"Stupidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sprinted for the river, Tom in the lead, Hippy a close second. He wondered why he had not thought of the gates, and chided himself for his stupidity. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... in his turn found that Headley was a rational and sweet-tempered man, who, even where he had made up his mind to differ, could hear an adverse opinion, put sometimes in a startling shape, without falling into any of those male hysterics of sacred horror, which are the usual refuge of ignorance and stupidity, terrified by what it cannot refute. And soon Tom began to lay aside the reserve which he usually assumed to clergymen, and to tread on ground which Headley would gladly have avoided. For, to tell the truth, ever since Tom had heard of Grace's intended dismissal, the curate's opinions ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... considerables—who, however, had signed their names in "lower case" or with a Maltese cross—the world in miniature, with its due proportion of petty graft, petty squabbles, envy, kindness, jealousy, generosity, laziness, ambition, stupidity, intelligence, honesty, hypocrisy, hatred, affection, badness and goodness, as standardised by the code established according to folk-ways on earth—in brief, a perfectly human community composed of the usual ingredients, worthy and unworthy—that was Gayfield, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Michelson was amazed, one day, by hearing from her master that the establishment was to be broken up. We cleared the house of all the servants but one, who was kept for domestic purposes, and whose lumpish stupidity we could trust to make no embarrassing discoveries. When they were gone, nothing remained but to relieve ourselves of Mrs. Michelson—a result which was easily achieved by sending this amiable lady to find lodgings for ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... over the heads of the good folks of Lanport, without numberless recriminations on the stupidity which had been displayed in not arresting the stranger before it was too late; and the ferment was not lessened on the arrival of another copy of the —— Journal, which contained a paragraph headed with the glittering words, "ONE THOUSAND ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... Irish Martin, the newest, the smallest, and the stupidest—if a quick heart and a willing will can be stupid—of them all. Some stupidity is only brightness not properly ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... certain cases, produces insanity. It also kills ambition and creates hopeless, indifferent persons. Therefore, made wiser by psychology we realize the importance of stirring the mind out of a fixed rut, or rather a stupidity that verges on somnambulism, and keeping it alert and active. Sheep growers, for example, try in every way to divert the minds of their shepherds lest the continual watching of a slowly moving flock paralyze their ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... dog. "That was a low thing for a man to do now, wasn't it? It wasn't like a man, that, nohow. But I got even with him: I pisoned his dog." His clumsy utterance, his rude embarrassed manner, set a fresh value on the stupidity of his remarks. I do not think I ever appreciated the meaning of two words until I knew Irvine—the verb, loaf, and the noun, oaf; between them, they complete his portrait. He could lounge, and wriggle, and rub himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... re-established their sovereigns, and entrusted them with power such as they had never possessed before. How they used it may be inferred from the general outbreak of 1848. A popular indignation, such as could have been excited only by long years of folly, stupidity, and tyranny, swept away or shook every throne from Berlin to Palermo. The people was everywhere for some months triumphant; and its abuse of power produced a reaction which restored or introduced despotism in every kingdom except Prussia and Piedmont, and even in Prussia gave ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... obtains happiness through destiny. Friends are not the cause of one's happiness. Foes are not the cause of one's misery. Wisdom is not competent to bring an accession of wealth; nor is wealth competent to bring an accession of happiness. Intelligence is not the cause of wealth, nor is stupidity the cause of penury. He only that is possessed of wisdom, and none else, understands the order of the world. Amongst the intelligent, the heroic, the foolish, the cowardly, the idiotic, the learned, the weak, or the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... intellectual repute, does the Turkey deserve his name for stupidity? He does not appear to be more limited than another. Audubon depicts him as endowed with certain useful ruses, in particular when he has to baffle the attacks of his nocturnal enemy, the Virginian Owl. As for his actions in the snare with ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... is more than inexcusable. The dear man is doing a stupidity of which he will repent soon. Never mind; I will not forget how devoted he was to me during my first stay ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... appeared, the Frenchmen began talking to him, forgetting that he was unable to understand them. As he made no reply, they recollected themselves, and began laughing at their own stupidity. ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... rector in the grey of the morning, when it became clear that Myatt had escaped—"God forgive me! Through my stupidity a horrible creature has been set loose in the world to work his diabolical ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... faithful old Army of the Potomac, "which has had hard fighting,—terrible fighting, and little praise." He lost patience with those staying at home depreciating the army and finding fault with General Meade. He wrote: "Frankly and bluntly, I cannot appreciate such stupidity. Why not as well ask if the sun rose this morning? That battle was the greatest of the war. It was a repulse which became a disastrous defeat to General Lee." He sarcastically invited critics, "instead of staying at home to weaken the army by finding ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... no defence of my own course. I am aware there can be none. I can only plead that I had already been vexed not a little by his unjust accusations of stupidity, and dismiss with as few words as possible an incident that will ever seem to me quite too indecently criminal. Briefly, then, with my well-intended "Best not lower yourself, sir," Mr. Belknap-Jackson forgot himself and I forgot myself. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the generations and descent of the swallow have been associated with our homes, and all the events of successive lives have taken place under their guardianship. The swallow is the genius of good to a house. Let its nest, then, stay; to me it seems the extremity of barbarism, or rather stupidity, to knock it down. I wish I could induce them to build under the eaves of this house; I would if I could discover some means of communicating ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... of knowledge, while the plant or the animal building up its body from the plant has learned by inheritance to avoid the assimilation of matters noxious to it. Strictly speaking, arsenical poisoning does not belong to the subject of adulteration. It is not due to wilfulness but to stupidity, but it affords a lesson which cannot be taken too much to heart, that mankind, by relying too much upon "science'' in feeding, is on a path that is fraught with considerable danger. To safeguard consumers, as far as practicable, the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... footprints of Balzac in that he is primarily a historian of morals, who has made a fairly consistent attempt to cover the world he lived in. With Dostoievski there is a kinship in the passionate hatred of cruelty and stupidity that crops out everywhere in his work. I have never found any trace of influence of the other three. To be sure there are a few early sketches in the manner of Poe, but in respect to form he is much more in the purely chaotic tradition of ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... the unventilated, tobacco-poisoned beer-cellars and concert-halls, and persisted in supping on heavy food and cold beer in the open air, as though on purpose to spite the over-anxious magistrates and doctors. Nor was the stupidity confined entirely to the lower classes. People who ought to have known better defied the cholera in excess of rioting, while those of another turn of mind gave way to superstitious fears, and as soon as they felt the first symptoms of the disease fled to the cold, damp ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Charles; "I know exactly how he felt. I hope you forgive me, Miss Lorton? Can I make amends in any way for my stupidity?" ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... vindicate their own sexual impotencies by padlocking the national vagina, who find relief for constipation in forbidding their neighbors the water closet (God forgives them, but not I); to the ostracizing ones who hurl excommunications upon all that is not part of their stupidity; to the ostracizing ones who fraternize only with the worms inside their coffins (their anger is the caress incomparable); to the pious ones who, lacking the strength to please themselves, boast interminably to God of their weakness ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... is quite another matter. Democracy, even Social-Democracy, though as hostile to British Junkers as to German ones, and under no illusion as to the obsolescence and colossal stupidity of modern war, need not lack enthusiasm for the combat, which may serve their own ends better than those of their political opponents. For Bernhardi the Brilliant and our own very dull Militarists are alike mad: the war will not do any of the things for which they rushed into it. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... but I never in my life recollect having taken a farthing from any one, except about fifteen years ago, when I stole seven francs and ten sous. The story is worth recounting, as it exhibits a concurrence of ignorance and stupidity I should scarcely credit, did it relate to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... not a quarrel which is so deadly! It is the strange transformation of what were once thought to be charms and virtues. The soft blue eyes are now simply silly; innocence is stupidity; docility is incapacity of resolution; the sweet, even ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... round its neck and gave it a saucer of milk. According to them, a course of consistent kindness to Nero would have turned him into something only faintly represented by Alfred the Great. In fact, the policy recommended by this school for dealing with the bovine stupidity and bovine fury of this world is accurately summed up in the celebrated ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... the uncongenial disguise of a knightly champion of distressed females and the slayer of giants. But the other new characters have generally a vivid personality. Who can forget Old Honesty, the dull good man with no mental gifts but of dogged sincerity, who though coming from the Town of Stupidity, four degrees beyond the City of Destruction, was "known for a cock of the right kind," because he said the truth and stuck to it; or his companion, Mr. Fearing, that most troublesome of pilgrims, stumbling at every straw, lying roaring at the Slough ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... taught the world that a body of police can be none the less efficient although their hands are clean; that honesty is not necessarily a synonym for stupidity; that law and order can be enforced without brutality. There are no agents provocateur in the London police, and the grafter has little opportunity to exercise ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... doctor's face looked hard. Was it, he seemed to be turning over in his mind, that she loved him a little in the depths of her heart? That was an irritating trait of feminine stupidity. But one intelligent glance at her calm face rendered that supposition impossible. She was merely largely human, with a sense ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... coming to tell you, sir," giving a peculiar look at Morton, who was doubtful whether it was caused by stupidity or obstinacy. He saw, at all events, that there was no use in attempting to draw forth the information he required before the old man was ready to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... led them into a trap. At the battle of Courtrai the knights charged into an unsuspected ditch, and as they fell the burghers with huge clubs beat out such brains as they could find within the helmets. It was subtlety against stupidity, the merchant's shrewdness asserting itself along new lines. King Philip had to create for himself a fresh nobility ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of realities in forcing men into a timid abandonment of their own doctrines; 3d, the unconquerable power of sympathy, which humbled all minds to one level, and forced the strongest no less than the feeblest intellects into the same infatuation of stupidity. The casuistry of ancient moralists on this question, especially of the scholastic moralists, such as Suarrez, &c.—the oscillations by which they ultimately relaxed and tied up the law, just as their erring ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... of himself again, and went on in the same hard voice—'One night my partner and I were playing two men who had done us up before. I knew they were cheating, but could not detect them. Game after game they won, till I was furious at my stupidity in not being able to catch them. Happening to glance at Nelson in the corner, I caught a meaning look, and looking again, he threw me a signal. I knew at once what the fraud was, and next game charged the fellow with it. ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... idea, Mrs. Brand," went on the ceremoniarius, "of the difficulties involved even in such a simple matter as this. The stupidity of people is prodigious. I foresee a great deal of hard work for us all.... Who is to deliver ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... was an operative, employed as a butler by the Winckel household. He had so often given proof of profound stupidity in everything except his duties in the household that Herr Winckel would have laughed at any suspicion of his being anything else but a butler. Herr Winckel was so fond of saying and repeating that the man had a butler mind it could never grasp ...
— Ted Marsh on an Important Mission • Elmer Sherwood
... any patience with stupidity," said Croyden. "Nor have I—but we sometimes forget that a card player is born, not made. All the drilling and teaching one can do won't give card sense ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... little German was our arithmetic-master; a very good one, whose patience was often sorely tried by our stupidity or frivolity. On such occasions he rained epithets on us, which, from his imperfect knowledge of English, were often comical, and roused more amusement than shame. But for Eleanor he never had a harsh word. She was thoroughly ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... out mamma's tea," Lady Mabel said presently, keenly sensible of the stupidity of her position. "Will you come, Roderick? Mamma will be glad to know that you are alive. She was wondering about you all the ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... shoulder, and I sank down howling with agony. My companions instantly surrounded me, uttering exclamations of alarm, regret, and pity, Craven himself being the foremost and loudest. He never should forgive himself, he said; it was all his awkwardness and stupidity; he was never so sorry for any thing in ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... virtue vincible; the winds vary and the needle forsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits. Since it has been found that the axis of the earth wabbles, stupidity is indispensable as ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... one. He appeared to be reflecting as he lighted it, and if his mind could have been read, it would have probably been discovered that he was wondering how it had happened that the conversation had taken this turn, and mentally cursing his own stupidity in making any remarks on the Schopenhauer. He was conscious all the time that his wife was looking rather steadily at him, and he knew that at least a conventional ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... Pritchard should always elevate. Garrick give Strength and Majesty to the Scene. Let us soften at the keen Distress of a Belvidera; let our Souls rise with the Dignity of an Elizabeth; let us tremble at the wild Madness of a Lear;[F] but let us not Yawn at the Stupidity of uninteresting Characters. ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... support, suffered the same fate. The balance of the regiments were sent in in the same manner—each arriving on the field just after its predecessor had been thoroughly whipped by the concentrated force of the Rebels. The men fought gallantly, but the stupidity of a Commanding General is a thing that the gods themselves strive against in vain. We suffered a humiliating defeat, with a loss of two thousand men and a fine rifled battery, which was brought to Andersonville and placed in position ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the spirit was killing the child of Captain Neves for the part he had taken in the affair. The diviner, in his response, revealed the impression made on his own mind by the sale, and likewise the native ideas of departed souls. As they give the whites credit for greater stupidity than themselves in all these matters, the mother of the child came, and told the father that he ought to give a slave to the diviner as a fee to make a sacrifice to appease the spirit and save the life of the child. The father ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the prison next day I, for the first time, bottomed the depths of human stupidity. The wretched man was pinioned and led up to the scaffold. I pray God I may never see such a sight again. The man was just one shake of horror. The prison chaplain, who had primed himself rather too ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... of men whatever. If it is to society as a whole that the able man owes his energy, his talents, and the products of them, it is to society as a whole that the idle man owes his idleness, the stupid man his stupidity, and the dishonest man his dishonesty; and if the able man, who produces an exceptional amount of wealth, can with justice claim no more than the average man who produces little, the man who is so idle that he shirks producing anything may with equal justice claim as much wealth as either. His ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... imperceptible deviation to the right or to the left, above or below the tracing, which impresses on the design the accent of strength or weakness, of indecision or determination."[369] I would add, of intelligence or stupidity; of knowledge ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... on my heel, angry at Goil's intolerant stupidity. I whipped open the door and slammed it shut behind me. Then I stormed to my quarters where I broke open a fresh bottle of Scotch. I downed a couple of quick shots then nursed a third, thinking about the time out near Jupiter when Willy had rigged up a still and brewed ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... in the interests of the farm. Alida was always ready to talk about these, and her questions would soon enable her to talk understandingly. She displayed ignorance enough, and this amused him, but her queries evinced no stupidity. In reading to her father and in the cultivation of flowers, she had obtained hints of vital horticultural principles, and Holcroft said to her laughingly one evening at supper, "You'll soon learn all I know and begin to ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... was allowed then to grow up paralytic, or with a deformed limb, or continually punished to correct what was imagined to be a condition of willful carelessness, irritability, or willful moral perversion. Perversion, stupidity, and irritability of the mind or temper were not known to depend, in many instances, on preputial irritation; children were, accordingly, worried and punished for something over which they had no earthly control or the least volition. Humanity cannot, at present, sufficiently appreciate what ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the suction screw," replied Erskine. "I got the idea from the Russian ice-breaker, the Yermack. The old idea was just main strength and stupidity, charge the ice and break through if you could. The better idea was to suck the water away from under the ice and go over it—that's what we've done. I rammed that chap, pulled the water away from under him, and, of ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... my stupidity in feeling most moved in the wrong place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage did not go, and, after nightfall, as there was a splendid moon, I went down to the bridge, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... for all this bandying of human problems, so long as its grocers and saloon-keepers flourished and its industries steamed and screamed and smoked and its bankers grew rich. Stupidity, license, and graft sat enthroned in the City Hall. The new black folk were exploited as cheerfully as white Polacks and Italians; the rent of shacks mounted merrily, the street car lines counted ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... stupidity. The inexplicable load he felt on his spirits seemed to have redoubled in weight. When he reached the street, he felt it impossible to go home, but went toward the main guard and said to the officer on duty, "My friend, I invite you to my wedding to-morrow; be ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Garth's mount, that a previous owner had christened "Cyclops," and who was tall enough and bony enough to be called a horse, was, like themselves, a stranger in the bush, and his face offered a comical study in anxiety, willingness and stupidity, under these new conditions. Natalie rode a young sorrel rejoicing in the name of Caspar. He had a dull eye, a long, sheeplike nose and a wagging under lip; and Natalie vowed he was half-witted. He would not ride abreast; but ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... lunatic asylum, for he had overlooked, in his equation, the fact that his first planet, with its two suns and perpetual daylight, had never known about the stars. There had been no way to break through their wall of stupidity, and he had left, the planet's sanity-police close on his heels. Had he used money it would have been a cinch, he had realized as soon as he ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban
... don't know. The gamekeeper might convince a jury. You know what juries are. You can never tell what form their stupidity will take," said ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... Speranski related how at the Council that morning a deaf dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so too. Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable for the stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering, broke into the conversation and began excitedly talking of the abuses that existed under the former order of things—threatening to give a serious turn to the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing Stolypin about his vehemence. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... aware of the German character and purposes, did Congress on April 6, 1917, declare a state of war existed between Germany and the United States. On that day the outcome of the war was decided. Through her hideous selfishness, her stupidity, and her brutality, Germany, after having spent nearly fifty years in preparation, lost her opportunity for world dominion. The resources and the fighting power of what she looked upon as a nation of cowardly, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... enough, while the boy in the red cap, feeling quite confident in his powers of flight, turned again to jeer and shout at the sailors, whom he derided with impudent remarks about their fatness of person, weight of leg, and stupidity generally, till he judged it dangerous to wait any longer, when he went off like a clockwork mouse, skimming over the stones, and from the first strides beginning to leave the ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... unto one of the least of these, ye did it not unto me,' I cannot help but feel sure in my heart that we are right, and I must tell you that Mr. Falkner's plan for doing just that work is the most practical and common-sense one I have ever heard. The only thing I find to wonder at is the stupidity of the church and myself, that we did not ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... trade, which injures their interests; but those people by their shrewdness deceive them easily, and frustrate the efforts of the alcaldes. The natives were on the whole very savage, and had even more barbarous customs and greater stupidity than the inhabitants of the other islands. They have a knowledge of herbs. In Paragua especially, there are some very poisonous ones. They use them to bewitch their fellows and deprive them of life. There is one of so uncommon deadliness, that if it be chewed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... or two hundred and fifty. Burdovsky has refused ten thousand roubles; you heard him. He would not have returned even a hundred roubles if he was dishonest! The hundred and fifty roubles were paid to Tchebaroff for his travelling expenses. You may jeer at our stupidity and at our inexperience in business matters; you have done all you could already to make us look ridiculous; but do not dare to call us dishonest. The four of us will club together every day to repay ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with the wolves, animals with every sense alert to detect the approach of the big gray killers, and he fully expected the steer to break into full flight at the first warning of his presence. He had almost forgotten the stupidity of the cows on the open range and the ease with which he had torn them down when hunting them with his wolf father long before. He made his final rush and drove his teeth deep into one hind leg before his prey had even quickened his gait. The steer lurched ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... flush stained her cheeks. The stupidity had been hers, not his. She resented it that he was ready to take the blame,—read into his manner a condescension he did not at ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the coaches of the nobility filled up the space from Temple Bar to Whitechapel. He had so perfectly convinced the public of his superior accomplishments in acting, that not to admire him would not only have argued an absence of taste, but the grossest stupidity. Those who had seen and been delighted with the most admired of the old actors, confessed that he had excelled the ablest of them in the variety of the exhibitions, and equalled them all in their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... appeared as if they had been left to drift as they might to this conjunction with Mackenzie's flock. Mackenzie believed Mrs. Carlson had abandoned her charge and fled Swan's cruelty, but he did not excuse himself for his own stupidity in allowing the flocks to come together as he ran to the place where his dogs and ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... preparations for burning them. Whereas Pitt, who regarded Toulon, not as a windfall, but as a base of operations for a campaign in Provence, maintained that such conduct must blight their prospects. With phenomenal stupidity, Langara allowed his secret instructions on this topic to leak out, thereby rousing the rage of the Toulonese and the contempt of his British colleagues. The Duke of Alcudia (better known as Godoy) expressed sincere ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... come to ordinary subscribers with paragraphs and articles rubbed out with pumice or blotted out with ink; consequently our Russian friends were wont to visit the legation, seeking to read in our papers what had been erased in their own, and making the most amusing discoveries as to the stupidity of the official censorship: paragraphs perfectly harmless being frequently blotted out, and really serious attacks on ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... really be the case that the driver is abusing the old gentleman for his stupidity ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... makes each suggest the other. For that reason, too, the parable of the natal stars governing our lives is such a natural one to express our subjection to circumstances, and can be transformed by the stupidity of disciples into a literal tenet. In the same way, the kinship of the emotion produced by the stars with the emotion proper to certain religious moments makes the stars seem a religious object. They become, like impressive music, a stimulus to ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... she remembered—Oh God! How she remembered—the close association in those three priceless years with her "godfather" Michael Rossiter; Rossiter who shaped her mind—it would never take a different turn—who was patient with her stupidity and petulance; an elder brother, a robust yet tactful chaffer; a banisher of too much sensibility, a constant encouragement to effort and success. Rossiter, she knew, with her woman's instinct, was innocently in love with her, but believed all the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... in guilt from her infancy, had she been noted for cunning and fraudulent ingenuity, had she been known as an expert forger, you would not have convicted her on this indictment, having had before you the malice and greed of Dockwrath, the stupidity—I may almost call it idiocy, of Kenneby, and the dogged resolution to conceal the truth evinced by the woman Bolster. With strong evidence you could not have believed such a charge against so excellent ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... to thirty merchants, trade men, officers, etc., and it is not easy for me to express the insignificance,—the inanity of their conversation. Scarcely any politics are mentioned at a moment when every bosom ought to beat with none but political sensations. The ignorance or the stupidity of these people must be absolutely incredible; not a week passes without their country abounding with events[1338] that are analyzed an debated by the carpenters and blacksmiths of England." The cause of this inertia is manifest; interrogated on their opinions, all reply: "We are of the provinces ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... intended to capture, fired their cannon in rejoicing at a victory that forever killed the prestige of British arms in the New World. For hitherto the British soldier had been thought invincible, and this exhibition of crass stupidity and bungling gave the colonials a different opinion of British arms. The British were brave it is true, but they could not adjust themselves to meet the enemy on their own ground,—and in all history the Briton has shown himself clumsy ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... been seen to fall in "an old cultivated field," the witnesses who ran to it picked up something that "had been upon the ground in the first place." The writer who tells us this, with the usual exclusion-imagination known as stupidity, but unjustly, because there is no real stupidity, thinks he can think of a good-sized stone that had for many years been in a cultivated field, but that had never been seen before—had never interfered with plowing, for instance. He is earnest and unjarred ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... nobles—one a duke of Florence, the other of Urbino—both bad enough fellows, no doubt, but could any Communists have acted worse? Besides, Communist mobs assert principles, and do these things in hot blood. But this most monstrous outrage was committed coolly by pure stupidity and the carelessness which cannot be moved by any consideration to take any trouble that can by any possibility be avoided. Had they turned up a quantity of the bones of animals to examine them, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... ladies occasionally shed tears of pity. If she accepted him conditionally she would have to tell her father about it." Mrs. March gave him a glance of silent contempt, and he hastened to atone for his stupidity. "Perhaps she's told him on the instalment plan. She may have begun by confessing that Burnamy had been in Carlsbad. Poor old fellow, I wish we were going to find him in Ansbach! He could make things very smooth ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had watched the women go out. How typical the party was of Natalie, of her meticulous care in small things and her indifference or real ignorance as to what counted. Was it indifference, really, or was it supreme craftiness, the stupidity of her dinners, the general unattractiveness of the women she gathered around her, the ill-assortment of people who had little in themselves and nothing whatever ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of sound ceased. I felt my eyes fill with tears; it was like Ventnor to flay himself like this for what he thought stupidity, like him to make this effort to admit his supposed fault and crave forgiveness—as like him as that mad attack upon the flaming Disk in its own temple, surrounded by its ministers, had been so bafflingly unlike his ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... and fast to some academic post with traditional bonds of rules and regulations and then strive to coerce him into partaking of our traditional pabulum. His inevitable rebellion against this regime we style incorrigibility, or stupidity, and then by main strength and authority strive to reduce him to submission and, failing in this, we banish him from the school branded for life. Our treatment of this boy is due to the fact that another boy in the school is endowed with other native ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... and turned to Kielland with burden of ten months' frustration in his voice. "They're stupid," he said slowly. "They are so incredibly stupid I could go screaming into the swamp every time I see one of them coming. Their stupidity is positively abysmal." ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... The frequent stupidity and infatuation of the buffalo seems the more remarkable from the contrast it offers to their wildness and wariness at other times. Henry knew all their peculiarities; he had studied them as a scholar ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a long stride across the room and hugged Mrs. Flynn, boyishly. "Didn't you tell me you felt like my mother? Don't you know mothers have to see through their boy's stupidity and selfishness down to the real trouble that lies underneath? No one will do it ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... means to some, and a poesy to others. Devotion causes a moral ophthalmia. By some providential grace, it takes from souls on the road to eternity the sight of many little earthly things. In a word, pious persons, devotes, are stupid on various points. This stupidity proves with what force they turn their minds to celestial matters; although the Voltairean Chevalier de Valois declared that it was difficult to decide whether stupid people became naturally pious, or whether piety had the effect of making intelligent ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... like a schoolmaster of little boys, or rather like a lover, to whom a mistress's elementary ignorance and difficulties have a touching fitness. Few scholars would have disliked teaching the alphabet under such circumstances. But Dorothea herself was a little shocked and discouraged at her own stupidity, and the answers she got to some timid questions about the value of the Greek accents gave her a painful suspicion that here indeed there might be secrets not capable of explanation to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Whiteplains about 9 o'clock A.M. and thus was the American army saved (by an interposing providence from a probable total destruction.). I may be asked wherein this particular interposition of providence appears, I answer, first, in the stupidity of the British general, in that he did not early on the morning of the 20th send a detachment and take possession of the post and stores at Whiteplains, for had he done this we must then have fought ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... that Miss Donovan will never be a first-rate queen. She is constitutionally incapable of that particular kind of stupidity which is called dignity. In that hour of her country's destiny, her chief feeling was amusement at the appearance of the admiral. She did not know, perhaps, that the guns of the Megalian navy were trained on her palace. But she ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... I have had Bustamante employed at a salary which he still enjoys, and now that I know that your Lordship is pleased with this I shall put him in a better place. Captain Machuca has been guilty of great stupidity, for as he was about to depart to take charge of the governorship of a fort, provided and appointed according to his deserts, he got married, and not as well as I could have wished. I shall give a present to Father Pina, as your ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... "efficient organization" and higher discipline. Such resolutions are now readily supported by everybody. But that their realization requires compulsion, and compulsion in the form of a dictatorship, is ordinarily not comprehended. And yet, it would be the greatest stupidity and the most absurd opportunism to suppose that the transition from capitalism to Socialism is possible without compulsion and dictatorship. The Marxian theory has long ago criticized beyond misunderstanding ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... have been much hindered in our work by the corruptness and stupidity of Eastern officials in many places, and by the destructive propensities and rapacity of Kurds and wandering Arabs and semi-savages, who have found our posts in the desert good for firewood and our wires for arrow-heads or some such implements. Some of our pioneers in wild regions have ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... to set a name on this face, which was positively annoying in its classical beauty, and which he felt convinced had occupied a place among the phantoms of his past. Irritated beyond endurance by what he termed his stupidity, he was trying to decide whether he should enter the cafe or not, when he saw M. Wilkie take his bill from the hands of a waiter, glance at it, and throw a louis on the table. His companion had drawn out his pocketbook for the ostensible purpose of paying for the coffee ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Barnes,[7] remonstrating upon the general tone of the 'Times,' and inviting him to adopt some Conservative principles in the midst of his zeal for Reform. Stanley told me that his election (at Preston) was lost by the stupidity or ill-will of the returning officer, who managed the booths in such a way that Hunt's voters were enabled to vote over and over at different booths, and that he had no doubt of reducing ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... organizations, which never allow themselves to be affected by any but animal impulses. She was not blessed with one of those consciences which escape suffering by virtue of mere brutishness, or of that dense stupidity in which a woman vegetates, sinning because she knows no better. In her case, an unhealthy sensitiveness, a sort of cerebral excitement, a disposition on the part of the brain to be always on the alert, to work itself into a frenzy of bitterness, anxiety and discontent ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... deep of the airs of the forest. America! He had chosen! Her youth called to his. He wanted to forget everything that had gone before, the horrors through which he had passed, both physical and spiritual,—the dying struggles of the senile nation, born in intolerance, grown in ignorance and stupidity which, with a mad gesture, had cast him forth with a curse. He had doffed the empty prerogatives of blood and station and left them in the mire and blood. The soul of Russia was dead and he had thought that his own had died with ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... to meet some of this country's expressionists, it appears that none has any intention of trying to reveal what is fine in your life as a people—you seek only to satirise, caricature, or damn altogether. If I believe my ears, there is nothing but stupidity and insularity in England. If I listen to my senses, to my subconscious mind, I feel that a great crisis would reveal that she is ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... score of this most picturesque, and frequently salutary, accompaniment of street scenery. In our own country, which has the amplest means of any other in the world, of carrying these objects of public taste into execution, there seems to be an infatuation—amounting to hopeless stupidity—respecting the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... order. She was tall, well-formed, but unmistakably showing the negro type, even in her small features. Her black eyes were excited, but unintelligent; her manner dogged, but with the obstinacy of half-conscious stupidity. Brant felt not only disappointed, but had a singular impression that she was not the same woman that he had first seen. Yet there was the tall, graceful figure, the dark profile, and the turbaned head that he had once followed down ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... was a kind of Indian summer of the silly season. But the editors could not keep them out, nor cared to. The mystery was the one topic of conversation everywhere—it was on the carpet and the bare boards alike, in the kitchen and the drawing-room. It was discussed with science or stupidity, with aspirates or without. It came up for breakfast with the rolls, and was swept off the supper-table ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... measure of his political capacity is given in the fact that he was an active promoter of the insurrection of September 4, 1870, in Paris against the authority of the Empress Eugenie. A more signal instance is not to be found in history of that supreme form of public stupidity which President Lincoln stigmatised, in a memorable phrase, as the operation of 'swapping horses while crossing ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... survivor of the old benefactors, who has outlasted whole hierarchies of outworn myths and, yet firm in the devotion of the heart of childhood, snaps his fingers alike at arid science and blighting stupidity, was driving his reindeer, his teeming sleigh filled with wonders from every region: dolls that walked and talked and sang, fit for princesses; sleds fine enough for princes; drums and trumpets and swords for young heroes; horses ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... expected to push away women who threw themselves at them. There was no excuse for Gervaise. She was a disgrace. The Lorilleuxs used to bring Nana up to their apartment in order to find out more details from her, their godchild. But Nana would put on her expression of innocent stupidity and lower her long silky eyelashes to hide the fire in her eyes ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... among the young business and professional group I have seen less genuine lack of money than fretful stupidity which was expressed in poor management. A lack of imagination and resourcefulness often paves the way to tragedy. We are living in a fascinating age, but under a complex economy that makes many demands on our ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... notion of what they are up against in America. They have never even heard of the batteries of almost brutal energy, of which I had thus touched a live wire even before I landed. People talk about the hypocrisy of England in dealing with a small nationality. What strikes me is the stupidity of England in supposing that she is dealing with a small nationality; when she is really dealing with a very large nationality. She is dealing with a nationality that often threatens, even numerically, to dominate all the other ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... there in spite of all the guides in the world. Not a few got slowly into the sitting position, their hair dishevelled, their caps awry, their eyes alternately winking very hard and staring awfully in the vain effort to keep open, and their whole physiognomy wearing an expression of blank stupidity that is peculiar to man when engaged in that struggle which occurs each morning as he endeavours to disconnect and shake off the entanglement of nightly dreams and the realities of the breaking day. Throughout the whole camp there was a low, muffled sound, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... privilege rarity stupidity verify epitaph retinue nutriment vestige medicine impediment prodigy serenity ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... amiable of men, and distinguished for courtesy and kindness, he was a swash-buckler in controversy. He had a trick of being in the right which his opponents found displeasing, and he was sometimes cruel in his impatience of stupidity and wrong-headedness. Scarcely any continuance in folly could have inspired most men to the retorts he occasionally made. He wrote to one unfortunate: 'Sir,—You have ventured to contradict me on a question with regard to which I am profoundly learned, ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... whatso hath betided; and, even as I plunged him into the ocean of her love, so will I go about to marry him to her, and may Almighty Allah help me thereto!" Rejoined his mother, "Do as thou wilt, but beware of giving her father rough words, whenas thou speakest with him; for thou knowest his stupidity and violence and I fear lest he do thee a mischief, for he knoweth not respect for any." And Salih answered, "Hearkening and obedience." Then he sprang up and taking two bags full of gems such as rubies and bugles ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... tantalised lip whenever he stooped to drink; and the fruits, which others plucked easily, sprang up out of his reach when he tried to touch the bough. He was constantly crushed by a desolating sense of his own stupidity; and yet his good temper was charming under all his trials, and he loved with a grateful humility all who tolerated his shortcomings. For this reason he had a sincere affection for Henderson, who plagued him, indeed, incessantly, but never in an unkind or insulting way; and who more than ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... constituents, in bickering with committees, intriguing and playing for the vote; to the business man harassed on four sides by the trust, the union, the law, and public opinion,—distrustful of any wide scheme because the stupidity of his shipping clerk is the most vivid item in his mind, all this discussion about politics and the inner life will sound like ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... blinkers It placed before your eyes; The stupidest are weakest, The witty are not wise; O, bless your good stupidity, It is your dearest prize! "And though my lands are wide, And plenty is my gold, Still better gifts from Nature, My Thomas, do you hold— A brain that's thick and heavy, A heart ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... collapses, and a deluge of hate, cruelty, and lies follows. The problem of international peace is the problem of expanding the area of love and social unity. It is the sin of Christendom that so few took this problem seriously until we were chastised for our moral stupidity and inertia. The young men and women of today will have to take this problem on their intellect and conscience for their lifetime, and propose to see ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... evidently much embarrassed; but he was very quiet and subdued in his manner. He was less impatient and snappish than usual; said nothing about "stupidity" and "blundering," as was his habit. He seemed to be abstracted, as well he might; but while he displayed less enthusiasm in his teaching, he was infinitely more gentlemanly and kind. As he gave no occasion for any trouble, ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... battle of brains, and she had foiled him with the indomitable stupidity of her passion. But his point—the one point that he stuck to—was a sword point ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... usually more than the wisdom is worth. Calder spares us. He tells us nothing. His silence may be golden, or it may be just a habit; but from the known character of Calder it is never the omniscience of stupidity. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Amroth, "because the impressions of youth are swift and keen; but of course, here, age is not a question of years or failing powers. The old, here, are the wise and gracious and patient and gentle; the youth of the spirit is stupidity and unimaginativeness. On the one hand are the stolid and placid, and on the other are the brutal and cruel and selfish ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... opposite to him, not quieter but more peaceful than when a girl, partly because now she was less afraid of him. He called her, in his thoughts as he sat there, heartless and cold, but not only was she not so, but it was his fault that she appeared to him such. In his moral stupidity he would rather have seen her manifest concern at the poverty to which he had reduced her, than show the stillness of a contented mind. She was not much given to books, but what she read was worth reading, and such as turned ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... should respect, and what it should curse. We will repeat the sorrowful cry of Israel and the complaints against the persecutions which are directed against us. Then, even though each individual may be against us, the masses, in their stupidity, will always be for us. With the press in our hands, we can turn wrong into right, dishonesty into honesty. We can shake all foundations, and separate families. We can destroy faith in all that our enemies, until now, have believed. We can ruin credits and arouse passions. We can declare ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... occasions, the first two times more or less due to his own fault, but the third owing to the stupidity of one of the sailors. Nevertheless a third occasion couldn't be overlooked by his messmates, who made much merriment of the event. It was still funnier when he brought his final load (an exceptionally heavy one) with a set face and ardent ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... in judgement is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy. A dull or narrow-minded person, to whom nothing is wanting but a proper degree of understanding, may be improved by tuition, even so far as to deserve the epithet of learned. But as such persons frequently labour under a deficiency in the faculty of judgement, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... one of them must be true; he was afraid that if this were granted, then, in such a proposition as "Epicurus will be alive or dead to-morrow," either one or the other must necessarily be admitted; therefore he absolutely denied the necessity of yes or no. Can anything show stupidity in a greater degree? Zeno,[89] being pressed by Arcesilas, who pronounced all things to be false which are perceived by the senses, said that some things were false, but not all. Epicurus was afraid that if any one thing ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... fever, which attacked the gentlemen more fiercely than it did the common people, the story of Jamestown would not have been one of disaster brought about by willful heedlessness and stupidity. ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... light of the hall he was standing with the instrument in his hands, clutching it with the stupidity of a man who has been struck by an unexpected and unexplainable missile. His face had gone to a grayish white, and his hands trembled as he set the receiver on the hook. His eyes were bulging from emotion and he kept wetting his lips as ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Feeling a certain sympathy for her painful confusion of mind, I did my best to give his words an interpretation which soothed her fears. Then she begged his pardon, taking all the blame to her own stupidity, and received his grudged, unwilling kiss with a restored happiness which pained me to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... the embarrassments of that stupidity, forgot himself completely. His stony, unwinking stare was fixed on the planks of ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... significance in his manner, and, my memory harking back to an adventure which we had shared in the past, I suddenly glimpsed the depths of my own stupidity. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... should, however, myself say that, though it may be extremely difficult to deduce any definite political sentiments from Peacock's works, it is very easy to see in them a general and not inconsistent political attitude—that of intolerance of the vulgar and the stupid. Stupidity and vulgarity not being (fortunately or unfortunately) monopolised by any political party, and being (no doubt unfortunately) often condescended to by both, it is not surprising to find Peacock—especially with his noble ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... preservation, but all things renew, germinate and spring. Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease: all others run into this one. We call it by many names,—fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity and crime: they are all forms of old age: they are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia; not newness, not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the mystery of printing was not then discovered. But this is altogether a mistake. The secret of printing must have been discovered many thousands of times before it was used, or could be used. The inventive powers of man are divine; and also his stupidity is divine—as Cowper so playfully illustrates in the slow development of the sofa through successive generations of immortal dulness. It took centuries of blockheads to raise a joint stool into a chair; and it required something like a miracle of genius, in the estimate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... no longer a sparkle in the eye which had formerly gleamed with cunning, and the lower lip hung with a terrible expression of stupidity. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... refinement, and with the feelings of gentlemen: I say, how can he sit composedly down to his dinner, while men, as good as himself, are suffering for want of food. There is in this conduct either a bold cruelty, or a stupidity and want of reflection, that does no honour to that officer, or to those ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... parleying through the closed door with the late callers. Maitland could have blessed his hot-headed Irish stupidity for ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... nectar first but is like poison in the end, that happiness is held to be of the quality of passion. That happiness which in the beginning and its consequences deludeth the soul, and springeth from sleep, indolence, and stupidity, that is described to be of the quality of darkness. There is not, either on earth or heaven among the gods, the entity that is free from these three qualities born of nature. The duties of Brahmanas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... cramps, diarrhea, pains in legs; possibly confusion, as if drunk, stupidity, followed by excitement, and perhaps convulsions. Lips and face may be blue. Pulse may ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... the kind is recorded of him. For surely, Socrates, Creophylus, the companion of Homer, that child of flesh, whose name always makes us laugh, might be more justly ridiculed for his stupidity, if, as is said, Homer was greatly neglected by him and others in his own day when ...
— The Republic • Plato
... sinking man were on the crib. "Philip," he faltered. They lifted the boy out of his bed, and brought him in his night-dress to his father's side; and the father twisted about and took him into his arms, still half asleep and yawning. Then the mother, recovering from the stupidity of her surprise, broke into paroxysms of weeping, and fell over her husband's breast and kissed and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... retorted his wife with great sharpness, as if in contempt of her husband's stupidity; "sold good leather—of course he did. That was part of his plan to make people believe he was an honest man. Besides, if he hadn't, how could he have got rid of his stock as he did. Do you recollect," she proceeded with increasing asperity, as became a Cowfold matron, "as it was him as got up ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford |
