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More "Stupid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Doubtless I am a stupid ass and all that," said Peter, staring, "but with the Gazette publishing it about the countryside that you are a yellow dog of the worst nature, I don't grasp how you expect Miss Carstairs to come on this yacht and lunch ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that was not all: he owned near Orleans a property leased for six thousand francs a year. He owned, besides, the house I now live in, where we lived together; and I, fool, sot, imbecile, stupid animal that I was, used to pay the rent every three months ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... have mentioned, come the confidants, a dull and stupid set, of whom one only deserves mention, not as an actor, but as an author. This is DUVAL. He has written that pretty comic opera, entitled Le Prisonnier, as well as Maison a vendre, and several drames, among which we must not forget Le Lovelace Francais, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... protuberances if it were not for the enormous girth of its round towers, which appear to give it a robust lateral development. These towers, however, fine as they are in their way, struck me as a little stupid; they are the exaggeration of an exaggeration. In a building erected after the days of defence, and proclaiming its peaceful character from its hundred embroideries and cupolas, they seem to indicate a want of invention. I shall risk the ac- cusation of bad taste ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... his master absently. Then, to the spare man at the head of the table: "I have been next door, talking to the American Secretary of War. A dull fellow. Convinced, is he, that Arvania harbors only kind thoughts for this great stupid nation. They shall be utterly unprepared for our ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... committed during the last age in the minster under his care. What else could be expected, when it was held by those who were thought the best judges in such matters, that nothing could be more barbarous and devoid of interest than the Confessor's Chapel, and 'nothing more stupid than laying statues on their backs?' It might have been supposed that Dean Atterbury, at all events, would have had some sympathy with the workmanship of the past. But 'there is a charming tradition that he stood by, complacently ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... wound in my body had been bound and cared for. A loosely tied scarf round my arm showed that some one had lately left me, and would return to finish the bandaging. I raised myself with difficulty, and saw a basin of water, a sponge, bits of cloth, and a pocket-knife. Stupid and dazed though I was, the instinct of self-preservation lived, and I picked up the knife and hid it in my coat. I did it, I believe, mechanically, for a hundred things were going through ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The one stupid thing, in Swan's opinion, which he had not done was to let Lone go on holding his tongue. He had forced the issue that morning. He had wanted to make Lone talk, had hoped for a weakening and a confession. Instead he had learned a good deal ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Findelkind sat by the edge of the bright pure water among the flowering grasses, and felt his heart heavy. Findelkind of Arlberg who was in heaven now must look down, he fancied, and think him so stupid and so selfish, sitting there. The first Findelkind, a few centuries before, had trotted down on his bare feet from his mountain pass, and taken his little crook, and gone out boldly over all the land on his ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... closely resembles the common domesticated buffalo that it seems hardly necessary to attempt a description. The wild one may be a trifle larger, but every one in India is familiar with the huge, ungainly, stupid-looking creature, with its bulky frame, black and almost hairless body, back-sweeping horns, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... another, knew little about their remote neighbors and often were quite willing to convert their ignorance into prejudice: The dweller in the uplands and the resident on the coast were wont to view each other with disfavor. The one was thought heavy and stupid, the other frivolous and lazy. Native Spaniards regarded the Creoles, or American born, as persons who had degenerated more or less by their contact with the aborigines and the wilderness. For their part, the Creoles looked upon the Spaniards as upstarts and intruders, whose sole ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... denied a youth of the mattresses. "My dear Hench, you make no distinctions. I've been talking about the boy's people and his bringing up and the way he acts, whereupon you fly off on a tangent and coolly conclude things about the boy himself. It is not only unkind, but stupid." ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... she had to do was so simple that she would indeed have been stupid if she had been unable to do it. She gave all her attention to the task, but every now and again old Ninepins ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... return to Poland Mr. Nicholas B. described him as a "worthy man but stupid," whenever he could be induced to speak of the conditions of his exile. Declining the option offered him to enter the Russian army, he was retired with only half the pension of his rank. His nephew (my uncle and ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... position to secure myself against idle jeers. At the same time, I am sure that playthings are the very pick of life; all people give them up out of the same pusillanimous respect for those who are a little older; and if they do not return to them as soon as they can, it is only because they grow stupid and forget. I shall be wiser; I shall conform for a little to the ways of their foolish world; but so soon as I have made enough money, I shall retire and shut myself up among my playthings until the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the least from the law of perfect harmony. He must know how to smile encouragement, frown disapproval, or, at an instant's notice bow deferentially and attend with utmost courtesy to wearisome stories of stupid patrons, or listen to the fantastic schemes of radical reformers and, with apparent seriousness and ostensible amiability, nod acquiescence to the wild-eyed revolutionist upon whom he inwardly vows to keep a careful watch ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... remembered and comprehended then, for the first time, all that he had made the little fellow suffer, and all the goodness, the heroic constancy, with which the latter had borne it, he displayed in his countenance a certain stupid wonder, then a sullen remorse, and finally a sorrowful and impetuous tenderness, and with a rapid gesture he caught the boy round the head and strained him to his breast. We all passed before them. I invited him to come to the house on Thursday, with Garrone and Crossi; others saluted ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... restored me; may it be that I may live more than ever to His glory. Whilst I was ill I had scarcely any such thing as thought belonging to me, but, excepting seasons of delirium, seemed to be nearly stupid; perhaps some of this arose from the weak state to which I was reduced, which was so great that Dr. Hare, one of the most eminent physicians in Calcutta, who was consulted about it, apprehended more danger from that than from the fever. I, however, had scarcely a thought of death or eternity, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... "Oh! how stupid people can be when they want to. Two persons are to meet us in New York to-morrow. I didn't tell you till I was sure; I had no desire that you should be ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... "What! twenty thousand families absolutely ignorant of the Coblentz plans and of its assemblies, twenty thousand families dispersed over the soil of Europe by the fury of clubs, by the crimes of brigands, by constant lack of security, by the stupid and cowardly inertia of petrified authorities, by the pillage of estates, by the insolence of it cohort of tyrants without bread or clothes, by assassinations and incendiarism, by the base servility of silent ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... appeared stupid, for suddenly my brain refused to act naturally. How was it for my father to find out this—my so great secret? Surely, I had taken every precaution. But my father's voice broke in rudely ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... I should never have ventured. The fact is, he must have confused you with two other ladies of title who are great friends of mine. I expect he heard me mention them, and—it was most stupid and careless of him, I know—but he must have concluded I wanted to see them, and ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... said his mother, reprovingly, "and raise her head. Don't you see that Miss Ainslie cannot drink lying there. I never saw you so stupid, my son. I shall have to grow worse again soon to keep you from getting ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... object is quickly taught if it is taught consistently, whether the terror be reasonable or not. There are few more stupid creatures than fish, but they notoriously soon learn to be frightened at any newly-introduced method of capture, say by an artificial fly, which, at first their comrades took greedily. Some one fish may have seen others caught, and have learned ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... generally recognised that too much freedom is not good for growing life, I think that almost everybody must at this stage have become aware of how immensely stupid the academical idea of a canon appears besides this idea. How suitable both to life and the desire for perfection the Greek practice was! How theologically dense the unprogressive inflexibility of the academical practitioner! And now let us ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... letter arrived for her. She had had no letter from any one for weeks. Yet, when she saw the direction, she flung it from her. It was from Mrs. Elton, whom she disliked, because she found her utterly uninteresting and very stupid. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... relative to the women. I remark generally, that the propinquity of the white man is destruction to the red man; and the farther the Indians are removed from us, the better for them. In their own woods, they are a noble race; brought near to us, a degraded and stupid race. We are destroying them off the face of the earth. May God forgive us our tyranny, our avarice, our ignorance, for it is ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... life without some youthful protege about his person. Accordingly in 1463 he made his valet, a lad of no education and of base birth, Cardinal and Bishop of Parma at the age of twenty. His merit was the beauty of a young Olympian. With this divine gift he luckily combined a harmless though stupid character. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Sense, and all the Degrees of good Manners, renouncing my Fame, all Modesty and Interest for a silly Sawcy fruitless Jest, to make Fools laugh, and Women blush, and wise Men asham'd; My self all the while, if I had been guilty of this Crime charg'd to me, remaining the only stupid, insensible. Is this likely, is this reasonable to be believ'd by any body, but the wilfully blind? All I ask, is the Priviledge for my Masculine Part the Poet in me, (if any such you will allow me) to tread in those successful Paths my Predecessors ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... any more, I flatly forbid it. I believe you don't like my books, and want to make me say I won't give you any more if you make me any more socks; and then you will make me some more in order not to get the books. No, I will let you read my stupid books in manuscript and help me that way. If you like to make me a kettle- holder, you may, for I only have one just now, and I like to have two because I always mislay one; but I won't have people working their fingers out to knit ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... not think Frisky Squirrel was stupid, when I tell you that the door was open all this time. It was open just the smallest crack, for Farmer Green's wife hadn't quite closed it when she went downstairs. Frisky had been too frightened to notice it. Besides, the attic had ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey
... fool! That Johnson! You blame me, Haljan, for the killing of Captain Carter? You need not. Johnson offered to try and capture you. Take you alive. He killed Carter because he was angry at him. A stupid, vengeful fool! He is dead, and I am ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... to dinner. They were not a very lively party. Mr Seaton looked sleepy, and yawned several times before they went to the dining-room. Mr Sherwood was very grave, and, indeed, "stupid," as ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... were once the best of friends, but they quarrelled over that infernal thing of Zeno's, and they never spoke to one another again for the rest of their lives. I draw the line at that, and the other stupid thing by Zeno about the flying arrow. I don't believe anybody understands them, because I could never ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... assured them Mr. Hogg was "an honest, honorable man, and not ill-tempered; only an intolerable bore—so stupid ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... What right have I to say these things to him and make him cry, and send him to stupid parties that he doesn't want to go to? After all, he's ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... no; they found him on the staircase this morning; it is so shocking.' 'Is it possible! Dear, dear, poor Pulteney! Had there been any seizure?' 'They don't think so, and that is almost the worst thing about it. It seems to have been all the fault of that stupid maid of theirs, Jane.' Dr Haynes paused. 'I don't quite understand, Letitia. How was the maid at fault?' 'Why, as far as I can make out, there was a stair-rod missing, and she never mentioned it, and the poor archdeacon ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... city, and I wish there never may. But I should be very sorry that any of them should be so weak as to imitate a Court chaplain in England, who preached against 'The Beggar's Opera,' which will probably do more good than a thousand sermons of so stupid, so injudicious, and so prostitute ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... a pipe in a corner of the room with his eyes half shut, looking stupid and half asleep, of course ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... behaved in a remarkable and unseemly manner. In a letter to Monsieur de Rohan, the Ambassador declared that while the Earls and the Counsel were pleading, their lordships guzzled and smoked; and that when they gave their votes condemning the two Earls, they were stupid with eating and "yvres de tabac"—drunk with smoking. This was probably quite untrue as a representation of what actually took place; but it would hardly have been written had smoking not been a common ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... cried the tailor, "a mistake done on purpose to bring a poor man into trouble. One man laughs at my stupid beard, and makes me believe that I am to make a suit of clothes for him—another takes away the pattern—and a third substitutes a dead man's head for it. Allah! Allah! I have got into the hands of a pretty nest of rogues, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... me to desert my post. Our whole cause is hazarded, if I throw up the game now. Particularly at this moment. You are demanding too much!... Do you expect me to give up my life work, simply because you cannot break away from your clod, on account of a stupid loyalty? ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... were called Pacte and Basilique. Basilique was saddled; a slow beast, full of strength and sympathy, but stupid and given to sudden fears. Pacte was the led horse, and had never heard guns. It was prophesied that when first I should have to hold him in camp when we were practising he would break everything near him, and either kill ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... very well for you to talk," said Simontault, "it is for us who know the truth of the matter to say what we think of it. For my own part, I think he was stupid the first time and witless the second; for I make no doubt that, while he was keeping his promise, to his mistress, she was put to as much trouble as himself, if not more. She had him take the oath only in order to make herself out a more virtuous woman than she really ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Evangelina seemed to be stupid, a trifle touched, perhaps, from suffering, for she laid a skinny claw upon O'Reilly's shoulder and warned him earnestly: "Look out for Cobo. You have heard about him, eh? Well, he is the cause ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... been fooled away. He would rather be waked out of a thousand sleeps than not see me just at present—and before it is too late. My God! it's simply dreadful, after all I've gone through, to have my work spoiled at the last and be foiled in the very doorway by a stupid flunkey! Is there no one with sense in the house; or with authority, even if he hasn't got sense? I could mighty soon convince him that your master must be awakened; even if he ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... gli uomini perle femminelle."[38] If the Black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the White party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "were for themselves"; and whoever it may be who is singled out in the setta dei cattivi, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... said Pickersgill, 'that is a yacht; and you're right there again in your guess—that is the stupid old Active which creeps about creeping for tubs. Well, I see nothing to alarm us at present, provided it don't fall a dead calm, and then we must take to our boat as soon as he takes to his; we are four miles from him at least. Watch his motions, Corbett, and see if he lowers a boat. ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... it all?' he asked himself inconsequently—this monotonous, restless, stupid life to which he was soon to be returning, and for good. He began to realize how ludicrous a spectacle he must be, kneeling here amid the weeds and grass beneath the solemn cypresses. 'Well, you can't have everything,' seemed loosely to ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... likings, made her hold up her hands and agree with her husband that their failure was certain. These first few days were spent in the needful arrangements of house and furniture, during which time Captain Carbonel came to the conclusion that no one could be more stupid or awkward than Master Hewlett, but that he was an honest man, and tried to do his best, such as it was, while his relation, Dan, though cleverer, was much more slippery, and could not be depended upon. Dora asked Master Hewlett what schools there ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their terrors. We were able to talk about them calmly, and thus grew familiar with them, at least in imagination. Every day we set aside a portion of the dried meat and biscuit which formed the chief part of our food, until at last we had as much as could be carried easily. It would be stupid to load ourselves with too heavy a burden, as ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... self-abasement before the magistrates. No refined gentleman who keeps himself to his own class and refrains from meddling with politics could ever by any chance imagine the airs of broad-blown impudence which are sometimes assumed by ignorant and stupid boors who have been endowed with a license; and assuredly no one would guess the extent of their political power unless he had something to do with election business. The landlord of fiction hardly exists in the quiet towns; there is seldom a smiling, suave, and fawning Boniface ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... clever as he was, he had only the instincts of his kind. All his senses were alert, and his eyes looked for enemies in all directions but one, and that one direction was above. He never looked up, and it never occurred to his stupid, old head, sharp as he thought himself, that the little fire-carriers might have climbed up into the trees above him. When they disappeared from his range of vision he gave up the chase, although, more often than ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... Eleseus was far from stupid, but on the contrary, a sly fellow in his way. He had seen his father come home, and knew well enough he was sitting there in the window at that moment, looking out. No harm in putting his back into it then for a bit, working a little harder for the moment—it ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... am the normal you did not want, and I board with Mrs. Biggs, where I heard a great deal of Mrs. Amy, as they call her. I must have a slow, stupid mind, or I should have suspected who she was. I never heard the name Harris connected with her. If I had I should have known. It is so ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... gross vice, and the hateful moroseness and harshness of temper, which result from our indisposition for gayety and enjoyment, are literally awful to think of. Pride and licentiousness triumph in our land, because we are too careworn or too stupid to enter heartily into innocent recreations. Those two demons, one of which first cast man out of Paradise, while the other has degraded him to the level of the brutes, are served by myriads of helpless slaves, who are handed over to a bondage of passion, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... his face with the same stupid stare. "Do?" says he. And with that his eye fell on the body, and "O!" he cries out, with his hand to his brow, as if he had never remembered; and, turning from me, made off towards the house of Durrisdeer at a strange ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mary. "Jurymen are stupid. They only look at the surface of things. Of course I know he didn't do it. I know he couldn't! But unless the truth comes to light, the jury will condemn him, and then, no matter who is judge, he will be hanged! Don't you see—don't ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... consider the state of the harbour-defences, actually alluded to these poor fishermen as having in their possession the soundings and bearings of the harbour and river-entrance. I, for one, did not believe in their being spies, never having seen such a lot of harmless, stupid-looking men. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... the man's attire, but gained no clue as to his calling. To avoid stupid staring he turned to watch a game of faro. Its fascinations were rapidly engrossing his attentions and luring him onward toward a reckless desire to tempt the goddess of chance, when he presently beheld McCoppet turn away from his man and ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... stupid the last few days," Joan complained to him. "One would think you were sick, or bilious, or something. You don't seem to have an idea in your head above black labour and cocoanuts. What ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... meant it to be pronounced?—and when her weak sight not allowing her to finish it, she handed the paper to Papa and requested him to read it all over again from the beginning? I fancied that she must have done this last because she did not like to read such a lot of stupid, crookedly written stuff herself, yet wanted to point out to Papa my utter lack of feeling. I expected him to slap me in the face with the verses and say, "You bad boy! So you have forgotten your Mamma! Take that for ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... who live where you can always look out on pleasant places, or who can travel at will into them, may find it hard to understand how wearisome and stupid it grows to be always in one room with an encompassing sky-line of roof-tops and chimneys, or may fail to sound the full depths of wonder and delight over the ride that Ward C took ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... to show 'ee' says I, an' so soon as I did get en outside, I did sauce en for bein' so stupid. ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... and whose eye is blind to her ineffable beauty, may dwell in such places and not be crushed by them. The dull herdsmen, thinking only of their cattle and of the milking to be done twice a day, might live their own stupid, commonplace lives there. The chance visitor who spent a few hours in scaling difficult cliffs would perhaps catch a brief and fleeting sense of their awfulness, only too quickly dissipated by the unwonted toil and peril of his situation. But Roland ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... men who take sides with dogma give themselves the airs of men who live for duty, while they regard the more curious among their fellows as licentious, trifling, irreverent and self-indulgent. The truth is, there is no greater luxury than dogma. It puts an eminence under the most stupid. At the same time I am not going to deny the pleasures of curiosity. We have only to see a cat looking up the chimney or examining the nooks of a box-room or looking over the edge of a trunk to see what is inside in order ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... you who speak thus to me? You, for whom I was prepared to endure any sacrifice! You, whom I would have served on my knees! And what reason do you give to justify your conduct? Money! Indispensable and stupid money! Nothing but money! But it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that he rejoiced at an event, which, even considered apart from its political relations, caused him to lose a conquest which had cost him so much, and France so much blood and expense. Other miserable wretches, still more stupid and more infamous, have even gone so far as to fabricate and spread abroad the report that the First Consul had himself ordered the assassination of his companion in arms, whom he had placed in his own position at the head of the army in Egypt. To these I have ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... at him with stupid amazement, as if the real meaning of this already once declared desire had only just distinctly reached her mind, or as if the effect of its first announcement had been quite effaced by the ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... which religion has given her to lean upon; the acute self-conceit and worldly learning of Bletson—the rash and ignorant conclusions of the fierce and under-bred Harrison, leading them into the opposite extremes of enthusiasm and infidelity, while Desborough, constitutionally stupid, thought nothing about religion at all; and while the others were active in making sail on different but equally erroneous courses, he might be said to perish like a vessel, which springs a leak and founders in the roadstead. It was wonderful ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Third side. Pride. A knight, with a heavy and stupid face, holding a sword with three edges: his armor covered with ornaments in the form of roses, and with two ears attached to his helmet. The ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... individual in specs. He worked as if manual labour pained him, and was always studying out of a musty little book. He was desperately keen to learn English and spoke it on every possible occasion; was intensely stupid as an orderly and obstinate as a mule. He was trying in the extreme. One day he told me he was intended for higher things and would soon be a priest in the Church. Sister Lampen, who was so quick and thorough herself, found him particularly tiresome, and used to refer to him as her ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... educated. After having been for some time after the death of Louis XIII. the favorite, the confidant, the first man, in short, at the court, he had been obliged to yield his place to Mazarin and so became the second in influence and favor; and eventually, as he was stupid enough to be vexed at this change of position, the queen had had him arrested and sent to Vincennes in charge of Guitant, who made his appearance in these pages in the beginning of this history and whom we shall see again. It is understood, of course, that ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to be a complete misreading of history. It is not denied—at least I do not deny—that both the English and British Governments, in their dealings with Ireland have done many things that were stupid, and some things that were abominable. But among their follies or their crimes is not to be counted the destruction of any such State as I have described; for no such State existed. They did not uproot one type of civilisation ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... sacred thing as long as I live. Freedom of thought shall be a right of my subjects. I will call all free and liberal minded persons to come to me, for liberty of thought brings liberty of will, and I prefer to rule a thinking people, to a mass of thoughtless slaves, who follow me through stupid obedience. Prussia shall be the land of liberty and enlightenment. The believers and the unbelievers, the pietists and the atheists may speak alike freely; the spirit of persecution shall be ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... "Who wants to help in a stupid thing like that? But all the same you'll go and make a silly mull of ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... coming between his two satellites. There was a faun in him—a northern faun, of course, a wild man of the woods, unrestrained, but innocent, leading two bears, one under each arm! Yes, something of that kind. Not a troll, you understand, for they are stupid and malignant." ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... on, clear to the saloon; and there they found him,—there he lay, perfectly stupid, and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... besieged me in the dark. According to all the rubbish I had read, I should have been sustained by the warm consciousness of virtue. Alas, I had but the one feeling: that I had sacrificed my sick friend to the fear of prison-cells and stupid starers. And no moralist has yet advanced so far as to number cowardice amongst the things ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... little troubles and annoyances. These we should accept as inevitable, and neither think nor talk much about them. They help to wear away the rough edges. We are stupid at times and so are others and then mistakes are made. These should also be accepted as inevitable, and we should not be more annoyed by those that others make than by our own. Those who go into a rage when their subordinates err waste much time ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... ought to be done, hath also been performed. And thou hast heard the duties of the Kshatriyas, recited by Bhishma, the son of Bhagirathi, by Krishna Dwaipayana, Narada and Vidura. Therefore thou shouldst not walk the way of the stupid; but pursuing the course of thy forefathers, sustain the burthen (of the empire). It is meet that a Kshatriya should attain heaven for certain by his (own) renown. Of heroes, those that came to be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... me in stupid surprise for a moment, as though he could not understand his failure to terrify me by his vaguely awful threat; then, with a gesture that I interpreted as indicative of his final abandonment of me to the destruction that I seemed determined ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... to explain, O father. Did not you give us leave to take from the Sheep a trifling contribution for our pelisses in winter? It is only because they are stupid sheep that they cry out. They have only a single fleece taken from each of them, but they grumble about giving ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... hospitality: 'Herr Rittmeister, our Schloss must not be disgraced; here are your brave fellows waiting, and nothing of refreshment ready for them. I have given order at the Tavern in the Village; send them down; there they shall drink better luck to me, and have a bit of bread and cheese.' Stupid Rabenau again consents:—and in few minutes more, Warkotsch is in the Woods, galloping like Epsom, towards Wallis; and Rabenau can only arrest Madam (who knows nothing), and return in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... been stupid and shy; but I'm sorry. You can be saved just now. We'll kneel down right here,' said Lucy. The sisters knelt beside their bed, and Lucy led Kate step by step into the Kingdom of God. She knew she was ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... percentage of them, with the best of intentions, will fail in this and find that they have no place in the new organization, while still others, and among them some of the best workers who are, however, either stupid or stubborn, can never be made to see that the new system is as good as the old; and these, too, must drop out. Let no one imagine, however, that this great change in the mental attitude of the men and the increase in their activity can be brought about by merely talking to them. ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... forgive. But when people dine with my father and say that fighting a duel is mere murder—of course I can see that is not just. It's all so different—having a reason—and letting the other man know—and using the same guns and things—and doing it in front of your friends. I'm awfully stupid, but I know that men like you aren't murderers. But it wasn't ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... of places, of the efforts at combating the effects of damp. Some of the means adopted by various repairers, apparently in the smaller towns—judging by the bad, even extraordinary woods used—have been very curious, many interesting, others primitive, even stupid. At about the same time the Amatis were introducing the use of side-linings, Giov. Maggini was trying other means of preventing the parting of the upper and lower tables from the ribs by damp. A method he adopted, and which many later makers imitated—if it did not occur to them spontaneously—was ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... in his hand. Some one had always to go during the night to put out the light, take the book from his hand, and the pipe from between his teeth. "For"—Belfast used to say, irritated and complaining—"some night, you stupid cookie, you'll swallow your ould clay, and we will have no cook."—"Ah! sonny, I am ready for my Maker's call... wish you all were," the other would answer with a benign serenity that was altogether imbecile and touching. Belfast outside the galley door danced ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... in stupid astonishment at this tremendous apparition. It was not the fighting season, so they had no jealousy, and felt nothing but a cold indifference toward the stranger. But as he came striding down the field ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... cross the threshold of the inner door. At present her mind was fixed on brisk movement in the marvelous air. She wanted to absorb the sunshine, to dispel once and for all the unpleasing picture of life in the high Alps presented by the stupid crowd she had met in the hotel overnight. Of course, she was somewhat unjust there; but women are predisposed to trust first impressions, and Helen was no exception ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... he. "I never heard that it liked music; and I don't think it can know much about music, for this is not at all sweet. There again! That was a sort of screech. O, how stupid I am!" thought he again. "So much for my head being full of Nipen! It is only Hund, tuning his violin, because they have all done supper. They will be waiting for me. I wish this Nipen would make haste. It can't be very hungry;—that ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... time passed most tediously; the half-breeds were too stupid to converse with, and the Yankee traders constantly tipsy. Had it not been that Gabriel was well acquainted with the neighbourhood, we should positively have died of ennui. As it was, however, we ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... was necessarily considerable. As good luck would have it, gulls abounded in sufficient numbers to furnish a hundred and twenty men with food for four or five months, and these creatures were so stupid as to allow themselves to be knocked on the head with a stick. A few horses were also killed which had relapsed into a wild state since the departure of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... he exclaimed in a tone of the greatest surprise. "I am sure I most earnestly beg your pardon; how very stupid of me to make such a mistake; but the resemblance between you two is so very striking that, although no one has ever said a word to lead me to such a conclusion, I have never doubted, from the moment I came on board, that you must be ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... out of his long and serious illness, Kathryn played her little game under cover. Some women, rather dull and stupid ones, can do this admirably if they are young enough and lovely enough to carry it through, and Kathryn was both. She had also that peculiar asset of looking divinely intuitive and sweet during her silences, and it would have taken a ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... good writing, as the papers show. But the case of my companion in the train is the case of thousands and tens of thousands of young fellows who for the first time in their lives want to write and discover that they have no gift of self-expression. It is not that they are stupid. It is that somehow the act of writing paralyses them. They cannot condense the atmosphere in which they live to the concrete word. You have to draw them out. They need a friendly lead. When they have got that they can talk well enough, but ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... good reasons for anything under heaven." The story was a great success. In dumb show, the speaker he referred to begged for mercy. This only delighted the audience still more, and when the dull speaker finished it was admitted that, for once, he had escaped being stupid or commonplace. He had also forced upon the next speaker the necessity of removing the unpleasant effects of the jokes made at his expense, a task ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... as Mr. Foker. They met heavy dragoons of the regiment always quartered at Chatteris; and stopped and talked about the Baymouth balls, and what a pretty girl was Miss Brown, and what a dem fine woman Mrs. Jones was. It was in vain that Pen recalled to his own mind what a stupid ass Foker used to be at school—how he could scarcely read, how he was not cleanly in his person, and notorious for his blunders and dulness. Mr. Foker was no more like a gentleman now than in his school ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fortune had been gained in Europe it would probably have been consumed in what is there called "founding a family." Mansions would have been built with it, parks laid out, a title of nobility purchased; and the income, wasted in barren and stupid magnificence would have maintained a host of idle, worthless, and pampered menials. Here, on the contrary, it is expended almost wholly in providing for the people of New York the very commodity of which they stand in most pressing need; namely, new houses. The simple reason ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... awake and work; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca University or Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptuous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all alone their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... men, and women mad on music and the theatre—well, it is that the men are silly and frivolous, and the women horrid and—and fast! Some are cold and just as hard as nails, others are positively wicked! I admit most of the men have nice manners and the women are not stupid. They all dress well." ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... to ken ye, sir," said Meg. "That muckle sumph [stupid], Saunders Mowdiewort, telled me a' aboot ye comin' an' the terrible store o' lear [learning] ye hae. He's the minister's man, ye ken, an' howks the graves ower by at the parish kirk-yard, for the auld betheral there winna gang ablow ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... impossibility—the imminent danger—of adopting the course of procedure which that adviser has been strenuously recommending, he would go away with slightly increased distrust of himself, and consideration for the Minister. Neither Sir Robert Peel, nor any other Minister, would be so arrogantly stupid as to disregard free information and advice, merely because it came from such persons, who, if they have no right to expect their advice to be followed, have yet a clear right to offer it, and urge it with all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... "he is much too heavy for you! How stupid of me not to think of it! If you don't promise me never to do that at home, I will take him to sea ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Templar, hastily, "if you impute what I could neither foresee nor prevent to my purpose or agency.—Could I guess the unexpected arrival of yon dotard, whom some flashes of frantic valour, and the praises yielded by fools to the stupid self-torments of an ascetic, have raised for the present above his own merits, above common sense, above me, and above the hundreds of our Order, who think and feel as men free from such silly and fantastic prejudices as are the grounds of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... talents, are the only persons who speak ill of him. In his profession of a surgeon, he is skilful and assiduous, but his modesty has always prevented him from pushing his practice to any extent, so as to render it lucrative. How many unfeeling, stupid block-heads are there in London, who ride in their carriages, and keep elegant establishments, clearing thousands a-year as surgeons, who do not possess a tenth part of the talent and skill of Mr. Gale Jones! It may be asked, why then is he not rich, like ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... we call a union station. I stopped at the first ticket-office where I saw the word "Berlin" on the glass, asked for a ticket good in the train that was going to leave at eight o'clock the next morning for Berlin, and took what the seller gave me. He was a stupid-looking fellow, so when I got to my hotel I showed the ticket to a friend. "That is not the ticket that you want at all," said he; "it will take you by a circuitous route in a train that does not leave until after nine, and you will not reach Berlin until long after dark." I went directly back ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... "Why she did this is none of your business or mine. Why she substituted herself concerns her and this gentleman only. Now go, and be hanged to you and your Prince and your Count, and your whole stupid country. Come, Jack." ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... (H.) is made of this fungus, and its spores, rubbed up with inert sugar of milk powdered, and it proves an effective remedy against dull, stupid, sleepy headache, with passive itchy pimples about the skin. From five to ten grains of the trituration, diluted to the third decimal strength, should be given twice a day, with a little water, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... stodgy thing mere domesticity can be. Yes! it can be all that for people who let it be all that. Even love that once was passionate cannot redeem the life of two people unless there is something there to redeem. Two lifeless and stupid people living together can make of life something duller than either could make alone. If it be part of general wisdom to try to live widely and fully, and to use as much of our natures as is possible, ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... he was, yet he was probably aware in the depths of his soul that there was nothing to justify his vanity, and that others might perhaps look down on him ... but I, a boy of nineteen, put no constraint on him; the dread of saying something stupid, inappropriate, did not oppress his ever-apprehensive heart in my presence. He sometimes even chattered freely; and well it was for him that no one heard his chatter except me! His reputation would not have lasted long. He not only knew very little, but read hardly anything and confined himself ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the dignity of the Christian character; and an enthusiast, of another creed, thinks all lovers of the stage belong to the schools of Voltaire and Hume, and that dancing is a link in the chain of seduction. Stupid, leaden-heeled people, who constantly mope in melancholy, and neither enjoy nor impart pleasure, will naturally be enemies to dancing; and such we are induced to think ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... the opposite as just as real as the thing itself. The opposite of love is hate; of health, disease; of good, evil; of the real, the counterfeit. God is positive—Truth. His opposite, the negative, is supposition. Oh, stupid, blundering, dull-eared humanity, not to have realized that this was just what Jesus said when he defined evil as the lie about God! No wonder the prophet proclaimed salvation to be righteousness, right thinking! But would gross humanity have understood the Master better if he had defined it ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to the saloon; and there they found him,—there he lay, perfectly stupid, and dead ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... arrangements with them for the yearly purchase of their peltry. It was not easy to obtain suitable persons for this important office. Those who had the intellectual qualifications, and who had any high aspirations, would not naturally incline to pass years in the stupid and degrading associations, to say nothing of the hardships and deprivations, of savage life. They were generally therefore adventurers, whose honesty and fidelity had no better foundation than their selfish interests. Of this sort was this ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... dog, on this occasion occupied his official position ahead, although, as has been pointed out, he was sometimes alternated with the hound, who now ran just behind him. Third trotted Wolf, a strong beast, but a stupid; then Claire, at the sledge, sagacious, alert, ready to turn the sledge from obstruction. For a long, time all these beasts, with the strange intelligence of animals much associated with man, had entertained a strong interest ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... among people who knew him, and lest he should be overheard he was habitually silent. He now appeared to me quite a different person to what I had fancied him to be. I had thought him what the world calls a very worthy, faithful, but rather stupid old man. I found him to be kind, thoughtful, and intelligent, and I felt very sure that my dear brother and sisters would find him the same, and that he would, in some way or other, prove a valuable ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of episcopacy—"an excellent man." Then a visit of Mr. ——, "an accomplished and able man, somewhat strong of the popish leaven." That was in 1842, and on the margin is written—"Gone over to the Church of Rome, 1845." He mentions also the "stupid business at Portobello and squabbles," and his going down to make peace. On September 4th we have some things which seemed important at their time—the Queen's visit to Scotland. He says, "It was a stirring subject for old Scotland." ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... which he had hitherto done for me, and could do infinitely better than I could. Moreover, I had set my heart upon making him a real convert to the Christian religion, which he had already embraced outwardly, though I cannot think that it had taken deep root in his impenetrably stupid nature. I used to catechise him by our camp fire, and explain to him the mysteries of the Trinity and of original sin, with which I was myself familiar, having been the grandson of an archdeacon by my mother's side, to say nothing of the fact that ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... children fidgeted uneasily in their seats and even the teacher became nervous and impatient, glancing often at the big clock which ticked so monotonously and slowly. Soon it would be twelve o'clock and teacher and pupils would have a respite for a few hours. If only those stupid children would solve those problems in arithmetic, the most difficult study, they would not have to stay after school. But it happened just as the teacher had feared: A dozen children, of whom two were boys, did not give correct answers. After the school was dismissed ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... stubborn will, Wound the callous breast, Make self-righteousness be still, Break earth's stupid rest. Strangers on a barren shore, Lab'ring long and lone, We would enter by the door, ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... reverently every "superstition," every anodyne and nepenthe offered to the inmates of this House of the Incurable. Such "sprinkling with holy water," such "rendering ourselves stupid," is the only alternative. Anything else is the insight of the hero, or the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... could take that from her, if he was in for it to that extent, why did he bother about the other stupid things? ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... man says that democracy is false because most people are stupid, there are several courses which the philosopher may pursue. The most obvious is to hit him smartly and with precision on the exact tip of the nose. But if you have scruples (moral or physical) about this course, you may proceed to employ Reason, which in this case has all the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... shining wit Sets all the room a-blaze, Don't think yourself a "happy dog," For all your merry ways; But learn to wear a sober phiz, Be stupid, if you can, It's such a very serious thing To ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... be a stupid sort of joke to get me from Boston to Idaho on a wild-goose chase. No, there is no joke about this," went on Mr. Clark, rising and pacing the floor. "Sandy McCulloch is real, and he has some real reason for wanting ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... him every hour, but he was too stubborn to go back to John Pontiac. Indeed, he soon got it into his stupid head that the old boss was responsible for his misfortunes, and he consequently came to hate Mr. Pontiac ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... cried out, "Ho, hop!" and immediately a voice from the woods near by answered, "ho, hop!" Being surprised at this, he called out, "who be you?" The voice answered, "who be you." Charles thought this very strange, and cried out "you're a stupid fellow," and "stupid fellow," was the ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... answer ready. The voice was masculine, if he analyzed it correctly. Dumb and stupid he stood poised upon ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... beginning, and when the physician is called the condition is dangerous. Usually the patient complains but little. There is a slight headache, low fever, no heat in the head, patient is pale most of the time, has little appetite, vomits occasionally and desires to sleep. He is nervous, stupid and lies on his side curled up with eyes away from the light. This disease appears mostly in delicate children, who are poor eaters and fond of books; usually in those inheriting poor constitutions. The mortality is very high. Parents ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderful pearl—glanced for a moment only; and carelessly he dropped ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... German pictures, Joseph is not only old, but appears almost in a state of dotage, like a lean, wrinkled mendicant, with a bald head, a white beard, a feeble frame, and a sleepy or stupid countenance. Then, again, the later Italian painters have erred as much on the other side; for I have seen pictures in which St. Joseph is not only a young man not more than thirty, but bears a strong resemblance to the received ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... illustrated by the following passage (as quoted by Lacassagne): "If there are beings in the world whose acts shock all accepted prejudices, we must not preach at them or punish them ... because their bizarre tastes no more depend upon themselves than it depends on you whether you are witty or stupid, well made or hump-backed.... What would become of your laws, your morality, your religion, your gallows, your Paradise, your gods, your hell, if it were shown that such and such fluids, such fibers, or a certain acridity in the blood, or in the animal spirits, alone suffice to make a man ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... reality reach below the surface, except in Epirus. The bishops were felt to be foreigners and extortioners. There was no real process of assimilation at work, either in Bulgaria or in the Danubian Provinces. The slow and plodding Bulgarian peasant, too stupid for the Greek to think of him as a rival, preserved his own unchanging tastes and nationality, sang to his children the songs which he had learnt from his parents, and forgot the Greek which he had heard in the Church when he ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... or injure us, and makes us moody, dark, peevish, always thinking about ourselves, and our plans, or our own pleasures, shut up as it were within ourselves—all these sins, in proportion as anyone gives way to them, darken the eyes of a man's soul. They really and actually make him more stupid, less able to understand his neighbours' hearts and minds, less able to take a reasonable view of any matter or question whatsoever. You may not believe me. But so it is. I know it by experience to be true. I warn you that you will find it true one ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... to hold gossip in too much discredit. It gives life fascination, makes the most stupid neighbors interesting. It keeps up the love of the great art of fiction and the industry of character-analysis. A small wonder that human beings are addicted to it, when we are so emphatically assured that heaven itself is devoted to it, and that we are ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to think that when the ear, that "gateway of knowledge," is shut, a poor child may, for want of teaching, and often for want of love and sympathy, grow up almost like an animal; his friends thinking him stupid, because he cannot ask questions or tell anything that is in his mind, until at last he really becomes stupid, and his mind grows dull from want ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... 'They're stupid things, and I don't want to talk like them. Anyway, they don't pronounce lots of their words right; they say "wat" and "ware" for "what" and "where;" so of course I got a lot of mistakes in my English dictation. But I beat them in my French,' ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... again for a time. The unparalleled addition to the world's heroic deeds will be to the good of mankind, as the unparalleled suffering has eclipsed all records. The survivors will be in an heroic mood for the rest of their lives. In general, life will start on a new plane and a lot of old stupid habits and old party quarrels and class prejudices will disappear. To get Europe going again will call for new resolution and a new sort of effort. Nobody can yet see what far-reaching effects ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... and the vast importance of liberating the prisoners the first thing upon an uprising. The speech of Doolittle was variously received; many of the members were much interested; others who were in the higher degrees of the order were vexed beyond measure that Doolittle should be so stupid as to proclaim, in this public manner, a matter which really belonged to higher degrees of the organization to decide. One of the number, James Geary, a second-hand clothes dealer and broker on Wells street, who will ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... the glance of a man, a young man, a painter?—No, no! I would kill on the morrow the man who polluted her with a look! I would kill you,—you, my friend,—if you did not worship her on your knees; and think you I would submit my idol to the cold eyes and stupid criticisms of fools? Ah, love is a mystery! its life is in the depths of the soul; it dies when a man says, even to his friend, Here is she ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... the very last place in the world that my father would think of looking for me. Besides I am curious to see the place. I understand that the great Mr. Blithers is to be there soon, and the stupid Prince who will not be tempted by millions, and it is even possible that the extraordinary Miss Blithers may take it into her head to look the place over before definitely refusing to be its Princess. I ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... wrong. It was not his wife's folly alone that stood between him and her. Gaston had been using him. He was lending him money—hush money! And while he had gone his stupid way, thinking he held the whip hand over Joyce, the two had had their laugh at him. Money has done much for good and evil in this world, but it saved Gaston that night from ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... a man with a very heavy purse and a very empty head, whose contributions to the county papers were never read but to be laughed at. Not having the slightest personal knowledge of the author, I answered innocently enough, 'Oh, he's a stupid, conceited fellow. It is a pity he has not some friend to tell him what a fool he makes of himself, whenever he appears in print. His poetry is such dull trash, that I am certain he must pay the Editor of the paper for allowing ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... abominable preface to his Platonic discourses? The disclosures he there makes are so insipid and intolerable that I feel very much inclined to step out and chastise him. It would be a very simple matter to hold up to view the senseless unreasonableness of this stupid set of people, if, in so doing, one had but a rational public on one's side; this would at the same time be a declaration of war against that superficiality which it has now become necessary to combat in every department of learning. The secret feuds of suppressing, misplacing, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... Merril flatteringly suggests, I should enjoy nothing better than such an experiment," he replied deliberately. "It would be quite a novel sensation to revolutionize one's ordinary rule of conduct so as to make a point of seeming bad or stupid. There would be as much psychology in it as in an extra term, at least. A man would find out, for instance, how much there was in him besides personal vanity and love of approbation. It would be a devilish small residue with ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... scenting something good to eat, proceed to fill up on the dosed stuff. It seems pretty hard to take advantage of a weakness that they appear to have in common with the other branch of the two-legged family, don't it? But every time they get so stupid that they stagger all around, and seem to lose all fear of mankind. Then one of the watchers will step out, take hold of a monkey's hand, and lead a whole string of them away, each trying to support the others. And so they walk into cages, and upon recovering from ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... she exclaimed. "How very stupid of me to forget. But do you know, I've never experienced such a strange sensation before. My memory is a perfect blank. How ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... she said flatly, her taste outraged and her sensibilities set on edge by the stupid, blundering, hammer-and-tongs onset which from first to last he had made. She loved him, and had meant to accept him, but if she had loved him ten times as much she couldn't have helped refusing him just then, under those circumstances,—not if she died for it. As she ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... its varying and changeful moods. Others have excelled in this or that interpretation of child-life: Greuze with his sentimentalism, the Dutch painters with their stolidity. In Velasquez every child is the scion of some Royal House, in Murillo they are all beggars. They are too often stupid in Michelozzo: in Andrea della Robbia they are always sweet and winsome; Pigalle's children know too much. Donatello alone grasped the whole psychology. He watched the coming generation, and foresaw all that it might portend: tragedy and comedy, labour and sorrow, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... THIRD READER. 73 "How stupid it is in you to stand there all the while like a stock! 2. "You never tell the hour till a bright sun looks forth from the sky, and gives you leave. I go merrily round, day and night, in summer and winter the same, without asking his leave. 3. "I tell the people the time to rise, to go to dinner, ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... served the ice cream, and said that as far as he was concerned, this was the best birthday party he had ever been to. And the Phoenix said, "Quite so, my boy, but might I make so bold as to ask why?" And David answered, "Well, the reason is that usually during birthday parties you have to play stupid games, like pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and button-button-who-has-the-button, in spite of the fact that eating good things is the real reason for having a party, as everybody knows." And the Phoenix said, "Precisely, my boy, but people have somehow lost the main ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... meet greets you with a Resurrexit Jesus; a good Imitation of the primitive Christians, were it the real Effect of Devotion. And all Sorts of the best Musick (which here indeed is the best in all Spain) proclaim an auspicious Valediction to the departed Season of superficial Sorrow and stupid Superstition. But enough of this: ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... be men, and sit round stiff and stupid like grown-up folks, and dance to please the girls. Then we eat up everything, and come away as ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... predecessor Victor. His opponents deserved far greater credit for the sturdy independence with which they upheld their individual rights than for the scriptural skill with which they unmasked the sophistry of a delusive theory; for all their reasonings were enervated and vitiated by their stupid admission of the claims of the chair of Peter as the rock on which the Church was supposed to rest. [358:3] This second effort of Rome to establish her ascendancy was, indeed, a failure; but the misinterpretation of Holy ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... words last night. I paid no heed at the time to the innuendo that I had come on deck to find him—to waylay him, as I have heard men say when speaking of a type of woman I despise. So I resolved to straighten out a stupid little tangle. It would be ridiculous, in our present state of suspended animation, to let such a slight thing ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... charmed and charming circle they should not set foot, and we are quite willing in addition, for them, to gird themselves about with the circumference of another thousand. It is not that they are disagreeable or stupid, or in any way obviously objectionable. Bores are more frequently clever than dull, and the only all-round definition of a bore is—The Person We Don't Want. Few people are bores at all times and places, and indeed one ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... cries she, "you look pensive and dismal. Do fling down that stupid thing; for even if it should speak it would not be worth attending to. Let us talk with one another, and with the sky, and the green earth, and its trees and flowers. They will teach us better knowledge than we ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these years, and fretted and fumed because I'd lost them, and then as soon as He gives 'em back to me, I go and shove them off into the House! No, no, my dear,' said grandmother, 'I'm not such an old stupid as that. And as for Poppy, my lass, why, she'll be my right-hand woman! They shall come home with me, my dear, and I'll be their mother—dear, blessed little chaps—and Poppy shall be their nurse, and we'll all be as happy as ever we can be ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... railings for airing and drying cushions and rags. These plats and railings were for ornament, and there was soon a protest against putting them to "such vile uses." I had gone into the hospital with the stupid notion that its primary object was the care and comfort of the sick and wounded. It was long after that I learned that a vast majority of all benevolent institutions are gotten up to gratify the asthetic tastes of the public; exhibit the wealth and generosity of the founders, and furnish ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... and I have been damnably imposed on. O, confound my stupid head, I shall be laughed at over the whole town. I shall be stuck up in caricatura in all the print-shops. The DULLISSIMO MACCARONI. To mistake this house of all others for an inn, and my father's old friend for an innkeeper! What a swaggering puppy must he take me for! What a silly puppy ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... Saviour. To complicate matters again, the Chevalier de St. George (of whom there is no recollection except that he was anonymous, both as a prince, and as a man) sent his son, the fifth remove in stupidity, of the most stupid line of monarchs (not even excepting the Georges) that ever wore crowns, to stir up an insurrection among the most obtuse race of people that ever wore, or went without, breeches. A war between France and England followed the descent of the Pretender. A war naturally ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... consciousness returned, they gathered into a little terror-stricken, gibbering group. At first they babbled. At first inarticulate, confused, they dripped strings of mere words; expletives, exclamations, detached phrases, broken clauses, sentences that started with subjects and trailed, unpredicated, to stupid silence; sentences beginning subjectless and hobbling to futile conclusion. It was as though mentally they slavered. But every phrase, however confused and inept, voiced their panic, voiced the long strain of their fearful buffeting and their terrific final ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... that it should be explained. This woman should have married a man who kept no journal, and one for whom no one cared. As it was, no doubt she suffered up to her capacity, which perhaps was not great, for God puts a quick limit on the sensibilities of the stupid. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... less elaborately educated. After having been for some time after the death of Louis XIII. the favorite, the confidant, the first man, in short, at the court, he had been obliged to yield his place to Mazarin and so became the second in influence and favor; and eventually, as he was stupid enough to be vexed at this change of position, the queen had had him arrested and sent to Vincennes in charge of Guitant, who made his appearance in these pages in the beginning of this history and whom we shall see ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... will appear in the world again for centuries; most of the princes are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few are credulous. While England is confiding in our loyalty, we might expatiate on her perfidy, and our tears fall copiously on the broken sceptre in the dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the king's ministers may be, the East India Company is well-informed on its interests, and alert in maintaining them. I wonder that a republic so wealthy and so wise should be supported on the bosom of royalty. Believe me, her merchants will take alarm, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... after the health of my mother and grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles, and admire my clothes, and wish her little Jane was old enough to run to school with me, and flatter me on the beauty of my hair and eyes and complexion, in such a way that very few children would have been so stupid as not to have seen through it. Could you not have said something to discourage ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... task as is here undertaken. Adonais is a composition which has retorted beforehand upon its actual or possible detractors. In the poem itself, and in the prefatory matter adjoined to it, Shelley takes critics very severely to task: but criticism has its discerning and temperate, as well as its 'stupid ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... the occasion of her accident—Accident? Bah! All affectation! I don't think she was squeezed more than she richly deserves for her airs. And now there is quite an intimacy struck up: I heard something about 'auld lang syne,' and what not. Oh, how stupid ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... back on him and talked with The Spider. She was hurt, and a little angry. Surely she had been his good friend. Was Pete so stupid that he did not realize why she had ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... inquired Jean, as they went across the yard. "I hate to ask stupid questions, but you see I do not know anything ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... going to be rather stupid for you at first, of course," Grace said. "Lent, and then so many of the men are not at home. Would you like to ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Latin word "brutus" means "senseless," "stupid." The Cumaei, the inhabitants of Cume in AEolis, were reckoned very stupid. Strabo (p. 622) gives two reasons why this opinion obtained; one of which was, that it was not till three hundred years after the foundation of the city that they thought ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... music of Jean's violin drew him like a magnet. Every evening when she played on the afterdeck of the Hoonah he slipped down to the Point beyond the Indian Village and listened—listened hungrily, with a longing to join her and explain his stupid innocence in connection with the dead Naleenah. His youth called to hers, and he wanted this clean-hearted girl ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... congregated there, that there were nightly pistol affrays in bar-rooms, etc., but as he admitted that a lady was sure of respect, and Mr. G. strongly advised me to stay and see the lakes, I got out, much dazed, and very stupid with sleep, envying the people in the sleeping car, who were already unconscious on their luxurious couches. The cars drew up in a street—if street that could be called which was only a wide, cleared space, intersected by rails, with here and there a stump, and great piles ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... most of those things which they need not have known and they knew none of those things thoroughly which they ought to have known. After twenty years of experience Mr. Ambrose ascertained that it was easier to teach a stupid boy than a clever one, but that he would prefer not ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... that, and have turned as white as a chicken! Speaking in this wise, M. Vigneron glanced at Madame Chaise, the aunt, who was standing in front of the sofa, looking in good health that morning; and his hands shook yet more violently at the covert idea that if that stupid attack had carried off his son, they would no longer have inherited the aunt's fortune. He was quite beside himself at this thought, and eagerly opening the boy's mouth he compelled him to swallow the entire contents of the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of the feelings that were associated with the gun in times past is called up. So the ox and the horse learn to associate certain movements with the voice and gesture of man. And so a fish, about the most stupid of all animals, comes to a certain spot at a certain signal to be fed. These combinations are quite elementary. This is quite another thing from that reciprocal action of ideas on each other by which man perceives the relations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... bearer of this. She has given you the quills, and you have again told an untruth. Alas! farewell. I await your report about the book. She is going to-day to Katel, so she will have very little time for her stupid blundering. May the Lord one day deliver me from her! Libera ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... world. The rock whereon the stone resteth hath crumbled beneath the swinging weight. And now that he," nodding towards Job, who was sitting on the floor, feebly wiping his forehead with a red cotton pocket-handkerchief, "whom they rightly call the 'Pig,' for as a pig is he stupid, hath let fall the plank, it will not be easy to return across the gulf, and to that end must I make a plan. But now rest a while, and look upon this place. What think ye that ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... was kneeling by the bedside of his dying wife, and her last words revealed to him a magnanimity of devotion for which he had been wholly unprepared. He had thought her merely amiable and stupid—except in her love for him—and his sentiments towards her had been a mixture of boredom, and the tolerant consideration due to the bestower of substantial benefits. Nevertheless, she had awakened, during a spasm of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... you mean quicker progress?" he asked, so naively that she concluded he was a trifle stupid. The best-looking ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... man grinned; it was Yankee Jake Dillon, one of the giant twins. Chad looked at him curiously; that blow on the head that his brother, Rebel Jerry, had given him, had wrought a miracle. The lips no longer hung apart, but were set firmly, and the eye was almost keen; the face was still rather stupid, but not foolish—and it was still kind. Chad knew that, somewhere in the Confederate lines, Rebel Jerry was looking for Jake, as Yankee Jake, doubtless, was now looking for Jerry, and he began to ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... live in this stupid place, like a nun in a convent, just because my brother desires to amuse himself in California," she said, when Elizabeth would have dissuaded her from leaving home. "I tell you, Grant would not wish it. I am not married and obliged to shut myself up and play proper like you. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... and besieged me in the dark. According to all the rubbish I had read, I should have been sustained by the warm consciousness of virtue. Alas, I had but the one feeling: that I had sacrificed my sick friend to the fear of prison-cells and stupid starers. And no moralist has yet advanced so far as to number cowardice amongst the things that ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... made my pretext for obtaining leave of absence from the king. This time I had determined to take with me a Swiss youth who had entered my service only a few weeks before. His name was Bauer; he seemed a stolid, somewhat stupid fellow, but as honest as the day ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... speaking slowly and sleepily, says: Look here, Jack, something's going on in my inside. He opens the other eye, and his nose and mouth appear. He speaks more briskly: It feels as though there were something hot in there. Do you suppose those stupid people in the house down below have forgotten all about Santa Claus, and are lighting the fire on the hearth? I believe they are. I wish you'd just climb up on my shoulder, and shout down to them to stop. Do: there's ...
— Down the Chimney • Shepherd Knapp
... the glass and see whatever was taking place among the roses. He walked swiftly across the turf to that point. He looked in and saw Maud, whose back was turned toward him, talking as if she were pleading for her life, while Farnham listened with a clouded brow. Sleeny stood staring with stupid wonder while Maud laid her hand upon Farnham's shoulder. At that moment he heard footsteps on the gravel walk at some distance from him, and he looked up and saw Mrs. Belding approaching. Confused at his attitude of espionage, he walked away from his post, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... author, "since it is written in many volumes of veracious Greek history that the Myrmidons were generated by ants. Such are some of the many legends which pretended sages expound with calm and unmoved visage from pulpits and tribunals to a stupid gaping crowd."] ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... know, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he was saying, "that while I suggested that the secrets of his breast might well be bared to you, I meant that as an honest lady and faithful postmistress they were not. It was my awkward joke—a stupid gambolling by an old man ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... moue of disappointment, and shrugged her shoulders. Surely he might have stayed with her on her birthday. What did the stupid State-affairs matter? Or had he gone to that gloomy chapel, where the candles were always burning, and where she was never allowed to enter? How silly of him, when the sun was shining so brightly, and everybody ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... ponies, until, having come within a hundred yards, the mass broke into single file and raced past the camp, each warrior lying along the off side of his pony and firing beneath its neck—the usual but utterly stupid and suicidal Sioux tactics, for accurate fire under such conditions is ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... the gander, and said it was a stupid creature, and could learn no tricks, and he only kept it on account of its affection for the pony. He had got them both on a Vermont farm, when he was looking for show animals. The pony's master had made a pet of him, and ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... apartments, I was convinced that the inhabitants of these houses were not peculiar people at all, but precisely such persons as those among whom I lived. As there are among us, just so among them; there were here those who were more or less good, more or less stupid, happy and unhappy. The unhappy were exactly such unhappy beings as exist among us, that is, unhappy people whose unhappiness lies not in their external conditions, but in themselves, a sort of unhappiness which it is impossible to right by any sort ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... think hearts can be stupid as well as heads? I do. I think people can be muddle-hearted as ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... and a hot supper prepared for the crowd. We arrived at last, and when I entered that fairy place my indignation reached high-water mark, and without any reserve I delivered my opinion to that friend of mine for being so stupid as to put us into a boarding-house whose terms would be far out of my reach. Then Mr. Langdon brought forward a very pretty box and opened it, and took from it a deed of the house. So the comedy ended very pleasantly, and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... mind that Lord and Lady St. Leger did not blame her, so there could be nothing to blame. It was some stupid and ignorant prejudice of old Maureen's. I knew she had fostered my Uncle Luke, and that she loved him, as the foster-mother does, with an ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... mine proceeds from a certain gentleness and uprightness of mind and comes nearer to virtue than its opposite, austerity, or a morose and troublesome peevishness, as Horace calls it. This supports the dejected, relieves the distressed, encourages the fainting, awakens the stupid, refreshes the sick, supplies the untractable, joins loves together, and keeps them so joined. It entices children to take their learning, makes old men frolic, and, under the color of praise, does without offense both tell princes their ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... peeping and twinkling, encircled about the middle with many folds of cloth; the medicine or dance man in his costume of rags, crane heads and feathers, with a girdle of jangling tin and bones, his little drum with curved sticks, his dance and music the convulsions and noises of a stupid beggar; and many, very many, blind;—who seem to have no home but the sidewalk, where you see them asleep at any time, day or night, waiting in darkness for alms and the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... on; for the British farmer is by no means the stupid personage which townsfolk are too apt to fancy him. This bed of phosphates was found everywhere in the Greensand, underlying the Chalk. It may be traced from Dorsetshire through England to Cambridge, and thence, I believe, into Yorkshire. It may be traced again, I believe, all round ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... dramatist had penned these words, the management of Blackfriars met with disaster. The cause, however, went back to December 13, 1600, when Giles and Evans were gathering their players. In their overweening confidence they made a stupid blunder in "taking up" for their troupe the only son and heir of Henry Clifton, a well-to-do gentleman of Norfolk, who had come to London for the purpose of educating the boy. Clifton says in his complaint ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... accomplish in a day, surprised all who knew him. He seemed to electrify everybody about him. His invincible energy thrilled the whole army. He could rouse to immediate and enthusiastic action the dullest troops, and inspire with courage the most stupid men. He would sit up all night, if necessary, after riding thirty or forty leagues, to attend to correspondence, dispatches and details. What a lesson his career affords to the shiftless ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... the baskets, too," went on the doctor. "It will save me a hot, stupid journey to ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... American and honest, why are you going there?" asked this boy, a peasant, and rather stupid in ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... Lancaster, where the Cumberland hills are seen over Morecambe Bay; on the north, at Carlisle, where the moors of Skiddaw are seen over the rich plains between them and the Solway. No one who loves mountains would lose a step of the approach, from these distances, on either side. But the stupid herds of modern tourists let themselves be emptied, like coals from a sack, at Windermere and Keswick. Having got there, what the new railway has to do is to shovel those who have come to Keswick to Windermere, and to shovel those who have come to Windermere ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... most famous are Nagracut and Syba, formerly mentioned; where, if Mr Coryat may be believed, who says he carefully observed the same, people cut off part of their tongues out of devotion. It were easy to enlarge on this subject, but I will not any farther describe their stupid idolatry. The sum of the whole is, that both the Hindoos and Mahometans ground all their opinions on tradition, not on reason, and are content to perish with their fore-fathers, out of preposterous zeal and fond perverseness, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... know—because there is too much to do. If I go out that stupid girl will burn the cake," and she pointed to a Kafir intombi (young girl), who, arrayed in a blue smock, a sweet smile, and a feather stuck in her wool, was vigorously employed in staring at the flies on the ceiling and sucking her black fingers. "Really," ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... foolish. It is no less foolish for people to take up a position of dislike, and to turn away from the gospel of Jesus Christ because it speaks in like manner. I said that men are very foolish animals; there is surely nothing in all the annals of human stupidity more stupid than to be angry with the word that tells you the truth about what you are bringing down upon your heads. It is absurd, because Micaiah did not make the evil, but Ahab made it; and Micaiah's business was only to tell him what he was doing. It is absurd, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... into the English camp. But it was not with one camp only that we had to deal: the English were everywhere: a whole army lay before us—an army so immense that many Englishmen thought that it would be a task beyond the stupid and illiterate Boer to count it, much less to understand its significance. I will pander to the English conception of us and say, "We have seen them: they ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... and richly worth digging for. The hint of least moment, as you may imagine it, is often pregnant with events of the greatest. Be implicit. Am I not your general? Did I ever lead you on that I brought you not off with safety and success?—Sometimes to your own stupid astonishment. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... ready to cry; she dropped her head on his shoulder and began to bemoan herself. "Why on earth didn't you say something? How could I know? How stupid you are, David! If I'd known you minded, I'd just as lief have been engaged to—" Elizabeth stopped short. She sat up very straight, and put her hand to the neck of her dress to make sure it was fastened. At ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... genuine Aino matter in the present collection. For instance, we learn from Professor Chamberlain's above-mentioned treatise why it is that Panaumbe ("on the lower course of the river") does the clever things, while Penaumbe ("on the upper course of the river") is the stupid imitator who comes to grief. It is simply the expression of the dislike and contempt of the coast Ainos, who tell the stories, for the hill Ainos further up the rivers. It is needless to mention here the many touches of Aino ideas, morals, and customs, which their ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... first 'cause he wrote till half past two last night, an' in the end he went back to bed an' it certainly was a relief to see the last of him, for I may in confidence remark as I never see him look quite so stupid afore. After he was gone back to bed I washed up the breakfast dishes an' then I went out in the wood shed in the dark an' there I got another surprise, for I thought I'd look over the rags I was savin' for the next rag rug an' when I poured ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... a sailor!" said Johnny Liston mockingly. "Why, there it is, as plain as a pikestaff, on the lift of that wave to the right there! Where are your eyes, stupid?" ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... to have him. Suppose, now, Herbert Greyson was to take a fancy to another girl, would I let uncle go to him and put a pistol to his head and say, 'Cap is fond of you, you varlet! and demmy, sir, you shall marry none but her, or receive an ounce of lead in your stupid brains'? No, I'd scorn it; I'd forward the other wedding; I'd make the cake and dress the bride and—then maybe I'd break—no, I'm blamed if I would! I'd not break my heart for anybody. Set them up with it, indeed! Neither would ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... curiously searched into Thy counsels; but, indeed, I have dishonoured Thy Holiness, wronged Thine Excellency, disgraced Thy saints' glory by my own exceeding disproportionate pourtraying. I bewail that my conceivings fall so short, my apprehensions are so dull, my thoughts so mean, my affections so stupid, expressions so low, and unbeseeming such a glory. But I have only heard by the hearing of the ear. Oh, let Thy servant see Thee and possess these joys, and then I shall have more suitable conceivings, and shall give Thee ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... necessary to dispose of all the crew which Captain Horn might have on board, Banker had not determined. But of one thing he was certain: he would leave no one on board of her to work her to the nearest port and give news of what had happened. One mistake of that kind was enough to make, and his stupid partner, who had commanded the vessel from Toulon, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... when you get back up there to your office. He's got the boys sized right up to the last hair of their stupid heads. But I'll hand you something I've reckoned to hand you a while back, only I wanted to be sure. There's nothing of this truck about the 'hands' of the old mill. It's the new hands you've been ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... am tired of this life. I am dull—stupid. I want to go out." Her lovely eyes are flashing, her face is white—her lips trembling. "Take me out," says ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... shone like satin, and a drooping moustache slightly discoloured by tobacco. His appearance, which she had never objected to before, seemed to her grotesque; but in spite of this, she could smile almost naturally at his jokes, which she thought inconceivably stupid. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Bud was not stupid. He was merely concerned chiefly with his own affairs—a common enough failing, surely. But now that he had thought himself into a mental eddy where his own affairs offered no new impulse toward emotion, he turned over and over ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... the floor to no avail. La banniere d'Alice Roussillon had disappeared, and Captain Farnsworth went forthwith to report the fact to his commander. When he reached the shed at the angle of the fort he found Governor Hamilton sitting stupid and dazed on the ground. One jaw was inflamed and swollen and an eye was half closed and bloodshot. He turned his head with a painful, irregular motion and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Atlas who bore, ere Hercules was born, And is to go on bearing that same load When Hercules turns ash on Oeta's top. 'Tis the transition-stage, the tug and strain, That strike men: standing still is stupid-like." ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... by abstract truthfulness. When a bad writer is inexact, even if he can look back on half a century of years, we charge him with incompetence and not, with dishonesty. And why not extend the same allowance to imperfect speakers? Let a stockbroker be dead stupid about poetry, or a poet inexact in the details of business, and we excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinct and palpable as the sun at noonday, or the moon in a cloudless night, I saw the ogre head of that dog; his great glassy, fishy eyes, his half drooping, half erect ears, his slavering jaws, and as he gazed in a stupid meaningless stare upon me, uttered his everlasting bow, wow! Tell me that the room was dark; that not a ray of light penetrated the closed doors or the curtained windows. What of that? That dog's head, I repeat, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... "How stupid you are! Go look up your friend Mme. Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. You're quite thick enough with ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... at Holland House to meet Kean. He is worth meeting; and I hope, by getting into good society, he will be prevented from falling like Cooke. He is greater now on the stage, and off he should never be less. There is a stupid and under-rating criticism upon him in one of the newspapers. I thought that, last night, though great, he rather under-acted more than the first time. This may be the effect of these cavils; but I hope he has more sense than to mind them. He cannot expect ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... news of his lost father soon roused the prince from the stupid fit into which he had fallen. He followed in amazement the sound of Ariel's voice, till it led him to Prospero and Miranda, who were sitting under the shade of a large tree. Now Miranda had never seen a man before, except her ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... on the morrow of one of these intimate gatherings, "we will have a little chat about your Justinian, whom the recent drama of "Thodora" has just made the fashion. Do you know the history of that terrible hussy and her stupid husband? Perhaps not entirely; it is a treat I am ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... the 6th of August, 1775, "the very year," as he himself says, in a letter to the Dublin Evening Post, "in which the stupid obstinacy of British oppression forced the reluctant people of America to seek for security in arms, and to commence that bloody struggle for national independence, which has been in its results beneficial to England, whilst it has shed glory, and conferred ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... on rare occasions, especially round Christmas time, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set with flashy imitation stones—or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of him. "Now," said I, "it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to do is to take a bath-chair and go around ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... turned up full, a pipe in his mouth, and an open Bible in his hand. Some one had always to go during the night to put out the light, take the book from his hand, and the pipe from between his teeth. "For"—Belfast used to say, irritated and complaining—"some night, you stupid cookie, you'll swallow your ould clay, and we will have no cook."—"Ah! sonny, I am ready for my Maker's call... wish you all were," the other would answer with a benign serenity that was altogether imbecile and touching. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Diggens. This fellow had been so beastly drunk, that he scarce knew what he was about when awoke; and Marble rather dragged him on deck, and aft to the taffrail, than assisted him to walk. There we got him at last; and he was soon dangling by the tackle. So stupid and enervated was the master's mate, however, that he let go his hold, and went into the ocean. The souse did him good, I make no doubt; and his life was saved by his friends, one of the sailors catching him by the collar, and raising ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... deprive these laws of practical importance. They represent essential criteria of sound policy in the sphere of social reorganization no less than in ordinary business. In our days a curious obsession has led many people to disparage these criteria, as though they were the sordid prejudices of a stupid tradesman. Because it has been found a matter of obvious practical convenience to maintain the roads out of taxation or of rates, and to dispense with charges for their use, it is suggested that the same principle should be applied to the railways. Or, more commonly, because ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... he dreaded he knew not what. As he stood listening to the silence, he thought he heard a child's laughter, and he sighed in relief. The servant came to the door, a sleepy-eyed German maedchen as strong as an ox and nearly as stupid. "Oh, it's Herr Poons," she said. "Come in. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... and the captain arrived on board the Mayflower they found Jones too stupid with liquor to listen to any plans, and too short-handed when he had been made to understand to carry them out with half the dispatch the ardent spirit of Standish prompted, so that all they effected was to have two of the larger pieces hoisted out of the hold, and one landed ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... animals that people persist in calling stupid, when they are only strong-minded and more intelligent than the other animals," said Kit Summers, quietly breaking ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... proper at her age. Some came to the conclusion that M. Regis chose subjects for composition not suited to young girls. A committee waited on the unlucky professor to beg him to be more prudent for the future. He even lost, in consequence of Jacqueline's success, one of his pupils (the most stupid one, be it said, in the class), whose mother took her away, saying, with indignation, "One might as well risk the things they ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... thoughtfulness. When I was assuming that her mind had wandered off to something else she said: "The people must be very stupid—not ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... are going to sermonize me, the moment is ill chosen," replied the lieutenant, sulkily. "I know perfectly that I have done a stupid thing, and am in for a lecture from my papa. I do not wish to hear from another what I must listen ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... "Awfully sorry. Stupid of me. Get your mind off it again—quick. What were we saying? Oh, yes, this girl. I always think it helps one to form a mental picture of people if one knows something about their tastes—what sort of things they are interested in, their favourite topics of conversation, and so on. This Miss ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... two feet, you stupid Oliver," cried Miss Lavinia, shaking her curls at him. "Did you ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... how these stupid boys have obstructed my work here," replied Hemmingwell angrily. "I can't see why they have to interfere this way. And they always pick ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... the queries, every one of which took several minutes, as he was constantly interrupted by the Kajee, who was very fat and stupid: the Lama scarcely spoke, and the bystanders never. My connection with the Indian government was first enquired into; next they came to political matters, upon which I declined entering; but I gathered that ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... vicious kick, Show Low putting in an extra one for his murdered bunkie. Last of all, McKee approached the prostrate man, and made the mistake which was to cost him his life by booting Peruna cruelly. The man was a stupid fellow by nature, and what wits he had were addled by the habit he had acquired of consuming patent-medicines containing alcohol, morphin, and other stimulating and stupefying drugs. He was as revengeful as stupid, and could have forgiven McKee's putting the rope ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... dear, dear little girl!" cried the shocked lady, with a gush of self-reproach and sympathy, "I'm so sorry—so very, very sorry. It was so stupid of me! Have I hurt you much, dear little girl? Come—come ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... I pray you—how should that book have taught you this strange notion? Why? What book is it? That stupid story!" was the gasping exclamation of the astonished girl—astonished no less by the impetuous manner than the strong language of the youth; and, with the tenderest concern she laid her hand upon his arm, while her eyes, full of the liveliest interest, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... latent nobility in the Greek character, in the midst of that levity with which all Europe taxes it, that never, except once, were the secrets of the society betrayed; nor was there the least ground for jealousy offered either to the stupid Moslems, in the very centre of whom, and round about them, the conspiracy was daily advancing, or even to the rigorous police of Moscow, where the Hetria had its head-quarters. In the single instance of treachery which occurred, it happened that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... their breakfast. Over all—Fanchon and her puppies—covering them with his faithful body—shielding them with his never-failing love and devotion, was my noble hound—as noble, as faithful a dog, as ever man or woman loved. I called to him, and rubbed him, but all in vain, and meanwhile stupid, silly Fanchon, that had foolishly left her warm bed in the cellar, looked on with cheerful indifference, and wagged ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... eyes. "No," she said with her old calm decision, and moved away. Four years ago she would have supplemented her refusal by the words, "You are stupid. You tease me," Now she contented herself with action ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... man everlastingly maddened by slightness and weakness. As a boy, when his father and mother still kept up their position a little, he had broken a priceless Venetian glass simply because he could not resist the temptation to close his hand on it. His father had flogged him, being of the stupid kind who believe that corporal punishment can influence the soul. And Reddin had done the same thing next day with a ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... earth's acknowledged Sovereign, finds at once Its only just proprietor in Him. The soul that sees Him, or receives sublimed New faculties or learns at least to employ More worthily the powers she owned before; Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze Of ignorance, till then she overlooked, A ray of heavenly light gilding all forms Terrestrial, in the vast and the minute The unambiguous footsteps of the God Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds. Much conversant with heaven, she often ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... thought of turning upon this man and talking to him. But there was something in his face at once stupid and invincible that told her he would go on forcing himself upon her, that he would esteem speech with her a great point gained. In the twilight he had ceased to be a person one could tackle and shame; he had become something more general, a something that crawled ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... and the American could easily have put in twelve months in Burma if so disposed. But one obstacle—and one only—interposed, and detained her from joining her friends in Cairo. (This is in the strictest confidence.) She was awaiting the moment when that great, big stupid Irishman would speak! ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Drayton, precisely," said Hugh Ritson. He paused and watched Drayton closely. That worthy had removed his pipe, and was staring, with stupid eyes and open ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... downcast eyes and trembling; and as though he had remembered and comprehended then, for the first time, all that he had made the little fellow suffer, and all the goodness, the heroic constancy, with which the latter had borne it, he displayed in his countenance a certain stupid wonder, then a sullen remorse, and finally a sorrowful and impetuous tenderness, and with a rapid gesture he caught the boy round the head and strained him to his breast. We all passed before them. I invited him to come to the house on Thursday, with Garrone and Crossi; others saluted him; one ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... society of piping bullfinches, pink canaries, gray parrots, goldfish, green squirrels, Italian greyhounds, and French poodles, she sought a refuge from despair. But even these varied charms, after a while, failed to please. The bullfinches grew hoarse; the canaries turned brown; the parrots became stupid; the gold fish would not eat; the squirrels were cross; the dogs fought; even a shell grotto that was constructing fell down; and by the time the aviary and conservatory were filled, they had lost ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... heard the scissors that fair lock divide, And while my heart with transport panted big, She cast a fiery frown on me, and cried, 'You stupid puppy—you have spoilt ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... with open mouths and stupid eyes, hearkening to the din of voices that floated out on the tranquil air, the snatches of ribald songs, the raucous bursts of laughter, the clink of glasses, the clank of steel, the rattle of dice, and the strange soldier oaths ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... outside to amuse themselves. It was very touching to hear the old hymn as they sailed by, and Aunt Barbara and Betty's father looked at each other significantly as they listened. "Becky, you ought to be there to help sing," Betty whispered, as they sat side by side, but Becky thought it was very stupid to be having ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... character. He grumbles a little now and then, but then his is licensed murmuring-were a lawyer, or a physician, or a clergyman, to breathe a complaint of hard luck or want of preferment, a hundred tongues would blame his own incapacity as the cause. But the most stupid veteran that ever faltered out the thrice-told tale of a siege and a battle, and a cock and a bottle, is listened to with sympathy and reverence, when he shakes his thin locks, and talks with indignation of the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... says in a voice that matched the evening, it was so quiet and soft; 'but it was exceedingly stupid of you to come behind ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... disjointed dreams, audacities, unsystematic irresponsible lampoons of systems, and all manner of rambling reveries, the poor drupes and berries I find in my basket after endless and aimless rambles in woods and pastures. I ask constantly of all men whether life may not be poetic as well as stupid? ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... be something, to make myself something, to do something. Why should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl? What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... myself together and I said: 'My dear little girl, what is this? What do you mean about your big sister Sarah?' Edward, I could not bring myself to say that idiotic Solly. In fact, I did think I must be mistaken and had not heard correctly. But Content just looked at me as if she thought me very stupid. 'Solly,' said she. 'My ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... had his sword taken from him for shooting within limits. Many have wondered that a man of Lincoln's intelligence should have been guilty of this stupid infraction of ordinary army regulations. Biographers of Lincoln puzzled over this until the secret was explained by William Turley Baker, of Bolivia, Ill., at the Lincoln Centenary in Springfield. All unconscious of ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... to get a taxi and manage as best we can," sighed Marjorie. "I wish the porters weren't so stupid! I can't make them listen to me. The taxis will all be taken up if we're not quick! Oh, I say, there's that Tommy again! I wonder if he'd hail us one. I declare ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... laden with sins; stupid, lazy, careless, over fond of pleasure;—much more, if he be given up to enjoying himself in bad ways, about which we all know too well—then he is like a man who starts in a race, weak, crippled, over-weighted, or not caring whether he wins ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... speak of, one Joseph Baines, a fat, small-eyed youth, with immense pendent pallid cheeks, rejoicing in the sobriquet of "Buttons," his father being eminent in that line in the Midland Metropolis. The son was Brummagem to the back-bone. He was intensely stupid; but, having been a fixture at —— beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant, he had slowly gravitated on into his present position, on the old Ring principle, "weight must tell." I believe he had been ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... either? Even though the adage be true—about a live dog better than a dead lion. Let me hope the hound won't tell a tale upon me. For certain the shot hit him. That's nothing. Who could say what sort of ball, or the kind of gun it came from? No danger in that. I'd be stupid to think there could be. Well, it's all over now, and ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... mellowed no opinion, toned down no crudity. He was coming, he said, to make a last hopeless call on his famous pupil, the others were working. The others—he explained—were his little Klaartje and his newest pupil, Kerkkrinck, a rich and stupid youth, but honest and good-hearted withal. He had practically turned him over to Klaartje, who was as good a guide to the Humanities as himself—more especially for the stupid. "She was too young in thy time, Benedict," concluded the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... their Pedro was in the room too. Had he seen me engaged with their two throats, he would have been at mine like a fierce dog, or any other savage and faithful brute. I had no difficulty in dissembling my longing for the vulgar, stupid, and hopeless argument of fight. I remarked that I really did not want a servant. I couldn't think of depriving them of their man's services; but they would not hear me. They had made ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... shaped his planks. One lucky cruise as a hand on a fishing boat owned by a friend would earn him enough to pay for the paint and cordage. With Yankee ingenuity he shaped the iron work at his own forge—evading in its time the stupid British law that forbade the colonists to make nails or bolts. Two winters' labor would often give the thrifty builder a staunch boat of his own, to be christened the "Polly Ann," or the "Mary Jane"—more loyal to family ties than to poetic ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... shall come to him," said John. "If I don't throttle the tigress, I'll muzzle her. I know how to deal with her. She has learned at least, that what her stupid son says, he does! I shall make her understand that, on her slightest movement to disgrace your uncle, I will marry you right off, come what may; and if she goes on, I shall get myself summoned for the defence, that, if I can say nothing for him, I may ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... popular he would have accepted and backed. But he said, "Io non voglio perdere gli uomini perle femminelle."[38] If the Black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the White party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "were for themselves"; and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... imaginations, and no judgments at all, we next commence half-wits, and then think we have the whole field of knowledge in possession, and despise every one who takes more pains, and is more serious, than ourselves, as phlegmatic, stupid fellows, who have no taste for the most ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... use, Messieurs!'—which was followed by the seizure of Breslau the wrong way. Never came such a cataract of evil news on an Aulic Council before. The poor proud people, all these months they have been sitting torpid, helpless, loftily stupid, like dumb idols; 'in flat despair,' as Robinson says once, 'only without ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the stupid thing said. "At first I thought it was some other woman, because, begging your pardon, you looked thin. But it was after nine and I knew you'd not be ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... if there were no folly in the world it would be a stupid place, and I for one should want to move,' I said. 'Some never discover their own follies, and they are hopeless. You are as wise as you are dear. It's in your power to do a lot of good. Think what you've already accomplished. I wish you would continue to help us ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... Polly had n't been "stupid," as Fan said, she would have had her wits about her, and let it pass; but, you see, Polly was an honest little soul and it never occurred to her that there was any need of concealment, so she answered in her straightforward way, "Oh, they ain't for me, sir; they ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... years the Indians who lived here when the Mission Padres came were stupid and brutish, because they knew nothing better. They were lazy, dirty, and at first would not work. But the patient Padres taught them to raise grain and fruit, to build their fine churches, to weave cloth and ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... much in society as women will them to be. Let a woman's society be composed of men gently born and bred, and if she find them either coarse or stupid, make answer to her—"You must have ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... risk of being killed himself, or shall he fling him from the horse in order to preserve his own life from the pursuers? If he does so, he is a wise man, but at the same time a wicked one; if he does not, he is admirably just, but at the same time stupid. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... apparent hopelessness of ever doing so made them look on Basil as a man who had carried smoothness into the realms of fine art. He was considered too gifted to be wholesome. The men of his set, being for the most part amiably stupid, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... monsieur, either to accompany us to the presence of the Colonel or to let us go alone. I do not see that you have any right to detain us. If harm comes to Captain Stephens you will remember that his blood must be upon your head. You are either stupid beyond words to describe, or bent upon showing your authority. Will you come, or let me go, to ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... then; but I wish you would just step across the yard, and see if that stupid ostler has rubbed them dry, as I told him. You understand those things, I know, Hurst—the fellows won't humbug you very easily; as to Hawthorne, I wouldn't trust him to see to any thing of the sort. Flora here knows more about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... How comes it that summer is so hot, but the winter so cold? Har answered: A wise man would not ask such a question, for all are able to tell this; but if you alone have become so stupid that you have not heard of it, then I would rather forgive you for asking unwisely once than that you should go any longer in ignorance of what you ought to know. Svasud is the name of him who is father of summer, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... him. As for Camilla her mind was absorbed in that gold piece. She had never seen anything quite so magnificent. Here were riches, indeed, and she didn't care a pin for the silly boys who stormed and roared about her. What a noise they did make over it! "Stupid boys, they couldn't play, and that was the reason they were so mad about it." She must go home and show her prize to her aunt. How glad her mother would be to hear of her success. Hugging her violin close she paid no attention to the rude people in the room and silently suffered ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... restaurants, in the streets, in their segregated quarters—women who, however they may be sentimentalized about and however irresponsible they may be for their own condition, are, as a matter of fact, ignorant, stupid, silly, and dirty. Yet on them was squandered the emotional life of millions ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... "Don't be stupid. You surely are not prepared to deny that you came to me last Wednesday, looking for work, with what purported to be a letter of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... truth rushed at last into my stupid old head. For the moment, I suppose I must have gone clean out of my senses. I seized the Sergeant by the collar of his coat, and pinned him ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the construction of Cargo Hold One. For one thing, it was huge. For another, it was heavily insulated. For a third, it was built like a tank for holding liquids. All very well and good; possibly someone wanted to carry a cargo of cold lemonade or iced tea. That would be pretty stupid, maybe, ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... for saving you from my stupid blunder," answered the girl, artfully avoiding all possibility of personal obligation. "Would you like me to read ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... the welfare of the boys and girls for whom she struggles during the years that they are growing to manhood and womanhood. Men are for the greater part so engrossed in business that on certain questions they are far less competent to be "authorities" than women. Against stupid pedagogy, against red-tape, against the policy that morality must never interfere with business principles, against civic dirtiness, against brothel and saloon, women are more active than men, because they ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... not go away and leave those stupid fellows to be killed?" he said, moving towards the door into the mosque proper. "However foolish they may have been, they are still our countrymen, and whatever happens we ought to ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... "Oh, how stupid of you! If I'd been—but good gracious! I forgot Dick. Do come, Alicia, and get him away from her. We seem to have ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... on the contrary, I hate you. You are a wicked creature, very inconsistent, very stupid, very silly. You do not write to me. You do not love your husband. You know how much pleasure your letters would afford, and you do not write to him even six lines, which you can readily ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... The stupid elephant, not being able to make very much sense of this remark, essayed, after the manner of persons worsted at repartee, to set his foot upon his clever conqueror. In point of fact, he did set his foot upon him, and ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... from a Fulness of Thought, I say 'tis impossible for the Mind to keep bent so long, as that of Menalcas does: It must necessarily have some Relaxations. If it proceeds from a Want of Reflexion, it must be confess'd, that he who can live so many Hours without reflecting, must be either wholly stupid, or some Degrees below ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... devoted band of followers—known a moment when it seemed likely that Grancy would fail us. We had watched him pitted against one stupid obstacle after another—ill-health, poverty, misunderstanding and, worst of all for a man of his texture, his first wife's soft insidious egotism. We had seen him sinking under the leaden embrace of her affection like a swimmer in a drowning clutch; but ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... view" is "openly," the "go about" is "walk the streets," the "domestic" is "servant." And there are many other such cases, gentlemen of the jury. 20. And unless this man is stupid, I think he understands that these matters are the same now as in antiquity, but that we now employ different terms for them. And he will show (his consciousness), for he will withdraw from the platform in silence. 21. And if he does not, I ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... only twenty years ago that this part of the country was seized by the British without bloodshed, and the foolish and dissolute King Theebaw was made prisoner for his stupid insolence, and deported, with his two wives, to India, where they are still spending their days in retirement. Upper Burma has, however, put on new beauty and prosperity since the British have taken it over; and the people are abundantly satisfied with the new ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... became a sensualist," he said. "I did not make that mistake. For the sensualist carries his miseries pick-a-back, and round his feet is wound the shroud that shall soon enwrap him. I may be mad, it is true, but I am not so stupid anyhow as to have tried that. No, what is it that makes puppies play with their own tails, that sends cats on their prowling ecstatic ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... seat) Is it true? (to his wife) You would not believe he was so stupid. (To Goulard) She has ended by becoming a daring speculator. (To his wife) I may tell you, my dear, that Goulard is going to invest a large sum ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... bosom of her stupid home you will see that, at times, she is gloomy and thoughtful, then suddenly laughing and gay as if beside herself; or assuming the serious expression of a German when he advances to the fight. Such varying moods always ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... that class know to a penny what they have sent home, what they have in the bank, what there is in their pockets to spend. Generations of poverty have taught them carefulness and thrift. Americans call them ignorant and stupid because their unfamiliarity with the language and customs make them appear so, but they are neither too ignorant nor stupid to misunderstand an incident like this. Are the men still on ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... that half the women aboard, including Sandy, had been making passes at him, she certainly wouldn't enlighten him. Besides, that one particular area of obtuseness was a real part of his charm. Wherefore she said merely: "I'm not sure whether I'm a bit catty or you're a bit stupid. Anyway, it's Alex she's really in love with. And you already know about ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... glad to remember that, even before receiving your letter, I was careful to say in my article that my quarrel was not personally with you, but with the newspapers which had used what you said as a part of a stupid stunt against organised religion. I am even more glad to learn that they had misused your name and used what you did not say. I ought to have known, by this time, that they are quite capable of it; and I entirely agree that the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... language was as gentle as her eyes. She wanted a match to light a cigarette, but I had none, and said that I also wanted one. In a few minutes she brought me a match, and then she recommenced her tireless weaving of six vile words into hundreds of stupid sentences. ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... unusually stupid, or are you rapt, beyond the realm of reason and mid-day common sense? Pray what is the fascination? It is neither so vast, nor so picturesque as the Colosseum. There, one expects to hear the roar of the beasts springing on their human ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... shame! Let those Yankee fools spin, Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin; Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel Too stupid for shame and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... despise The cold man of science, who walks with his eyes All alert through a garden of flowers, and strips The lilies' gold tongues, and the roses' red lips, With a ruthless dissection; since he, I suppose, Has some purpose beyond the mere mischief he does. But the stupid and mischievous boy, that uproots The exotics, and tramples the tender young shoots, For a boy's brutal pastime, and only because He knows no distinction 'twixt heartsease and haws,— One would wish, for the sake of each nursling ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... boy's face!" said Plushkin to Chichikov as he pointed to Proshka. "It is stupid enough, yet, lay anything aside, and in a trice he will have stolen it. Well, my lad, what do ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... as far as folks and human nature is concerned. Those that had even average common sense got along comfortable and all right in Tennessee and Mississippi, and those that suffered out there were the sort that are so stupid they would starve in the middle of a good apple pie. My brother that went with the others to Tennessee never came back, and we ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... appear to have been no very worthy accession to the University of Glasgow. We know of no word of complaint against them from Smith, but they were a sore trial both to Hutcheson and to Reid. Reid says he always felt in lecturing to those "stupid Irish teagues" as St. Anthony must have felt when he preached to the fishes,[46] and Hutcheson writes a friend in the north of Ireland that his Irish students were far above taking any interest in their work, and that although he had "five or six young gentlemen from Edinburgh, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... His wrath blazed forth with unwonted vehemence. "That night," says Dabney,* (* Letter to the author.) "he was quartered in a farmhouse a mile or two east of Willis' Church. The soldier assigned to him as a guide made a most stupid report, and admitted that he knew nothing of the road. Jackson turned on him in fierce anger, and ordered him from his presence with threats of the severest punishment. On retiring, he said to his staff, "Now, gentlemen, Jim will have breakfast for you punctually at dawn. I expect ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... office," the latter continued, "and tried to persuade them to let me ride in the guard's van of your special, but he made a stupid fuss about it, so I thought I'd better come to you. Can I beg a seat in your compartment, or anywhere in the train, as ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have made him worse by feeding him. Shall I never get it into your stupid heads that you must not stuff people who are ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... pier of yours one atom. Any one of these boards looks capable of crumbling and letting one through.—And, Damaris, please don't be cross with me or I shall be quite miserable. Forgive my having asked you stupid questions. I was a blundering idiot. Of course, what I heard last night was just some echo, some trick of wind or of the river and tide. I was half asleep and imagined the whole thing most likely, magnified sounds as one does, don't you know, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... biggest licking you ever had in your life," answered Wilton, angrily, "You are so stupid, you can't understand anything." ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... is a strong drink," said the old man, as he looked at me, with a half smile on his countenance. "This is at any rate," said I, "so strong, indeed, that I would not drink another cup for any consideration." "And I would not ask you," said the old man; "for, if you did, you would most probably be stupid all day, and wake the next morning with a headache. Mead is a good drink, but woundily strong, especially to those who be not used to it, as I suppose you are not." "Where do you get it?" said I. "I make it myself," said the old man, "from the honey which my ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... recorder stuck to the bottom of the Taber conference coffeepot had cost Senator Crane a hundred dollars. He had now listened to it four times and was pacing the floor of his office, scowling darkly at the walls. An android! What in hell was an android? What kind of a stupid, ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... worldly learning of Bletson—the rash and ignorant conclusions of the fierce and under-bred Harrison, leading them into the opposite extremes of enthusiasm and infidelity, while Desborough, constitutionally stupid, thought nothing about religion at all; and while the others were active in making sail on different but equally erroneous courses, he might be said to perish like a vessel, which springs a leak and founders in the roadstead. It was wonderful to behold what a strange variety ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... been the triumph could she have achieved it! One more word,—one other pressure of the hand in the post-chaise might have done it! Had he really promised her marriage she did not even now think that he would have gone back from his word. If that heavy stupid duke would have spoken to him that night at Mistletoe, all would have been well! But now,—now there was nothing for her but weeping and gnashing of teeth. He was gone, and poor Morton was gone; and all those others, whose memories rose like ghosts before her;—they were all gone. And ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... assembled round the tree, And then with manners shocking They pinched and shook the Paris doll, And cried in words so mocking— "Why, don't you know, you stupid thing, Dot won't care for another, She has received this Christmas morn A dear, sweet ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... parsons had been simulating an interest in the cloudy firmament as an excuse for not looking at the girls until close at hand. Jane sent an eyeflash at Josephs with a skill which proved her favorite assertion that she was not so stupid as people thought. He blushed and took off his soft, low-crowned felt hat. Fairholme saluted very solemnly, for Agatha bowed to him with marked seriousness. But when his gravity and his stiff silk hat were at their highest point she darted a mocking smile at him, and he too ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... of having stupid books presented to one by the author! ——, who is experienced in such matters, told me that the best plan in such cases was, to acknowledge the receipt of the book the same day it arrived, and civilly ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... war between the partizans of England and France. On one side, that of the English, were ranged the pride of the old grandees, the arts and prejudices of a cunning and intelligent priesthood, and the intolerable stupid superstition of the most ignorant and priest-ridden part of the people. On the other side, there was a small party of the more liberal minded, who supported the French, because they had abolished the Inquisition, and all the old monastic humbug with ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... drop in it; but as it was, there was only a small quantity, which quieted me. I sat down by the window shivering with cold. The heavy rain was driven in by sudden gusts of wind, and I remained there till gradually, as the night grew darker and the sedative began to take effect, I sunk into a heavy, stupid kind of calmness. I started when the clock struck ten; and, groping about the room, I found the match-box and struck a light. I then went to my bureau; and, taking out of the drawer my pistol-case, I placed it on the table, and then sat down to write a few lines to my father. I gave him a short ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... going to be talked out of my common sense, and me on my death-bed," said the old lady impatiently, and yet with some secret hope that Ingram would go on talking and amuse her. "I won't have you say he is anything but a stupid and ungrateful boy, who married a wife far too good for him. He is worse than that—he is much worse than that; but as this may be my death-bed, I will keep a civil ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... to the Rebellion, but from the year which followed its suppression. It may, in old times, have been a politic trick of shrewd politicians, to involve the foundations of States in the mists of a mythical antiquity; but we happily live in an historical period, and there is something peculiarly stupid or peculiarly impudent in the attempt of the publicists of the Philadelphia Convention to ignore the origins of political societies for which, after they have obtained a certain degree of organization, they claim such eminent traditional rights and privileges. Respectable as these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... bed. Not a bit of it, the boy answered: he should go out on the terrace at twelve o'clock; the chimes would be fine, heard out there. He fell asleep almost as he spoke; presently he woke up, feeling headachy, cross and stupid, and of his own accord went up ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... however, though he was eminently distinguished both in features and in person, was not liable to the charge of effeminacy. From this it was rescued, both by his strength, and by the air of confidence and self-possession with which the youth seemed to regard the wonders around him, not indicating the stupid and helpless gaze of a mind equally inexperienced, and incapable of receiving instruction, but expressing the bold intellect which at once understands the greater part of the information which it receives, and commands the spirit to toil in search of the meaning ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... callers, and seem greatly on the increase during the Eighteenth century. As we read history we learn that no one hundred years of the past has produced wonders in such number and variety. Stupid systems of government have given place to better and wiser. Voyages of the ocean have had months by sail reduced to days by steam. Journeys over land that would require six months by horse and ox, are now accomplished in six days by rail. Our law, medical and other schools of five ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... painful, he approached the portrait, held the candle toward it, and could distinguish the words on the border of the painting,—Jno. Melmoth, anno 1646. John was neither timid by nature, nor nervous by constitution, nor superstitious from habit, yet he continued to gaze in stupid horror on this singular picture, till, aroused by his uncle's cough, he hurried into his room. The old man swallowed the wine. He appeared a little revived; it was long since he had tasted such a cordial,—his heart appeared to expand to a momentary confidence. "John, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... win," I replied. "You must win: you must not think of being beaten. Take it that they will not want to convict you. Say it to yourself in the court; don't let yourself fear for a moment. Your enemies are merely stupid, unhappy creatures crawling about for a few miserable years between earth and sun; fated to die and leave no trace, no memory. Remember you are fighting for all of us, for every artist and thinker ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... signs; the Koshalas comprehend from what they see; the Kurus and the Pancalas comprehend from a half-uttered speech; the Salwas cannot comprehend till the whole speech is uttered. The Mountaineers, like the Sivis, are very stupid. The Yavanas, O king, are omniscient; the Suras are particularly so. The Mlecchas are wedded to the creations of their own fancy. Other peoples cannot understand. The Vahikas resent beneficial counsels; as regards the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... footed it right merrily. Juchhe! Juchhe! Juchheisa! Heisa! He! So fiddle-bow was braying. Our swain amidst the circle press'd, He push'd a maiden trimly dress'd, And jogg'd her with his elbow; The buxom damsel turn'd her head, "Now that's a stupid trick!" she said, Juchhe! Juchhe! Juchheisa! Heisa! He! Don't ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... time it fell, but the fourth it clung, and crept down a twig, settling at last in a position that far, surpassed any posing that I could do. I was very pleased, and yet it made a complication. It had gone so far that it might be off the plate and from focus. It seemed so stupid and helpless that I decided to risk a peep at the glass, and hastily removing the plate and changing the shutter, a slight but most essential alteration was made, everything replaced, and the bulb caught up. ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Where's the "danger," where's the "glory," of merely stepping under a little spirt from one end of the Falls, with plenty of room to stand, and no darkness, no mystery, no nothing. Nothing but an overwhelming sense of being a cussed fool, and a simpleton, and a stupid, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... had but a very cloudy understanding of the state of affairs when he was endeavoring to blackmail Mrs. Horn, and making stupid charges against her husband. He knew that the three negroes he had met in Paris in the service of Mrs. Horn had once been his own slaves, held not by any right of law, but by brutal force, and he knew that the people with whom they were ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... generality of which are exceedingly dirty and disgusting. The company I found did not make amends for the accommodation. The only Europeans on board were two young men, who had received some unimportant situation in a quarantine office from the Turkish government. The behaviour of both was conceited, stupid, and withal terribly vulgar. Then there were four students from Alexandria, who boarded at Beyrout, and were going home to spend the vacation—good-natured but much-neglected lads of fourteen or fifteen years, who seemed particularly partial to the society ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... through the high fence (it really was more fun than the stupid games directed by their elders) and wondered—at least Doris wondered; Meredith was either amused or shocked; if the latter it was an easy matter to turn aside. This hurt Doris, and to her plea that the thing was there, Meredith ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... it seemed to me; and the start of surprise and consternation which escaped the stranger when he first saw me confirmed me in the impression. But a moment later I doubted; so natural was the posture into which the man fell, and so stupid the look of inquiry which he turned first on me and then on Maignan. As he stood before me, shifting his feet and staring about him in vacant wonder, I began to think that I had made a mistake; and, clearly, either ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... time, behaved in a remarkable and unseemly manner. In a letter to Monsieur de Rohan, the Ambassador declared that while the Earls and the Counsel were pleading, their lordships guzzled and smoked; and that when they gave their votes condemning the two Earls, they were stupid with eating and "yvres de tabac"—drunk with smoking. This was probably quite untrue as a representation of what actually took place; but it would hardly have been written had smoking not been a common practice among ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... ears at the lightly spoken words—if he had been in her room last night; the impropriety of them to him was evident. For a moment she blushed, too, then she recovered herself and grew impatient with one so artificial—and yet so simple, so self-conscious—and yet so unconscious, so desperately stupid—and yet so ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... likes, be as considerate as he will, and let the season be never so pressing, it is impossible to get the labourers out to their work when the hour is up. Most of them go to sleep, and have to be waked up, after which they are as stupid as owls for a quarter of an hour. One or two, it will be found, have strolled down to the adjacent ale-house, and are missing. These will come on the field about an hour later. Then one man has a rake too heavy for ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... got their true character, that's all. Now I'll just tell you an instance—it was at a party somewhere—it was at that tiresome Mrs. Swinburne's, where the evenings are always so stupid, and there was nothing worth going or staying for but the supper,—except Mr. Carleton! and he never stays five minutes, except at two or three places; and it drives me crazy, because they are places I ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... was a practical and somewhat stupid man, who read the manuscript with considerable scepticism, and then put it away, having come to the conclusion that it was no business of his, and that there was no money in it anyhow. He thought nothing more of it until he got back to ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... war. "Our sea-coast," said a person then in authority to the present writer, "was in a condition of unreasoning panic, and fought to have little squadrons scattered along it everywhere, according to the theory of defence always favored by stupid terror." The "stupidity," by all military experience, was absolute—unqualified; but the Navy Department succeeded in withstanding the "terror"—the moral effect—so far as to compromise on the Flying Squadron; a rational solution, though not unimpeachable. ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... group of tatterdemalions, seated in the shade of some baskets of charcoal, a broad-shouldered and stupid looking boy rose to meet him. His face was streaked with red and his neck was scratched; he bore the traces of a recent fight. He walked along beside Tchelkache, and said under ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... necessary that argument should just fail to prove this; because it is God's Will that men should be equal before Him: the man who can argue very cleverly was not designed to have an advantage over the stupid or ignorant man in their dealings with God. The meaning of our Lord's words, The poor have the Gospel preached to them, is not to be confined to poverty in money and clothes: the man who is poor in ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... of my mother and grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles, and admire my clothes, and wish her little Jane was old enough to run to school with me, and flatter me on the beauty of my hair and eyes and complexion, in such a way that very few children would have been so stupid as not to have seen through it. Could you not have said something to discourage ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... is it! What a stupid donkey I was," responded Lord Upperton, laughing heartily. "He wasn't at all bashful," he continued, "but was well behaved; asked me where I was from. I told him I was from London. 'Sho! is that so? Haow's King ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... edition (though in reality printed at Goettingen) bore the imprint London, and was stated to be derived from an English source; but this was, reasonably enough, held to be merely a measure of precaution in case the actual Baron Munchausen (who was a well-known personage in Goettingen) should be stupid enough to feel aggrieved at being made the butt of a gross caricature. In this way the discrepancy of dates mentioned above might easily have been obscured, and Buerger might still have been credited with a work which has proved a better ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... of seeing another's point of view, an instinctive belief in precedent. And it was closely allied to his most deep and moral quality—the power of making a decision. Those decisions might be "crass" and stupid, conduce to unnecessary suffering, have no relation to morality or reason; but he could make them, and he could stick to them. By virtue of this power he was where he was, had been for centuries, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for the key to their speech has not yet been found. Yet they have a speech which enables them to exchange, by means of intonations not yet noted by man, ideas that are rudimentary, no doubt, but which are such as may be conceived by creatures within their sphere of action and feeling. Less stupid than we are, animals succeed in understanding a few words of our idiom, but not enough to enable them to converse with us. Besides, as the words they do learn refer solely to what we exact of them, the conversation would be brief. But ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... obligations towards her? Could they send the girl away if they did not like her? Besides, wouldn't they have to marry her? and if Jerome found a yoke-mate among the heiresses of Provins they ought to keep all their property for his children. A yokemate for Jerome, according to Sylvie, meant a stupid, rich and ugly girl who would let herself be governed. They decided to refuse the Lorrain request. Sylvie agreed to write the answer. Business being rather urgent just then she delayed writing, and the forewoman coming forward with an offer for the stock and good-will of the ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... and Herbert read as follows:—"Much has been said of the stupid and stubborn disposition of the ass, but we are greatly inclined to suspect that the aspersion is ill-founded: whatever bad qualities of this kind he may sometimes possess, they do not appear to be the consequences ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... rests on an implied but essential compact that the result of a fair election shall be conclusive. If those who lose an election are thereupon to rush to arms for a reversal of the decision of the ballot-box, then elections are a stupid sham, whereon no earnest person will waste his breath or his suffrage. Why should any one devote his time and effort to secure a political result which those overborne by it will set at defiance the next hour? It is not merely Jefferson or Adams, Jackson or Lincoln, who is defied by a revolt like ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... overwhelming contrast between this scene and the scenes of yesterday! The awful fact that her mother was going to marry such a being as Mr. Martin overpowered her with such a sense of horror that for the time she felt quite dumb and stupid. ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... You will think me very stupid, but the more I think of it the less I understand this famous distinction between body and soul, and the relation of one ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... think that advancing that puppy into my place will bend me to your purpose, you grossly deceive yourself. I pity the stupid puppet who can thus sneak to his bitterest enemy, to obtain a position he could never rise to by his own merit. Silly boy!—I laugh at his folly, our shallow policy, and ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... CONTENDING FOR THE EXISTENCE OF MATTER AS THE OCCASION OF IDEAS.—It is a very extraordinary instance of the force of prejudice, and much to be lamented, that the mind of man retains so great a fondness, against all the evidence of reason, for a stupid thoughtless somewhat, by the interposition whereof it would as it were screen itself from the Providence of God, and remove it farther off from the affairs of the world. But, though we do the utmost we can to secure the belief of Matter, though, when ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... with—' There was not a stick or a stone near. 'I will throttle you for good,' I corrected myself. 'I was on the threshold of great things,' he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold. 'And now for this stupid scoundrel—' 'Your success in Europe is assured in any case,' I affirmed steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of him, you understand—and indeed it would have been very little use for any practical purpose. I tried to break the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... are filled with loathing at the very sight of books, or where the torch of learning is kindled, which burns on with ever-increasing brightness forever more, and when I think of some of the teachers of my youth I am reminded of what the wise pastor said to a "stupid lunk-head" who had conceived the preposterous idea that he was called to be a preacher. "What, you be ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... pompous, characterless language of King Lear, the same in which all Shakespeare's kings speak, the reader or spectator cannot conceive that a king, however old and stupid he may be, could believe the words of the vicious daughters with whom he had passed his whole life, and not believe his favourite daughter, but curse and banish her; and therefore, the spectator or reader cannot share ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... half-crazed girl, brought from the alms-house, now did the drudgery of the family. Abner Dimock had grown penurious, and not one cent of money was given for comfort in that house, scarce for need. The girl was stupid and rude, but she worked for her board,—recommendation enough in Mr. Dimock's eyes; and so hard work was added to the other burdens loaded upon his silent wife. And soon came another, all-mysterious, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the mate sententiously. "Those wretches in the hold are up to some trickery. These stupid sentries are too dull or careless to investigate. They are crazy for water in there, and it is my opinion they have got hold of something and are trying to cut a way out—God knows where!—perhaps through the bottom ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... their dumb companions to bear the burden, and using no whips or goads. Drivers or pullers of carts will turn out of their way, under the most provoking circumstances, rather than overrun a lazy dog or a stupid chicken."[83] Etiquette is refined, elaborate, and vigorous. Politeness has been diffused through all ranks from ancient times.[84] "The discipline of the race was self-imposed. The people have gradually created their own social conditions."[85] "Demeanor was [in ancient times] ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... rite,) where the priest was waiting to receive me. It was a poverty-stricken edifice, purposely kept so, in order to obviate the envy and malice of the Mohammedans; and all the Christians that I saw in Gaza were a stupid-looking people; they are few in number, and grievously oppressed by their numerous Moslem fellow-townsmen, being far away from the notice of consuls. One cannot but regard with compassion a people who have for ages endured suffering for the name of Christ, while facilities are offered for acquiring ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... gave you the opportunity. You failed to profit by it. You got drunk the first night you arrived. Kenneth Traynor was a temperate man. Is it no wonder you excited wonder and talk? Then you were stupid under questioning and gave equivocal answers. Your explanation to Parker about the diamonds was more than unfortunate; it was idiotic. His suspicions were at once aroused. He may yet give us trouble before we have time to get rid of the stones. Finding the wife eluded ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... is no quiet now. Some are one way, some t'other. There are the Church folk, and the meeting-house folk, and it is as much as they can do to keep themselves from going at each other's throats. I hear so much about it that my brain gets stupid with it all, and I hate Parliament and king worse than the schoolmaster who used to whack me for never knowing the difference between one letter ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... my comb!" cried Lesa. "If Rollicking Robin and Busy Bee and Fleet-footed Field Mouse and Chirping Cricket and Gliding Brown Snake and Cunning Black Ant and Flitting Butterfly cannot help me, how can such a stupid, ugly, hobbling thing as you find my golden comb? Be off! Get out ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... not worry about that now. Let me finish. Something happened to Movaine couple of hours ago. Nobody's fault. And something else happened to Marras Cooms just now. That puts me in charge of the operation here. Nice, isn't it? When we found Cooms lying in the hall with a hole through his stupid head, I told Baldy Perk it looked like Bad News had thrown in with the Star boys and done it. Know Baldy? He's Cooms' personal gun. Not what you'd call bright, and he's mighty hot now about Cooms. I left him in charge on our level, with orders to get Quillan the next time he shows up there. Well ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... home if she calls again. She is stupid; she cannot get the girl to come to her again. I shall trust you with an adventure, Dykeman —an adventure that will remind you of our young days, man. This charming creature—I tell you she is irresistible—her very oddities bewitch ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... very stupid to believe, that his close Attachment to the World, and the Loosness of his own Morals can be atton'd for by the recluse and strict Lives that are led ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... Without another thought, and in plain defiance of the fact that I knew my father meant me to write the romantic story of my half-brother's adventure and subsequent good fortune, I ventured to heed merely the letter of his remarks and ignore their spirit. I took the stupid "Warranty Deed" itself and chopped it up into Hiawathian blank verse without altering or leaving out three words, and without transposing six. It required loads of courage to go downstairs and face my father with my performance. I started ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his nephew, took over the government of Libya by gift of the emperor. And this man became the chief cause of great ruin to the people of Libya, and all were dissatisfied with his rule—the officers because, being exceedingly stupid and young both in character and in years, he proved to be the greatest braggart of all men, and he insulted them for no just cause and disregarded them, always using the power of his wealth and the authority of his office to this end; and the soldiers ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... medicine, from what I hear, and, when occasion offered, treated the sick with great skill and, of course, without charge. He lived first in Egypt and then in Algiers and Morocco. Last year he settled down in Paris, where he died four weeks ago as the result of a most stupid accident." ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Is at the Nuptiall of his sonne, a guest That best becomes the Table: Pray you once more Is not your Father growne incapeable Of reasonable affayres? Is he not stupid With Age, and altring Rheumes? Can he speake? heare? Know man, from man? Dispute his owne estate? Lies he not bed-rid? And againe, do's nothing But what he did, being childish? Flo. No good Sir: He has his health, and ampler ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... just what they're fond of! And remember, them that are stupid, or the women folk, as can't put their money into use themselves, they take it to the bank, and they there, deuce take 'em, clutch hold of it, and with this money they fleece the people. It's ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... of you idiots," retorted the captor, who had now released both young men. "Besides being a mean, detestable trick, it's as old as the world. That red-pepper trick was invented by some stupid lout who lived thousands of ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... no means the fool that men fancied him. He was shrewd instead of stupid. His father had left him abundant wealth, to which his uncle, King Tarquin, might at any time take a fancy, and sweep him away to enjoy it. The king had killed his brother for his wealth, and would be likely to serve ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... "dreadfully fresh. But somehow,—I'm on the grind committee, you know,—and they don't do anything funny. They just do quantities and quantities of stupid, commonplace things, like mistaking the young faculty for freshmen and expecting Miss Raymond to help them look up their English references. I just wish they'd think of something original," ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... S.P.C.A., that I loved children and animals and all helpless creatures, both great and small, that I used the dumb brutes gently and only asked in return that they do the same by me. But how is one to communicate such humanitarian ideas to a big, stupid, wilful, perverse, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... to overbear the whole of the hostile war fleet at both points. To have the greater force and then to divide it, so that the enemy can attack either or both fractions with decisively superior numbers, is the acme of military stupidity; nor is it the less stupid because in practice it has been frequently done. In it has often consisted the vaunted operation of "surrounding an enemy," "bringing him between two fires," and so forth; pompous and troublesome combinations by which a divided force, that could perfectly well ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... liking," responded Copetta, lightly. "I dare say, now, that you found more pleasure in that stupid jelly-fish, or that dismal brass monkey, or that crooked man,—and he's a ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... than most foreign critics realize. But whether it be strong or weak, one thing is certain: a power which has been supreme for two centuries will not surrender without a struggle. The Prussian Junkers may be politically stupid, but they have not lost the fighting spirit, and they will not give way to the 'mob.' Before Prussian reaction capitulates, it will play its last card and seek salvation ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... me then?" said open-eyed Molly. She was vaguely ill at ease; but the other shammed stupid. All she could be brought ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... that little sum of money," she declared gayly, "for my husband has just made me cancel a dinner-party for next Thursday, because he has to go up to the stupid place." ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... squirrel,—he seemed to settle himself from his earliest years into a sort of lofty contempt for the Nutcrackers, for Nutcracker Lodge, and for all the good old ways and institutions of the domestic hole, which he declared to be stupid and unreasonable, and entirely behind the times. To be sure, he was always on hand at meal-times, and played a very lively tooth on the nuts which his mother had collected, always selecting the very best for himself; but he seasoned his nibbling ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a joke," cried Pencroft, "it is a very stupid one! To come home and find no staircase to go up to your room by—that's nothing for weary men to ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... it is, old fellow. They're about the most obstinate, stupid, ignorant brutes under the sun. They don't know when they're well off as subjects of Great Britain, so they'll ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... great point of relief and reunion!—and there had been late dinners, and long dinners, and great dinners, fine plate, good dishes, and plenty of wine, but a dearth of conversation—the natural topics chained up by etiquette. One half of the people at table were too prudent, the other half too stupid, to talk. Sir Ulick talked away indeed; but even he was not half so entertaining as usual, because he was forced to bring down his wit and humour to court quality. In short, till the company had drunk a certain quantity of wine, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the mystery has been too commonly explained by the very easy process of setting it down as in fact inexplicable, and by resolving the phenomenon into a misgrowth or lusus of the capricious and irregular genius of Shakespeare. The shallow and stupid arrogance of these vulgar and indolent decisions I would fain do my best to expose. I believe the character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakespeare's deep and accurate science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... seems perfectly superfluous. Where intelligence is not highly valued and carefully promoted by selection, the intelligence derivable from association with man does not appear to be inherited. Lap-dogs, for instance, are often remarkably stupid. ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... a crowd, you say, With three in the sleigh? Well you are stupid! Three's a pleastanter company far, than two, When the person who crowds you ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... wronged as she held herself, have felt him stupid not to see how wronged; but he was in any case acute for an evasion. "You risked your offer for the great equivalent over which you've so wildly worked ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... never saw one before. The book that told of them says they squeeze their victims to death just as a snake does. The only way to do is to make some smoke and fire at the bottom. This sort of kills the branches or makes them stupid and they let go. The trees are half animal, and awful things. I hope we don't meet with ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... of wishing that she would move on. Nearly all the busy people of the Exhibition called her either Aunty or Grandma at once, and made little pleasures for her as best they could. She was a delightful contrast to the indifferent, stupid crowd that drifted along, with eyes fixed at the same level, and seeing, even on that level, nothing for fifty feet at a time. "What be you making here, dear?" Betsey Lane would ask joyfully, and the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... with blood. They are at first expelled with violence, afterwards with much pain, effort, and often fruitless straining. With these local symptoms, the child, as might be expected, is very ill, feverish, and stupid, though without sound sleep, much exhausted, and its nervous system so disturbed as to occasion frequent twitchings of the fingers and of the corners of the mouth, while sometimes actual convulsions take place. The thirst is intense, the child calling ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... "'How stupid of me not to have mended it! said Melchior; but he had not mended it, and so there was nothing for it but to go to bed; and ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... this belief; and folk in Paris called it popularly by the name of Lemmonio Boreo. [2] The girl, while she sojourned in the statue's head, could not prevent some of her movements to and fro from being perceptible through its eye-holes; this made stupid people say that the ghost had got into the body of the figure, and was setting its eyes in motion, and its mouth, as though it were about to talk. Many of them went away in terror; others, more incredulous, came to observe the phenomenon, and when they were unable to deny the ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... that, you know there can be no doubt about it; there is the will—the stupid; will, by which she ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
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