"Idiotical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distinguished at the opposite side to where I stood, but much nearer the place where the red figures sat. Yes, there stood our poor governor and the sweet young ladies, and I thought they never looked so handsome before; and close by them were the sharking priests, and not far from them was that idiotical parson Platitude, winking and grinning, and occasionally lifting up his hands as if in ecstasy at what he saw and heard, so that he drew upon himself the notice of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... week or two after the adventure! A silly hussy—I wished to marry her, by the left hand, to my forester, but she kept on moping and looking at the idiotical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... grandson. His firstborn, Tom, was wild, and went to sea—the old story—leaving wife and unborn child for his father to look to. Six years had gone—the seventh began at New Year's; the boy was born, burnt, saved alive, and not idiotic; its mother had died; Adam's life was outrunning the child's, and he would soon have to leave it to go on by itself; but his faith in his son's ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... had said this pretty well for an idiotic Monster; but the child, instantly perceiving the awkwardness of his attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly destroyed his hopeful opinion of himself by saying, compassionately: "What a funny ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... position. I am helpless—here on suffrance—obliged by idiotic regulations to sit in idleness. But if I could find a British officer with brains—surely there must be one somewhere! —one with some authority, who is considered above suspicion, I could show him, perhaps, ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... that. She's unhappy, and I don't like the life she's leading. Always out at cinematographs and theatres and restaurants, and with a lot of boys who mean no harm, I know—but they're idiotic, they're no good.... Now, when the war's like this and the suffering.... To be always at the cinematograph! But I've lost my authority over her, Ivan Andreievitch. She doesn't care any longer what I say to her. Once, and not so long ago, I meant so much to her. She's changed, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... you ever see such idiotic clumsiness!" he ejaculated. And then, in deepest contrition: "I won't attempt to apologize—it's beyond all that. But you must let me make ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... virtue. They have their reward. But in men whose bitterness of longing grew out of hideous fault. The distinction of beauty—not a payment for prayers or chastity. The distinction of love ... above chests of linen and a banker's talent and patents of nobility.... Divine need. Idiotic. But what else, what ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... crown, and on his neck and arms great golden beads and nuggets. His habit was to suck a large nut that looked like a big cigar, and as he sat there with it in his mouth it gave his face a strangely idiotic expression. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... with interest, grew even more responsive to this offer, yet as the tea came, he felt unaccountably stupid and idiotic. Utter disgust with himself filled his mind to think he couldn't get to the point then and there of telling his kind host about that letter he ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... painfully numerous, fail. The question rises to the mind with fearful solemnity, were they created for this end,—created to fail? Can we for a single moment believe that a Father of infinite justice and mercy ever created one individual among his children, an accountable being, neither insane nor idiotic, and yet so imperfect that he must fail? Surely it were blasphemy to hold such an act possible. Infinitely various are the works of his hand in the forms of humanity, as in every other department of the universe, but even so manifold are the varieties and degrees of service which he prepares ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... isn't it?" mused the detective aloud, "how idiotic men and women can be in their attitude to the supreme things of life. What is of greater importance than the food we eat and the liquors we drink? Through them the body reconstitutes itself hourly and daily. Providence ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... idiotic correspondence to which you refer, and am informed that you are the author of the screed which appeared in last Saturday's issue of the paper. If my informant is correct as to the authorship of the letter I can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... we have the same theologic tendency to magic, and, as a result, a muddle of science and theology, which from one point of view seems blasphemous and from another idiotic, but which none the less sterilized physical investigation for ages. That debased Platonism which had been such an important factor in the evolution of Christian theology from the earliest days of the Church continued ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... only boy that doesn't deny it is Davis. Davis, you are excused. I wish to talk to the rest of them." That all goes to show he can be a gentleman if he would only try. I am a natural born philosopher so I thought this idea is too idiotic for me to converse about so I recommend silence and I also argued that to deny you must necessarily be accused and to be accused of stealing would of course cause me to bid Prex. good-by, so the only way was, taking these two considerations with each ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... been good enough for you for fifty years," I retorted. "And if you think you look sporty, or anything but idiotic, sitting there in a flowered kimono and swabbing out the throat ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... miserable mother, might die; and so this misery might be at an end. Nothing but death could end it. Thoughts and dreams of other violence had crossed her brain,—of carrying the girl away, of secluding her, of frightening her from day to day into some childish, half-idiotic submission. But for that the tame obedience of the girl would have been necessary,—or that external assistance which she had sought, in vain, to obtain among the lawyers. Such hopes were now gone, and ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... The Harriet Barne's here; they've been making us work on her, to convert her to an interplanetary craft, of all idiotic things." ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... I, "granting for the sake of the argument which I am about to build upon the concession" (I could not bring myself to use the idiotic and meaningless phrase, "for the sake of argument") "that death, especially the death of a Lalugwump, is desirable, yet the act of dying, the transition state between living and being dead, may be accompanied ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... best line in the piece, to my mind—and it certainly "went with a roar"—is a question of the housekeeper—answered in the negative—"Have you ever seen the Pastor laugh?" Laugh! with such surroundings! Pretentious twaddle, that would be repulsively immoral were it less idiotic. And ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... such tricks as the spiritualists attribute to our dead? It shatters every thought of the majesty of death. Would a sane live man walk into my house and announce his presence to me by rapping on a wall or tipping a table or scrawling idiotic messages on a slate or talking to me through some ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... peaceful citizens. To realize this, it was only necessary to walk the streets, if that were possible, through those days of riot and conflagration, observe the materials gathered into the vast, moving multitudes, and scrutinize the faces of those of whom they were composed,—deformed, idiotic, drunken, imbecile, poverty-stricken; seamed with every line which wretchedness could draw or vicious habits and associations delve. To walk these streets and look upon these faces was like a fearful witnessing in perspective of the last day, when the secrets of life, more loathsome ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... this elaborate movement of the head—a distinct idea of a personality. The bird's proceedings suggested extreme sentimentality combined with that sort of weak determination which is often the most persistent. Such weak determination is a very common 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 ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... triangular tips, hinged to the main wings. I longed to pour out questions, for the "why" of things, especially mechanical things, has interested me ever since I was old enough to pick a doll to pieces, to see what made its eyes open and shut. But Di was asking idiotic questions in the sweetest way, and Captain March was laughing and delighted. It pleased him a great deal more that she should want to know precisely why he had named his monoplane the Golden Eagle than if Father or I had catechized ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... triumph, where another would have gone in shame and secrecy, was startling and disgusting. He was nearly three months under the most skilful treatment-and returned to the Court with half his nose, his teeth out, and a physiognomy entirely changed, almost idiotic. The King was so much struck by this change, that he recommended the courtiers not to appear to notice it, for fear of afflicting M. de Vendome. That was taking much interest in him assuredly. As, moreover, he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... himself what he has to do, and arrange the means for doing it. To be the passive victim of a rushing stream of disconnected impressions is torture, especially if the emergency be urgent. So when the sun came up Zachariah began to be ashamed of himself that the night had passed in these idiotic moonings, which had left him just where he was, and he tried to settle what he was to do when he reached Manchester. He did not know a soul; but he could conjecture why he was advised to go thither. It was a disaffected town, and Friends of the ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... was an idiotic question, but it slipped from his tongue before he could catch it. Esme turned her head and looked at him wonderingly. He knew that in the sunlight her eyes were as mistily blue as early meadow violets, but here they looked ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to do in his stupor. With the full purport of this thing upon him, Conniston was driven to a fury of rage. He jerked Truxton's head back and slapped him across the face until his fingers tingled. Now Truxton's eyes opened, red-rimmed, bloodshot, fixed in a vacant, idiotic stare. And before Conniston could speak the eyes were closed again, the head had sunk ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... extremely handy. I asked her why and she explained. There was a rule at the school that the pupils were not to speak when they walked through the garden from the chapel to the refectory. And, since this rule appeared to be idiotic and arbitrary, she broke it on purpose day after day. In the evening the children were all asked if they had committed any faults during the day, and every evening Nancy confessed that she had broken this particular rule. It cost her ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... suffered less than any of us, being much less reduced in frame, and retaining my powers of mind in a surprising degree, while the rest were completely prostrated in intellect, and seemed to be brought to a species of second childhood, generally simpering in their expressions, with idiotic smiles, and uttering the most absurd platitudes. At intervals, however, they would appear to revive suddenly, as if inspired all at once with a consciousness of their condition, when they would spring upon their feet in a momentary flash of vigour, and speak, for a short period, of their ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... silver cross on her very business-like gray clothes, and was the only member of the party who went to church. Last, but the reverse of least, there was Diana Duke, studying the newcomer with eyes of steel, and listening carefully to every idiotic word he said. As for Mrs. Duke, she smiled up at him, but never dreamed of listening to him. She had never really listened to any one in her life; which, some said, was why she ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... was insane or idiotic at the time of the marriage. [Sec.3422.] If a person marries who has a husband or wife living such marriage is absolutely void. In case of absence of the husband a presumption of death does not arise until he has been absent seven years without intelligence concerning him. Where ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... Pastourelle to rue Portefoin), changing lodgings at this time to evade the investigations of Auguste de Maulincour. Stunned by the death of his daughter, whom he adored and with whom he held secret interviews to prevent her becoming amenable to the law, he passed his last days in an indifferent, almost idiotic way, idly watching match games at bowling on the Place de l'Observatoire; the ground between the Luxembourg and the Boulevard de Montparnasse was the scene of these games. One of the assumed names of Bourignard was the Comte de Funcal. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... say she was not gentle; she could be the gentlest creature that ever lived, when it was a question of a child, or a bird, or— anything that was hurt, in short. When that little beggar fell down the other day and barked his idiotic little shins, the way she took him up, and kissed him, and got him to laughing, while he, Geoffrey, plastered him up; and it hurt too, getting the gravel out. When that violoncello note gets into her voice—well, you know! Yes, she must certainly ride the ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile; the result was an idiotic simper. The glorious gilding had been worn off, the wood was gray and cracked. The Polly's galley was entirely hidden under a deckload of shingles and laths in bunches; the after-house was broad and loomed high above the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of Rome. He never realized the degradation possible to Christianity until he visited "The Eternal City," with its huge shams and ghastly superstitions. He never saw Hinduism with its myriad inane rites and debasing idolatry half so grotesque, idiotic, and repulsive, as in this city of Benares, where one ought to see the religion of these two hundred odd million people at its best, and not at ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... gets into mischief must be either sly, or delicate, or idiotic; indeed, the system of many persons, in bringing up children, is likely to make them either the one or the other. The present plan of training children is nearly all work (books), and very little play. ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... do want to," declared King, agreeably. "I'm not afraid of any grumpy girl. I'll smile on her so sweetly, she'll have to smile back." And King gave such an idiotic grin that they ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... it be but O'Connor? And these German underwriters are perfect babes in the wood—they're just idiotic enough to cancel a profitable contract merely to take on an experimental one with a bigger premium income in its place. Now, nobody outside the office knew the conditions of our contract with the Karlsruhe—except O'Connor. No, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... a girl of sixteen will flirt with every eligible man she meets until she renders him idiotic, she must expect to pay the penalty. But I don't pretend to understand this affair; it is wrapped in blacker mystery than the Man in the Iron Mask. All I've got to say is—I had no hand in it; so no more of your ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... following case observed by Meniere:—A married couple, being cousins, who enjoyed excellent health, had eight children, of whom four were born deaf mutes, another was idiotic, another died when five years of age, and two others suffered from absolute deafness, which only made its ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of horses with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker's assistant, who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic solemnity by dragging down the corners of the mouth. She turned ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... idiotic notion of mine to have a glass roof to my bedroom! I feel as though I were living under an umbrella through which the water might come dripping at any moment. During the night this will probably happen. The panes of glass, unless ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... henceforth in this record, lest it might seem to any unkind person who might hereafter read it that I wished to taunt Rupert St. Leger with his somewhat obscure position, in reiterating his real distance in kinship with my family—when my cousin, Rupert St. Leger, wished to commit a certain idiotic act of financial folly, he approached my father on the subject, arriving at our estate, Humcroft, at an inconvenient time, without permission, not having had even the decent courtesy to say he was coming. I ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... of the lamp, the others began to talk in undertones. Old Barthes, who considered that bomb to be both idiotic and abominable, spoke of it with the stupefaction of one who, after fighting like a hero through all the legendary struggles for liberty, found himself belated, out of his element, in a new era, which he could not understand. Did not the conquest of freedom suffice for everything? ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... means roughly noble or lord. Lig-magte is the local overlord. He has an ugly stoneheap of a building just outside the city. He seems to be the mouthpiece for the group of magter that are pushing this idiotic war. As to your second question, I have to answer yes and no. We found Director Mervv's head outside the door next morning with all the skin gone. We knew who it was because the doctor identified the bridgework in ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... to speak of woman's tenderness, but there is no tenderness like that of a man for the woman he loves when she is tired or troubled, and the man who has learned simply to love a woman at crucial moments, and to postpone the inevitable idiotic questioning till a more auspicious time, has in his hands the ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... things, and he knew that one baby so thoroughly, that he had good reason to believe he could do something for any other. I have known people who would have begun to fight the devil in a very different and a very stupid way. They would have begun by scolding the idiotic cabman; and next they would make his wife angry by saying it must be her fault as well as his, and by leaving ill-bred though well-meant shabby little books for them to read, which they were sure to hate the sight of; while all the time they ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... I'm disgusted. This has been the most idiotic thing I've ever done, and if you say the word we'll get out of here on the first train—freight or passenger. The Guggenslockers—pigs!" Mr. Lorry ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... theatre—and afterwards, when the evening was over and he had gone off in a cloud of glory. He would think it all over and come solemnly to the conclusion that the reason for his mumbling stupidity, his toeing and heeling, and all that idiotic speechlessness that set Emmy on her hind legs, was sheer love of the truth. He couldn't tell a lie—to a woman. That would be it. He would pretend that Jenny had chivvied him into taking Em, that he was too noble to refuse to take Em, or to let ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... have been no saint, and no doubt I have fancied myself as a lover once or twice ere this; but to see that girl, sir, means a change in a man's life: to have met the light of those sweet eyes is to love, to love in reality. It is to feel ashamed of the idiotic make-believes of former loves. To love her, even in vague hope, is to be glorious already; and, by George, to have her troth, is to be—I cannot say what ... to be ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... please, that would be idiotic! I'm a foundling, haven't any family. What's a war cross more or less to me? Now Paul here keeps a cafe; just think of the pleasure it will give his clientele to ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... made it too hot for these mules, and they were only allowed to stay on the ground as it amused us to see their idiotic sniggers. The paper on 'Beauty' was rot, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... sat ... in his brown corduroys ... his lock of hair over his eyes ... that simple, sweet, idiotic expression, like ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... it!" Tai-y remonstrated laughingly. "But wait and I'll ask him about it! so come along all of you, and I vouch I'll make him abandon that idiotic frame of mind and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... was aggravated by the Vicar's death—and not only in the eyes of Mrs Orgreave and her falsely stoic husband, but in Edwin's eyes too! Useless for him to argue with himself about idiotic superstitiousness! The death of the Vicar had undoubtedly ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the time reminding her of her mental weakness and inferiority? And as it has been, so it is. Woman is still believed intellectually inferior to man, by ninety-nine one hundredths of mankind. Poor, weak, silly, drunken, half-idiotic men, whose wives have to support them, will tell you in conscious pride of sex of woman's weakness of mind. I have heard little Lilliputian men, whose minds were as small as a baby's rattle-box, always harping on this worn-out string of woman's ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... I am, Madam. As a matter of fact, I am not clever at discussing public questions, because, as an English gentleman, I was not brought up to use my brains. But occasionally, after a number of remarks which are perhaps sometimes rather idiotic, I get certain convictions. Thanks to you, I have now got a conviction that this woman question is not a question of lovely and accomplished females, but of dowdies. The average Englishwoman is a dowdy and never has half a chance of becoming anything else. She hasnt any charm; and ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... you tell her. She's prepared for it, and do you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that I lie. Perhaps you do; don't make yourself uncomfortable to hide it. Only, as it happens this time, I don't. I've told plenty of little idiotic fibs, but they've never ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... his face, and he returned her gaze with an expression so unmoved and idiotic, that she saw it was hopeless to expect a ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... laid in a sarcophagus which may still be seen forming the sill of one of the windows of S. Matteo (on the right as you enter). Over this sarcophagus stood the Bust of Lamba till 1797, when the mob of Genoa, in idiotic imitation of the French proceedings of that age, threw it down. All of Lamba's six sons had fought with him at Meloria. In 1291 one of them, Tedisio, went forth into the Atlantic in company with Ugolino Vivaldi on a voyage of discovery, and never returned. Through ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... however, her fears proved groundless. Masterman himself opened the door for her as she went up the steps. "Saw you coming," he explained. "Just got out from town. Ena's been telling me the most distressing thing—the most damnably theatrical, idiotic thing. Perhaps ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... fool plays we have to work in! Having another girl roll you around the stage by the hind legs in a 'Wheelbarrow Chorus' in a musical comedy is dignified drama compared with the idiotic things I've had ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... to guess the impression made on Meir by Schmul's humble and at the same time grave, warning. He continually kept his hand on little Lejbele's head, and looked into the beautiful fine-featured face of the pale, sick, idiotic and trembling child, where he saw the personification of that portion of Israel, which, devoured by misery and disease, nevertheless believed blindly and worshipped humbly, timidly, ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... to the inmost core of its being. The dear little 'oilan!' Now that I am so far away, I go over it in my mind's eye with the idiotic affection of a mother who knows every inch of her baby's body and would like to gobble it. The leaves must be down by this time, and there can be nothing on the bare boughs but the empty nests where the little birdies used to woo and sing. My love to them and three ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... disappointment; the thing which had been alive was dead, and so the sudden hope which had come with the new wonder died too. He supposed that he had been the prey of an absurd fancy created by the idle words of the doctor, or by an idiotic movement of his mind, which had cried to him on a sudden: "If the Valentine you love and revere is really gone away, what are you worshipping now?" Now, in his heavy disappointment he thought of this cry as a mad exclamation, and he sought to drown all memory of it, and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... apartments did not connect in any way, except by the two porches. Not far from that building was another that had once been the dining room and kitchen of the seven wives. These mormon women must be simply idiotic, or have their tempers ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... idiotic nonsense to that little beast," interrupted Hereward sarcastically, "you'll perhaps kindly oblige me by mentioning ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... it; but she made a complete fool of him, brain and all. I don't know how she managed it, but I can imagine. She liked him, of course; but it was quite plain to me that she was playing with him. The whole affair was so idiotic, I got perfectly furious. One day I asked him to row me in a boat on the lake—all this happened at our house by Lake George. We had never been alone together for any length of time before. In the boat I talked to him. I was very kind about it, I think, ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... the shock like a man, and then crawl into a hole somewhere and die; but his mind would not grip, nor his eyes focus. The only words which his empty brain could pump up were these, irrelevant and idiotic, "'A frog he would a-wooing go, heigho,' said Rowley"; and they must not be said. "It is a bit difficult, perhaps," said the whispering voice that crept through the tumult of winds and waters in his head. "Never mind, take down the rest of it," and the far-away whisper began to say ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... meant. Her very white face showed that. The young man went on, pressing, masterful, confident, towering over her: "It's idiotic to speak of it now, out here—with all these people around—but it just got me to see you with that—I wasn't sure how I felt about you till I saw how I felt when you seemed so friendly with him, when you got off the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... as evidence of good faith, and it is designed to weed out the duller dull and many of the base. Our schooling period ends now about fourteen, and a small number of boys and girls—about three per cent.—are set aside then as unteachable, as, in fact, nearly idiotic; the rest go on to ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Susan considered so simply idiotic, there was, of course, no further conversation between ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... his celebrity without approving of his character. It was on that account, I strongly suspect, that he seized with avidity upon the theory of poetical genius being allied to madness, which he got hold of in some idiotic book everybody was reading a few years ago. It struck him as being truth itself—illuminating like the sun. He adopted it devoutly. He bored me with it sometimes. Once, just to shut him up, I asked quietly if this theory which ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... we as hapless individuals of this idiotic community have to do is to secretly evade its ridiculous conventions when they don't suit us, and to make the most of them when ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... I was seventeen; and she, I imagine, was about twenty. But a girl of twenty is three times older than a boy of seventeen. She commanded. She mothered. I felt infinitely childlike and absurd. I thought of refusing; but that seemed an idiotic attempt at dignity which would only amuse this very mature young person. To accept seemed to throw away entirely one's masculinity. Somehow, I.... But she stepped right into the room then, instinctively ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... this wretched Nupton who must have made—must be going to make—some idiotic mistake.... Look here, Soames! you know me better than to suppose that I.... After all, the name "Max Beerbohm" is not at all an uncommon one, and there must be several Enoch Soameses running around—or rather, "Enoch Soames" is ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... happens to us all, happens to some with a wide difference; and Will was not one of those whose wit "keeps the roadway:" he had his bypaths where there were little joys of his own choosing, such as gentlemen cantering on the highroad might have thought rather idiotic. The way in which he made a sort of happiness for himself out of his feeling for Dorothea was an example of this. It may seem strange, but it is the fact, that the ordinary vulgar vision of which Mr. Casaubon suspected him—namely, that ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of his idiotic actions, on the basis of an inflated and dishonest report of the battle which was sent to the empress, Nassau received a valuable estate, the military order of St. George, and authority to hoist the flag of rear-admiral; other officers were also substantially rewarded; while all that was ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... "Never again. I did that idiotic thing twice over before I thought what a fool I was towards myself, and teaching you two lads ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... said, "there's one thing certain: Byram can't stay if there's going to be fighting here. I heard guns at sea this morning; I don't know what that may indicate. And here's this idiotic revolution started in Paradise! That means the troops from Lorient, and a wretched lot of bushwhacking and guerrilla work. Those Faouet Bretons that Buckhurst has recruited are a bad lot; there is going to be trouble, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... her thought. Had we not shared it for forty years? And the moment of its consummation had come at last. So I, too, affected not to recognize my enemy, and, putting on an idiotic senility, I, too, crawled in the dust toward the litter whining for mercy ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... said the Cornal. "Well, if you must be putting it that idiotic way, you must; anyway, we're waiting on ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... way of spending money, they injured none but themselves. Their search for the secret of life did not involve the wanton torture of helpless creatures, nor did their boasted knowledge lead them to the idiotic conclusion that they were ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... "Samuel, you're perfectly idiotic today," she declared. "Of course she is here; anyone with eyes can see she is. She is—ahem—visiting me and she is attending the Misses Cabot's school. There! Now, Mr. Smith understands, I hope. And dinner is ready. Don't any of you say another ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... buffo," cried Franck, striking the table with his fist. His smile had already turned somewhat idiotic, and he seemed to ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... recovers itself by being simply let alone. So when we consider how easily it can be preserved in Labrador, and how beneficial its preservation is to all concerned, we can understand how the wanton destruction going on there is quite as idiotic as it is wrong. ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... well justified by the facts," she replied seriously. "But only the most idiotic and ignorant of gossips could possibly say that of you. Every one who is any one knows that the Kyneston coronet does not ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... while pointing out to them a broom, that "it had formerly been a novice who neglected to sweep out" the Council-room, hence was re-born as a broom (!), therefore, the wisest of all the world's sages stands accused of idiotic superstition. Why not try and find out, before condemning, the true meaning of the figurative statement? Why should we scoff before we understand? Is or is not that which is called magnetic effluvium a something, a stuff, or a substance, invisible, and imponderable though it be? If the learned ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... all the horrors of the time, and in the newspapers, until the Kaiser was elected sole bugaboo, he shared the honors of that office with von Hindenburg, the Crown Prince, Capt. Boy-Ed, von Bernstorff and von Tirpitz. Most of this denunciation, of course, was frankly idiotic—the naive pishposh of suburban Methodists, notoriety-seeking college professors, almost illiterate editorial writers, and other such numskulls. In much of it, including not a few official hymns of hate, Nietzsche was ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... Jeff. "But of course my not seeing it doesn't count. I can't see the value of that idiotic old battered-up copper pail you cherish so tenderly, but that's because I lack the true, heaven-born artist's soul. Where are you going to put ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... manifestations had independently occurred to me as arguments against his position. The experiences of Elmira Reformatory and Bicetre—not to mention institutions of more recent establishment—long since showed that both the morally insane and the idiotic can be greatly improved by appropriate treatment. Schrenck-Notzing seems to be unduly biased by his interest in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... this unpleasant experience the mad fellow "took off" down wind. This idiotic method of leaving the ground resulted in his being barely able to rise above the roofs of the near-by village and brought him into direct contact with the church spire. The spire being of solid construction withstood ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... of the talents committed to him. Men must acknowledge the responsibility that rest upon them, and meet it with that true courage which directs them aright. The lack of knowledge does not imply lack of ability to think and to reason. All men, unless of idiotic, impaired, or diseased minds, are possessed of the faculty of reason, and should use it for the purpose for which it was given— to supply needed helps to our temporal existence. From thought comes ability, and from ability system, courage, attention, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... is that, excepting barnyard fowls, the horse is the most idiotic of all animals, and, pound for pound, even the miserable hen is his intellectual superior. Indeed, if horses had brains no better than those of hens, but proportionately larger, they would not be drawing wagons, and carrying men upon their backs, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... her, and saw truth in her eyes, and felt all his idiotic vengeance slipping away from him. He didn't want to believe in her and made ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt again with your idiotic remarks, especially when one is not talking to you and doesn't care to know whether you exist or not!" Kolya snapped out irritably. The boy flushed crimson but did ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rag, which it calls the Holy Coat, and which it pretends is the very garment we read of in the Gospels. Such a precious relic is, of course, endowed with supernatural qualities. It will heal the sick, cure cripples, and, let us hope, put brains into idiotic heads. Hence the contemplated rush to Trier, where more people will congregate to see Christ's coat than ever assembled to hear him preach ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... even the little wild Porto Santo rabbits. By the standard of the length of skull the capacity (see column 7) is only half of what it ought to have been! I kept this individual animal alive, and it was not unhealthy nor idiotic. This case of the Angora rabbit so much surprised me, that I repeated all the measurements and found them correct. I have also compared the capacity of the skull of the Angora with that of the wild rabbit by other standards, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... decided to accept the position, not so much on account of its financial attractions, as because I shall be glad, on a friendly basis, to be associated with the gentleman I have named. Why did you put me to all that worry writing that idiotic letter, when a few words would have saved ever so much bother? You evidently need a partner. My mother will be pleased to meet you any time you call. You ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... far too idiotic to be declined. You say that a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but I hope at least that he is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and now, to swear as a Christian, and promise as a good comrade and a fellow-artist, that I will not ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... Jack Priest, and that idiotic parson, Platitude; they have just been set down by one of the coaches, and want a postchaise to go across the country in; and what do you think? I am to have the driving of them. I have no time to lose, for I must get myself ready; so do come and ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Hudig's insults that lingered in his ears grew fainter by the lapse of time, the feeling of shame was replaced slowly by a passion of anger against himself and still more against the stupid concourse of circumstances that had driven him into his idiotic indiscretion. Idiotic indiscretion; that is how he defined his guilt to himself. Could there be anything worse from the point of view of his undeniable cleverness? What a fatal aberration of an acute ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... landlord had allowed her to turn into it. Now she roosted there in the place of Pere Bru. It was inside there, on some straw, that her teeth chattered, whilst her stomach was empty and her bones were frozen. The earth would not have her apparently. She was becoming idiotic. She did not even think of making an end of herself by jumping out of the sixth floor window on to the pavement of the courtyard below. Death had to take her little by little, bit by bit, dragging her thus to the end through the accursed existence she had made for ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... that," she laughed. "I'm going to marry him. He's going out next week. It's idiotic to have an engagement. So I'm going to marry him the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... becomes paralyzed, cannot move his limbs, his mind becomes lost, and he presents a perfect picture of imbecility. He does all sorts of queer things. He sits in the corner with an idiotic smile on his face, playing with straws; he is forgetful, he cannot remember even the most ordinary events. He becomes disgustingly filthy and eats his own excrement. In fact, he ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... long after it was found to be a mistake, hundreds and thousands of the old physicians clung to it, carried around with them, in one pocket, a bottle of jalap, and in the other a rusty lancet, sorry that they couldn't find some patient idiotic enough to allow the experiment ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... One set of volumes contains nothing but copper-plate engraved titles, and woe betide the grand old Dutch folios of the seventeenth century if they cross his path. Another is a volume of coarse or quaint titles, which certainly answer the end of showing how idiotic and conceited some authors have been. Here you find Dr. Sib's "Bowels opened in Divers Sermons," 1650, cheek by jowl with the discourse attributed falsely to Huntington, the Calvinist, "Die and be damned," with many others too coarse to be ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... from the main point of this chapter long enough to explain that equality is not synonymous with identity, as seems to be the impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to say is shared by the judge on the bench with the workingman on the construction gang, and the idiotic observation that "if women expect to vote they must expect to stand up in the street-car," is not, alas! confined to the lout, but is quite often ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... of the press has been variously estimated. The Index was early dubbed sica destricta in omnes scriptores and Sarpi called it "the finest secret ever discovered for applying religion to the purpose of making men idiotic." Milton thundered against the censorship in England as "the greatest discouragement and affront that can be offered to learning and learned men." The evil of the system of Rome was, in his opinion, double, for, as he wrote in his ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... to my view of the matter, you must look out of the window the whole time that I continue, for once entered I always fight to a finish and I cannot retire to my corner on this auspicious occasion without announcing through a trumpet that even if Jack is a most idiotic fellow I never have caught the microbe from him, and, as a sequence, have always seen clear through and out of the other side of the whole situation. Of course I should not say this to any woman but you because it would not have any ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... effort with such wonderful speed and accuracy? The slave looked at him in wonder. It was very evident that he had already forgotten the service which he had rendered, and the same listless, childlike, and almost idiotic expression was in his face. This event endeared the boy very much to the Circassian, and she never failed to show him every kindness in her power. She would arrange his straggling dress, and part his hair, smoothly away from his handsome forehead, ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... in life," said the Judge, "is to be the organizer of a lodge without flub-dub, gold tassel uniforms, red tape ritual, a regiment of officers with high-sounding titles, a calisthenic drill of idiotic signs and grips, a goat, and members who call each other 'brother.' I would name the presiding officer 'it,' and its first by-law would provide for the expulsion of the member who advocated the ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... to you as idiotic as it did to me, but you will get the explanation at the end of the chapter, as I did—on the drive home—the two hours of which were entirely taken up in laughing at the mistakes of the good lawyer, who ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... a man of adventurous disposition. He had a reputation in Connacht as a singularly bold rider to hounds. The story of his singlehanded cruise round Ireland in a ten tonner will be told among yachtsmen until his son does something more extravagantly idiotic. The London season always bored him. The atmosphere of Conroy's house in Park ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... wants healthy babies and intelligent workers. Today we refuse to allow the combination and force thousands of intelligent workers to go childless at a horrible expenditure of moral force, or we damn them if they break our idiotic conventions. Only at the sacrifice of intelligence and the chance to do their best work can the majority of modern women bear children. This is ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of men, not only of those who are engaged in it, but even more upon those who see it from a distance, that commanders are often severely condemned for prudent care of the lives of men under their command, who have no choice but to march blindly to death when ordered, while the idiotic sacrifice of the bravest and noblest of patriotic soldiers is loudly applauded as a grand exhibition of "gallantry" in action. If George H. Thomas had had no other title to honor or fame, he would have deserved the profound ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... have but intellect, is much more their affaire. Yesterday morning, while sitting among the tents of "ye Egypcians," I overheard a knot of men discussing the merits of a degraded-looking doglet, who seemed as if he must have committed suicide, were he only gifted with sense enough to know how idiotic he looked. "Would you take seven pounds for him?" asked one. "Avo, I would take seven bar; but I wouldn't take six, nor ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... like to see it. She said, "Yes." It struck her that she had said it too loudly and in an inexpressibly foolish way. Indeed, she came to the conclusion as she followed him down the hillside that nobody since the world began had ever done anything so idiotic as saying "Yes" in that particular manner, and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West |
