"Idiotic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... try. I'll show those girls I can do something, though I am the youngest! Oh, I say! I've only just remembered that Winnie'll be the under-mistress. I'll have to call her 'Miss Gascoyne' whenever I speak to her. How perfectly idiotic! I'm sure I shall laugh. I wonder if Miss Roscoe's told her yet? What a surprise it would be for her to come into the room ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... the devil is it?" he asked at last, his face red, his lips quivering. "What do you mean by rushing in, in this—idiotic fashion?" ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... darkness about Lee, his army, his movements, and his plans. And all this while the country, the people, is kept officially ignorant of its honor, of its fate. All publicity and communication is suppressed—not to inform thereby the enemy of our movements. How idiotic, how silly! As if the march and the movements of an army of one hundred thousand men could be kept secret from a vigilant and desperate enemy, and the enemy wanted to read the papers ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... In the car, the doctor, completely overwhelmed, sat with his arms folded on his breast, gazing with idiotic fixedness upon some imaginary point in space. Kennedy was frightful to behold. He was rolling his head from right to left like a wild beast in ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... mortal for a gentleman's ears, the like of which no Soplica had ever heard, Thaddeus trembled, and his face grew pale as that of a corpse. Stamping his foot and biting his lips, he muttered, "Idiotic woman!" ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... you will in a few minutes. When we have finished with you, you'll want an iceberg. I'm getting tired of this idiotic talk about not having written my own works. There's one thing about Nero's music that I've never said, because I haven't wanted to hurt his feelings, but since he has chosen to cast aspersions upon my honesty I haven't any hesitation in saying ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... Edwin had been shut away from the better class of society and the proper helps that are usually thrown about the young, they at once gave him a low and degraded place in their estimation and pronounced him dull, stupid, and idiotic. All commands were given in a harsh tone and in such a manner that he could ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... Strong's notion was that since the Church continued to exist, it probably served some necessary purpose in human economy, though he could himself no more understand the good of it than he could comprehend the use of human existence in any shape. Since men and women were here, idiotic and purposeless as they might be, they had what they chose to call a right to amuse themselves in their own way, and if this way made some happy without hurting others, Strong was ready enough to help. He was as willing to ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... you are a wonderfully lucky fellow; and that, instead of waiting thirty years to see your uncle grow a semi-idiotic old dotard, you will step at once into one of the finest estates ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... meaning, ill-natured winks and a series of sarcastic smiles: which circumstance still further increased his confusion. That Nozdrev was a notorious liar every one, of course, knew, and that he should have given vent to an idiotic outburst of this sort had surprised no one; but a dead soul—well, what was one to make of Nozdrev's reference to ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... are various contemporary accounts. To Thelwall, in November, 1796, he sent the following description of himself: "... my face, unless when animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed almost idiotic good-nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of a face; fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... arrival of the elephants, with their yellow flags floating from the howdahs, announcing, as did the flags of Lord Macartney's Mission to Peking, "Tribute from the English to the Emperor of China," and I suppose that there are governments idiotic enough to thus pander to Chinese arrogance. No doubt what has given rise to the report is the knowledge that the Government of India is bound, under the Convention of 1886, to send, every ten years, a complimentary mission from the Chief Commissioner ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... "I'm perfectly certain all this cocksure Johnny-head-in-air business, 'sail to-day and see you again at tea tomorrow, so it's not worth while saying good-by'—you know the style?—is fatuous and idiotic. It is not bluff, because the English officer-man doesn't bluff. He hasn't the brains, to begin with, and then he is a very sound sort of an animal. He doesn't need to hide his fright for the simple reason that he's not frightened. A friend of mine was talking about it all yesterday. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Saltmarsh and Randall. Baillie in his Dissuasive (pp. 57-64) has much the same story as Paget about Mrs. Hutchinson and the New England Antinomians, and attributes the rise of that heresy to the evil influence of Independency.—The idiotic and disgusting myth of the monstrous accouchements of the two Antinomian women seems to have found great favour with the orthodox: and it figures in many pious books of the time and afterwards. It seems actually to have originated in America, and to have been widely believed there, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... it's this wretched Nupton who must have made—must be going to make—some idiotic mistake.... Look here, Soames! you know me better than to suppose that I.... After all, the name "Max Beerbohm" is not at all an uncommon one, and there must be several Enoch Soameses running around—or rather, "Enoch ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... might have had a consciousness that he owed much of his celebrity to being so; he might have felt that he was rather at the top of fashion than of fame. Fashion soon changes, thought I, eagerly to myself—a time will come, and that speedily, when he will be no longer in the fashion; when this idiotic admirer of his, who is still grinning at my side, shall have ceased to mould his style on Byron's; and this aristocracy, squirearchy, and what not, who now send their empty carriages to pay respect to the fashionable corpse, shall have transferred their empty ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... tombs and secluded altars. From every one of these lurking-places, such crowds of phantom-looking men and women, leading other men and women with twisted limbs, or chattering jaws, or paralytic gestures, or idiotic heads, or some other sad infirmity, came hobbling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes in the cathedral above, had been suddenly animated, and had retired to this lower church, they could hardly have made ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... life of a Paris studio, would put the letters half-read, in his pocket, and would immediately forget all about them. After all, he couldn't interfere with Barty; he was the man at the helm, and mustn't be talked to. Also it was idiotic to keep a dog and bark yourself. Proverbial philosophy is a recognised sedative; Larry gave himself a dose or two, and straightway forgot Cousin Dick, forgot Ireland, forgot even that gratifying nomination of himself as Nationalist candidate for the Division, and plunged back into the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... word at the last moment. If you are not gone why don't you come? Why did you leave me yesterday? You leave me crying—I who haven't cried for years and years, and you haven't the sense to come back within the hour, within twenty hours! This conduct is idiotic"—and a sprawling signature of the four magic letters ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... I do, my dear. It seems senseless to me. But that's all the better—the more idiotic it is, the less chance of its being guessed. Yes, on the whole, I don't think you could have thought of ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... most alarming. Voluntary action over one half the frame quite suspended; what was worse, there was little or no sensation. The poor woman essayed to speak from time to time, but with repulsive contortions, so that her words sounded like idiotic babble. As her husband bent over her, she seized his arm with the hand still live, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... disguised as a swan, was 'enabled to avail himself of his situation' vis-a-vis to Leda. And to think that he may have, must have written these biographies of the Great! What a work, Henry! And, owing to the idiotic arrangement of your ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... manifestations had independently occurred to me as arguments against his position. The experiences of Elmira Reformatory and Bicetre—not to mention institutions of more recent establishment—long since showed that both the morally insane and the idiotic can be greatly improved by appropriate treatment. Schrenck-Notzing seems to be unduly biased by his interest in hypnotism ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... night!" He added quickly, sullenly: "You look blue with cold. Why don't you wear a decent coat? It's idiotic!" ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... story really sounded so wonderful I couldn't quite grasp it. Now let me ask you something more. Have you had any reason for keeping this a secret, other than your fear of confessing that you violated a few bigoted and idiotic mining rules—which, after all, are binding only upon sentiment—and which your success has proved ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... glad I resisted the strong temptation to shirk the business. Manchester has gone solid for technical education, and if the idiotic London papers, instead of giving half a dozen lines of my speech, had mentioned the solid contributions to the work announced at the meeting, they would have enabled ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... "Well, if you must be putting it that idiotic way, you must; anyway, we're waiting ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... nearly all Italian, and none English so far as I saw. This passion for allying one's self to the great, by inscribing one's name on places hallowed by them, is certainly very odd; and (I reflected as I added our names to the rest) it is, without doubt, the most impertinent and idiotic custom in the world. People have thus written themselves down, to the contempt of sensible ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... purchase. I now heard that I should have waited for his reply before concluding it. A man does not buy tracts of land like that, I was severely told. And as I was so very young and (he implied it) idiotic, he had intervened to stop the sale, pending inquiries and the discharge of certain formalities which were legally required. If the seller went into the court and had the transfer registered and a proper deed ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... may be a breach of hospitality, and you are all but a stranger, but we are curious to know whether you are of that small company of the favored of heaven who can play at being foolish without becoming idiotic. Alice is sometimes very near idiocy. You ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... is seized with a giggling fit, laughs on the least, or without any, provocation—a rather idiotic state—which he is quite conscious of but cannot stop. Presently some one will ask, "Have you found a wicker's nest?" which is a biting sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... no further. He saw that Fulton, and Withers too, would follow Braceway's lead. Consequently, he was confronted with the necessity of keeping up the idiotic duel with the ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... with her hands loose in her lap. She was wondering whether or not, should she make a vigorous protest, they would send her back to the convent. The Verlat gown was carefully hung in her closet. Last night she had been idiotic. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... take care!" cried the unreal editor. "You will be saying next that we are the creatures of our environment; that the Timminses would be wiser and better if the conditions were not idiotic and pernicious; and you ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... ground for fear as to the animal's sanity. But the dog had brains enough not to wander outside the fire-zone in his dripping condition, and stood steaming joyfully and contentedly beside Jean, his face a mask of idiotic happiness. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... a false impression of my—of my—I stammered. The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was trying to finish it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the logic of their construction. My idiotic mumble seemed to please him. He cut it short by saying, with courteous placidity that argued an immense power of self-control or else a wonderful elasticity of spirits—"Altogether my mistake." I marvelled greatly at this expression: he might have been alluding ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Cerizet. "La Peyrade was telling me only yesterday, by way of explaining Thuillier's idiotic simplicity, that he had believed a most ridiculous bit of humbug. The 'honest bourgeois' is persuaded that the seizure was instigated by Monsieur Olivier Vinet, substitute to the procureur-general. The young man aspired ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... guide looked around doubtingly, and at length turned aside to a half ruinous cottage, the only habitation they had seen for miles, where he closely questioned an old woman whom he found there as to the way before them. Little satisfied with her directions, he presently stopped an idiotic looking fellow, with a huge head, whom they met driving some milch goats toward the hovel, and questioned him. The goatherd stood staring at the party with open mouth, and gave little heed to him. But, at length, being pressed for an answer, he gave one in a harsh voice with great ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... have torn it!" Tai-yue remonstrated laughingly. "But wait and I'll ask him about it! so come along all of you, and I vouch I'll make him abandon that idiotic frame of mind and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... know what syllabubs are? That's a good idea. Why they are—syllabubs are—they are only babies, idiotic children; that's a good idea, that's good. [Bumps ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... he remembered that he was now far beyond the reach of all human solace and sympathy, even all human aid, for a moment his mind seemed to desert him; and he wrung his hands in forlorn and almost idiotic woe. An awful thing it is, the failure of the energies of a master-mind. He who places implicit confidence in his genius will find himself some day utterly defeated and deserted. 'Tis bitter! Every paltry hind seems but to breathe to mock you. Slow, indeed, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... of Rome. He never realized the degradation possible to Christianity until he visited "The Eternal City," with its huge shams and ghastly superstitions. He never saw Hinduism with its myriad inane rites and debasing idolatry half so grotesque, idiotic, and repulsive, as in this city of Benares, where one ought to see the religion of these two hundred odd million people at its best, and not at ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... lost. I expect no action, for impediments will be interposed by others. But my duty is done. I have as little to lose as any of them. The generals all say the system of passports in use has inflicted great detriment to the service, a fact none can deny, and if it be continued, it will be indeed "idiotic suicide," ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... that it was faithlessness. She said it was mere honesty. She could see nothing inherently wrong in falling in love genuinely after one arrived at years of discretion. She thought it inherently idiotic, and worse, to make a choice that ought to be for life, at years of indiscretion. Still, people were idiotic, and that must be considered, as well as all the other facts, such as the difficulty ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... music. I am a little sensitive, too, about admitting that I like Carlyle and Browning. I suppose this is because I have belonged to a Browning and Carlyle club, where I have heard some of the most idiotic women it was ever my privilege to encounter, express glib sentiments concerning these masters, which in me lay too deep for utterance. It is something like the occasional horror which overpowers me when I ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... entertain the high-born Lady Ygerne Bellaire at dinner," he said in mock deference. "Her request is my command. Shall I voice my second idiotic thought?" ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... sign of sorrow: but she spoke rarely to any one. A dead dull weight seemed to hang over her. To preachers, class-leaders, gossips, who upbraided her for not letting them see her mother, she replied by silence. People thought her becoming idiotic. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... was a man about your build and years. I pulled up to let him in, when, darn my skin! if he ever moved, but sorter looked at me without speakin'. I called to him, and he never answered, 'cept with that idiotic stare. I then let him have my opinion of him, in mighty strong English, and drove off, leavin' him there. The next morning, when I came by on the up-trip, darn my skin! if he wasn't thar, but lyin' all of a heap on the boulder. Jim drops ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... can well afford to insist upon adequate scrutiny of the character of those who are thus proposed for future citizenship. There should be an increase in the stringency of the laws to keep out insane, idiotic, epileptic, and pauper immigrants. But this is by no means enough. Not merely the Anarchist, but every man of Anarchistic tendencies, all violent and disorderly people, all people of bad character, the incompetent, the lazy, the vicious, the physically unfit, defective, or degenerate ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... aristocrat of nature—the unique man in a tower of ivory, the elect, who, in samite robes, traverses moody gardens. Really, I shudder at the idea of ever living again in yonder stewpot of humanity, with all its bad smells. To struggle with the fools for their idiotic prizes is beyond me. The ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... spoke no word of any language but his own. Although of a brutal, almost idiotic type, he was loudly eulogized by his master as the model of fidelity and usefulness. Bourgonef treated him with gentleness, though with a certain imperiousness; much as one might treat a savage mastiff which it was necessary to dominate ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... decided upon murder, must have arranged for an unassailable alibi. Very well. Are we now to leap to the other end of the scale, and to credit him with such utter stupidity as to place hanging evidence where it could not fail to be discovered by the most idiotic policeman? Preserve your balance, Knox. Theories are wild horses. They run away with us. I know that of old, for which very reason I always avoid speculation until I have a solid foundation of fact upon ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... are sometimes rather free With feminine anatomy; Their catalogues erotic Of pretty girls' peculiar "points," Their eyes and limbs, and curves and joints, Are often idiotic. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... her? I thought of my victory over the acrimonious photographer at the railroad station. Had I not won her favor there? And it came over me that even on that occasion she had shown me but scant cordiality. Was it all because of Auntie Yetta's idiotic jest? She beckoned to Miss Siegel, who was on the other side of the hall, and presently she was joined by her and by some ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... not to put on any of these things till he had been assured that they were there with the consent of Adam Ferris. But he realized that he had already used the razors, and besides it would be idiotic, in his present awkward position, to strain at any gnats after swallowing such a camel as the marriage on the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... him. But alas! she was also surrounded by others—by wild, pale, terrible forms, which were unseen by all except the dying empress! She there saw the tortured face of Anna Leopoldowna, whom she had let die in prison; there grinned at her the idiotic face of Ivan, whose mind she had destroyed; there saw she the angry-flashing eyes and bloody form of Eleonore Lapuschkin, and, springing up from her bed, the empress screeched with terror, and folded her trembling hands in prayer to God for grace and mercy for her daughter, for Natalie, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... flat means society life; that is, the pretence of social life. It's made to give artificial people a society basis on a little money—too much money, of course, for what they get. So the cost of the building is put into marble halls and idiotic decoration of all kinds. I don't. object to the conveniences, but none of these flats has a living-room. They have drawing-rooms to foster social pretence, and they have dining- rooms and bedrooms; but they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a domestic life that you are scarcely better informed than I as to the latest modes. We will drive in the park, use our eyes on the avenue, and visit several fashionable establishments first. Then I wish to find a dressmaker who is not an idiotic slave of fashion, and who can modify the prevailing styles by taste and appreciation of the person for whom she works. The one whom I employ must make dresses for me and under my direction, and not dresses in the abstract, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... can't imagine who has been repeating such idiotic stories to you, I wish people would mind their own business. Sir ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... black girl who lived in the house, used to tell me all sorts of bush wonders, as we went in the early summer mornings for a swim in the river. She was a great water-baby, with rather a contempt for my aquatic limitations. Then she thought it too idiotic to want to dry yourself with a towel,—just like a mad ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... of his pale and melancholy countenance, and apparently miserable condition. I observed that no one took any notice of him; and that he was allowed to wander about the great straggling workhouse, among the insane, the idiotic, and the imbecile, without the slightest attention being paid to his going and coming; in short, he lived the wretched life of a ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was insane or idiotic at the time of the marriage. [Sec.3422.] If a person marries who has a husband or wife living such marriage is absolutely void. In case of absence of the husband a presumption of death does not arise until he has ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... horror I experienced on finding myself in the midst of a boundless space, face to face with mine enemy. Her narrow intellect and strong animal nature seemed to have expanded, even as I have seen the face of a child expand from pleasing infancy into idiotic youth. This animal part of her immortality roused my ire—struck some savage chord in my nature—and I rose up like a wild beast to attack her; but the creature laughed and jeered at my vain efforts. She led me thus, in fruitless pursuit, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... the rock, and took to horse again, and home. All through the dark ride he fervently cursed Count Victor, a prey of an idiotic jealousy. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... was idiotic enough to repeat the affront, on which, and as though a perfect understanding as to what was to be done subsisted among the three sailors, old Joe, Plum, and Robins fell upon Sloper, and, lifting him up in their arms, ran with him ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... devil people can like such misshapen, idiotic-looking, selfish, useless brutes; and, by George, it smells like a polecat—curse it! but some people have deuced queer fancies in more matters than one. The brute! on my soul, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... bring me a looking-glass, quick! do, till I see what I look like when I talk. Does my face assume an idiotic expression when I am conversing? Be honest and tell ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... it says that Mordecai was a young man? And why do you call him Mottel? Which Mottel? And where does it say he loved a maiden? The word referring to Mordecai and Esther means 'brought up.' And your saying 'he will go with her under the wedding canopy' is just idiotic nonsense. The phrase you quote refers to Ahasuerus, not to Mordecai. Then again, it is nowhere mentioned in the 'Book of Esther' that Ahasuerus went with Esther under the wedding canopy. Does it need brains to turn a passage upside down? Every ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... "we'll get back all right. Don't know as this lot'd be any special ornament to kingdom come, anyhow; but we'll go through hell on the way comin' or goin'; now, mark me, Reed, and stop your idiotic grinning." ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... not be idiotic," said Abel quietly; "for I feel as if I could hit one of them by seeing the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... leered at him with its everlasting grin. The young man smiled. "Perhaps that is the likeness of a mandarin—bulbous nose, hanging cheeks, moustaches drooping like plumes, a peaked head, knotty hands—a regular deformity. Reflecting on the ugliness of that idiotic race, there is much to be urged by way of excuse for people who ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. He often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic he'll get it out of me. Has he asked you any ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... meant anything by that odd little ballad last evening. Could she have intended to remind me of blue-eyed Jennie Burton? No, for she was singing it by herself, when she did not know I was listening. The idiotic brook! If I had given my whole heart to the effort I might have won Jennie Burton by this time. Ida Mayhew was right; no woman that I wish to win will show a lover any favor till he cannot help stopping ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... were bearing the torches. His pale gums were displayed in a sort of idiotic titter; his large, scared eyes gazed upon the crowd of ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... de Hegel-Hartmann, au nom des principes de Schopenhauer"). What a writer! Like a cuttle-fish in water, every movement produces a cloud of ink which shrouds his thought in darkness. And what a doctrine! A thoroughgoing pessimism, which regards the world as absurd, "absolutely idiotic," and reproaches Hartmann for having allowed the evolution of the universe some little remains of logic, while, on the contrary, this evolution is eminently contradictory, and there is no reason anywhere except in the poor brain of the reasoner. Of all possible worlds that which exists is the worst. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has been good enough for you for fifty years," I retorted. "And if you think you look sporty, or anything but idiotic, sitting there in a flowered kimono and swabbing out ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it?" enquired the young man in the water rather sarcastically. "Here, give this thing a hoist, will you, Rod? I can't understand how such an idiotic thing happened? Miss Graham and I were paddling along as steadily ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... of March 3, 1839, for the sixth census, differed very slightly from that for the fifth, except that returns were also required of the number of insane and idiotic, the number of Revolutionary pensioners, and of the manufacturing, agricultural and educational statistics. By an amendment adopted February 26, 1840, the time for completing the enumeration was reduced to five months from June 1, and, for the first time provision is made ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Does that shock you? I find they have some idiotic arrangement by which a person has to live here three months before he can be married, although I was given some hope that, by paying for it, a person could get a special licence. If that is the case, I am going to have ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... should anglers go about their harmless sport in stealthy silence like conspirators, or sit together in a boat, dumb, glum, and penitential, like naughty schoolboys on the bench of disgrace? 'Tis an Omorcan superstition; a rule without a reason; a venerable, idiotic fashion invented to repress lively spirits and ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... all my control to keep my eyes blank, my face devoid of expression. Out of the tail of my eye I saw Foulet smiling, a vague, idiotic smile of sympathy with Fraser's glee. But suddenly the glee died—as suddenly as if a button had snapped off the current. He leaned forward, his black eyes ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... your hair," sputters Waldo. "And saying idiotic things like that doesn't help. Not a bit. Must I call the ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... going to drag you up the ladder of social position to fame and to wealth for such reward as that?" she singled out her own portrait. "Bah! you are impossible—impossible! I have been mad to think that I could make anything out of you. As for your idiotic claim that you have painted the truth—" She seized a large palette knife that lay with the artist's tools upon the table, and springing to her portrait, hacked and mutilated the canvas. The artist ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... Middle Ages. Beyond this generation of debilitated and invalided mothers, rises a countless posterity robbed of its birthright of health while yet unborn.[4] A possible genius deformed and dwarfed by the weight of a fashionable dress; a brain which might have been brilliant rendered idiotic by the constant pressure of a corset, and the wearisome weight of a "stylish" dress pressing about the hips; a child whose natural capacity might have carried him to the seat of a Webster or into the laboratory of an Edison, condemned to drag a weakly, diseased, or deformed body through life, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... idiotic nonsense and looked away from me while he was talking. The fellow looked like an evil conscience personified. But I don't suppose he has ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... subsequent discovery, between the pages of a put-away book, I still held an undaunted course. But, when Patrick, the disinherited spendthrift, took upon himself, for the thinnest reason, all the blame of his supplanter's evil doing and kept up this idiotic fraud till the girl of his heart, and indeed everyone who cared for him, turned their backs in disdain, then I confess to having felt that Miss SHARP was trying my forbearance too high. But even so the fact that I could not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... more idiotic sort launch into dog-carts and raiment of English cut, and here in Buffalo they play polo at four in the afternoon. I saw three youths come down to the polo-ground faultlessly attired for the game and mounted on their best ponies. Expecting a game, I lingered; but I was mistaken. These ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... trying to get into your head. I couldn't represent you if there was to be a fight with Anne. But we can fight these idiotic ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... syphilitic wards, where, in the awful contemplation of their daily, piecemeal decay, the silent victims were stretched all day upon their cots; among the idiotic and the crazed; into the apartments of the aged poor, seeing, let us hope, blessed visions of life beyond these shambles; and drinking in, as we walked, the solemn but needful lesson of our own possibilities and the mutations of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... herself to many utterances as idiotic as Ernest's, and Mary secretly wondered to find how shadowy and ridiculous such solid people showed in a strange land. They carried their ignorance and their parochial atmosphere with them as openly and ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... the wonderful gardens they make in Japan that I never heard Mr. Craven come in and did not realise that he was standing near us until Yoshio suddenly shot up and fled, literally vanished, and left me planteel! I felt so idiotic sitting on the stairs hugging my knees and Mr. Craven, all splashed and muddy, waiting for me to let him pass—I was dreadfully frightened of him in those days," the faintest colour tinged her cheeks. "I longed ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... with acclamation all that is for the welfare of his fellow-men, is delighted to learn that an "Anti-Orange-peel-and-Banana-skin Association" has been organized in the city of New-York. The great number of severe accidents annually caused by the idiotic custom of casting orange-peel and such other lubricious integuments recklessly about the side-walks, has long furnished a topic for public animadversion. Some of our leading citizens have taken the matter in hand—or, to speak more correctly, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... white. Despite its veneer of brazen effrontery, the face, with its great mouth and two days' growth of beard, was haggard and weary looking. Ben mentally pictured, with a feeling of compassion, other human beings doing their idiotic "stunts" inside, sweltering in the foul air; and he wondered how, if an atom of self-respect remained in their make-up, they could fail to ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... "I have never knowingly done you any wrong in thought, or word, or deed; all you have said to me to-day has been ridiculously wrong-headed; but never mind. Stop crying, do, and don't let us have any more idiotic jealousy. Why, it was Lady Galbraith who sent me the flowers and fruit, with a kind message of apology because she has not been able to call. Why should not ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Alexius were impaled, broken on the wheel and otherwise lingeringly done to death. All this was done to terrorize the reactionaries and isolate the tsarevich. In April 1718 fresh confessions were extorted from Alexius, now utterly broken and half idiotic with fright. Yet even now there were no actual facts to go upon. Alexius' "evil designs'' were still in foro conscientiae, and had not been, perhaps never would be, translated into practice. The worst that could be brought against him was that he had wished his father's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... should, the tears started to his eyes as he explained to me that the capture of the ship would leave him and his frau absolutely penniless in their old age. I endeavoured to soften the blow to him as much as possible by sympathetically murmuring some idiotic platitude about "the fortune of war," but of course it was no good; the poor old fellow simply shook his head and ejaculated—"Ay—the fortune of war! It is all very well for you, young sir, who depend upon war ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... conqueror, and his face radiant as with a reflection of unseen glory; and yet they hesitate, and dally with the call, and mean, some time, to have such an inheritance deeded to them, but not now! Remember, I am not responsible for this. Were I writing fiction I should hesitate to set down such idiotic folly, expecting you to call it unnatural or absurdly overdrawn; but I do solemnly declare to you that this is fact. Account for the folly of their ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... old girl," said Vane bending over and patting her neck; "but I s'pose it's only in keeping with everything else these days—it's not fairness that counts; it's just luck—fatuous idiotic luck. It's not even a game; it's a wild-cat gamble all over the world. And may Heaven help us all when the bottom does drop out ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... after their departure he sat thus, amid a deep silence, broken only by an occasional giggle from the stateroom, or an idiotic sniggering from the direction of the mate's bunk, until, recalled to mundane affairs by the lamp burning itself out, he went, in befitting ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... silence, and you know that every one is waiting for you to speak. You try to think of something to say, but find, to your horror, that your reasoning faculties have left you. It is a moment of despair, and your evil genius, seizing the opportunity, suggests to you some of the most idiotic remarks that it is possible for a human being to perpetrate. Glancing round with an imbecile smile, you sniggeringly observe that "it hasn't got much hair has it?" Nobody answers you for a minute, but at last the stately nurse says with ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... devil," said the madman, "do you think you are making those idiotic signs to? Whom ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... but I will venture to say that there are not fifty millions. How many in England? Where are the four hundred millions found? To make this immense number, they have counted all the Heretics, all the Catholics, all the Jews, Spiritualists, Universalists and Unitarians, all the babes, all the idiotic and insane, all the Infidels, all the scientists, all the unbelievers. As a matter of fact, they have no right to count any except the orthodox members of the orthodox churches. There may be more "members" now than formerly, and this increase of members is due to a decrease of religion. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Rip Donderdunck's case," he exclaimed in a low, mumbling tone. "He fell from the top of Voppelploot's windmill. After the accident the man was stupid and finally became idiotic. In time he lay helpless like yon fellow on the bed, moaned, too, like him, and kept constantly lifting his hand to his head. My learned friend Von Choppem performed an operation upon this Donderdunck and discovered ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... spite of the ill temper their resistance caused in him, the heroism of the Rochellese excited the cardinal's admiration. Buckingham had just been assassinated. "The king could not have lost a more bitter or a more idiotic enemy; his unreasoning enterprises ended unluckily, but they, nevertheless, did not fail to put us in great peril and cause us much mischief," says Richelieu "the idiotic madness of an enemy being more to be feared than his wisdom, inasmuch ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mental weakness and inferiority? And as it has been, so it is. Woman is still believed intellectually inferior to man, by ninety-nine one hundredths of mankind. Poor, weak, silly, drunken, half-idiotic men, whose wives have to support them, will tell you in conscious pride of sex of woman's weakness of mind. I have heard little Lilliputian men, whose minds were as small as a baby's rattle-box, always harping on this worn-out string of woman's weakness of mind. It is an idea not peculiar ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... callow," she remarked, "but I should have thought anybody with the slightest grain of sense could have seen at a glance what Raymonde is. Why, she's simply been playing ragtime on you. Did you actually and seriously believe that the girls at this school were expected to go through such idiotic performances? Don't believe a ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... of that review of a book called A Question of Cubits, or some such idiotic title! Send it down at once, instantly. Do you hear? ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... little glitter in his eyes, "I have news. Things have moved with me. I think that, with the help of an idiotic Englishman, we shall solve the riddle of what our professors have called the consuming explosive. I sent the formula home to Germany, by a trusty hand, only a ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... who attacked the flock; but it must have been some hours after that he was shot, for the shepherd had to come home with the flock to inform him of the occurrence, and then search and pursuit had to be made, during which he was overtaken. He is a stupid idiotic sort of man, so that the natives have not deemed him worthy of receiving the honours of their ceremonies, and still call him a boy, or youth, although he is an ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... forsooth, that we would have by intuition the knowledge which they had acquired by costly experience! And when we complained of the expense and trouble involved in the selection and purchase of these extras, the intimation that we were unreasonably idiotic was freely bandied about by the very people who should ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... those whom rheumatism and paralysis had twisted into postures of agony. And the victims of hydrocephalus followed, with the dancers of St. Vitus, the consumptives, the rickety, the epileptic, the cancerous, the goitrous, the blind, the mad, and the idiotic. "Ave, ave, ave, Maria!" they sang; and the stubborn plaint acquired increased volume, as nearer and nearer to the Grotto it bore that abominable torrent of human wretchedness and pain, amidst all the fright and horror of the passers-by, who stopped short, unable to stir, their hearts frozen ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Almost idiotic with the shock of my great grief I reeled and tottered away among the bowlders. Fooss came to find me; and when he found me he kicked me violently for some time. "Esel ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... part of an old lady's body was projected out of a window upstairs. She tossed her arms above her white cap, scolding in a cracked voice. The gardener remained glued to the tree, his toothless mouth open in idiotic astonishment, and a little farther up the path the pretty girl, as if spellbound to a small grass plot, ran a few steps this way and that, wringing her hands and muttering crazily. She did not rush between ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... was talking of the abuse of scenery. I never said anything so idiotic as that the effect isn't helped by an appeal to the eye and ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... them begged and pleaded, but it was no use. Not an inch would Mrs. Comstock budge. The night was warm and the carriage comfortable, the horses were securely hitched. She did not care to see what idiotic thing a pack of school children were doing, she would wait until the Sintons returned. Wesley told her it might be two hours, and she said she did not care if it were ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... moisture, light, and heat. By these exterior conditions it may be rendered luxuriant in its growth, or it may be stunted in its growth. It may barely exist under one class of conditions; it may be distorted and perverted, or it may perish utterly under another. And so in the idiotic mind the ideas of reason may be wanting, or they may be imprisoned by impervious walls of cerebral malformation. In the infant mind the development of reason is yet in an incipient stage. The idea of God is immanent to the infant thought, but the infant thought is ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... daughter,' said the old woman, nodding her head in the direction of the corpse; and speaking with an idiotic leer, more ghastly than even the presence of death in such a place. 'Lord, Lord! Well, it is strange that I who gave birth to her, and was a woman then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there: so cold ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... he said; "you work for an ideal, and you get something out of it for yourself. Ideals, incidentally, that are not profitable are idiotic." With that he blew the smoke of his Havana ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... old, and look askance At flannels and flirtation; not for me Youth's idiotic rapture at a glance From maiden eyes: although it comes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... now termed his idiotic preoccupation with himself, he had overlooked the fact that she, too, would be in evening dress. Another thing was, he had never seen Louise in any but street-dress, or the loose dressing-gown. Now he called ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... is idiotic, he could not have told me to go through the rosary ten times a day; that would amount to something like five hundred prayers on end; no one could do such a task without losing his wits. There is no doubt, it is clear ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... deficiency, which would be painfully illustrated by a serious crisis, is there equally in ordinary humdrum times of peace. The crippled and idiotic life which would bring disaster then is undermining our very existence now. Is it not time that a sensible nation should look to it that every one of its members, when adult, should at least be healthy, well-fed, and well-grown, and that each should not only be decently developed ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... the one alternative. Will you give up this idiotic passion? You refuse. It is on your own head, then. Go—go till I send for you, which ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... ideala. identical : identa. idiom : idiomo, idiotismo. idiotic : idiota. idle : senokupa. idol : idolo. illegitimate : nelauxlegxa, bastarda, illuminate : ilumini. illusion : iluzio. illustrate : ilustri. image : figuro, bildo. imagine : imagi, revi. imbibe : ensorbi. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded. Lady Blemley replied that your lack of brain-power was the precise quality which had earned you your invitation, as you were the only person she could think of who might be idiotic enough to buy their old car. You know, the one they call 'The Envy of Sisyphus,' because it goes quite nicely ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Three Chandeliers, in the Rue de la Huchette. Next day, or the day after, as he was breakfasting at the sign of the Armchair, he fell into talk with two customers, one of whom was a priest and the other our friend Tabary. The idiotic Tabary became mighty confidential as to his past life. Pierre Marchand, who was an acquaintance of Guillaume Coiffier's and had sympathised with him over his loss, pricked up his ears at the mention of picklocks, and led on the transcriber of improper romances from one thing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... When within a few feet of McClosky, he stopped. "You persistent old plantigrade!" he said in a low voice, audible only to the person addressed, and a face full of affected anxiety, "why don't you go to bed? Didn't I tell you to go and leave me here alone? In the name of all that's idiotic and imbecile, why do you continue to shuffle about here? Or are you trying to drive me crazy with your presence, as you have with that wretched music-box that I've just dropped under yonder tree? It's an hour and a half yet before the stage passes: ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... connection with each case he cried and carried on at a great rate, and finally insisted that he was going to bring me a raw egg as an offering of friendship, which he did. One of his subjects was his cousin, who was both idiotic and a deaf-mute. My impression was that there were several cases of deaf-mutism in the village. One man, whenever any of our party spoke to him, or in any way turned our attention to him, piously and vigorously crossed himself, grimaced and gesticulated as if in a fit. One man, who seemed ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... well justified by the facts," she replied seriously. "But only the most idiotic and ignorant of gossips could possibly say that of you. Every one who is any one knows that the Kyneston coronet ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... while pointing out to them a broom, that "it had formerly been a novice who neglected to sweep out" the Council-room, hence was re-born as a broom (!), therefore, the wisest of all the world's sages stands accused of idiotic superstition. Why not try and find out, before condemning, the true meaning of the figurative statement? Why should we scoff before we understand? Is or is not that which is called magnetic effluvium a something, a stuff, or a substance, invisible, and imponderable though it be? ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... given us some interesting adolescents. Miss Dingwall in "Sketches by Boz," "very sentimental and romantic"; the tempery young Nickleby, who, at nineteen, thrashed Squeers; Barnaby Rudge, idiotic and very muscular; Joe Willet, persistently treated as a boy till he ran away to join the army and married Dolly Varden, perhaps the most exuberant, good-humored, and beautiful girl in all the Dickens gallery; Martin ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... gulping laugh in the fur cloak he had picked up. He had known that it would end in some such way. Of course; it had been idiotic to expect anything else. He listened smilingly for what else Leif ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the law or medicine take special studies; those preparing for athletic contests take special training. If they did not, they would be idiotic. Those who are preparing for marriage should not leave success to chance. For, while happiness is sometimes dependent on luck, in the majority of instances it is not; happiness usually ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... the candles, I could see her staring eyes, framed by lids that looked as if they had been scalded, so red were they; her idiotic and contracted mouth, trembling with despair, and her whole pitiful face, which ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... and all sorts of city delights at the door, you are forced to sit, not in a room with some human grace and comfort or furniture and decoration, but in a stalled pound with a lot of other children, beaten if you talk, beaten if you move, beaten if you cannot prove by answering idiotic questions that even when you escaped from the pound and from the eye of your gaoler, you were still agonizing over his detestable sham books instead of daring to live. And your childish hatred of your gaoler and flogger is nothing ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... Hedwig," he said, "if it is not terrible because it is new to you, and because you do not know me very well. Not," he added hastily, "that I think your knowing me well would be an advantage! I am not so idiotic. But you do not know me at all, and for a good many years I must have stood in the light of an enemy. It is not easy to readjust such things—witness the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... angry with myself. I was mismanaging this thing in the most idiotic way. Instead of this bovine silence, gay small-talk, the easy eloquence, in fact, of the brisk man of affairs should have been my policy. No wonder Smooth Sam Fisher treated me as a child. My whole bearing was that of a ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse |
