that he won't bring any action against me—unfortunately. And, besides, pray tell me where the disgrace would be? I have a foolish wife—is that my fault? I oppose her absurd extravagance—haven't I a right to do so? If all husbands were as courageous, we should soon close the establishments of these artful men, who minister to your vanity, and use you ladies as puppets, or living advertisements, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... years he had "preached within his house in this place publicly, in the exposition of the sacred Scriptures, that baptism is no other than a simple symbol, and consequently it is indifferent whether men are sprinkled or immersed; that those who eat a little bread, and drink a little wine, are foolish in thinking that they will be saved by this communion; that the most holy mother of God is not ever virgin; that those who worship her, as also the other divine images, are idolaters; that he does not accept the sacred Councils, and the things ordained by them in religion, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... She must also remain as young looking as ever and always be at his beck and call. Gaylord was rapidly developing into an impossible little bully, the usual result of an impoverished snob who manages to become a barnacle-like fixture on someone a trifle more foolish yet ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... State. He had told himself then, fresh from the influence of Jefferson and the traditions of Kingsborough, that he had but one love remaining—the love of Virginia. Now, with the bitterer wisdom of experience, that youthful romance showed half foolish, half pathetic. To the man of twenty-three it had been at once the inspiration and the actuality. His personal life had turned to ashes in an hour, and he had told himself that his public one, at least, should remain vital. He had pledged himself to success, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... must be tired of hearing about the farm, so he, too, lapsed into silence although his thoughts were still upon his home. He wondered how the horses would fare with their new owners, and how things in general would be run on the place. "My goodness!" he muttered under his breath, "I'm surely doing a foolish thing in selling out to a corporation! They'll go and cut down all the trees, and let the farm go to waste. It would be just like them to allow the land to become marshy again, and to let the birch woods grow ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... shall be well, and then these foolish humours will cease to haunt me. But just now I cannot bear you from my sight. When you are with me I am at peace. I know that all is well. But when you go I am filled ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... by no means without faults, but he was gifted, generous, forgiving, and brave. He was foolish enough to love a lady too near the throne, and on that account was banished, and endured many hardships for years. Yet he did not let this dampen his love of country, and his loyalty to the government. Though an exile, he wrote a romantic epic extolling the deeds of his countrymen in all ages, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... a buyer and burier of books that the subject of this paper showed himself in most interesting light. He said that the time to make a library was when one was young. He held the foolish notion that a man does not purchase books after he is fifty; I shall expect to see him ransacking the shops after he is seventy, if he shall survive his eccentricities of diet that long. He was an omnivorous buyer, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Mrs. Marshall with her two sons, Wm. R. and Joseph, and her daughter, Rebecca. Their store was the first started in our neighborhood until John G. Lennon built his a little later. Mrs. Marshall impressed me when she said to my mother that "If one of her sons was foolish enough to get into a fight and get whipped she would whip him again when he came home." I thought of her in after years when I heard people speak of Wm. R. Marshall while he was Governor of Minnesota. Once on our first acquaintance, my mother sent my brother, then about six years ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... again, and Rachel knew that for the hundredth time he was regretting his own past weakness. He had been so foolish in money matters, frittering away his once considerable capital in aimless speculations. He and his sister had shared equally under their father's will, but while he had been at last compelled to sink the greater part of what was left to him in ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... dazed and foolish, with his hair full of forget-me-nots, into which he had plunged in his fall. The children gathered round him hooting and screaming; and he stared at them grinning vacantly without a word. From shouts the boys soon went ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... friend to us, Dan," she said, "e'en as say the Scriptures, 'God hath chosen the weak things of the earth to confound the mighty.' David went out against Goliath with a sling and a stone, and thou hast overcome savages with naught but a foolish pumpkin." ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Jacot was a fine, powerful, energetic man, in the prime of life. He was a teetotaler and a vegetarian; and although constantly travelling to and fro in his district on his evangelising work, he had no foolish recklessness in him. No one would have thought that he would have been the first to go of us who used to sit round his hospitable table. His delicate wife, his two young children or I would have seemed far more likely. His loss will be a lasting one to the people ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... of the squadron, who had learned what was going on, coming aboard, and conveying to Brown in no measured terms that they would have nothing to do with it. One of them in a passion told Brown he was mad, and did not know what he was about—which was true enough. The next day, a foolish show of landing was made, and then Brown decided to abandon the attempt and transfer his attack ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... made, and an extensive assortment of Facts did appropriate honour to the contract. The business was all Fact, from first to last. The Hours did not go through any of those rosy performances, which foolish poets have ascribed to them at such times; neither did the clocks go any faster, or any slower, than at other seasons. The deadly statistical recorder in the Gradgrind observatory knocked every second on the head as it was born, and buried ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... up to a point and his under lip came out. He would not be driven out. He would show them. He was as honest as any there; more honest than many; more foolish than all. He ordered a drink and seated himself by a table, indifferently eyeing the shifting crowd through the fluttering curtain ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... bosom of my God. I hardly, if ever, prayed for his recovery, being willing the rod should remain till it effected the purpose for which it was sent, and then I believed it would be removed—as if the Lord was to follow exactly the rules prescribed by my weak, foolish, ignorant heart. ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... she began; "my sweet, pretty girl, never did I think I should be so fortunate as to sleep in the same room with you. How oddly things come about, to be sure! Here am I with four foolish girls, each one madder than the other; for if they were not mad, they would not behave as they have behaved. Each one of them had an honourable attachment, and well for them had they stopped there! but no, they were not content, they would have the whole world at their feet, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... an entire series of difficulties directly traceable to the foolish and adventurous persistence of carrying loaded firearms. The morning paper of the day in which I am writing records ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... that her husband proved to be negligent of and unkind to her," she murmured, "and that she repented her rashness in leaving her home and friends. Oh, I wonder why girls will be so foolish and headstrong as to go directly contrary to the advice of those who love them best, and run away with men of ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... D. and I made an expedition to the very broker's ten days ago, but when I saw the dingy shop choke-full of newly-arrived dirty furniture, and remembered that these streets are reeking with small-pox—as it refuses to "leave us at present"—I thought I should be foolish to go in. D. knows of a pair in Ecclesfield, and I have commissioned her to annex them if possible; but they can't quite arrive in time. In case I don't manage to write Xmas greetings to Aunty and Madre, ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... 'that we have expressed as much sympathy as it was possible to feel. We deplore the combat, we hold the South responsible for it, we think their capricious separation one of the most foolish and one of the most wicked acts that have ever been committed; we hope that the North will beat them, and we should bitterly regret their forcing themselves back into the Union on terms making slavery worse, if possible, than it is now. We wish the contest ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Thus these foolish people departed, some one way and some another; and the king and his lords and all his company right ordinately entered into London with great joy. And the first journey that the king made he went to the lady princess his mother, who was in a castle ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... during his exile. Finally comes the Uttara-kanda, which relates that Rama, hearing some of the people of Ayodhya spitefully casting aspersions on the virtue of Sita during her imprisonment in the palace of Ravana, gave way to foolish jealousy and banished her to the hermitage of Valmiki, where she gave birth to twin sons, Kusa and Lava; when these boys had grown up, Valmiki taught them the Ramayana and sent them to sing it at the court of ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... have doomed me to this lot? A contest had been going on in my mind for years, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible errors of superstition; between the wisdom of manly courage, and the foolish weakness of timidity. The contest was now ended; the chain was severed; God and right stood vindicated. I was A FREEMAN, and the voice of peace and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... 'Tis true; no more than all birds, or all fishes. If you appear learned to an ignorant wench, or jocund to a sad, or witty to a foolish, why she presently begins to mistrust herself. You must approach them in their own height, their own line: for the contrary makes many, that fear to commit themselves to noble and worthy fellows, run into the embraces of a rascal. If she love wit, give verses, though you borrow them ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... race be a fairly long one. Growth is a kind of success which does indeed come to some organisms with less effort than to others, but it cannot be maintained and improved upon without pains and effort. A foolish organism and its fortuitous variation will be soon parted, for, as a general rule, unless the variation has so much connection with the organism's past habits and ways of thought as to be in no proper sense of the word "fortuitous," the organism ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... adventurer—a dishonourable character—a man who preys upon society, and makes easily-deceived people his dupes, Sir; his absurd, his foolish, his wretched dupes, Sir,' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... respectfully to the overseer. In that way you will find your life much easier than you would think. You will be chosen for small boat service; and that is a great thing, as we are not chained in the small boats. Some men are foolish and obstinate, but, so far from doing any good, this only brings trouble on themselves; they come in for punishment daily, they are closely watched, and their lives made hells for them. Even as a ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... grand and petty council, all bourgeois, or of the most intelligent among the agricultural class, who know the interests of their country right well, and are not likely to betray them, as the noblesse are but too often induced to do, for the sake of some foolish ribband, rank, or title. The noblesse are in a manner self-exiled (so they say) from all participation in the legislative and executive power; for they have too much morgue to endure to share the government with those whom they regard as roturiers; but the real state ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... about? He remembered the words "a new nation"—no more. "We've got to grope around in the dark and hunt for new ways and learn as we go. And when you've once got into the work and really felt the thrill of it all—well, then it seems rather foolish and small to bother about your ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... first stupor of the excursionists passed away, and was succeeded by a frantic and impotent energy. They all ran about upon the plateau of rock in an aimless, foolish flurry, like frightened fowls in a yard. They could not bring themselves to acknowledge that there was no possible escape for them. Again and again they rushed to the edge of the great cliff which rose from the river, but the youngest and most daring of them could ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... antiquity like myself, with none of your soft and gentle ways. It would do me good to tell you all we have gone through since that bad creature found us out, but I have no right to make you miserable with other people's sorrows. No—I will go away before I begin to be foolish again; and my boy will be ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... you foolish, naughty girl," he exclaimed affectionately, "be good—be good." And as he spoke, he kissed her, pressed her hand tenderly, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Parachute descent from a balloon, however, was made by Jacques Garnerin, on the 22nd of October, 1797, in the Park of Monceau. De la Lande, the celebrated astronomer, has furnished a detailed and highly interesting account of this foolish experiment. ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... Rabbit was afraid to jump down from such a height, for fear of breaking his neck, so up in the tree he remained for a long time. Many animals passed under the tree, but none took pity on the rabbit, until at last came an old and foolish Rhinoceros, who rubbed his withered hide against ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... "do not, I beg of you, be rash. It was foolish of me, perhaps, to meet you here. We can talk for a few minutes, and afterwards, perhaps, we may meet again, but I am frightened all ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... might be crouching there prepared to hurl an explosive bomb over the fence when the locomotive was brought around as far as that spot. Or was the villain foolish enough to attempt to enter the enclosure by ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... the universe in which we find ourselves and from it there is no escape. No man can avoid life—not even the foolish one who, when the difficulties before him appear for the moment overwhelming, tries to escape them by suicide. A man cannot die. He can only choose how he will live. He may either helplessly drift through the world suffering from all the ills and evils that ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... possible, until the finishing touches just before dinner was served. I went and dressed myself for the evening's entertainment. I took equal pains with my costume, as if I were going to entertain a party of friends at home, and it may be I was foolish enough to have a feeling of elation that my Mill Road friends should see me for once dressed like a real lady. The picture that my glass gave back when the pleasant task was all completed was comfortably reassuring. Mrs. Flaxman I found waiting for me, when I went downstairs. ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... suppose she had done—Mrs. Whitney, that is? Flung herself down on him and sucked the wound! Yes, without a moment's hesitation, her gold hair all about his hand and her white dress in the dirt. Of course, it was a foolish thing to do, and not in the least the right way to treat a wound, but she had risked her life to do it; a slight cut on her lip—you understand; a tiny, ragged place. Afterward, she had cut the wound crosswise, so, and had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... primarily social. The time has passed (so we are told) when the individual may be discussed and his social condition ignored. To seek out an individual here and there and endeavor to redeem or recover him while the environment remains unchanged, is a waste of force: as foolish as it would be to spend millions on remedies for people sick with malaria in a pestilential and malarial district, and ignore the condition of the district. True wisdom would demand first of all that the district be purged, the environment made healthy, ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... principles goes on .... Irving was here then, is here now. Stanley is here, and Joe Hatton, but Charles Reade is gone and Tom Hood and Harry Lee and Canon Kingsley. In those days you could have carried Kipling around in a lunch-basket; now he fills the world. I was young and foolish then; now I am old ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... following prosperity. And, on the contrary part, if evil men come to the stage, they ever go out (as the tragedy writer answered to one that misliked the show of such persons) so manacled, as they little animate folks to follow them. But history being captive to the truth of a foolish world, in many times a terror from well- doing, and an encouragement to unbridled wickedness. For see we not valiant Miltiades rot in his fetters? the just Phocion and the accomplished Socrates put to death like traitors? the cruel Severus live prosperously? the excellent Severus miserably murdered? ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... would not have me say I am certain, would you? these are no times for Popery and infallibility; however, I assure you I think him perfectly safe. He has done a foolish and idle trick, but no man is wise always. We must get rid of his fever, and then if his cold remains, with any cough, he may make a ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... something playful about it, that will not support a very exacting criticism, and the lesson must be apprehended by the fancy at half a hint. Such is the great mass of the old stories of wise animals or foolish men that have amused our childhood. But we should expect the fable, in company with other and more important literary forms, to be more and more loosely, or at least largely, comprehended as time went on, and so to degenerate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he was greater or less than Washington, as to whether either of them set to perform the other's task would have succeeded in it, or, perchance would have failed. Not only is the competition itself an ungracious one, but to make Lincoln a competitor is foolish and useless. He was the most individual man who ever lived; let us be content with this fact. Let us take him simply as Abraham Lincoln, singular and solitary, as we all see that he was; let us be thankful if we can make a ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... regarding her real identity and association with the case. I wondered why in the not very distant past I had promised to keep silent respecting her; I wondered why up to that present moment, knowing beyond doubt that her activities were inimical to my interests, were criminal, I had observed that foolish pledge. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... dared to bring evils upon himself. But either perceiving some folly in you, they have come hither, or in perplexity running the risk, whether it shall be or not. For surely they do not think that you alone are mad, in so great a portion of Greece as they have been over, so as to commiserate their foolish distresses. Come, compare the two; admitting them into your land, and suffering us to lead them away, what will you gain? Such things as these you may gain from us; you may add to this city the whole power of Argos, and all the ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... important than those in which they differ. The diversities are superficial, the identities are deep as life. Physical processes and wants are the same for everybody. All men, be they kings or beggars, civilised or savage, rich or poor, wise or foolish, cultured or illiterate, breathe the same breath, hunger and thirst, eat and drink, sleep, are smitten by the same diseases, and die at last the same death. We have all of us one human heart. Tears and grief, gladness and smiles, move us ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the dire pains of hell, he answered, just as if he had been possessed by a demon, that he had rather go to hell than to paradise; and, as he was one of the chiefs in that region, he carried a great many with him to the same decision of a perverse mind. But I did not hesitate to attack the foolish fellow again and again, and I insisted upon the horror and the eternity of the torments with great vehemence of language; but he answered that he certainly ought to go, after this life, there, where his parents and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... impossible falls in the river, and described the people of the Arctic coast as possessing the extraordinary power of killing with their eyes. These Indians told Mackenzie of "small white buffalo" which they hunted to the westward. Perhaps they meant the mountain sheep, the Sass-sei-yeuneh or "Foolish Bear" of ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... know what you are saying? and do you fancy that that Turk will be foolish enough to receive a poor wretch like me ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... "Philharmonic Society" and other musical associations, finding in the same much to compensate them for what they lost by being debarred from entering those circles of culture and amusement, the conditions of entrance to which were, not a love of and proficiency in art, but that ignoble and foolish one, the mere possession ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... "for, in the first place, I've a foolish partiality for poachers, and am sorry when any of 'em come to hurt; and, in the second, I'd be mighty displeased if any ill had happened to one of Sir Piers's flesh and blood, as this young ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... an old Scottish ballad, which, notwithstanding its rude simplicity, speaks feelingly to the heart.' Mr. Carlyle is said, when young, to have written them on a pane of glass in a window, with a diamond, adding, characteristically, 'Oh foolish Thee!' In 1802, in the first edition of 'The Border Minstrelsy,' Scott cited only three stanzas from the same ballad, not including Burns's ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... listening with astonished eyes. "I am lecturing you," he said in his usual even tones, "Forgive me for thinking that you are setting about your plan in a way that can never be successful. As you say, we talk and talk, and the more we talk the less do we understand each other. It is a foolish world, and a pre-eminently ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... found effective in other departments of human knowledge. It will bring to politics the conception of natural laws, and deal with delicate social questions on impartial scientific principles. It will show that certain wrongs are inevitable, and others curable; and that it is as foolish to try to cure the incurable in social as in biological and chemical matters. A spirit of this kind will encourage reform, and yet obviate vain attempts to ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Shakespearian; 2. The involved grammar is Shakespearian—"show thee, being a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;" 3. The alteration is most flat, and un-Shakespearian. As to the grossness of the abuse—she calls him "gross and foolish" a few ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... the war was as great a surprise to them as to us, and although the two women told us we were foolish to go to fight—it was no business of ours if England wanted to get into a row—it made no difference in our friendly relations, and the day we left Clara came to the station with a box of candy. I suppose if we had known as much then as we do now about German ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... revolver from his belt and fired. Chenoine fell dead. Before Vermilion could fire again the other man, with the slightest perceptible movement of his right hand, fired from the hip. The revolver dropped from the half-breed's hand. He swayed unsteadily for a few seconds, his eyes widening into a foolish, surprised stare. He half-turned and opened his lips to speak. Pink foam reddened the corners of his mouth and spattered in tiny drops upon his chin. He gasped for breath with a spasmodic heave ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... manner: but I can't tell how it was. It was chiefly my own fault. I was foolish to suppose he could ever think seriously of me. But he used to make me read with him—and I used to be with him a good deal, though not much neither—and I found my affections entangled before ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... deeply-rooted superstitious feelings have been, to a great extent, dissipated. Let us hope that the school-master will find his way into every collier's dwelling, enlightening his too long uncultivated mind; and that the foolish prejudices shall cease, which have been hitherto the barriers to post-mortem examinations in ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... taken it into his head to make an empress of me," said the princess, as her three favorites again entered. "Foolish people that you are! It does not satisfy you to be the friend of a Princess Elizabeth, but I must become an empress ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... won't you do good to mankind, then?" Catharine, a kind of She-Louis Quatorze, was equal to such a thing. To put one's cast Lover into a throne,—poor soul, console him in that manner;—and reduce the long-dissentient Country to blessed composure under him: what a thing! Foolish Poniatowski, an empty, windy creature, redolent of macassar and the finer sensibilities of the heart: him she did make King of Poland; but to reduce the long-dissentient Country to composure,—that was what she could not do. Countries in that predicament ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... foolish of me, but I had already made up my mind to push on to Woodbridge that night. It could not be more than four miles, and the time was not much after eight. I felt a little twinge of quite unworthy annoyance because I was still treading in the glamour ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... do up the long, thick fur on them in little knots, tied with tough, twisted grass, which would make the hair curl and look very showy indeed. Even some of my ancestors who happened to get old acted in that foolish way, and when the fur got thin would wear some kind of false stuff, though any one but a blind person ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... I gawped at him some foolish. Think of springin' all that mystery dope right on Broadway! And, as I'm none too anxious to talk about shells anyway, we don't have such a chatty luncheon. I'm just as satisfied. I wanted time to think what I should exhibit as ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... while I call you! 5 Let no false and foolish fears appal you, Come from out the crevices that hide you, Leave the worthless stones that are beside you, Leave the earth that lies around, above you, And come with me, for I do dearly ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... to London. I had that foolish belief that the Lord Mayor would help me. I was too young to know better; and besides, I was afraid that my being with the smugglers would, perhaps, get me hanged, if I were caught by one of those magistrates, whom I ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... "Foolish, hardhearted girl," said the stranger, "are you afraid of what they may do to you? I tell you, even the retainers of the law, who course life as greyhounds do hares, will rejoice at the escape of a ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the stars, those bright-eyed spectators of a sleeping world, tell no tales of us poor humans, or they might have whispered the fact that the reasonable sober-minded Ursula Garston was holding foolish vigil that night until the gray dawn drove her away to seek ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... your foolish day, ain't it? I'll tell you what I'm not goin' to do with it. I'm not goin' to hire an automobile at four dollars an hour and take a lassie out for a ride ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... thought of his sweet and loving sister, with her perfect faith in his manhood, walking four miles a day to earn less than two dollars, while he had been induced to spend in one foolish evening as much as she could earn in two weeks, it was no wonder he did ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... awakening amongst the masses is due either to the activity of the Ali Brothers or myself. For the time being we have the ear of the masses because we voice their sentiments. The masses are by no means so foolish or unintelligent as we sometimes imagine. They often perceive things with their intuition, which we ourselves fail to see with our intellect. But whilst the masses know what they want, they often do not know how to express their wants and, less often, how to get what ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... the venerable Bishops who brought your message, without taking exception to your requests, though there were some things blameworthy among them, we received tidings that the City of Rome was agitated by certain foolish anxieties, from which real evil would grow unless the suspicion which caused them ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... failed to secure the permanent regard of any of her numerous admirers, was foolish enough, as most old maids are, to suppose that some green, young, inexperienced lover would be most likely to be caught in her net. Hence she had her mind fixed on Murty, whom she regarded, as he really was, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... Armour had made the great mistake of his life. When people came to know, they said that to have done it when sober had shown him possessed of a kind of maliciousness and cynicism almost pardonable, but to do it when tipsy proved him merely weak and foolish. But the fact is, he was less tipsy at the time than was imagined; and he could have answered to more malice and cynicism than was credited to him. To those who know the world it is not singular that, of the two, Armour was thought to have made the mistake and had the misfortune, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cascade along his broad shoulders, and then rippled down his satiny skin clear to the barrier of the swimming trunks tight about his waist. It was some time before he mustered the courage to turn his foolish face toward the door through which had sounded the cooing ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper |
