"Empty-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... times, when I see the crowd of young, empty-headed fortune-seeking jackanapes, who dare to aspire to your ladyship's hand ... I have asked myself whether perchance I had the right to remain silent, whilst they poured their farrago of nonsense into your ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... type of woman altogether unsuited to the life of a planter's wife. She was a shallow, empty-headed person devoid of mental resources and incapable of taking interest in her household or her husband's affairs. In her girlhood she had been pretty in a common style, and she refused to recognise that the days of her youth and good looks had gone ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... "What a vain, empty-headed creature Henrietta Hen is!" she exclaimed. "She doesn't know that one of her brood is nothing ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... words being fraught with some ugly and hidden meaning. In her voice there had been manifest an unsuspected quality which had revealed her for the moment as not all frivolous fool or spoiled and empty-headed doll; but a tyrant and oppressor, crueller and more menacing ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... depraved nature. The corporation would seem either to have a charming sympathy for it, or to look upon it with that good-natured indifference so happily illustrated while eating its oysters and drinking its whiskey. An empty-headed corporation is sure always to have its hands very full, which is the case with yours at this moment. Having the people's money to waste, its own ambition to serve, and its hat to fill with political waste paper-what more would ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... not," said Father Griffen, "I'll not lose sight of this adventurer; he has the appearance of an empty-headed fool, but traitors know how to assume all guises. Alas!" continued he sadly, "this last voyage imposes upon me great obligations toward those who dwell at Devil's Cliff. Meantime, their secret is, so to speak, mine, but I have done what I could; ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... way had lost interest in her old toys. When God gives babies to children, the children forget their other dolls, and the Princess, when the babies came, put away her other dolls, and played with the toys that came alive. And she spanked them and fondled them and scolded them with the same empty-headed vanity that she used to ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... emphasis, which to many people would seem out of all keeping with the subject; but I am young, and a girl, so I understood. There are many empty-headed women in whom the craving for pretty things is as strong as the masculine craving for drink and cards. Circumstances have compelled these women to wear the plainest, most useful of clothes, while every shop window shows a ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... declare that she would under no circumstances become a wife, but at the same time she was firm in her heart never to have a husband. So she followed the politician's common plan: she compromised. She allowed her hand to be sought by every empty-handed and empty-headed and hollow-hearted prince or noble in Europe, determined that each in his turn should go empty away; and so she played off princes against her own people, until the course of years had left no doubt that she had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an empty-headed creature with strange notions. She never laid an egg without making a great fuss ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... heard of it. Why did they promote that empty-headed countryman of yours to a place for which he was quite unfit? I was not contented. But then I am more ambitious for you than you are for yourself." He sat without answering her for awhile, and she stood waiting for his reply. "Have you nothing to say ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... their interests, that for the sake of a paltry saving, they prefer worthless teachers for their children, practising a vile economy at the expense of their children's ignorance. Apropos of this, Aristippus on one occasion rebuked an empty-headed parent neatly and wittily. For being asked how much money a parent ought to pay for his son's education, he answered, "A thousand drachmae." And he replying, "Hercules, what a price! I could buy a slave for as much;" Aristippus answered, "You shall have two slaves then, your ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... sleepless night, when he had tossed and turned on his uneasy bed, and risen unrefreshed, he hired a horse, for he had none in town, and went for a long ride. Coming back he turned into Rotten Row. He could not tell why he did so, for such places, affected by the gay, empty-headed votaries of fashion, were little consonant to his present state. He was barely in it when a lady's horse took fright: she was riding alone, with a groom following; Lord Hartledon gave her his assistance, led her horse until the animal was calm, and ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... chosen. Certainly, at first, the choice of Blanche Evers seemed highly incongruous; it was difficult to imagine a young woman less shaped to minister to Gordon's strenuous needs than the light-hearted and empty-headed little flirt whose inconsequent prattle had remained for Bernard one of the least importunate memories of a charming time. Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose—the prettiest of little geese, perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Doree with a new respect. "I owe you an apology. You're a smart girl. You've got a brain in your head. I'm so used to carting empty-headed females around the System that I'd forgotten smart ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... seem to sponge, and how, instead of being in the Army serving his country like her own boy, enjoying his youth and a comfortable allowance, he was stuck in a gloomy City office, drawing a miserable salary, and enduring the whims and temper of an empty-headed, selfish parent. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... thinking: "Of all the empty-headed vain creatures it ever was my misfortune to meet, she ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... not at all interested in that addlepated, monkey-faced nincompoop. He's after my daughter, but he shall never marry her. Why, if wives could be supported for fifty cents a year, that empty-headed specimen of vacuous mentality couldn't even ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... sorry for her, she did look so ridiculous. I wonder her husband allows her to make such a guy of herself. What a curious little man, his great cough and that foolish shouting manner; a good-natured, empty-headed little fellow. They are a funny couple! Harold knew her husband at Oxford; they were at the same college. She took honours at Oxford; that's why she seemed out of place in a little town like Sutton. She is ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... Here is the book; here is your role: read." And I read. He did not commend; at some passages he scowled and stamped. He gave me a lesson: I diligently imitated. It was a disagreeable part—a man's—an empty-headed fop's. One could put into it neither heart nor soul: I hated it. The play—a mere trifle—ran chiefly on the efforts of a brace of rivals to gain the hand of a fair coquette. One lover was called the "Ours," a good and gallant but unpolished man, a sort of diamond in the rough; the other was a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the mind of Bob Gareth-Lawless a fearsome doubt remotely hinting that she might end by becoming an awful bore in the course of time—particularly if she also ended by being less pretty. She chattered so incessantly about nothing and was such an empty-headed, extravagant little fool in her insistence on clothes—clothes—clothes—as if they were the breath of life. After watching her for about two hours one morning as she sat before her mirror directing her ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... serious Five Towns woman. She had always referred to it as "the" hand-mirror—as though disdaining special ownership. She had derided it once by using it in front of Louis with the mimic foolish graces of an empty-headed doll. And now she was asking for it because she wanted it; and she had said ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... conspiracy that you have afoot; and well can I foresee what the conspiracy designs. . . Yet did I flatter you overmuch, my Lord of Buckingham; it is no creature of your brain, this scheme whose end is treason. You are too vain and empty-headed to be of any service except to aid its execution—and then, later, to be the leading figure at your own. Your sires were overmuch Lancastrian for you to be trusted by a son of York—after your ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... quite right!' he agreed, in his hearty manner. 'If I had had any brains instead of being a great empty-headed fool of an attorney, I should have seen to that before,' and, linking his arm in mine, he led me in spite of all protests on my part, to his great touring car and bade ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... empty-headed puppy, Mr. Matthew Sharpin, has made a mess of the case at Rutherford Street, exactly as I expected he would. Business keeps me in this town, so I write to you to set the matter straight. I inclose with this the pages of feeble scribble-scrabble which the creature Sharpin calls ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... be an 'owling cad; Or be gowing to the bad; Or a hoary centenarian, or empty-headed lad; Or the merest trifle mad— If there's rhino to be had, Why, a modern girl will tyke you—yes, and only ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... decided to tell you this morning," she said, "for I am absolutely exhausted now. It was a terrible thing to keep thinking about, and I could not have fought it out any longer! There were extenuating circumstances, I suppose. I was a spoiled little empty-headed girl; the girls all about me were reckless in everyway; I did not know the boundary-line, or dream that it mattered very much, so long as no one knew! My mother had been unhappy in my childhood, and used to talk a good deal about ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... the ground by a blow to his deepest affection in life, and he never recovered from it. His whole soul was wrapped up in his only son, of whose abilities he had the most extravagant estimate and hope. All the evidence goes to show that Richard Burke was one of the most presumptuous and empty-headed of human beings. "He is the most impudent and opiniative fellow I ever knew," said Wolfe Tone. Gilbert Elliot, a very different man, gives the same account. "Burke," he says, describing a dinner party at Lord Fitzwilliam's in 1793, "has now got such a train ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... debater, a clever tactician, and, above all things, an excellent man of business, was appointed Secretary at War. He became at the same time leader of the House of Commons. He was one of the managers in the unfortunate impeachment of the empty-headed High-Church preacher, Dr. Sacheverell. He resigned office with the other Whig ministers in 1710. Harley coming into power offered him a place in the new administration, which Walpole declined to accept. The Tories, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... afflicted ones, these peculiar ones—Mme. Poussette kept the secret well. But two days ago he sent for me and told me everything; how he was properly married in the parish of Sault au Recollet to Artemise Archambault, she, the half-witted, the empty-headed—God knows whether that was the charm or what—and of the birth of the child, he told me. What could you expect from the union of two such natures? If you marry, mademoiselle, mate neither with a bad ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... herself, but she was eloquent in it. They both used every possible argument to induce her to accept Mr. Carlyle: the old lady declaring that she had never been introduced to any one she was so much taken with, and Mrs. Levison was incapable of asserting what was not true; that he was worth a dozen empty-headed men of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... none the more easy. Comte tried to find pupils to board with him, but only one pupil came, and he was soon sent away for lack of companions. 'I would rather spend an evening,' wrote the needy enthusiast, 'in solving a difficult question, than in running after some empty-headed and consequential millionaire in search of a pupil.' A little money was earned by an occasional article in Le Producteur, in which he began to expound the philosophic ideas that were now maturing in his mind. He announced a course of lectures (1826), which it was hoped would bring money ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... ignorant vulgar'ty what comin' down to cases is merely noise. It's the whiskey they drinks, most likely. They're addicted to a kind of cat-bird whiskey over thar, which sets 'em to whistlin' an' chirpin' an' twitterin' an' teeterin' up an' down on the conversational bough, to sech a seemin'ly empty-headed extent it's calc'lated to mislead the ca'mest intellects into a belief that the c'rrect way to deal with Red Dog is to build one of these yere stone corrals 'round it, call it a loonatic asylum, an' let it go ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... that makes matters worse, for his grandson, Sirajuddaula, who'll probably succeed him, is no better than a tiger. He lives at Murshidabad, about one hundred miles up the river. He's a vain, peacocky, empty-headed youth, and as soon as the breath is out of his granddad's body he'll want to try his wings and take a peck or two at us. He may do it slyly, or go so far as to ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... me that you have done so if you want to make me a little more happy than I have been this last day or two. There has been too much thinking in the heads of both of us. Be empty-headed for once when you write next: whether you write little or much, I am sure always of your full heart: but I cannot trust your brain to the same pressure: it is such a Martha to headaches and careful about so many things, and you don't bring it here ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... said, "don't be an ordinary tourist. They're empty-headed morons and they do make trouble. Be an invisible tourist. Be nice to everybody. Be polite and kind. Don't step on any toes, no matter whose and ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... fightin' in the rebel army, when you ought to know better,' says I. 'Now, who in thunderation am I?' 'Sufferin' Moses!' says he, 'that voice grows more like his every time he speaks. It can't be that empty-headed galoot, Dan Whitley, who never knew nothin' 'bout the rights an' wrongs of the war, an' had to ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... proud, and I hadn't the heart to go back on the old story. But I'll tell you what your grandfather did for him: he got him returned at the very next election, and he on the other side, too; and after a bit a man begins to think more about getting a seat in Parliament than about courting an empty-headed girl. I have met this Mr. Roscorla, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... objections to women are traditional. They take no account of the vast change that is coming about. Because women were once empty-headed, it is assumed they are all still so en masse. The defect of the female mind? It is my belief that this is nothing more nor less than the defect of the uneducated human mind. I believe most men among ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... fascinating an audience to the degree that she does. Your Excellency may take my word for it, she is a very clever woman. My own interviews with her sufficed to convince me of that fact. And I need not tell your Excellency, that little as some of the empty-headed young gentlemen in the stalls may suspect it, talent,—not only the special talent of song but general talent,— has much to do with the power of fascination that a ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... in the midst of a band of empty-headed men, who certainly have no particular regard for a woman's reputation. And you, in consequence of your intimacy with Madame Karpathy, rub shoulders every day with her acquaintances, and will also be taken for a light, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... moment answer—could not meet his earnest gaze. Dark as it was she felt, rather than saw, the glow of his deep blue eyes. She could not mistake the tenderness of his tone. She had so believed in him. He seemed so far above the callow, vapid, empty-headed youngsters the other girls were twittering about from morn till night. She felt that she believed in him now, no matter what had been said or who had said it. She felt that if he would but say it ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... was not to wait long, after all, for a husband. Among the many men who fluttered round her, willing to woo if not to wed the empty-headed beauty, was General Leclerc, young and rich, but weak in body and mind, "a quiet, insignificant-looking man," who at least loved her passionately, and would make a pliant husband to the capricious little autocrat. And we may ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... titanic contest to the blue jay, two monstrous giants fighting to the death. All the other forest people had fled away in terror, but the empty-headed blue jay, held by the terrible fascination, remained on his bough, watching with dilated eyes. He saw the great beads of sweat stand out on the face of each, he could hear the muscles strain and creak, he saw the two fall ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it out, dear. What do you think you want?" Valentia answered herself; "It's Foster, of course! That dull, empty-headed, commonplace, hard-up, handsome boy. You can't marry him. He's just twenty-two, and has only a miserable allowance, and is in an expensive regiment, and you, darling, will only have three hundred a year. I should ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... of being temperamental now and then—which I'm not—but the one thing in life which I love is sanity. And that, Dinky-Dunk, is why I love you, even though you are only a big sunburnt farmer fighting and planning and grinding away for a home for an empty-headed wife who's going to fail at everything ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... argument to show that a thing did not exist, if it was a thing which he knew ought to exist. He looked back over the history of art, and saw the old hideous state of affairs—saw genius perishing of starvation and misery, and men erecting monuments to it when it was dead. He saw empty-headed rich people paying fortunes for the manuscripts of poems which all the world had once rejected; he saw the seven towns contending for Homer dead, through which the living Homer begged his bread. And Thyrsis could not bring himself to believe that a thing so monstrous could continue ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... printers and papermakers; you may cut an author's hand off and he is as good an author as before. What is the result? There is more imagination in any number of a penny journal than in half-a-dozen of the Royal Academy rooms in the season. No author can live by his work and be as empty-headed as an average successful painter. Again, consider our implements of music—our pianofortes, for example. Nobody but an acrobat will voluntarily spend years at such a difficult mechanical puzzle as the keyboard, and so we have to take our impressions ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... already seen of my Carrie, that there is not the slightest ground for those charges against clever women; on the contrary, it seems to me that your clever woman will see the duty, as well as the pleasure, of ordering her husband's house in a becoming manner. Why should empty-headed girls, who haven't a word to say for themselves, nor an accomplishment to their back—why should they be the superlative concocters of custards, and menders of shirts and stockings? Do you mean to tell me that a woman must be a fool to have a light hand at pastry? I believe these ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... not allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing 'She does not gain upon me, Sir; I think her empty-headed.' He was, indeed, a stern critick upon characters and manners. Even Mrs. Thrale did not escape his friendly animadversion at times. When he and I were one day endeavouring to ascertain, article by article, how one of our friends[153] could possibly spend as much ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... respectable democratic newspaper,[59] "is the politician. Of all the privileged beings who have ever governed us he is the worst. In that, however, there is nothing surprising ... he is not only amoral, but incompetent by definition. And it is this empty-headed individual who is intrusted with the task of settling problems with the very rudiments of which he is unacquainted." Another French journal[60] wrote: "In truth it is a misfortune that the leaders of the Conference are Cabinet chiefs, for each of them is obsessed ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... war has disturbed me.... I thought it would further my plans. The Germans are so efficient. Their spy system, too, was excellent. The streets are full of these boys in khaki. All empty-headed young fools.... Yet I do not know.... They won the ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie |
