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More "Addle" Quotes from Famous Books



... habitat is the sea, such as the salmon, it is essential for the maintenance of the species that the spawn should be deposited in fresh water, nay, in running fresh water; for in still water, however pure, the eggs in a few weeks addle and die. The eggs of the common trout also require to be deposited in running fresh water; while other fresh water fishes, such as the tench and carp, are reared most successfully in still, reedy ponds. The fresh water fishes spawn, too, at very different seasons, and the young remain for ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... of the suite sported their embroidery at the balls, or shook their Mechlin ruffles over the green tables at faro. I have seen many scores of these young sprigs since, of these and their principals, and, mon Dieu! what fools they are! What dullards, what fribbles, what addle-headed simple coxcombs! This is one of the lies of the world, this diplomacy; or how could we suppose, that were the profession as difficult as the solemn red-box and tape-men would have us believe, they would invariably choose ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of this campaign of murder is typified by making Von Tirpitz, its inventor, an addle-headed seahorse, the nursery comedian of the sea. Stupid and ridiculous bewilderment stares from his foolish eyes. Another submarine has failed to find a safe victim in a trading ship, but has been hoisted with its own sea petard. The impotence ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... Gorget-maker, and Starcher, must be sent for, and the linnen must be bought & ordered for the Bridegrooms shirts, the Brides smocks, Cuffs, Bands; and handkerchifs; & do but see, the day is at an end again: my brains are almost addle, and nothing goes forward: For M^{rs}. Smug said she would bring linnen, and M^{rs}. Smooth laces, but neither of them both are yet come. Run now men and maids as if the Devil were in you; and comfort your selves, that the Bride will reward you ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... rule the house, while these fellows mind you at a word, in a voice as quiet as your mother's. Besides, what should I do with all these mills and bridges of yours, and Diets, and Leagues, and councils enough to addle a man's brain? No, no; I could once slay a bear, or strike a fair stroke at a Schlangenwalder, but even they got the better of me, and I am good for nothing now but to save my soul. I had thought to do it as a hermit up there; but my little Christina thinks the saints will be just as ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ignorance, and that faction that could best dupe and deceive John Gull was sure to be in place and power. The Pitt faction had succeeded in this their amiable occupation for a great length of time. In the years 1793 and 1794, they had so contrived to addle the brains of the multitude that their heads had been wool-gathering ever since; their vision had been then so mystified, and their brains had been so confused by the mountebank tricks of Pitt and his associates, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... pipe, "though I might read it fast enough if I liked, for there's Miss Lyddy has 'em and 's done with 'em i' no time. But there's Mills, now, sits i' the chimney-corner and reads the paper pretty nigh from morning to night, and when he's got to th' end on't he's more addle-headed than he was at the beginning. He's full o' this peace now, as they talk on; he's been reading and reading, and thinks he's got to the bottom on't. 'Why, Lor' bless you, Mills,' says I, 'you see no more into this thing nor you can see into the middle of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... her Zome'hat she come to bag or borrow; An' zoo, they soon began to vind That she'd agone an' left behind Her evil wish that had such pow'r, That she did meaeke their milk an' eaele turn zour, An' addle all the aggs their vowls did lay; They coulden vetch the butter in the churn, An' all the cheese begun to turn All back ageaen to curds an' whey; The little pigs, a-runnen wi' the zow, Did zicken, zomehow, noobody ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... must be a living ghost—a ghost we can respect, a ghost we can listen to. The poor spiritless addle-headed ghost that has hitherto haunted our blue chambers is of no use to us. I remember a thoughtful man once remarking during argument that if he believed in ghosts—the silly, childish spooks about ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... they ain't big fools enough to buy 'em, give'em away; and if you can't do that, pay folks to take'em. Bah! what a fine style of genius common-sense is! There's a passage in the book that would fit half these addle-headed rhymesters. What is that saying of mine about I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... articles were, I believe, finally discovered and routed out of an unoccupied bed, where they had been laid and forgotten by the addle-pated ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... you, and much they care. You seem to me to have shut your eyes since ever you left off tanning. How many times have I told you, John, that a sneaking fellow hath got in with Sue? I saw him with my own eyes last night skulking past the wicket-gate; and the girl's addle-pate is completely turned. You think her such a wonder, that you won't hearken. But I know ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... were in each of the rolling mills where I had worked. I had to invent the statistics out of my own head, but that head was full of intellect, so I jokingly gave him a fine array of figures. The fact was that there may have been an addle-pated Red among the mill hands of that time, but if there was I had ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... and places in Cripplegate Ward within the walls are Milk Street, great part of Honey Lane Market, part of Cateaton Street, Lad Lane, Aldermanbury, Love Lane, Addle Street, London Wall Street, from Little Wood Street to the postern, Philip Lane, most of Great Wood Street, Little Wood Street, part of Hart Street, Mugwell Street, part of Fell Street, part of Silver Street, the east part of Maiden Lane, and some few houses in Cheapside to the eastward ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... how many comrades there were in each of the rolling mills where I had worked. I had to invent the statistics out of my own head, but that head was full of intellect, so I jokingly gave him a fine array of figures. The fact was that there may have been an addle-pated Red among the mill hands of that time, but if there was I ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... little round doorway wide open to the sun and rain. They must have been a young couple who built it, and quite inexperienced. I wonder they had not abandoned it; for a crack of light into a wren's nest would certainly addle the eggs. They are such tiny, dusky, tucked-away things, and their cradle is so deep and dark and hidden. There were no fatalities, I am sure, following my efforts to prop the leaning structure, though the wrens were just as sure that it was all a fatality—utterly ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... supported Leslie Walker because he was rich and would be able to subscribe liberally to all local institutions. A shallow-pated Miss favoured Walker because his colours were the prettier; and an addle-pated old man balanced this by voting for Henderson because he "shouted,"[1] and Walker was temperance. There was a silly little flaxen-haired woman who also supported the Opposition to spite her husband,—a ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... of the literary populace superfoetating in my brain—plays, novels, essays, tales, homilies, and rhythmicals; for ethics and poetics, politics and rhetorics, will I display no more mercy than sundry commentators of maltreated Aristotle: I will exhibit them in their state chaotic; I will addle the eggs, and the chicken shall not chirp; I will reveal, and secrets shall not waste me; I will write, and thoughts ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... filled his pipe, "though I might read it fast enough if I liked, for there's Miss Lyddy has 'em and 's done with 'em i' no time. But there's Mills, now, sits i' the chimney-corner and reads the paper pretty nigh from morning to night, and when he's got to th' end on't he's more addle-headed than he was at the beginning. He's full o' this peace now, as they talk on; he's been reading and reading, and thinks he's got to the bottom on't. 'Why, Lor' bless you, Mills,' says I, 'you see no more into this thing nor you can see into the middle of a potato. I'll tell you ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... big fools enough to buy 'em, give'em away; and if you can't do that, pay folks to take'em. Bah! what a fine style of genius common-sense is! There's a passage in the book that would fit half these addle-headed rhymesters. What is that saying of mine about ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... false note that had escaped him in executing a Mozart sonata. He resumed his grave, dignified air, in order to salute with a wave of his hand the phantom that had just appeared before him. It was the same that he had summoned one evening at the Hotel Steinbock, and treated there as an addle-brain, as a visionary, and even as an imbecile; but this time he gave him a more indulgent and gracious reception. He bore him no ill-will, he wished him well, he was under essential obligations to him, and Samuel Brohl ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... mush,' said Jack Goodall. ''E'd never addle a week's wage, nor yet a day's if th' chaps didn't make it up ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... of character. For diplomatists he has always a curious contempt, and he never misses an opportunity of ridiculing them. 'Mon Dieu,' says Lyndon, 'what fools they are; what dullards, what fribbles, what addle-headed coxcombs; this is one of the lies of the world, this diplomacy'—as if it were not also a most important and difficult branch of the national services. Abject reverence of great folk he regarded as the besetting disease of middle-class Englishmen; ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... "You didn't ought to give him till sun-up, Sandy. Sun-down 'ud have been better. He's a mangy coyote, but he's got brains an' he'll addle 'em figgerin' out some way to ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... in faith he had no legal claim to the title. If he owned a habitation or had established a home on any spot in the universe, it was because no man envied him what he took; for Tom was one of God's fools, a foot-loose pilgrim in this world of ours, a poor addle-pated, simple-minded, harmless ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... day, after ever so much trouble;" rejoined Pao-y, "but I can't make out when I can have lost it! I've also become quite addle-headed." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... of Staffordshire Give laud and praises due, Who every meal can mend your cheer With tales both old and true: To William all give audience, And pray ye for his noddle: For all the fairies evidence Were lost, if it were addle. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... is nothing drier and more unprofitable under the sun, nothing more nearly approaching to a state of addle, than a builder's brains. Your regular builders (and, indeed, not a few of your architects) are the sorriest animals twaddling about on two legs; mere vivified bags of sawdust, or lumps of lath and plaster, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... The next morning Addle went from the settlement, to carry the woman and her children some milk. When the girl reached the nook, she found it empty. She ran upon the bluffs, and looked northward, but there was neither horse nor wagon visible. The mother, and children had evidently resumed their journey very ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford

... have heard that he had a little trouble at first, through an injurious report spread amongst the men immediately before he undertook the management. Some person previously employed upon the ground had "set it eawt that there wur a chap comin' that would make 'em addle a hauve-a-creawn a day for their shillin'." Of course this increased the difficulty of his position; but he seems to have fought handsomely through all that sort of thing. I had met him for a few minutes once before, so there was no difficulty ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... a burst of candor). Since I've known you I do not think so hard on Puritans. (Half- wistfully.) I wish—I wish I had your arts and knew wise household ways. I fear we be but addle-pates at Merrymount. I cannot brew ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... is—en de aigs dey wuz hatched right dar in de middle er de baid whar me en my ole man en de chillun sleep. De hull time dat black hen wuz a-settin', Cephus he was bleeged ter lay right spang on de bar' flo' caze we'uz afeared de aigs 'ould addle. Lawd! Lawd! dey wuz plum three weeks a-hatchin', en de weather des freeze thoo en thoo. Cephus he's been crippled up wid de rheumatics ever sence. Go 'way f'om yer, marster. I warn't ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow









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