"Foolery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her tears. "Enough of this foolery," she said pleadingly. "It is the feast of Dedication, not of Lots. There needs no ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... whose bewitching style, Life's tedious minutes can beguile, Makes us, with him, forget uneasy care, And not remember what we are. Who by a charm, which no one can withstand, Enchanting poison can command, Can make us share his pleasing foolery, And from dull ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... is not always plainly dressed, but takes airs of quality, and rises above her original condition, so as to attire herself gracefully in magnificent apparel. In her manners she mingles elegance with foolery, force with delicacy and grandeur, or even haughtiness with plainness and modesty. If, sometimes, to please the people, she gives a loose to farce, it is only the gay folly of a moment, from which she immediately returns, and which lasts no longer than ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... for Wilmot, I could do (I think) something so near your meaning in Sir Gilbert, that I let him go with a pang. Assumption has charms for me—I hardly know for how many wild reasons—so delightful, that I feel a loss of, oh! I can't say what exquisite foolery, when I lose a chance of being someone in voice, etc., not at all like myself. But—I speak quite freely, knowing you will not mistake me—I know from experience that we could find nobody to hold the play together in Wilmot if I didn't do it. I think I could touch the gallant, generous, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... their trial in Westminster-Hall for blowing down some city, which cannon had been fired by his secret orders, would not every one who knew the affair both despise, and in their judgment condemn, such a foolery? But how does judging men for doing that which He has before determined they should do, reflect upon the wisdom and goodness of the Almighty? It is said of Nero, that he secretly ordered Rome to be set on fire, and then laid the blame upon the Christians, ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... said, 'neither of you was to trouble me to-night: you have paid no regard to my wish for quiet! It is time the foolery should end! I am weary of it. A woman cannot marry a double man—or half a man either—without at least being able to tell which is which ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... Alethes Noctroff (1657), in which he elaborately dealt with the charge as both false and frivolous. In one passage he offers a qualified defense of such an act: "I cannot but bewail the exceeding rudeness of our times to suffer such foolery to be prosecuted as of some high and notorious crime. Suppose it were (as it is not) true, may not some eminent congregational brother be found guilty of the same act? Is it not much short of drinking an health ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "Let them proclaim what they please; but, in the end, we shall find that all this foolery has only made more work for the armorers ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dirty cur," said his mother. "I ran off like a fool when I heerd of your good fortune, and see the condition that baggage left me in—my teeth knocked in and my eye knocked out, and all for your foolery, because you couldn't keep ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... something else then. Daisy, Daisy," said he, shaking her shoulders gently, "this religious foolery is spoiling you. Don't you go and make yourself stupid. Why I don't know you. What is all this ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... went from the girl herself to his hostess. What foolery was this? Why should Johnnie Consadine dress herself as a servant and wait on ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... into the realm of pure foolery. It is a patent declaration: "This is only a play; laugh and we are content." Once more we venture to point a parallel on the modern stage, in the vaudeville comedian who interlards his dancing with comments ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... filthy than the vilest and most base tatterdemalion of the stews, and with him rare Cethegus, a senator in all his bravery! Wise judgment! excellent disguises! I know not whether most to marvel at the insane and furious temerity of this one, or at the idiotic foolery of that! Well fitted are ye both for a great purpose. And now—may the dark furies hunt you ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... it is a fate that plagues me In this mans foolery; I may be murthered, While he stands on protection of his folly. Avant, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... to Aunt Rebecca's menagerie, for those birds were not to be had for nothing; and Cluffe, who loved money as well, at least, as any man in his Majesty's service, would have seen the two tribes as extinct as the dodo, before he would have expended sixpence upon such tom-foolery, had it not been for Dangerfield's investments in animated nature. 'The hound! as if two could not play at that game.' But he had an uneasy and bitter presentiment that they were birds of paradise, and fifty other cursed birds beside, and that in this costly competition ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hurt', the telegram says. 'Will wire again in a few hours'. I suppose it's the same old story: an explosive and a panic. Somebody probably tried to stir a fire with a stick of frozen dynamite, or some such foolery as that." The scorn in the words came from the effort at self-mastery. Then the professor rose and looked about him vaguely for his hat. When he had found it, "Come along," he bade Brenton shortly. "We've got ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... you—looking so well too. And quite smart. Your aunts dressed you up. I thought I must look at you. I'm staying just round the corner, and my first thought was 'I wonder how she's getting on in all that tom-foolery. You bet she's keeping her head.' And so you are. One can see ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... were sole and peaceable dominator over all Europe, Asia, and Africa, that, if you marry, you will surely be one of the horned brotherhood of Vulcan. Hereby may you perceive how much I do attribute to the wise foolery of our morosoph Triboulet. The other oracles and responses did in the general prognosticate you a cuckold, without descending so near to the point of a particular determination as to pitch upon what vocation amongst ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... been told that keeping Christmas in the German sense was coming to be very general in England; but her shrewd, practical turn of mind induced her to hope that the English would never go "such lengths in foolery." At Hanover, she wrote, the tradespeople had been for many weeks in full employ, framing and mounting the embroideries of the ladies and girls of all classes; of all classes, for not a folly or extravagancy existed among the great but it was imitated ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... they say, when Plummer once had to take one of Wotherspoon's classes; some foolery about a second aorist. Thank goodness, I don't understand the profound dispute.—Oh, do look at that ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... went through the pleasant foolery of casting a line, of drawing the bait, of lifting the hook, and of reeling in. "Four pounds, Jack. He fit hard, as old ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Social ambition could get little hold of him; let parvenus give balls half in doors, half out, and light two thousand lamps, and waste their substance battling and manoeuvring for fashionable distinction; he had nothing to gain by such foolery, nothing to lose by modest living; he was the twenty-ninth Baron of Beaurepaire. So wise, so proud, so little vain, so strong in health and wealth and honor, one would have said nothing less than an earthquake could shake ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday foolery; if we walk not in the trodden paths our very petticoats ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... of an upright statesman, or the more brilliant exploits of a heroic warrior; not a memento, to record conjugal affection, filial piety, or grateful friendship. The iconoclasts proceeded not with the impetuous fury of fanatics, but with the extravagant foolery of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... tropical sun scorch it, and it would remain as sweet and fresh as ever; and Bradley said that there was more flesh-and-muscle-producing material in a cubic inch of the sausage than in an entire dinner of roast turkey and other such foolery. ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... but to this hard, dull work he devoted himself in a manner that astonished some of the other brigadiers whose ideas of the position involved a showy staff of officers and a deal of picturesque posing in resplendent uniforms. But Grant had no patience with such foolery. He had work to do and when his headquarters were established at Cairo, Illinois, he took charge of them himself, keeping his eyes on all the details like any careful business man. In fact he was, as far as appearances ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... meant to be "fresh." He was always ready for foolery with the girls, but he was not the sort to go too far. Now he blamed himself for having moved too fast. He had offended her sense of what was the ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... said Clarence, dashing aside the obstacles before the door, 'I'm not going to stay here to be treated in this way. If it hadn't been for your foolery in sticking up the notices we should have been friends with the Indians now. I don't want to quarrel with any Bogallala. And you have the cheek to ask me if I'm in a funk, and to want to feel my hands. Well, it just ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... Carton, "and they hid your clothes, and had bull-fights and all sorts of foolery. That was in Nineteen: old 'Thirsty' was the prefect for that passage, and he doesn't care tu'pence what fellows do. But Allingford's put a stop to almost all that kind of thing: he's captain of the school, and ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... striking and more terrifying than the way in which the phenomena of the ecstatic—which have often been seized upon by sentimental theorisers as proofs of spiritual exaltation—may be plainly seen to bridge the gulf between the innocent foolery of ordinary hypnotic patients and the degraded and repulsive ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... rejoined Mrs Squeers. 'If the young man comes to be a teacher here, let him understand, at once, that we don't want any foolery about the boys. They have the brimstone and treacle, partly because if they hadn't something or other in the way of medicine they'd be always ailing and giving a world of trouble, and partly because it spoils their appetites and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... came slithering out of a public house playing a concertina. Soames watched him for a moment dance crazily on the pavement to his own drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to avoid contact with this piece of drunken foolery. A night in the lock-up! What asses people were! But the man had noticed his movement of avoidance, and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the street. 'I hope they'll run him in,' thought Soames viciously. 'To have ruffians like that about, with women out alone!' A woman's figure ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "I think of nothing else. I think shame to be dangling here at home, and going through with this foolery of education, while others, no older than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have lost my labour, was a proverbial expression, which was also possibly the refrain of some song. Aeschylus means to say that all Euripides' phrases are cast in the same mould, and that his style is so poor and insipid that one can adapt to it any foolery one wishes; as for the phrase he adds to every one of the phrases his rival recites, he chooses it to insinuate that the work of Euripides is labour lost, and that he would have done just as well not to meddle with tragedy. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... are to take one miserable little faculty, our one-legged, knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, rough-skinned, underfed, and perpetually irritated and grumpy intellect, or analytical curiosity rather (a diseased appetite), and let it swell till it eats up every other function? Away with such foolery. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Rights Convention, a failure. Could I see it made up of women whose dress would indicate their translation from cowardice to courage; from slavery to freedom; from the kingdom of fancy and fashion and foolery to the kingdom of reason and righteousness, then would I hope for the elevation of woman, aye, and of man too, as perhaps I have never yet hoped. What should be the parts and particulars of such dress, I am incapable of saying. Whilst the "Bloomer dress" is unspeakably ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... I have declared to you By what means we escaped away; Now we bid our cares adieu, Though the King did lose the day. To him I was true, And that he well knew; 'Tis God that must his comfort be, Else all our policy Had been but foolery, For the King no longer ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... mumming and foolery a-going on yonder; and I suppose ye join the merry-making, as they ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the boy as much as any of them; but he is ashamed to do so in our company, and seems to say—Ha' done with your nonsense, youngsters: what will the laird and that other gentleman think of me if I give way to such foolery?' ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... hilariously wasted their scanty store of Indian corn by making an image with the sheaves, and wreathing it with the painted garlands of autumn foliage. They crowned the King of Christmas and bent the knee to the Lord of Misrule! Such fantastic foolery is inconceivable in a Puritan community, and the Maypole which was its emblem was the most inconceivable of all. This "flower-decked abomination," ornamented with white birch bark, banners, and blossoms, was the center of the tipsy jollity of Merrymount. As Morton ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... little reverence to the flag of his master! Hark ye, Mr Ark, we will remember the circumstance when questioned at the Old Bailey. Send the people to their guns, sir, and ware the ship round, to put an end at once to this foolery, or we shall have him sending a boat aboard to ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... happened so far is through our not having the sense to keep quiet—worrying them with guns and such foolery. And losing our heads, and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn't any more safety than where we were. They don't want to bother us yet. They're making their things—making all the things they couldn't bring with them, getting ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... music, like a comic opera of Gilbert and Sullivan. There is life and movement; but it is a scenic and burlesque life. There is wit, criticism, and caricature;, but it does not cut deep, and it is neither hot nor fierce. There is some pleasant tom-foolery; but at a comic opera we enjoy this graceful nonsense. We see in every page the trace of a powerful mind; but it is a mind laughing at its own creatures, at itself, at us. Lothair would be a work of art, if ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... when men take the right course to escape his hellish snares? This, therefore, is the reason why the truly humbled is opposed, while the presumptuous goes on by wind and tide. The truly humble, Satan hates; but he laughs to see the foolery of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to be a Dutchman to-day; a Frenchman to-morrow; [or in the shape of two countries at once, as, a German from the waist downward, all slops; and a Spaniard from the hip upward, no doublet:] Unless he have a fancy to this foolery, as it appears he hath, he is no fool for fancy, as you would have it appear ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... or Pergamus abiding to this day by their masters' tombs? or either Chabrias or Diotimus by that of Adrianus? O foolery! For what if they did, would their masters be sensible of It? or if sensible, would they be glad of it? or if glad, were these immortal? Was not it appointed unto them also (both men and women,) to become old in time, and then to die? And these once dead, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... joke, such as Mark Twain loved—a carefully prepared, harmless bit of foolery. He wrote Robert Collier, threatening him with all sorts of revenge, declaring that ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... their scenes? Exits and entrances, the essential details of the action, Luck directed painstakingly, as always he had done. Why, then, said camera man to assistants, should he let those fellows go in and ball up the dramatic business and turn whole scenes into farce with their foolery? And why had he chosen Tracy Gray Joyce as leading man? And that eye-rolling, limp sentimentalist, Lenore Honiwell, as his leading woman? Luck was known to despise these two, personally and professionally. They ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... crowd laughed; and Anthony laughed, too, with a strange sob in his throat at the gallant foolery, which, after all, was as much to the point as a deal that the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... to some foolery. Then I saw littered about his feet the shattered remains of the best of our electrometers. "What's up, man?" said I. "You've smashed ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... to anger him too much; what fine foolery is this in a woman, to use those men most forwardly they love most? If I should lose him thus, I were rightly served. I hope he's not so much himself, to take it to th'heart: how now? will ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... charlatans, those clownish jugglers, mole-catchers, ratkillers, who throw spells over beasts, who sell secrets which they have not, defiled these times with the stench of a dismal black smoke, of fear and foolery. Satan grows enormous, gets multiplied without end. 'Tis a poor triumph, however, for him. He grows dull and sick at heart. Still the people keep flowing towards him, bent on having no other God than he. Himself only is ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... "'Stop that foolery, Smith,' snarled the inspector; 'you'll give the poor devil the trouble of building them up all over again. Come along.' He unlocked the gate and stood for a moment ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... circulating-library-subscribing daughters, get up small assemblies in humble imitation of Almack's, and promenade the dingy 'large room' of some second-rate hotel with as much complacency as the enviable few who are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts of some 'fancy fair in high life,' suddenly grow desperately charitable; visions of admiration and matrimony float before their eyes; some wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest accident in the world, has never been heard ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... never was a stranger wedding. For, wedding it was, though only two of those present knew it. When the ceremony was over, the cow-punchers gave one yell of congratulation and immediately abandoned their foolery for the night. Blankets were unrolled and sleep became the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... the doctor was gone, Caesar said to Grannie, "Cut out the bridesmaids and the wedding-cakes and the fiddles and the foolery, and let the girl be ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... face mottled with pallor, was pulling himself together, and striving to resume the arrogant insolence of his customary bearing. He opens his mouth to speak, but only a husky murmur replaces the harsh stridency of his usual utterance. "What devilish foolery is this—" But ere he can get further, some bucolic statesman brings his massive palm down on the table with a bang that makes the oaken plank crack, and thunders out—"The charter! ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... fool is minor only through his station and unimportance in the plot; he really occupies much space in the play and in fact pervades it. How is Antonio connected with the plot? What traits of his does the play bring out? Is his fondness for Sebastian unnatural? How is he concerned in the foolery of the play? Is he necessary to the plot? As the fool represents the merry-making spirit of the play, so Malvolio stands for the dupes of it. Does any one sympathize with him? Who shows the clearest understanding of his faults? (I. v.). What signs are there in the play of Malvolio's being ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... "A truce on this foolery, M. Chauvelin," she broke in, with sudden impatient vehemence, "pray leave your protestations of friendship and courtesy alone, there is no one here to hear them. I pray you proceed with what you ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... "I'm glad your father didn't live to see you in all the glory of your gracelessness," he said. "Your father was a man, every inch of him. Do you get it? A man. I think he'd have whaled all this musical and artistic tom foolery ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... delightful book, witty, epigrammatic, flavorsome ... recalls Frank Stockton's bewitching foolery ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... done, and the King gone out of the Hall; and then it fell a-raining and thundering and lightening as I have not seen it do for some years: which people did take great notice of; God's blessing of the work of these two days, which is a foolery to take too much notice of such things. I observed little disorder in all this, but only the King's footmen had got hold of the canopy, and would keep it from the Barons ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... grappled by a trembling hand, and a husky voice demanded, "What message did she really send? I can't stand foolery." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the word," said Richardson; "I'm a good Conservative and I've no patience with this Socialist foolery, asking your pardon. It's tyranny, that's what it is, all along the line, but I've my living to make, same as other people, and I've got to belong to the union. I couldn't touch another hair-pin without a strike permit, not if you ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... things better," said an old one- eyed captain, with the blue-and-white riband for St. Vincent peeping out of his third buttonhole. "They sheer away their heads if they get up to any foolery. Did ever a vessel come out of Toulon as my 38-gun frigate did from Plymouth last year, with her masts rolling about until her shrouds were like iron bars on one side and hanging in festoons upon the other? ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a rush, striving to convince myself that it is all real and rational, and not some glimpse of fairyland. This I cannot succeed in doing, and it is better so. I much prefer to believe that all this pomp, and vanity, and show, and mumbo-jumbo foolery has come from fairyland, than to believe it the performance of sane and sensible people who have mastered matter and solved the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... the sin of carnal indulgences unsanctioned by the priest and his empty ceremonies. Fools! NATURE, and her laws, and her promptings, and her desires, spurn the trammels of form and custom, and reign triumphant over the hollow mummery of the parson and his pious foolery. ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... "This is foolery," said Grandcourt, with undertoned disgust. It was too irritating that this indulgence of Lydia had given her a sort of mastery over him in ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... you happen to worm yourself into my place, Miss Fairfield?" she said at a rehearsal. "Did you make up this Bear foolery?" ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... the alternative is, what the voice of "deep calling unto deep" really utters, as the constellation of Hercules draws the solar world toward it through the abysmal night. No more ethical foolery; no more pragmatic ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... out to-morrow," Charlie said. "You'll forget this foolery of mine?" gripping Fisher's ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... "God! what foolery is this? The girl's fainting. Never mind. Here, landlady, bring a light! Lead the way. She's not too heavy to carry. Upstairs with you. What a snail you are, old ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... over to pay ten thousand pounds rent to his Landlady Cleveland. My Lord Angier, who bought of Sir George Carteret for eleven thousand pounds, the Vice-treasurership of Ireland, worth five thousand pounds a year, is, betwixt knavery and foolery, turned out. Dutchess of York and Prince Edgar, dead. None left but daughters. One Blud, outlawed for a plot to take Dublin Castle, and who seized on the Duke of Ormond here last year, and might have killed him, a most ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... true enough of some of the country militia," said Robinson, "but in our village, there was no such foolery. Regulars—and British ones at that—couldn't have gone through a better training, or a better rill. One of the British officers at Saratoga said that the New England militia were equal to regulars; and as far as marching up to cannons' mouths and driving ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... everything is going on well here," he murmured. "If he knew what was taking place he would soon be back, and might be guilty of some foolery or other." So ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... believe thee, 'twere some honesty, And for thy penitence would not laugh at thee (As sure they will) and beat thee for thy poverty: If they would allow thy foolery, there were ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... ev'n for thy soul, to thwart me further! None of your arts, your feigning, and your foolery; Your dainty squeamish coying it to me; Go—to your lord, your paramour, be gone! Lisp in his ear, hang wanton on his neck, And play your monkey gambols o'er to him. You know my purpose, look that you pursue it, And make him ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... always one knows that a child will be thankful for it. But this tale, Mr. Joseph, happens also to be a lie; secondly, a fraudulent lie; thirdly, a malicious lie.' I have seen this stuff described as 'scholarlike badinage;' but the only effect of such exquisite foolery, within my mind, is to persuade one that a writer assailed by such weapons, and those weapons used by a man who has the whole resources of the English language at his command, must probably have been encountering an inconvenient truth. I will simply refer to the story of Sir ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... wars," he said. "I did not dream it. I thought that we had grown wiser at last. It seemed to me like the dawn of a great clearing up. I thought the common sense of mankind would break out like a flame, an indignant flame, and consume all this obsolete foolery of empires and banners and militarism directly it made its attack upon human happiness. A score of things that I see now were preposterous, I thought must happen—naturally. I thought America would declare ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... to laugh at the strange foolery of both master and man, except the innkeeper, whose mind was still sore at the loss of his wine-skins. The priest and the barber first busied themselves in getting Don Quixote, now quite worn out with his adventure, safely into bed, ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... The old streets must be widened, the lanes straightened, the houses made more substantial. There was a great outcry against the improvements. Old Detroit had been good enough. It was the center of trade, it commanded the highway of commerce. And no one had any money to spend on foolery. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... useful hints how to address the large masses of the people. If he looked upon the world, as it then was, as a ship of fools, and represented every weakness, vice, and wickedness under the milder color of foolery, the people who read his poems singled out some of his fools, and called them knaves. The great work of Sebastian Brant was his "Narrenschiff." It was first published in 1497, at Basle, and the first edition, though on account of its wood-cuts it could ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Lanciotto!—O, my stars!— If this thing lasts, I simply shall go mad! [Laughs, and rolls on the ground.] O Lord! to think my pretty lady puss Had tricks like this, and we ne'er know of it! I tell you, Lanciotto, you and I Must have a patent for our foolery! "She smiled; he kissed her full upon the mouth!"— There's the beginning; where's the end of it? O poesy! debauch thee only once, And thou'rt the greatest wanton in the world! O cousin Lanciotto—ho, ho, ho! [Laughing.] Can a man die of laughter? Here we sat; ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... Such foolery as this and at such a time irritated me sorely; but there was no help for it now. Whether I should or should not open to him the subject that had taken me thither, I must, I saw, let him have his humour till ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... drink on deck, and bid all pour libations to her as a future queen. But Tob cuffed her back into the after-castle, slamming to the hatch behind her heels, and bidding the crew send the liquor down their dusty throats. "We are done with that foolery," said he. "My Lord Deucalion will be king of this new kingdom we shall build in the Tin Islands, and a right proper king he'll make, as you untravelled ones would know, if you'd sailed the outer seas ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... sublime hopes of the future, nature, man,—so great, though so little,—so dear, though incomplete. Returning to Rome, I find the news pronounced official, that the viceroy Ranieri has capitulated at Verona; that Italy is free, independent, and one. I trust this will prove no April-foolery, no premature news; it seems too good, too speedy a realization of hope, to have come on earth, and can only be answered in the words of the proclamation ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... marriage, and digging the bridegroom out of a drift—dodging a herd of Highland cattle that thought he had come too near their calves, or driving off Drumsheugh's polled Angus bull with contumely when he was threatening Mrs. Macfadyen. If he met the bairns coming from school, the Glen rang with the foolery. When Willie Harley broke his leg, Carmichael brought his dog Jackie—I could tell things of that dog—and devised dramatic entertainments of such attraction that Jamie Soutar declared them no better than the theatre, and threatened Carmichael ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... paths, an' seek for salvation in the good old way. Everybody can shout 'Amen!' as loud and as long as the Spirit moves him, with us. Some one was sayin' you thought we ought to have a choir and an organ. No, sirree! No such tom-foolery for us! You'll only stir up feelin' agin yourself by hintin' at such things. And then, too, our folks don't take no stock in all that pack o' nonsense about science, such as tellin' the age of the earth by crackin' up stones. I've ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... not again touch Mrs. Smiley's hand. Immediately thereafter the sound of soft drumming came from the piano at a point entirely out of reach of the psychic, and at my request the drummer kept time to my whistling. After some minutes of this foolery "the force" left the piano abruptly, as if with a leap, and dropped to the middle of the table. A light, fumbling noise followed, and I called out: "Is every hand in the circle ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... they care for no newspapers except the Sunday ones; what they want is the lightest and frothiest of chit-chatty information—bits of stories, bits of description, bits of scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery. Am I not right? Everything must be very short, two inches at the utmost; their attention can't sustain itself beyond two inches. Even chat is too solid for them: they ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... "What damned foolery have you been up to NOW?" he demanded. "Can't I move a step without stubbing my toe on you? Why ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the door, and went on: "People always say such foolery, miss. I'll make answer hencefor'ard, 'Of course a lady like Miss Everdene can't love him'; I'll say it out ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Cambridge with my old man, and—isn't it rum?—he was a pupil of Praddy's!! He mucked his school and 'varsity career, thought next he'd like to be an architect or a scene painter. My dad recommended Praddy as a master. He worked in the Praed studio, but got the chuck over some foolery. Then as he couldn't face his poor old Governor, he enlisted in the Bechuanaland Border police, came out to South Africa and got let in for this show. The doctors and nurses give him about a month and he doesn't ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... party following on slowly. She-wee-she, for the greater part of the time, trudged on foot over the snow, keeping himself warm by hard exercise, and all kinds of crazy capers. In the height of his foolery, the patriarchal colt, which, unbroken to the saddle, was suffered to follow on at large, happened to come within his reach. In a moment, he was on his back, snapping his fingers, and yelping with delight. The colt, unused to such a burden, and half wild by nature, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... help him on and give him a start; then think how cheaply he had got Storborg, and saying straight out what he would give for it! When his father thought it was going wrong somehow with the business, and naught but foolery, she took him up. "How can you stand there and say such things!" Ay, she reproved him for using such words about his son; Isak was forgetting his place, it seemed, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... upon it, you will never after own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half of what you will get for the land you will spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought. Now, I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I feel that it is so even on your own account, and particularly on mother's account. The eastern forty acres I intend to keep for mother while she lives; if you will not cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support her; at least, it will rent for something. Her dower ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Losing true life for ever and a day Through ever trying to be and ever being— In the evolution of successive spheres— Before its actual sphere and place of life, Halfway into the next, which having reached, It shoots with corresponding foolery Halfway into the next still, on and off! As when a traveller, bound from North to South, Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France? In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain? In Spain drops cloth, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... on the part of the men; vanity, cruelty, and foolery on the part of the officers. Those are the virtues which they offered us on first acquaintance. Just compare ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... ardour. The old beaver seeing what was going on, turned his back upon them, and suffered them to be as kind to each other as they pleased. At last, turning quickly round, while the maiden, suspecting what was coming, and pretending to be abashed, ran behind her mother, he said, 'To end this foolery, what say you to marrying my daughter? She is well brought up, and is the most industrious girl in the village. She will flap more wall with her tail in a day than any maiden in the nation; she will gnaw down a larger tree betwixt the rising ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Joe's eyes are blazing; no foolery now! Harris quietly signs. The name of Joseph Woods is added, at once, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... no other clergyman about, bar Kanaka pastors, we ought to call in Father Galuchet, and have the old man administered and take the sacrament. It was all the same to me, you may suppose; but I said I thought Adams was the fellow to consult. He was jawing away about watered copra and a sight of foolery. 'Look here,' I said, 'you're pretty sick. Would you like to see Galoshes?' He sat right up on his elbow. 'Get the priest,' says he, 'get the priest; don't let me die here like a dog!' He spoke kind of fierce and eager, but sensible enough. There was nothing to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that appears: You'll not be perjur'd; 'tis a hateful thing: Tush! none but minstrels like of sonneting. But are you not asham'd? nay, are you not, All three of you, to be thus much o'ershot? You found his mote; the king your mote did see; But I a beam do find in each of three. O! what a scene of foolery have I seen, Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen; O me! with what strict patience have I sat, To see a king transformed to a gnat; To see great Hercules whipping a gig, And profound Solomon to tune a jig, And Nestor play ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... you a pair of gloves," said her father, "that they get a good percentage of it down at the mission school. He is just the subject for a cunning priest, because he sincerely believes in their foolery. He belongs to a tribe now nearly extinct, I imagine—the martyrs, who in old-fashioned times died ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the slain knight Wolfram: his foolery is but the disguise of his revenge, and thus he rails over the body of his brother: "Dead and gone! a scurvy burden to this ballad of life. There lies he, Siegfried—my brother, mark you—and I weep not, nor gnash the teeth, nor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... evening, I tell you, all those heads in the reek of the light, the foolery of those people enjoying life and profiting by peace! It was like a ballet at the theater or the make-believe of a magic lantern. There were—there were—there are a hundred thousand more of them," Volpatte at last concluded ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... a moment of doubt as to how he should deal with this foolery. If he were quite sure it was just Joyce's nonsense—but perhaps she had gone crazy. The thought ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... is not supposable. The fact that phenomena can be counterfeited is no reason for concluding they do not exist. In experiments with magnetism and hypnotic suggestion, many delusions beset the experimenters, and there is more or less intentional foolery on the part of the subjects. Thus have I seen, at the prison-hospital of Salpetriere and elsewhere, young women outrageously deceiving the most serious investigators, who did not in the least suspect such insincerity. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o' goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't bite; them's my views—amen, so be it. And now, you look here," he added, suddenly changing his tone, "we've had about enough of this foolery. The tide's made good enough by now. You just take my orders, Cap'n Hawkins, and we'll sail slap in and be done ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... skill, the famous dancers gyrated pyrotechnically, the house applauded with delight, Agatha laughed and chuckled and clapped her hands and I remained silent, unnoticed and unnoticing in my reflective corner, longing for the foolery to end. Where was Lola? Why had she forsaken me? What remedy, in the fiend's name, was there for this heart torture within me? The most excruciating agonies of the little pain inside were child's play to this. I bit my lips so as not to groan aloud and contorted ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... triumph of the foolish knight—the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked—and "thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest. There was good foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him! Lovegrove, who came nearest to the old actors, revived the character some few seasons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque; but ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... to be looking forward to that life of dull foolery," thought she, as the mossy bastions of Besancon drifted from her horizon—she was journeying up alone, Janet staying on with one of the Saint Berthe women as chaperone. "It is foolery and it is dull. I don't see how grown-up people endure ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... serious, these men would never have recoiled before the mere danger of a stick of hardwood. The American woodsman is afraid of nothing human. But this was a good-natured bit of foolery, a test of nerve, and there was no object in getting a broken head for that. The reptilian gentleman alone grumbled at the abandonment of the attack, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... "What foolery is this? Are we in the midst of the Carnival, that a workman ventures upon such a ridiculous masquerade? Throw off your ugly bear's skin instantly or I will crisp your bristles for you ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... Vick's character would be Touch-me-not. I believe there's a flower called that—noli me tangere—or some such name. Well, that's Vicky Van. She'd laugh and jest with you, and then if you said anything by way of a personal compliment or flirtatious foolery, she was off and away from your side, like a thistle-down in a summer breeze. She was a witch, a madcap, but she had her own way in everything, and her friends did ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... door of the counting-room. The rest hour was over and Constans's place was at the tan-pit. How was the work to get done if everybody shirked their part of the common task? A message in a bottle. What foolery was this? Nevertheless, Messer Hugolin extended his hand to receive the roll, and, removing the waxed string that bound it, knit his brows over the enclosure—half a dozen sheets of writing. Constans was about to retire discreetly, but Messer ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... into an infernal mess with your foolery," he said sulkily, "and when you do, you needn't come to me to ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham |
