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More "Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this! That these disdaineous females and this ferocious old woman are placed here by the administration, not only to empoison the voyagers, but to affront them! Great Heaven! How arrives it? The English people. Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?" Another time, a merry wideawake American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it out, and had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in vain to sustain exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and had ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... country worth fighting for—infinitely harder than the most apprehensive imagination could have pictured. There have been mothers and widows for whom a single grave, or the appearance of one name on the missing list, has turned the whole conflict into an idiot's tale. There have been many such; but there have apparently not been enough to deflect by a hair's breadth the subtle current of public sentiment; unless it is truer, as it is infinitely more inspiring, to suppose that, of this company of blinded baffled sufferers, almost all have had ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... fairies' eyes, dismally fray'd! His ensuing voice came like the thunder crash— Meanwhile the bolt shatters some pine or ash— "Thou feeble, wanton, foolish, fickle thing! Whom nought can frighten, sadden, or abash,— To hope my solemn countenance to wring To idiot smiles!—but I ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... For idiot seasons that still come and go— To whom the heart no offices can teach, Vainer than breezes that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... among all mountains; as the 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. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... us in all simplicity that he had fallen into such a state that he would read the same telegraphic despatches over and over again in different papers, as if they were new, until he felt as if he were an idiot. Who did not do just the same thing, and does not often do it still, now that the first flush of the fever is over? Another person always goes through the side streets on his way for the noon extra,—he is so afraid somebody ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... it was necessary to praise Ghosts with extravagance, because the vituperation of the enemy was so stupid and offensive, but now that there are no serious adversaries left, cooler judgment admits—not one word that the idiot-adversary said, but—that there are more convincing plays than ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... that your eyes are anything to be stuck up about, though; they're neither brown nor green, nor any other recognized color; just a sort of mixture—like Pedro's estofados. Your mouth, now—you always had a homely sort of mouth, too big by far. And you were an idiot to shave off your mustache. You might let it grow again, now that you're where you could have it trimmed once in awhile, but I suppose it would take a month and look like a nail-brush in the meanwhile! And then there's your complexion, you poor ugly hombre. I remember when it was like ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... it was her own baby crying and calling for her, went into the garden in silence. There he heard at once that the groans came from the bath-house that stood near the garden gate, and that they were the groans of a woman. Opening the door of the bath-house, he saw a sight which petrified him. An idiot girl, who wandered about the streets and was known to the whole town by the nickname of Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya (Stinking Lizaveta), had got into the bath-house and had just given birth to a child. She lay dying with the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to 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 those bulls!" ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... capacity. They measure from seventy-five inches to ninety. Europeans' brains measure from ninety to one hundred inches. There are instances of Esquimaux measuring over ninety. Even the brain of an idiot is double the size of that of the orang-otang. But how did man get this extraordinary development of brain, far beyond his necessities? For the cave man of Mentone, who hunted the bison, had as good a head as Bismarck. Natural ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... an illness; and having obtained permission for the first time to read a little during the day, he picked up a book from a pile beside the bed and began Sordello. No sooner had he done so than he turned deadly pale, put down the book, and said, "My God! I'm an idiot. My health is restored, but my mind's gone. I can't understand two consecutive lines of an English poem." He then summoned his family and silently gave the book into their hands, asking for their opinion on the poem; and as the shadow of perplexity ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... contemptuously, for my own temper was rising; "I am not afraid. There, get up and dress at once, and don't make an idiot of yourself." ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... full of talk and merriment, Urania thoughtful. This day's entertainment was too much in Ida's honour to be pleasant to Miss Rylance; yet she could not deny herself the painful privilege of being there. She wanted to see what happened—how far Mr. Wendover was disposed to make an idiot of himself. She saw more than enough in the glances of the charioteer, when he turned to talk to the girls behind him—now to point out some feature in the landscape, now to ask some idle question, but always with looks that lingered upon ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... gradually overcomes their clouded brains, the last glimmerings of reason dying out one by one, like the smoky lights on the already cold breasts of the corpses lying around them. Through the stupor spreading over the faces of butchers and cannibals, we see appearing that of the idiot. It is the revolutionary idiot, in which all conceptions, save two, have vanished, two fixed, rudimentary, and mechanical ideas, one destruction and the other that of public safety. With no others in his empty head, these blend together through an irresistible ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... be both lavish and determined in the prosecution of any object on which he has set his heart. His heart, in this instance, is set upon his friend's wife, and the obstacles in his way do not seem to be very formidable. The case, indeed, is soon too manifest for any one but a born idiot to feign ignorance of it. The husband is not a born idiot—he either sees it plainly, or (it may be, after a struggle) he looks another way, and resigns himself to the inevitable. For inevitable it is, if he is to continue in that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... he panted. "That's right, clumsy! Noisy does it! Now chuck every single thing you can lay hands on, overboard—except the muskets, idiot!" ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... to see what was the matter. I hear from the Brigade that some doddering idiot has cut our wire. Who in the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... 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
... selfishness, and she expatiates to her son on the unmanliness and indolence of his father. The old family servant takes up the tale, and says to the youth:—'When you grow up you must be more of a man than your father.' All the world are agreed that he who minds his own business is an idiot, while a busybody is highly honoured and esteemed. The young man compares this spirit with his father's words and ways, and as he is naturally well disposed, although he has suffered from evil influences, he rests at a middle point and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... "Don't be an idiot," returned the despatcher, with an expression of Western force and brevity. "They will lift your hair before you get half-way to the train. Stick to your key as long as you can. If they start to cross the creek, leg it for the ranch. Do ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... sheathed in armour; a judge, an advocate, and a magistrate, all in their robes; a mendicant friar and a nun; and the list was completed by a physician, an astrologer, a miser, a merchant, a duchess, a pedler, a soldier, a gamester, an idiot, a robber, a blind man, and a beggar—each distinguishable ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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
... music in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely, There's not a string attuned to mirth But has its chords ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and pretends that really the tender thing is gone away at last. He will take this half of a broken sixpence back: it was given in happier times. If ever he should marry, he will know that one far away prays for his happiness. And if—if these unwomanly tears—And suddenly the crass idiot discovers that she is laughing at him, and that she has secured him and bound him as completely as a fly fifty times wound round by a spider. The crash of applause that accompanied the lowering of the curtain stunned Macleod, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... o' 'cuteness, Mr. Tulliver," she observed as she sat down, "but I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things; for if I send her upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all the while I'm waiting for her downstairs. That niver run i' ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... 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
... wriggling worm, and says, in a voice that rises as fast as the sound a mouse 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 if it isn't raining black feathers. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... an idiot, Joe, but, if you want to keep your hand in and go through a regular chapter of flirtation, just right about face, and devote yourself to some one else. Nothing like jealousy to teach womankind their own minds, and a touch of it will bring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... whose eldest son was a junior whip, had been the recipient, since the advent of the new Cabinet, of so much rejoicing over the final exclusion of "that vain old idiot, Alresford," from any further chances of muddling a public department, that Lady Selina's talk made her at once nervous and irritable. She was afraid of being indiscreet; yet she longed to put her visitor down. In her odd disjointed way, too, she took a real interest in politics. Her craving ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... much of a scout as I thought I was," he muttered. "Chunky could have done no worse and for a blundering idiot he's always held the cup up to the present time. I'm glad no one saw me make such an exhibition of myself. But what if that fellow heard me? No, he couldn't. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... me with a boat, The seamen know an idiot has got 'em; They make their wills and are prepared to die, Quite certain they are going to the bottom. But what care I! For when I go ashore, In uniform with buttons bright and shining, The girls all cluster 'round ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... come to draw lots to see who is to go and kill M. Thiers," cries a red-haired gamin.—"Idiot," retorts his comrade, "they have no arms!"—"Listen, and you will hear," says the first, which is capital advice, if I could but follow it. The pushing becomes intolerable, when suddenly the bald head of an unfortunate citizen executes a fatal plunge—I ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... of it. It was rather a good idea to keep the idiot scared and quiet, and a devilish hard thing to get out of—head away from the string. My dear Kemp, it's no good your sitting glaring as though I was a murderer. It had to be done. He had his revolver. If once he saw me he would ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... began now to pay for the joy he had taken in her companionship. He knew the weakness of every actor, and suffered with them and for them. Royleston from the first tortured him by mumbling his lines, palpably "faking" at times. "The idiot, he'll fail to give his cues!" muttered Douglass. "He'll ruin the play." The children scared him also, they were so important to Helen at the ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... and the harvest will be greater than any other crop. He will reap it in days of bedridden misery, and possible sudden death. He will reap it in bitter hours by the bedside through the illness and death of his wife or in her long years of ill health. He will reap it in little white coffins, idiot babies; blind, deaf and dumb, sickly and stunted children. And it will cost him lost wages and hospital and ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... remarked, handing the book back to George; "it is not a book that personally I would recommend to any German about to visit England; I think it would get him disliked. But I have read books published in London for the use of English travellers abroad every whit as foolish. Some educated idiot, misunderstanding seven languages, would appear to go about writing these books for the misinformation and false guidance ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... and having put down one foot had to find place for the other. Three persons, who had evidently found no room even in the passage, lay in the anteroom, close to the stinking and leaking tub. One of these was an old idiot, whom Nekhludoff had often seen marching with the gang; another was a boy about twelve; he lay between the two other convicts, with his head on the leg ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... "Young idiot!" he said, meaning Salthenius, who was only an undergraduate when he committed that indiscretion, "how did he know ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... you wouldn't," I replied hastily. "I was a fool, an idiot—by Jove, what an idiot I ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... I have told you—mackintosh up to her ears and a flat leather cap, suiting her pretty face to perfection. But any fool could have seen she was a woman twenty yards away; and I began to ask which was the bigger idiot—me for making the suggestion, or she for taking it? It was too late, however, to think of that, and trusting that good luck might pull us through, perhaps looking on the whole affair as one which was pretty near its end—and ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... your miner's trade again, poor fool! Make yourself a home, since you know how to, and life will be sweet to you for many a long day yet: the weather is fine and victuals plentiful. Dig, delve, go underground, where safety lies. Like an idiot, you refrain; ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... further, the road spoken of is a plain road. "The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." That is, if a man is three fourths an idiot, he can find this road just as well as if he were a philosopher. The imbecile boy, the laughing-stock of the street, and followed by a mob hooting at him, has only just to knock once at the gate of heaven, and it swings open: while there has been many a man who can ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... any more witnesses!" growled O'Brien. "And you know it almighty well, you idiot!" he muttered under ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... was the son of the Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden; another is a book by Daumer, which he devotes entirely to the explosion of all theories that have ever been advanced; and a third, by Dr. Eschricht, contends that Caspar was at first an idiot and afterwards an impostor. Before considering these different theories, let us recall the principal incidents of his life. These have, indeed, been placed within the reach of the English reader by the Earl of Stanhope's book and by a translation of Feuerbach's "Kaspar Hauser. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... never beheld. They seemed, many of them, like disinterred corpses, for a moment reanimated to go through this ceremony, and then to sink back again into their profound sleep. Pale and haggard and unearthly, the wild eye of the visionary and the stupid stare of the idiot were seen among them, and it needed no stretch of the imagination to find in most the expression of the worst passions of our nature. They chanted as they went, their sepulchral voices echoing through the vaulted piazza, while the bell of St. Peter's, tolling a deep bass drone, seemed a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... has been said, it follows that the death penalty as a punishment even for the worst crimes is morally untenable; for either the culprit is really irredeemable, that is to say, he is an irresponsible moral idiot, in which case an asylum for the insane is the proper place for him; or he is not irredeemable, in which case the chance of reformation should not be taken from him by cutting off his life. The death penalty is the last lingering vestige of the Lex Talionis, ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... set her down as an enamoured idiot or a creature not a whit less artful than her brother, was Countess Livia's debate. Her inclination was to misdoubt the daughter of the Old Buccaneer: she might be simple, at her age, and she certainly was ignorant; but she clung to her prize. Still the promise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... massacre. The little boys and girls who were big enough to walk alone also collected there and, munching their bread-and-butter, stood looking on curiously to see the others die or gathered round the village idiot, who lay upon the ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... make money, I say, at some sensible work? Make money for me, will you? I'll force you out to make money at some work by which there's money to be made; not the like of that idiot writing of yours, curse it. Answer me, and tell me you'll go out and work for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... was married? What the dev—And you're actually asking me to tell her so too? Mary, are you insane? Embarrassed? What if she is embarrassed? And what do I care if—What? Sweet and pretty? Mary, don't be an idiot. Am I to improvise a wife, in my own house, because a stray girl may object to visiting a bachelor? Not if I know it. Not much." The Governor bristled with indignation. "Confound the girl, I'll—" At this ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the idiot, who had of late assumed all the port of coherence; he snatched and held a part in the colloquy, so did the dignity of labor annul the realization of his infirmity, "then I'd be obleeged ter him ef—ef—ef he'd stay ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... would have wished to have seen the town of Birmingham like that of Lyons, razed, and all its industrious and loyal inhabitants butchered as a man whose conduct proves that he has either an understanding little superior to that of an idiot, or the heart of Marat: in short, as a man who fled into banishment covered with the universal destestation of his countrymen. The spirit, which could dictate such outrageous abuse, must disgrace any individual ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... doddering old idiot! If you didn't want your little pet hurt, you'd best have kept him home. I ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... the real goods, liked me because I was not stupid, and liked me a bit, too, I think, for myself. Of course I had not the slightest intention of joining him in a life of sordid, petty crime; but I'd have been an idiot to throw away all the good things his friendship made possible. When one is on the hot lava of hell, he cannot pick and choose his path, and so it was with me in the Erie County Pen. I had to stay ...
— The Road • Jack London
... was rather addicted to the practice of calling other people names. If the butler made a mistake she dubbed him an idiot at once. She did not actually call her present companion, Mrs. Ingham-Baker, a fool, possibly because she considered the fact too apparent ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... receive? If the prospects of Christianity had not already decided the question for him, so far from receiving credit for political sagacity, as he ever has done, he would deserve rather to be considered an absolute idiot! ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... "Silly idiot that I am!" he said crossly. "I have left my magnifying glass on top of the safe—and it's the most necessary tool we policemen have. Don't bother to come, Mr. Brent, if you'll just lend me the keys of the vault. Thanks, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... many others, never finished. Late I sat into the night, toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust aside the curtain of the years, to hail that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap VOCES FIDELIUM on the fire before he goes; so clear does he appear before me, sitting there between his candles in the rose-scented room and the late night; so ridiculous ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fool I should be to present it for payment, and have the police upon me. Do you take me for an addle-pated idiot? I tell you what I will do. I will burn your miserable old hulk of a ship, and its rotten cargo; and you and ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... clothes off her back; that there was no trouble she would not take for others; that she did not get on well with her husband, who drank, and was altogether bad and vile; that she had a great sorrow—an only child, an idiot, to whom she was devoted, and who would some day be the Duke of Towers; that she was highly accomplished, a great linguist, a great musician, and about the most popular woman ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... rafters of their own burning dwellings in the town of Charlestown, and heard the cannon shots hurled from British ships against the base of the hill. Three times did scarlet regiments ascend that hill only to be driven back; the voice of that idiot boy, Job Pray, ringing out above the din of battle, "Let them come on to Breed's—the people will teach them ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... 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
... 700 lbs." This was distressing. I had made up my mind, if I could not get people at Ujiji, to wait till men should come from the coast, but to wait in beggary was what I never contemplated, and I now felt miserable. Shereef was evidently a moral idiot, for he came without shame to shake hands with me, and when I refused, assumed an air of displeasure, as having been badly treated; and afterwards came with his "Balghere," good-luck salutation, twice a day, and on leaving said, "I am going to pray," till I told him that ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... were kicked out of Leadenhall with every mark of indignity, and a competence in my fob! The birds of the air would not be so free as I should. How I would prance and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and ramble about purposeless as an idiot!" ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... her daughter who was an idiot, were cut to pieces in the woods, and their bodies left to be devoured by wild beasts: Susanna Bales, a widow of Villaro, was immured till she perished through hunger; and Susanna Calvio running away from some soldiers and hiding herself in a barn, they set ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory of this unspeakable idiot—great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!—the memory of this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel without knowing it, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... with interest, because it lends, in a stranger's ear, some justification to the excess of my fondness. But then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was perceived only through its effects. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not the less I must have loved thee, having that capacious heart—overflowing, even as mine overflowed, with tenderness; stung, even as mine was stung, by the necessity of loving and being loved. This it was which crowned thee ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ye born idiot, ye don't know I s'pose what long ears the old hag there has? and ye'd be wanting her to hang two or three of us, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... impeded, and incoherent. People began to say that the fever had taken away the little wit Willie Dixon had ever possessed and that they feared that he would end in being a "natural," as they call an idiot in the Dales. ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... bad wrong 'un," said Paul. "We hadn't been going a fortnight before he asked me to accept half salary, swearing he would make it up, with a rise, as soon as business got better. Like an idiot, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... thought bitterly; that was the whole trouble. This cravenness, this kowtowing before any idiot with a louder voice, certainly wasn't in his genes. The trouble was in his conditioning, started when he was an adolescent. Give somebody an inch and they'll take two. Pretty soon they're walking all over you, and you've become so used ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch
... you; I dare say I shall in time. I have not yet quite embraced all Count Mirabel's philosophy. He says that the man who plagues himself for five minutes about a woman is an idiot. When I think the same, which I hope I may soon, I dare say I shall be ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... only a little further development, on the principle of analogy, to commend itself to every scholar. It is equally obvious that the low-bred and foul-mouthed ruffian Captain Tucca must be meant for Sir Philip Sidney; the vulgar idiot Asinius Bubo for Lord Bacon; the half-witted underling Peter Flash for Sir Walter Raleigh; and the immaculate Celestina, who escapes by stratagem and force of virtue from the villanous designs of Shakespeare, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Bettie Hamlyn said, presently: "Why, your one object in life appears to be to find a girl who will allow you to moon around her and make verses about her. Oh, very well! I met to-day just the sort of pretty idiot who will let you do it. She is visiting Kathleen Eppes for the Finals. She has a great deal of money, too, I hear." And Bettie ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... I am an idiot?" exclaimed Giovanni. "Of course I shall stay where I am till Carnival is over." He was ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... strange sort of originality about McClintock; he imitates other people's styles, but nobody can imitate his, not even an idiot. Other people can be windy, but McClintock blows a gale; other people can blubber sentiment, but McClintock spews it; other people can mishandle metaphors, but only McClintock knows how to make a ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... are, Carrington!" cried the young man, flinging away his cigar. "If my uncle chooses to make an idiot of himself, that is no reason why I should watch the evidence ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... these lines twice, and, turning round, she asked Ying Erh laughingly: "Why don't you go and pour the tea? what are you standing here like an idiot!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... perfect madness, since it furnishes their bountiful pens with means to show the greatness of their wisdom. But if any of these good natured gentlemen critics call me such names, as: "simpleton," "a fool and don't know it," "an idiot making an ass of himself," which exquisite expressions I have selected from the sayings of critics at this day, I would have them beware, since if I am old, my heart is none the less given to mischief, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... night she kept on muttering away straight up to the fifth watch, when she at last turned in. But shortly, daylight broke, and I heard her get up and comb her hair, all in a hurry, and rush after P'in Erh. In a while, however, she returned; and, after acting like an idiot the whole day, she managed to put together a stanza. But it wasn't after all, good, so she's, of course, now ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... next see your friend, Captain Bennydeck, give him my compliments, Mr. Randal, and say I congratulate him on having been jilted by my daughter. It would have been a sad thing, indeed, if such a sensible man had married an idiot. Good-morning." ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... found my companions as usual in a state of faint-heartedness. The Hammal was deputed to obtain permission for fetching the Gerad and all the Gerad's men. This was positively refused. I could not, however, object to sending sundry Tobes to the cunning idiot, in order to back up a verbal request for the escort. Thereupon Yusuf Dera, Madar Farih, and the other worthies took leave, promising to despatch the troop before noon: I saw them depart with pleasure, feeling that we had bade adieu to the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... have been permanently injured. 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 ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... never pausing in their impressive march unless it be to plunge into the Serpentine and rescue a drowning child, he would know what I mean. He would admit that a dog who cannot answer to his own name and pays but little more attention to "Down, idiot," and "Come here, fool," is not every place's dog. He would admit it, if he had time. But before I could have called his attention to half the good dogs I had marked out he would have sat down beaming in ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... of intellectual 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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... of order to be here! I won't put up with much more of it, and so I'll tell him. I shall dress as I like, and do as I like, even if I haven't got a handle to my name. Sir Richard, indeed!— a pattern for me to follow! Next time the fat old idiot say's that to me, I'll throw the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... him taken to Atlanta. When the pouch was opened, it was found that none of these packages were in it, although they were entered on the way-bill which accompanied the pouch, and were duly checked off. The poor messenger was thunder-struck, and for a time acted like an idiot, plunging his hand into the vacant pouch over and over again, and staring vacantly at the way-bill. The Assistant Superintendent of the Southern Division was in the Atlanta office when the loss was discovered, and at once telegraphed to ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... little idiot," she said, giving me a tender little shake that robbed the words of their harshness, "can't you see that that ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... it; only don't make a blundering idiot of yourself with all that Burgundy inside of you; put the chloral in your pocket carefully. And now for the Hall at once, and ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... snapped, "I deny it. That term planned economy covers a multitude of sins. My dear Leonid, don't be an idiot ..." ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker, and a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence, and enabled you to handle Bigger Propositions. But they didn't imply that you were to be impractical and refuse to take twice the value of a house if a buyer was such an idiot that he didn't jew you down ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Fuentes inside looked extremely miserable. You know, he is the brother of Jorge Fuentes, who has been Minister of the Interior for six months or so, some few years back. Of course, he has no conscience; but he is a man of birth and education—at one time the director of the Customs of Cayta. That idiot-brute Gamacho fastened himself upon him with his following of the lowest rabble. His sickly fear of that ruffian was the most rejoicing ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... mind, nor had she ever quite altered her opinion: This man representing himself as George Liddell was an impostor who had known the real "Simon Pure," and got himself up accordingly as soon as he heard that the late John Liddell had died intestate; that Mr. Newton was a weak-minded, credulous idiot to acknowledge this impostor at first sight, if he were not a double-dealing traitor ready to play into the hands of the new claimant. He ought to have thrown the onus of proof on him, instead of acknowledging his identity by that childish exclamation. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... he stuttered hoarsely. "I'll beat you black and blue when I get hold of you. I'll give you six months in the county jail at hard labor, you brainless young ruffian—you audacious wooden headed idiot, you—" ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... his chest. "Fool, imbecile, idiot, that I am!" he thought. "He was waiting to be questioned about this circumstance. He is so wonderfully shrewd that, when he saw me take the dust, he divined my intentions; and since then he has managed to concoct this story—a plausible ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... a daughter two years older, by keeping a small school for girls. At the age of five years the boy was sent to the Pyle Street School, where the master, unable to teach him anything and deciding that he was an idiot, dismissed him. For a year and a half afterward he was so regarded. During this time he was often subjected to paroxysms of grief which were expressed generally in silent tears, but sometimes in cries ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his self-esteem humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than that his son was an idiot. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... the careful hands of his mother and sister Kate—he found Dr Nathaniel Deane seated by his side. The latter having felt his pulse, and complimented him on his achievements, "No, no, Cousin Nat," he answered; "if you knew all, you would not praise me. I have acted like an idiot, or ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... beside me in silence, his candle in his hand. Then the tall, lean figure inclined towards me. "I say, Watson," he whispered, "would you be afraid to sleep in the same room with a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scarlet; and the denoument of the Merry Wives of Windsor hinges on the colour of Anne Page's gown. As for the uses Shakespeare makes of disguises the instances are almost numberless. Posthumus hides his passion under a peasant's garb, and Edgar his pride beneath an idiot's rags; Portia wears the apparel of a lawyer, and Rosalind is attired in 'all points as a man'; the cloak-bag of Pisanio changes Imogen to the Youth Fidele; Jessica flees from her father's house in boy's dress, and Julia ties ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... 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 ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... she screamed. "Pilgrims of the night, indeed! I'll pilgrim you, you chuckle-headed idiot. Here are your betters trying to make themselves heard." Then Caleb slowly unstopped his ears, and rose rather stiffly to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... be a sentimental idiot," snapped Chillingworth, "and spoil the biggest city story the paper ever had. Why, this may draw the whole United States into a row, and mean war and a new possession and maybe consulates and governorships ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... indulge, without interruption, in those fine romances with which his imagination teemed. One day when he was in a deep reverie, a friend entered hastily: "Don't disturb me," cried the poet; "I am enjoying a moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish another who is an idiot." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the wild March sunset, gone almost ere come, By glacial shower was hustled out of life, Under a blighted ash tree, near his house, Thus mused the man: "Believe, or Disbelieve! The will does both; Then idiot who would be For profitless belief to sell himself? Yet disbelief not less might work our bane! For, I remember, once a sickly slave Ill shepherded my flock: I spake him plain; 'When next, through fault of thine, the midnight wolf Worries ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... lady in the Vennel and received the Bailie's best attention from the Bench, "and if I hadna to hear him preach a sermon as long as my leg besides—confound him for a smooth-tongued, psalm-singin', bletherin' old idiot! But I bear him no grudge; I'll hae a taste o' that whisky, though I'm no mindin' so much about the tea. The sooner we're at the place the better, for I'll be bound there'll be more tea bought this day in Muirtown than ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean; In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... plucked goose down on the bench with an expression which said that she, for one, wasn't going to waste any more words on an idiot. Easy-going, indeed! Did Josephine consider that a drawback? Mrs. Tom sighed. If Josephine, she thought, had put up with Tom Sentner's tempers for fifteen years she would know how to appreciate a good-natured man ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... muttered to himself, "they do not know that the first handful of heather and dried bracken they throw on their fire, will send a skarrow to the sky that will warn every soul within twenty miles. If I had not been a blind idiot, and thinking of something else, I should have seen it long ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... an institution. He had (with her full concurrence) already established a school for the higher education of girls, among other projects which sprang from his fertile brain, and she playfully told him that people would say he had had many children, and that his last was an idiot. Here for once the woman's instinct failed, and masculine sense succeeded. Some of his co-religionists also discouraged the undertaking. "Looking back to the year 1792, and considering the miserable condition of the insane in general at that period, it appears to us almost strange that ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... lips to me on the subject. It was bad enough and stupid enough for him to try to kiss a decent young woman like Julia, who is really as good as gold and as modest as one of our own Highland lassies; but to think of him insulting Teuta! The little beast! One would think that a champion idiot out of an Equatorial asylum would know better! If Michael, the Wine Master, wanted to kill him, I wonder what my Rupert and hers would have done? I am truly thankful that he was not present. And I am thankful, too, that I was not present ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... heard one of them calling you a fool the other evening. She must have thought you an idiot." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... in, up came the swarm of idlers from the wharf, dragging themselves heavily along, laughing stupidly at the ponderous gambols and grimaces of a huge idiot boy, who, on seeing a new arrival, rolled rather than walked up from the water with his hand extended, crying out—money—money. It was all the language the poor creature possessed. He had learned to beg, and that was knowledge enough for him. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... between himself and a large gourd, which he suspended from the ceiling, and almost blinded himself by his attempts to butt it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of Mr. Ellis, who put a final stop to this diversion. Then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and made the pillow into a baby, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... crinkled to a smile. "Sure enough. They figure he's the tail end of our party. Well, I'll bet Thomas gives 'em a good run for their money. He's right careless sometimes, but he's no foolhardy idiot and he don't aim to argue with birds like these even though he's a rip-snorter when he gets goin' good ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... the well-accustomed signal No response the maiden gave; But I heard the waters washing And the moaning of the wave. Vanished was my own Undine, All her linen, too, was gone; And I walked about lamenting On the river bank alone. Idiot that I was, for never Had I asked the maiden's name. Was it Lieschen—was it Gretchen? Had she tin, or whence she came? So I took my trusty meerschaum, And I took my lute likewise; Wandered forth in ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the steppe defends himself from the crows—that I have bitten my hands with pain and despair—that I still defend myself. But I cannot any more. I cannot. The evidence pounds on my brain. He avoids me. He tells me that I have become an idiot—that I have ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... son to Tom Allonby, who had been Marquis of Falmouth at his uncle's death, had not Tom Allonby, upon the very eve of that event, broken his neck in a fox-hunt; but Dan Gabriel, come post-haste from Heaven had with difficulty convinced the village idiot that Holy Church had smiled upon Tom's union with a tanner's daughter, and that their son was lord of Allonby Shaw. I doubted it, even as I read the proof. Yet it was true,—true that I had precedence even of the great Monsieur ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... I think one of us must go into town. 'Twill never do to leave poor Nutter in the lurch; and between ourselves, that O'Flaherty's a—a blood-thirsty idiot, by Jove—and ought to ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in anything, Hunterleys," he declared. "You could tell me the most amazing things in the world and they'd pass in at one ear and out at the other. Kind of a blithering idiot, eh? You know what I did last night after dinner. If you'll believe me, when I got to the villa, I found the place patrolled as though they were afraid of dynamiters. I skulked round to the back, got on the beach, and climbed a little way up towards the ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fashion, but neither threats nor entreaties moved mademoiselle from her decision. "Bah!" he said, "it is the way with them all, a woman can never be a true artist. Directly she rises to any height she goes off and gets married, ten to one to some idiot, who interferes in all her arrangements, and so her career is spoiled. I did think Mademoiselle Laurentia was above such frivolity. I imagined that, at last, I had discovered a true artist, one to whom her art was everything. No, I am again mistaken, and Mademoiselle Laurentia—why, ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... development, on the principle of analogy, to commend itself to every scholar. It is equally obvious that the low-bred and foul-mouthed ruffian Captain Tucca must be meant for Sir Philip Sidney; the vulgar idiot Asinius Bubo for Lord Bacon; the half-witted underling Peter Flash for Sir Walter Raleigh; and the immaculate Celestina, who escapes by stratagem and force of virtue from the villanous designs of Shakespeare, for the lady long since indicated ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... you—you idiot! Boy, boy, say!" she screamed with such a sharp, insistent treble that it reached the lad's ears. He turned around ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... too,' in other words, he epitomizes the army and navy. It is the military man who is foolish enough to believe anything and who keeps alive the most absurd superstitions and customs. The ancient Greeks cast a side-light on this truth, for their word for private soldier was 'idiot.' And on account of this strange stupidity of soldiers, things that would be disgraceful in private life become glorious in war. Their one virtue is obedience, unqualified by any of the balancing virtues, and they wear liveries to show that they are servile. And then ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... would be an iniquity. His words found a sympathetic echo among the crowd, and the Gov.-General, deadly pale with rage, yielded to this demonstration of public opinion. Antonio Novales was pardoned, but the strain on his nerves weakened his brain, and he lived for many years a semi-idiot in receipt of a monthly pension ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Ivanovna, to whose rooms Raskolnikoff went the day before for the purpose of pawning his watch to make his rehearsal. He knew all about this Elizabeth, as she knew also a little about him. She was a tall, awkward woman, about thirty-five years of age, timid and quiet, indeed almost an idiot, and was a regular slave to her sister, working for her day and night, trembling before her and enduring even blows. She was evidently hesitating about something, as she stood there with a bundle under her arm, and her friends were pressing some subject rather warmly. When Raskolnikoff ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... sick-faced, grinning rascal, whose staring eyes had shocked him out of his senses. And what a damned fool he had made of himself with the crucifix! He ground his teeth together as he cursed himself for a sentimental idiot. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... Nattie, as she watched his retreating form, "that he is not going to make an idiot of himself! Not only because he is as good a fellow as he is a blundering one, and I wouldn't for the world hurt his feelings, but also because it would be dreadfully uncomfortable to have a rejected lover wandering around in the ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... in. But her roof was going stripping, and half her house was felled, and she couldn't get her son (the idiot boy) to leave his bed. He would perish; he would die; he was all the family she had left to her—wouldn't the master come ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... merriment, Urania thoughtful. This day's entertainment was too much in Ida's honour to be pleasant to Miss Rylance; yet she could not deny herself the painful privilege of being there. She wanted to see what happened—how far Mr. Wendover was disposed to make an idiot of himself. She saw more than enough in the glances of the charioteer, when he turned to talk to the girls behind him—now to point out some feature in the landscape, now to ask some idle question, but always with looks ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... 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 by another ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... apparent insanity of the remark, but the more I gaze on your features, the more I'm convinced that you'd never be such a suicidal idiot as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... idiotic tendency, usually accompanied by a case history, tainted heredity and highly neurotic constitution. AEstheticism has reason for complaint, and more than one painter or sculptor has represented the union of Leda with the Swan. It is certainly much better for society, for an idiot or an imbecile to be castrated than for him to make a girl ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... stand—that she first—. But where's the use of thinking of that, or any thing else," he exclaimed with a sudden burst of passion, "where a woman is concerned? They are all, all alike, and I am a double fool! But go, Rose, go—enjoy her splendour, and lie in wait, as she did, for some rich idiot!" ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... means a child who, not being an idiot or imbecile or otherwise a proper person to be sent to an institution under the control of the Mental Hospitals Department, and not being merely backward, is by reason of mental or physical defect incapable of receiving proper benefit from instruction in an ordinary school, ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... 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
... sensations of pain, but having no emotion of resentment? Did you imagine that there was no danger in inflicting on me pains, however great; miseries, however direful? Do you believe me impotent, imbecile, and idiot-like, with no understanding to contrive my escape and thy ruin, and no energy to perpetrate it? I will tell the end of thy infernal works. The country, in justice, shall hear me. I would that I had the language of fire, that my words might glow, and burn, and drop like molten ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... he's my friend, I suppose? You look down on him just because he's a hard worker, and of some use in the world—not a dandified, conventional, wasp-waisted idiot like Cecil Reeve! Perhaps you ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... to retract. Let us retract while we can, not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violent oppressive acts. You will repeal them. I pledge myself for it. I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot, if they are not ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... is no music in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely, There's not a string attuned to mirth But has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... great chums, Ethan and I, Skinner; and I cried. Why—why, damn it, sir, this boy Matt's people and mine are all buried in the same cemetery back home. Yes, sir! And nearly all of 'em have the same epitaph—'Lost at Sea'—and—you idiot, Skinner! What do you mean, sir, by standing there with your infernal little smile on your smug face? Out of my office, you jackanapes, and call the dogs off this boy Matt. Why, there was never one of his breed that wasn't a man and a seaman, ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... France called him "the wisest fool in Christendom." At the age of thirty-seven, this Scotchman succeeded to the throne of England as James I. "He was indeed," says Macaulay, "made up of two men—a witty, well-read scholar who wrote, disputed, and harangued, and a nervous, driveling idiot who acted." ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... that flew round him: nor would abstain from the meanest theft if he was either hungry or dry, or would murder his dearest friend for a farthing; and also was in every particular as wanting in his understanding as an infant or an idiot. These truths are so evident that all must agree to them; though some may dispute about the quantity and the degree: for they may think, that a very little virtue is sufficient for happiness; but for riches, property, power, honour, and all such ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... of struggle and economy for the exploring party, to which had been added a chaperon in the large and reassuring person of Becky Zalmonowsky, the class idiot. Sadie Gonorowsky's careful mother had considered Patrick too immature to bear the whole responsibility, and he, with a guile which promised well for his future, had complied with her desires and preserved his own authority unshaken. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... like," he declared, indulgently. "Our clients send us in these things with their own description and we haven't time to verify them all—not likely. One bedroom suite, then—there you are. Now then, Burton, you blithering idiot," he muttered savagely under his breath, "if you can't hold your tongue I'll kick you out of your seat Thirty pounds shall we say?" he continued, leaning forward persuasively. "Twenty pounds, then? The price makes no difference to me, only ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... announced to the world that the kingdom of Greece is bankrupt. The Morning Chronicle, at a time when it was regarded as a semi-official authority on foreign affairs, declared and certified that the king of Greece was an idiot. Verily! the battle of Navarino has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... "Triple idiot!" she reflected wrathfully, as she poured out coffee, "you had better have held your tongue," and she set herself to charm away the shadow from his face and dispel any suspicion he might have formed of her desire to probe into his affairs. She had an uncommon personality and could talk ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Sam thought bitterly; that was the whole trouble. This cravenness, this kowtowing before any idiot with a louder voice, certainly wasn't in his genes. The trouble was in his conditioning, started when he was an adolescent. Give somebody an inch and they'll take two. Pretty soon they're walking all over you, and you've become so used to ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch
... was going to," retorted the lieutenant irritably; "but the idiot who uses this glass ought to be turned out of the service for being short-sighted. I shall never get it to the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... idea of that," interjected Borgert, with a great show of righteous indignation. "If this totally incapable idiot becomes major I ought to be made at least a general. Though it is queer that the colonel is evidently moving heaven ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... had done him in eating a share of his proportion. 'Well,' says the laird, 'I hope M'ille Chruimb,' for so the Irishman was called, 'you will take no notice of him that did that; for he is but a fool that plays the fool now and then.' 'I cannot tell,' says he, 'but he is no idiot at eating, nor will I let my affront pass so; for I must have a turn or two of wrestling with him for it in your presence.' Whereupon a stander-by asks Duncan if he would wrestle with him. 'I will,' says he, 'for I think I was fit sides with ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... 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 ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... Cohen confessed to me to-day that she had pumped him all about Hawkins's coming over to New York and signing papers; and, although he swears he didn't tell her anything in particular, yet I don't trust the idiot. No, Quib; it's bad business and we've got to get Hawkins out of the ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... became all apologies and indignation. He regretted more than words could tell that the American gentlemen who deigned to patronize his restaurant had been put to annoyance. The garcon—here he turned and burned up that individual with a fiery sideglance—was a debased idiot and the misbegotten son of a yet greater and still more debased idiot. The cashier was a green hand and an imbecile besides. It was incredible, impossible, that the overcharging had been done deliberately; that was inconceivable. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... was one of those days of rest which some idiot in the Council had once sponsored. And a group of soft-headed fools had concurred, so that one now had to tolerate periodic ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... know, like t' rest o' 'em, what he saw!' cried Margaret angrily, facing round upon the boy, whose face was, indeed, one question.' "Margaret, did he tell tha what t' witch said to un?"—every blatherin idiot i' th' parish asked me that, wi his mouth open, till I cud ha stopped my ears an run wheniver I seed a livin creetur. What do I keer?—what doos it matter to me what he saw? I doan't bleeve he saw owt, if yo ast me. He wor skeert wi his own thinkins, an th' cowd gripped him i' th' in'ards, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "I'm sorry Kathleen West lives here. I thought we were going to have a peaceful year. But every fall apparently brings its problem. Really, Grace, I can't help feeling terribly remorseful to think that it is I who have caused all this trouble. If I hadn't been such an idiot when I first came here, you and Alberta Wicks and Mary Hampton might at ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... orderly and elevated minds; and here stands the barrier that separates them from the common and the waste. Is a man to be angry because an infant is fretful? Is a philosopher to unpack and throw away his philosophy, because an idiot has tried to overturn it on the road, and has pursued it with gibes ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... your gold; I want not your pity. I am sane. Would I had been born a drivelling idiot, and remained ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... at a valuation, as well as the village itself with all its cottages and people, in order that the castle might have its proper setting out there. There were two more things he wanted included in the bargain—a village idiot and a family ghost ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... to be released. They begged in vain: certainly some of them must have been permanently injured. 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 on those beneath. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... and get to bed, child. And look here—I give you this advice free: a fire lighted by an idiot can do as much damage as any other kind ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... "Idiot!" I howled. "Sir Walter's gone down there. Wimpole has slipped us. He's half a mile down the other road. You're wrong... Are you deaf? ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... only find out from Walter what he's mad at, and tell him he's an idiot and a heartless thing, maybe we could smooth it out, because I know that 'way down in her ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... him like a nat'ral-born idiot, into a little grocery-shop near by, where we sets down at a table with a bottle atween us. Then it comes out as there is a New Bedford whaler about to start for the fishin' grounds, an' jest one able-bodied sailor like me ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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
... combined! He could no longer make allowances for the spite of a woman whose lover had been traduced. Rage and despair seized him; he bit his nails and tore his hair with fury, and prayed Heaven to help him hate her as she deserved, "the blind, insolent idiot!" Yes, these bitter words actually came out of his mouth, in a torrent ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... that?" And in this manner he asked me of whoever was old or ugly in the room. I made no sort of answer: and when he found that I was resolutely silent, and walked on as much as I could without observing him, he suddenly stamped his foot, and cried out in a passion, "Fool! idiot! booby!" ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... a bon-mot of Sir Thomas on the birth of his son. He had three daughters, but his wife was impatient for a son: at last they had one, but not much above an idiot—"you have prayed so long for a boy," said the Chancellor, "that now we have got one who I believe will be a boy ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... 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 and a ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... getting me fired from this job as I ever got. He snarled and growled at me. He told the managing editor that he was an ignoramus and the M.E., believe it or not, took it, took it like a little lamb, Jimmy. Dije ever hear anybody call the M.E. an idiot and get ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... two children, Thomas and a daughter two years older, by keeping a small school for girls. At the age of five years the boy was sent to the Pyle Street School, where the master, unable to teach him anything and deciding that he was an idiot, dismissed him. For a year and a half afterward he was so regarded. During this time he was often subjected to paroxysms of grief which were expressed generally in silent tears, but sometimes in cries continued for many hours. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... terrible lesson to his ambitious father; he could not bear the sight of his promising child, changed to a feeble idiot, and he sent him away to Plumfield, scarcely hoping that he could be helped, but sure that he would be kindly treated. Quite docile and harmless was Billy, and it was pitiful to see how hard he tried to learn, ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the sharp girl. "Never say 'she' for a person's name. Well, if your mother saw the advertisement then you are a One Only at reduced terms, and I knew you were directly I saw you. Now, tell me. Don't blink—unless of course you're an idiot; all idiots blink. Tell me. Was that dress made for you or was it ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the drift on all fours, concerned only with learning 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
... certain that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring at his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no blood on it ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... whatever he receives." His face assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad taste in his mouth. "That's how we found him out, Mr. Malone," he said. "It's rather startling to look at a blithering idiot and have him suddenly repeat the very thought that's ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... been waiting for me to look at him all through dinner. Shall I do it, and you can see what an idiot he looks? ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... on. I'm much obliged to you for your offer. I've enough money for the present. I've about my person some forty pounds' worth of British gold, and the same amount, say, of the toughness of the heaven-sent idiot. They'll see me through together! After they're gone I shall lay my head in some English churchyard, beside some ivied tower, beneath an old ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... in yere, right through this door! An' every mother's son of 'em, hed a cyard. I know what I 'm a-talkin' about, you miserable third-class idiot, an' if you give me any more of your lip I 'll paste you good an' proper. Go back thar whar you belong, an' tind to your part of this ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... a sudden, flashing glance of indignation. "Then she was a donkey, Scott, a fool—an idiot!" she declared, with trembling vehemence. "I'd like—oh, how I'd ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... he 's under—just about a minute— I take advantage of the fact to say His fishy carcase has no virtue in it The gunning idiot's worthless hire to pay. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... everything I said. Mrs. Smith (such bosh putting "de Yorburgh" on!) sat on a big sofa with Lord Valmond, and she opened and shut her eyes at him, and Jane Roose says she takes every one's friend away; and Lord George Lane came up, and we talked, and he wasn't such an idiot as at dinner, and he has nice teeth. All the rest, except the Rooses and me, are married—the women, I mean—except Miss La Touche, but she is just the same, because she sits with the married lot, and they all chat together, ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... may be the fact—how often the lunatic also lives by faith? Are not the forms of madness most frequently those of love and religion? Certainly, if there be a God, he does not forget his frenzied offspring; certainly he is more tender over them than any mother over her idiot darling; certainly he sees in them what the eye of brother or sister cannot see. But some of them, at least, have not enough of such support to be able to go on living; and, for my part, I confess I rejoice as often as I hear that one has succeeded in breaking his ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the midst of his frenzy, suddenly quieted down. This was the idiot butcher of whom people had been chattering. No use to ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... "Fool! idiot!" old Beelzebub grinned as he spoke, And stamp'd on the scaffold in ire; The painter grew pale, for he knew it no joke, 'Twas a terrible height, and the scaffolding broke; And the devil could wish it ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... he 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 see what he was doing, he passed a wire ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... indicated that would do—"who would call her husband an idiot aloud before a dinner-table, and quarrel like a fishwife ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... such which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy—of hope; but felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to perfect—to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile—an idiot. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the sergeants coming on board this morning at six o'clock. The idiot missed us this morning and of course that dished us. The sergeants got in wrong. As I am only a private, and therefore ignorant and simple according to the military code, and, being with non-commissioned officers who are supposed ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... Venetia the Austrian seaplanes are making the same sort of idiot raid on lighted places that the Zeppelins have been making over England. These raids do no effective military work. What conceivable military advantage can there be in dropping bombs into a marketing crowd? It is a sort of anti-Teutonic ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Country's Gifted Minds," and "Mrs. Widesworth is requested to write any maxim which her experience of life may have suggested on page 209 of this volume, just between the remarks of the Living Skeleton and the autograph of the Idiot Albino." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... The idiot! Does the simpleton really think that everybody has read all he has written? Does he really believe that everybody remembers all of his, writer's, words he may happen to have read? At one of those famous dinners of the Phi Beta Kappa Society; where no reporter ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... much his younger, perhaps inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book writing; and if he be not repulsed or slighted, must appear in print like a Punie with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer, it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... psychosis is that, when they are closed, the soul cannot be seen." (American Journal of Psychology, vol. ix, No. 3, 1898.) The instinctive and unreasoned character of this act is further shown by its occurrence in idiots. Naecke mentions that he once had occasion to examine the abdomen of an idiot, who, thereupon, attempted to draw down his shirt with the left hand, while with the right he ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to be got Which after proves an idiot When folk perceive it thriveth not, The fault therein to smother, Some silly, doting, brainless calf That understands things by the half, Say that the Fairy left this oaf And took away ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... upon," said Lawrence, "she wouldn't have allowed Mark to see her so often. A woman who lives alone! Why on earth couldn't you leave her to stew in her own juice? I don't wish to see my brother-in-law make an idiot of himself." ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... 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
... calling any human being a brute, for no one, I believe, is sunk so low, but there is some spark of humanity, some spark of what St. Paul calls "the spirit," left in him, which may be fanned into a flame and conquer, and raise and save the man at last—unless he be a mere idiot—or that most unhappy and brutal of all beings, a ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... last syllable of recorded time; And 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 sound and fury— ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... from lip to lip, growing in sensation and absurdity as they went. A report, telegraphed by an anonymous idiot from Liverpool, to the effect that six air-ships had appeared over the Mersey, and demanded a ransom of L10,000,000 from the town, was eagerly seized on by the cheaper evening papers, which rushed out edition after edition on the strength of it, until the St. James's ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... "Fool, dray-horse, coxcomb, idiot!" It was Dromio of Syracuse unconsciously insulting ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... try to equivocate, you shining idiot! For now you see for yourself you are talking nonsense. And I repeat that such unheard-of nonsense ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... folly had wholly gone. There—I have written those words, but I have no sooner written than I repent them. It is not a folly for a boy to be honestly in love, as I was in love with Barbara. I was silly, if you please—a moon-struck, calf-loving idiot, if you like—but in all that hot noon of my madness there never was an unclean thought in my mind nor an unclean prompting of the body. However, all that was past and done with. My liver was washed clean of that passion; it had not left a spot upon my heart. I have only loved two ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I was, I did not see his game. No one ever does see Addicks' game till it is too late, for no one but a moral idiot would play the game Addicks plays, and, thank heaven, moral idiots are so rare in life that it is not worth while figuring out the formula ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... portrait-painter without faults. His portraits are marred in several cases by the intrusion of his own personality with its "My good man" and "My little man" air. His human beings have a way of becoming either lifeless or absurd when they talk. The Leech-Gatherer and The Idiot Boy are not the only poems of Wordsworth that are injured by the insertion of banal dialogue. It is as though there were, despite his passion for liberty, equality, and fraternity, a certain gaucherie ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... James. "You can't tell with a man of that sort. He can be a March hare if he's in the mood. He'd as soon shoot a Turk as a monkey, or keep two women as half a dozen. By the by, Lucy," and the eyeglass went out like a falling star, "don't let that sentimental idiot make too much of ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... I'm sure it's not any wish of mine that I'm born with inclinations for better things. If I could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I'd be born the lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I could find plenty of companionship, or I'd be born an idiot, which would ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... sternly forbidden. They cannot even touch him without suffering the consequences. It would seem as if Nature, when she made this block of stupidity in a world of wits, provided for him tenderly, as she would for a half-witted or idiot child. He is the only wild creature for whom starvation has no terrors. All the forest is his storehouse. Buds and tender shoots delight him in their season; and when the cold becomes bitter in its intensity, and the snow packs deep, and all other creatures grow gaunt and savage in their ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... which for many years served as a model of intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua conventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of patent hair-restorers. ...
— Options • O. Henry
... However, when they pressed me close I told them every whit; and some thought that I had spoken falsely and derided me and others that I was daft and hare-brained and my words were the wild pratings of an idiot or the drivel of dreams. The youngsters made abundant fun of me and laughed to think that I, who never in my born days had sighted a golden coin, should tell how I had gotten so many Ashrafis, and how a kite had flown away with them. My ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... this idiot here, I am going to give her to an ex-secret judge, at present a smuggler in the Pyrenees at Oleron. He can do what he pleases with her—make her a servant in his posada, for instance. I care not, so that my ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... clothes for, idiot of a woman! To put on, to wear. I shall habit myself as a gentleman. ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... a shop, I waited in the street, and I watched you through the window taking off your gloves and counting the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache's; you were let in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy door that had closed ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... was encouraged by her parents to study so much that her brain gave way, and she is now an idiot. This is a sad result, but the parents must find some consolation in the thought that they have ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... think anything yet," he said. "I don't know enough. Wait until I've learned a bit more—if you're not sick of teaching such an idiot." ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... 380 Where Beauty seems to dwell, nor once inquire Where is the sanction of eternal Truth, Or where the seal of undeceitful Good, To save your search from folly! Wanting these, Lo! Beauty withers in your void embrace, And with the glittering of an idiot's toy Did Fancy mock your vows. Nor let the gleam Of youthful hope that shines upon your hearts, Be chill'd or clouded at this awful task, To learn the lore of undeceitful Good, 390 And Truth eternal. ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... goodness' sake drop that awful face! It absolutely gives me spasms!" hinnied Magsie. "It's the very image of a village idiot who used to terrify me when I was a kiddie. Don't look at me with those horrid eyes! I shall ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... "You young idiot," he growled, "stay where you are. 'Twould be a useless sacrifice. You'll do more good by staying here, and helping to cover the retreat of the women should we have to ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... a typical alcoholic family one in which the first three children were healthy, the fourth was of defective intelligence, the fifth was an epileptic idiot, the sixth was dead born, and finally the productive career ended with ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; [Footnote: Published in 1798. It opened with the Ancient Mariner and closed with Wordsworth's lines on Tintern Abbey. Among other poems written in Wordsworth's simplest style were The Idiot Boy, The Thorn, and We are Seven.] in which it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... hunting. I was sometimes at a loss to hear the "coo-ee" or call of my natives. Fortunate men! they did not even understand what deafness meant. Lunacy also was unknown among them, and such a thing as suicide no native can possibly grasp or understand. In all my wanderings I only met one idiot or demented person. He had been struck by a falling tree, and was worshipped ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the young man whose duty it is to go to dinners and afternoon parties, this terrible weakness will again overcome him. He has done well at college, can make a very good speech at the club suppers, but at the door of a parlor he feels himself a drivelling idiot. He assumes a courage, if he has it not, and dashes into a room (which is full of people) as he would attack a forlorn hope. There is safety in numbers, and he retires ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... step further, and tell me why Adam ate another, he shall have my India-coloured silk, broidered with golden lions and vultures, whereof I had meant to make me a new gown for this next Michaelmas feast. It doth seem as if none but a very idiot could have let in evil and sin and sorrow and pain all over this world, for the sake of a sweet apple. It must have been sweet, I should think, because it grew in Eden. But was there never another in all the garden save only ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... whose use the pregnant suns are poised With idiot moons and stars retracing stars? Creep thou betweene—thy coming's all unnoised. Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars. Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fraye (By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway); Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say Which ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... been asleep," said the idiot, with widely opened eyes. "There have been great faces coming and going—close to my face, and then a mile away. That's sleep, eh? I dreamed just now that something—it was in the shape of a man—followed me and wouldn't let me be. It came creeping on to worry me, nearer and nearer. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... white vestments, entered, followed by a large retinue. Startled at such pomp, I thought that the Praetor had arrived, so I put my bare feet upon the floor and started to get up, but Agamemnon laughed at my anxiety and said, "Keep your seat, you idiot, it's only Habinnas the sevir; he's a stone mason, and if report speaks true, he makes the finest tombstones imaginable." Reassured by this information, I lay back upon my couch and watched Habinnas' entrance with great curiosity. ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... "but I was deceived, I was robbed! It was that idiot Sicardot who let me in for that by swearing that the Napoleonists would be triumphant. I thought I was only making an advance. But the old dolt will have to repay ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... the defence of these—if it was impious to struggle for their abrogation, I have indeed led an ungodly life.... To read, however, his Lordship a lesson of good manners, I had prepared for him a chastisement which would have been echoed from the Segrave who banqueteth in the castle,[129] to the idiot who spitteth over ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... pretty bad wrong 'un," said Paul. "We hadn't been going a fortnight before he asked me to accept half salary, swearing he would make it up, with a rise, as soon as business got better. Like an idiot, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the writer only,[*] not the tenderness of the idiot who will always be deceived, not the softness towards other people's troubles which cause all my misfortunes to come from my holding out my hand to weak people who are falling into disaster. In 1827 I help a ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
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