"Foolery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... England, where it obtained the warm commendation of Richard Baxter; and it may be supposed to have had an important effect in producing the more disastrous delusion which followed three years after. The Goodwin children soon got well: in other words, they were tired of their atrocious foolery; and the death of their victim gave them a pretense for ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... what had happened? Andros, his 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
... as a fleshless ghost;—in which capacity I thought I had a glimpse of him looking over the shoulder of a particolored clown, in a carriage full of London Cockneys driving towards the Capitol. This good-humored foolery will go on for several days to come, ending always with the celebrated Horse-race, of horses without riders. The long street is cleared in the centre by troops, and half a dozen quadrupeds, ornamented like Grimaldi in a London pantomime, scamper away, with ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... a male as Tibby—was enough to stop the foolery. The barrier of sex, though decreasing among the civilized, is still high, and higher on the side of women. Helen could tell her sister all, and her cousin much about Paul; she told her brother nothing. It was not prudishness, for she now spoke ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... 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 Dodd was it, as it came out of Nature's hands. It might be said to remain in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Bess the matron, taking up the bundle and examining it. "Ye'n sweltered yoursen, I reckon, running that fool's race. An' here, they'n gi'en you lots o' good grogram and flannel, as should ha' been gi'en by good rights to them as had the sense to keep away from such foolery. Ye might spare me a bit o' this grogram to make clothes for the lad—ye war ne'er ill-natured, Bess; I ne'er said ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... 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 in plain ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... but the flaunting cover of shrewd observation and trenchant vision. Going where he would, and saying what he listed, now in the Queen's inner chamber, then in the midst of the Council, unconsidered, and the butt of all, he paid for his bed and bounty by shooting shafts of foolery which as often made his listeners shrink as caused their laughter. The Queen he called Delicio, and Leicester, Obligato—as one who piped to another's dance. He had taken to Buonespoir at the first glance, and had frequented him, and Lempriere had presently been added to his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you are through with this tom- foolery, I shall be glad if you will come to the club; any of you who have got guns had better look them up; they'll be wanted before this is over. We'll meet these dirty skinflints with cold lead and plenty ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... said Lady Kitty, smiling lazily at the foolery. But as she paused between sentences, Patty put in parentheses of her own, and when finished the remarkable ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... injustice!—and one or two more of the same brood. There is another that hath gone up also, post haste, and with good reason as they say, for he hath made himself the but of all the jokers in Vevey on account of some foolery in the games of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... article) Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still 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, too cumbrous for Algiers! Linen goes next, and last the skin itself, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... 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 ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... fancies engendered by your heated brain, which in your calmer moments you will discard, as I discard them now. If I have any weight with you, I counsel you to drink no more, or you will commit some mad foolery, of which you will be ashamed hereafter. The discreeter course would be to retire altogether; and for this you have ample excuse, as you will have to arise betimes to-morrow, to set out for ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 could not, to save their lives, get through a dramatic scene together without ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... Lieutenant of Ireland; but he was forced to come 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, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... affected. The whole relations of beauty and ugliness, of dignity and ignominy were turned upside down. Beauty became an extravagance, as if top-hats and umbrellas were not the real extravagance—a landscape from the land of the goblins. Dignity became a form of foolery and shamelessness, as if the very essence of a fool were not a lack of dignity. And the consequence is that it is practically most difficult to propose any decoration or public dignity for modern men without making them laugh. They ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... 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, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... locoed sheep-herders!" he greeted spitefully, "if yuh think yuh can saw off on your foolery and hold this herd, I'll go and get something to eat. When I come to this outfit t' work, I naturally s'posed yuh was cow-punchers. Yuh ain't. Yuh couldn't hold a bunch uh sick lambs inside a high board corral with the gate shut and locked on the outside. When ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... he exclaimed, when, he and the captain were alone, "isn't there EVER going to be any let-up to this tom-foolery? Are these women of ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hovering about, a good deal, in Germany and other countries; pretending to be a new light of Heaven, and not a bog-meteor of phosphorated hydrogen, conspicuous in the murk of things. Bog-meteor, foolish putrescent will-o'-wisp, his Majesty promptly defined it to be: Tom-foolery and KINDERSPIEL, what else? Whereupon ingenious Buckeburg, who was himself a Mason, man of forty by this time, and had high things in him of the Quixotic type, ventured on defence; and was so respectful, eloquent, dexterous, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... Servians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Italians, the Austrians. Why, they can't even shoot! It's just the balance of power and all that foolery keeps this country a roadless wilderness. Good God, how I tire of it! These men who swagger and stink, their brawling dogs, their greasy priests and dervishes, the down-at-heel soldiers, the bribery and robbery, the cheating ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the author, 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 reason ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... of this foolery?' he asked, pointing to Psmith's gloves and hat. 'Suppose Mr Bickersdyke had come round and seen them, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... somewhat remarkable that Mannering had once before tried a similar piece of foolery at the instance of Sophia Wellwood, the young lady to whom he was attached, and that a similar conjunction of planetary influence threatened her with death or imprisonment in her thirty-ninth year. She was at this time eighteen; ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 at push-pin with the boys, And critic Timon laugh at idle ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Byles," answered Sir William Howe; "if mirth were a crime, you had never gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this new foolery, I know no more about it than yourself; perhaps not so much. Honestly now, Doctor, have you not stirred up the sober brains of some of your countrymen to enact a ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... good Russian cry over this poor fellow," she added, pointing to the prince, who had not recognized her in the slightest degree. "So enough of this nonsense; it's time we faced the truth. All this continental life, all this Europe of yours, and all the trash about 'going abroad' is simply foolery, and it is mere foolery on our part to come. Remember what I say, my friend; you'll live to agree with ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... practical American will stand only about so much verbal foolery; and there is nothing in the world that makes him more uncomfortable—yes, downright mad!—than to feel that he is being played with. I could see that I had nearly reached the limit with him, and that if I held him now it must be by driving ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... suffered from the undiscerning critics who persisted in seeing in their nonsense a hidden meaning, a cynical, political, or other intent, veiled under the apparent foolery. Lear takes occasion to deny this in the preface to one of his books, and asserts not only that his rhymes and pictures have no symbolical meaning, but that he "took more care than might be supposed to make the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... 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 ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... 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 ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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
... these young dogs, he throws gravity aside, and plays 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?" A little volume might almost be made on Sir Walter Scott and his dogs. Wilkie, Allan, and especially Sir Edwin Landseer, have handed down to us the portraits of many of them. His works, and biography ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... other Woman's 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "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 ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... greyhounds and birding-pieces, who would elude the statutes against gunnes, to be called to account "for the shallow-brain'd idlenesse of their ridiculous foolery." ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... 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
... deal!" Bransome announced. "Contract—this is the Pacific slope, and we've no time for such foolery. I'm figuring that I can trust you, and my word's good enough in this locality. Run that pond down a fathom and you'll get your money. Any particular reason why you shouldn't start in to-day? Don't know of any? Then put that ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... was an apotheosis of tom-foolery. General Harrison had lived the life, mainly, of a Western farmer, and for a time, doubtless, exercised amid his rude surroundings the primitive hospitality natural to sturdy Western pioneers. On these facts the changes were rung. In every town and village a log ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... perceive what 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
... 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 ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Hanlon," and Miss Ames was very earnest, "but, and this is why I'm here—you told me that in all the foolery and hocus-pocus there was, you believed, two per cent of genuine telepathy—two per cent of genuine communication with spirits of ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... up 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
... Gett-all go away with Wilding! A Man of Wilding's extravagant Life Get a Fortune in the City! Thou mightst as well have told me, a Holder-forth were married to a Nun: There are not two such Contraries in Nature, 'Tis flam, 'tis foolery, 'tis most impossible. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... Burns retorted, coolly, "so long as you keep your distance with your foolery. You or any ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... you,' she 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 of the ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... ago," he told her, "if you had tried this foolery, I would have choked you, and thrown what was left ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... This pace in foolery had been set at the Duke's House, but Nell out-did them, with her broad-brimmed hat as large as a cart-wheel and her quaint waist-belt; for was not her hat larger by half than that at the rival house and ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... ultimate of all sane European policy, as distinguished from oligarchic and dynastic foolery, is the establishment of the natural map of Europe. There exists no school of thought that can claim a moment's consideration among the Allies which aims at the disintegration of the essential Germany or the subjugation of any Germans to an alien ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... you 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 ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Dover, 'this in my mind was pretty foolery, but yet the Foole of all Fooles is not here found that I ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... the 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 made yesterday ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... at 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 know it. He can't talk much owing to his jaw being tied ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... more! St. George and the Dragon fly away with all the Methodist Chapels that ever were built! they shall hold no daughter of mine. And hark ye,—you shall give up this foolery altogether and tell me you will marry Mr. Carlisle, or I won't have you in my family. You may go where you like, but you shall not stay with me as long as I live. I give you a month to think of it, Eleanor;—a month? what's to-day?—the tenth? Then I give you ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... afraid of Spirits.} They are never fearful in the Night, nor do the Thoughts of Spirits ever trouble them; such as the many Hobgoblins and Bugbears that we suck in with our Milk, and the Foolery of our Nurses and Servants suggest to us; who by their idle Tales of Fairies, and Witches, make such Impressions on our tender Years, that at Maturity, we carry Pigmies Souls, in Giants Bodies, and ever after are thereby so much depriv'd ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... mean time Francis was summoned before the director, and since, I do not know why, they suspected him of corrupting me; and since he was, moreover, by reason of his foolery, in bad odor with the doctor and the sisters, he was informed that he must leave the hospital the following day and join his ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... "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
... so does a tenacious knowledge of his rights; yet, he feels the prejudice that cuts and slights him in his progress, that charges him with the impudence of a negro, that calls his attempts to be a man mere pompous foolery." ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... "'No foolery, Werbrust,' said du Tillet. 'You know the holders of his paper. Now, look here. There is business in it. Shares in this new concern of ours have gone up twenty per cent already; they will go up to five-and-twenty by the end of the quarter; you know why. ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... perception of the men's wishes, and it was plain this lucky shot had given them a sickener of their trade. In a moment they were all of one mind: the chase was drawing away from us, it was needless to hold on, the Sarah was too foul to overhaul a bottle, it was mere foolery to keep the sea with her; and on these pretended grounds her head was incontinently put about and the course laid for the river. It was strange to see what merriment fell on that ship's company, and how they stamped about the deck jesting, and each computing what increase had come ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appearance of any symptoms of it among the neighbouring youth, even when it took the form of an inquiry for his limp paper and skewer-like pens. In fact, the diffusion of penmanship was what he most seriously deprecated and discountenanced. "The Lord knows," his main argument ran, "the foolery them spalpeens 'ill be gabbin' permiscuis would sicken you, widout givin' them the chance to be sittin' down aisy and invintin' it." His wife once suggested that "the crathurs might be more sinsible like, when they were takin' time ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... harvest-time they 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
... disgust. "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
... ye filthy swine! Out of the sanctuary, ye accursed peddlers! Touch no longer the altar with your desecrating hands. What have ye to do with the alms of our fathers, which were given for the poor and the Church, and you spend for splendor, pomp, and foolery, while the children suffer for bread? See you not that the wind of Freedom[2] is blowing? On two men not much depends. Know that there are many Luthers, many Huttens here. Should either of us be destroyed, still greater is the ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... been thinking of putting some of my own—yet I don't think I shall. We're going away for the winter. Sibyl wants to give up the house, and I think she's right. For people like us, it's mere foolery to worry with a house and a lot of servants. We're neither of us cut out for that kind of thing. Sibyl hates housekeeping. Well, you can't expect a woman like her to manage a pack of thieving, lying, lazy servants. The housekeeper idea ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... refused him again, and the baron was so exasperated that he said plainly there was no need for Paul to believe in such foolery as this absurd symbol of transubstantiation, to become a good and honest man. So it was resolved to bring the boy up in the Christian faith, but not in the Catholic Church, and that he should decide his religion for himself ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... but did 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
... other frowsy 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 ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... are blazing; no foolery now! Harris quietly signs. The name of Joseph Woods is added, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Meredith, ask Joseph Conrad, ask H.G. Wells, ask Murray Gilchrist, ask George Moore, ask Eden Phillpotts, ask "Q," ask Henry James. Lo! I say to all facile gabblers about the "art of the short story," as the late "C.-B." said to Mr. Balfour: "Enough of this foolery!" It is of a piece with the notion that a fine sonnet is more ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... drawing-room, and overheard William Clerk and me laughing excessively at some foolery or other in the back-room, to her no small surprise, which she did not keep to herself. But do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister,[149] or I for my lost fortune? If I have a very ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 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 were ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... to accept your wager, my lord," answered Ramorny, bitterly, "but there is no time for foolery. You have dismissed me from your service, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... her plans. And so I could not sleep for a long time; not, indeed, until the light of morning began to stream through the cottage window, and then I felt to laugh at it all. Betsey's signs and Betsey's words were so much foolery, while the conversation about the buried treasure was no more true than the stories which were believed in superstitious days. Besides, thoughts of Naomi drove away all else, although everything came back to me afterward. ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... 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 comes cheaper than breakfast and dinner. So, it ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... sat down again on the bench, and told her the exact truth about that night; how it had started in drunken foolery, and all the rest of it. He even explained the exact route he had taken home so as to come ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... kept to the old 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 b'en in the quarry line all my life, an' I know ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... but sooner than lose a good chance you may kiss them both," etc. Drovers, who frequented the "Gate House" at the top of the hill, and who wished to keep the tavern to themselves, are said to have been responsible for the rude beginnings of this tedious foolery.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... not very exalted, it is better than nothing at all. On the individual boy the effect will be various. "Look here," says the house master, "there's London Matric. at the end of next term. Hadn't you better give up all this foolery with politics and do a little real work?" The advice was taken, and perhaps we are not sufficiently impartial to offer a valuable opinion on the result. However, the boy was no fool, and the first part of the advice ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... got into the girl?" said Arundel, tired of this foolery. "I prithee no more, sweet Prudence, but conduct me at once to Eveline. Consider how long it ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... in perfumery or to deck himself with elegant arms and the like, or even if he allowed himself to be guilty of outrages or irregularities of a very questionable kind, provided only his military duties were not immediately affected, the foolery and the crime were allowed to pass, and the general lent a deaf ear to the complaints of the provincials on such points. Mutiny on the other hand was never pardoned, either in the instigators, or even in the guilty ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... thought to send me to the Globe Theatre at this festive season of the year to witness the representation of a piece, called by the management, for some reason or other, "a faerie comedy." Now, I like a Burlesque, and I am fond of a Pantomime, but a mixture of blank verse and tom-foolery is rather too much for me, especially when that mixture is not redeemed by a plot of any interest. Nothing can be more absurd than the story (save the mark!) told in this particularly uninteresting play. It appears that a "Duke!" of Athens married the Queen of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... there exists outside of Cape Cod another individual who would like to see Mr. Thomas Foolery move in state most perfect, just send him over here: he must be present on that day when the little Lord Mayor makes a great man of himself. A great man is the Lord Mayor on that day on which he sacrifices all his good sense to ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... end this foolery! The time has come for everything that draws breath to rise up against these systematic, insane and stupid acts of destruction, perpetrated without any military excuse or strategic object. The reason why we are ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... yonder manage 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? The meanest sloop that ever sailed out of France would have overmatched ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cavil and charge me, partly that these toys are lighter than may become a divine, and partly more biting than may beseem the modesty of a Christian, and consequently exclaim that I resemble the ancient comedy, or another Lucian, and snarl at everything. But I would have them whom the lightness or foolery of the argument may offend to consider that mine is not the first of this kind, but the same thing that has been often practiced even by great authors: when Homer, so many ages since, did the like with the ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... foolery, you idiot," I muttered to Stephen, kicking him on the shins, "or you'll get our throats cut." Then, collecting myself with an ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... of virtue, has left it upon record, that Pericles, when he was sick, showed one of his friends that came to visit him, an amulet or charm that the women had hung about his neck; as much as to say, that he was very sick indeed when he would admit of such a foolery ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... given 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 not have been ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... basket; protests to my husband he is now here; and hath drawn him and the rest of their company from their sport, to make another experiment of his suspicion: but I am glad the 30 knight is not here; now he shall see his own foolery. ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... in denouncing the penny wisdom and pound foolery of the Academicals in foisting off upon the public such ancient and fish-like articles that have long ceased to be bon ton and in the fashion, since it is undeniable that many are over fifty years, and some ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... not get away before," she said as she fell in beside him. "The old man was working with his foolery and it was impossible to get him to go to bed. Once or twice I yawned, but ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... William, thinking her the finest child he had ever seen. She is become of that age when it is necessary to remove her from a mere nurse, and to think of educating her. I am now anxious for the child's being placed under your protecting wing"; a clumsy, transparent piece of foolery, which at once confirms its intention to mislead! But we are saved the trouble of interpretation, for the father goes on to write on another piece of note-paper, "My beloved, how I feel for your situation and that of our dear Horatia, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... driven 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
... 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 he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... precious father-in-law; and what do you think that I must think of him? Will you not admit that for a vulgar, impudent brute, he is about as bad as even England can supply?" Of course Lord George had nothing to say in answer to this. "He is going on with this tom-foolery, I believe?" ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... 'buses and trams. As a rule 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: ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... grim sense of humour, and enjoyed nothing more than really elaborate foolery. Such as, for example, the celebrated ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... sometimes called we believe La Capital de Majeza; the proper translation of which we conceive to be the Head Quarters of Foolery, for nothing more absurd and contemptible than this Majeza ever came within the sphere of our contemplation. Nevertheless it constitutes the chief glory of the Sevillians. Every Sevillian, male or female, rich ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... property? Did you ever hear of the Claimant and Portland Prison? I would advise you to acquaint yourself with these details before you come to me again. You may be more fool than knave; but you may carry your foolery or ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Turner, he was ugly only when he was drinking, and there was not even enough liquor on the Ella to revive poor Burns. He spent his days devising, with bits of wire, a ring puzzle that he intended should make his fortune. And I believe he contrived, finally, a clever enough bit of foolery. He was anxious to talk, and complained bitterly of loneliness, using every excuse to hold Tom, the cook, when he carried him his meals. He had asked for a Bible, too, and read it ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the purification of the torpid lethargy brought on by peace and prosperity, is now gone stark staring mad on the subject of a real or supposed Popish plot. I read one programme on the subject, by a fellow called Oates, and thought it the most absurd foolery I ever perused. But that cunning fellow Shaftesbury, and some others amongst the great ones, having taken it up, and are driving on at such a rate as makes harness crack, and horses smoke for it. The King, who has sworn never to kiss the pillow his father went ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... to this pledge, and again addressed her lord with fresh arguments for the detention of Wallace. Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, impatient under all this foolery, as he justly deemed it, abruptly said, "Be assured, fair lady, Israel's Samson was not brought into the world his duty better than allow himself to be tied to any ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... cloud of words, of which Dr Thorpe understood about half, and Isoult much less. John, being a little wiser, was called upon for a translation. "Hang me if I know what the fellow is a-writing about!" testily cried Dr Thorpe. "Jack, do thou put this foolery into ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... with edge-tools till once it cuts its fingers. The most lugubrious poetry is written by very young and tolerably comfortable persons. When a man's mood becomes really serious he has little taste for such foolery. The man who has a grave or two in his heart, does not need to haunt churchyards. The young poet uses death as an antithesis; and when he shocks his reader by some flippant use of it in that way, he considers he has written ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... 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
... and made the scene a picture of the moment when waking thoughts start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream. The leader of the hostile party stood in the centre of the circle, while the rout of monsters cowered around him like evil spirits in the presence of a dread magician. No fantastic foolery could look him in the face. So stern was the energy of his aspect that the whole man, visage, frame and soul, seemed wrought of iron gifted with life and thought, yet all of one substance with his headpiece and breastplate. It was the Puritan ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... What a cursed foolery is a dream! The host was actually sitting there vis-a-vis with the lawyer, at the other end of the long table; for Mistress Boris had so laid the places. And as the magistrate's place remained empty, host and guest sat so far apart that the one was ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... ideas. 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
... is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I feel it is so even on your own account, and ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... foolery," snapped Mr. Downing, as the three hundred and fifty went up on the board. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mr Turnbull in his department as much as I could, but he grumbled very much. "I can't bear all this nonsense, all this finery and foolery. Everything comes up cold, everything is out of reach. The table's so long, and so covered with uneatables, that my wife is hardly within hail and, by jingo, with her the servants are masters. Not with me, at all ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... pervert it to the great injury of the poor, forsaken sheep of Christ. If I had only loved them enough I should have dealt quite differently with the pope and his Romanists, who with their laws and their prattle, their letters of indulgence, and the rest of their foolery, bring to naught out faith and God's Word. They make for us what laws they will, only to capture us, and then sell them to us again for money;[77] with their mouths they weave snares for money, and yet boast that they ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... into the same pitiable foolery, on Pierson's introduction. And the lucky humbug was very soon living in clover in Mills' house, which he chose first; had admitted the happy fools, Pierson and Folger, as the first two members of his true church; Pierson, believing that from Elijah the Tishbite ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... at me, "you do look like the captain himself, and might almost go on board and read the articles of war; but, surely, Master Keene," added he, looking at the captain as he lay senseless in bed, "this is no time for foolery of this sort." ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... chair, and plays the little concertina with superb execution. There are no "jumps" in Grock's performance. His moods flow from one into another with a masterly smoothness, and you are aware when he is finished that you have never seen that sort of foolery before. Not just that sort. It is the good mind that satisfies, as in the case of James Watts, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... never after own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half 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. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... again!" he grumbled. "Bother! What's the good of going to the same place twice over? I call it foolery and rubbish." ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt
... quickly round, while the maiden, suspecting what was coming and pretending to be abashed, ran behind her mother, said he, "To end the foolery, what say you, son of the snail, to marrying my daughter? She is well brought up, and is the moat 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 ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... bring them to him? And who can think that he should be quiet 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 other. ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... cities, and their stiddy growth and size, And brag about yer County-seats, and business enterprise, And railroads, and factories, and all sich foolery— But the little Town o' Tailholt is ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... they are not elected. This, I think, is one of the considerations for which many people's minds are still unprepared. But unless we are to have over again after all this bloodshed and effort some such "Peace with Honour" foolery as we had performed by "Dizzy" and Salisbury at that fatal Berlin Conference in which this present war was begotten, we must sit up to this novel proposal of electoral representation in the peace negotiations. Something more than common sense binds our statesmen to this idea. They are morally ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... 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 with him as I have done." Beneath which I read a regret, but said nothing, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... for what I have written; but it were too much for Job himself to bear what one has not. I suspect that when the Arab Patriarch wished that his 'enemy had written a book,' he did not anticipate his own name on the title-page. I feel quite as much bored with this foolery as it deserves, and more than I should be if I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... us all into an infernal mess with your foolery," he said sulkily, "and when you do, you needn't come to me ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... would do. His palms touched the pressed grasses where she had been, but he did not say a word. He would not give her that satisfaction; and he told himself grimly that he had his opinion of a girl who would waste time in foolery, out here in the cold—with ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... King, who was at Oxford in winter quarters, and having neither the power nor opportunity to meddle with the details of an execution. The incident, in a word, is worth as much and as little as the abominable story of the subsequent pact with Lucifer or the foolery of the ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... 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 of the sun and ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... He'll have to swallow his gruel. We can't spare him. Where would I get another man from at this time of the season? Besides, that would look as if he were afraid of them. We've lost hours of precious time with his foolery already," he adds savagely, and I can guess the headstrong Jones has "caught ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... gayly at Uncle Steve's foolery, and said: "If they're weeping so you'd better take them some of ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... mountain eyrie felt his heart warm with a sort of fatherly pity over these bumpkin raptures. The lad blows a bubble of foolery, and it glitters and floats and bursts, and who is the worse for it? The man carves folly in brass, and breaks his head on his own monument; or forges it in steel, and stabs his own heart with it. The vanities of youth are yeast in wholesome ale. The follies ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... swords, and pistols, glassware and brassware, emeralds and other precious stones, and altogether disgusted with the childish gimcrackery of royalty. Great Alexander, I thought to myself, who would be a Czar of Russia, and have to make his living at the expense of all this sort of tom-foolery? Who would abide even for a day in a bazar of curiosity-shops, bothered out of his wits by servants and soldiers, and the flare and glitter of jewelry? It certainly all looked very shallow and troublesome to a plain man, destitute by nature of kingly ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... days have held up fair till now that all is 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 ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and nothing else. If I am Count and Field-Marshal and Viceroy, I owe it all to the good heart of your Empress and mine, whose humble servant I am. Take it away, and let me hear no more of such foolery." ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... The League of Youth to Bjoernson's The Newly Married Couple (1865), a slighter, but, as it seems to me, a more amusing comedy.] but it excludes it from the larger European view. Oddly enough, Ibsen believed, or pretended to believe, that The League of Youth was a "placable" piece of foolery, which could give no annoyance to the worst of offenders by its innocent and indulgent banter. Perhaps, like many strenuous writers, he underestimated the violence of his own language; perhaps, living so long at a distance from Norway and ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... Harry. "You get us into a precious hobble through sheer wanton foolery, and then you expect me ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... this, which—like the other points I have mentioned—has been known and taught long ages ago. Says that humorous old sage, Lao-tze, whom I have already quoted: "By non-action there is nothing that cannot be done." At first this sounds like mere foolery or worse; but afterwards thinking on it one sees there is a meaning hidden. There is a secret by which Nature and the powers of the universal life will do all for you. The Bhagavat Gita also says, "He who discovers inaction in action and action in ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... she is now," replied he, "mightily offended that people should have their ears open to any sort of foolery, and shut to words of truth ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... but for my foolery you would be fifty marks poorer to-night, Christian Gregorovitch. A ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... see All breeds of winged creatures trust to wings And from their fledgling pinions seek to get A fluttering assistance. Thus, to think That in those days some man apportioned round To things their names, and that from him men learned Their first nomenclature, is foolery. For why could he mark everything by words And utter the various sounds of tongue, what time The rest may be supposed powerless To do the same? And, if the rest had not Already one with other used words, Whence was implanted in the teacher, then, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Marshal "we've had foolery enough for one morning. We are here for an execution, ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... King's foolery roused the spirit of mischief in the two girls, and faster and faster flew the drops of water from one to another of ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... I, "this is too bad; go forward now and cut this foolery short. You will be too drunk to cook the dinner if you ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... other place, for, when you're on the way, you can keep a lookout for the varmints; but you've undertook to settle down right in the heart of the Apache country, and that's what I call the biggest piece of tom-foolery ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... of this foolery, You found out what I am when you were a boy. None of this hysterical excitement. I ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... who thought that he spoke in a mood of mockery, cautioned him that they were met there on a business of life and death, and were in no mood to be trifled with. Therefore, he, Boyd Connoway, had better keep his foolery for another time! ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... this gear hastily," said the Grand Master, "since thou wilt needs go through the foolery.—Hark thee—I think I know most of thy frailties by heart, so we may omit the detail, which may be somewhat a long one, and begin with the absolution. What signifies counting the spots of dirt that we are about ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... turned the pages of the album, the famous album, said to be crammed with passionate declarations. Not a bit of it! Nothing but foolery and childish nonsense: ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... 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, mumbling ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... burnt-cork artist seemed inappropriate to the place; his grotesque dancing inadmissible in that atmosphere once consecrated to the comedy of manners and the stately march of the classic drama. Where Hamlet had moralized, a loutish clown now beguiled the time with some tom-foolery, his wit so broad, his quips were cannon-balls, and his audience, for the most part soldiers from Mexico, open-mouthed swallowed the entire bombardment. But Saint-Prosper, finding the performance dull, finally rose and went out, not waiting for the thrilling ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... singing on the beach yet that I couldn't 'ave sung into a cocked hat. And we both know how to put on the toff a bit. Eh? Well, that's my ideer. Me and you, Grubb, with a refined song and a breakdown. Like we was doing for foolery yestiday. That was what put it into my 'ead. Easy make up a programme—easy. Six choice items, and one or two for encores and patter. I'm all right ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... worker. And little by little the rich took courage, emerged from their hiding-places, and flaunted their luxury in the face of the starving multitude. They dressed up like scented fops and said to the workers: "Come, enough of this foolery! What have you gained ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... 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 ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguished soldier, and is now the owner of a fine property at home, I don't see what trouble he can have had. He may possibly, for anything I know, have had some boyish love affairs, but I don't think he is the sort of man to allow his whole life to be affected by any foolery of that sort. He is ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... of you," he said. "I heard him tell Miss Deerhurst that it was no use for anyone to try to be such an out-and-out gentleman as his uncle, for they couldn't do it, and he had rather be like you than anyone else. I don't care for gentlemen, and all that foolery, as you know. I wish I could leave him to my old mate, Eli Potter; but you are true and honest, Fulk Torwood, and I think not so ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 herself against the Belgian outrage; that she would not tolerate the smashing ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... dodged Dorothy and Elsie, who advanced upon him with one accord and one purpose of kissing him, and cried, "No, no! This is no time for foolery!" ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... 'Badly 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 to get ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... end of this foolery, you scoundrel!" said Nigel—"Do you come hither to vent your noisy oaths and your bottled-up valour on me? You seem to know me, and I am half ashamed to say I have at length been able to recollect you—remember the garden behind the ordinary,—you dastardly ruffian, and the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott |
