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Imbecile   /ˈɪmbəsəl/  /ˈɪmbəsaɪl/   Listen
Imbecile

adjective
1.
Having a mental age of three to seven years.  Synonyms: idiotic, imbecilic.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Imbecile" Quotes from Famous Books



... It was a vicious suggestion. Other bricks and missiles followed, while the crowd surged forward. Suddenly the line of patrolmen opened to let through a squad of mounted police, who charged the mob.... It was a thing requiring courage, but a thing ordered by an imbecile. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... dead! but that's out of nature. We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. 'Twere imbecile hewing out roads to a wall, And when Italy's made, for what end is it done If we have not ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot

... there now," my friend remarked. "This fellow Merryweather is a bank director, and personally interested in the matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone. Here we are, and they are waiting ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... fellow," said Lefevre, "do you consider what you are so promptly offering? Do you know that my experiment, if successful, might leave you a paralytic, or an imbecile, or ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... hand, and an imbecile smile flitted over his ghastly face. "Ah! then, you love her?" ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... thought it excusable to leave as soon as the sermon was over. Whether he sought to lure me on to further avowals, I know not: but, whatever was his motive, he asked me, in reply, whether I believed that he cared for the humdrum custom of church-going and whether I thought him imbecile enough to consider this as any thing more than the means by which to keep the masses in check; adding, that it was the duty of the intelligent to make the affair respectable by setting the example of going themselves; and that he only wished ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska

... capitalists to-day, and there are positively two sides to it. The labor union has two difficulties; the first one is that it began to make a labor scale for all classes on a par, and they scale down a man that can earn five dollars a day to two and a half a day, in order to level up to him an imbecile that cannot earn fifty cents a day. That is one of the most dangerous and discouraging things for the working man. He cannot get the results of his work if he do better work or higher work or work longer; that is a dangerous thing, and in order to get every laboring man free ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... immemorially plundered hen-roosts that chickens are as free to it as the air it breathes, without any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him that the imbecile broiler of another, slain by pure accident and by its own contributory negligence, was saddening him, while I was off in my train without a pang for the owner and with only an ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to demoralisation by indulgences following security and abundance. In the time of our Founders the signs of a world-wide epoch of prosperity and relaxation were plentiful. Both sexes drifted towards sexual excesses, the men towards sentimental extravagances, imbecile devotions, and the complication and refinement of physical indulgences; the women towards those expansions and differentiations of feeling that find expression in music and costly and distinguished dress. Both sexes became unstable and promiscuous. The ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... sounded bombastic and ludicrous, sounded silly enough to provoke a shrug of the shoulders, sounded like one of those sentences which only an imbecile or a lunatic could utter. And yet Valenglay remained impassive. He knew that, in such circumstances as the present, the man before him was not the man to indulge ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... have their cows, their poultry, their pigs,—all watched over and provided with accommodations of Dutch-like neatness. All this is characteristic of the people. It may be thought to detract something from the feminine graces which in other lands make a woman so amiably dependent as to be nearly imbecile. But it produces a healthy and blooming race of women to match the hardy Englishman,—the finest development of the physical and moral nature which the world has witnessed. For we are not to look on ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... improvement of the human animal which we do to that of the equine or the porcine, the experiment would not have been left untried so long. In-and-in breeding is a mistake, and can only commend itself, and that for selfish reasons, to the Aztec in physique and the imbecile in mind. The families which take most pride in their purity are the most degenerate; the stock which is the most robust and handsome is that which has in it a liberal infusion of foreign bloods. In my opinion, the coming man, the highest ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... him to the best of my ability. It was I who during ten consecutive years secured for him the contracts for the fleet and the army; almost his whole fortune came from that source. Then one fine morning this slow-blooded imbecile of a Bernese goes crazy over an odalisk whom the mother of the Bey had caused to be expelled from the harem. The hussy was beautiful and ambitious, she made him marry her, and naturally, after this brilliant match, Hemerlingue was obliged to leave ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... think, Mr. Farnsworth, if any one ought to go to a lunatic asylum it might as well be you! You sit there like an imbecile saying, ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... may suffice to explain why it is that Shakespeare's style has no imitators. He were indeed a very hardy or else a very imbecile man, who should undertake to imitate it. All the other great English poets, however, have been imitated in this respect, and some of them with no little success. Thomson's Castle of Indolence, for example, is an avowed imitation ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... Mr. Prohack. "I know I'm the greatest and sweetest imbecile that the Almighty ever ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... Holstein. Moreover, it was impolitic in the highest degree, making the Czar a bitter enemy of England for four years. The wretched country, in distraction, threw itself into the arms of Bernadotte. Christian VII had long been an imbecile, and his son, Frederick VI, though energetic and well-meaning, turned Denmark into another vassal state of France by the treaty of Fontainebleau, signed October ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Madison for consenting to the war—on the assumed ground of coveting another term as President—which every other historian and biographer from Hildreth to Sydney Howard Gay has pronounced, and which has become a stock historical convention; holds Jackson's campaign ending at New Orleans an imbecile undertaking redeemed only by an act of instinctive pugnacity at the end; gives Scott and Jacob Brown the honor they have never before received in fair measure; and in many other points redistributes praise and blame with entire independence, and with curious ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Uncle Ben's imbecile reply did not trouble Johnny. He had ears now only for the superior intellect before him. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... around him before the Government in London could seriously believe that a Stuart in arms was in the island. There were other and minor elements of success, too, to be noted in the great game that the Stuart prince {210} was playing. The Ministry was unpopular: the head of that Ministry was the imbecile Duke of Newcastle, perhaps the most contemptible statesman who has ever made high office ridiculous. The King was away in Hanover. England was in the toils of a foreign war, and her prestige had lately suffered heavily from the sudden defeat at Fontenoy. There were very few troops in England ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... nightcap and head-gear of the detestable Mrs. Squeers, as she administers matutinal brimstone and treacle to the starving pupils of Do-the-boys Hall. Mark the astonishment of Squeers and his victim, as the savage goes down under the thundering blows of Nickleby's cane. Look at the old imbecile declaring his passion for the foolish Mrs. Nickleby. Behold his knee-breeches and shorts protruding from the chimney, when his benighted intellect prompted him, at the imminent hazard of strangulation, to pay a visit to ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... Idiots and imbecile persons likewise afford good evidence that laughter or smiling primarily expresses mere happiness or joy. Dr. Crichton Browne, to whom, as on so many other occasions, I am indebted for the results ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... it be! ingenious and imbecile. He advises the Catholics, in the old nursery language, to behave like good boys; to open their mouths and shut their eyes, and see what God ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... who settles within the Tropics, and carries thither the strength and the energetic habits acquired in regions more propitious to the constitution. He differs as widely from princes nursed in the purple of imperial cradles, as the companions of Gama from their dwarfish and imbecile progeny, which, born in a climate unfavourable to its growth and beauty, degenerates more and more, at every descent, from the qualities of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... we shall find him prying and prowling in nearly every scene of real life; him, the ever present, the king of the Middle Ages, whose triumph we have seen on the cloister wall at Pisa, the lord "Death." His fleshless face peers from behind a bush at Zatzinger's stunted, fever-stricken lady and imbecile gentleman; he sits grinning on a tree in Orso Graf's allegory, while the cynical knights, with haggard, sensual faces, crack dirty jokes with the fat, brutish woman squatted below; he puts his hand into the basket of Duerer's tattered pedlar; he leers hideously at the stirrup of Duerer's ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... organized system of oppressive misrule—had adopted to remedy existing evils. After the dissolution of the Directory France cannot be said to have been in a state of anarchy, and the long and bloody wars with which Napoleon is usually blamed should rather be charged to that government and imbecile ministerial policy that lost to England the American colonies. The series of battles from Marengo to Waterloo are as much the creation of the cabinet of George III as those from Concord to Yorktown. Waterloo involved more than the simple defeat of Napoleon; it meant the defeat ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... amounting to 12,000,[26] but an American, who has carefully examined the country, going down the whole length of the peninsula on the one side, and returning by the other, fixes it at 4000. The inhabitants are an imbecile race of mixed bloods and Indians, dwelling in the few small villages which the country contains, and upon ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... been in this hospital for the past eight months. We do not believe him sick, or that he has been sick, but completely worthless. He is obese and a malingerer to such an extent that he is almost an imbecile—worthlessness, obesity, and imbecility and laziness. He is totally unfit for the Invalid Corps or for any ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... appears a perfect imbecile," said Mrs. Porter, turning abruptly to Kirk. "I ask him if he attributes his physical decay ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... and fool, most valiant in words, but constantly being drubbed by Harlequin. Scaramouch is a common character in Italian farce, originally meant in ridicule of the Spanish don, and therefore dressed in Spanish costume. Our clown is an imbecile old idiot, and wholly unlike the dashing poltroon of Italian pantomime. The best "Scaramouches" that ever lived were Tiberio Fiurelli, a Neapolitan (born ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... it consecrates, to the wealthy whom it protects, and to the entire nation, to which it assures all the liberty desired by a people methodical and slow in character, and who, absorbed in their commercial interests, do not like being perpetually worried about the imbecile George III. or public affairs. Vainly have the friends of reform protested their attachment to the Constitution. Vainly they declare that they desire to demand nothing, to obtain nothing, save in lawful ways. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... verdict of the sentence; but at the same time for mitigating that sentence there arose this strong argument—namely, that amongst women not formally pronounced idiots, there never can have been one more pitiably imbecile. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... apology: "Miss Vanstone's kind love, and she begs to be excused—she's prompting Mr. Clare." She prompted him to such purpose that he actually got through his part. The performances of the other gentlemen were obtrusively imbecile. Frank was just one degree better—he was modestly incapable; and he gained by comparison. "Thanks to Miss Vanstone," observed the manager, who had heard the prompting. "She pulled him through. We shall be flat enough at night, when the drop ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... de Guise himself, but also by two notaries, a priest, and several witnesses. Unfortunately, however, whether by accident, or intention on the part of the Duke, both the notaries by whom it had been attested were aged men, one of whom had subsequently died; while the other had become so imbecile that when interrogated upon the subject, he first doubted, and subsequently denied, all knowledge of the transaction; but as these contingencies did not affect the signature of M. de Guise himself, his position ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... Russian minds. God had been philosophized away to make place for the Absolute, and even school-boys came home to announce the astounding news that there was no longer any God. Who was not a doubter, a disbeliever, was unhesitatingly declared an imbecile; and Gogol's correspondence, breathing as it does the spirit of the deepest godfulness, came upon his friends like a note of discord at a concert. His friends declared him insane, and all manner of advice offered, which could ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... personality we have not understated the duty of society to its members. We all admit a collective responsibility for children. Are there not grown-up people who stand just as much in need of care? What of the idiot, the imbecile, the feeble-minded or the drunkard? What does rational self-determination mean for these classes? They may injure no one but themselves except by the contagion of bad example. But have we no duty towards them, having in view their ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... steadily carrying with outstretched arms two of the squatter party, his hands tightly grasping their collars. Yet I believe his touch was as gentle as with the violets. His face was preternaturally grave; theirs, to my intense astonishment, while they hung passive from his arms, wore that fatuous, imbecile smile seen on the faces of those who lend themselves to tricks of acrobats and strong men in the arena. He slowly traversed the whole length of one side of the house, walked down the steps to the gate, and then gravely deposited them OUTSIDE. I heard him say, "Dot vins der pet, ain't it?" ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... up to this moment, and now is the crisis of my fate. All my future depends upon it, whether for weal or woe. Lady Chetwynde, do not call it nonsense—do not underrate its importance. Do not, I implore you, underrate me. Thus far you have tacitly assumed that I am a feeble and almost imbecile character. It is true that my abject devotion to you has forced me to give a blind obedience to all your wishes. But mark this well, Lady Chetwynde, such obedience itself involved some of the highest qualities of manhood. Something like courage ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... he, "it is not, mademoiselle, that the bats alone are blind; here is a very blind Montaiglon. I implore your pardon, M. le Baron. It is good to be frank, though it is sometimes unpleasant, and I must plead guilty to an imbecile misapprehension." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... wish. But the American nation was not yet rid of its unsuccessful generals. James Wilkinson, who was inscrutably chosen to succeed Dearborn, was a man of bad reputation and low professional standing. "The selection of this unprincipled imbecile," said Winfield Scott, "was not the blunder of Secretary Armstrong." Added to this, Wilkinson was a man of broken health. He was shifted from command at New Orleans because the Southern Senators insisted that he was untrustworthy and incompetent. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... materials of discontent were gradually being concentrated; the inflammable spirits of the Sepoys were ready to burst into a blaze. Strong and judicious measures, promptly put into action, might even now have allayed the excitement and dissipated the danger. But the imbecile commander-in-chief was enjoying himself and shirking care in the mountains; and Lord Canning and his advisers at Calcutta seem to have preferred to allow to take the initiative in their own way. Generally throughout ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... natural to the soul of the poet, the painter or the musician. The men who would experience any fatigue in putting into practice the instructions given in this Meditation are naturally predestined, just as he who cannot perceive the connection which exists between two different ideas is an imbecile. As a matter of fact, love has its great men although they be unrecognized, as war has its Napoleons, poetry its Andre Cheniers and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... rights of the wider kind. Men debated whether she had a soul, made cynical proverbs about her, called her the "weaker vessel," and debarred her from political and economic equality, classing her up to this very moment in rights with the idiot, the imbecile, and the criminal. Worse than this, they gave her a spurious homage, created a lop-sided chivalry, and caused her to accept as her ideal goal of womanhood the achievement of beauty and the entrance into wifehood. After they tied her hand and foot ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... "It is wicked for you to say such things. Do you suppose that Mr. Atkins would find it necessary to work as he is doing to beat a fool? And, besides, you're not complimentary to me. Should I, do you think, take such an interest in one who was an imbecile?" ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... what he termed his imbecile stupidity in not knowing his own heart all these past months, and convinced, as he also was, that Alice and Calderwell cared for each other, he could see no way for him but to play the part of a man of ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... shall be compelled to make it perpetual. The robber barons established inequality by the sword, and by the same power made it perpetual. The posterity of kings and barons, however worthless, corrupt, criminal, or imbecile, continue to occupy the saddle upon the public donkey. But inherited royalty is going, and inherited aristocracy must also go. We who survive are the responsible parties, and (as the Romans charged their rulers in ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... learned and thoroughly digested, if the future of Christianity is to improve upon her past in India. For, be it remembered, Christianity never met with so doughty a foe as that which confronts it in this land. The ancient faiths of Greece and Rome, which Christianity overcame, were infantile and imbecile as compared with the subtle wisdom and the mighty resistance of Brahmanism. The conditions of the conflict in India are different from those ever met before by our militant faith. The subtle and ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... herself in hopeless disgrace, and for her there can be no resurrection here. If she dreams that I am in my dotage, and may relent, she strangely forgets the nature of the blood she saw fit to cross with that of a beggarly foreign scrub. Go back and tell her, the old man is not yet senile and imbecile; and that the years have only hardened his heart. Tell her, I have almost learned to forget even ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... found to be 8 to 12 ounces above the average weight, but there are notable exceptions. The brains of idiots are small; indeed, any weight under a certain size, about 30 ounces, seems to be invariably associated with an imbecile mind. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... to operate on the system, so as to render exhaustion no longer a pain, but a pleasure, Peter lay on that knoll, high up the mountain-side, in close proximity to the clouds, dreaming and thinking about nothing; that is to say, about everything or anything in an imbecile sort of way: in other words, wandering in his mind disjointedly over the varied regions of memory and imagination; too tired to originate an idea; too indifferent to resist one when it arose; too weak to follow it out; and utterly indifferent as to whether his mind did follow it out, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... tricksters, a coveted opportunity to rail against the Administration, and to weaken, as far as their influence could be felt, the confidence which had been reposed in it. The President was represented as an imbecile, utterly devoid of statesmanship. The army was berated with no measured terms. Every reverse of fortune was attributed to a want of brains and heart in the heads of departments. The Republic had certainly ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... "For"—Belfast used to say, irritated and complaining—"some night, you stupid cookie, you'll swallow your ould clay, and we will have no cook."—"Ah! sonny, I am ready for my Maker's call... wish you all were," the other would answer with a benign serenity that was altogether imbecile and touching. Belfast outside the galley door danced with vexation. "You holy fool! I don't want you to die," he howled, looking up with furious, quivering face and tender eyes. "What's the hurry? You blessed wooden-headed ould heretic, the divvle will have you soon ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... the public gapes for every trifle calculated to prove that the palsied fingers can no longer grasp the intellectual sceptre, and that the well-worn and hard-earned bays are as a crown of thorns to the pulseless brow. It was, in those days whispered in London that the great orator had become imbecile immediately after the publication of his "Letter to a Noble Lord;" and that he wandered about his park kissing his cows ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... true, that the natural inferiority of the black man, connects him so closely with the animal creation, it looks passing strange to me that he should be made responsible for the violation of laws which he has been declared too imbecile to aid in framing or of comprehending. Nor is it less strange to see him enslaved and compelled by his labor to maintain both his master and himself, after having declared him incapable of doing either. Why not let him go then? Why hold with an unyielding ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... have no right to criticise you," she humbly admitted. "After all, it does not surprise me that you were not deceived. Only an imbecile could have been fooled all these weeks. Everyone said that you were no fool. It seems ridiculous that it should have gone to this ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... sadly. "I'm afraid I should have said, Mr. Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately, an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)

... anything? I would fight for my friend, but if I lost my friend, I should still be there. I would fight for my country, but if I lost my country, I should still exist. But if what that devil dreams were true, I should not be—I should burst like a bubble and be gone. I could not live in that imbecile universe. Shall I not fight for ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... It had ideas, but refrained from expressing them, it was so scornful! It was observant, but would not communicate its observations to any one, it was so miserly! Nobody but Fouche ever mentioned what he had observed. 'At that time,' to quote the words of one of the most imbecile critics in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 'literature was content with a clear sketch and the simple outline of all antique statues. It did not dance over its periods.'—I should think not! It had no periods to dance over. It had no words to play with. You were plainly told ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... dead! but that's out of nature. We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. 'T were imbecile hewing out roads to a wall. And when Italy's made, for what end is it done If we ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... the glorious tidings of Trafalgar could revive the sinking spirit of this great minister. He died on the 23rd of January, 1806, and was succeeded in the government by Mr. Fox, the same statesman who had, throughout every variety of fortune, arraigned his conduct of the war as imbecile and absurd, and who all along professed his belief that in the original quarrel between Great Britain and revolutionised France, the blame lay with his own country, and above all with ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... be so pig-headed! You are talking like an imbecile. Your secretary, Miss Dore, is a nice girl. But how would you feel if Percy were to come to you and say that he was engaged to ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... one of those truly unfortunate cases which, so far as present knowledge goes, cannot be guarded against. Eunice, age 31, mentally 2, is a low-grade imbecile. There is not in the whole family, for generations back, a single case of feeble-mindedness, nor of disease that would undermine the nervous organization. Close scrutiny does not reveal a single assignable cause. She came, as an accident, to ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... at Caen, after making acquaintance with the inside of the debtor's prison in that town—imbecile, and in the asylum of the 'Bon Sauveur'. He is buried in the Protestant cemetery of Caen. France has raised a more lasting monument to his fame in Barbey d'Aurevilly's 'Du Dandysme et de Georges ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... physician said that he could distinguish the symptoms of approaching madness six months beforehand. "Are there any persons about the Court likely to become mad?" said the King. "I know one who will be imbecile in less than three months," replied he. The King pressed him to tell the name. He excused himself for some time. At last he said, "It is M. de Sechelles, the Controller-General." "You have a spite against him," said Madame, "because he would not ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... we continue to listen to a wandering voice as| |imbecile as our condition?" said the speaker. "When | |this voice recently was removed from the counsels of| |our government, we thought, good easy souls, that we| |had got rid of it forever. Has Mr. Bryan proved | |himself so good a prophet in the past that we can | |afford to trust ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... ordered for their dinner oysters, a duck, pork and cabbage, cream, a Pont l'Eveque cheese, and a bottle of Burgundy. It was an enfranchisement, almost a revenge; and they laughed at Cornaro! It was only an imbecile that could be tyrannised over as he had been! What vileness to be always thinking about prolonging one's existence! Life is good only on the ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... the professors are responsible only to a judicious board of directors, examinations for admissions and for advancements will be rigid and impartial, the administration will be vigilant and firm, the reckless who will not and the imbecile who cannot acquire a good education, will be dismissed for more congenial pursuits, the rich and the poor will be upon an equality, and only desert will be ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... business than old Gobseck! To the shame of mankind, when I have wanted to shake hands with Virtue, I have found her shivering in a loft, persecuted by calumny, half-starving on a income or a salary of fifteen hundred francs a year, and regarded as crazy, or eccentric, or imbecile. ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... and philosophic ideas, and may be forced to put on a System of Thought, as men put on a mackintosh. But his true education is what he makes of these things. If he hears of Theodoric with a yawn, we say—the college-folk—He must be imbecile. No, not imbecile! he may become a successful toreador, or snake-charmer, which things are out of our line! And a man may be an upright citizen, a good husband, and a sincerely religious man, who has never heard of Francesca, nor Fra Angelico, nor named ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... cried the reader, as he finished perusing this letter. "The imbecile! Was there ever such a fool born ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come. "I was an imbecile," she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with bitterness; "Arcadia," she laughed. "I thought it was different here, that you were different; that feeling in my heart—but it's gone now, dead. I suppose I should thank you. But, do you know, I regret it; I would rather ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... not to call me 'Corky,' didn't I?" He glared at his big brother. "How can you stand there grinning like an imbecile with all this ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... quite out of breath, and holding one little hand against her side, quite unheeding the speechless discomfiture of our party or the complete demoralization of Yuba Bill, whose features had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous and imbecile cheerfulness,—"you see, boys, I was mor'n two miles away when you passed down the road. I thought you might pull up here, and so I ran the whole way, knowing nobody was home but Jim,—and—and—I'm ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... appropriate and educational objects. It should, for the reason given in the footnote, be still ignorant of the Arabic numerals. It should be able to handle a pencil and amuse itself with freehand of this sort:—and its mind should be quite uncontaminated by that imbecile drawing upon squared paper by means of which ignorant teachers destroy both the desire and the capacity to sketch in so many little children. Such sketching could be enormously benefited by a really intelligent teacher who would watch the child's ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... four in number, and fourfold in character. The first is the Apology tyrannical; the second, the Apology imbecile; the third, the Apology absurd; and the fourth, the Apology infamous. That is all. Tyranny, imbecility, absurdity, and infamy all unite to dance, like the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... the woman into whose hands my imbecile curiosity had put the clew was growing greater every minute. It seemed as if Olivia could not be safe now, day or night; yet what protection could I or ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... suppers and suppers on plays; to dine every evening at some place where they hadn't dined before; to meet lots of nice amusing people with demobilised minds who wouldn't talk to him about the war; to let himself go in bursts of exquisitely imbecile laughter; never to be quiet for an hour, never to be alone with himself, never to be ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... proprietor and the waiter like a tug running round two ocean liners. Monsieur Beauchamp could recommend the Barquettes Norvegienne—No? Madame did not so desire? Of course not. He frowned terrifically at the waiter, who glared ferociously at the diminutive waitress. Morbleu! What imbecile suggested Barquettes Norvegienne? Monsieur Beauchamp mentioned other dishes as an overture to the meal, waxing increasingly wrathy towards the waiter on each veto. Ah! monsieur desired Consomme Anton. The proprietor's face beamed and his arms were outstretched towards heaven. That this gentleman ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... ape, there, they seem on very good terms. I wonder if they go to the room of Monsieur Kater! I think so; for one—the ghost in white, he is a little lame like the Englishman who goes always to the room of Monsieur.—Ah, bah! Imbecile! ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... "the safe side" would have no pertinency, even with the imbecile, if man were immortal. It seeks advantage from the fact that every man must die. It tries to paralyse reason with the clutch ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... books. You have not written my plays. Any statement to the contrary is an infamous falsehood. No one else, dead or alive, could ever have written anything which I have written. When I have become an imbecile, which is not likely to happen yet, as I am a vegetarian and do not read your rag, it will be time enough for other people to lay claim to my work. Nor have I ever assisted you in conducting that which you call a paper, nor have I ever written an editorial for its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various

... to realize more and more clearly that while India dreams or wrestles weakly in its sleep, while Europe is still hopelessly and foolishly given over to militant monarchies, racial vanities, delirious religious feuds and an altogether imbecile fumbling with loaded guns, China, even more than America, develops steadily into a massive possibility of ordered ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... archipelago, East or West, is a bad friend to the Republic. We may guide, protect, elevate them, and even teach them some day to stand alone; but if we ever invite them into our Senate and House, to help to rule us, we are the most imbecile of all ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... to the sun, or something, acting on his nervous frame: since then he has been very ill in bed—doctor, anxiety &c. as you may suppose: they are exactly opposite us, at twelve or fifteen feet distance only. Through sentimentality and economy combined, Isa would have no nurse (an imbecile arrangement), and all has been done by her, with me to help: I have sate up four nights out of the last five, and sometimes been there nearly all day beside....[55] He is much better to-day, taken broth, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... justice, must have its part in the making of laws, the administration of affairs, and the regulation of relations in society. It sees, indeed, that necessity rules in all the affairs of man. It knows that where any man, or any number or race of men, are so imbecile of intellect, so degraded, so incapable of self-control, so inferior in the scale of humanity, as to be unfit to be intrusted with the highest prerogatives of citizenship, the great law of necessity, for ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... have disdained. Possibly it was the careless generosity with which Father Goriot allowed himself to be overreached at this period of his life (they called him Monsieur Goriot very respectfully then) that gave Mme. Vauquer the meanest opinion of his business abilities; she looked on him as an imbecile where money ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... do something?" she asked. "Is there nobody to place you where you might be cured? A tragedy? Imbecile, I am comedienne to the finger-tips! What should I do with your tragedy, even if it ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... enlightened Temple alone, who nevertheless appears to have treated him as though he were what the world took him for; and that Francis, who saw these underlined manuscripts, and yet persisted in the conventional view of Boswell, was not a Mid-Victorian prig but a common imbecile. It is true that he has been stupid enough to mangle and emasculate the letters that he was employed to publish; an officious prude unquestionably he was, but no ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... man;[26] and that his good sense, and, above all, his good fortune (ikbal) had preserved the principality entire; but that God only, and the forbearance of the Honourable Company, could now serve it under such an imbecile as the present chief'. He seemed quite melancholy at the thought of living to see this principality, the oldest in Bundelkhand, lose its independence. Even this poor, unclothed, and starving wretch had a feeling of patriotism, a pride of country, though ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Mansolah's carelessness and the imbecile cowardice of his subjects had enabled the Fellatahs to establish themselves in Yarriba, to entrench themselves in its fortified towns, and to obtain the recognition of their independence, until they became sufficiently ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... of the United States, both in theory and practice, is so utterly broken down by the influence and effects of slavery, so imbecile for the highest good of the nation, and so powerful for evil, that I can give no voluntary assistance in holding it up ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... until the small hours of the morning, and then he was in a state that I can only describe, with your permission, as hoggish. He could hardly speak. I had him at my mercy. Neither tact nor wariness was required for the moment. I stripped him to his skin; he only laughed like an imbecile. His eyes had a horrid squint in them; he was hideous. I found five francs in one of his pockets, but neither in his clothes nor on his person ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the English from "the Pale," and to carry his arms across the channel in the quarrel of Richard de la Pole, father of the famous Cardinal, and at this time a formidable pretender to the English throne. The imbecile conduct of the Scottish Regent, the Duke of Albany, destroyed this enterprise, which, however, was but the forerunner, if it was not the model, of several similar combinations. When the Earl of Bothwell took refuge at the English Court, in ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... with an heiress. 'Once a great scientist had invented a new kind of underwear, and had endeavoured to make it a gift to humanity; and here was a man who had seized upon it and made millions out of it! Here was a "trance medium," who had got a fortune out of an imbecile old manufacturer; here was a great newspaper proprietor, who published advertisements of assignations at a dollar a line; here was a cigar manufacturer, whose smug face was upon every billboard—he had begun as a tin manufacturer, and to avoid the duty, he had had his raw material cast in the form ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... ennui, as to put the final and eternal welfare of his soul at issue on the throw of a stone. La Harpe, no correct writer, nor sound critic, affirms, that Rousseau undertook to decide the question of a Superintending Providence by throwing stones at a tree. That would have been not merely an imbecile but a blasphemous act. As the case stood, Jean Jacques must be acquitted of any charge worse than that of excessive and even ridiculous weakness. "Je m'en vais," he says to himself, "je m'en vais jeter cette pierre contre l'arbre qui est vis-a-vis de moi: si je le touche, signe de salut; ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... as splendid as jewelled Mrs. Potiphar, and her palace, thirty feet front. Where were their heads, and their hearts, and their arms? How looks this craven despondency, before the stern virtues of the ages we call dark? When a man is so voluntarily imbecile as to regret he is not rich, if that is what he wants, before he has struck a blow for wealth; or so dastardly as to renounce the prospect of love, because, sitting sighing, in velvet dressing-gown and slippers, he does not see his way clear to ten thousand a year: when young ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... satisfy the proudest of her sons. The French had entered Madrid under pretence of being Spain's allies against Portugal, and Murat, once settled there to his own perfect satisfaction, made no secret of his master's intention to annex the whole peninsula. The imbecile King, Charles IV., had abdicated; his son, Ferdinand VII., was practically a captive in France. The country had, in fact, been sold to Napoleon, neither more nor less, by the infamous Godoy, favourite of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... imbecile trust, Waiting for God to begin, While, growing strong in the dust, Rests the bruised ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... rapture in other days. Both in countenance and manner the elegant voluptuary of our former acquaintance at the Court of Ravenna was entirely and fatally changed. Of the other eight patricians who lay on the couches around their altered host—some wild and reckless, some gloomy and imbecile—all had suffered in the ordeal of the siege, the famine, and the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... otherwise, in the disastrous Turk Countries; but, though willing enough, was never much of a soldier: as to Neipperg, among his own men especially, the one cry is, He ought to go about his business out of Austrian Armies, as an imbecile and even a traitor. "Is it conceivable that Friedrich could have beaten us, in that manner, except by buying Neipperg in the first place? Neipperg and the generality of them, in that luckless Silesian Business? ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... dear gazelle; But I was given a parroquet - (How I did nurse him if unwell!) He's imbecile, but lingers yet. He's green, with an enchanting tuft; He melts me with his small black eye: He'd look inimitable stuff'd, And knows it—but he ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... wasting away,—like a candle burnt down to the socket, flitting and flaring alternately; at one time almost imbecile, at others, talking and planning as if he were in the vigour of his youth. O what a curse it must be—that love of money! I believe—I'm shocked to say so, Philip,—that that poor old man, now on the brink ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... old mother; bedridden 15-year-old boy; water head; simple; old mother feeds it mouth to mouth[14]; "Die kind, leeraart, het ik nou al lang afgege aan de Heere Jesus!" (This child, Pastor, I have given to the Lord Jesus long ago.") She dotes on this imbecile, poor mother. Such a simple, homely, gladsome, believing old heart. "Ik ben velen een wonder geweest" ("I am a wonder unto many"); me certainly; daughter with sick girlie; "De Heere het haar ver ons terug gege" ("The Lord has given her back to us"); there was ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.

... admitted; "I've had something to think about—I've been a fool, Bella; the commonest, most easily gulled kind of imbecile!" ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... you're a fool," said his wife. "Jane is in a desperate state of health, and can't live very long at the best. I believe she's decided to leave her money to Elizabeth, or she never would have invited the child to visit her. Do you want to fly in the face of Providence, you doddering old imbecile?" ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne

... using this doll method of doing so. He kindly allowed me to visit the girl with him, and, being an ordinary mortal and unused to horrible sights, I was shocked at her appearance. She had nasty open sores on her cheeks, arms and forehead. She was certainly an imbecile. Her father was adamant in his belief that "Jadoo" and nothing else accounted for her state. Her imbecility was due, we found, to her having had a fall as a baby. In order to ascertain the cause of the sores the medical officer removed her to the cantonment (Government) hospital, ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... Imbecile, "Ah!" and his breath Comes heavy, as clogged with a weight; While, from the pale aspect of nature in death, He turns to the blaze of his grate; And nearer and nearer, his soft-cushioned chair Is wheeled toward the life-giving flame; He dreads a chill puff of the snow-burdened ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... appeared, expect anybody to get it for him. He just wrote things, things that he thought were adequately imbecile, and shot them into letter-boxes. As to what became of them, Tanqueray had never seen anybody more unsolicitous, more ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... made to believe that the grain which had been sold for supplying the departments below the Loire, is shipped at Paimboeuf and taken out of the kingdom from there to be sold abroad." In the suburbs of Rouen they imagine that grain is purposely "engulfed in the swamps, ponds, and clay-pits." At Laon, imbecile and Jacobin committees attribute the dearness of provisions to the avidity of the rich and the malevolence of the aristocrats according to them, "jealous millionaires grow rich at the expense of the people. They know the popular strength," and, not daring to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... had a fire here, but our people put it out before the parish-engine arrived, like a drivelling perambulator, with the beadle in it, like an imbecile baby. Popular opinion, disappointed in the fire having been put out, snowballed the beadle. God ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... water. The "Tail" has an individual or two of that genus,—and the rest is mainly yet undecided. For example, I knew old —- myself; and can testify, if you will believe me, that few greater blockheads (if "blockhead" may mean "exasperated imbecile" and the ninth part of a thinker) broke the world's bread in his day. Have a care of such! I say always to myself, —and to you, which ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Bonacieux, when her husband had shut the street door and she found herself alone; "that imbecile lacked but one thing to become a cardinalist. And I, who have answered for him to the queen—I, who have promised my poor mistress—ah, my God, my God! She will take me for one of those wretches with whom the palace swarms and ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... a flat with fire-escapes written all over the front of it. The street in front was being repaired. It had been said by imbecile residents of the vicinity that the paving was never allowed to remain down for a sufficient time to be invalided by the tramping millions, but that it was kept perpetually stacked in little mountains through the unceasing vigilance ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane

... be a confirmed imbecile to let this chance go and not resume my authorized position. Ah, his time, without infamy, I can preside at the board where the high officials will gladly sit—I shall have generals at my feet, perhaps a marshal! Yes, I will go home and brazen ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... roads to the feeling of superiority. From that classical imbecile who burnt down the Temple of Diana to the crop of young girls who invent tales of white slavery in order to stand in the public eye as conspicuous victims, notoriety has been mistaken for fame by those desperate for public attention. To be superior some way, even if only in crime ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... individual who broke in upon her was that animated piece of ragged door-mat, Toozle. This imbecile little dog was not possessed of much delicacy of feeling, having been absent on a private excursion of his own into the mountain when the schooner arrived, he only became aware of the return of his lost, loved, and deeply-regretted ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... case was a hopeless one. And when one night we picked him up out of the Union Ditch, a begrimed and weather-worn drunkard, a hopeless debtor, a self-confessed spendthrift, and a half-conscious, maudlin imbecile, we knew that the end had come. The wife he had abandoned had in turn deserted him; the woman he had misled had already realized her folly, and left him with her reproaches; the associates of his reckless life, who had used and abused him, had found him no longer of service, or even amusement, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... the slightest effect in restoring peace to the minds of unscientific Frenchmen. M. Lalande's study was crowded with anxious persons who came to inquire about his memoir. Certain devout folk, 'as ignorant as they were imbecile,' says a contemporary journal, begged the Archbishop of Paris to appoint forty hours' prayer to avert the danger and prevent the terrible deluge. For this was the particular form most men agreed ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... classification then there are three main classes of criminals: (i) The instinctive or born criminal. This is a person in whom the tendency to crime is inborn, and this inborn tendency is always due to some congenital defect. The most common type of the instinctive or born criminal is the moral imbecile, a person only slightly mentally defective who cannot distinguish right from wrong. It is evident that in the instinctive or born criminal biological causes of crime predominate. This class is however relatively small among the general criminal ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... James Denton, with a tinge of bitterness in his voice. "I have never understood how I came to do it. I was a fool—an imbecile—a lunatic, Miss Marvin. I married the girl without even dreaming that I ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... still passes for a furious ranter among people of some intelligence. But for all that, this is the sum and substance of his theory: It installs in the political establishment, over the heads of delegated, regular, and legal powers an anonymous, imbecile, and terrific power whose decisions are absolute, whose projects are constantly adopted, and whose intervention is sanguinary. This power is that of the crowd, of a ferocious, suspicious sultan, who, appointing his viziers, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... as if he were wondering if there was a clause in the Rule that forbade a prior to throw anything within reach at an imbecile sacristan. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... "O imbecile, I saw you hungry in the field and took pity on you; so I picked up for you some grain and took hold of you that you might eat; but you fled from me, and I know not the cause of your flight, except it were to put upon me a slight. Come out, then, and take the grain ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... country. He had a sister on board, whom he faithfully neglected throughout the voyage, though she was not only sick, but much his senior, and had nursed and cared for him in childhood. In appearance he was like an imbecile Henry the Third of France. The Scotsman, though perhaps as big an ass, was not so dead of heart; and I have only bracketed them together because they were fast friends, and disgraced themselves equally by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sympathy for an honest Academician plus bete que nature, his hate for an architect plus mauvais que la gale; he is in the thick of it all. He feels with the Duc de Mora and with Felicia Ruys—and he lets you see it. He does not sit on a pedestal in the hieratic and imbecile pose of some cheap god whose greatness consists in being too stupid to care. He cares immensely for his Nabobs, his kings, his book-keepers, his Colettes, and his Saphos. He vibrates together with his universe, and with lamentable ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... his daughter Dreux, the only one of the family to whom it was possible to speak with profit. The mother, with little wit and knowledge of the Court, full of apparent confidence and sham cunning, received all advice ill. The brothers were imbecile, the son was a child and a simpleton, the two other daughters too light-headed. I had often warned Madame de Dreux of the enmity of the Duchesse de Bourgogne; and she had spoken to her on the subject. The Princess ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... one should not enter it? The facts, as I read them, are something like this: This woman was married in America. Her husband developed some hateful qualities, or, shall we say, that he contracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile. She fled from him at last, returned to England, changed her name, and started her life, as she thought, afresh. She had been married three years, and believed that her position was quite secure—having shown her husband the death certificate of some man, whose name she had assumed—when ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... held to be true the statements of the good Sire Harduin and of the innkeeper Tortebras. By her who speaks has it been replied, that she recognised as evidence the greater part, and also as malicious, calumnious, and imbecile certain portions. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Imbecile" :   simpleton, mongoloid, retarded, imbecility, simple



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