"Witless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and highland dresses; Tell them that youth once gone returns no more, That hired huzzas redeem no land's distresses; Tell them Sir William Curtis is a bore, Too dull even for the dullest of excesses, The witless Falstaff of a hoary Hal, A fool whose bells have ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... been lately made acquainted' [and so I have by Betty, and she by my brother] 'with the weak and wanton airs he gives himself of declaiming against matrimony. I severely reprehend him on this occasion: and ask him, with what view he can take so witless, so despicable a liberty, in which only the most abandoned of men allow themselves, and yet ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... deer from the bishop's park should be killed for the inauguration feast. "Let three hundred be taken, and if you find more wanted do not stickle to add to this number." In this answer the reader must not see the witless, bad arithmetic of a vegetarian unskilled in catering, but a fine determination, first to feed all the poor folk of his metropolis with the monopolies of princes; and secondly, to sever himself wholly ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... tottering fortress of the ultra-masculine, abetted by a petty handful of witless traitors—those petticoated creatures who also see in women nothing but their sex. They may be, in some cases, honest in their belief; but their honesty does no credit to their intelligence. They are obsessed by this dominant idea of sex; due clearly enough to the long period of male ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... and anon the Immortals bethink them of harp and minstrelsy. And all the Muses together with sweet voice in antiphonal chant replying, sing of the imperishable gifts of the Gods, and the sufferings of men, all that they endure from the hands of the undying Gods, lives witless and helpless, men unavailing to find remede for death or buckler against old age. Then the fair-tressed Graces and boon Hours, and Harmonia, and Hebe, and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, dance, holding each by the wrist the other's hand, while among them sings one neither unlovely, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... (Colony!) grant me boon of mightiest laughter. Certain a townsman mine I'd lief see thrown from thy gangway Hurled head over heels precipitous whelmed in the quagmire, Where the lake and the boglands are most rotten and stinking, 10 Deepest and lividest lie, the swallow of hollow voracious. Witless surely the wight whose sense is less than of boy-babe Two-year-old and a-sleep on trembling forearm of father. He though wedded to girl in greenest bloom of her youth-tide, (Bride-wife daintier bred than ever was delicate kidlet, 15 Worthier diligent watch ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Look how thou diest. Look how thy eye turns pale. Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents. Hark how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out; How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth; Behold distraction, frenzy, and amazement, Like witless antics, one another meet, And all cry, Hector! Hector's dead! ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... enough for comfort; it was far too small for the new style of wholesale entertainment which the plutocracy has introduced from England, where the lunacy for aimless and extravagant display rages and ravages in its full horror of witless vulgarity. Thus, the Severences from being leaders twenty years before, had shrunk into "quiet people," were saved from downright obscurity and social neglect only by the indomitable will and tireless energy ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... are his words! They cut Like sharpen'd swords and burn like hissing flames! What is his will? His speech, though witless, ay, And senseless too, insults and threatens me.— It warns me too—of what?—Oh God, I quake! If but Brangaene came, or Dinas came! They come not and this creeping fear—how hard It grips my soul!—More Gaelic barons ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... abuse, The coarse, unfeeling, witless jest, The threat obscene, the oath profuse, And ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... galleys were introduced—Robert Macaire, the clever rogue above mentioned, and Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice, butt, and scapegoat, on all occasions of danger. It is needless to describe the play—a witless performance enough, of which the joke was Macaire's exaggerated style of conversation, a farrago of all sorts of high-flown sentiments such as the French love to indulge in—contrasted with his actions, which were philosophically unscrupulous, and his appearance, which was ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wish— This honour, from his master kind, The fowl would gladly have declined. Outcried the bird of chase, As in the weeds he eyed the skulker's face, 'Why, what a stupid, blockhead race!— Such witless, brainless fools Might well defy the schools. For me, I understand To chase at word The swiftest bird, Aloft, o'er sea or land; At slightest beck, Returning quick To perch upon my master's hand. There, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... her companions giggled at this witless behavior; but some, who felt it somewhat uncanny and whom the unhappy girl's bitter cry had struck painfully, drew apart and had already organized some new amusement, when a neat little woman appeared on the scene, clapping her plump ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... belly pleads they bribed been: And he, for want of better advocate, Doth to the ear his injury relate. The back, insulting o'er the belly's need, Says, Thou thyself, I others' eyes must feed. The maw, the guts, all inward parts complain The back's great pride, and their own secret pain. Ye witless gallants, I beshrew your hearts, That sets such discord 'twixt agreeing parts, Which never can be set at onement more, Until the maw's wide mouth be stopt ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... among fools of both sexes to sneer at Susan B. Anthony and use her name to point witless jokes. But it seems to us—and we differ from her most emphatically on the question of woman suffrage—that her brave, unselfish life reflects a credit on womanhood which the follies of a thousand others can ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... I hated like the devil to let her work that way, but ... you knew I was scared witless every second until we ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... "GREEN," you will see that the Verdant Greens are a family of some respectability and of considerable antiquity. We meet with them as early as 1096, flocking to the Crusades among the followers of Peter the Hermit, when one of their number, Greene surnamed the Witless, mortgaged his lands in order to supply his poorer companions with the sinews of war. The family estate, however, appears to have been redeemed and greatly increased by his great-grandson, Hugo de Greene, but was again jeoparded in the year 1456, when Basil Greene, being commissioned ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... thing just witless, accidentally cruel perhaps, but not malignant? Or is it wise, and merely refusing to pamper us? Is there somewhere in the immensities some responsive kindliness, some faint hope of toleration and assistance, something sensibly on our side against death and ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... witless dialogue of secondary personages, then an almost empty stage, old Faust alone remaining, and ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... held over the fire, or thrust in hot water half a minute, then the candles withdrawn by help of the reeds. They were cooled a bit, to save the softened outside, then nubbed of surplus wick, and laid in a dish outside. Careless or witless molders, by laying candles still soft upon the pile, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... not wring his hands, as do Those witless men who dare To try to rear the changeling Hope In the cave of black Despair: He only looked upon the sun, And ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... corslet for non dur habit (otherwise non durabit, it shall not last), un lit sans ciel, that is, a bed without a tester, for un licencie, a graduated person, as bachelor in divinity or utter barrister-at-law; which are equivocals so absurd and witless, so barbarous and clownish, that a fox's tail should be fastened to the neck-piece of, and a vizard made of a cowsherd given to everyone that henceforth should offer, after the restitution of learning, to make use of any such ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... In spite of the vindictive urgings of the Hollander newspaper, the Volksstem, few could believe that the death sentence would be carried out and most people recognized that the ebullitions of that organ expressed the feelings of only a few rabid and witless individuals among the Hollanders themselves and were viewed with disgust by the great majority of them. At the same time the scene in court had been such as to show that the Government party—the officials and Boers then present—had not regarded the death sentence as a mere formality, but had, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... by those who know it intimately as the most stupid and witless of birds, and yet before leaving its eggs exposed to the hot African sun, the parent bird knows enough to put a large pinch of sand on the top of each of them, in order, it is said, to shade and protect the germ, which always rises to the highest point ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... "The witless are under the protection of God," stammered a flat-cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. "They foretell ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... you had fallen into a bear pit?" the King asked with a faint smile, that sharpened swiftly to bitterness. "After all, it would matter little what anyone told of me. Without doubt your kin have already taught you to call me thrall-bred and witless. Little ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... eyelids sate the swelling tear, Not poured forth, though sprung from sad lament, And with this craft a thousand souls well near In snares of foolish ruth and love she hent, And kept as slaves, by which we fitly prove That witless pity ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the blighting breath of the false gods, stupid conventions, traditions, examples, your lapses from that consistency? His Seigneurie, at all events, delightfully, hadn't the least real idea of what any John Berridge was talking about, and the latter felt that if he had been less beautifully witless, and thereby less true to his right figure, it might scarce ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... wine-tinted, ribbon-like leaves, and the air is alert with rich and spicy odour, there is ample apology ever ready for the season and the direct results thereof. The trees are manifestly over-exerting themselves, in a witless competition with others which may never boast of painted, scented fruit. There is not a sufficient audience of aesthetics to tolerate the change of which the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... caution needful, save from sin?) And those two Truths, each gazing upon each, Embraced like sisters, thenceforth one. For her No arduous thing was Faith, ere yet she heard In heart believing: and, as when a babe Marks some bright shape, if near or far, it knows not, And stretches forth a witless hand to clasp Phantom or form, even so with wild surmise And guesses erring first, and questions apt, She chased the flying light, and round it closed At last, and found it substance. "This is He." Then cried she, "This, whom every ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... what my feelings were that evening—of my murderous hatred of that smirking jesting Jezebel who sat opposite me at dinner, my wrathful indignation at the thought of the poor little expected heir defrauded ere his birth; of the crushing contempt I felt for myself and the bishop as a pair of witless idiots unable to see our way out of the dilemma; all this boiling and surging through my soul, I can only wonder—Domenico having given himself a holiday, and the kitchen-maid doing her worst and wickedest—that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... the hard Fate of the justly-admir'd Astarte, and reflecting on his own Stars that so obstinately darted down their malignant Rays, and continu'd daily to torment him. What, said he! to pay four hundred Ounces of Gold for only seeing a Bitch pass by me; to be condemn'd to be beheaded for four witless Verses in Praise of the King; to be strangled to Death, because a Queen was pleas'd to look upon me; to be made a Prisoner, and sold as a Slave for saving a young Lady from being sorely abus'd by a Brute rather than a Man; and to be upon the Brink of being roasted alive, for no other Offence ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... better knows than you How I have ever loved the life removed, And held in idle price to haunt assemblies Where youth, and cost, and witless bravery keeps. 10 I have deliver'd to Lord Angelo, A man of stricture and firm abstinence, My absolute power and place here in Vienna, And he supposes me travell'd to Poland; For so I have strew'd it in the common ear, 15 And so it is received. ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... have known sunburn and frost but never a shoe, and a damsel or two in cotton homespun dress made of one piece from collar to hem, and pantalettes of the same reaching to the ankles—all standing and looking the picture of witless incapacity, and making no plea against tyranny! Is that a thing worth while to turn and look back upon? If the blow fell upon ourselves or our set, that would be different; but these illiterate and lowly ones—they are—you ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Elections had become a cheerful formality, a septennial folly, an ancient unmeaning custom; a social Parliament as ineffectual as the convocation of the Established Church in Victorian times assembled now and then; and a legitimate King of England, disinherited, drunken and witless, played foolishly in a second-rate music-hall. So the magnificent dream of the nineteenth century, the noble project of universal individual liberty and universal happiness, touched by a disease of honour, crippled ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... generous, undistinguishing love. Only he always forgot what he was going to do. He was much more sensitive than Maria, more shy and reluctant. But his shyness, his sensitiveness only made him more aimless and awkward, a tiresome clown, slack and uncontrolled, witless. All day long his mother shouted and shrilled and scolded at him, or hit him angrily. He did not mind, he came up like a cork, warm and roguish and curiously appealing. She loved him with a fierce protective love, grounded on pain. There was such a split, a contrariety in his soul, one ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... willing to admit,—is that of Lazarus, whose firm conviction rests that he was dead (in fact they buried him) and then restored to life by a Nazarene physician of his tribe, who afterwards perished in a tumult. The man Lazarus is witless, he writes, of the relative value of all things. Vast armaments assembled to besiege his city, and the passing of a mule with gourds, are all one to him; while at some trifling fact, he'll gaze, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... humbling to me on many grounds. I left the happy pair tete-a-tete, in their princely parlor together, little fancying that there was another argument which had been prepared to overthrow my feeble virtue. But all this had been arranged by the small cunning of this really witless couple. I was left to find my way down stairs as I might; and just when I was about to leave the dwelling—vexed to the heart at the desperate stolidity of the miserable man, whom avarice and weakness were about to expose to a loss which might be averted in part, and ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... "Thou art witless or art come from afar, if thou enquirest about this land. It is not utterly unknown; many know it who dwell in the East and in the West. It is rough and unfitted for steeds, yet it is not a sorry isle, though narrow. It hath plenteous store of corn and the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... it was not Bill's sarcasm alone that so bit into his bones, it was the jeering light he witnessed in Sandy's eyes, combined with the undisguised ridicule of Sunny's open grin. His blood began to rise; he felt it tingling in the great extremities of his long arms. The obvious retort of the witless was surging through his ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... for a masked ball! Indifference and pique swung Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the knee to Baal, who hold fast to what is high and good in the doctrine of political equality; in whose hearts the altar-fires of rational liberty are kept aglow, beaconing the darkness of that illimitable inane where their countrymen, inaccessible to the light, wander witless in the bogs of political unreason, alternately adoring and damning the man-made gods of their own stature. Of that bright band fueling the bale-fires of political consistency I can not profess myself a member in good standing. In view of this general recreancy ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... my offerings few, While witless wisdom fool'd my mind; But now I trim my sails anew, And trace the course I left behind. For lo! the Sire of heaven on high, By whose fierce bolts the clouds are riven, To-day through an unclouded sky His thundering steeds and car has driven. E'en now dull ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... beest a lover but three days, thou wilt be heartless, sleepless, witless, mad, wretched, miserable, and indeed a stark fool; and by that thou hast been married but three weeks, though thou shouldst wed a Cynthia rara avis, thou wouldst be a man ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the Skyeman was very illiterate; witless of Salamanca, Heidelberg, or Brazen-Nose; in Delhi, had never turned over the books of the Brahmins. For geography, in which sailors should be adepts, since they are forever turning over and over the great globe of globes, poor Jarl was deplorably ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... hope, but in one instant's scrutiny she saw that this had vanished, too. Some terrible thought had sobered and engrossed him. Now he was eyeing her like a witless thing, his features drawn, his eyes burning. The moment ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... here—we call the treasure knowledge, say, Increased beyond the fleshly faculty— Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven: The man is witless of the size, the sum, The value ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Solomon forgot. Others there were, whose Names I shan't repeat; Eliakim had friends both small and great: And many, who then for his Favour strove, With their hot heads, like furious Jehu, drove. Some Wits, some Witless, Warriors, Rich and Poor, Some who rich Clothes and empty Titles wore; Some who knew how to rail, some to accuse, And some who haunted Taverns and the Stews. Some roaring Bullies, who ran th'row the Town Crying, God damn 'um, they'd support the Crown: ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... and fro on that distant beach. I say that this dismal omen damped the spirit of us all. But nothing in this world can long dishearten the brave; we soon grow lighter, and, marching along in the crowd, blackguard effectively the witty or witless dogs that crack jokes at us and forebode hard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... we hear nothing of his exploits in these capacities. However, he must have been a familiar figure to the villagers as he stood in his little desk on the Sunday, giving out the psalms and leading the singing, because when in the rifled and dismantled Maypole he appeals to the poor witless old Willet as to whether he did ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... witless oversight! Now, Anthony, prepare thyself to die. Lo, where the monstrous ministers of wrath Menace thy murder with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... "Witless, quotha? Wise men have not folly enough to please them, nor madness enough to desire to please them," said Gerard loftily; "but 'tis to my comrade I speak, not to you, you brazen toads, that make so free with a man ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... fear her not. She is but a poor harmless body," said Kenric. "Only the witless carls and cottar folk are so simple as to believe that she has aught of evil in ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... genius knew Ere mated with his being. Conscious then Of his high theme alone, he smiled again Straight back upon himself in many a hue And tint, and light and shade, which slowly grew Enfeatured of a fair girl's face, as when First time she smiles for love's sake with no fear. So wrought he, witless that behind him leant A woman, with old features, dim and sear, And glamoured eyes that felt the brimming tear, And with a voice, like some sad instrument, That sighing said, "I'm dead there; love ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... foretells the truth. Or if some erring crossbow-bolt should break Thine unarmed head, shot from behind a house, So, evil falls, and a fool foretells the truth." "Well," quoth Lord Raoul, with languid utterance, "'Tis very well — and thou'rt a foolish fool, Nay, thou art Folly's perfect witless man, Stupidity doth madly dote on thee, And Idiocy doth fight her for thy love, Yet Silliness doth love thee best of all, And while they quarrel, snatcheth thee to her And saith 'Ah! 'tis my sweetest No-brains: mine!' — And 'tis ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... or flower, herd or herdsman, church or cottage, to the shadowed horizon, looming dark as the twilight deepened, was in sympathy with the gloom which had come upon me as Martin Hall ceased to speak. I had thought the man a fool and witless, flighty in purpose and shallow in thought, and yet he seemed to speak of great mysteries—and of death. In one moment the jester's cloak fell from him, and I saw the mail beneath. He had made a great impression upon me, but I concealed it from ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... motionless presence beneath him, than able to distinguish it by power of vision, he endured interminable minutes of trembling horror, in a witless daze, before he thought of his match-box. Immediately he found it and struck a light. As the wood caught and the bright small flame leaped in the pent air, he leaned forward, over the body, breathlessly dreading ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... scarcity of the supernatural. Mr. Sludge is not so much to blame: the people at length push the thing so far that he is obliged to cheat in self-defence. And when a man tasks his wits successfully, if it be only to mislead the witless, he has a sense of satisfaction in the effort akin to that of the rhetorician ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... heart-broken, crazy wife was left without house or home, and went away wandering through the country no one knew where. Some said she had cast herself into the sea and was drowned; but others, I mind, declared they had seen her after that as wild and witless as ever. Hers was a hard fate whatever it might have been, for her husband hadn't a friend in the world, no more had she; and when she went mad there was no ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... thee beat thy wings below For statues one, and one for aphorisms Was hunting; this the priesthood follow'd, that By force or sophistry aspir'd to rule; To rob another, and another sought By civil business wealth; one moiling lay Tangled in net of sensual delight, And one to witless indolence resign'd; What time from all these empty things escap'd, With Beatrice, I thus gloriously Was rais'd aloft, and made the guest ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the marriage of St. Catherine," observed his visiter, stepping through the casement, "I wish I could break all marriages as easily; and as to the motive, your honour, I did not like to wait quietly, and see a pistol-ball walk towards my witless pate, to convince, by its effects thereupon, the unbelieving world that Robin Hays had brains. As to the domestics, the doors were locked, and they, I do believe, (craving your pardon, sir,) too drunk to open them. As to ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... will?" returned his wife. "Once a witless fool, always a witless fool!" and giving free rein to her vexation and ill-temper she continued to upbraid her husband until his anger also was stirred, and he had wellnigh made a second bid ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... a witless vanity about my friend that sat on him almost like a virtue. He made parade of his crafts less, I could see, because he thought much of them, than because he wanted to keep himself on an equality with me. In the same way, as I hinted before, he never, in all the time of our wanderings ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... out on my forehead. What should I say? Uncle Tom no longer stood between us. Isabel was my bride. There were no barriers to break down, no protests to overcome. We were both of an age and of an experience where formalities lose their significance. The goddess had descended to me and here was I a witless fool. Finally there flashed into my mind what she had said to me in Rome: "My friend, for this once be Orpheus—Orpheus was once Dionysius. Orpheus, tranquil and inspired, touched the quiet lyre surrounded by the Muses. Orpheus had been Dionysius ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... affair a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength—signifying ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... "Ignorant and witless, you know not what you say. The plant thus tossing to and fro may well look down upon the rank and vulgar herbs. If it tosses, it is, at least, all self-contained—itself both flower and seed. Do thou be like it; be thine own root, and even in the whirlwind thou wilt still bear thy blossom: ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... occasion, as you say, and that designing men in after-ages invented the book of Joshua, affirming it was written at the time of that imaginary event by Joshua himself, adducing this pile of stones in evidence of its truth, what is the answer which every one who heard it must have made to this witless falsehood? 'We know this pile of stones,' they would say; 'but of such an origin as thou hast related we have, not heard, nor even of this book of Joshua. Where has it been concealed, and from whence was it brought forth? Besides, it solemnly inculcates that this miraculous event, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... by that poor young man, by that poor fool! For it is in the presence of a fool, gentlemen, that we now find ourselves, and the case is all the more curious, all the more interesting, seeing that, in many points, it recalls the insanity of the unfortunate prince who recently died, of the witless king who reigned platonically over Bavaria. I shall ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Yet to die were witless, When Death, who with his fatal finger taps At princely doors, as freely as he gives His summons to the serf, may at this instant Have sealed the only life that throws a shade Between us and ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... for him a Persian wife, no, three or four wives—although I have heard the custom of these witless Greeks is to be content with only one. There is no surer way to ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... as I am learned, Madam," said Hugh modestly. "I am younger even than you, methinks, and far more witless. But I have heard them say that have been deep skilled, as methinks, in the ministeries [mysteries] of God, that wherein it is said that 'He mai save withouten ende,' it scarce signifieth ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... witless remark on the rapid course of the ship as it cut its way through the water of the bow; the stranger answered with a strong Lancashire accent; and in the talk which followed, he said he was going out to see the cotton-mills at Fall River and New Bedford, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thou detect in me Some touch of cowardice or witlessness, That made thee undertake this enterprise? I seemed forsooth too simple to perceive The serpent stealing on me in the dark, Or else too weak to scotch it when I saw. This thou art witless seeking to possess Without a following or friends the crown, A prize that ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... before you leave your chamber and house, take care first that the collar of your shift, and of your blanchet, cotte and surcotte, do not hang out one over the other, as happens with certain drunken, foolish or witless women, who have no care for their honour, nor for the honesty of their estate or of their husbands, and who walk with roving eyes and head horribly reared up like a lion (la teste espoventablement levee comme un lyon!), their hair straggling out of their wimples, and the collars ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... I am forced to use two English words to translate that single Greek one. The 'cunning' workman, thoughtful in experience, touch, and vision of the thing to be done; no machine, witless, and of necessary motion; yet not cunning only, but having perfect habitual skill of hand also; the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect, in connection with this passage of Pindar, Homer's three verses about getting the lines ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... feet and springing upward to a perch, upon which he hung until he got balance for another leap. I followed the animal, knowing him wiser in such matters than I. From time to time Orivie urged me to ride and when I refused gave me the knowing look bestowed upon the witless, the glance of the asylum-keeper upon the lunatic who thinks himself a ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... his fiery qualities received the appropriate cognomen of hell), to hasten, with what force he could collect, to his relief. It happened to be Midsummer-day, when a great fair was held at Chester, the humours of which, it should seem, the worthy constable, witless of his lord's peril, was then enjoying. He immediately got together, in the words of my authority, "a great, lawless mob of fiddlers, players, cobblers, and such like," and marched towards the earl. The Welsh, although a musical people, not relishing this sort of chorus, thought ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... wage scale at all. Labor was a thing gone by. Wealth, success, ease, luxury was at hand for the taking. What a man had dreamed for himself he now could have. He could overleap all the confining limits of his life, and even if weak, witless, ignorant or in despair, throw all that aside in one vast ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... hath made thee to be hated by bringing of false witness, hath made the thirsty earth shrink from drinking of blood, hath cast down the Church—since that this man in this way hath brought peril upon the republic and upon the souls of poor and witless folk, this man hath wrought worse treasons than any that I wot of. If ye will adjudge him to die, I am ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... upon your innocence; For lifted clear and still and strange From the dark woven flow of change Under a vast and starless sky I saw the immortal moment lie. One instant I, an instant, knew As God knows all. And it and you I, above Time, oh, blind! could see In witless immortality. I saw the marble cup; the tea, Hung on the air, an amber stream; I saw the fire's unglittering gleam, The painted flame, the frozen smoke. No more the flooding lamplight broke On flying eyes ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... foolish one, witless on whose side the gods were fighting that day, discharged yet other missiles, wavering and wide of the mark; for his wind had been taken with the first clod, and he shot wildly, as one already desperate and in flight. I got another clod ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... and two guards had difficulty in preventing her from embracing her husband. Antonio, the son of Capitana Tinay, appeared crying like a baby, which only added to the lamentations of his family. The witless Andong broke out into tears at sight of his mother-in-law, the cause of his misfortune. Albino, the quondam theological student, was also bound, as were Capitana Maria's twins. All three were grave and serious. The last to come out was Ibarra, unbound, but conducted between ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Story anent a witless Wight's Adventures with the Midridge Fairies in the Bishoprick of Durham; now more ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... the Dean's "Frequent reproaching the [132] Animadverter with the Character of a Wit, tho join'd with such ill-favour'd Epithets, as his witless Malice has thought fit to degrade it with, as that he is a spiteful Wit, a wrangling Wit, a satirical Wit, and the WITTY, subtle, good-natur'd Animadverter, &c. the Dr. says, that tho there be but little Wit shewn in making ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... hall, seated at their ease as though they were our judges, we lead them to the dance in fear; we wait upon them with all diligence and anticipate their commands; and we are so afraid of offending them and so desirous of doing them service that those who see us pity us, and often deem us more witless than brutes. They account us dull and void of understanding, and give praise to the ladies, whose faces are so imperious and their speech so fair that they make themselves feared, loved, and honoured by those who only know them outwardly. But when we are ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... the other perceived the slip he had made, as did his sister, and the two joined in the Captain's mirth; while Master Bob also lent his help, although witless of what the general merriment was about, the deep ho-ho-ho! of his father being even more contagious than the catching laugh of his old ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... into the pool outside—cannot you hear them, Jac Hallen?" Impatience came to his voice; in truth, I must have been staring at him witless. "Maidens out there, Jac Hallen, who are seeking handsome youths like yourself for escort. Must I speak plainly? You are not wanted ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... and stone in this old place has got to be counted over again, the first of the month, by the examiners of Uncle Sam, and every book verified. By the way," the cashier ended carelessly, as witless messengers of fate alone can say such things, "you'd better leave me the key of that old chest we carry in special account for the Bowdoins. They'll want to look at everything, you know. The examination may come next year, or it may come ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... consequences of his disobedience to the rules of discipline and order. For years he had wanted a "new" experience of life. No one would give him what he sought. To him the "social" round was ever the same dreary, heartless and witless thing, as empty under the sway of one king or queen as another, and as utterly profitless to peace or happiness as it has always been. The world of finance was equally uninteresting so far as he was concerned; ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... To mass in jest, catch'd, was fain to disburse The hundred marks, which is the statute's curse, Before he 'scap'd; so't pleas'd my Destiny (Guilty of my sin of going) to think me As prone to all ill, and of good as forget- Ful, as proud, lustful, and as much in debt, As vain, as witless, and as false as they Which dwell in court, for once going that way, Therefore I suffer'd this: Towards me did run A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun E'er bred, or all which into Noah's ...
— English Satires • Various
... of connecting various threads of action in one plot, disregarding chronology, and hazarding an ethical solution of motives which mere fidelity to fact hardly warrants. He shows us Vittoria married to Camillo, a low-born and witless fool, whose only merit consists in being nephew to the Cardinal Monticelso, afterwards Pope Paul IV.[9] Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, loves Vittoria, and she suggests to him that, for the furtherance of their amours, his wife, the Duchess Isabella, sister to Francesco de' Medici, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Sobbing, frightened almost witless, he had been floundering forward for over an hour, and had made circle after circle without knowing, when, by chance, he set foot in a perfectly ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... path Wave after wave in wrath Frets 'gainst his fellow, warring where to send me. Flung forward, heaved aside, Witless and dazed I bide The mercy of the ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... did you say my lip was sweet, And made the scarlet pale? And why did I, young witless ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... This poor witless youth, plied with champagne; the older men who flattered him with lies; the suggestion of champagne made as though it were a sudden inspiration, and the six bottles standing ready in the cupboard; and now the suggestion ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... topers," quoth the Duke, "ye are witless, in faith, for there is no man here but is without wine, as in ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... At this witless, sweet impudence the Canadian looked very sheepish—for a beaver; and all the other people laughed; but the noble historical shades of Basil's thought vanished in wounded dignity beyond recall, and left him feeling rather ashamed,—for he had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Petition, and I think it has done some good; yet I am not confident that the measure will disarm the Catholic spleen.[288] And I was not entirely easy at finding myself allied to the Whigs, even in this instance, where I agree with them. This is witless ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... quarter to a third of the book, but are replete with padding, pointless babble and occasional puerile inaccuracies. They are largely attempts to explain and to moralize upon Yorick's emotions,—averbose, childish, witless commentary. The Wortregister contains fourteen pages in double columns of explanations, in general differing very little from the kind of information given in the notes. The Allgemeine Litteratur Zeitung[30] devotes ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... I with pennoned spear, To prance upon a bold destrere: I will not have black Care prevail Upon my long-eared charger's tail, For lo, I am a witless fool, And laugh at Grief and ride ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cords were strong; But happier Orpheus stood unbound, And shamed it with a sweeter song. His mode be mine. Of Heav'n I ask, May I, with heart-persuading might, Pursue the Poet's sacred task Of superseding faith by sight, Till ev'n the witless Gadarene, Preferring Christ to swine, shall know That life is sweetest when it's clean. To prouder folly let me show Earth by divine light made divine; And let the saints, who hear my word, Say, 'Lo, the clouds begin to shine About ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... curious magian hands: Faint music of thy breast has throbbed the faster, If I have touched it with my charming-wands. And yet,—the wonder any woman knows Thou dost deny the proud Soul that has fed Among the lilies of the White Eros.— Ere I go down among the witless Dead Give, give the secret, for my bliss or rue, Lest lack of that should ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... me then, The People flock'd about; I told the Bear-Garden-Men, My Guts they were almost out: They said I stunk most grievously, No Man would pity me; They call'd me witless Fool and ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... tours, hussar and highland dresses; Tell them that youth once gone returns no more, That hired huzzas redeem no land's distresses; Tell them Sir William Curtis[559] is a bore, Too dull even for the dullest of excesses— The witless Falstaff of a hoary Hal, A fool whose bells have ceased to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and witless, that he has established a class for the acquirement of an elegant and ready style of punning, on the pure Joe-millerian principle. The very worst hands are improved in six short and mirthful lessons. As a specimen of his capability, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... estimable woman, whom some were disposed at first to denounce as narrow-minded and witless, that must be attributed the very strongly developed religious revival apparent throughout Protestant Germany since the present emperor came to the throne. Prior to the present reign, church-going ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... bonny woman! Sit ye doon and rest yersel'. And wha is this? Is it witless Willie, as I've ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... they grow still beneath the rising storm. The roofless bullock hugs the sheltering stack, With cringing head and closely gathered feet, And waits with dumb endurance for the morn. Deep in a gusty cavern of the barn The witless calf stands blatant at his chain; While the brute mother, pent within her stall, With the wild stress of instinct goes distraught, And frets her horns, and bellows through the night. The stream runs black; and the far waterfall That sang so sweetly through the summer eyes, And ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... strongly presented. Imagine a girl of the period versed in the loose expressions of the day. She goes away; but, after an absence of five years in a country where she hears little except in a foreign tongue, she returns, and with her comes her slang. How common, how witless, her talk appears! Her slang has long since gone out of fashion. The best of English never ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... to woman be a friend? I deal with man, and when I can Reclaim with interest all I lend. Who but a witless gambler plays For farthing stakes these golden days? No, woman—woman—woman— Must only play the ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... witless of speech, Lay half-way open like a rose-lipp'd shell; And his young cheek was softer than a peach, Whereon his tears, for roundness, could not dwell, But quickly roll'd themselves to pearls, and fell, Some on the grass, and some against his hand, Or haply ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... explanation of the man's presence now. He must have met Duchaine that morning as the old man was flying or wandering aimlessly along the tunnel. They had reached le Vieil Ange together, and Leroux had probably had little difficulty in inducing the witless old man to take him back into ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... strength and might of Englishmen with this clerkly lore, so that her folk may have the better of them in France; and the poor, witless King gives in to her. And so while the Beauforts ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... souls of its inhabitants, and here, within half an hour's train travel of the Lord Mayor's Mansion and the golden vaults of the Bank of England, transpired on the sweltering night of which I write, one of the most witless and appalling tragedies of the present war. Forever memorable in the hitherto colorless calendar of Walthamstow will be this tragedy in the second ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... a new and complex sensation. Uncle Charles had grown so witless that he could no longer be sent out on errands and the disorder in settling in the new house left Stephen freer than he had been in Blackrock. In the beginning he contented himself with circling timidly round the neighbouring square or, at most, going half way down one of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... a dream! What can it mean? And that I was a maiden Queen Guarded by an Angel mild: Witless woe was ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... Vrouw Coetzee was not dead. She died a year after; but all that while she went witless, always smiling and seeming ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... alive I issued, scarce sure which, And down the darkling street I wildly fled, Led by a little, cold, and wandering moon, Which seemed as lonely and as lost as I. I had no aim, save to reach warmth and light And human touch; but still my witless steps Led to my husband's door, and there I stopped, By ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... costly offerings I had brought With sudden rust and mould grew dim: I found his tomb, indeed, where, by their laws, All must on stated days themselves imprison, Mocking with bread a dead creed's grinning jaws, Witless how long the life had thence arisen; Due sacrifice to this they set apart, Prizing it more than ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Captain Eric entered heartily into his plans as Bernulf laid them before him. "The loons!" he exclaimed with a hearty laugh, as he heard of the journey through the fens. "The witless geese! And thou hast not once told them that the young lord and his serving-man came ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... Exalt with exultation; many a night Set all its stars upon them as for spies On many a moon-bewildering mountain-height Where he rode only by the fierier light Of his dread lady's hot sweet hungering eyes. For the moon wandered witless of her way, Spell-stricken by strong magic in such wise As wizards use to set the stars astray. And in his ears the music that makes mad Beat always; and what way the music bade, That alway rode he; nor ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with that indefinable interjection of displeasure which defies all spelling. "You talk like the witless creature that you are. Didn't I tell the lad, two years ago, Michaelmas was, that the day he could pay off the mortgage on the farm, he should have you and the farm too? And eight hundred and fifty florins oughtn't to frighten a man as has got the right spirit in him. And there was ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... well what those twinkling lights denoted. He could almost hear the clatter round the tea-table, the witless jests of the youngsters, the careless laughter of the women, the trivial, merry nonsense that was weaving another hour of happiness into the golden skein of happy hours. Contemptible, of course! Vanity of vanities! But how ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... limit of his capacity was being reached. Mr. Slosson had become a sort of Greek chorus. He anticipated all the possible phases of drunkenness that awaited his companions. He went from silence to noisy mirth, when his unmeaning laughter rang through the house; he told long witless stories as he leaned against the bar; he became melancholy and described the loss of his wife five years before. From melancholy he passed to sullenness and seemed ready to fasten a quarrel on Yancy, but the latter ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... admire her on the stage from my seat in the pit. There are times when my wife seems no nearer to me than a beautiful picture. If I sit in a corner, and listen to her pretty babble about the last fan she bought at the Middle Exchange, or the last witless comedy she saw at the King's Theatre, is that companionship, think you? I may be charmed to-day—as I was charmed ten years ago—with the silvery sweetness of her voice, with the graceful turn of her head, the white roundness of her throat. At least I ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... head, the Hobbs person, still with the preposterous affectation of taking me off in speech and manner, was persuaded by the stricken mother to sing. "Sing that dear old plantation melody from London," she cried, "so that my poor boy may know there are worse things than death." And all this witless piffle because of a quite natural misunderstanding ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... gift is neglected, where it is not earnestly sought and carefully treasured, there may be a kind of smoky illuminations, which, in the dark, may pass for bright lights, but, when the Lord comes, shudder into extinction, and, to the astonishment of the witless five who carried them, are found to be 'going out.' Brethren, only He who does not quench the smoking flax but tends it to a flame, will help us to keep our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... understand. Or am I drunk? Ein galgen gelachter, nicht wahr? I will take quarters at the hotel. I know the management well. I saved the place from being looted in the November excitement. Have you seen the Kaiser Salle? His Majesty dined there once. A witless popinjay. Liebknecht is a man. Flames in his heart. But a poor orator. He will be killed. They must kill him. A little Jew, Haase, has brains. You will meet him. And the Dadaists—they know how to laugh. The cult of the absurd. Perhaps the next ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... knows when or how Diane de Poitiers first came to fascinate Francois, or how or why her power waned. At any rate at the time Francois pardoned her father, the witless Comte de St. Vallier, for the treacherous part he played in the Bourbon conspiracy, he really believed her to to be the "brightest ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... partially or fully developed female organs which result in fructification, and such fruit is ostentatiously displayed. The male produces its fruit not as does the female, clinging closely and compact to the stem, but dangling dangerously from the end of the panicles—an example of witless paternal pride. This fruit of monstrous birth does not as a rule develop to average dimensions, and it is generally woodeny of texture and bitter as to flavour, but fully ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... pointed to the brave show of the sky over the sunken sun; "the knights fled and the sheriff dead: two of the lawyer kind slain afield, and one hanged: and cruel was he to make them cruel: and three bailiffs knocked on the head—stout men, and so witless, that none found their brains in their skulls; and five arbalestiers and one archer slain, and a score and a half of others, mostly men come back from the French wars, men of the Companions there, knowing no other ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... of those in Buddhist works, it is more than probable that the noodle-stories which are found among all peoples never had any other purpose than that of mere amusement. Who, indeed, could possibly convert the "witless devices" of the men of Gotham into vehicles of moral instruction? Only the monkish writers of the Middle Ages, who even "spiritualised" tales which, if reproduced in these days, must ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... women's ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell,— And what am I, that I should love ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... trusted her inspiration farther than it appeared likely to carry her. Again she could think of nothing happier than to repeat, on the same witless note of interrogation: "To ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... hug my knee, The while a witless masquerade Of things that only children see Floats in a mist of light and shade: They pass, a flimsy cavalcade, And with a weak, remindful glow, The falling embers break and fade, As one by one the ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... farewells, the train had pulled away, the loneliness in her heart had become too great to hide. Her escort had made smart jokes about her tears, alleging disappointment and envy. He was a poor, shallow, witless, fool who could not understand; and that he could not understand mattered, to her, not at all. She had commanded him to take her home and at her front door had thanked him ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright |
