"Stupid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are very big and blubbering, show a person to be credulous, foolish, dull and stupid, and apt to be enticed to anything. Lips of a different size denote a person to be discreet, secret in all things, judicious and of a good wit, but somewhat hasty. To have lips, well coloured and more thin than thick, shows a person to be good-humoured in all things ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... He was a stupid, heavy, good-natured Englishman. He stuttered a little, and had a peculiar habit of wedging the monosyllable "why" into his conversation at times when it served no other purpose than to fill up the pauses caused by his stuttering; but this ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... of purpose to crystallize her, she cannot absorb even the gravest of warnings; not from unwillingness or stupid obstinacy, but from sheer inability to grasp any novelty. That her beloved master and mistress—either or both—should not have the best of everything and plenty of it is, at this advanced stage in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... it was to say pleasant things. It was easy—too fatally easy. When I discovered how popular this made me I kept on. I continued for myself what I had really begun for others. Insensibly I acquired skill. I was not stupid. I had rather a gift for character—and could say exactly the thing to each one to flatter them the most. I found that I took pleasure in the exercise of such cleverness. There was a feeling of power in it—playing with the foibles and weaknesses of men and women. I did not see that I was often ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... individuals to a town throughout the North who think much as the present speaker does about him and his enterprise. I do not hesitate to say that they are an important and growing party. We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in. Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... "No;—but Sicily is stupid generally. It's all ridiculous, Philip. Except for the name of the thing, one can get just as good nearer home. I could get better sport at Appledore last summer, than in any place I've been ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... anything in particular, unless it was noted for Squire Walker, as Mount Vernon was noted for Washington, and Monticello for Jefferson. No doubt the squire thought he was as great a man as either of these, and that the world was strangely stupid because it did not find out how great a man he really was. It was his misfortune that he was born in the midst of stirring times, when great energy, great genius, and the most determined patriotism are ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... which I was to take a path that would lead me to a group of trees, where I should find the Headquarters of the 16th Battalion. When I got to the quarry I found many roads there, and whether it was that the information I had received was incorrect, or that I was more than usually stupid, I do not know. I wandered up and down for a long time, tripping over bits of wire and slipping into holes, before I was able to get to the top of the hill and look over in the direction of the German lines. At last I found a track which had evidently been used by men going up to the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... before the "coup d'etat" pronounced Bonaparte the "Guardian of Order" and Thiers and Berryer "Anarchists," and as early as December 27, 1851, after Bonaparte had silenced those very Anarchists, cries out about the treason committed by "the ignorant, untrained and stupid proletaires against the skill, knowledge, discipline, mental influence, intellectual resources an moral weight of the middle and upper ranks." The stupid, ignorant and contemptible mass was none other than ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... "Stupid!" "Silly creature!" "The girl's a blockhead!" "Where's her eyes, I wonder?" shouted the carpenters, after the manner of carmen and stage drivers, when you narrowly escape being run over by their carelessness, at ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... me any more, I flatly forbid it. I believe you don't like my books, and want to make me say I won't give you any more if you make me any more socks; and then you will make me some more in order not to get the books. No, I will let you read my stupid books in manuscript and help me that way. If you like to make me a kettle- holder, you may, for I only have one just now, and I like to have two because I always mislay one; but I won't have people working their fingers out to ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... to-night the other guests were an elderly couple by the name of Bellamy and a rather stupid, middle-aged bachelor,—Mr. Crosby. These with the two Van Reypens and Patty made up the ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... suppose for a second that Irene is a nice girl; but between Rosamund—who, I must own, is very plucky—and this mite Agnes, who is devoted to her, she is quite quiet and amenable, and she is no doubt passionately fond of that stupid, inane little Agnes. Now, I mean to get Agnes from her. You must help me, Phyllis. How are we ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... respectable house and farm on the verge of the pretty little village of Lissoy, in West Meath. Here the schoolmistress who first put a book into Oliver Goldsmith's hands confessed, "Never was so dull a boy; he seemed impenetrably stupid." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... gratified to the utmost, by being shouldered about, and elbowed right and left, on all sides. Some of these had muddy sandals and umbrellas, and stained garments: having trudged in from the country. The faces of the greater part were as coarse and heavy as their dress; their dogged, stupid, monotonous stare at all the glory and splendour, having something in it, half ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... common in folk tales. Giants are often represented as not only big but also stupid, and as easily overcome by keen-witted human foes like "Jack the Giant-killer." It may be that traditions of pre- historic peoples have sometimes given birth to legends of giants. Another source of stories ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... that the painter, like many another man endowed with imaginative gifts, had little practical knowledge of affairs beyond a talent for spending money; and it is amazing how stupid a clever man can contrive to be when he is taken out of his sphere. For such men there is no safety save in keeping out of debt, and once the balance was on the wrong side of his account, Fenton, self-poised as he was, lost his head. It troubled and worried him to be in debt even ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... pretence of buying something. She'll probably have some perfumery sent from there—to-morrow, I think.—Bah! it's sickening, isn't it? It's their affair. Well! what about my letter? Is it what I told you that makes you so stupid? You played the prude—I didn't know—Oh! yes, yes, now I remember; that's what it is—What was it you said to me about the little one? I believe you didn't want anyone ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... a little hastily, but will scarcely perceive it and will think it of little consequence. But his attacks will grow stronger; your words will grow more hasty; there will be frettings and worryings; and you will be so stupid that you will not be aware of your backsliding. Do not cease your watching and praying even if you have no temptations. Alas, how many have gone down under this cunning device of Satan! This is a scheme he ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... the Spirit, this speech was quite unexpected, And he stood in a sort of stupid dismay; And before his few scattered thoughts were collected, She rightly concluded—he'd Nothing to Say. Then she lifted her skirts with a masterly hand, And out of the puddles and ruts kept them well up,— Thus showed that she had the most perfect command Of the crinoline mysteries ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... a wretchedly thin field out again yesterday," said Mrs. Hoopington. "Why you didn't bring one or two hunting men down with you, instead of that stupid Russian ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... applicability or non-applicability of the Christian precept to his own case was too difficult a question to be discussed lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by Alexey Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all that had been said, what stuck most in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured Turovtsin—"Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!" Everyone had apparently shared this feeling, though from politeness they had not ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Nessus said. "How stupid of me not to think of it, for in the desert we make all our rope of twisted slips of hide. If you will stand sentry here, my lord, I will ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... said Bert. "Though how any one can get to like a doll, with such stupid eyes as they have, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... this a little hard to do at first, but he confessed that it grew easier as he saw more of Miss Casey. He attributed his reform to her entirely. She had made the semi-political, semi-social organizations to which he belonged appear stupid, and especially so when he lost his money playing poker in the club-room (for the club had only one room), when he might have put it away for her. He liked to talk with her about the neighbors in the tenement, and his chance of political advancement to the ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... churchman. But the Dominican who kept Philip's conscience, Gasparo de Cordova by name, was, fortunately for the favourite, of a very tender paste, easily moulded to the duke's purpose. Dull and ignorant enough, he was not so stupid as to doubt that, should he whisper any suggestions or criticisms in regard to the minister's proceedings, the king would betray him and he would lose his office. The cautious friar accordingly held his peace and his place, and there was none to dispute ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dead. It was soon discovered that Pierre had only swooned. Water was dashed upon his face. He revived and stared about vacantly. Slowly what had happened dawned upon his mind, but he seemed stupid, saying nothing. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... not so easy to say. She was of course reconciled, she sobbed, to Evelyn marrying some day: only plain and stupid girls were left to be old maids: but it must not happen for years and years and years to come, and when it did, it must be to some one much older than herself, some one she did not greatly care for: in short, Evelyn was to marry only to escape the ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... always pretendest to be stupid when I want to borrow a little bit of thy wisdom. Thou art like the rich man who tells the beggar that he has no money. By the way, I must not forget that I always send money to the poor children on my birthday. Come, tell me which of the heaps I shall send to-day—these small coins, ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... minute, trying to screw up courage to speak to her. She wanted to ask her if she had seen the advertisement. She did not know why she wanted to ask her this, but she wanted to. How stupid not to be able to speak to her. She looked so kind. She looked so unhappy. Why couldn't two unhappy people refresh each other on their way through this dusty business of life by a little talk—real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would have liked, what ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... said Miss Elizabeth, quietly. "People are very stupid. They don't know what will freshen themselves up. They think the trouble is with the confectionery, and so they try macaroon and pistachio instead of lemon and vanilla. Fresh people are better than fresh flavors. But I think ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... "What! Marion forgotten?" I exclaimed, "Marion forgotten! and by me!" No, never! never! while memory looks back on the dreadful days of the revolution; when a British despot, not the NATION, (for I esteem them most generous,) but a proud, stupid, obstinate, DESPOT, trampling the HOLY CHARTER and constitution of England's realm, issued against us, (sons of Britons,) that most unrighteous edict, TAXATION without REPRESENTATION! and then, because in the spirit of our gallant fathers, we bravely opposed him, he broke up the very ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... that when he was jogging with me lazily, and rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I patted his neck and said, "Stubbs, I am surprised you don't canter when you know how much I like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only getting stupid and going to sleep," he would give his head a comical shake or two and set off directly, while Charley would stand still and laugh with such enjoyment that her laughter was like music. I don't know who had given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as naturally ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles leaves me without a single one. In the early days you used to bother me with looking after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very long for me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... purposes, as to say that the sea-comb is sought for the adornment of the hair, the fish named sea-hawk to catch birds, the fish named the little boar for the hunting of boars, or the sea-skull to raise the dead. My reply to these lying fabrications, which are as stupid as they are absurd, is that I have never attempted to acquire these playthings of the sea, these tiny trifles of the shore, either ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... as Fanny Brandeis, that was a stupid conclusion at which to arrive. How could she think it possible to shed her past life, like a garment? Those impressionable years, between fourteen and twenty-four, could never be cast off. She might don a new cloak to cover ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the other men came round, and Godfrey thought he had never seen more villainous faces. Some of them were heavy, stolid, and stupid; others were ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Swartboy made a long speech, in which the Kaffir was requested to report himself as a fool for having fallen into a pit,—that he had shown himself more stupid than the sea-cows, that had apparently ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... I have served for, Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest, I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches, I have given aims to every one that ask'd, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others, Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown, Gone freely with powerful ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... mesmerist, I elect to will the reader—that is, if natural slumber has not ere this put him beyond my control—across the frontier, into the back parlour of Mrs. L.'s tobacco store. There I am operating on a boy—such a stupid little Flemish boy that no amount of fluid could ever make him clever. How I came to treat him to passes I don't remember; probably I used him as an object-lesson to amuse Carry. All I recollect is that I gave him a key to hold, and made him ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... dear, you must make them tell me every least little thing that happens. You know they are such fly-aways that they'll only write me when they learn to swim, or shoot a wildcat, or get lost in the woods. I want to know all the stupid bits: what you have for dinner, how and where you sleep, how your camp looks, what you do from morning till night, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the murder of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really worthy one to ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... two to ten dollars. Once they had it a hundred and sixty dollars. "The devil is in the money!" exclaimed the horse-dealer; "I'm certain I counted right." "And so am I!" said the woman; "I can not be mistaken. It is you who have made the mistake. You always were a stupid old fool about money!" This she said with some degree of asperity, for she was evidently displeased at the whole proceeding. "A fool, eh? A fool!" muttered the old man; "you do well to call me a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... to learn to ride like that," announced Rosalie Breeze. "The idea of bouncing up and down in a stupid old side-saddle when we could just as well sit as Polly and Peggy do. Why, I never saw anything as graceful as those two girls in my life. Can't you show me how, Dawson? If you can't you can just make up your ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... getting on famously. That is Rose herself—as radiant as she appears on the stage, when the focus of a lorgnette has excluded all the stupid and ennuyantes figures that ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... clamor for a job; the satisfied, brutal egotism of Brome Porter, who lived as if life were a huge poker game; the overfed, red-cheeked Caspar, whom he remembered to have seen only once before, when the young polo captain was stupid drunk; the silly young cub of a Hitchcock. Even the girl was one of them. If it weren't for the women, the men would not be so keen on the scent for gain. The women taught the men how to spend, created the needs ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... be much wiser and more sagacious. But this his [77]Learned Antagonist utterly denies; Whole Nations, Flesh-Devourers (such as the farthest Northern) becoming Heavy, Dull, Unactive, and much more Stupid than the Southern; and such as feed much on Plants, are more Acute, Subtil, and of deeper Penetration: Witness the Chaldaeans, Assyrians, AEgyptians, &c. And further argues from the short Lives of most Carnivorous Animals, compared with Grass Feeders, ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... Susan," said he, looking reflectively in front of him, "that our lives are very seldom built with a hall through the middle and the rooms alike on both sides. I don't think we'd like it if they were. They would be stupid and humdrum. The right sort of a life should have its ups and downs, its ins and outs, its different levels, its outside stairs and its inside stairs, its balconies, windows and roofs of different periods and different styles. This is education. These things are the advantages ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... paid? And more than that, it had been given in a fraud. He had no money when he gave it, and no prospect of any but what he was to get from those worthless shares. Would anybody believe him that it was only a stupid blunder of his own? Yes, his partners might believe him; but, horrible thought, he had already implicated THEM in his fraud! Even now, while he was standing there hesitatingly in the road, they were entering upon the new claim he had NOT PAID FOR—COULD NOT PAY FOR—and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... that country. A national faith is so great a blessing, that we seldom find it granted a second time to those, who, by imitating the ingratitude of the Jews, have drawn upon themselves the like terrible chastisement. St. Vedast found the infidels stupid and obstinate; yet persevered, till by his patience, meekness, charity, and prayers, he triumphed over bigoted superstition and lust, and planted throughout that country the faith and holy maxims of Christ. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... platform of a railway-station waiting for a train. In all this time, the agitated, nervous presence of my Father, whose pale face was permanently drawn with anxiety, added to my perturbation, and I became miserable, stupid—as if I had lost my way in ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Gwen's scheme had been that Mrs. Masham should play the part Widow Thrale seemed to fill so easily. It had failed. The fact is that nothing but sympathy with vulgarity gives what is called tact, and in this case the Guardian Angel's scorn of the stupid reservations and distinctions of the servantry at the Towers had quite ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... to a speech about womanly women. And then—just as I was settling down with a sigh of well-earned relief to The Portrait of a Lady, a girl named Ackerly, a dough-faced, deadly, unintermittently stupid girl, who sits next to me in Latin because her name begins with A (I wish Mrs. Lippett had named me Zabriski), came to ask if Monday's lesson commenced at paragraph 69 or 70, and stayed ONE HOUR. She has ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... far as a foreigner may judge, the dialogue seems stilted and uniform, the characters, with certain obvious exceptions, rather types than persons. In the old fighting days it was necessary to praise Ghosts with extravagance, because the vituperation of the enemy was so stupid and offensive, but now that there are no serious adversaries left, cooler judgment admits—not one word that the idiot-adversary said, but—that there are more convincing plays ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... a stupid afternoon," said Muriel, on her return, "one of those tiresome duty visits that have to be paid now and then, ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... wretched, goes to the fire and puts a log on. Mrs. Dudgeon unbars the door and opens it, letting into the stuffy kitchen a little of the freshness and a great deal of the chill of the dawn, also her second son Christy, a fattish, stupid, fair-haired, round-faced man of about 22, muffled in a plaid shawl and grey overcoat. He hurries, shivering, to the fire, leaving Mrs. Dudgeon ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... them think it was respectable, they do serve lunches at some of them; of course they didn't know what kind of a place it was. And after they wuz made stupid drunk they didn't know ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... generation, and all the book and lecture privileges of the present time; and then there are the rising generation of apprentices—the sons of steam and of railroads. Among all it would be difficult to find a bad-shaped head, or a stupid face—as for a drunkard not one. It was once remarked to us by a gentleman at the head of a great establishment of this kind, that there was something about the labour of skilled workmen in iron that impressed itself upon their countenances, and showed itself ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... came, Findelkind sat by the edge of the bright pure water among the flowering grasses, and felt his heart heavy. Findelkind of Arlberg who was in heaven now must look down, he fancied, and think him so stupid and so selfish, sitting there. The first Findelkind, a few centuries before, had trotted down on his bare feet from his mountain pass, and taken his little crook, and gone out boldly over all the land on his pilgrimage, and knocked at castle gates and city walls in Christ's ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... grass shack of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderful pearl—glanced for a moment only; and carelessly he dropped it ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Tree Inn, and I see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable litter, among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting to be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village. A heavy animal,—the dullest animal in the stables,—with a stupid head, and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been, within the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of putting a possible accuser ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... and going to speak: but he stamped with his foot, and said, Begone! I tell you: I cannot bear this stupid romantic folly. ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... force the complacent aspect of a mind unabashed, but felt that he made a stupid show before that clear-headed, virtuously-living old, man of iron nerves. The alternative to flying into a passion, was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sore on the yacht and all the stupid folks on it; so she wanders out to windward of the worst smells, plants herself on the flattest rock she can find, and prepares to read. That's her pose when she looks up and discovers this male party with the ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... three animals that people persist in calling stupid, when they are only strong-minded and more intelligent than the other animals," said Kit Summers, quietly breaking into ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... exclaimed Clara, as soon as they were out of hearing. "Now we have to go along that horrid, stupid path that poor unfortunate is so fond of! If mamma had to go there herself, she would know ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... your hand—both hands; here is the ancestral bracelet—it shall pinch me no longer, neither my wrist nor my heart; here's the brooch you gave me—I won't be pinned to it any longer, nor to you neither; and there is your bunch of charms; and there is your bundle of love-letters—stupid ones they are;" and she crammed all the aforesaid treasures into his hands one after the other. So this was what she went ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... wait until after breakfast?" and Godfrey forced himself into a sitting posture. "I was out late last night, and drank too much wine. I feel confoundedly stupid, and the uproar that you have been making for the last hour at the door has given me an awful headache. But what is the matter with you, Tony? You look like a spectre. Are you ill? or have you, like me, been too ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... me, I cannot, will not give her up! No, I cannot!—no, I will not! Why should I not love her? Is she not pure as Mary herself? Ah, blessed is he whom such a woman leads! And I—I—have condemned myself to the society of swinish, ignorant, stupid monks,—I must know no such divine souls, no such sweet communion! Help me, blessed Mary!—help ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... that they are going to fight all over again—don't you understand? You are so stupid! What could they have had to quarrel about but me? O God! Thou art just! This is indeed punishment—too much punishment ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... infinitesimal gradations: some men are very short, others rather short, others medium-sized, others tall, and yet others again of portentous stature like Mr. Chang and Jacob Omnium. So, too, some men are idiots, some are next door to a fool, some are stupid, some are worthy people, some are intelligent, some are clever, and some geniuses. But genius is only the culminating point of ordinary cleverness, and if you were to try and draw up a list of all the real geniuses in the last hundred years, no two people ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... of that learned and not illiberal Barberini, Pope Urban the Eighth, under whose long reign the Copernican system was put on trial, who believed in that system as Galileo did, who read his books and talked with him; and who, when the stupid technicalities of the ecclesiastic courts declared the laws of the universe to be nonsense, gave his voice against the decision, though he could not officially annul it without scandal. 'It was not my intention,' said the Pope in the presence of witnesses, 'to condemn Galileo. If the matter ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... believe I looked very guilty. After sitting for a few minutes longer I got up to go, when to my horror the merchant rose also. The old ladies made no effort to detain him, but Miss Martha's face spoke volumes as we left the house. Half mad with vexation, I could hardly help asking him why he was stupid enough to come away just at the moment I had chosen for leaving; but he forestalled the inquiry by a voluntary explanation. He wished to speak to me. He had ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... reflection. One represents to you civilization stunted, repressed; he comprehends everything, the honor of the galleys, patriotism, virtue, the malice of a vulgar crime, or the fine astuteness of elegant wickedness. Another is resigned, a perfect mimer, but stupid. All have slight yearnings after order and work, but they are pushed back into their mire by society, which makes no inquiry as to what there may be of great men, poets, intrepid souls, and splendid organizations among these vagrants, these gypsies of Paris; a people ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... (its theme) have no terrors for me even in mixed company. But the joke was not the really serious thing about The Foundations, a play that starts (some years hence) with a mob of starving people yelling outside the house—dear, stupid, kindly Lord William Dromondy's house. Lord William was a god of an infantry captain in the great War, and his four footmen—particularly James, the first of them—though revolutionaries at heart, are ready to stand between their master and any other revolutionaries in London town. ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... deny to the latter great value and high consideration. It is nearer to us; beyond the control of foreign legislation; and undisturbed by those vicissitudes to which all inter-national intercourse is more or less exposed. The most stupid are sensible of the benefit of a residence in the vicinity of a large manufactory, or of a market-town, of a good road, or of a navigable stream, which connects their farms with some great capital. If the pursuits of all men were perfectly the same, although they would be in possession ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... what it almost amounts to now in Germany, and it is for this reason, no less than to escape military service, that so many millions of Germans have immigrated to this country. Unlike the vast majority of the bourgeois and lower classes, a kindly but stupid people, they were born with an alertness of mind and an energy of character which gave them the impetus to transfer themselves to a land where life might be harder but where soul and body could attain to a complete independence. Their present attitude is, however unconsciously, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... itself plainly, the Mazzinists noisily. Europe must be very stupid, not to understand the one; very deaf, not to hear ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... wife's cleverness, and good-natured men are pleased by his innocent boasting. The most pleasant of households may be found in cases where a clever, good-humoured, dexterous woman rules over a sweet-tempered but somewhat stupid man. She respects his manhood, he adores her as a superior being, and they live a life of pure happiness. But, sad to say, the husband is not usually good-humouredly willing to acknowledge his partner's superiority, and in that case the girl's doom ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... (H.) is made of this fungus, and its spores, rubbed up with inert sugar of milk powdered, and it proves an effective remedy against dull, stupid, sleepy headache, with passive itchy pimples about the skin. From five to ten grains of the trituration, diluted to the third decimal strength, should be given twice a day, with a little water, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the States General were with them, but the majority of the populace of the towns was with the Prince of Orange; and that populace was played off with great effect by the triumvirate of * * * Harris, the English Ambassador, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, the Prince of Orange, a stupid man, and the Princess, as much a man as either of her colleagues, in audaciousness, in enterprise, and in the thirst of domination. By these, the mobs of the Hague were excited against the members of the States ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at all, stupid?" said Cinq-Mars. "That is not thy business. I told thee to remain ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... soon to drop out of mind, and to be of no further consequence in the determination of conduct. But further, this misuse of reason, this inciting of the mind to memorise facts unrelated except by their mere accidental time or space relations, will if persisted in tend to render the individual dull, stupid, and unimaginative. ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... patiently to impart; he wondered, indeed, if she were not unduly frivolous even for a child of six; for she would refuse to study unless she could have the doll she called Bishop Wright with her and pretend that she taught the lesson to him, finding him always stupid and loth to learn. He hoped for better things from her mind as she aged, watching anxiously for the buddings of reason and religion, praying daily that she should be increased in wisdom as in stature. He had become so used to the look of her mother in her face that it now and then gave ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Play-master wrote a work of five-and-twenty volumes about the toy bird: it was so learned and so long, full of the most difficult Chinese words, that all the people said they had read it and understood it, or else they would have been thought stupid, and would have had their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... progeny, buoying them up in case the current should prove too strong and carry them down. If there are eggs still unhatched, the father, when disturbed, takes the little ones away to a safer spot, whilst the mother sticks to the nest. But they are rather stupid, for even the day after the eggs are hatched, on being disturbed by a casual passer-by, the old cock swims out into mid stream. He then calls to his tiny progeny to follow him, though they are utterly incapable of doing so, and generally come to hopeless grief in the attempt. Then ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of course, accounts for my getting no answer," said Holmes. "Dear me, how very stupid of me, to be sure! Good morning, miss, and many thanks for having relieved my mind." He chuckled and rubbed his hands when we found ourselves in the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Me-thinkes a Father, Is at the Nuptiall of his sonne, a guest That best becomes the Table: Pray you once more Is not your Father growne incapeable Of reasonable affayres? Is he not stupid With Age, and altring Rheumes? Can he speake? heare? Know man, from man? Dispute his owne estate? Lies he not bed-rid? And againe, do's nothing But what he did, being childish? Flo. No good Sir: He has his health, and ampler strength indeede ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... science were making them far more dangerous than they had ever been before. He believed that the evil and horror of war was becoming more and more tremendous with every decade, and that the free play of national prejudice and that stupid filching ambitiousness that seems to be inseparable from monarchy, were bound to precipitate catastrophe, unless a real international aristocracy could be brought into being to ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... unaccustomed to such encounters, and, although the space between us and the brow of the precipice, was not three feet wide, they all contrived to sway their bodies and heavy sacks in such a manner as to pass us safely, except one. He, more stupid or more unlucky than the rest, struck us a full broad-side as he went by jolting us hard against the hill, and well-nigh jolting himself down the craggy descent into the abyss below. One leg hung a moment ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Have I read the New Mirror so much (to say nothing of the graceful things coined under a bridge, and a thousand other pages flung from the inner heart) and not learned who has an eye for everything pretty? Not so stupid, Cousin Bel, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Poor old England still barges in whenever there is a fight going on, and gets her head knocked, and goes on fighting just the same, and never knows that she is heroic, but blunders on—simple-hearted, stupid, sublime! ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... answered, 'you are stupid. Do you imagine I should worry myself like this if I didn't?' She smiled through her tears. She knew from her father's tone that ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... and a foreigner, Mallet du Pan, exclaims,[3350] "What! twenty thousand families absolutely ignorant of the Coblentz plans and of its assemblies, twenty thousand families dispersed over the soil of Europe by the fury of clubs, by the crimes of brigands, by constant lack of security, by the stupid and cowardly inertia of petrified authorities, by the pillage of estates, by the insolence of it cohort of tyrants without bread or clothes, by assassinations and incendiarism, by the base servility of silent ministers, by the whole series of revolutionary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I can't see that you have any books on the old houses about here. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn't been much explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. My cousin's house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past—it must have been more of a place once." He stopped short, with the blush of a shy man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. "I'm an architect, you see, and I'm hunting up old houses ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... lose them one by one, This stupid coward throng? And never shall the wolf have done? They were at least a thousand strong, But still they've let poor Robin fall a prey! Ah, woe's the day! Poor Robin Wether lying dead! He follow'd for a bit of bread His master through the crowded city, And would have follow'd, had ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... "Pshaw! you stupid!" she said, with a bewitching pout, "if you had been a little more civil, you would have known that I am Mrs. Thornton's daughter—not Mr. Thornton's; that mamma is mamma, but papa ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... good thing I was not there at that time, for at the sight of tears in the faces of those dear women I would have been driven to sheer madness. I believe I would have taken a club to the hard-hearted or stupid Tescheron and murdered him with mince-meat minuteness in the presence of the gossipers lolling around the fireplace in the living-room. At the time of the tearful scene between mother and daughter, a dramatic passage that ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... made him come home to our nature, in a way that it feels but cannot talk of. And he seemed to be of the past somehow, although so young and bright and brave; of the time when greater things were done, and men would die for women. That he should woo three maids in vain, to me was a stupid old woman's tale. ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... sent under guard to the D———regiment for identification; and if he were found to be a Hans and not a Tommy—well, though he had tried a very stupid dodge he must have known what to expect when he was found out, if his officers had properly trained him in German rules ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... my gig; and I had my friend Mr. Brooke as a companion, who was likewise attended by a sampan and crew he had taken with him to Sarawak from Singapore. His coxswain, Seboo, we shall all long remember: he was civil only to his master, and, I believe, brave while in his company. He was a stupid-looking and powerfully-built sort of savage, always praying, eating, smiling, or sleeping. When going into action, he always went down on his knees to pray, holding his loaded musket before him. He was, however, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... set of stupid fools, To think the skipper knows by tasting, What ground he's on; Nantucket schools Don't teach such stuff; with all ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... said the captain's sister. 'See how lovely you all looked with your big guns and uniform when you entered Markton; and then see how stupid the parsons look by comparison, when they flock into ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... subsequent perusal of his own work, what an egregious blunder he had committed?"—"Very true," said I; "for if he wrote with a design to discredit the measures which he represents in such an odious light, nothing could be more stupid than not to commence his dialogue at a period which was subsequent to those measures. But he so entirely forgets himself, as to tell us, that he did not choose to attend a Senate which was held in one of Caesar's future ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... out what had been a fiddle, crushed to morsels in the great- coat, he blubbered aloud; and Cathy, when she learned the master had lost her whip in attending on the stranger, showed her humour by grinning and spitting at the stupid little thing; earning for her pains a sound blow from her father, to teach her cleaner manners. They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room; and I had no more sense, so I put ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... is wagging with the strong and untiring regularity of a pendulum, and a smirk of welcome and recognition is on her face. Roger's arm is round me, and we are holding each other's hands, but we are no longer in heaven. I could not tell you why, but we are not. Some stupid constraint—quite of earth—has fallen upon me. Where are all those most tender words, those profuse endearments with which I meant to ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... busy clearing the snow from the horses' hoofs. The driver, stupid or dazed, sat on the box, helpless as a parrot on ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... marry you for? For your face that she can never see? No! For your heart that is one with her own. Trust to her natural good sense—and, better than that, to the devoted love that you have inspired in her. She will see her stupid prejudice in its true light, when she feels it trying to part ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... an ass merely, he is a pompous and a stupid ass. (Laughs again to himself.) Now there is something very important that he ought to know, and he wouldn't let ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... on the other hand, while the nation stagnated and decayed in political nullity and indolent opulence, the theological monopoly of the nobility, stupid fatalism, wild and meaningless mysticism, the system of soothsaying and of mendicant prophecy gradually developed themselves, till they reached the height at which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... who are both now with God." The second wife, Elizabeth, survived her husband. Administration of his goods was granted to her as the widow of an intestate in May, 1695.[5] The fine old manor-house at Newton was pulled down by a stupid land-agent within the memory of man, but a stone has been found built into the wall of a house half-a-mile from the site, bearing the inscription "H^VE, 1689." This may well stand for H[enry and] E[lizabeth] V[aughan]. Newton probably passed to the poet's eldest son Thomas and ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... you are eighty years old," said Blucher, puffing his pipe, "and at that age few persons are able to sing. But I should really like to hear again a merry native song. I have not heard one for fifty years, for here, you see, Hennemann, people are so stupid and ignorant as not ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... laborers, and others wandered about with their hooks over their shoulders. There was a larger, less distinct crowd out on the tracks. Bannon ran through an opening in the fence, and pushed into the largest group. Here Peterson and Vogel were talking to a stupid-looking man with a ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... "Looks very stupid," commented Mrs. Rexford, hastily pulling in her head and speaking within the room. "But still, one must not lose a chance." Then with head again outside, she continued, "Do you understand me, my good girl? ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... closely connected with the development of the sympathetic feelings. The better we can imagine objects and relations not present to sense, the more readily we can sympathize with other people. Half the cruelty in the world is the direct result of stupid incapacity to put one's self in the other man's place. So closely inter-related are our intellectual and moral natures that the development of sympathy is very considerably determined by increasing width and variety ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... the second step that costs? The four fellows knew as well as you did—everyone except the tenderfoot novelist knows—that in nearly every instance, a freshly backed colt is like a fish out of water; stupid, puzzled, half-sulky, half-docile. It is at the second backing that he is ready to contest the question of fitness for survival; he has had time to think the matter over, and to note the one-sidedness ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... measures was very remarkable. Awkward as the people were, they were not stupid, and learned to work with unexpected rapidity. More wonderful was the change in their manners, appearances and the very expression of their countenances. Cheerfulness and gratitude replaced the gloom of misery ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the reader to enlarge upon this process of stupid or hypocritical purgation, whereby the writings of men like Doni and Straparola were stripped of their reflections on the clergy, while their indecencies remained untouched; or to show how Ariosto's Comedies were sanctioned, when his Satires, owing to their free speech upon the Papal Court, received ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... cedar, I have one thing more to say. We Americans have a country abounding in beautiful timber, of whose beauties we know nothing, on account of the pernicious and stupid habit of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... encouragement to come out openly on his side. They were Germans who lay on Burgoyne's left and Burgoyne sent Colonel Baum, an efficient officer, with five or six hundred men to attack the New Englanders and bring in the supplies. It was a stupid blunder to send Germans among a people specially incensed against the use of these mercenaries. There was no surprise. Many professing loyalists, seemingly eager to take the oath of allegiance, met and delayed Baum. When near ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong |
