"Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of disease is, to the philosophical mind, of all others the most essentially foolish—indeed, we can hardly call to mind any other so thoroughly calculated to turn the average well-constructed man or woman into an exuberantly incurable idiot. For what does it amount to when we come to pan it out? If there exist grounds for the misgiving, why then it is going begging—grovelling for something which the other party has not got to give; if groundless, is it not a fulfilling of the homely ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... them off. I was defenseless. I must get away. I ran to the top of the staircase and looked down. There was that fool Peppo, beleaguered by a bevy of fair women. They were simply looting him, and he was grinning like an idiot. I gathered up my train, ran down, and made a dash at him, yanked him out of that circle of rich contours, and dragged him by a limp cuff up the stairs after me. I told him that I must escape from that house ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... firm of Verity, Bulmer an' Co. See? Wot's wrong with that? I've done everything for you up to date; now it's your turn. Simple, isn't it? P'raps I ought to have explained things differently, but it didn't occur to me you'd hobject to bein' the wife of a millionaire, even if 'e is a doddrin' owd idiot to talk of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... "Fool!—madman—insane idiot!" he cried, tearing the note to pieces, and trampling on the fragments in his ungovernable rage: "how have you marred your own fortune, destroyed your best hopes, and annihilated all my ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... tired I slept; and when I woke I stretched myself like a giant refreshed. It was a pure joy to me in those days to close my fingers into a fist and see the beauty and firmness of my muscles. When solemn, civilised people spoke to me of duty and work, I listened like an idiot. I had nothing in my consciousness to help me to understand them. I knew no more of duty than Crusoe on his island; and as for work, I had no ambition,—why, then, should I work? I read, of course; but I read because I liked it, not because ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... this! That these disdaineous females and this ferocious old woman are placed here by the administration, not only to empoison the voyagers, but to affront them! Great Heaven! How arrives it? The English people. Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?" Another time, a merry wideawake American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it out, and had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in vain to sustain exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and had ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... country worth fighting for—infinitely harder than the most apprehensive imagination could have pictured. There have been mothers and widows for whom a single grave, or the appearance of one name on the missing list, has turned the whole conflict into an idiot's tale. There have been many such; but there have apparently not been enough to deflect by a hair's breadth the subtle current of public sentiment; unless it is truer, as it is infinitely more inspiring, to suppose that, of this company of blinded baffled sufferers, almost all have had ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... fairies' eyes, dismally fray'd! His ensuing voice came like the thunder crash— Meanwhile the bolt shatters some pine or ash— "Thou feeble, wanton, foolish, fickle thing! Whom nought can frighten, sadden, or abash,— To hope my solemn countenance to wring To idiot smiles!—but I ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... For idiot seasons that still come and go— To whom the heart no offices can teach, Vainer than breezes that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... among all mountains; as the Brahmana is the foremost among all castes, art thou the foremost of all bowmen! Dhritarashtra's son (Duryodhana) listened not to the words repeatedly spoken by me and Vidura and Drona and Rama and Janardana and also by Sanjaya. Reft of his senses, like unto an idiot, Duryodhana placed no reliance on those utterances. Past all instructions, he will certainly have to lie down for ever, overwhelmed by the might of Bhima!'—Hearing these words of his, the Kuru king Duryodhana became of cheerless heart. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... us in all simplicity that he had fallen into such a state that he would read the same telegraphic despatches over and over again in different papers, as if they were new, until he felt as if he were an idiot. Who did not do just the same thing, and does not often do it still, now that the first flush of the fever is over? Another person always goes through the side streets on his way for the noon extra,—he is so afraid somebody ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... it was necessary to praise Ghosts with extravagance, because the vituperation of the enemy was so stupid and offensive, but now that there are no serious adversaries left, cooler judgment admits—not one word that the idiot-adversary said, but—that there are more convincing plays than ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... that your eyes are anything to be stuck up about, though; they're neither brown nor green, nor any other recognized color; just a sort of mixture—like Pedro's estofados. Your mouth, now—you always had a homely sort of mouth, too big by far. And you were an idiot to shave off your mustache. You might let it grow again, now that you're where you could have it trimmed once in awhile, but I suppose it would take a month and look like a nail-brush in the meanwhile! And then there's your complexion, you poor ugly hombre. I remember when it was like ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... it was her own baby crying and calling for her, went into the garden in silence. There he heard at once that the groans came from the bath-house that stood near the garden gate, and that they were the groans of a woman. Opening the door of the bath-house, he saw a sight which petrified him. An idiot girl, who wandered about the streets and was known to the whole town by the nickname of Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya (Stinking Lizaveta), had got into the bath-house and had just given birth to a child. She lay dying with the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to want then, and want till you're gray, and longer," retorted the little man. "So we might as well move on. Tummas, you idiot, gad up those bulls!" ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... capacity. They measure from seventy-five inches to ninety. Europeans' brains measure from ninety to one hundred inches. There are instances of Esquimaux measuring over ninety. Even the brain of an idiot is double the size of that of the orang-otang. But how did man get this extraordinary development of brain, far beyond his necessities? For the cave man of Mentone, who hunted the bison, had as good a head as Bismarck. Natural ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... an illness; and having obtained permission for the first time to read a little during the day, he picked up a book from a pile beside the bed and began Sordello. No sooner had he done so than he turned deadly pale, put down the book, and said, "My God! I'm an idiot. My health is restored, but my mind's gone. I can't understand two consecutive lines of an English poem." He then summoned his family and silently gave the book into their hands, asking for their opinion on the poem; and as the shadow of perplexity ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... contemptuously, for my own temper was rising; "I am not afraid. There, get up and dress at once, and don't make an idiot of yourself." ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... full of talk and merriment, Urania thoughtful. This day's entertainment was too much in Ida's honour to be pleasant to Miss Rylance; yet she could not deny herself the painful privilege of being there. She wanted to see what happened—how far Mr. Wendover was disposed to make an idiot of himself. She saw more than enough in the glances of the charioteer, when he turned to talk to the girls behind him—now to point out some feature in the landscape, now to ask some idle question, but always with looks that lingered upon ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... gradually overcomes their clouded brains, the last glimmerings of reason dying out one by one, like the smoky lights on the already cold breasts of the corpses lying around them. Through the stupor spreading over the faces of butchers and cannibals, we see appearing that of the idiot. It is the revolutionary idiot, in which all conceptions, save two, have vanished, two fixed, rudimentary, and mechanical ideas, one destruction and the other that of public safety. With no others in his empty head, these blend together through an irresistible ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... be both lavish and determined in the prosecution of any object on which he has set his heart. His heart, in this instance, is set upon his friend's wife, and the obstacles in his way do not seem to be very formidable. The case, indeed, is soon too manifest for any one but a born idiot to feign ignorance of it. The husband is not a born idiot—he either sees it plainly, or (it may be, after a struggle) he looks another way, and resigns himself to the inevitable. For inevitable it is, if he is to continue in that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... he panted. "That's right, clumsy! Noisy does it! Now chuck every single thing you can lay hands on, overboard—except the muskets, idiot!" ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... to see what was the matter. I hear from the Brigade that some doddering idiot has cut our wire. Who in the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... their utmost quickness and perfection; suppose him likewise, if you please, nimble and active, nay, give him riches, honours, authority, power, glory; now, I say, should this person, who is in possession of all these, be unjust, intemperate, timid, stupid, or an idiot, could you hesitate to call such an one miserable? What, then, are those goods, in the possession of which you may be very miserable? Let us see if a happy life is not made up of parts of the same nature, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... selfishness, and she expatiates to her son on the unmanliness and indolence of his father. The old family servant takes up the tale, and says to the youth:—'When you grow up you must be more of a man than your father.' All the world are agreed that he who minds his own business is an idiot, while a busybody is highly honoured and esteemed. The young man compares this spirit with his father's words and ways, and as he is naturally well disposed, although he has suffered from evil influences, he rests at a middle point and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... "Don't be an idiot," returned the despatcher, with an expression of Western force and brevity. "They will lift your hair before you get half-way to the train. Stick to your key as long as you can. If they start to cross the creek, leg it for the ranch. Do ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... sheathed in armour; a judge, an advocate, and a magistrate, all in their robes; a mendicant friar and a nun; and the list was completed by a physician, an astrologer, a miser, a merchant, a duchess, a pedler, a soldier, a gamester, an idiot, a robber, a blind man, and a beggar—each distinguishable ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... something in a rather surly fashion, whereupon the gentleman, who had not yet spoken, leaned forward, and said angrily, "You told us you knew this neighbourhood. You are an idiot!" ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... music in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely, There's not a string attuned to mirth But has its chords ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and pretends that really the tender thing is gone away at last. He will take this half of a broken sixpence back: it was given in happier times. If ever he should marry, he will know that one far away prays for his happiness. And if—if these unwomanly tears—And suddenly the crass idiot discovers that she is laughing at him, and that she has secured him and bound him as completely as a fly fifty times wound round by a spider. The crash of applause that accompanied the lowering of the curtain stunned Macleod, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... o' 'cuteness, Mr. Tulliver," she observed as she sat down, "but I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things; for if I send her upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all the while I'm waiting for her downstairs. That niver run i' ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... idiot unhung!" he confessed, as he took her in his arms. "But when I saw that the writing was yours, I fancied your father had by threats, or in some way, induced you to change your mind, and that you really thought, in duty ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... wriggling worm, and says, in a voice that rises as fast as the sound a mouse makes racing up the treble of the piano keys: 'Ump! whew! Didn't I tell you so? The minute my back was turned, of course you made ducks and drakes of all your promises. Show me a "Flying Jenney," that the tip end of any idiot's little finger can spin around, and I'll christen it Edward McTwaddle Singleton!' Seems funny to you, doctor? Just wait till you are married, and your Susan shuts the door and interviews you, picking a whole flock of crows, till you wonder if it isn't raining black feathers. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... an idiot, Joe, but, if you want to keep your hand in and go through a regular chapter of flirtation, just right about face, and devote yourself to some one else. Nothing like jealousy to teach womankind their own minds, and a touch of it will bring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... whose eldest son was a junior whip, had been the recipient, since the advent of the new Cabinet, of so much rejoicing over the final exclusion of "that vain old idiot, Alresford," from any further chances of muddling a public department, that Lady Selina's talk made her at once nervous and irritable. She was afraid of being indiscreet; yet she longed to put her visitor down. In her odd disjointed way, too, she took a real interest in politics. Her craving ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... much of a scout as I thought I was," he muttered. "Chunky could have done no worse and for a blundering idiot he's always held the cup up to the present time. I'm glad no one saw me make such an exhibition of myself. But what if that fellow heard me? No, he couldn't. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... me with a boat, The seamen know an idiot has got 'em; They make their wills and are prepared to die, Quite certain they are going to the bottom. But what care I! For when I go ashore, In uniform with buttons bright and shining, The girls all cluster 'round ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... come to draw lots to see who is to go and kill M. Thiers," cries a red-haired gamin.—"Idiot," retorts his comrade, "they have no arms!"—"Listen, and you will hear," says the first, which is capital advice, if I could but follow it. The pushing becomes intolerable, when suddenly the bald head of an unfortunate citizen executes a fatal plunge—I ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... of it. It was rather a good idea to keep the idiot scared and quiet, and a devilish hard thing to get out of—head away from the string. My dear Kemp, it's no good your sitting glaring as though I was a murderer. It had to be done. He had his revolver. If once he saw me he would ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... began now to pay for the joy he had taken in her companionship. He knew the weakness of every actor, and suffered with them and for them. Royleston from the first tortured him by mumbling his lines, palpably "faking" at times. "The idiot, he'll fail to give his cues!" muttered Douglass. "He'll ruin the play." The children scared him also, they were so important to Helen at the ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... and the harvest will be greater than any other crop. He will reap it in days of bedridden misery, and possible sudden death. He will reap it in bitter hours by the bedside through the illness and death of his wife or in her long years of ill health. He will reap it in little white coffins, idiot babies; blind, deaf and dumb, sickly and stunted children. And it will cost him lost wages and hospital and ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... remarked, handing the book back to George; "it is not a book that personally I would recommend to any German about to visit England; I think it would get him disliked. But I have read books published in London for the use of English travellers abroad every whit as foolish. Some educated idiot, misunderstanding seven languages, would appear to go about writing these books for the misinformation and false guidance ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... and having put down one foot had to find place for the other. Three persons, who had evidently found no room even in the passage, lay in the anteroom, close to the stinking and leaking tub. One of these was an old idiot, whom Nekhludoff had often seen marching with the gang; another was a boy about twelve; he lay between the two other convicts, with his head on the leg ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... "Young idiot!" he said, meaning Salthenius, who was only an undergraduate when he committed that indiscretion, "how did he know ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... you wouldn't," I replied hastily. "I was a fool, an idiot—by Jove, what an idiot I ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... I have told you—mackintosh up to her ears and a flat leather cap, suiting her pretty face to perfection. But any fool could have seen she was a woman twenty yards away; and I began to ask which was the bigger idiot—me for making the suggestion, or she for taking it? It was too late, however, to think of that, and trusting that good luck might pull us through, perhaps looking on the whole affair as one which was pretty near its end—and ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... your miner's trade again, poor fool! Make yourself a home, since you know how to, and life will be sweet to you for many a long day yet: the weather is fine and victuals plentiful. Dig, delve, go underground, where safety lies. Like an idiot, you refrain; ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... further, the road spoken of is a plain road. "The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." That is, if a man is three fourths an idiot, he can find this road just as well as if he were a philosopher. The imbecile boy, the laughing-stock of the street, and followed by a mob hooting at him, has only just to knock once at the gate of heaven, and it swings open: while there has been many a man who can ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... any more witnesses!" growled O'Brien. "And you know it almighty well, you idiot!" he muttered under ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... was the son of the Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden; another is a book by Daumer, which he devotes entirely to the explosion of all theories that have ever been advanced; and a third, by Dr. Eschricht, contends that Caspar was at first an idiot and afterwards an impostor. Before considering these different theories, let us recall the principal incidents of his life. These have, indeed, been placed within the reach of the English reader by the Earl of Stanhope's book and by a translation of Feuerbach's "Kaspar Hauser. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... never beheld. They seemed, many of them, like disinterred corpses, for a moment reanimated to go through this ceremony, and then to sink back again into their profound sleep. Pale and haggard and unearthly, the wild eye of the visionary and the stupid stare of the idiot were seen among them, and it needed no stretch of the imagination to find in most the expression of the worst passions of our nature. They chanted as they went, their sepulchral voices echoing through the vaulted piazza, while the bell of St. Peter's, tolling a deep bass drone, seemed a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... has been said, it follows that the death penalty as a punishment even for the worst crimes is morally untenable; for either the culprit is really irredeemable, that is to say, he is an irresponsible moral idiot, in which case an asylum for the insane is the proper place for him; or he is not irredeemable, in which case the chance of reformation should not be taken from him by cutting off his life. The death penalty is the last lingering vestige of the Lex Talionis, ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... set her down as an enamoured idiot or a creature not a whit less artful than her brother, was Countess Livia's debate. Her inclination was to misdoubt the daughter of the Old Buccaneer: she might be simple, at her age, and she certainly was ignorant; but she clung to her prize. Still the promise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... massacre. The little boys and girls who were big enough to walk alone also collected there and, munching their bread-and-butter, stood looking on curiously to see the others die or gathered round the village idiot, who lay upon the ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... make money, I say, at some sensible work? Make money for me, will you? I'll force you out to make money at some work by which there's money to be made; not the like of that idiot writing of yours, curse it. Answer me, and tell me you'll go out and work for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... was married? What the dev—And you're actually asking me to tell her so too? Mary, are you insane? Embarrassed? What if she is embarrassed? And what do I care if—What? Sweet and pretty? Mary, don't be an idiot. Am I to improvise a wife, in my own house, because a stray girl may object to visiting a bachelor? Not if I know it. Not much." The Governor bristled with indignation. "Confound the girl, I'll—" At this ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the idiot, who had of late assumed all the port of coherence; he snatched and held a part in the colloquy, so did the dignity of labor annul the realization of his infirmity, "then I'd be obleeged ter him ef—ef—ef he'd stay ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... would have wished to have seen the town of Birmingham like that of Lyons, razed, and all its industrious and loyal inhabitants butchered as a man whose conduct proves that he has either an understanding little superior to that of an idiot, or the heart of Marat: in short, as a man who fled into banishment covered with the universal destestation of his countrymen. The spirit, which could dictate such outrageous abuse, must disgrace any individual ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... doddering old idiot! If you didn't want your little pet hurt, you'd best have kept him home. I ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... the real goods, liked me because I was not stupid, and liked me a bit, too, I think, for myself. Of course I had not the slightest intention of joining him in a life of sordid, petty crime; but I'd have been an idiot to throw away all the good things his friendship made possible. When one is on the hot lava of hell, he cannot pick and choose his path, and so it was with me in the Erie County Pen. I had to stay ...
— The Road • Jack London
... was rather addicted to the practice of calling other people names. If the butler made a mistake she dubbed him an idiot at once. She did not actually call her present companion, Mrs. Ingham-Baker, a fool, possibly because she considered the fact too apparent ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... receive? If the prospects of Christianity had not already decided the question for him, so far from receiving credit for political sagacity, as he ever has done, he would deserve rather to be considered an absolute idiot! ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... "Silly idiot that I am!" he said crossly. "I have left my magnifying glass on top of the safe—and it's the most necessary tool we policemen have. Don't bother to come, Mr. Brent, if you'll just lend me the keys of the vault. Thanks, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... idiot send the license back to the minister who had performed the ceremony?" The Laird demanded. "Then this tangle ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... many others, never finished. Late I sat into the night, toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust aside the curtain of the years, to hail that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap VOCES FIDELIUM on the fire before he goes; so clear does he appear before me, sitting there between his candles in the rose-scented room and the late night; so ridiculous ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fool I should be to present it for payment, and have the police upon me. Do you take me for an addle-pated idiot? I tell you what I will do. I will burn your miserable old hulk of a ship, and its rotten cargo; and you and ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... clothes off her back; that there was no trouble she would not take for others; that she did not get on well with her husband, who drank, and was altogether bad and vile; that she had a great sorrow—an only child, an idiot, to whom she was devoted, and who would some day be the Duke of Towers; that she was highly accomplished, a great linguist, a great musician, and about the most popular woman ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... rafters of their own burning dwellings in the town of Charlestown, and heard the cannon shots hurled from British ships against the base of the hill. Three times did scarlet regiments ascend that hill only to be driven back; the voice of that idiot boy, Job Pray, ringing out above the din of battle, "Let them come on to Breed's—the people will teach them ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... burst out in sundry half-stifled noises, which roused the master from his reverie, and he again resumed the book, to continue the examination. As ill luck would have it, he once more repeated, "Avoir, avant," and then half abstractedly, "avu." "Ah, you young idiot!" cried he, in a discordant voice, "can't you manage avoir yet? Whatever ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... 700 lbs." This was distressing. I had made up my mind, if I could not get people at Ujiji, to wait till men should come from the coast, but to wait in beggary was what I never contemplated, and I now felt miserable. Shereef was evidently a moral idiot, for he came without shame to shake hands with me, and when I refused, assumed an air of displeasure, as having been badly treated; and afterwards came with his "Balghere," good-luck salutation, twice a day, and on leaving said, "I am going to pray," till I told him that ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... were kicked out of Leadenhall with every mark of indignity, and a competence in my fob! The birds of the air would not be so free as I should. How I would prance and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and ramble about purposeless as an idiot!" ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... her daughter who was an idiot, were cut to pieces in the woods, and their bodies left to be devoured by wild beasts: Susanna Bales, a widow of Villaro, was immured till she perished through hunger; and Susanna Calvio running away from some soldiers and hiding herself in a barn, they set ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory of this unspeakable idiot—great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!—the memory of this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel without knowing it, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... with interest, because it lends, in a stranger's ear, some justification to the excess of my fondness. But then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was perceived only through its effects. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not the less I must have loved thee, having that capacious heart—overflowing, even as mine overflowed, with tenderness; stung, even as mine was stung, by the necessity of loving and being loved. This it was which crowned thee ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ye born idiot, ye don't know I s'pose what long ears the old hag there has? and ye'd be wanting her to hang two or three of us, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... impeded, and incoherent. People began to say that the fever had taken away the little wit Willie Dixon had ever possessed and that they feared that he would end in being a "natural," as they call an idiot in the Dales. ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... bad wrong 'un," said Paul. "We hadn't been going a fortnight before he asked me to accept half salary, swearing he would make it up, with a rise, as soon as business got better. Like an idiot, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... thought bitterly; that was the whole trouble. This cravenness, this kowtowing before any idiot with a louder voice, certainly wasn't in his genes. The trouble was in his conditioning, started when he was an adolescent. Give somebody an inch and they'll take two. Pretty soon they're walking all over you, and you've become so used ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch
... you; I dare say I shall in time. I have not yet quite embraced all Count Mirabel's philosophy. He says that the man who plagues himself for five minutes about a woman is an idiot. When I think the same, which I hope I may soon, I dare say I shall be ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... only a little further development, on the principle of analogy, to commend itself to every scholar. It is equally obvious that the low-bred and foul-mouthed ruffian Captain Tucca must be meant for Sir Philip Sidney; the vulgar idiot Asinius Bubo for Lord Bacon; the half-witted underling Peter Flash for Sir Walter Raleigh; and the immaculate Celestina, who escapes by stratagem and force of virtue from the villanous designs of Shakespeare, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Bettie Hamlyn said, presently: "Why, your one object in life appears to be to find a girl who will allow you to moon around her and make verses about her. Oh, very well! I met to-day just the sort of pretty idiot who will let you do it. She is visiting Kathleen Eppes for the Finals. She has a great deal of money, too, I hear." And Bettie ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... I am an idiot?" exclaimed Giovanni. "Of course I shall stay where I am till Carnival is over." He was ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... strange sort of originality about McClintock; he imitates other people's styles, but nobody can imitate his, not even an idiot. Other people can be windy, but McClintock blows a gale; other people can blubber sentiment, but McClintock spews it; other people can mishandle metaphors, but only McClintock knows how to make a ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... are, Carrington!" cried the young man, flinging away his cigar. "If my uncle chooses to make an idiot of himself, that is no reason why I should watch the evidence ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... these lines twice, and, turning round, she asked Ying Erh laughingly: "Why don't you go and pour the tea? what are you standing here like an idiot!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... perfect madness, since it furnishes their bountiful pens with means to show the greatness of their wisdom. But if any of these good natured gentlemen critics call me such names, as: "simpleton," "a fool and don't know it," "an idiot making an ass of himself," which exquisite expressions I have selected from the sayings of critics at this day, I would have them beware, since if I am old, my heart is none the less given to mischief, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... night she kept on muttering away straight up to the fifth watch, when she at last turned in. But shortly, daylight broke, and I heard her get up and comb her hair, all in a hurry, and rush after P'in Erh. In a while, however, she returned; and, after acting like an idiot the whole day, she managed to put together a stanza. But it wasn't after all, good, so she's, of course, now ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... next see your friend, Captain Bennydeck, give him my compliments, Mr. Randal, and say I congratulate him on having been jilted by my daughter. It would have been a sad thing, indeed, if such a sensible man had married an idiot. Good-morning." ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... found my companions as usual in a state of faint-heartedness. The Hammal was deputed to obtain permission for fetching the Gerad and all the Gerad's men. This was positively refused. I could not, however, object to sending sundry Tobes to the cunning idiot, in order to back up a verbal request for the escort. Thereupon Yusuf Dera, Madar Farih, and the other worthies took leave, promising to despatch the troop before noon: I saw them depart with pleasure, feeling that we had bade adieu to the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... have been permanently injured. For my own part, when I neared the stove I was nearly suffocated; but I took heart when I saw but three more men between me and the hole. At this moment a sound as of tramping feet was heard, and some idiot on the outer edge of the mob startled us with the cry, "The guards the guards!" A fearful panic ensued, and the entire crowd bounded toward the stairway leading up to their sleeping-quarters. The stairway was unbanistered, and some of the men ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... never pausing in their impressive march unless it be to plunge into the Serpentine and rescue a drowning child, he would know what I mean. He would admit that a dog who cannot answer to his own name and pays but little more attention to "Down, idiot," and "Come here, fool," is not every place's dog. He would admit it, if he had time. But before I could have called his attention to half the good dogs I had marked out he would have sat down beaming in ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... of intellectual development is seen in comparing the world-renowned philosopher Humboldt and the idiot figured by Spurzheim. The contrast of coronal and basilar development is seen in comparing the benevolent negro Eustace, who received the Monthyon prize for virtue in France with the skull of the cannibal Carib, as figured by Lawrence. As to the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... of order to be here! I won't put up with much more of it, and so I'll tell him. I shall dress as I like, and do as I like, even if I haven't got a handle to my name. Sir Richard, indeed!— a pattern for me to follow! Next time the fat old idiot say's that to me, I'll throw the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... him taken to Atlanta. When the pouch was opened, it was found that none of these packages were in it, although they were entered on the way-bill which accompanied the pouch, and were duly checked off. The poor messenger was thunder-struck, and for a time acted like an idiot, plunging his hand into the vacant pouch over and over again, and staring vacantly at the way-bill. The Assistant Superintendent of the Southern Division was in the Atlanta office when the loss was discovered, and at once telegraphed to ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... little idiot," she said, giving me a tender little shake that robbed the words of their harshness, "can't you see that that ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... it; only don't make a blundering idiot of yourself with all that Burgundy inside of you; put the chloral in your pocket carefully. And now for the Hall at once, and ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... snapped, "I deny it. That term planned economy covers a multitude of sins. My dear Leonid, don't be an idiot ..." ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker, and a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence, and enabled you to handle Bigger Propositions. But they didn't imply that you were to be impractical and refuse to take twice the value of a house if a buyer was such an idiot that he didn't jew you down ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Fuentes inside looked extremely miserable. You know, he is the brother of Jorge Fuentes, who has been Minister of the Interior for six months or so, some few years back. Of course, he has no conscience; but he is a man of birth and education—at one time the director of the Customs of Cayta. That idiot-brute Gamacho fastened himself upon him with his following of the lowest rabble. His sickly fear of that ruffian was the most rejoicing ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... mind, nor had she ever quite altered her opinion: This man representing himself as George Liddell was an impostor who had known the real "Simon Pure," and got himself up accordingly as soon as he heard that the late John Liddell had died intestate; that Mr. Newton was a weak-minded, credulous idiot to acknowledge this impostor at first sight, if he were not a double-dealing traitor ready to play into the hands of the new claimant. He ought to have thrown the onus of proof on him, instead of acknowledging his identity by that childish exclamation. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... he stuttered hoarsely. "I'll beat you black and blue when I get hold of you. I'll give you six months in the county jail at hard labor, you brainless young ruffian—you audacious wooden headed idiot, you—" ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... his chest. "Fool, imbecile, idiot, that I am!" he thought. "He was waiting to be questioned about this circumstance. He is so wonderfully shrewd that, when he saw me take the dust, he divined my intentions; and since then he has managed to concoct this story—a plausible ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... a daughter two years older, by keeping a small school for girls. At the age of five years the boy was sent to the Pyle Street School, where the master, unable to teach him anything and deciding that he was an idiot, dismissed him. For a year and a half afterward he was so regarded. During this time he was often subjected to paroxysms of grief which were expressed generally in silent tears, but sometimes in cries ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his self-esteem humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than that his son was an idiot. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... the careful hands of his mother and sister Kate—he found Dr Nathaniel Deane seated by his side. The latter having felt his pulse, and complimented him on his achievements, "No, no, Cousin Nat," he answered; "if you knew all, you would not praise me. I have acted like an idiot, or ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... beside me in silence, his candle in his hand. Then the tall, lean figure inclined towards me. "I say, Watson," he whispered, "would you be afraid to sleep in the same room with a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scarlet; and the denoument of the Merry Wives of Windsor hinges on the colour of Anne Page's gown. As for the uses Shakespeare makes of disguises the instances are almost numberless. Posthumus hides his passion under a peasant's garb, and Edgar his pride beneath an idiot's rags; Portia wears the apparel of a lawyer, and Rosalind is attired in 'all points as a man'; the cloak-bag of Pisanio changes Imogen to the Youth Fidele; Jessica flees from her father's house in boy's dress, and Julia ties ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... certainly born to adorn the age she was given to.'—Well said, Jack—'And would be an ornament to the first dignity.' But what praise is that, unless the first dignity were adorned with the first merit?—Dignity! gew-gaw!— First dignity! thou idiot!—Art thou, who knowest me, so taken with ermine and tinsel?—I, who have won the gold, am only fit to wear it. For the future therefore correct thy style, and proclaim her the ornament of the happiest man, and (respecting ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... she screamed. "Pilgrims of the night, indeed! I'll pilgrim you, you chuckle-headed idiot. Here are your betters trying to make themselves heard." Then Caleb slowly unstopped his ears, and rose rather stiffly to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... be a sentimental idiot," snapped Chillingworth, "and spoil the biggest city story the paper ever had. Why, this may draw the whole United States into a row, and mean war and a new possession and maybe consulates and governorships ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... indulge, without interruption, in those fine romances with which his imagination teemed. One day when he was in a deep reverie, a friend entered hastily: "Don't disturb me," cried the poet; "I am enjoying a moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish another who is an idiot." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the wild March sunset, gone almost ere come, By glacial shower was hustled out of life, Under a blighted ash tree, near his house, Thus mused the man: "Believe, or Disbelieve! The will does both; Then idiot who would be For profitless belief to sell himself? Yet disbelief not less might work our bane! For, I remember, once a sickly slave Ill shepherded my flock: I spake him plain; 'When next, through fault of thine, the midnight wolf Worries ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... lady in the Vennel and received the Bailie's best attention from the Bench, "and if I hadna to hear him preach a sermon as long as my leg besides—confound him for a smooth-tongued, psalm-singin', bletherin' old idiot! But I bear him no grudge; I'll hae a taste o' that whisky, though I'm no mindin' so much about the tea. The sooner we're at the place the better, for I'll be bound there'll be more tea bought this day in Muirtown than ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean; In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... plucked goose down on the bench with an expression which said that she, for one, wasn't going to waste any more words on an idiot. Easy-going, indeed! Did Josephine consider that a drawback? Mrs. Tom sighed. If Josephine, she thought, had put up with Tom Sentner's tempers for fifteen years she would know how to appreciate a good-natured man ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... muttered to himself, "they do not know that the first handful of heather and dried bracken they throw on their fire, will send a skarrow to the sky that will warn every soul within twenty miles. If I had not been a blind idiot, and thinking of something else, I should have seen it long ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... an institution. He had (with her full concurrence) already established a school for the higher education of girls, among other projects which sprang from his fertile brain, and she playfully told him that people would say he had had many children, and that his last was an idiot. Here for once the woman's instinct failed, and masculine sense succeeded. Some of his co-religionists also discouraged the undertaking. "Looking back to the year 1792, and considering the miserable condition of the insane in general at that period, it appears to us almost strange that ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... lips to me on the subject. It was bad enough and stupid enough for him to try to kiss a decent young woman like Julia, who is really as good as gold and as modest as one of our own Highland lassies; but to think of him insulting Teuta! The little beast! One would think that a champion idiot out of an Equatorial asylum would know better! If Michael, the Wine Master, wanted to kill him, I wonder what my Rupert and hers would have done? I am truly thankful that he was not present. And I am thankful, too, that I was not present ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... heard one of them calling you a fool the other evening. She must have thought you an idiot." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... in, up came the swarm of idlers from the wharf, dragging themselves heavily along, laughing stupidly at the ponderous gambols and grimaces of a huge idiot boy, who, on seeing a new arrival, rolled rather than walked up from the water with his hand extended, crying out—money—money. It was all the language the poor creature possessed. He had learned to beg, and that was knowledge enough for him. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... between himself and a large gourd, which he suspended from the ceiling, and almost blinded himself by his attempts to butt it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of Mr. Ellis, who put a final stop to this diversion. Then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and made the pillow into a baby, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... crinkled to a smile. "Sure enough. They figure he's the tail end of our party. Well, I'll bet Thomas gives 'em a good run for their money. He's right careless sometimes, but he's no foolhardy idiot and he don't aim to argue with birds like these even though he's a rip-snorter when he gets goin' good ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... the well-accustomed signal No response the maiden gave; But I heard the waters washing And the moaning of the wave. Vanished was my own Undine, All her linen, too, was gone; And I walked about lamenting On the river bank alone. Idiot that I was, for never Had I asked the maiden's name. Was it Lieschen—was it Gretchen? Had she tin, or whence she came? So I took my trusty meerschaum, And I took my lute likewise; Wandered forth in ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun |
