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More "Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this anonymous idiot?... He really ought to have known better than that," says a reviewer in The Near East. I quite agree. It is pleasant now and then to be able to agree with a paper which is so one-sided as to admit pro-Nikita and anti-Serbian diatribes by Mr. Devine, but which refuses to insert a letter on ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans with a heavy sigh. "They are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... representation I had somewhere seen of Silenus reproving his Bacchanals: the picture was the more striking by the contrasted subjects it was opposed to: on one side was a spare-looking stripling, of about the age of eighteen, with lank hair brushed smoothly over his forehead, and a demure, half-idiot-looking countenance, that seemed to catch what little expression it had from the reflection of its sire, for such I discovered was the ancient's affinity to this cadaverous importation from North Wales. The father, a Welsh rector of at least one hundred ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the courage you bring to it" ... this from old Frosted Moses in the warm corner by the door. There might have been an answer, but Dicky Tasset, the Town Idiot, filled in the pause with the tale that he was telling Mother Figgis. "And I ran—a mile or more with the stars dotted all over the ground for yer pickin', as ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... book. Either I'm an idiot, or blinded by conjugal conceit, or else Barty's book—which I've copied out myself in my very best handwriting—is one of the most beautiful and important books ever written. Come and dine with me to-night; Barty's dining in the City with the Fishmongers—you shall ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Mallalieu a fool, indeed, ever since the previous evening, when the police, conducting him to Norcaster, had told him of the Mayor's escape from the Town Hall. Nobody but an absolute fool, a consummate idiot, thought Cotherstone, would have done a thing like that. The man who flies is the man who has reason to fly—that was Cotherstone's opinion, and in his belief ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in Highmarket ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... right have you to guess? You're not to guess at all. Understand? Idiot! Shoulder arms, march! [As he goes off a short roll of drums ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... we, of the village, are the very dirt beneath her feet. I hear she's thinking of taking up Civic Improvement. I hope it is true—she'll likely run up against somebody who won't hesitate to tell her what an idiot she is." ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... on the grade and tried in vain to pierce the darkness. "Here—here, you blithering idiot! The police want you." ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... don't know what I was going to say. I am an abject idiot, which, all things considered, is not remarkable. - Ever your affectionate and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an idiot," admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-of-fact voice. "But she confessed to myself only the other day that she suffered from a sense of unreality. I told her that at any rate she had her own feelings surely. And she said to me: Yes, there was one of them ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... while into the other the genuine idiom of her native land flowed, ardently, from the now unsealed lips of Barty Mangan, began to wonder why the boys were talking like stage Irishmen; Georgy, she knew, was idiot enough for anything, but she had to admit to herself that Larry, also, was rather overdoing it. Christian was able to feel amused, but she also felt, quite illogically, that what had been distaste for Tishy Mangan was rapidly ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... considerable ingredient in the disposition of Euripides. Even his pathos is somewhat tinctured with this taste for painful images. As we have beheld in our own times a barbarian alternately glut his sight with executions, and then shed floods of tears, and sink into idiot despondency; so the poetry of Euripides in turn disgusts us with outrageous cruelty, and depresses us with the most painful ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Captain's youngest son. A poor idiot, who, thirty years of age, had the appearance of an overgrown boy. The other members of the Captain's large family were all married and settled prosperously in the world. Flora felt truly ashamed of the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... "This idiot," said he, indicating Jones, "has sold a coal mine, worth maybe a million, for five thousand. The Glanafwyn property has turned up coal. I only heard of it last night, and by accident. Struthers said to me straight out in the club, 'Do you know that ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... little idiot," she said, giving me a tender little shake that robbed the words of their harshness, "can't you see that ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... what he had gotten for the cow; to which he replied, that he had sold her to an honest woman named Am Solomon, who had promised to pay him on the next Friday ten pieces of gold. The wife was contented, and when Friday arrived, her idiot of a husband having, as usual, taken a dose of bang, repaired to the tree, and hearing the bird chattering, as before, said, "Well, my good mother, hast thou brought the gold?" The bird croaked. Supposing the imaginary woman refused to pay him, he became angry, and threw up his spade, which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... whether I was badly hurt. On my assurance that unless his back and legs and arms were broken, there was no damage done, he straightened up and declared he was unhurt but dreadfully humiliated. "How could a man be such a condemned idiot as to plunge head-first against a barricade like that?" This was the question suggested to his mind, only he did not say "condemned idiot" exactly, but he apologized for the emphatic words he did use, and as they do not look well in print, they need ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... son. Here, in England, you would cruelly designate him as something between a madman and an idiot, but the Easterns look not thus upon those who possess not their ordinary faculties. Through Helfa, Abou had seen many wonderful things, and now he was going to ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... began to abuse the swineherd. "You precious idiot," he cried, "what have you brought this man to town for? Have we not tramps and beggars enough already to pester us as we sit at meat? Do you think it a small thing that such people gather here to waste your master's property—and must you needs bring ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... makes racing up the treble of the piano keys: 'Ump! whew! Didn't I tell you so? The minute my back was turned, of course you made ducks and drakes of all your promises. Show me a "Flying Jenney," that the tip end of any idiot's little finger can spin around, and I'll christen it Edward McTwaddle Singleton!' Seems funny to you, doctor? Just wait till you are married, and your Susan shuts the door and interviews you, picking a whole flock of crows, till you wonder ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... I will not be at the initiating, passing, or raising a candidate in a clandestine Lodge, I knowing it to be such. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I will not be at the initiating of an old man in dotage, a young man in nonage, an atheist, irreligious libertine, idiot, madman, hermaphrodite, nor woman. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I will not speak evil of a brother Master Mason, neither behind his back, nor before his face, but will apprise him of all approaching danger, if in my power. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... do not place much stock in Professor Cortoran's theory, though I admit that I am prejudiced. Naturally one does not care to believe that the object of his greatest affection is descended from a gibbering idiot ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... what fools men are!" she ejaculated. "And do you think, now, I'm going to let that girl, who's just getting rid of her malaria, go star-gazing with any old idiot while all the mists are curling out ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... "I'm just a plain idiot, Miss Edith," he said. "I was only fooling. It will mean a lot to me to have a nice girl go with me to the movies, or anywhere else. We'll make it to-night, if that suits you, and I'll take a look through the neighborhood at noon and see what's ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Brahmana is the foremost among all castes, art thou the foremost of all bowmen! Dhritarashtra's son (Duryodhana) listened not to the words repeatedly spoken by me and Vidura and Drona and Rama and Janardana and also by Sanjaya. Reft of his senses, like unto an idiot, Duryodhana placed no reliance on those utterances. Past all instructions, he will certainly have to lie down for ever, overwhelmed by the might of Bhima!'—Hearing these words of his, the Kuru king Duryodhana became of cheerless heart. Eyeing him, Santanu's son said,—'Listen, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Idiot was one of the terms, the mildest, which I should have applied to that young man. I wanted very much to remove him from that car by what Lute would call the scruff of the neck. But most of all, just then, I wanted to be alone, to see the last of ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his eyes from the man coming down the trail. It was usually some good-natured idiot, with a predisposition to gabbling, that made most of the trouble in ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... her. They went into one of the rooms. The candle burning in it showed a bed, with posts reaching to the ceiling, and an ancient mahogany chest. A handful of fire burned in the deep fireplace, and before it crouched Mack, an old slave of Mr. Robinson's—a miserable idiot, with just mind enough to perform ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... biggest idiot unhung!" he confessed, as he took her in his arms. "But when I saw that the writing was yours, I fancied your father had by threats, or in some way, induced you to change your mind, and that you really thought, in duty ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... want then, and want till you're gray, and longer," retorted the little man. "So we might as well move on. Tummas, you idiot, gad up ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... repeated the Princess impatiently. "I explained very carefully what I desired. That new groom is stupid. Caron, my chauffeur, would never have made a mistake unless that idiot groom ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... on for a great while, and say all manner of entertaining things. But all's gone. I am now an idiot. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intoxication and without stupor, turning a visual radius of fifty leagues across the earth around a circumference of three hundred." On the Rigi his musings on the magnificence of the view are checked by the presence of a cretin. Behold the contrast! An idiot with a goitre and an enormous face, a blank stare, and a stupid laugh is sole participator with Victor Hugo in this ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the brown satiny forehead lovingly, and laughed at herself for a suspicious idiot. And yet, the occurrence would not go from her mind, and she wakened in the night to think about it hour after hour and when she did sleep she was oppressed with a constant feeling of uneasiness, and woke again and again with that sense of groping after something that had just occurred, but which ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... You blessed idiot, there's no use of both of us smashing. If anybody's got to stay—I can bluff it out a good deal better than you ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... said, with a sneer. 'And you come here to tell me that! You infernal idiot! You come here to put yourself in my power like this! Courtenay Ivor, I always knew you were an ass, but I didn't ever know you were quite such a born idiot of a fellow as that. Hold back there, you image!' With a rapid dart, before you could ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... it! Did anybody ever see such an idiot since girls were first created? Not help it, after having given him as good as a promise! You must help it. You must be ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... astrology. I tell you the beastly chest holds twenty-seven thousand point nine double eight recurring cubic inches of air. Some other fool can reduce that to rods, and there you are. I'm fed up with it. Thanks to the machinations of that congenital idiot with the imitation mustachios, I've paid more than four times its value, and I'm not going to burst my brains trying to work out which drawer would have had a false bottom if it had been built by a dipsomaniac who kept fowls. And ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... in the fields behind the house, and in front of it the patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one of them was an idiot from that day forward, and another, after a dreadful season of mental conflict, took holy orders and became renowned for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books, and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... undoing of the French would have been ruined. Ay, you may stare. That is another matter in which you have lacked discretion. You may be a fine engineer, O'Moy, but I don't think I could have found a less judicious adjutant-general if I had raked the ranks of the army on purpose to find an idiot. Samoval was a spy—the cleverest spy that we have ever had to deal with. Only his death revealed how dangerous he was. For killing him when you did you deserve the thanks of his Majesty's Government, as Grant suggests. But before you can receive those you ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... For my own part, when I neared the stove I was nearly suffocated; but I took heart when I saw but three more men between me and the hole. At this moment a sound as of tramping feet was heard, and some idiot on the outer edge of the mob startled us with the cry, "The guards the guards!" A fearful panic ensued, and the entire crowd bounded toward the stairway leading up to their sleeping-quarters. The stairway was unbanistered, and some of the men were forced off the edge and fell ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... that they were thus together. They were near, near, and all she had imagined of that had only become more true, more dreadful and overwhelming. She stared straight away in silence till she felt she looked an idiot; then, to say something, to say nothing, she attempted a sound which ended ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... those who can say, "I am sorry." Now, I am never sorry, and I consider that what is called repentance is the function of an idiot. If I do a thing, I intend to do it. Regret is the most weak-minded of all ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... but horrid recollection of having been on that occasion unlike himself, ill at ease, burning in the face, talking with idiot loquacity of his adventures in the Baltic provinces, and finding from time to time that he was addressing himself exclusively to Mrs. Wallace. The other lady, when he joined them, had completely lost the slight appearance ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... if he had been a builder: "My machine surpasses all expectations, and will soon be at work. In Paris I go to bed early and rise ditto, spending all day at Spad's. I have no other thought or occupation. It is a fixed idea, and if it goes on I shall become a perfect idiot. When peace is signed, let nobody dare to mention a weapon of any kind in ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... "unless something possesses that sappy little Parmlee to make one of his visitations. John Milton says that out on the road it blows so you can't stand up. It's just like that idiot Parmlee to be blown in here, and not have strength of mind ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... to say, the only explanation of a godless life, unless the man is an idiot, is that there lie beneath it, as formative principles and unspoken assumptions, guiding and shaping it, one or both of these two thoughts: either 'There is no God,' or 'He does not care what I do, and I am safe to go on for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... flow," explained the little man proudly. "Helps tap the unused eighty per cent. The pre-symptomatic memory is unaffected, due to automatic cerebral lapse in case of overload. I'm afraid it won't do much more than cube his present IQ, and an intelligent idiot is ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... "Why, you idiot and wife for Barabbas," said Sancho, "what do you mean by trying, without why or wherefore, to keep me from marrying my daughter to one who will give me grandchildren that will be called 'your lordship'? Look ye, Teresa, I ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... will not spend to gain an idiot's praise; Or to make sport For some slight Puisne of the Inns of Court. Then, worthy Stafford, say, How shall we spend the day? With what delights Shorten the nights? When from this tumult we are got secure, Where mirth with ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... was where there was no cause at all for it, and the more wholly unreasonable, the better still; that the motive should lie in the feeling itself and not in the object of it—and that the affection which could (if it could) throw itself out on an idiot with a goitre would be more admirable than Abelard's. Whereupon everybody laughed, and someone thought it affected of me and no true opinion, and others said plainly that it was immoral, and somebody else hoped, in a sarcasm, that I meant to act out my theory for ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... his brother into fits when he dressed up like a ghost and ran after him in the moonlight; but he did; and that bright, handsome little fellow, that might have been the pride of any mother's heart is just no better than an idiot, and never will be, if he lives to be eighty years old. You were a good deal cut up yourself, Tom, two weeks ago, when those young ladies left your hothouse door open, with a frosty east wind blowing right in; you said it killed a good many ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... too. The idiot! the patch! the slave! the booby! The property fit only to be beaten For your morning exercise? your football, or Th'unprofitable lump of flesh, your drudge, Can now anatomize you, and lay open All your black plots; level with the earth Your hill of pride, and shake, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... that the woman that rascal said was his wife is a courtesan, and he's given me the full history of the case—how he'd hired her for this year, how the money I'd promised him, like an utter idiot, was the sum due him for the months yet to run. This, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... "Don't be an idiot!" said Mrs. Hargrave, frowning. "That would be a nice thing to do with Rosanna heartbroken. Now, Minnie, all there is to this is that Mrs. Horton years and years ago had a younger sister who eloped with a no-account man whom she met when she visited his sister. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... aghast. Was he crazy, or did he mean to insult her master? Evidently neither. He seemed as sane as herself, while no one could associate an insult with him. He did not know anything. That was the solution of his audacity, and pityingly, as she would have addressed a half idiot, Mrs. Noah made him understand how impossible it was for him to think her master would lend ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... to the clown). Stick to it, friend Madhavya. I will humour the king a moment. (Aloud.) Your Majesty, he is a chattering idiot. Your Majesty may judge by his own case whether hunting ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... girl in the middle row. What beautiful hair she had! What an idiot she was to give up four years of her life to this round of work and play and pretence of living! Oh, to go back to Germany—to see Bertha and her mother again, and hear the father's 'cello! Hermann had loved her so! He ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... to what I said, ribbons or no ribbons," said Tom firmly. "But I see how it is—it's that scented idiot, Featherstone, has come betwixt you and me. O Jenny, my dear love, don't you listen to him! He'll not be bound to a word he says the minute it's not comfortable to keep it. He'll just win your heart, Jenny, and then throw you o' one ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... "Oh, you idiot!" Mary exclaimed, very nearly aloud, with a sense that Ralph had said something very stupid. So, after three lessons in Latin grammar, one might correct a fellow student, whose knowledge did not embrace ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... said, "and I shall have to ask Mr. Hethcote to disrate you, and get some one here who is not a born idiot. Here, take this horrible mess away! Pour the contents of your plates back into the pot, boys, and put the plates together. You must wash them, Tom, or the tallow will taste in everything ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... men, and out of his intense intellectual activity and scientific curiosity, grows one of Browning's greatest defects. He is often led too far afield, into intricacies and anomalies of character beyond the range of common experience and sympathy. The criminal, the "moral idiot," belong to the alienist rather than to the poet. The abnormalities of nature have no place in the world of great art; they do not echo the common experience of mankind. Already the interest is decreasing in that part of his poetry which deals with such themes. Bishop ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... "You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve, "why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... case, he would have restrained them in the public streets' (Boswell's Hebrides, under date of Aug. 11, 1773, note). Dr. T. Campbell, in his Diary of a Visit to England, p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:—'He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Shaftesbury of Charles II's time, is, indeed, not forgotten, but remembered with detestation. Ragged schools; provident schools; asylums for the aged governess; homes in which the consumptive may lay their heads in peace and die; asylums for the penitent; asylums for the idiot; homes where the houseless may repose,—these are the monuments to our Shaftesbury, to our younger sons. The mere political ascendency—the garter or the coronet—are distinctions which pale before these, as does the moon ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... fool such an idiot; for Nature had effectually done the job without human intervention. It was useless to waste words upon him; and Somers crept cautiously up out of his reach, and out of his hearing, unless he yelled out his insane speeches. Every moment he stopped to listen for sounds within the house; but ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... She might, for reasons of her own, have married me. There is no knowing what a woman will do. Bah! What a mollycoddle I have been! She, and he too, perhaps, have been laughing at me for the blind idiot I am—me, the man who thought he knew all there was to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... madness to resist... Once you're beaten, there's nothing for it but to submit to your conqueror, instead of allowing yourself to be tortured like an idiot... ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... jumping to his own feet and grabbing the South African in his arms. He glared at the newcomer. "Kenny, you idiot, you're lucky you don't have a ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... for no reason. My case is better than Dreyfus' and Sacco-Vanzetti's combined. Here I was prepared to remove the drug scourge forever, and at a piddling cost. Did I get courteous handling, or at least a fair hearing? Not bloody likely! I was an idiot to expect anything from the world's most inflated bureaucracy—Dickens' Circumlocution Office brought up ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges
... out. Can't you understand? You are an idiot. Rand-Brown's playing for the second, and I'm playing for ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... said the tattered man, rambling on in idiot fashion. His head was hanging forward and his words were slurred. "This thing won't do, now, Tom Jamison. It won't do. I know yeh, yeh pig-headed devil. Yeh wanta go trompin' off with a bad hurt. It ain't right—now—Tom Jamison—it ain't. Yeh wanta leave me take keer of yeh, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... waist, the Carabus is the glory of our collections, but only for the sake of his appearance. He is a frenzied murderer; and that is all. We will ask nothing more of him. The wisdom of antiquity represented Hercules, the god of strength, with the head of an idiot. And indeed merit is not great when limited to brute force. And this is the case with ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... attribute of persons who are partially idiotic. Father Murchison was moved to think of these poor creatures who will often, so strangely and unreasonably, attach themselves with persistence to those who love them least. Like many priests, he had had some experience of them, for the amorous idiot is peculiarly sensitive to the attraction of preachers. This bowing movement of the parrot recalled to his memory a terrible, pale woman who for a time haunted all churches in which he ministered, who was perpetually endeavouring ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Count under boyish police supervision, encouraged the lads to tell tales about him, rebuked him for his misconduct in the measles, lectured him before the whole school on his rank disgusting offences, and treated him as half a rogue and half an idiot. If he pleaded not guilty, they called him a liar, and gave him an extra thrashing. The thrashing was a public school entertainment, and was advertised on the school notice-board. "Next week," ran the notice on one occasion, "the Count is to have ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... beneficent spirit, prying into the universe, not lording it over it; a thoughtful spectator of the scenes of life, or ruminator on the fate of mankind, not a painted pageant, a stupid idol set up on its pedestal of pride for men to fall down and worship with idiot fear and wonder at the thing themselves have made, and which, without that fear and wonder, would in itself ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... even i' this warl'.An' whan ye think o' the ages to come, truly it wad seem to maitter little what intellec' a man may start wi'. I kenned mysel' ane 'at in ord'nar' affairs was coontit little better nor an idiot,'maist turn a prophet whan he gaed doon upo' his knees. Ay! fowk may lauch at what they haena a glimp o', but it'll be lang or their political economy du sae muckle for sic a man! The economist wad wuss his neck had been thrawn ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... "No, idiot. We both know that Ryter is headed for Rehabilitation. Fifteen years or so of it, as a guess. The problem is little Reetal who has now learned a good deal more than she was ever intended to learn. Does she head ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... him. Oh, god of love, was this his precious Jennie? Had he made an irrevocable ass of himself over this lump of ancient human flesh? A hue of brilliant scarlet suffused his countenance. Oh, what an imbecile, a simple, drivelling idiot, he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... "I pretended to be half an idiot, and so got safely out, though I fell into Sheridan's hands. He suspected me at first, but at last he thought I was what I looked—a fool. He wanted to know where you lived, but I wouldn't tell him. I told him you told me not to tell anyone, 'cause, if I did, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... have only inflamed the violent passions of the person whom he addressed, when Dougal threw himself between them, and in his own language, which he spoke with a fluency and rapidity strongly contrasted by the slow, imperfect, and idiot-like manner in which he expressed himself in English, poured forth what I doubt not was a very animated pleading ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... up meat, that his stomach was satisfied with only the smell thereof. The choleric cook demanded of him to pay for his breakfast; the poor man denied having had any, and the controversy was referred to the deciding of the next man that should pass by, who chanced to be the most notorious idiot in the whole city: he, on the relation of the matter, determined that the poor man's money should be put between two empty dishes, and the cook should be recompensed with the jingling of the poor man's money, as he was satisfied ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... "ANOTHER IDIOT" wishes to know if there is such an appointment in the gift of the Crown as the office of "Court Sweep." Why, certainly; and, on State occasions, he wears the Court Soot, and his broom is always waiting for him at the entrance! At Balmoral and Osborne there is a beautiful sweep leading ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... from every book in the national library: to have these extracts superbly printed by Didot;—and to ... BURN ALL THE BOOKS FROM WHICH THEY WERE TAKEN!" It never occurred to this revolutionising idiot that there might be a thousand copies of the same work, and that some hundreds of these copies might be OUT of the national library! Of course, Mercier laughed at the project, and made the projector ashamed of it.[98] Robespierre, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Ye blundering idiot!" he whispered, "she's a half-breed. Och! But's time y'r eastern greenness was tannin' a good western russet! Let her follow with bowed head, or you'll have the whole pack on ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... lurking in the eye of the reader, whose only resource against the outbreak of his own laughter lay in lauding, from time to time, most vehemently, the sublimity of the verses;—particularly some that began "'Tis thus the goiter'd idiot of the Alps,'—and then adding, at the close of every such eulogy, "I assure you when I was in the Drury Lane Committee, much worse things were ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... like a perfect idiot," I remarked, with becoming modesty, as I surveyed myself in the glass. I did not think so, all the same. Indeed, I was saying to myself that I had had no idea I could look so well. Yet, after all, it is other ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... "'Run, you idiot!' I yells to Struthers as I jammed the youngster back into the cabin. All of a sudden the gas went out of him and he broke, hanging to me like ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... that, idiot. Our spies in Baghdad advised us yesterday. That's why I pretend to be with ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... very trying time. Near Messines my film suddenly ran out. I had to reload. This was anything but an easy operation. I unscrewed my camera from the gun socket, and in doing so had a near escape from doing a head-dive to earth. Like an idiot, I had unfastened my waist-strap, and in reaching over the fuselage my camera nearly over-balanced, the aeroplane contributing to this result by making a sudden dive in order to ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... to you for your intended civilities to my liking Madame Capello; but as I never liked any thing of her, but her prettiness, for she is an idiot, I beg you will dispense with them on my account: I should even be against your renewing your garden assemblies. you would be too good to pardon the impertinence of the Florentines, and would very likely expose yourself to more: besides, the absurdities ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Here we are at the Castle Hill—and that idiot Aunt Fulda has forgotten her carriage. Shall I remind her? There is still time to turn back. No, don't trouble yourself. 'Let them alone and they'll come home.' I wish I had no memory. It is a perfect nuisance to have to think in inverted commas ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether they are Lepidoptera or Steptopotera; but as for telling how you can get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike them—why Linnaeus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did. These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a great deal. He always kept up his exercise; and I never heard that he was ill. If any other man was ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... cart rattled up bearing a male citizen, who was too drunk to know what he was doing, or even to do anything. He was lying on his back in the cart, with feet and hands up, hurrahing at the top of his voice. This disgusting, drunken idiot was picked up out of the cart by two men, who put a ticket into his hand, carried him to the window (he was too drunk to stand), shoved him up and raised his arm into the aperture; his vote received, he was tumbled ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... redeem everything: and never does the impetuosity of lovers who have been caressing each other the whole evening with flaming gaze fail to do it! Yes, you can bring her home in triumph, she has now nobody but you, you have one more chance, that of taking your wife by storm! But no, idiot, stupid and indifferent that you are, you ask her, "What is ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... screamed Violet, raising her face, which became suddenly and violently flushed. "O good Lord! Are you a temperance preacher? Teach your granny! Bad for me? Say another word, and I'll box your ears for you! You braying jackass!—you snivelling idiot! Who makes the Brilliant draw? You or I? Tell me that, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... juvenile eccentricities, and aim at the appearance of a decided enemy to free trade in the article of Wild Oats. Accordingly, as the first step towards respectability, I eschewed coloured waistcoats, and gave out that I was a marrying man. No man under forty, unless he is a positive idiot, will stand forth as a theoretical bachelor. It is all nonsense to say that there is any thing unpleasant in being courted. Attention, whether from male or female, tickles the vanity, and although I have a reasonable, and, I hope, not unwholesome regard, for the gratification of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Meek little wolf in lamb's wool! Do you dream that you can deceive me? Do you think me an idiot, to be cajoled by your low-spoken denials of a fact which I know? A fact, to the truth of which I will swear till every ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... he'd think me a presumptuous idiot," said Austen. "Politicians are not idealists anywhere—the very word has become a term of reproach. Undoubtedly your father desires to set things right as much as any one else—probably more ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... been watching anxiously from the corrals, came across the yard to the veranda. He was dressed for riding, and he had a gun on his hip. Overland scowled. "You little idiot," he said, "when your Uncle Jack's brains get ossified, just give the sad news to the press. You're jest itchin' to get in a muss and get plugged. I ain't. I figure to ride down the Moonstone Trail, steerin' the Guzzuh with one hand and smellin' ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... far from being an idiot. Before leaving the camp he had several bullet-holes shot through his coat. He arranged also with a friendly Oneida Indian to follow and confirm his tale. Thus prepared, he set out for St. Leger's camp. Reaching it, he ran breathlessly among the Indians, seemingly in a state ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Hatchett, alias, a Fig for my Godsonne, or crake me this Nutt, or, a Countrie Cuffe, that is a sound Box of the Eare for the Idiot Martin, to hold his Peace: seeing the Patch will take no warning; written by one that dares call a Dog a Dog. Rare. Printed by Anoke and Astile ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... lost, and they are wandering helplessly in search of us. They will go on and on into the farther recesses of this awful place, and lie down at last to die—giving their lives for ours. There, there, I am babbling like some idiot. Forward, my men; there is no time to ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... will keep her occupied until six. But from now till then nix on the news. Take her out on the fool pond, walk her up Sunset Hill, quarrel with her, make love to her, anything, so she won't guess. I don't dare go near her. I'd give it away in a minute, I'm such an idiot. Besides I can't think of anything but Larry. Gee!" The boy swept his hand across his eyes. "Last time I saw him I consigned him to the devil because he told me some perfectly true things about myself and tried to give me some perfectly sound advice. And now—I'm ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... from school. When he appeared, "had a most delightful thrill shoot through her." The first impulse to fly was conquered; she never thought a boy beautiful before. They often met after dark, wrote; finally she grew tired of him because she could not make him feel deeply, sent him off, called him an idiot, and then soliloquized on the "most dreadful grief of her life." The latter stages of their acquaintance she occasionally used to beat him, but his attraction steadily waned. Once later, as she was suffering from a dull, irresolute feeling due to want of a companion ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... poor woman, she being unable to accustom herself to it, was compelled to inform her relations, who thereupon came to the house. When they arrived, the husband declared to them that his wife was an idiot, that she displeased him in every possible way, and made his life almost unbearable; that she would wake him out of his first sleep, never came to the door when he knocked, but would leave him out in the rain and the cold, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... development is seen in comparing the world-renowned philosopher Humboldt and the idiot figured by Spurzheim. The contrast of coronal and basilar development is seen in comparing the benevolent negro Eustace, who received the Monthyon prize for virtue in France with the skull of the cannibal Carib, as figured by Lawrence. As to the coronal or ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... here he comes." And, as the master spoke, a young man of some nineteen years of age came up the hatchway. He had a cloak and a sword under his arm, and was dressed in deep mourning, and called out, "Gumbo, you idiot, why don't you fetch the baggage out of the cabin? Well, shipmate, our journey is ended. You will see all the little folks to-night whom you have been talking about. Give my love to Polly, and Betty, and Little Tommy; not forgetting my duty to Mrs. Franks. I thought, yesterday, the voyage would never ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had, according to orders, been sent to him from town, under his assumed name, "Gibson." He ate but little, and that mechanically; and seemed to feel, for once, little or no interest in his newspaper. He had never paid the least attention to the eulogia upon Miss Aubrey of the idiot Titmouse, nor of Snap, of whom he entertained but a very little higher opinion than of Titmouse. One thing was clear, that from that moment Miss Aubrey formed a new element in Mr. Gammon's calculations; and for aught I know, may occasion very different results ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... and the new Burgrave of Ghent, and the escapades of Count Baldwin. He had lived much among gentlefolk and kept his ears open.... She felt stronger and cheerfuller than she had been for days. That rat-hunt had warmed her blood. She was a long way from death in spite of the cackle of idiot chirurgeons, and there was much savour still in the world. There was her son, too, the young Philip.... Her eye saw clearer, and she noted the sombre magnificence of the great room, the glory of the brocade, the gleam of silver. Was she not the richest woman in all Bruges, aye, and in all Hainault ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... normal one." Sir James Crichton-Browne speaks of the great numbers of feeble-minded girls, wholly unfit to become mothers, who return to the work-house year after year to bear children, "many of whom happily die, but some of whom survive to recruit our idiot establishments and to repeat their mothers' performances." Tredgold points out that the number of children born to the feeble-minded is abnormally high. Feeble-minded women "constitute a permanent menace to the race and one which becomes serious at a time when the decline of the birth-rate ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... 'prentice stage of reviewing, could make columns of fun out of it. The general theme is age-old, being not different from the themes of most other novels in that respect. A half-idiotic spendthrift (he ends as very nearly an actual idiot) not merely wastes his own property but practically embezzles that of his wife and daughter; the wife dies and the daughter is left alone with an extravagant establishment, a father practically non compos, not a penny in her pocket after she has paid his doctor, and a selfish baronet-uncle who ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... boy, very nervous and conscience-stricken, who thought he ought to be at prayers, crept quietly in. Dr. Turner looked up and said, in the same tone as he was reading, 'Go out—go out! Somebody put that idiot out!' Then he went on with his reading exactly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... district court of the county wherein he has any property, for the purpose of selling or otherwise controlling that and all other property of such minor within the state, unless a guardian has previously been appointed under the preceding section. The foreign guardian of any non-resident idiot, lunatic or person of unsound mind may be appointed the guardian of such ward by the district court in like manner and with like effect in all cases where the foreign guardian of a non-resident minor could be appointed the ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... as best I could, though they were utterly unable to fathom my reserve. What would they have said had they known of the minister's offers with regard to my laboratory and my jesting reply, in which I asked for a crocodile skin to hang from my ceiling! They would have taken me for an idiot. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... in numbers, whether it's the number of fools or anything else," he said. "One idiot's a risky proposition, but two or three in a bunch can watch each other. Come on, Judge, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bed of cane-work and mats, and, lighting my pipe, went outside, walked down to the beach, and seating myself on a canoe, looked out upon the wide expanse of ocean, heaving under a dark and lowering sky, and wondered moodily why I was ever such an idiot as to take charge of a trading station on such a God-forsaken place as Tarawa Island in the ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... will get well, I think; but I shouldn't wonder if mental complications followed. I have seen cases like that at the Bicetre, where operations on an alcoholic patient produced paresis. The man got well," he added harshly, as if kicking aside some dull formula; "but he was a hopeless idiot." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... latter end of the duke's life, it was even said that the seal of the finance department was in the hands of his valet-de-chambre, who, in his master's frequent absences, was in the habit of issuing drafts upon the receiver-general. As the valet- dechambre was described as an idiot who did not know how to read, it may be believed that the finances fell into confusion. Certainly, if such statements were to be accepted, it would be natural enough that for every million dollars expended by the king in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to mock with the aspersion of madness Cast on the inspired by the tame high finisher of paltry blots Indefinite or paltry rhymes, or paltry harmonies, Who creeps into state government like a caterpillar to destroy; To cast off the idiot questioner, who is always questioning, But never capable of answering; who sits with a sly grin Silent plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave; Who publishes doubt and calls it knowledge; whose science is despair, Whose pretence to knowledge is envy, whose ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... pleasant day," I said, because one is always expected to announce some result of observation of the atmosphere. It shows at once whether or not one is an idiot. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... Her case might now degenerate into one of common apathy such as Cutter had seen hundreds of times. There would be nothing to be done but to try the usual methods, with the usual unsatisfactory results, abandoning her at last to the care of her relations and nurses as a hopeless idiot. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... know, Net—I begin to think he's a beastly idiot. That fellow was bragging to me the other day that he bullied his sisters into fagging for him when he was at home. I think that's enough for me." And so holidays again came to an end, to Nettie's secret delight. She hated parting with ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... score had stood at one, while we were at two, and besides, we had had two by honours; as they made four by cards, they went out—and so did I—not without an obbligato accompaniment on muted strings; unwhispered whispers of "confounded blockhead!" "blundering idiot!" "well, of all the born fools!" and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... been blessed with such love as this, and who could have cast it away from him, can have been nothing but an idiot. On that ground—though I dared not confess it to Eunice—I forgave ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... were these faces, so malignant their staring eyes, and shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not occur to Mr. Bessel to attempt intercourse with these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms, they seemed, children of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden the boon of being, whose only expressions and gestures told of the envy and craving for life that was their one ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... muttered something in a rather surly fashion, whereupon the gentleman, who had not yet spoken, leaned forward, and said angrily, "You told us you knew this neighbourhood. You are an idiot!" ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... theorists had been more tolerant toward other people's inventions (they never invent anything themselves); but with regard to the one upon which he was now engaged, they had, with complete unanimity, decided that the thing could not be done, and charitably called every man an idiot or a lunatic who ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... who came bowing to her was a young man for whom she had a special dislike,—"a conceited idiot," she called him to her companions, "with an offensive familiarity of manner." In reality, Tom Jordan was a well-meaning young man, though rather silly, but his vanity and conceit happened to jar upon the same marked characteristics in ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... think she has one of the best understandings I ever met, and more knowledge of the world. I may be charmed with the French, but your ladyship must not expect that they will fall in love with me. Without affecting to lower myself, the disadvantage of speaking a language worse than any idiot one meets, is insurmountable: the silliest Frenchman is eloquent to me, and leaves me embarrassed and obscure. I could name twenty other reasons, if this one was not sufficient. As it is, my own defects are the sole cause of my not liking Paris entirely: the constraint I am ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the masters who, sipping a glass of punch, maintained that only an idiot could imagine that a human brain could remember at the same time: the three thousand dates mentioned in history; the names of the five thousand towns situated in all parts of the world; the names of six hundred plants and seven hundred animals; the bones ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... went to the Richtberg the very next day to see the place. There stood the executioner's house, from which the whole street was probably named. One wretched hovel succeeded another. Yonder before a door, Wilhelm the idiot, on whom the city boys played their pranks, smiled into vacancy just as foolishly as he had done twenty years ago, here lodged Kathrin, with the big goitre, who swept the gutters; in the three grey huts, from which hung ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wilfully cruel; no, he was simply and irremediably a heedless idiot of a man, just as every married man is, for a spell, at least. But it broke Em's ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... table with a faint smile. "Don't be a bear, Aubrey. It's all very well for you. You have Stephens to lather your chin and to wash your hands, but thanks to that idiot Marie, I have to ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Henry VI., was not only an invalid but almost an idiot. It is said that he was wan like an albino, and that the awe men had of him was partly that which is felt for a monster of mental deficiency. His Christian charity was of the kind that borders on anarchism, and the stories about him recall the Christian fools in the great anarchic novels of Russia. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... I was I sat mute, and looked as blank as an idiot. In all this description of hers I was struck by the resemblance between her vision and mine; but I was dreaming of some one else. She looked at me a moment, and took her hand away. She seemed hurt, and I thought I saw her wiping her eyes. I could not ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... in maintaining his dignity, he became ungratefully haughty at a moment when haughtiness must bring on him at once derision and ruin. He resented the friendly intervention which might have saved him. Was ever King so used? Was he a child, or an idiot, that others must think for him? Was he a petty prince, a Cardinal Furstemburg, who must fall if not upheld by a powerful patron? Was he to be degraded in the estimation of all Europe, by an ostentatious patronage which he had never asked? Skelton was recalled to answer for his conduct, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will, if able to walk across the road into the chapel, and will forget no word of the service, and make no blunder in the ceremony. To you he seems to be an idiot, but he is not so, though long suffering has made his mind to wander strangely, when he sees strange faces. There are many who have been called to a more active sphere of duty for their King and country than that poor Cure, but none who have suffered more acutely ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... growing angry.) The foul fiends of madness have possessed this doddering idiot. (Majestically.) ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return—the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame—shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Don't pay any attention to those silly things. I ought to know best, for I've three separate hair-pins sticking into my scalp at the present moment. Jim took me to my first dance when he was at home for Christmas. It was s-imply lovely! I was awfully nervous, for I generally manage to make an idiot of myself if I get a chance; but I got on finely. I fell down full length as I was entering the room, but that was only because the floor was so beautifully polished. I danced every single dance—all waltzes, and the most ex-quisite music. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... an angel, and headstrong as a devil.' And what's her name?—Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects omniscience, he delights in every small chicane. He is rather droll. Yesterday he knew from ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... him out! Never mind; he can beat the town at one or two things, and it is for these we will use him. Some call him an idiot. The expression is neat and vigorous, but not precise; so I have christened him the Anomaly. Anomaly, this is Mr. Little; go and shake hands with him, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... strange enough. But this is not all. Many persons who have conducted themselves foolishly in active life, and whose conversation has indicated no superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very justly described by one of his contemporaries as an inspired idiot, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bite the stick they've been thrashed with," said Henderson. "You're right, Dubbs, and I respect you; ay, you fellows may sneer if you like, but I advised you not to do it, and I won't make myself an idiot ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... life acquires ideas as he may, causes them to combine, change and generate in his own mind, and then translates them into action of some kind. He who omits any of these things cannot be said to have really lived. He cannot, it is true, fail to acquire ideas unless he is an idiot; but he may fail to acquire them broadly, and may even make the mistake of thinking that he can create them in his ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... he who is convinced without a vestige of doubt, without the faintest hope of any saving uncertainty, that his soul is not immortal, should prefer to be without a soul (amens), or irrational, or idiot, that he should prefer not to have been born, is a supposition that has nothing, absolutely nothing, absurd in it. Was he happy, the poor Jewish intellectualist definer of intellectual love and of happiness? ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... way of Civita Castellana! Darn that old idiot of a woman! what's she up to now? If she's running away from me, she'll wish herself back before she gets far on that road. Why, there's an infernal nest of brigands there that call themselves Garibaldians; and, by thunder, the woman's ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... appearance excluding the suspicion of mere sly malice, I came to the conclusion that he was simply the most tactless idiot on earth. I almost despised myself for the weakness of attempting to enlighten his common understanding. I started to explain that I did not think anything whatever. Hamilton was not worth a thought. What such an offensive loafer . . . "Aye! that he is," interjected Captain ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... to get tired of it than of most healthy and innocent diversions, and cricket kept him out of mischief; so it was very unlucky, both for himself and for those over whom he had influence, that his jealousy of Crawley had led him to make such an idiot ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... I am eager to commit murder when I see a poor girl brought to ruin in this senseless way. Personally, it is a matter of utter indifference to me whether you marry Lida or go to the devil, but I must tell you that you are an idiot. If you had got one sound idea in your head, would you worry yourself and others so much merely because a young woman, free to pick and choose, had become the mistress of a man who was unworthy of her, and by following her sexual ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... question of the genetic linkage between the two species, but, in spite of the physical similarities, their actions were controlled almost entirely by instinct instead of reason. They were like some sort of idiot parody of ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "yes, she pretended she could show me I was wrong. It was easy, was it not, with the proofs I held against her? The fact is she adores her son, and her heart is breaking at the idea that he may be obliged to restitute what he has stolen from me. And I, idiot, fool, coward, almost wished not to mention the matter to her. I said to myself, I will forgive, for after all she has loved me! Loved? no. She would see me suffer the most horrible tortures, without shedding a tear, to prevent a single hair falling ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... exclaimed, in transports of just indignation; "the azure waters of a silver lake! I didn't see that. This poet is an idiot. I'll bet he never saw a lake, or silver either. A stupid ballad too, in every way; the length of the lines cramps the music. For the future I shall compose my verses myself; and without waiting, since I feel in the humour, I shall manufacture some couplets ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Nur, "I might know a good deal and yet be an idiot. But I possess the knowledge of how to learn some of the innumerable things I do not know, and that is the reason I am so justly famous ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... "For an old idiot who notices as much as I something particular's always happening. If ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... think me a born idiot!'—Nelly would say, not without resentment. 'I really could understand, Bridget, ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... own world I had the habit of solitary song; here not a crooning murmur ever parted my lips! There I sang without thinking; here I thought without singing! there I had never had a bosom-friend; here the affection of an idiot would be divinely welcome! "If only I had a dog to love!" I sighed—and regarded with wonder my past self, which preferred the company of book or pen to that of man or woman; which, if the author of a tale I was enjoying ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... worth while even to feed and clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their places could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the parish authorities, in order to get rid of imbeciles, that one idiot should be taken by the mill owner with every twenty sane children. The fate of these unhappy idiots was even worse than that of the others. The secret of their final end has never been disclosed, but we can form some idea of their awful sufferings from the hardships ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... suspected him then, either, idiot that she was. She had been too busy being rested, being thankful, being happy in the big garden, tucked away from the people who had failed her and the ghastly city and the memory of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... world who have a soul for its beauties. Women, for instance," he went on, smoking furiously. "What help do you make of women? None! You sit at one end of the table, your secretary at the other. You don't look at her. She might have pig's eyes, for anything you know about it. Idiot! And she—not quite as bad, perhaps. Women feel a little, you know, that they don't show. Why not marry, Maraton? No? Perhaps you are right. And yet women are wonderful. You can't do your greatest work, Maraton, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... general mirth of the class burst out in sundry half-stifled noises, which roused the master from his reverie, and he again resumed the book, to continue the examination. As ill luck would have it, he once more repeated, "Avoir, avant," and then half abstractedly, "avu." "Ah, you young idiot!" cried he, in a discordant voice, "can't you manage avoir yet? Whatever ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... population of those domestic affections which were certain to decay gradually under the influence of manufactories and poor houses. Mr. Fox wrote a civil acknowledgment, saying that his favorites among the poems were "Harry Gill," "We are Seven," "The Mad Mother," and "The Idiot," but that he was prepossessed against the use of blank verse for simple subjects. Any political significance in the poems he was apparently unable to see. To this second edition Wordsworth prefixed an argumentative ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... are open hours When God's will sallies free And the dull idiot may see The flowing fortunes of a ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... made the most thoughtless think. There, among them, at the very stove round which they were gathered, stood one with a haggard eye and vacant gaze, and at his feet clung two half-naked infants; a quarter of an hour before he was a hale man, a husband, with five children; now, he was an idiot and a widower, with two. No tear dimmed his eye, no trace of grief was to be read in his countenance; though the two pledges of the love of one now no more hung helplessly round his legs, he heeded them ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... know what that old muff means," he says innocently, when he has finished his bitter draught. "He's always flying out at me, the old turkey-cock. He quarrels with my play at whist, the old idiot, and can no more play than an old baby. He pretends to teach me billiards, and I'll give him fifteen in twenty and beat his old head off. Why do they let such fellows into clubs? Let's have a game at piquet till dinner, Heavyside. Hallo! That's my uncle, that ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thought better of it and lay back again with eyes closed, while Markham moved on tiptoe around the room putting things to rights, all the while swearing silently. What in the name of all that was unpleasant did this philandering little idiot mean by trying to destroy herself on the front lawn of his holiday house? Surely the world was big enough, the air broad enough. He glanced at her for a moment, then crept over on tip-toe and peered at her secretively. He straightened and scratched his head, fumbling for his pipe, puzzled. She ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... cane-work and mats, and, lighting my pipe, went outside, walked down to the beach, and seating myself on a canoe, looked out upon the wide expanse of ocean, heaving under a dark and lowering sky, and wondered moodily why I was ever such an idiot as to take charge of a trading station on such a God-forsaken place as Tarawa Island in ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... would be, subject to the remarks of men. "There is he," men would say of him, "who has maundered away his mind in softnesses;—who in his life has loved two girls, and has, at last, been thrown over by both of them because he has been no better than a soft maundering idiot." It would be thus that his neighbours would speak of him in his vain effort to ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Camp was struck in haste, and they travelled down the Rhine. When their boat was detained at Marsluys, all three sat writing in the cabin—Shelley his novel, Mary a story called 'Hate', and Claire a story called 'The Idiot'—until they were tossed across to England, and reached London after borrowing passage-money ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... a mediaeval wooden figure of a king which I remember seeing in a town in the east of Europe: a crown blazing with many-coloured glass, a long crimson robe covered with ornaments and beneath them an idiot face, no bones, no muscles, no attitude. That is not what a Greek meant by beauty. The same quality holds to a great extent of Greek poetry. Not, of course, that the artistic convention was the same, or at all similar, for treating stone and for treating language. Greek poetry is statuesque ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... all," I continued, savagely. "Those women followed us, and who do you think one of them turned out to be? Well, it was Professor Smawl, of Barnard College, and I'll bet every pair of boots I own that she starts for the Graham Glacier within a week. Idiot that I was!" I exclaimed, smiting my head with both hands. "I never recognized her until I saw her tip-toeing and craning her neck to listen. Now she knows about the glacier; she heard every word that young ruffian said, and she'll go to the glacier ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... I have just said to you," cried Madeleine, still in bed; "you will not have the cruelty to take away Morel; what do you think will become of me, with my five children, and my idiot mother? There she is, huddled up on her mattress. She is foolish, my good gentlemen; she is quite out ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... a blamed idiot. You know I want you to go ahead and use him; only—I'd hate to see ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... moon-faced idiot grinning back at her. He was complete, and not bad-looking! But just before she touched the red button once and the blue button twice—which sent Pascal stumbling out to the backyard to finish weeding the circle of pansies before dinner—she wondered about the gash that was ...
— Weak on Square Roots • Russell Burton
... it of ours?" said others. "Let the idiot go," and went away. But the rest gathered up stones and mud and threw at him. At last, when he was bruised and cut, the hunter crept away into the woods. And it ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... logic of Hume." Perhaps the finest answer to the charge that Shakspeare was an unregulated genius, full of great absurdities and great beauties, is contained in Hudson's ironical statement of it: "He has sometimes been represented as a sort of inspired and infallible idiot, who practiced a species of poetical magic without knowing what he did or why he did it; who achieved the greatest wonders of art, not by rational insight and design, but by a series of lucky accidents and lapsus ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... me for a child, that I should be thus lectured by boys and a gray-headed idiot? You don't ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... be, Olive called herself a blind idiot for having, in spite of all her first shrinkings, agreed to bring Verena to New York. Verena had jumped at the invitation, the very unexpectedness of which on Mrs. Burrage's part—it was such an odd idea to have come to a mere worldling—carried a kind of persuasion with it. Olive's ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... got to see our girl and then he will be, unless he's a natural born idiot, which, of course, he couldn't be," replied Brenda's father in a tone of absolute conviction. "Now, I wonder what that man Marmion's going to let ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... Padishah said L180 just after the hammer came down—so Potter declared. At any rate the Jew merchant secured it, and there and then he got a gun and shot it. Potter made a Hades of a fuss because he said it would injure the sale of the other three, and Padishah, of course, behaved like an idiot; but all of us were very much excited. I can tell you I was precious glad when that dissection was over, and no diamond had turned up—precious glad. I'd gone to one-forty on that ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Maksoud has demanded her from me; but I have found, upon private inquiry, he is addicted to the intemperate use of opium, and my daughter shall never be the wife of one who is a violent madman one-half the day and a melancholy idiot during the remainder. I have nothing to apprehend from the pacha's resentment, because I have powerful friends with the grand vizier, who will oblige him to listen to reason, and to submit quietly to a disappointment he so justly merits. And now, Saladin, ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... ordinary school work. As a young man he had suffered the insolence of these wretched people about him; their cackling laughter at his poverty jarred and grated in his ears; he saw the acrid grin of some miserable idiot woman, some creature beneath the swine in intelligence and manners, merciless, as he went by with his eyes on the dust, in his ragged clothes. He and his father seemed to pass down an avenue of jeers and contempt, and contempt from such animals as these! ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Majesty will get a new Chamberlain—one who isn't an absolute idiot," said the Duchess severely, "your house-party would be in less danger of being recruited in this ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... Don Quixote, "if your highnesses would order them to turn out this idiot, for he will ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the piano has stopped. He stretches his head to listen, and does something to his ear that sends it another inch nearer the door; he chuckles and groans on the sly; and I—I notice nothing. Oh, he is becoming quite fond of me; he thinks me an idiot." ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... spire, the sober schoolhouse, the smithy of the ringing anvil, the corner grocery, the cluster of friendly houses; the venerable parson, the wise physician, the canny squire, the grasping landlord softened or outwitted in the end; the village belle, gossip, atheist, idiot; jovial fathers, gentle mothers, merry children; cool parlors, shining kitchens, spacious barns, lavish gardens, fragrant summer dawns, and comfortable winter evenings. These were elements not to be discarded lightly, even by those who perceived ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... right, Fred. Goodness knows I like the flowers. But I'm not a young idiot who expects her honeymoon to last forever. I've had one experience, ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... the Countess believe that brother of hers, idiot as by nature he might be, and heir to unnumbered epithets, would so far forget what she had done for him, as to drag her through the mud for nothing: and so she told ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... devil can have become of that butler? I never allow a servant to—Oh, confound that idiot, he's got the keys. Can't get into the other ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on, "walking" a circle round him, Mr. Atwater's eye furiously searched the borders of the path, the lawn, and otherwheres, for anything that might serve as missile. He had never kicked a dog, or struck one with his hand, in his life; he had a theory that it was always better to throw something. "Idiot poodle!" ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... administered in profusion, and crammed down with epithets; not more than two or three of the convention having ever heard the account given of Mr Young by his worthy colleagues, and its reaching them thus for the first time thro' his huffing friends, it sounded truly like "a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Their pride was alarmed, and their sympathies excited, by being told that Judge Spencer had first cheated Mr. Young out of the Secretary's office, and that his wrath now burnt after ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... said Jack, "any idiot would have known that she would take it like that. How could she do otherwise? You, her brother, ought to know that to a girl like Miss Gordon the idea of marrying such a low brute as Durnovo could only be repugnant. Durnovo—why, he is not good ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... mind through the service of his limbs: where man is made the possession of another, the possessor loses at once and for ever all that is most valuable in that for which he has paid the price of crime. He becomes the owner of that which only differs from an idiot in being less easily drilled into habits, and more capable of ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... stare at that idiot in the corner,' angrily exclaimed Parsons, as the extraordinary convulsions of Watkins Tottle's countenance excited the wondering gaze of Timson,—'but have the goodness to tell me in three words the contents of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... her hands on her hips. At the brutal tone of her voice, a sort of moaning, or rather a mewing, the lamentable cry of an idiot, came from the adjoining room. I shivered to the marrow of my bones. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... she then true? O madman! idiot! To let the feeble breath of empty rumour Drive me ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... feelings. I went hot all over. "Shar," of course, not "Shah." How ever could I have been such an idiot as to have thought it was "Shah"? S-h-a-h obviously spelt shash, not shar. How nearly I had exposed my appalling ignorance to my fellows! "Vote for the—"; I blushed again, hardly able to think of it. And oh! how thankful I was now that everybody ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... you that makes you so stupid? You played the prude—I didn't know—Oh! yes, yes, now I remember; that's what it is—What was it you said to me about the little one? I believe you didn't want anyone to touch him! Idiot!" ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... a change from last year, I should say. I used to be friends with Susan Atwell and Jerry Macy, but this Stevens girl made mischief between us and broke up our old crowd entirely. Your friend, Miss Dean, took sides with them, too, and helped the thing along. She made a perfect idiot of herself over Constance Stevens. Oh, well, never mind. I'm not going to say another word about it. I'm sorry we can't be friends. I'm sure we'd get along famously together. It is impossible, though. ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... An idiot of a woman has written to me to get her a place as governess in an 'European or Arabian family in the neighbourhood of Thebes!' Considering she has been six years in Egypt as she says, she must be well fitted to teach. She had better learn to make gilleh and spin wool. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... his feet. "My parable," he cried. "Don Quixote and the damsel in distress. Where's my hat? Where's the time-table? Get a cab! Simpson, you idiot, why didn't you make me read this before, confound you! I mean God bless you. Your salary's ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sir: Some idiot must have put a scaffold pole on it and cracked it right down the middle, and it's thick enough you'd think to stand hanythink.' Geoffrey was silent for quite a minute, and then said in a constrained voice and with ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... matches, pile them up carelessly, and set fire to them in that inflammable room. A steward came up and modestly explained that it was his duty to ask him to refrain from what he was doing. At which the jackanapes dismissed him with "Get out of here, you idiot." ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... (aside, Oh, you old blackguard! What's bred in the bone won't come out of the flesh. I really must frighten the old coward a little; besides, the council has got to settle what's to be done with him, or the old idiot will put us to shame by dying on our hands of fright and stupidity.) (To N.) Nupkins, I really don't know what to do with you as a slave; I'm afraid that you would corrupt the morals of my children; that you would set them quarrelling and tell them lies. There's nothing for it but you ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... appears in modern society, is also less subject to variation than man;[4] she is much less liable to be a genius or an idiot than her brother.[5] She offers greater resistance to disease, endures pain and want more stoically, and lives longer; so that while more boys than girls are born in all parts of the world, where statistics are kept, in mature years ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... gazed at him with the look of an idiot. He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... was! idiot!—upon my return to the fort, to have been anxious about my personal appearance, and to have spent a couple of hours in removing the artificial blackening from my beard and complexion, instead of going to examine my prisoner—when his escape would have been prevented. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not mean to frighten his brother into fits when he dressed up like a ghost and ran after him in the moonlight; but he did; and that bright, handsome little fellow, that might have been the pride of any mother's heart is just no better than an idiot, and never will be, if he lives to be eighty years old. You were a good deal cut up yourself, Tom, two weeks ago, when those young ladies left your hothouse door open, with a frosty east wind blowing right in; you said it killed a good many ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... oh yes! He did not say much to us; but we did not like him. He called the driver an idiot, and I ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... said the butcher. 'What right has any one to bring an abomination like that into our city? The horror is enough to make an idiot of every child ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... wild woman that I don't know a real man when I see one, Doug,—even if you are making an idiot of yourself just now! You should have planned to be more tactful about bringing your ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... mot d'entre ses levres sorte, Regarde le roi d'Arle et d'une telle sorte, Avec un si superbe eclair, qu'il l'interdit; Et Ratbert, furieux sous ce regard, bondit Et crie, en s'arrachant le poil de la moustache —Je te trouve idiot et mal en point, et sache Que les jouets d'enfant etaient pour toi, vieillard! Ca, rends-moi ce tresor, fruit de tes vols, pillard! Et ne m'irrite pas, ou ce sera ta faute, Et je vais envoyer sur la tour la plus haute Ta tete ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... a strangely mingled feeling in his breast; one moment it was horror, the next disgust, that they two should join hands: she so young and beautiful, he prematurely aged and little better than an idiot. Then it was misery—then despair, which swept over his soul to join forces and harrow him so that he felt that ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... some more, with a few plantains from a garden, when I was to eat, as kings lived upon flesh, and "poor Tom" wanted some, for he lived with lions and elephants in a hovel beyond the gardens, and his belly was empty. He was precisely a black specimen of the English parish idiot. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... man, goes yachting with Tompkins in later days, these two sinners are quite capable of enjoying themselves immensely in the present without raking about among the ashes of the past to seek the reason why Tompkins persisted, in spite of his friends' advice, in making an idiot of himself over that Robinson girl—Jones standing by all the while with the ring in his waistcoat pocket. Whereas, if the friendship existed between the respective ladies of Jones and Tompkins, their conversation will usually be found to begin with: "I always told you, Maria, when we ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... the mutineers; and then as we proceeded leisurely downhill to where the boats were lying, related, in a few words, what had taken place. It was a story that profoundly interested Silver, and Ben Gunn, the half-idiot maroon, was the hero ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most interesting lecture on the Venus, demonstrating it, as he proceeded, by reference to the points which he criticised. The figure, he seemed to allow, was admirable, though I think he hardly classes it so high as his own Greek Slave or Eva; but the face, he began with saying, was that of an idiot. Then, leaning on the pedestal of the cast, he continued, "It is rather a bold thing to say, isn't it, that the sculptor of the Venus de' Medici did not know ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... coughed several times, each cough being louder than the last, and then, treading softly, was about to return to the workshop when the girl stirred and muttered in her sleep. At first she was unintelligible, then he distinctly caught the words "idiot" and "blockhead." ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... in reviewing "The Antiquary" that the immortal idiot of the "Quarterly" complains about "the dark dialect of Anglified Erse." Published criticism never greatly affected Scott's spirits,—probably, he very seldom read it. He knew that the public, like Constable's friend Mrs. Stewart, were "reading 'Guy Mannering' all ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... indeed, is more definitely, more explicitly, and in further ways of exodus, a departure from the subjects and treatment of most of the books noticed in the last chapter. It is true that its author attributes to the reading of the regular romances the conversion of his pretty idiot Javotte from a mere idiot to something that can, at any rate, hold her own in conversation, and take an interest in life.[258] But he also adds the consequence of her elopement, without apparently any prospect ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... fat and plump. Sometimes as one whose limbs have been broken by the action of disordered wind in the system, sometimes as a bird, and sometimes as one of exceedingly ugly features. Sometimes he appears as a quadruped. Capable of assuming any form, he sometimes appears as an idiot destitute of all intelligence. He assumes also the forms of flies and gnats. O Vipula, no one can make him out in consequence of these innumerable disguises that he is capable of assuming. The very Creator ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... anything about the habits of the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether they are Lepidoptera or Steptopotera; but as for telling how you can get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike them,—why Linnaeus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did. These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a great deal. He always kept up his exercise; and I never heard ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... after our common interests. I felt exceedingly disturbed, and yet could not believe it; but at any rate there has been some gossip of the sort. Pray look into the whole matter, learn the truth, find out the author, and get the empty-headed idiot out of the country, if you possibly can. Valerius mentions Cn. Plancius as the origin of this gossip. I trust you thoroughly to investigate and find out what is at the bottom of it. I have good reason to believe that ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "The drivelling idiot!" he thought. "So he's gone and married her—that slut of a barmaid! Mount Rorke will never forgive him. I wouldn't be surprised if he ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... I'm all right for summer games, but winter is coming on, and I shall have to play that horrid old hockey, and I haven't the remotest idea how it is done. I've never seen a match, but you have, and I want you to tell me all about it, so that I may know what to do, and not make an idiot of myself. You went to the Betham ground when you were staying there, and saw the girls' team play. Go on! Describe it! Tell me all about it, ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... it can't be helped. I've done my three cards with pictures of flowers, and the rest of the calendar will have to be plain," said Lizzie. "You were rather an idiot, Ulyth." ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... is called. He then came forward, trembling, as if about to receive sentence of death, and taking off his greasy fez, said, "I drink to our prince Kara Georgovich, and to the progress and enlightenment of the nation." I looked with astonishment at the torn, wretched habiliments of this idiot swineherd. He was too stupid to entertain these sentiments himself; but this trifling circumstance was the feather which indicated how the wind blew. The Servians are by no means a nation of talkers; they are a serious people; and if the determination to rise were ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... meat. My aunt called him a respectable man, a cavalier, and even a grenadier. He had a way of tapping children on the forehead with the hard nails of his long fingers (he used to do it to me when I was younger) and saying, "Hear how empty your head sounds," and then laughing at his own wit. And this idiot was to have my watch? Never! was what I determined as I rushed from the room and flung myself at full length on my bed, my cheeks burning with the box on the ear I had just received. But in my heart was burning the bitterness of outraged dignity and thirst for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Noises of wood and metal, clattering of wheels, banging of implements, jangling of bells—all such things are bad enough, but worse still is the clamorous human voice. Nothing on earth is more irritating to me than a bellow or scream of idiot mirth, nothing more hateful than a shout or yell of brutal anger. Were it possible, I would never again hear the utterance of a human tongue, save from those few who ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... the clown). Stick to it, friend Madhavya. I will humour the king a moment. (Aloud.) Your Majesty, he is a chattering idiot. Your Majesty may judge by his own case whether hunting is ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... Broek, mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans with a heavy sigh. "They are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... coming down to see what was the matter. I hear from the Brigade that some doddering idiot has cut our wire. Who in the hell ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... exclaimed Haight, angrily, "why couldn't you come around and give me the tip on the quiet, instead of standing there grimacing like an idiot, making a fool of yourself and me, too? Where ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... does. We're in a hell of a hole, figure it out any way y'u like. Instead of having shot up a casual idiot, I've killed Ned Bannister's right-hand man. That will be the excuse—shooting Morgan. But the real trouble is that I won the championship belt from your cousin. He already hated y'u like poison, and he don't love me any too hard. He will have us arrested by ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... to confess it, I also have been in love with her; and how! But I was too small a personage, and too poor a devil, to be worth a serious thought of Miss Brandon. As soon as she felt sure that her abominable tricks had set my head on fire, and that I had become an idiot, a madman, a stupid fool—on that very day she laughed in my face. Ah! I tell you, she played with me as if I had been a child, and then she sent me off as if I had been a lackey. And now I hate her mortally, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... IDIOT, means merely the non-proficient in anything, the "layman," he who was not technically trained in any art, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... apparently lost all control of himself, and his voice and red face showed the anger he was simulating so well. "If you think you're going to frame me out of this class and out of graduating, you're a confounded idiot! Ask any of these chaps here—they all know I'm not ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... Graces are this Lady's handmaids. She was certainly born to adorn the age she was given to.'—Well said, Jack—'And would be an ornament to the first dignity.' But what praise is that, unless the first dignity were adorned with the first merit?—Dignity! gew-gaw!— First dignity! thou idiot!—Art thou, who knowest me, so taken with ermine and tinsel?—I, who have won the gold, am only fit to wear it. For the future therefore correct thy style, and proclaim her the ornament of the happiest man, and (respecting herself and sex) the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... all this he knew nothing, and what he thought, as he listened, was that she was as weak in mind as in body; and what he said was that a man must be an idiot who would not complain when he saw the bread taken from ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... developed. I am quite ready to admit that this is the correct explanation in many instances, as in those figured by Prof. Meyer, in which there are several minute points, or the whole margin is sinuous. I have myself seen, through the kindness of Dr. L. Down, the ear of a microcephalous idiot, on which there is a projection on the outside of the helix, and not on the inward folded edge, so that this point can have no relation to a former apex of the ear. Nevertheless in some cases, my original view, that the points are vestiges of the tips of formerly erect and pointed ears, still ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... his frenzy, suddenly quieted down. This was the idiot butcher of whom people had been chattering. No use to bluster ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... flourishing in their utmost quickness and perfection; suppose him likewise, if you please, nimble and active, nay, give him riches, honours, authority, power, glory; now, I say, should this person, who is in possession of all these, be unjust, intemperate, timid, stupid, or an idiot, could you hesitate to call such an one miserable? What, then, are those goods, in the possession of which you may be very miserable? Let us see if a happy life is not made up of parts of the same nature, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the back of your hand," Honoria replied, warming to her subject. "They hardly repaid felling for firewood. It made me wretched. Some idiot threw down a match, I suppose. There had been nearly a month's drought, and the whole place was like so much tinder. There was an easterly breeze too. You can imagine the blaze! We hadn't the faintest ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... twentieth year) Preclude my wit of his sweet liberty, And make it still the yoke of wardship bear? I fear he [i.e. my lord] hath another title [i.e. right to my wit] got And holds my wit now for an idiot. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... idiots among the number of their servants. The first wife of Seneca had followed this fashion, and Seneca in his fiftieth letter to his friend Lucilius[21] makes the following interesting allusion to the fact. "You know," he says, "that my wife's idiot girl Harpaste has remained in my house as a burdensome legacy. For personally I feel the profoundest dislike to monstrosities of that kind. If ever I want to amuse myself with an idiot, I have not far to look for one. I laugh at myself. This idiot girl has suddenly become blind. Now, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... be. The man who believes in peaceable secession must be an idiot. Secession means a military nation living side by side with a non-military nation, which it hates and will do its best to crush. It means a successful rebel flashing the sword in our face at every fancied insult, and all the work of war perennially renewed. It means conservative traitors and doughface ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... has to say," Brand said, "will you? and give him distinctly to understand that if he tries again to see Miss Lind, I will break his head for him. What idiot could have ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... be shot if she's a day more than twenty-eight! Idiot that I am, why can't I keep calm! But, Yoletta, how you distress me! It almost frightens me to ask another question, but do tell me how ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... the latter end of the duke's life, it was even said that the seal of the finance department was in the hands of his valet-de-chambre, who, in his master's frequent absences, was in the habit of issuing drafts upon the receiver-general. As the valet- dechambre was described as an idiot who did not know how to read, it may be believed that the finances fell into confusion. Certainly, if such statements were to be accepted, it would be natural enough that for every million dollars expended by the king in the provinces, not more than one hundred ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... an infernal jackass. The inscription on the gate of hell ran through his mind. He thought he would make his life— his desolate, broken life—a perpetual exile, like Dante's. At the same time he ground his teeth, and muttered: "Oh, what a fool I am! Oh, idiot! beast! Oh! oh!" The pipes reminded him to smoke, and he took out his cigarette case. The Italians looked at him; he gave all the cigarettes among them, without keeping any for himself. He determined to spend ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Antiochian Anthropology? Why do you not give us some uncommon words, and instead of 'looking back upon your subject,' sometimes 'recapitulate,' and instead of talking about a man's 'peculiarities,' mention his 'idiot-sin-crasies,' and describe the hair as the capillary adornment; and instead of speaking of a thing as tied ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... months' leave coming on shortly, which I intend to spend in St. Petersburg. I shall make it my business to see privately some of the officials in the Admiralty there, and when they realize by personal inspection what a well-intentioned idiot I ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... the man in the corner with a sarcastic chuckle. "So severely alone, in fact, that one quarter of an hour after another passed by and still the magnificent police officer in the gorgeous uniform did not return. Then, when it was too late, Schwarz cursed himself once again for the double-dyed idiot that he was. He had been only too ready to believe that Prince Semionicz was a liar and a rogue, and under these unjust suspicions he had fallen an all too easy prey to one of the most cunning rascals he had ever ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... try to equivocate, you shining idiot! For now you see for yourself you are talking nonsense. And I repeat that such unheard-of nonsense irritates me," ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... its manufacture is regarded with suspicion by United States officials who want to be considered zealous. Rather than be drawn into any difficulty with these people, I have always courted retirement and avoided the busy haunts of men. Still some strolling idiot or other will occasionally see the smoke from my little home and drop ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... country of Switzerland. He was educated tolerably well; he was a good musician, and could draw excellently. He possessed a small, though independent fortune. However, notwithstanding his advantages and acquirements, he proved, when he became a lover, to be an idiot. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... Dickens, tells the story exactly in his picture of Dr. Blimmer's system of teaching. That poor babe, Paul Dombey, might as well have been fed to an insatiable ogre as to have been placed in the hands of that pompous idiot. And our country is full of little Paul Dombeys, blossoming for eternity. How much better to have let the poor little fellow play in the sands upon the beach with his sister Florence and old Glubb. But the precocious ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... I responded irrelevantly in French, and then we looked at each other and grinned. He subsequently, thinking he had made an impression, ventured to press my hand; I drew it away and told him he was an idiot, at which he was greatly flattered; and then we grinned at each other again. It was very exciting indeed. I won the game easily, because he knew nothing of chess, and then he said something in his mother-tongue, placing his hand upon his heart. I could have sworn that it meant, "Of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... enough to prevent anything of the kind. If there had been cause for jealousy, he would have been reticent. Besides, Amy is too high-toned to yield readily to this vice, and Burt can never be such an idiot ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... that book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,—mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... section, the boys once again tendered us the glad mitt, but looked askance at us out of the corners of their eyes. They could not conceive, as they expressed it, how a man could be such a blinking idiot to join the Suicide Club. I was beginning to feel sorry that I had become a member of said club, and my life to me ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
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