"Fool" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wasn't anybody's fool, not by several degrees—not even Hawkeye's. Toddles hated Hawkeye like poison; and his hate, apart from daily annoyances, was deep-seated. It was Hawkeye who had dubbed him "Toddles." And Toddles repudiated the name with his heart, his ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... imagine that the soul is each man's share of God, and character the muscle which tries to reveal its mysteries—a kind of its first visible radiance—the right to know that it is the voice which is always calling the pragmatist a fool. ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... sleep out of doors at night; I can do with coffee and oranges for lunch and breakfast; but in the evening I will assert my dignity and do justice to my taste: I will dine at the Hermitage and permit you to call me a fool. And why not, since my purse, like my stomach, is now my own? Why not go to the Hermitage since my push-cart income permits of it? But the first night I went there my shabbiness attracted the discomforting attention of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... statement from a wonderful source. So clear-cut is it that any wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot mistake it. Especially is this true when we couple with it this other statement of Jesus: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." We must never forget that Jesus was born, lived, and died a Jew, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... my looking narrowly into the sealings of your letters. If, as you say, he be base in that point, he will be so in every thing. But to a person of your merit, of your fortune, of your virtue, he cannot be base. The man is no fool. It is his interest, as well with regard to his expectations from his own friends, as from you, to be honest. Would to Heaven, however, you were really married! This is now the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... an intoxicating sense of the divine mystery and miracle of life. For myself I was fairly dumbfounded with amazement, and my companion, the hard-headed sceptical astronomer, kept on crying and muttering to himself, "My God! my God!" as if he had become a drivelling fool. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... unfeignedly interested in the gambols of the porpoises, laughing heartily from time to time; and altogether seemed so absolutely happy and free from care that Leslie, while he could have kicked himself for being such a fool, felt ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a gorgio—which is the same as talking like a fool—were you a Rommany Chal you would talk wiser. Wish to die indeed! A Rommany Chal would wish to ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... and crack your thong, And bid your steed go faster; He does not know, as he scrambles along, That he has a fool for ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... theme demands serious treatment. Let us, therefore, begin with definitions. What is a poet? and what is a publisher? Popularly speaking, a poet is a fool, and a publisher is a knave. At least, I am hardly wrong in saying that such is the literal assumption of the Incorporated Society of Authors, a body well acquainted with both. Indeed, that may be said to be its working hypothesis, the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... like your friend. What do they care for a ship or two? Insured, I guess. What do they care for sailors' lives alongside of a few thousand dollars? What they want is speed between ports, and a damned fool of a captain that'll drive a ship under as I'm doing this one. You can put in the morning, asking why ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and saw her speak to a respectable elderly person behind the counter, who darted an indignant look at me, and at once led my charming stranger into a back office. For the moment, I was fool enough to feel puzzled; it was out of my character you will say—but remember, all men are fools when they first fall in love. After a little while I recovered the use of my senses. The shop was at the corner of a side street, leading to the market, since removed to make ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... to indulge the thought; I was a fool to dream of it. She would prove heartless, like all of her sex, and repay me with black ingratitude. Let her fight the battle ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... a moustache like a lady's eyebrow, came and asked for a curiously compounded drink, and Arabella was obliged to go and attend to him. "We can't talk here," she said, stepping back a moment. "Can't you wait till nine? Say yes, and don't be a fool. I can get off duty two hours sooner than usual, if I ask. I am not living in the house ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... in pursuing his inborn taste, they scolded him and punished him bitterly for bringing home the nasty creatures. But nothing could win away Tam from the love of the beasties; and in the end, he had his own way, and lived all his life, as he himself afterwards beautifully put it, "a fool to nature." Too often, unhappily, fathers and mothers thus try to check the best impulses in their children, under mistaken notions of right, and especially is this the case in many instances as regards the love of nature. ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... prospectus, by means of which they catch in their rat-trap the departmental rodent commonly called subscriber, sometimes stockholder, occasionally corresponding member or patron, but invariably fool. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... fairly obvious that you run several sorts of risk by refusing to help me in finding my daughter, and I can hardly believe that you know nothing about her movements. . . . Come, my man, don't be both a fool and a ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Skinner's two holidays running? A very beautiful and brilliant girl, the loveliest girl I think I ever saw! Really, Hugh Alston, though I am surprised and pained at your silence and duplicity, I must absolve you. I always regarded you as more or less a fool, but Joan Meredyth is a girl any man might fall in ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... girdle an astrolabe not bigger than the hollow of a man's hand, often two to three inches in diameter and looking at a distance like a medal." These men practiced both natural astrology astronomy, as well as judicial astrology which foretells events and of which Kepler said that "she, albeit a fool, was the daughter of a wise mother, to whose support and life the silly maid was indispensable." Isidore of Seville (A. D. 600-636) was the first to distinguish between the two branches, and they flourished side by side till Newton's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... play on his head, Smooth,' spoke Littlejohn, in a tantalizing sort of vein. 'He is less a fool ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... of the fourteenth century, there lived in a neighbouring forest a poor idiot named Soloman, or Salaun, as it is written in the Breton tongue. This idiot was known as the Fool of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... exterminating advertising signs. He was himself a large stockholder in a breakfast-food factory, which painted signs wherever it could secure space. These signs were not works of art, but they were distinctly helpful to business, and only a fool, in the opinion of the Honorable Erastus, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... with keen glances toward the illuminated kitchen window every time he passed it. Sometimes his mind was chaotic; sometimes clear. The emotions which had awakened in him within the week were complex enough to stagger a more intelligent man. And Marche was not a fool; he was the typical product of his environment—the result of school and college, and a New York business life carried on in keenest competition with men as remorseless in business as the social code permitted. Also, he went ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... might have done it very well. My horse would have trotted to Clifton within the hour, if left to himself, and I have almost broke my arm with pulling him in to that cursed broken-winded jade's pace. Morland is a fool for not keeping a horse and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... rival, even in his own lunatic sphere. This hint was not lost upon his companion, counsellor, and buffoon, the facetious Davy Dawdle, who had some humour, and a great deal of mischief, in his composition. He looked upon his patron as a fool, and his patron knew him to be both knave and fool; yet, the two characters suited each other so well, that they could hardly exist asunder. Davy was an artful sycophant, but he did not flatter in the usual way; on the contrary, he behaved en cavalier, and treated Sycamore, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... I have to thank for introducing her to her mother. What a fool I was to have come back. I thought that shame was covered up long ago. What ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... happened, he was greatly vexed; and, smiting his thigh, he exclaimed, "Ah! fool, thou knewest well that it boots not to heap favors on the vile; yet didst thou suffer thyself to be gulled by smooth words; and so thou hast brought upon thyself this mischief. But even now he shall not get off scot-free." And instantly he sent for his generals, and commanded them ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... From this very cask I have ze honor to drink also ze health of ze General St. Clair, and at one time of Daniel Boone. Eh bien! Long have I suffer in this wilderness; it is fifteen years that Eloy Deville was ze fool to leave France, to leave my native Lyons, and seek ze Terre promise—to find ze tree of natural sugar, ze plants also with wax candles for ze fruit, ze no work, no tax, no war, no king—ze paradise on ze ground! ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... flushed with defiance, until the Father Superior told him to sit down and not make a fool of himself, a command which, notwithstanding that the feeling of the Chapter had been so far entirely against the head of the Order, such was the Father Superior's authority, Brother Athanasius ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... thoughts of the departed. At least they all soon went over to Austin's and called for beer. My particular friends called for it twice. Then they all lit pipes. The old grocery keeper was good enough to say that I was no fool, if I did go off owing him four dollars. To the credit of human nature, let me here record that the fellows were touched by this remark reflecting upon my memory, and immediately made up a purse and paid the bill,—that is, they told the old man to charge it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... point with singular unanimity; each praised silence in others. Of all characteristics in human nature, this has been one of the most abiding. Mere superficial gleaning of what, in the long history of human expression, has been said by the fool or unsaid by the wise, shows that, for once, no difference of opinion has ever existed on this. "Even a fool," said the wisest of men, "when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise," and still more often, the wisest of men, when he spoke the highest wisdom, has been counted a fool. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... was all that Kenrick could ejaculate, as he paced up and down his study with agitated steps. "O Tracy, what an utter, utter ass, and fool, and wretch, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Williams, I was de cap'en. I called the signals. Dem niggers of mine couldn't learn no signals, so we jus' played lack we had some. I'd give some numbers to fool the Tuskegee niggers. But dem numbers didn't mean nothin'. I'd say, "two, four, six, eight, ten—tek dat ball, Homer, an' go roun' the end." Dat's de only sort of signals dem niggers could learn and sometimes dey missed dem. Dat's de reason we got beat and dem Tuskegee niggers ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... de Bolini, as he was called, was a man of tranquil mind, living a peaceful and quiet life above all things. He liked lettered men more than letters, and did not trouble to gain the reputation of a wit. He knew he was not a fool, and when he mixed with learned men he was quite clever enough to be ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the favored recipient had treated it with cold contempt, ruthlessly destroyed it or cast it into the wastepaper-basket? Many were the painful, blush-provoking thoughts that each terrible possibility suggested. She had long since decided that she had been a little fool, and that of course Seniors in college had better things to do than to answer silly girls' more silly letters, when one day on her regular visit to Barton Bump's store ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... any moment. If you saw a man hanging by a very slender thread over a great precipice where he would surely be dashed to pieces if the thread broke, and if you saw him thus risking his life willfully and without necessity, you would pronounce him the greatest fool in the world. One who commits sin is a greater fool. He suspends himself, as I have told you once before, over an abyss of eternal torments on the slender thread of his own life, that may break at any moment. ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... on and all the world was dark. Fool that he was, two years had passed since he had heard from her. She also was a consumptive; ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... a time thinking. "Curious! She knows I have things to say to her. They are unimportant but I can say them to no one else. She knows I avoid looking at her. There must be something—an attraction. She's a fool. I don't know. I should have put an end to our walks ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Money would buy what he wanted, and the ring on his finger was worth many louis, the only thing of value he had this side of France. But it was enough. A deer fled across his path, and a partridge blundered into his face. They had played him the man in the motley; let them beware of the fool's revenge. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... printers," said he, "are wretched ones. Keimer is a compound of fool and rogue. But this young man is manifestly of great promise ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... think your old hen 'd be such a fool, Miss Dalton," she said; "but I kind o' surmised the reason she's been missin', an' I found her to-day in a corner o' the haymow sittin' on five eggs. Now, wouldn't you s'pose at her age she'd know better than to try an' raise chickens ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to Nan in a fury and demanded if this were true. Nan curtly admitted that it was. Old Abe was so much taken aback by her coolness that he asked almost meekly what was her reason for doing such a fool trick. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pen is a two-edged tool, often turned by the fool against his own soul. So an honest author "chuckles" when his subscribers have lost their copies because this will enhance the value of his book! I ask, Can anything be better proven than the vileness of a man who is ever suspecting and looking for vileness ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... all creation did I stand alone, Still to the rocks my dreams a soul should find, Mine arms should wreathe themselves around the stone, My griefs should feel a listener in the wind; My joy—its echo in the caves should be! Fool, if ye will—Fool, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... said then,—but now I think, what a cussed fool I was. All my eye-flown bubbles were fated to be busted and melted, like the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... you he tells the truth, and tells it because he likes you, and wants to help you; but when he flatters you, he lies and deceives you, and does it to fool you, because he wants you to do something for him, or to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... particular way of thinking, which is not to be taught, and therefore not to be imitated by him who has it not from nature. How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... my legs, but I wasn't such a fool as not to see what a pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests' families how to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot's apron the blue border and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took a great square stone in the temple ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... a regular, and gettin' rid of me; and as I didn't want to be rid of him, I stopped persistin'; but now I wish I had persisted, for then he'd 'listed, and most likely would be alive now, through not bein' shot in the back by a city fool with ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... you, both as a man and as a Christian. If they, for their amusement, were to request you to cut off your right hand, you would not feel bound to comply with them. Do not, for their gratification, expose yourself in the condition of a fool, or an idiot. Do not, in order to please a party of thoughtless revellers, incur the displeasure of Almighty God, and run the hazard of ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... death except Adams himself, a good old man, whom they loaded with plunder, and day after day continued to treat with the most shocking cruelty, painting him all over with various colours, plucking the white hairs from his beard, and telling him he was a fool for living so long, and many other tortures which he bore with wonderful composure, praying ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... think they will stop the train for you, you fool!" said a man standing by. "You ought to have come sooner if you wanted to ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... that life, whether beautiful or not, is the artist's noblest study; and that, as the uses of a hand are independent of its beauty and will survive it, life with its obligations will survive love. "She has been a fool to think she must be loved ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock's shoulder again and again with his compasses. "You poor, dull-witted fool, would you ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he, being ardently attached to the hope of a second term, in the concrete, was duped by men who had liberty every way. He is the cat's-paw. By much dragging of chestnuts from the fire for others to eat, his claws are burnt off to the gristle, and he is thrown aside as unfit for further use. As the fool said of King Lear, when his daughters had turned him out-of-doors, "He's a shelled peascod." [That's a ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... Warble, you want to get over your fool idea that because a woman is slender she isn't adorable. These folks are up to date, snuff ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... be good business and good policy to have these few workers fool around the edge of the wreckage for five or ten minutes adjusting a dynamite blast, then hastily scramble away and consume as much more time before a tremendous roar announces the ugly work is done, but the onlookers doubt it. Sometimes, ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... up, Dad! His people did wire him that his mother was desperately ill. They merely wanted to get him away from the campaign. He'd been gambling, the pesky little fool, with some of the Rawhide crowd, was all out of cash and dared not tell his guardian. That's all there was to it. Soon's he gets his money he'll square up—thought perhaps he had, since Rawdon had enough to marry on. Lowndes owed him ten times what he ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... shut in together between four walls, within a few feet of one another. But with what, with whom, was I thus momentarily imprisoned? A new light flashed suddenly over the affair with a swift, illuminating brilliance—and I knew I was a fool, an utter fool! I was wide awake at last, and the horror was evaporating. My cursed nerves again; a dream, a nightmare, and the old result—walking in my sleep. The figure was a dream-figure. Many a time before had the actors in my dreams stood before me for some moments after ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... that. The drayman made a fool of himself. I proceeded upon true principles. That fellow knew ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... says Vee. "And I always thought that was perfectly silly. Besides, I don't believe we could fool anyone if we tried. It's much simpler not to bother. ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... but with me!—but I grow The fool of my own wishes, and forget The solitude which I have vaunted so Has lost its praise in this but one regret; There may be others which I less may show;— I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet I feel an ebb in my philosophy, And the tide rising ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... could not lay my hand upon it: but, after a thousand attempts to put him off from seeing it, I was at length obliged to bring it him. I thought he would have given me a severe reprimand, but he contented himself with saying: "Change that man, he is a fool; and desire him for the future, never to attempt a eulogy of me." I sent for him, scolded him, and, like me, he was let off for ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... to God—de whole worl' was crezzie dad same way!" She sank, trembling, into her chair. "Oh, no, no," she continued, shaking her head, "'tis not Miche Vignevielle w'at's crezzie." Her eyes lighted with sudden fierceness. "'Tis dad law! Dad law is crezzie! Dad law is a fool!" ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... I know it's a fool way... to blurt it out at you like that. I thought up a hundred ways to say it to you. I had a fine speech all by heart, but I can't remember a word of it. When I see you I can't even think straight. ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... theatres, cheap jewelry, and tight boots. He quotes poetry on the weather yard-arm, to the great dissatisfaction of Mr. Brewster, (to whom you will shortly be introduced,) who often confidentially assures the skipper that the third mate would have turned out a natural fool if his parents had not providentially sent him ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... me, the more vigorously, I suspect, because he found me resolute. When he could think of no new way of stating his case—his case against Anita—he said: "You are a fool, young man—that's clear. I wonder such a fool was ever able to get together as much property as report credits you with. But—you're the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... in a voice that hardly passed his throat. "What my friends have been saying all along is true. They warned me against you from the first, but I wouldn't believe them. I was a fool, and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... nuthin'; but that fool dream was rattlin' round in Jonadab's skull like a bean in a blowgun, and he sees a chance ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the thoughts of many minds in many ages. It is no simple, no superficial thing, nor to be estimated by superficial understandings. An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is, however, sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces and put together, at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance, and complexity, composed of far other wheels and springs and balances and counteracting and cooeperating ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... who was a great coward, drew back, and said he cared not for her and that none but a fool would fight for a girl who loved ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... traveller gave himself up for lost; his arms dropped by his side; he stared wildly at us, with pale face and eyes opened wide with a look of helpless fright. Restraining with difficulty a shout of laughter, I said to him: "Did you leave Jaffa to-day?" but so completely was his ear the fool of his imagination, that he thought I was speaking Arabic, and made a faint attempt to get out the only word or two of that language which he knew. I then repeated, with as much distinctness as I could command: "Did—you—leave—Jaffa—to-day?" ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... know what it is to be in spontaneous relations with God—where the Divine Object works upon the soul spontaneously? It is that which prevents me from saying Mass, because I make a fool of myself. At any point I am apt to be so influenced by God as to be utterly deprived of physical force, to sink down helpless. At my brother's house they expect it and get me a chair. A few moments on a chair, and I am ready to go on. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... unruly engine, wildly striking Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer; Hast thou the knack? pamper it not with liking; But if thou want it, buy it not too dear. Many affecting wit beyond their power Have got to be a dear fool for an hour."—HERBERT. ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... know now what I never knew before—the meaning of the common saying, A fool you can neither bend nor break. Pray heaven I may never have a wise fool for my friend! There is nothing more intractable.—"My resolve is fixed!"—Why so madman say too; but the more firmly they believe in their delusions, the more they stand in ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... to notice it. I was suffered to walk down-stairs without being called back. I sallied forth into the street, but no clerk was sent after me, nor did the publisher call after me from the drawing-room window. I have been told since, that he considered me either a madman or a fool. I leave you to judge how much he was in the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... a sharper!" he ejaculated to himself. "What a fool I was to be taken in by his smooth tongue! He took me for a greeny from the ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... said the skipper, speaking loud enough for all on board to hear, "and to let you see for yourself what a confounded fool you are, I'll fetch her up ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... volume, extended and spread out before the eyes of all men, to be seen and read of all. It is certain, if these things,—all of them in their orders and harmonies, or any of them in their beings and qualities,—were considered in relation to God's majesty, they would teach and instruct both the fool and the wise man in the knowledge of God. How many impressions hath he made in the creatures, which reflect upon any seeing eye the very image of God! To consider of what a vast and huge frame the heavens and the earth are, and yet but one ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... observe that so many, and such conflicting statements, respecting public measures, I believe never were before made by a body of persons dwelling within limits so confined as those of Harmony. Some of the ci-devant "communicants" call Robert Owen a fool, whilst others brand him with still more opprobrious epithets: and I never could get two of them to agree as to the primary causes of ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... course followed by April Fool's Day. This part was taken by Fred Ames, in a suit of figured chintz, with ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... she would sit in state, the queen of scholars! Here she would realize her dream of being the beloved teacher bringing light and joy to her children! But the desks before her had an abstract angularity that bruised her sentiment and made her shrink. She winced, feeling she had been a fool in her anticipations. She had brought her feelings and her generosity to where neither generosity nor emotion were wanted. And already she felt rebuffed, troubled by the new atmosphere, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... fool game and pay the same amount of attention to your political fortunes,' I said to him, 'you would have a right to aspire to the Presidency of the United States.' And what do you suppose he said ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... clutches, if he does not possess an amount of tact sufficient to cope with them. A man who desires to tackle the Gipsies must have his hands out of his pockets, "all his buttons on," "his head screwed upon the right place," and no fool, or he will be swamped before he leaves the place. This I experienced myself a week or two since. During the months of November and December of last year, my friend, the Illustrated London News, had a number of faithful sketches showing Gipsy life ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... exclaimed. "I have been a dundering fool for four weeks by the Moon! I might just as well have been smoking ever since I contrived this self-ventilating arrangement. The compartment becomes a perfectly clean vacuum at each operation, yet I had to wait for this bed clothing to catch ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... that there wasn't any blue from the typewriter ribbon daubed on her cheeks!... He ceased his rocking; appraised her. A part of her brain was wondering what he would do; a part longing to smile temptingly at him; a part coldly commanding, "You will not be a little fool—he isn't interested in you, and you won't try to ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... our first evening at the Ritz, we were looking over the theatrical offerings advertised upon the wall by the elevator at the hotel, when whom should we meet but "Auntie," the patrician relative of the Gilded Youth. She recognized us in our civilian clothes, and it fell to me to make the fool blunder of complicating our formal greetings with gaiety. Auntie's troubled face would have caught Henry's quick sensitive eyes. But Auntie's voice brushed aside the levity ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... pleased the gout to take The reverend Croly from the stage, Or Southey, for our quiet's sake, Or Mr. Fletcher, Cupid's sage, Or, damme! namby-pamby Poole,— Or any other clown or fool! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... can find you several beautiful ladies—beautiful, that is to say, with the aid of one of the costumers up the street and a liberal supply of cosmetics—who will inveigle any young man you want dealt with into any sort of situation, provided he is fool enough and the pay is good. I'm an all-round man still, Wingate, but my nose is a little closer to the ground than ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of prospects if they did not then act intelligently upon the clues secured. Not only should you keep your eyes and ears open for indications of opportunities to succeed, but you should be ready in advance to take instant advantage of any you may discover. What a fool a miner would be if, after finding rich prospects of gold, he were to lose his chance to someone else because he did not know how to file a mining claim! Could there be a greater failure in salesmanship than learning about a big contract to be let, and being unprepared ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... say the same word over and over again, many times. It was that way when I went out on the battlefield to help Captain Herrick. As I ran along, stumbling over the dead and wounded, I heard these voices crying out: 'Fool! Fool! Don't do it! You mustn't do it! You're a coward! You know you're a coward! You're going to be killed! You're a little ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... Sam was a fool. But the large world of such Has thousands—better taught, alike absurd, And less sublime. Of fame he soon got much, Where distant cataracts spout, of him men heard. Alas for Sam! Had he aright preferred ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... that money can't purchase!" said the prince. "He is a fool who wouldn't make use of your services, and if you have such good sight, look and tell me whether it is far to the iron castle, and what is now going on there?" "If you rode by yourself, sir," answered Sharpsight, "maybe you wouldn't get there within a year; ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... a fool! take care of yourself! It is time you would begin. The property is yours now. You are morally responsible for it, and can surely make some better use of it than giving it away to rich men around Pittsburg. Go at once and attend ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... fool a little, else I shan't know I am writing to you. And really I must break out somewhere, [224] life is such a solemn abstraction in Washington to a clergyman. What has he to do, but what's solemn? The gayety passes him by; the politics pass him by. Nobody wants ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... indignantly, his lean frame almost quivering, "it is a wonder to me that you can look up at that picture and reflect that you are trying to drag John Burnit's son into this fool scheme." ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... is, I'd bet my life on it," she insisted, as we, too, hurried back to the table and took up our towels and napkins once more. "There's no mistakin' them signs, and you'd be a little fool if you wasn't to help him along. Men's all sort of bashful, some more 'n others, and it's a good thing to help along. I like the looks of that fellow—he'd be awful silly and ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... wrong with me?" he muttered. "Am I sickening for a fever before I have been forty-eight hours in Cairo? What fool's notion is this in my brain? Where have I seen her before? In Paris? St. Petersburg? London? Charmazel! ... Charmazel! ... What has the name to do with me? Ziska-Charmazel! It is like the name of a romance or a gypsy tune. Bah! I must be dreaming! Her ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... are but artful devices to inebriate and fool my own imagination, my imagination is on its guard, and reason shall not, this time, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... united their forces in Spain. The whole Peninsula was in revolt, and the counter-revolution was not impossible after all. He reflected with terror on the sarcasms which he had flung on young Pompey. He knew him to be a fool and a savage. "Hang me," he said, "if I do not prefer an old and kind master to trying experiments with a new and cruel one. The laugh will be on the other ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... restrained it and waited to see if he would ask for it. He poured his tale of woe into my sympathizing ear for twenty minutes, and finally turned away and left me without his dues. As he walked away, I called him back and said, "Look here, my friend, do you know you are a fool?" ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... repeated too often that the enormous revenues of this Nation could not be collected without becoming a charge on all the people whether or not they directly pay taxes. Everyone who is paying or the bare necessities of fool and shelter and clothing, without considering the better things of life, is indirectly paying a national tax. The nearly 20,000,000 owners of securities, the additional scores of millions of holders of insurance policies and depositors in savings banks, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... question about,' answered Emilius, in high indignation. 'Making a caricature of yourself, and making a fool of yourself, are among the pleasures you are always driving after at ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... education: "They thought only;" he exclaimed, "of making me stupid, and of stifling all my powers. I was a younger son. I coped with my brother. They feared the consequences; they annihilated me. I was taught only to play and to hunt, and they have succeeded in making me a fool and an ass, incapable of anything, the laughing-stock and disdain of everybody." Madame de Saint-Simon was overpowered with compassion, and did everything to calm M. de Berry. Their strange tete-a-tete lasted ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... life, torments itself about frivolities, about neckcloths, and the passionate desire to appear a man. Then the young fellow swells himself out; his swagger is all the more portentous because it is exercised on nothings. Yet if he envies a fool who is elegantly dressed, he is also capable of enthusiasm over talent, and of genuine admiration for genius. Such defects as these, when they have no root in the heart, prove only the exuberance of sap,—the ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... Philistine masses must appear with the halo of true sons of 'holy order,' the daughter of Heaven rich in blessings, and to this halo the school-boy attempts of these Terrorists help them. Such a silly fool, lost in his fantastical imaginings, does not even see that he is only a puppet, whose strings are pulled by a cleverer one in the Terrorist wings; he does not see that the fear and terror he causes only serve to so deaden all the senses of the Philistine ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... considered and reconsidered the subject we talked upon today. Nothing on earth shall make me risk the possibility of the Prince's goodness to me furnishing an opportunity for a single scurrilous fool's presuming to hint even that he had, in the slightest manner, departed from the slightest engagement. The Prince's right, in point of law and justice, on the present occasion to recall the appointment given, I hold to be incontestible; but, believe me, I am right in the proposition ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... cannot abandon. The truth is that people love to lose themselves, and this is a kind of ramble of the mind, which is unwilling to subject itself to attention, to order, to rules. It seems as though we are so accustomed to games and jesting that we play the fool even in the most serious occupations, and when we least ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... on the plains once he got an idea in his head—he was that kind—Lord, you ought to seen the fight he put up at Spottsylvania! He got to Carson City with two wagons, a driver and a cook—had eight thousand dollars with him, too, the damn fool. Cook got into row, gambling, cut a man, and was jugged. Old Waite wouldn't leave even a nigger in that sort of fix—natural fighter—likes any kind of row. So, he hung on there at Carson, but had sense enough—Lord ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... the right of us. This was the guide, who I believe must have been born utterly without the organ of locality. He had found some shepherds, he told us subsequently, not long after he had left us, but then the fool of a fellow could not find his way back to us, to the spot where we agreed to wait for him. There was a great deal of shouting before we could bring him to our bearings: the fog muffled the sound, adding ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... savour. applied to an insipid mannerless man as "brid" (cold) is to a fool. "Ahl Zauk" is a man of pleasure, a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... whilst each himself survey'd, He sat with pleasure, though himself was play'd: The miser grinn'd whilst avarice was drawn, Nor thought the faithful likeness was his own; His own dear self no imag'd fool could find, But saw a ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... him East before meeting him here. Mr. Davies, I am glad to relieve your mind of one uncomfortable theory in connection with this affair. I wish I could extenuate or explain Willett's conduct as easily, but that young man is a fool of the first magnitude." ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... will not remain silent. He whom thou forcest to wake up will not remain asleep. The faces which thou makest keen will not remain stupid. The mouth which thou openest will not remain closed. He whom thou makest intelligent will not remain ignorant. He whom thou instructest will not remain a fool. These are they who destroy evils. These are the officials, the lords of what is good. These are the crafts-folk who make what existeth. These are they who put on their bodies again the heads that have ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... "Don't say such things to me!" he cried. "I've heard that sanctimonious stuff before. It's of no use. You can't fool me! I don't know any such ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... his own length. But all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can jump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make five jumps a second too—seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in one little second—for he don't fool away any time stopping and starting—he does them both at the same time; you'll see, if you try to put your finger on him. Now that's a common, ordinary, third-class flea's gait; but you take an Eyetalian FIRST-class, that's been the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... smart of you to allow yourself to be robbed," rejoined Paul quickly. "No thief would have gotten the chance to fool me that way. I would not have been so friendly with a strange man as to allow him the chance to get ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... scarcely had the question been put, when the old, grave host broke out in a furious storm of abuse, especially against the interpreter, who was overwhelmed with bitter reproaches for helping a "foreign devil" to make a fool of his own countrymen. All my protestations were in vain, and I had to go away with my object ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... as blind and unjoyous as they,—what plea have you to make, what shelter to claim, except that charity which suffereth long and is kind? We will strive not to withhold it; while there is life, there is hope. At forty, it is said, every man is a fool or a physician. We will wait and see which vocation you select as your own, for the broken ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... expected anything from such a source as that. Never, despite one's wishes, was anything possible of acquisition thence... This is usually the case. Felitzata, as a clever woman indeed (albeit one cold of heart), was for having her son accounted a God's fool, and thereby gaining some provision against her ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... meet me here—an' I war seated on yonder log waitin' for her. Jest then some Injuns war comin' through the gleed. That girl ye saw war one o' 'em. She had a nice bullet-pouch to sell, an' I bought it. The girl would insist on puttin' it on; an' while she war doin' so, I war fool enough to gie her a kiss. Some devil hed put it in my head. Jest at that minnit, who shed come right into the gleed but Marian herself! I meant nothin' by kissin' the Injun; but I s'pose Marian thort I did: she'd already talked ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... back to the commander of the Patrol. "Lieutenant Gavigan," he said sharply, "there are more ways than one a policeman can lose his head. One is by being a fool. Your Commissioner is keenly interested in this work of ours and is giving us all the assistance he can. Each one of my boys carries his personal permission to go where he chooses. Roy, show ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... fool's thot. Bide till you'm grawed cool anyways. 'Tis very hard this fallin' 'pon a virtuous member like what you be; but 'tedn' a straange tale 'tall. The man was like other men, I doubt; the maid was like other maids. You ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... me, fool!' was the conjugal reply; and Burbo, satisfied with the dear assurance, strode through the apartment, and sought ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... was hardly likely, he thought bitterly, that he should succeed where other and better men had failed. He had been a fool to succumb to the temptation that had been too hard for him to resist. He knew her well enough to know beforehand what her answer would be. The very real fear for her safety that the thought of the coming expedition gave him, her nearness in the mystery of the Eastern night, the lights, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... but with me! but I grow The fool of my own wishes, and forget The solitude which I have vaunted so Has lost its praise in this ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... he asked tartly. "With six major operations this morning and a probable meningitis diagnosis ahead of me this afternoon I think I might be spared the babblings of an hysterical nurse!" Casually over his shoulder he nodded at the girl. "You're a fool!" he said, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... always do; everybody tries to tease and plague me now. You and Jean, and father, and that old fool, Rouel, are all alike," and Annot ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... new, weird business, and his father advised him not to fool with it. His college chum said to him, as they chatted together for the last time before leaving school, that it would be grewsomely lonely to sit in a dimly lighted flag-station and have that inanimate machine tick ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... drubbed and roundly basted, and my poor back and sides are most womanishly tender. I go abroad no more without Excalibur." He tapped his sword hilt as he spoke. Huguette glared fiercely up at him. "Will it teach you not to play the fool again?" asked, with a vicious snap of ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... labelled, Grand Entrance to Bamboozlem, and was published by Humphrey shortly afterwards. The queen is represented at the head of a procession, all the members of which (herself included) are mounted on braying "jackasses." A figure, intended no doubt for Alderman Wood, habited in a fool's cap and jester's dress, holds her by the hand; the lady who follows him, playing on the fiddle and wearing a Scotch bonnet, is meant for Lady Ann Hamilton (she is named "Lady Ann Bagpipe" in the sketch); Bergami (immediately behind) carries a banner inscribed "Innocence"; ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... same intolerance of anything higher than the low level, the same incapacity to comprehend simple devotion and lofty aims, the same dislike of a man who comes and rebukes by his silent presence the vices in which he takes no part. And it is a great deal easier to say, 'Poor fool! enthusiastic fanatic!' than it is to lay to heart the lesson that lies ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... name, and therefore you would imagine that she is one; and yet surely she takes the most varied and even unlike forms. For do we not say that the intemperate has pleasure, and that the temperate has pleasure in his very temperance,—that the fool is pleased when he is full of foolish fancies and hopes, and that the wise man has pleasure in his wisdom? and how foolish would any one be who affirmed that all these opposite pleasures ...
— Philebus • Plato
... It's very likely I have money for you, when I'm in such need of it myself! Go ask Dietrich; he has his pockets full, and a big heap besides. But don't be such a fool as to ask him for just one mean little franc; ask for five. I'll use two or three of them; tell him you'll pay ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... course, in the repetition of former successes. No; I even withdraw that,—not the repetition, only the conservation, the feeding, of former successes. The success is in the creation. When a world is once created, any fool can ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... fool," cried the foreman, "don't you know she's gone plumb wild about you? Didn't she come begging to me to ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... and the leader of the House of Commons in a necktie you do not envy. That is the kind of thing you want to take the nonsense out of you. If you are not decanted off from yourself every few days or weeks, you will think it sacrilege to brush a cobweb from your cork by and by. O little fool, that has published a little book full of little poems or other sputtering tokens of an uneasy condition, how I love you for the one soft nerve of special sensibility that runs through your exiguous organism, and the one phosphorescent particle in your unilluminated intelligence! But if ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fool," said Stubbs. "We're still in Germany, remember. You may need that gun before we ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... morning—all gone!" Uncle Chris drove the point home with a gesture. "I did what I could. When I found that there were only a few hundreds left, for your sake I took a chance. All heart and no head! There you have Christopher Selby in a nutshell! A man at the club—a fool named—I've forgotten his damn name—recommended Amalgamated Dyestuffs as a speculation. Monroe, that was his name, Jimmy Monroe. He talked about the future of British Dyes now that Germany was out of the race, and . . . well, the long and short of it was ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... "I want to thank you and Mrs. Ballard for picking Mrs. Garvey up the other day when our fool chauffeur went to sleep at the switch. It—it ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... the washin' tubs, A fool came neist; but life has rubs; Foul were the roads, and fu' the dubs, And jaupit a' was he: He danced up, squintin' through a glass, And grinn'd, i' faith, a bonnie lass! He thought to win, wi' front o' brass, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Stupid!" he said to the moth, as it flew away. "A man goes and gets a girl to care for him, and then he goes and plays some fool trick—like as not this chap had his sheet tied—and leaves her alone the rest of her life. Just look at this sweet old angel, will you? it's a shame. No, sir, no woman in ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... characters; I said he was a very universal man, quite a man of the world[1134]. JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but one may be so much a man of the world as to be nothing in the world. I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."' BOSWELL. 'That was a fine passage.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir: there was another fine passage too, which he struck out: "When I was a young man, being ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... quickly observed this peculiar predisposition to a military life in his subjects, and took advantage of it to fool them to the top of their bent. The victories achieved beneath his banner reflect scarcely less honour on them than on him, and the memory of them associates his name in their hearts by the strongest bonds of sympathy that can bind a Frenchman—the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... I was dog-tired for once in my life, but I had not done any tramp from Caraquet that day, if I had told the bald truth. Only I had no idea of telling it, nor any wish to explain to Billy Jones that I had been making a fool of myself elsewhere, doing a solid week of hospital nursing over a filthy boy I had found on my just-finished road the morning I had really left Caraquet. From the look of him I guessed he had got hurt cutting down a tree and not getting out of the way ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... if I had put such a question, he would have set me down as a fool! Nobody can say when she will be ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... upon this great past and learned from it she has gone forward to greater and more splendid human triumph; but where she has ignored this past and forgotten and sneered at it, she has shown the cloven hoof of poor, crucified humanity,—she has played, like other empires gone, the world fool! ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... can the war last? | | | |It's a fool question, because there is no certain | |answer. But when there is an unanswerable question, | |it is the custom to look up precedents. Here are a | |few ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... wolf, disguised in wool; He was a viper in the breast; He was a villain, or the tool Of greater villains; at the best, A blind enthusiast and fool! ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... apparel, such as slippers, &c., and also her guitar, all of which had been concealed in the ceiling since the sad close of her history. Numbers flocked to see them; but, as it was a mere pleasantry, the hoax was well received, and ended in the neighborhood of Danvers with the privileged "April fool's day" of its date, although it may even yet ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... to face his enemies with spirit, may be accounted sufficiently bold; but he who braves the anger of his friends, is fool-hardy." ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and endeavor to save the inexperienced girl from the dangers of a bad marriage, if possible. To perform this feat, and not to degenerate into a Spanish duenna, a dragon, or a Mrs. General—who was simply a fool—is a very difficult task. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... with his knife. Luckily the blade missed its mark, grazing only my ribs, and before he could strike again I had him by the wrist, and the blow he meant for me went home in his own neck. After that, 'twas easy work to hold off the other two, one of whom was the drunken fool who had blabbed his secret days ago, had I only heeded it, in my sick cabin. Finding me stubborn, and further passage barred, they sheered off with a curse and hastened forward. I durst not follow them; for it might be a feint to decoy me from my post. So, with all the haste ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... this one has already served his time in Elsass, where he went when he left here as a boy. But, Donnerwetter, why should that dumb fool take ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... of his listeners, which increased, through giggles and snickers, to a great outburst of laughter. To his disgust and dismay, he learned that the simple phrase he had repeated and repeated was nothing else than "I am so drunk." He had been made a fool of. Over and over, solemnly and gloriously, he, Frederick Travers, had announced how drunk he was. After that, he slipped quietly out of the room whenever it was sung. Nor could Polly's later explanation that the last word was "happy," and not "drunk," reconcile him; for she had been compelled ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... glittered so at first sight. On that point I could reassure him. My open jealousy made me admire soberly. But when he told me, quite suddenly, as though on an afterthought, that he meant to make a play of it and not a story, I had the solid satisfaction at that moment of calling him a fool. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... he fares ill, and thereby does a greater and more acceptable work than another, who fasts much, prays much, endows churches, makes pilgrimages, and burdens himself with great deeds in this place and in that. Such a fool opens wide his mouth, looks for great works to do, and is so blinded that he does not at all notice this greatest work, and praising God is in his eyes a very small matter compared with the great idea he has formed of the works of his own devising, in which he perhaps praises himself ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... like his wit that was to use the same. But with my verses he his mistress won, Who doated on the dolt beyond all measure. But see, for you to heaven for phrase I run, And ransack all Apollo's golden treasure! Yet by my troth, this fool his love obtains, And I lose you for ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... written in the style of a child; the Letters are not so simple; they are the work of a child, rearranged—with the minimum of alteration, no doubt, and yet perceptibly—by a governess. And the governess was no fool: narrow, jealous, provincial, she might be; but she was an acute and vigorous woman, who had gained by a peculiar insight, a peculiar ascendancy. That ascendancy she meant to keep. No doubt it was true that technically she ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey |
