"Stupidly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the paramount claim of women to a no-license law, without laying bare the legal and political disabilities that make them "the greatest sufferers," the helpless victims of the liquor traffic, was impossible. It would have been stupidly unwise to withhold what with a majority of voters is the weightier consideration, that in alienating from women their earnings, governments impose upon community taxes for the support of the paupered children of drunken fathers, whose mothers would joyfully support ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... his hand she glanced stupidly towards him. Then, shivering a little as though suddenly cold, she got up stiffly out of her chair. But still she did not speak. Robin ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the cabal of "The Importants," of whose jargon he had retained some smattering, which, together with some expressions he had perfectly acquired from Madame de Vendome, formed a language that would have puzzled a Cato. His speech was short and stupidly dull, and the more so because he obscured it by affectation. He thought himself very sufficient, and pretended to a great deal more wit than came to his share. He was brave enough in his person, and outdid the common Hectors by being so upon all occasions, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... it a breathin' chance without running the risk of being locked up as a crazy man." He laughed as he said it, but his heart was in the words. "You know all that; haven't I told you often enough? It's not a morbid egoism, or what their precious academic books so stupidly call 'degenerate,' for in me it's damned vital and terrific, and moves always to action. It's ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Forrester stared at her stupidly for a moment, and then his eyes turned to the clock. It was on the stroke of midnight! So late—and Faith going out! He tried to think, to understand, but his brain worked slowly, like machinery that wanted oiling through ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... it is crooked. I suppose at this hour every lady in Pattaquasset expects that her friends will not call her away from her affairs; and I stupidly forgot to deliver my message when I had a moment's chance this morning. Now as it is possible you may see this—if she cannot be called the silver-footed Thetis, she is certainly the silver-tongued—you would know how ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... brass. Age, infirmity, sickness, every weakness, is there condemned to death. The whole Irish people is debased by the spectacle and contact of beggars and of those who notoriously die of hunger; and England stupidly winked at this tyranny. We begin now to expiate a long curse of neglect. Such is the law of justice. If we are asked why we have to support half the population of Ireland, the answer lies in the question itself; it is that we have deliberately allowed them to be crushed into ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... to the council of Ten that in respect of foreign affairs as well as of the home department the power really belonged. Peter de' Medici, son of Lorenzo de' Medici, the father of the Muses, was feebly and stupidly, though with all the airs and pretensions of a despot, governing the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... first-floor bedroom in the front of the house. My knocking and ringing produced no response for three or four minutes; then, as I persisted, a scantily clothed and half-awake maid-servant unbarred the door and stared at me stupidly ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... lay drowned, and the jewels—as I said, Lucien could not unglue his eyes from them. At first he stared at them stupidly. Not for some minutes did his mind grasp that they represented great wealth; and even when the temptation grew, it whispered no more than that here was money—maybe even a hundred pounds—but enough, at all events, added to his savings, to purchase the cottage at home, and make him and Jeanne happy ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nothing to all the nobodies and laughed stupidly over all their stupidities until—suddenly and without any warning—a fearful jump in his throat sent the mercury in his constitution shooting up to 160, and he saw, heard, felt, gasped, and knew, that that radiant angel in ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... commonplace to suffer from it with acuteness. He cannot get on either with or without a woman in his establishment. Betrayed by his wife, he consoles himself with a mistress, and finally goes back to the wife. And the moral of it all is: 'Let us be stupidly comfortable, if we can, in any way we can: but it is almost certain that we cannot.' In A Vau-l'Eau, a less interesting story which followed En Menage, the daily misery of the respectable M. Folantin, the government employe, consists ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... rudeness from me, for he seem'd an honest, good man; but my heart was boiling that any should put so ill a construction on my Delia. As for him, he had risen, and was moving with dignity to the door—to show me out, as I guess. When suddenly I, that had been staring stupidly, leap'd upon him and hurled ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... true! It is not true!" he echoed stupidly. It seemed to him that the very skies must fall, and the earth perish, if they could take away Hirschvogel. They might as soon talk of tearing down God's ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... justice in that, though, and I'm not going to whine. The Pope tried to paint an awful end, but his nightmare didn't frighten me. We must all bow our heads to the law of compensation—the Pope as well as everybody else. But to die stupidly like this..." ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... has happened to us," he went on, speaking with difficulty out of the turmoil of his being. "We are not young," he repeated stupidly; "and not foolish. We won't let ourselves ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in at Shearman's window,' said Leonard, rather sheepishly, 'at the locks of the new lot he has got in, and he came and asked if I were going to choose one, for he had got a couple down from London, and the man had stupidly put his cipher on both, so he would be glad if I would take one off his hands. I didn't accept—I made that clear—but then he begged, as if it was to oblige him, that I would come out to Abbotstoke and help him try the two, for he didn't ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my waist, and about twice a week I went across it in order to explore the forest. Unfortunately there were no paths here of any extent, and it did not prove very productive either in insects or birds. To add to my difficulties I had stupidly left my only pair of strong hoots on board the steamer, and my others were by this time all dropping to pieces, so that I was obliged to walk about barefooted, and in constant fear of hurting my feet, and causing ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in his sleep he had a kind of under consciousness of what was going on. He was stupidly conscious that they were trying to raise him up to an uncomfortable sitting posture—a bolt-upright position. This he was sleepily unwilling to submit to. There wasn't any particular strength in his hands, and his drowsy faculties didn't extend farther down than his head. He ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... Capability fit the inward: though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... stare stupidly and remain silent. He glanced down at the charred cauldron-lids, and traced a figure in the air with his finger. But I was too excited, or too mortified, or still too dazed, perhaps, to see what it was he outlined, or what it was he meant to convey. I could only go on ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... came in sight, wearing his black robe and white ruff; there were doubtless to be other funerals that day. Peer sank down on a bench and looked stupidly on while the coffin was lifted from the cart, carried to the grave, and lowered down. A man with spectacles and a red nose came up with a hymn-book, and sang something over the grave. The priest lifted the spade—and at the sound of the first spadeful of earth falling ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... enough to think of curing the malady after it has been caught; for to catch it is the very thing for which you seek that dream-land of the painters' village. "Snoozing" is a part of the artistic education; and the rudiments must be learned stupidly, all else being forgotten, as if they were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... self-possession of his address. His remarkable military and statesmanly talent had found opportunity of shining by contrast, more particularly in the revolutionary war which the democrats so wretchedly and stupidly mismanaged; he was confessedly the only democratic officer who knew how to prepare and to conduct war, and the only democratic statesman who opposed the insensate and furious doings of his party with statesmanlike ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... new to the wonder of seeing her there, so answered her stupidly. For all my day-dreams of the week that I had been away I was not prepared for her. And indeed she had altered. The strain of fear and incessant watchfulness was removed, and with the lessening of that tension had come a pliancy of look ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... at the thing stupidly for a moment, as I fumbled for a pourboire to give the messenger, when it occurred to me that he might explain the mystery. "Did a lady buy this?" I asked; "a young lady, with a tall senor also young, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ordering Lord Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart from before the town according to the will of Heaven. As the English general very positively declined to believe that Joan knew anything about the will of Heaven (which did not mend the matter with his soldiers, for they stupidly said if she were not inspired she was a witch, and it was of no use to fight against a witch), she mounted her white war-horse again, and ordered her white ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... Judge in the full rush of his anger. He turned stupidly as though he had not heard aright. "What?" he asked. From the easy chair the butler regarded him with ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... saluted and barked at the askaris. Birnier gazed stupidly at the uniforms around him as if unable to comprehend. He looked at zu Pfeiffer who stood erect, his face lost in shadow above the lamp, and ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... that," said Ellen; "I am used to it, that is the reason I am tired. I am accustomed to ride up and down the country at any pace I like; and it is very tiresome to walk stupidly round and round ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... looked stupidly at him for a space, then with laboured slowness he came to his feet, and his only answer was the eloquent gesture with which one hand swept toward ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... stood in the middle of the road, gazing stupidly at the lame dog that gave us the clue. Then ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... one of these periods of absorption, a flower fell out of the air on his paper. It was a brilliant, orange-colored tropical bloom, so big and so freshly plucked that it dashed his verse with dew. For an instant he stared stupidly at it. Then he ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... contraries are to be found in [111] me, in one corner or another"; if delicacy, so also coarseness. Delicacy there was, certainly,—a wonderful fineness of sensation. "To the end," he tells us, "that sleep should not so stupidly escape from me, I have caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that I might the better and more sensibly taste and relish it.—Of scents, the simple and natural seem to me the most pleasing, and I have often observed that they cause an alteration in me, and work upon my spirits ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... highest thinkable level of prepared security and unconscious insolence. What was the pale page of fiction compared with the intimately personal adventure that, in almost any direction, he would have been all so stupidly, all so gallantly, all so instinctively and, by every presumption, so prevailingly ready for? Berridge would have given six months' "royalties" for even an hour of his looser dormant consciousness—since one was oneself, after all, no worm, but an heir of all the ages ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... prize to the shore, intending to land and secure it, when a calf hippopotamus shoved its blunt nose out of the water close at hand, gazed stupidly at them and snorted. Tom at once shot it in the head, and it commenced to bellow lustily. Instantly the mother's head cleft the surface of the water as she came up to the rescue and rushed at the boat, the gunwale of which she seized in her mouth ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... ocean blew his curtains far into the room, where they bellied out, fluttering, floating, subsiding, only to rise again in the freshening breeze. He sat watching their silken convolutions, stupidly, for a while, then rose and closed his window, and raised the window on the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... annoyance over her lost wager. The beetle man, she judged, would be coolly superior about it. So she delivered herself of sundry stinging criticisms regarding the conduct of the Caracunan Administration in having stupidly involved itself in a blockade. She even spoke of going to see the President and apprising him ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... had the Lady so gazed upon me, I staring stupidly at her, and the Negress continuing to enjoin me to silence by putting her finger to her Lips. Then clapping her little hands together (I mean that the Lady did, for the Black Woman's were sad Paws), in tumbles from a little door at the side of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... drove in, up came the swarm of idlers from the wharf, dragging themselves heavily along, laughing stupidly at the ponderous gambols and grimaces of a huge idiot boy, who, on seeing a new arrival, rolled rather than walked up from the water with his hand extended, crying out—money—money. It was all the language the poor creature possessed. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... heard him? Was my uncle beside himself? I stared at, him stupidly, and felt as if ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... them there was light. It came from the left side of the room, the broad glare of a strong electric torch. I watched it stupidly, but it gave me the fillip needed to pick up the threads. I remembered the tunnel now and the Kansas journalist. Then behind the light I saw a face which pulled my flickering senses ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... obeyed him. She was sitting down in a stiff-backed arm-chair, looking stupidly at the pattern of the carpet as if it were something new to her. Between physical pain and mental excitement she was beginning to wander. She was the sort of woman to lose control over her mind with a temperature of one ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Roger stared stupidly across the canal at the speaker, incomprehension taking the place of anger. "Oh," he said at last, "it's all a mistake. You got on the wrong tract: this is ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... see that if it had been, you might have been annoyed: I dare say I put the case stupidly—but I'm so bewildered by this new development—by his using you all this time as a pretext—that I really don't know where to turn for light on ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... MORRER PEDIDO AUSA DA MORTE. AUSA is perhaps for OUSADIA, "boldness;" and the passage would then mean that since death appeared inevitable they should meet it half-way, and not lazily await it; they should die like soldiers in a charge, not stupidly ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... served by Mabel Turpin, the elder daughter, a stupidly good-natured girl, who would fain have entered into conversation. Miss Rodney replied to a question that she had slept well, and added that, when she rang her bell, she would like to see Mrs. Turpin. Twenty minutes later ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... distance appeared a great black patch, which came slowly nearer and nearer. The patch turned into a lazy, slow-stepping ox, with a jolting, creaking waggon, in which sat a little old man who gazed stupidly in front of him into the dark distance. The cart dragged along wearily, creeping through the sand, and first the ox, then the little fellow, then the ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... knees. Beyond her and beyond the cottage, by the edge of the wood the firing-party had fallen into rank and were marching off among the pine-stems, the Prince and Father Domenico with them. I stared stupidly after the disappearing uniforms, and put out a hand as if to brush away the smoke which yet floated across the clearing. The Commandant, turning to follow his men, at the same moment lifted his hand in salute. So he, too, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... and then they passed within the enclosure, which, to the girl's horror, she found filled with headless bodies. The creature who carried the bodiless head now set its burden upon the ground and the latter immediately crawled toward one of the bodies that was lying near by. Some wandered stupidly to and fro, but this one lay still. It was a female. The head crawled to it and made its way to the shoulders where it settled itself. At once the body sprang lightly erect. Another of those who had accompanied them from the fields approached ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... whirling round the carriage, and then—smash!—bang through the window went Beauty!—leaving me doubled up on the seat, holding out half a chicken. It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while it lasted; and drops of perspiration trickled down my nose on to the chicken, at which I sat stupidly staring. After a dazed pause I staggered to the broken window and looked out. There was Beauty, with a perpendicular tail like a young fir-tree, going like great guns in exactly the wrong direction. We had just come through a long tunnel, and the last I saw of my aunt's ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... Prosper Magnan fainted and fell into the pool of Wahlenfer's blood. "It was," he said to me, "the punishment of my thoughts." When he recovered consciousness he was in the public room, seated on a chair, surrounded by French soldiers, and in presence of a curious and observing crowd. He gazed stupidly at a Republican officer engaged in taking the testimony of several witnesses, and in writing down, no doubt, the "proces-verbal." He recognized the landlord, his wife, the two boatmen, and the servant of the Red Inn. The surgical instrument which ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... He could only sit there dumbly—stupidly—listening for what he felt was sure as the death stroke of the headsman to his doomed victim. Again ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... peasant, whose lean acres extended up the mountainside in the rear. The man had been unwilling to leave the little field that was his all and had remained, for to go away would have been to him like parting with life. He could be seen within the low-ceiled room, sitting stupidly on a bench, watching with dull, lack-luster eyes the passing of the troops whose retreat would give his ripe grain over to be the spoil of the enemy. Standing beside him was his wife, still a young woman, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... "I rather stupidly took up the same idea from a map saying 'Zambesi' (eastern branch), believing that the map printer had some authority for his assertion. My first crossing was thus as fruitless as theirs, and I was less excusable, for I ought to have remembered ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... meet her the next evening. A dozen times his footsteps led him unconsciously almost to the gate. Then he would hurry away again, pace the mean streets, jostling stupidly against the passers-by. The pale, sweet face, the little nymph-like figure, the little brown shoes kept calling to him. If only there would pass away the horror of those hands! All the artist in him shuddered at the memory of them. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... Clarke or Mrs. Lambert got up and skittered around the room doing those things. I held their hands—and know they didn't get away. Besides, how did that glass come there? and how could they make those voices sound so natural? What is the use of being stupidly stubborn? If you treat Viola fairly she will ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... their forces, met him while on his march; passing through every place Without molestation, his allies receiving him courteously, and escorting him as he passed the boundaries of each district. Indibilis, who spoke for both, addressed him by no means stupidly and imprudently like a barbarian, but with a modest gravity, rather excusing the change as necessary, than glorying that the present opportunity had been eagerly seized as the first which had occurred. "For he well knew," he said, "that ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... sorry to interrupt this interesting conversation," she said; "but I have stupidly forgotten one of my domestic duties. You will allow me to return, and listen with renewed pleasure, when my household business is off my mind. I shall hope to find you both more polite to each other than ever when I come back." She ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... a great desire to tell Mrs. Bolton that she had behaved very stupidly. But she knew Mrs. Bolton would not stand that, and she had to content herself with saying, severely, "The next time he comes, let me know without fail, please. What is the child ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... a cuff. They fell on Gerard now like idle air. He paid the lad in silence, and descended the hill alone. The brook was silvery; it ran murmuring over little pebbles, that glittered, varnished by the clear water; he sat down and looked stupidly at them. Then he drank of the brook; then he laved his hot feet and hands in it; it was very cold: it waked him. He rose, and taking a run, leaped across it into Germany. Even as he touched the strange land he turned suddenly and looked back. "Farewell, ungrateful country!" he cried. "But ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... a little stupidly, for I did not, at the moment, comprehend his meaning which, however, he immediately explained by answering, "Let me take it, then;—let me make a little interest in it to myself, by reading ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... must have helped. So did Socrates, by the way. Of course it lowers the general standard. Where everybody can read and write, there's an end of good taste. No, I don't mean that exactly," he added, feeling that he was expressing himself very stupidly. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... any one might have devised it too," replied young Edith, modestly. "Sure, 't was no great device to use a Scotch mist for our safety, and 't were wiser to chance it than stay and be stupidly murdered by Red Donald's men. And so it was, good Robert, even as Mary did say, that we came forth unharmed, from amidst them and fled here to King William's court, where we at ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... at his friend in surprise and with some distrust. The offer was so generous and reckless, that he could not help asking himself what was its motive. He looked so long and so stupidly at Offitt, that the latter at last divined his feeling. He thought that, without telling Sleeny the whole scheme, he would test ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... possible, Ben a little the first. His first barrel missed, but the second, aimed at the same bird, brought it down. Creamer's first barrel went off in the act of cocking, in the hurry and agitation of the surprise; and letting the muzzle of his gun drop, he stood stupidly gazing at the departing flock, until roused by Davies's "Give them t'other barrel, any way." Raising his gun, he fired instantly, and killed a fine gander, which fell dead a hundred and ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... stupidly, his hand still on the shelf. His fingers had closed on a revolver, but they had found the barrel instead of ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... prisoners were silent, watching the deadly battle. Then, gradually, Tom felt the hairy man's grip relaxing. With the last ounce of his strength he burst out of the encircling arms and staggered back. The ape man looked at him stupidly and then down at his arms as if they had betrayed him. With a roar, he came rushing in again. Tom set himself, left foot forward, shoulders hunched, and when Monkey came within arm's length, he swung with all the strength he had left in his body. ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... there is a good article on the Amendment Cases in the 'E. R.' They have stupidly omitted to send it from Grafton Street. The 'Quarterly' came, and a better article than our friend your neighbour's never was written. I admired it so much that I wrote to him about it. Pray tell him my opinion of it, in case my letter should have miscarried, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... did not answer. After a moment's pause he asked again for his tea. The girl turned away impatiently. Here was a puzzle, neither the voyageurs, nor Wishkobun her nurse, nor her father would explain to her. The first had grinned stupidly; the second had drawn her shawl across her face, the third asked ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?" he asked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evil man to destroy that which he may not possess. "Nay, nay, your wits are disordered. You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank, and you construe that into a proof ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... bag a 'rhino' I quite forgot the interdict, and fired an Express bullet into the shoulder of the animal, as he stood broadside on, staring stupidly at me. He staggered, and made as if he would charge down the hill. The old 'Major Capt[a]n,' as they called our sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire. The mahouts and beaters were petrified with horror at my presumption. I ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Vernor, he naturally shrinks. The young lady considers the arrangement 'horrible.' After accepting her duties cut and dried all her life, she pretends at last to have a taste of her own. I confess I am surprised; I had been given to believe that she was stupidly submissive, and would remain so to the end of the chapter. Not a bit of it. She has insisted on my being formally dismissed, and her father intimates that in case of non-compliance she threatens him with an ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... crossing the road, one of the stray cows that wandered about the town. The ungainly animal came slowly along, turning this way and that, in search of a firmer footing, until all at once her hind legs plunged down into a hole, and the poor creature was left sitting bolt upright and staring stupidly about her, as if in astonishment at her unwonted position. Louise laughed at the absurd picture, but her heart failed her a little when she thought of the long walk in store ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... me as one! An older woman than I might have been hard put to it to preserve her presence of mind, in such a position as mine. Instinct, not reason, served me in my sore need. Instinct, not reason, kept me passively and stupidly silent when I got back to the house. "We will talk about it to-morrow," was all I could say to Michael, when he gently lifted me ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... mingling with the skirling pipes of the wind came a different, human sound. And, presently, when the call—if call it was—was repeated, the man sat up and looked dully around. But he made no effort to reply. He waited, listening stupidly, and the cry did not reach him again. Then, his glance falling to the woman, a ray of intelligence leaped in his eyes. He rose on his knees and moved her so there was room for his own bulk between her body and the rock. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... fairly bursts out crying, and dashes the cuff of his jacket across his eyes, blushing up to the roots of his hair, and feeling as if he should like to go down suddenly through the floor. The whole form are taken aback; most of them stare stupidly at him, while those who are gifted with presence of mind find their places and look steadily at their books, in hopes of not catching the master's eye and getting called up in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... was stupidly staring at this announcement, he whipped out a big clasp knife, and in a few minutes fashioned me a practicable crutch. Then, taking me by the other arm, he set me ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... but the drops of sweat upon the brow—chilled him again. At the same moment, the hopeless absurdity of love and marriage between a girl of seventeen and a man of thirty-six, occurred to him in all its force. Stupidly sensitive being that he was, he thought that this icy, intellectual Mr. Minford would laugh ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... me," she continued; "I have been saying many prayers for you, while my prayers were of no good, for then He was not mine. But now I have espoused Him, and am going to be married to-day, and He will hear me." The woman stared at her stupidly, as much as to make it evident that if afterwards a change took place in her, as in Callista, that change too, though in so different a soul, must come of something beyond nature. She had something in her hand, and said, "It's useless to give a mad woman like her ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... seemed to them impossible that Arsene Lupin should be there, so near to them, behind that frail partition, which they could smash with a blow of their fists. They both of them knew him too well, demon that he was, to admit that he would allow himself to be nabbed so stupidly. No, no, a thousand times no; he was not there. He must have escaped, by the adjoining houses, by the roofs, by some suitably prepared outlet; and, once again, the shadow of Arsene Lupin was all that they could hope ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... her just now. However, my trouble has a practical side, for which I originally mentioned it. As this may bring me to London more than I thought, it seems possible I might go there after all, instead of Wycombe, if I knew to whom to go. Also I find I stupidly destroyed your letter with the names of the priests at Wycombe to whom you referred me. Would it bother you very much to send me the names again, and any alternative London ones that occur to you; and I will let you know my course of action ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... in the bitterness of the knowledge that he was sick, Hazel seemed to herself half benumbed; and sat stupidly dwelling on that one fact, feeling it, and yet less with a sense of pain than of an intolerable burden. A weight that made her stir and move sometimes, as if she could get away from it so. It was no use to tell her not to anticipate; to say ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... an ostentatious discourse on adjectives and adverbs, something which I knew to be utterly beyond her depth. It had the intended effect. She listened to my explanation stupidly, and when I had finished she said, with resignation: "I don't understand what you say. I wish I had time to go to evening school, at least, as you did. I haven't any idea of these things. Lucy will ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... by any means, but as much as the pourer would allow, then raised myself upon my hands and looked. The starlight was extraordinarily clear in that pure desert atmosphere, and by it I saw the face of Sergeant Quick bending over me. Also, I saw Orme sitting up, staring about him stupidly, while a great yellow dog, with a head like a mastiff, licked his hand. I knew the dog at once; it was that which Orme had bought from some wandering natives, and named Pharaoh because he ruled over all other dogs. Moreover, I knew the two camels that stood near ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... in which he happens to be. M. Bompain completed that procession of subalterns, all classified with reference to some one specialty. Bompain, the secretary, the steward, the man of confidence, through whose hands all the business of the establishment passed; and a single glance at that stupidly solemn face, that vague expression, that Turkish fez poised awkwardly on that village schoolmaster's head, sufficed to convince one what manner of man he was to whom interests like ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... resentful. He paused in a kind of temper, and struck with his hand a little shrub. Thence there arose instantly a cloud of awakened sparrows, which as instantly dispersed and disappeared into the thicket. He looked at them stupidly, and when they were gone continued staring at the stars. "I am angry. By what right? By none!" he thought; but he was still angry. He cursed Madame von Rosen and instantly repented. Heavy was the money ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... She looked at him stupidly, as one who failed to catch his meaning. Then he lost all control of himself and effervesced, forgetful that the woman was only a poor peasant, bellowing that he had no idea of going back to Sedan to be caught like a rat in a trap; not he! he was going to make tracks for foreign parts, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... already started his inevitable grumbling. There were eight in the compartment, and he had stupidly omitted to secure ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... went, toward Purdy, and the people who had come out of their houses to speak words of encouragement to Alf and me when we were on our way to see the Aimes boys tried, now stood about their doors, gazing stupidly. At the wagon-maker's shop a crowd was gathered, and I was recognized as I drew near by young men who had met me at the General's house the night before—now so long ago, it seemed—and they came out into the road and urged me to tell them all I knew. I felt that Etheredge ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... possibly influenced by British slang 'plonk' for cheap booze, or 'plonker' for someone behaving stupidly (latter is lit. equivalent to Yiddish 'schmuck')] The sound a {newbie} makes as he falls to the bottom of a {kill file}. While it originated in the {newsgroup} talk.bizarre, this term (usually written "*plonk*") is now (1994) widespread ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... pointing the way along the trail for the initiated. They would have trees done like that at regular intervals; but if you were a silly European you wouldn't know without being told what the trees meant by sticking out their elbows in that significant way; and so you would stupidly proceed to get ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... most terrifying ghost stories on the entire record, which would have made an exceptionally splendid show in the 'Transactions of the Society for Psychical Research.' Unfortunately, however, he was only a man of science, ungifted with the precious dower of poetical imagination; so he stupidly called it a remarkable fire-ball, measured the ground carefully like a common engineer, and sent an account of the phenomenon to that far more prosaic periodical, the 'Quarterly Journal of the Meteorological Society.' Another splendid apparition thrown ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Absolute strangers. They were admiring Luca Signorelli—of course, quite stupidly. However, we got talking, and they refreshed me not—a little. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... presently recovering his recollection to a certain degree, he came limping to me holding his hand to his right thigh. "The first thing that must now be done," said I, "is to free these horses from the traces; can you undertake to do so?" "I think I can," said the man, looking at me somewhat stupidly. "I will help," said Belle, and without loss of time laid hold of one of the traces. The man, after a short pause, also set to work, and in a few minutes the horses were extricated. "Now," said I to the man, "what is next to ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... to encounter all sorts of difficulties as I have travelled along this road. The world has been against me, sometimes very intensely, and often very stupidly. I have had difficulties similar to those of other men, with my own bodily appetites, with my mental disposition, and with ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... these gross faults was the fight at Worth, where MacMahon, before his army was mobilized, accepted battle with the Crown Prince, pitting 50,000 men against 175,000; the next was Bazaine's fixing upon Metz as his base, and stupidly putting himself in position to be driven back to it, when there was no possible obstacle to his joining forces with MacMahon at Chalons; while the third and greatest blunder of all was MacMahon's move to relieve Metz, trying to slip 140,000 men ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... repeated Jost stupidly—"Then the man who came to me last night—" He broke off, unable to find any words for the expression of the thoughts which ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... moment against the back of her chair. She had a sick feeling, a sensation as if her heart were dissolving, as if the room looked unfamiliar and much larger than usual. When she put on her clothes she did it slowly, her fingers fumbling stupidly at buttons and hooks, her mouth a little open ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... topic. He innocently eavesdrops. The individual who advocates the wearing of gloves is (of course) frivolous, fashionable, and feeble. His companion, who despises such vanities, is poor, though honest,—brawny and impregnable. It is wonderful how stupidly the kid-glove advocate reasons. The honest son of toil overwhelms him in a few moments. When a man talks so splendidly about the hard palm of labor being more useful to the world than the silken fingers of the aristocrat, who would have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... gracefulness. Matter, however, is obstinate and resists. It draws to itself the ever-alert activity of this higher principle, would fain convert it to its own inertia and cause it to revert to mere automatism. It would fain immobilise the intelligently varied movements of the body in stupidly contracted grooves, stereotype in permanent grimaces the fleeting expressions of the face, in short imprint on the whole person such an attitude as to make it appear immersed and absorbed in the materiality of some mechanical ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... and, drawing it far back, took careful aim at the largest of the great pigs. In the ape-man's teeth were other arrows, and no sooner had the first one sped, than he had fitted and shot another bolt. Instantly the pigs were in turmoil, not knowing from whence the danger threatened. They stood stupidly at first and then commenced milling around until six of their number lay dead or dying about them; then with a chorus of grunts and squeals they started off at a wild run, disappearing quickly in ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... opinion," said the burgomaster, and the councillors agreed with him. They returned to the table, at which the chief burgomaster still sat, gazing stupidly at the wine-cup. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... we shall have to change the subject. Love affects people in as many different ways as wine. Some are exalted,—their feet spurn the earth, their heads are in the clouds; some pugnacious, walking about with a chip on the shoulder; others are stupidly happy,—their faces wearing a sickly smile that becomes painful to look at; others again, like you, melancholy as a wailing tenor in the last act of 'Lucia.' Like learning, a little draught of love is dangerous; drink largely and be sober. The charmer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... entirely abhorred slavery Not possible for Clemens to write like anybody else Ought not to call coarse without calling one's self prudish Polite learning hesitated his praise Praised it enough to satisfy the author Reparation due from every white to every black man Shackles of belief worn so long Stupidly truthful The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it Used to ingratitude from those he helped Vacuous vulgarity Walter-Scotticized, pseudo-chivalry of the Southern ideal We have never ended before, and we do not see how we can end Livy: Well, if ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... he murmured. "I can't sleep. That's what's the matter. Nothing does any good. I can't sleep—can't forget. Only sit here like this, and feel stupid. Never mind, Sally. Good little girl." He spoke thickly, like a man who has been drinking; but he was stupidly unshakable. She could do nothing with him. Having withdrawn her arm she could not again lay it upon his shoulders; but stood silent, feeling helpless and on tiptoe, with a sense of strain. She was not miserable nor anxious about him; she could almost hear her own voice, so nearly had detachment ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... reached the bank, where lie switched his tail, raised his proboscis, and sniffed the air uneasily, his height being fully thirty feet and his length about fifty. On seeing the raft and its occupants, he looked at them stupidly and threw back his head. "He seems to be turning up his nose at us," said Bearwarden. "All the same, he will do well for breakfast." As the creature moved, his chest struck a huge overhanging palm, tearing it off as though it had been a reed. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... tendency to cleave to the floor; the walls at times undulated in a most disagreeable manner; people looked unnaturally big; and the "very bottles on the mankle shelf" appeared to dance derisively before my eyes. Taking these things into consideration, while blinking stupidly at Dr. Z., I resolved to retire gracefully, if I must; so, with a valedictory to my boys, a private lecture to Mrs. Wadman, and a fervent wish that I could take off my body and work in my soul, I mournfully ascended to my apartment, and Nurse ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... back, and run all the way home, and been round by the town for fear you should see me. And I've done something you could never, never think of if you tried till next Christmas, I've got some flowers for Mrs. Overtheway, only I did it so stupidly; she will think me a perfect goose, and perhaps be angry," and the tears ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... waves. Regulus stirred, groaned, and struggled into a sitting posture. "Lie down again!" ordered Darkeih. "We 's all on de way to Heaben, but if nigger shake de boat, we'll get dere befo' de Lawd ready for us. Lie down!" Regulus, muttering to himself, looked stupidly about him, then dropped his head back into her lap. In three minutes he was snoring. Darkeih's whimpering died away, and her turbaned head sank lower and lower, until it rested upon that of Regulus, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... woman whose breakfast was so often forgotten was not alone to-day. Her daughters were at home, but they were not paying much attention to her. At first she peered stupidly with her half-blind eyes into Theo's basket, then ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... her too—rather. She's interesting." His sister gave him a momentary, mystified glance and he added: "And she's dreadful." He felt stupidly annoyed and was ashamed of his annoyance, as he could have assigned no reason for it. It didn't grow less for the moment from his seeing Gabriel Nash approach Julia, introduced by Nick Dormer. He gave ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... of coughing and looked stupidly at the sky. Here was the last straw. He was dog-tired, for he had had little sleep the past week. There was no one to leave with Marion, and Marion was too weak to tend herself. The word was from Branksome, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... be daunted, Eric trundled along the little vehicle right into the heart of the birds' colony, beating down the grass as he advanced and crushing hundreds of eggs in his progress, as well as wheeling over those birds that could not, or stupidly would not, get out of his way; when, as he was beginning to load up the wheelbarrow with a mass of the finer sort of guano which he had scraped up, the penguins, which had been all the while grumbling terribly at the intruder who was thus desolating their domain—waiting ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... eyelashes. Others stared with amazed eyes. Men sitting doubled up in the upper bunks smoked short pipes, swinging bare brown feet above the heads of those who, sprawling below on sea-chests, listened, smiling stupidly or scornfully. Over the white rims of berths stuck out heads with blinking eyes; but the bodies were lost in the gloom of those places, that resembled narrow niches for coffins in a whitewashed and lighted mortuary. Voices buzzed louder. Archie, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... now leaning forward on his elbows and laughing foolishly, stupidly. It was a queer laugh, and struck terror into Brent as he himself coughed and clutched involuntarily at his ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... "the waist, since one has to make use of that hideous word, should be a gradual, imperceptible, gentle transition from one to another of woman's two glories, her bosom and her womb, and you stupidly strangle it, you stave in the thorax, which involves the breasts in its ruin, you flatten your lower ribs, and you plough a horrible furrow above the navel. The negresses, who file their teeth down to a point, and split their lips, in ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France |
