"Jackass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in fury. Oh, he was an innocent—a blind baby—the joke and laughing-stock of the country around, with yokels grinning at him and pale-faced devils laughing aloud. The teachers knew; the girls knew; God knew; everybody but he knew—poor blind, deaf mole, stupid jackass that he was. He must run—run away from this world, and far off in some free land beat ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... "The jackass in Goroko, you mean," I interrupted. "How can you, who are a Christian, talk such rubbish about spirits? I only wish that my ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... hauled the Boy down. Potts was egging the miscreant on. O'Flynn, poorly disguising his delight in a scrimmage, had been shouting: "Ye'll spoil the Blow-Out, ye meddlin' jackass! Can't ye let Mac make his spache? No; ye must ahlways be huntin' round fur harrum to be doin' or throuble ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Turner against me more than anything else that could have happened. The attorney, who was much exasperated at the conduct of the Judge, said to me as we met the coroner, "Never mind what the Judge does; he is an old fool." I replied, "Yes, he is an old jackass." This was said in an ordinary conversational tone; but a man by the name of Captain Powers, with whom Turner boarded, happened to overhear it, and running to the court-house, and opening the door, he ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... mean by it?" demanded Bones wrathfully. "Haven't I given you a good uniform, you blithering jackass? What the deuce do you mean by opening the door, in front of people, too, dressed ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... buy that timber for an investment if I offered it cheap enough," Donald explained. "Besides, I owed you a poke. You wanted to be certain you hadn't reared a jackass instead of a man, so you gave me a hundred thousand dollars and stood by to see what I'd do with it—didn't you, old Scotty?" Hector nodded a trifle guiltily. "Andrew Daney wrote me you swore by all your Highland clan that the man who sold you that red cedar ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... his experiences in our far West is given in the volume called Roughing It (1871). This book should be read as a chapter in the early history of that section. The trip from St. Joseph to Nevada by stage, the outlaws, murders, sagebrush, jackass rabbits, coyotes, mining camps,—all the varied life of the time—is thrown distinctly on the screen in the pages of Roughing It. While in the West, he caught the mining fever, but he soon became a newspaper reporter and ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... "What a jackass you are!" said Berkley irritably; "here's a dollar to get some pie. And if you can cheat that cursed ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... not such singing birds in Australia, as there are here. Though there is a robin red-breast there, he does not sing as sweetly as he does here. But there are laughing birds in Australia. There is a bird called the "laughing jackass." He laughs very loud three times a day. He begins in the morning;—suddenly a hoarse loud laugh is heard,—then another, then another,—till a whole troop of birds seem laughing all together, and go on laughing for a few minutes;—and then they are all quiet again. Such a ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... patient as my poor husband has been, letting hard work wear him away till he's become the sorry thing you see there.... Do you know what Charles said the other evening when he found his father on that chair, crippled like that, and unable to speak? Why, he shouted to him that he'd been a stupid jackass all his life, working himself to death for those bourgeois, who now wouldn't bring him so much as a glass of water. Then, as he none the less has a good heart, he began to cry his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... was to ask you," continued Johnson, without heeding the reply, but with a growing anxiety of eye and a nervous twitching of his lips,—"ef I was to ask you, fur instance, ef that was a jackass rabbit thet jest passed,—eh?—you'd say it was or was not, ez the case may be. You wouldn't play the ole man ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... some comfort in such a place as that. He can live honest and respectable. Just think of settin' on four or five hundred bodies killed with an earthquake! It makes my mouth water. But nothin' of that sort ever happens in this jackass kind of a land. Things go along just 'sif they were asleep. We've got six saw-mills 'round this town, but nobody ever gets tangled in the machinery and sawed in half. We've got a gunpowder-factory out beyond ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... to tell of how in the heat of a debate Congressman Johnson of Indiana called an Illinois representative a jackass. The expression was unparliamentary, and in ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... be sarcy, sir," growled Brookes; "and what are you crowin' at, old Sam? You needn't begin makin' a noise like a laughin' jackass. Something's going to be changed, or ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... of man for a skipper if you like," said the second officer bitterly. "He ought to be hanged for pretending he's a sailorman. It's sheer murder to put such a jackass in command ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... surprise—nothing more nor less than a blundering and inaccurate resume of the opinions expressed in a leading article in that morning's Times. At length this one-sided conversation between a jackanapes and a jackass became too intolerable for Brand, who threw away his cigarette, and descended ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... me a little too fast. Let me gum dis 'bacco and spit and I can do and say more 'zackly what you expect from me. My marster had sheep, goats, mules, horses, stallion, jackass, cows and hogs, and then he had a gin, tan yard, spinnin' rooms, weave room, blacksmith shop and shoe shop. Dere was wild turkeys on de place, deer in de cane brakes and shad in de Catawba River. De Indians ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... Alfred, pay attention; now you are going to poke yourself against my prince of lodgers. Who has stolen your eyes? Pardon, M. Rudolph; that beggar Cabrion stupefies him more and more— he certainly will make him turn to a jackass, my ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... neighbouring cottager Stupidly yawned upon the other: No jackass brayed; no little cur 755 Cocked up his ears;—no man would stir To save ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Jim and I, no doubt still under the poignant influence of the last lion's heroic race and end, inclined to freedom or death. We compromised on the reasonable fact that as yet we had shown only a jackass kind of intelligence. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... knows," he whispered hoarsely, "religion should never enter into the working of a ship, and I suppose I'll have to get along with that fellow; but did you mark the Masonic ring on the paw of the Far-Down? And on the right hand, too! The jackass don't know enough to wear it ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... proud of the immensity of the wagers which she dared to risk, Madame Beaumont on one occasion staked the entire Bretton estate on a game of chance. She lost; and her opponent, being apparently as sporting as herself, dared her to win it back by riding through Bretton Park and village astride on a jackass with her face to the tail The idea of the haughty and pompous lady undertaking such a penance must have seemed actually incredible, but Madame Beaumont was not readily daunted. To the unbounded surprise of her fellow-gamester she accomplished the feat and thus reinstated ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... other, seizing his comrade by the arm as he was turning to go away. "A feller might as well try to joke with a jackass as with you. In coorse I don't mean that; but I'll threaten the old hypocrite and terrify him till he's half dead, and then he'll ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... man was right. "If the dome gives them a perfect cover, why let me make a jackass of myself, Mother?" ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... of this learning in Jackass Gulch, California, more than forty years ago. Jackass Gulch had once been a rich and thriving surface-mining camp. By and by its gold deposits were exhausted; then the people began to go away, and the town began to decay, and rapidly; ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen To hold his harvest festival upon his village-green, While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head; Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun, And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run, Lived a colony of settlers—old Missouri was the State Where they formerly ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... hold-backs," said Key, wondering whether it would sound like a joke or a child-speech. When it seemed to be lost on Evan, he corrected: "I meant 'every jackass.'" ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Grace, 1892, and the fables writ by Sir THOMAS MORE in 1520, or thereabouts, which he represents as if told him by an old wife and nurse, one Mother MAUD. Here are "The Wolf,"—"Brer Wolf"—and the simple-minded Jackass, both are going to confession to Father Fox—"Brer Fox." AEsop is, of course, the common origin of all such tales. The extracts which I have come across, are to be found in a small book compiled by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... them. Nothing less pleasant than their society. The stewards have neglected to serve soup to some negro, who at every meal has edged himself higher up the table, and whose conversation consists of whispering into the ear of a black neighbour, with an occasional guffaw like that of the 'laughing jackass.' ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... as if it had a splinter in it; and on its head was a sort of basket-hilted, low-crowned hat, without a rim. I asked a sailor standing by, what this animal meant, when, looking at me with a grin, he answered, "Why, youngster, don't you know what that means? It's a young jackass, limping off with a kedgeree pot of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... tongue! Now the fat's in the fire, to be sho! Ever since I tuck you for better for wuss, I have been trying to larn you 'screshun! and I might as well 'a wasted my time picking a banjo for a dead jackass tu dance by; for you have got no more 'screshun than old Eve had, in confabulating with the old adversary! Why couldn't you temperlize? Sassing that white 'oman, is ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... whole story. They gave me absolution for what the donkey had done, and after that, as it was very rare to meet an English officer who was a good Christian, I was in great favour during my stay at Minorca, and was living in plenty, paying for nothing, and as happy as a cricket. So the jackass proved a very good friend, and, to reward him, I hired him every day, and galloped him all over the island. But, at last, it occurred to me that I had broken my leave, for I was so happy on shore that I quite ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... out rapidly until it begins to be worth something, when she suddenly suspends publication and begins to haul wood to market. In this great work she is assisted by the pearl-gray or ecru colored jackass of the tepid South. This animal has been referred to in the newspapers throughout the country, and yet he never ceases to be an object of ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... open-eyed inquisitives. Another attempt to again enlist his services only results in alienating his sympathies still further: he has been grossly taken in by my assumption of intelligence. Having discovered in me a jackass incapable of the Fat-shan pronunciation of Sam-shue, he retires on his dignity from further interest in ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... it was a bull-calf, an' another he said "Nay; It's just a painted jackass, that has never larnt to ...
— The Three Jovial Huntsmen • Randolph Caldecott
... kindness; and Fraser, for his part, in order to gratify these favoured guests, made great havoc among the feathered race. He returned after a short ramble with a variety of game, among which were a crow, a kite, and a laughing jackass (alcedo gigantea,) a species of king's-fisher, a singular bird, found in every part of Australia. Its cry, which resembles a chorus of wild spirits, is apt to startle the traveller who may be in jeopardy, as ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... lightning, speedily rendering further pursuit hopeless. The pinch in the ear and the touch with the heel were the secret signs by which Jabal had been used to urge his mare to her utmost speed. Jabal's companions were amazed and indignant at his strange conduct. "O thou father of a jackass!" they cried, "thou hast helped the thief to rob thee of thy jewel." But he silenced their upbraidings by saying: "I would rather lose her than sully her reputation. Would you have me suffer it to be said among the tribes that ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... pony, shelty, sheltie; garran^, garron^; jennet, genet^, bayard^, mare, stallion, gelding; bronco, broncho^, cayuse [U.S.]; creature, critter [U.S.]; cow pony, mustang, Narraganset, waler^; stud. Pegasus, Bucephalus, Rocinante. ass, donkey, jackass, mule, hinny; sumpter horse, sumpter mule; burro, cuddy^, ladino [U.S.]; reindeer; camel, dromedary, llama, elephant; carrier pigeon. [object used for carrying] pallet, brace, cart, dolley; support &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... shorewards I observed that Hans, who was seated near to me under the stomach of a jackass, was engaged in sniffing at the sides and bottom of the barge, as a dog might do, and asked him what ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... is an owl or two. These are heard occasionally, but not seen. Often at night one hears a solemn cry of "More pork! more pork! more pork!" I have heard people talk, too, of a laughing jackass (not the Australian bird of that name), but no ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... mind to go,' observed Jack, after a pause, thinking he might punish Puff, and try to do a little business with Sponge. 'I've a good mind to go,' repeated he; 'just by way of paying Master Puff off. He's a consequential jackass, and wants taking ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... to your talk, sir, in private life—I had not, as one might say, imbibed it—for nothink. The General, sir—your lamented uncle—had a flow: he would, if allowed, and meaning no disrespect, talk the hind leg off a jackass; but I found him lacking in 'umour. Now you, Mr. George, 'ave 'umour. You 'ave not your uncle's flow, sir—the Lord forbid! But in give-and-take, as one might say, you are igstreamly droll. On many occasions, sir, when you ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to be filled with the spirit o' th' Lord all on a sudden, after th' fashion o' th' talking jackass i' th' Scriptures; for if a didna talk a did th' next thing to 't—a tried to. And after pulling at my heels like as though a fiend had got him, a scuttles into th' thicket, for no cause, as I could see, but to give me th' benefit ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... stripped and dived into the water all about the net, and left not off working hard until he had brought it up. He rejoiced thereat and, donning his clothes, went to the net, when he found in it a dead jackass which had torn the meshes. Now when he saw it, he exclaimed in his grief, "There is no Majesty, and there is no Might save in Allah the Glorious, the Great!" Then quoth he, "This is a strange manner of daily bread;" and he began re citing in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... "I'm sorry. Forgive me, will you? Of course you're dead right and I've been talking like a jackass. I'll behave, honest I will.... But what ARE we going to do? I won't give you up, you know, no matter if every spirit control in—in wherever they come from ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... distinctive privilege of man to exert his voice during his repast, and to indulge also in those specially human cachinnations which no lower creature, except that disreputable Australian biped known as the 'laughing jackass,' presumes to imitate; and to these vocal exercises of the feasters respond the endless ring and tinkle of knife and fork on china plate, and the ministering angels in white chokers behind the chairs, those ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... three or four times Smith has called. If he comes to-morrow tell him I will see him when I return. Bolt the doors and don't leave it to that jackass, Wilkins." ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... a fool, Roy—a stupid, trusting fool. You trusted me, didn't you? I was your bosom friend, your boyhood chum, whose wild ways grieved you. Fool, fool, if you had possessed the wit of a jackass you would have known I hated you! Hate, hate, hate! I have hated you all my life, Roy! I hated you when we were boys and you made me take second place. I have hated you ever since; I hate you now—so much it is almost love, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... opposed he continually rolled his head from side to side, in a very odd manner, as if the power of distinct vision lay only in the anterior and basal part of each eye. This bird is commonly called the jackass penguin, from its habit, while on shore, of throwing its head backwards, and making a loud strange noise, very like the braying of an ass; but while at sea, and undisturbed, its note is very deep and solemn, and is often heard in the night-time. In diving, its little wings are used as fins; but ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... in those days," responded the grey old narrator, with a smile for his wife. "My great-great-grandmother was a beautiful woman, and she was well aware of that fact. Her husband was a jealous devil, as unreasonable as a jackass, and as stubborn as an ox. To make a long story short, after they had been married five years and had seen enough of the connubial hell to drive them both out of mind, he took a sudden fancy that she was false to him. A young Virginian, in fact, the very man who stood ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... to less serious matters. I never shall see a donkey without gratefully thinking of a Prussian. If anyone happens to fall out with his jackass, let me recommend him, instead of beating it, to slay and eat it. Donkey is now all the fashion. When one is asked to dinner, as an inducement one is told that there will be donkey. The flesh of this obstinate, but weak-minded quadruped is delicious—in colour like mutton, firm ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... for." Burns was quivering with rage. "You ran a good bluff and you nearly put it over; but I don't want to advertise myself as a jackass, so I shan't have you ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... thinker," he said, "you are rather a pusillanimous jackass. A man of your convictions to shy at a shadow! Fie, sir, fie! What if the room were empty? The place was full enough of traps to permit of ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... getting really excited; "a jackass of a fellow as ain't fit to hold a candle to our Archie? Never you fear, Molly, there'll nothing come of that; I'd sooner see her in ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... bawls more lustily than once he snored. The sympathetic Comstocks droop to hear, And Carson river sheds a viscous tear, Which sturdy tumble-bugs assail amain, With ready thrift, and urge along the plain. The jackass rabbit sorrows as he lopes; The sage-brush glooms along the mountain slopes; In rising clouds the poignant alkali, Tearless itself, makes everybody cry. Washoe canaries on the Geiger Grade Subdue the singing of their cavalcade, And, wiping with ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the intruder. Every magpie, minah, and wattle-bird within a mile joins in the clamour. They dart at the hawk as he flies from tree to tree. When he alights on a limb they give him no peace; they flap their wings in his face, and call him the worst of names. Even the Derwent Jackass, the hypocrite with the shining black coat and piercing whistle, joins in the public outcry, and his character is worse than that of the hawk himself, for he has been caught in the act of kidnapping and devouring the unfledged young of his nearest neighbour. The distracted hawk has at ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... 'em, John, that he who comes to ye with a temperance pledge insults yer character. It is like askin' ye to promise not to become a jackass; and what would ye think of a man who would ask ye to sign a paper like that? or to sign the Ten Commandments? or to promise that ye'd never lie any more? It's one's duty to maintain one's dignity of character, and, John, I want ye to ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... law lease, And contains twenty ducks, six drakes, three ganders, two dead dogs, four drowned kittens, and twelve geese. Of course the green's cropt very close, and does famous for bowling when the little village boys play at cricket; Only some horse, or pig, or cow, or great jackass, is sure to come and stand right before the wicket. There's fifty-five private houses, let alone barns and workshops, and pigsties, and poultry huts, and such-like sheds, With plenty of public-houses—two Foxes, one Green Man, three Bunch of Grapes, one Crown, and six King's Heads. The ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... head over heels in love with the young lady," he confessed. "Don't think I am a confounded jackass. I am not in the habit of doing such things. I'm twenty-seven and I have never gone out of my way to meet a girl yet. This is something—different. I want to find out about ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the figure of a worthless old grafter in a tattered gray shirt. Every question is settled when some moth-eaten ne'er-do-well lets out what is known as a 'rebel yell.' The most polished and profound speech conceivable is answered when a jackass mounts the platform and brays out something about the gallant boys in gray. The cry for progress, for material advancement, for moral and social betterment, is stifled, that everybody may have breath to shout for a flapping trouser's leg worn by a degraded old sot. All that your Southern ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... riding to reach it. Our path lay at first along the back of a great spur of the main mountain; it narrowed till there was a precipice on either side—on the right hand some seven or eight hundred feet, on the left more than a thousand. I had not looked down the like since I crossed the Jackass Mountain on the Fraser River in British Columbia. Underneath us were villages—scattered huts, built like bee-hives. The piece of level ground beneath was dotted with them. The place looked like some gigantic apiary. The dots of people seemed little larger than bees. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... and darkness will be upon us in a couple of hours. I can continue my soliloquising as I canter through the bush; there will be no one to disturb me or ridicule me, unless, indeed, the bird named the laughing jackass should make the woods echo with his idiotic chuckle, or the parrots should ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... own ears the expressions of contempt for his talent, and the hisses of the audience go straight to the ears of the actor, whereas the author has the comfort of going to his grave without a suspicion that you have cried out at every page: "The fool, the animal, the jackass!" and have at length flung his book into a corner. There is nothing to prevent the worst author, as he sits alone in his library, and reads himself over and over again, from congratulating himself on being the originator of a host of rare ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... burros he runs across a mine; and if he goes out the next day to look for another mine he runs across his burros. The most of them are like the old Professor down here, they wouldn't know mineral if they saw it; but of course when they grab up a chunk of pure silver and start to throw it at a jackass they can't help taking notice. Well, that's the way this mine was found. A prospector that was camping here went up on that little hill to rock his old burro back to camp and right on top he found a piece of silver that was so pure you could cut it with your knife. That ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... you wouldn't work yourself up so about nothin' at all! Want me to make a blame jackass of myself raisin' the whole place about a potato-peel ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... innocent—oh, she's a cute one!—she says, 'Why, Mister Turner—is it really yours?' An' she looked so full of joy thet when he says to me, 'Excoose us, friend Carmichael,' I sat there like a locoed jackass an' let them go. But I wasn't mad at thet. He was a better dancer than me an' I wanted her to have a good time. What started the hell was I seen him put his arm round her when it wasn't just time, accordin' to the dance, an' ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... right, Chief," broke in the now thoroughly cheerful Perry. "That jackass I shot could probably have told us all about it. I positively know the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... displeasing in the former. What seems lawless in him, follows the law of a profound and peculiar genius, with which, whether we like it or not, we must reckon. His imitators were devoid of thought and too indifferent to question whether there was any law to be obeyed. Like the jackass in the fable, they put on the dead lion's skin of his manner, and brayed beneath ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... people!’ says Dravot. ‘Not much. Peachy, you’re a fool not to get a wife too. Where’s the girl?’ says he with a voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. ‘Call up all the Chiefs and priests, and let the Emperor see ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... individual calling, without being taxed to decide where every woman belongs; and the fact that so many men fail in the business they undertake, calls loudly for their concentrating more thought on their own faculties, capabilities, and sphere of action. We have all seen a man making a jackass of himself in the pulpit, at the bar, or in our legislative halls, when he might have shone as a general in our Mexican war, captain of a canal boat, or as a tailor on his bench. Now, is it to be wondered at that woman has some doubts about the present position assigned her being the true ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... School-Master, dryly, "that a little rampant jackass would make a good crest for ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... it a public nuisance. The multitude, however, he could not, during his lifetime reclaim; for a miserable cotemporary of his, named Philemon, a coarse writer of broad farce, who afterwards died of a fit of laughter at seeing a jackass eat figs, continued by intrigues and his natural influence with the mob, to carry away some prizes from him; though he was so mean and contemptible a poet that his very name would have been forgotten, and long since sunk in eternal ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... pessimist and an optimist, with ample opportunities to quarrel. Johnson is a jackass, but honest. He is a pessimist and has a pea-green liver. Listen to him and the business will die painlessly, by inches. Applerod is also a jackass, and I presume him to be honest; but I never tested it. He suffers from too much health, ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... hundred and fifty lots at Blockhead's Point, worth $150 a piece; some on them are worth $200. I have one hundred lots at Jackass Inlet, worth at least $100, at the very lowest calculation. In short, I'm ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... knowing he was a farmer, thoughtfully sent him a present of a jackass, Washington proposed naming the animal in honor of the donor; and in writing to friends about the present, draws invidious comparisons between the gift and the giver. Evidently, the joke pleased him, for he repeats it in different letters; thus showing how, when he sat down to clear his desk ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... yet no cavalry in the force. A few infantry companies were mounted on mules and sent in pursuit of the guerillas, but the Saints merely laughed at them, terming them jackass cavalry. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... her very much, and one day she was especially kind to me and I went walking down the street like a peacock and plumped right on to Mr. Clark. We walked along together and he said something about Miss Merriam, and I was jackass enough to say that I hoped—not thought, Ethel Blue, but hoped; ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... dinner with the nester, and after that Little rode away, leading Whitey's borrowed horse. There seemed no reason for Whitey's staying any longer, and Chet again went to the stable, and returned leading what is called a jack, "jack" being short for "jackass." ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... tickled him, that he commenced to laugh, and, finding it inconvenient to do so on his legs, he sat down to indulge his humour freely. A laughing jackass perched on the fence at the side of the road heard Mr Villiers' hilarity, and, being of a convivial turn of mind itself, went off into fits of laughter also. On hearing this echo Mr Villiers tried to get up, in order to punish the man who mocked him, but, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... have described a steamer in a storm as he would have described a sailing-ship in a storm. But any description of the latter would be as inapplicable to my friend's account of the other as the ways of a jackass to those of a mad bull. In the letter from which it was taken, however, there were some things addressed to myself alone: "For two or three hours we gave it up as a lost thing; and with many thoughts of you, and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... shall," said the captain of Springhaven, sternly. "I think you had better call your Moosoo Jacks 'Master Jackass,' or 'Master Jackanapes,' and put your own name on the back of him. You been with a Frenchman hob and nobbing, and you don't even know how they pronounce themselves, unchristian as it is to do so. 'Jarks' were his name, the very same as Navy beef, and a ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... on the shoulder so impressive, and pulled out a double-headed cent, like unto those so much in use in General Jackson's time, when shaving decapitated the deposits he found himself mounted on the back of a brass jackass. 'Here!' I continued—'Heads, I win; tails, you lose.' To come the sharp over him in a more square sort of way, I gave him an unmoved look straight in the eye, as ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... you wish me good evening, you stupid jackass! Do you suppose I have travelled five and twenty miles for the pleasure of wishing you ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... bother," she told him in one of her few impulses of friendliness. "You see, we are very experienced." He nodded without visible happiness at this truth. "I'm a jackass!" he cried. "Judith tells me that all the time. If you could only see my daughters," he continued with a new vigor; "such lovely girls as they are. One dark like you and the other fair as a daisy. Judith and Pansy. And my home that darling mama made before she ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... province of Ukwuk, the Wampog issued a proclamation convening all the male residents in council in the Temple of Ul to devise means of defence. The first speaker thought the best policy would be to offer a fried jackass to the gods. The second suggested a public procession, headed by the Wampog himself, bearing the Holy Poker on a cushion of cloth-of-brass. Another thought that a scarlet mole should be buried alive in the public park and a suitable incantation chanted over the remains. ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... a scowl of disapproval from the Sitt Carulin, a glance of agonised appeal from the Sitt Hilda, and then a malicious grin from old Costantin, as he ran by on foot, prodding with his staff the hindmost jackass, on which the Sitt Jane sat up with face averted. The three ladies were clad in white with mushroom hats and fluttering face-veils. Their bodies bulged now here, now there, like sacks of grain, obedient to the ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... existence, but now the deed came naturally enough. He poured his glass and even echoed the other remarks of 'Here's how.' When the fiery liquor arrived in his stomachical regions he realized with perfect clarity that it was without doubt some newly invented substitute for whisky; perhaps that jackass-brandy which he had heard of. His emotion was twofold: he was glad that Helen was at the hotel and he was determined ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... encouragement; why, if such behaviour is not enough to drive an honest man mad, I know not what is. It is of no use talking, I only wish the power were in my hands, and if I did not make short work of them, might I be a mere jackass postillion all the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Thomasina briskly. "Don't gush. I loathe gush. That's all right, then, and I'll tell the girls I was wrong just now. They will all treat you decently if I tell them to; so behave sensibly, and don't be a young jackass, ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in society that he is most remarkable; and here he would, I own, be odious, but he becomes delightful, because all the men hate him so. A perfect chorus of abuse is raised round about him. "Confounded impostor," says one; "Impudent jackass," says another; "Miserable puppy," cries a third; "I'd like to wring his neck," says Bruff, scowling over his shoulder at him. Clarence meanwhile nods, winks, smiles, and patronizes them all with the easiest good-humor. He is a fellow who would ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... compelled to regard Swift's description of Lilliputia and Sydney Smith's account of Australia as poor attempts at fun. For, leaving out of view the pigmies of the former place, whose like we know is never found in Congress, what is there in that Australian bird with the voice of a jackass to excite the feeblest interest in the mind of a man who has listened to the debates on Kansas? or what marvel is an amphibian with the bill of a duck to him who has gazed aghast at the intricate anatomy of the bill of English? It is true that ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... love of Mike! He had been sitting in the back part of old Kumme's bicycle-shop, filling his pipe from the tobacco-pouch of a personal friend of the Kaiser. He had called this personal friend of the Kaiser a fool and a jackass, informing him that a real mechanic could put a ball-bearing together while he, the personal friend of the Kaiser, was spitting on his ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... words, and where even edible snakes would be scarce; spots of dead-finish, gidya, and brigalow-bush to north and east, and in the trees by the billabong the cry of the cockatoo and the laughing-jackass. It was lonely, but surely it was safe. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... history, Astier-Rehu and Schwanthaler, whom a singular fatality had brought face to face on the summit of the Rigi, after thirty years of insults and of rending each other to shreds in explanatory notes referring to "Schwanthaler, jackass," "vir ineptissimus, Astier-Rehu." ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... process. While Henry Gowan, whom Decimus had thrown away, went through the whole round of his acquaintance between the Gate of the People and the town of Albano, vowing, almost (but not quite) with tears in his eyes, that Sparkler was the sweetest-tempered, simplest-hearted, altogether most lovable jackass that ever grazed on the public common; and that only one circumstance could have delighted him (Gowan) more, than his (the beloved jackass's) getting this post, and that would have been his (Gowan's) getting it himself. He said it was the very thing for Sparkler. There was nothing ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... J was a Jackass who said He had such a bad cold in his head, If it wasn't for leaving The rest of us grieving, ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... who liked it were non-committal; and as for the addle-pated mob and rabble, they thought they had found out a fool. Blast them, Jack, what they call the public is a monster, like the idol we saw in Owhyhee, with the head of a jackass, the body of a baboon, and the tail of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... a tall superbly built figure combining the strength of a horse with the gentle curves of a hippo. When she spoke, her sweetly modulated voice was as pleasant to the ear as the bray of a Spanish jackass. Her hair hung to her waist and was the convenient nesting place for several English sparrows. She was slightly cockeyed from birth and had had her nose squashed in a saloon brawl. She carried herself with the graceful dignity of an African orang-utan and was always much sought after, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... in the road, there came along a very large countryman, mounted on a very small jackass; he was sitting side-saddle fashion, one leg crossed over the other, the lower leg nearly touching the ground; one hand held a pipe to his mouth, while the other held an olive branch, by no means an emblem of peace to the jackass, who twitched one long ear and then the other, in expectation ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and the son of an English gentleman was bitten so severely on the forehead, that the wound bled freely on the following morning. The fowls also suffered so terribly that they died fast; and an unfortunate jackass on whom they had set their fancy ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... appreciation of the possibilities of evolution, we should have perceived that they were essentially of the same stock and ancestral to our modern types. There were little camels scarcely more than twelve inches high, little taller than cotton-tail rabbits and smaller than the jackass rabbits; horses 15 inches high, scarcely larger than, and very similar in build to, the little English coursing hound known as the whippet; it is not improbable that we shall find the miniature deer; there certainly existed ancestral wolves and ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... resembled a mining town of California's early days. Miners and cattlemen, too, made the town headquarters, and there were frequent fights and an occasional shooting scrape. The cost of everything was high. Money flowed freely, as did bootleg jackass brandy. It seemed that the prohibition enforcement officers had been unable to locate the infant town. The rough, unrestrained life of the frontier was rife at Ragtown, and Twitter-or-Tweet Orr Tweet gleaned shekels ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... mixed with it, and she cemented her exiled lover's box with them, at which a smile is allowable, but an intelligent smile tipped with pity, please, and not the empty guffaw of the nineteenth-century-jackass, burlesquing Bibles, and making fun of all things except fun. But when mended it stood unreplenished. They kept the weekly rent paid, and the pot boiling, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... fair votaries, prodigal of grief, With cureless pangs, and woes that mock relief, Droop in soft sorrow o'er a faded flower, O'er a dead jackass pour the pearly shower: But hear, unmoved, of Loire's ensanguined flood Choked up with slain; of Lyons drenched in blood; Of crimes that blot the age, the world, with shame, Foul crimes, but sicklied o'er with freedom's name,— Altars and thrones subverted, social life Trampled to ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... these swelled the lists beyond the number then authorized by law, there was established a reduced pay for those whose recent promotion made them in excess. For them was adopted, in naval colloquialism, the inelegant but suggestive term "jackass" lieutenants. It should be explained to the outsider, perhaps even many professional readers now may not know, that the word was formerly used for a class of so-called frigates which intervened between the frigate-class proper and the sloop-of-war proper, and ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... of two miles out of the canon brought me to Tuttletown. Here I stayed several hours, for the interest of the whole trip, so far as Bret Harte was concerned, centered around this once celebrated camp, and Jackass Hill, on which, at one time, lived James W. Gillis, the supposed prototype of "Truthful James." He died a few years ago, but his brother, Stephen R. Gillis, is living there to-day, and after some little difficulty I succeeded in finding ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... of a guarda-costa of eighteen guns, that lay in the offing, and which, to the most unpractised eye, bore about the same resemblance to an English or American man of war of the same class, as an old, worn-out jackass does to a handsome, high spirited, well groomed race-horse. The rest of the group was made up of young officers "of no mark or likelihood," and with whom we have nothing to do, with the exception of Don Gregorio Nunez, a dashing young cavalry officer, related to the viceroy, report said ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... little doubt that when the jackass wore the lion's skin he thought himself the lion. ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy |
