"Imbecile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite out of breath, and holding one little hand against her side, quite unheeding the speechless discomfiture of our party or the complete demoralization of Yuba Bill, whose features had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous and imbecile cheerfulness,—"you see, boys, I was mor'n two miles away when you passed down the road. I thought you might pull up here, and so I ran the whole way, knowing nobody was home but Jim,—and—and—I'm out of breath—and—that lets me out." And here Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... moan, and turned again to his labor. Tears gathered into his eyes, of mortification and pathos, And when the dull old monk, who forgot, while he waited the answer, Visions and painter, and all, had maundered away in his error, Pordenone half envied the imbecile peace of his bosom; "For in my own," he mused, "is such a combat of devils, That I believe torpid age or stupid youth would be better Than this manhood of mine that has climbed aloft to discover Heights which I never can reach, and bright on the pinnacle standing In the unfading ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... coarse and cowardly and imbecile brutality of those bundles of iron, launched in full flight against the lace-work, so delicate, that had risen confidently in the air for centuries, and which so many battles, invasions, scourges have ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... at the chance of finding something to do to take his attention off his trouble, for when I asked him if I should get a bricklayer to come in, he turned upon me like a lion. "Burdon," he said, "we'll get this job done, and then I shall have to make arrangements for you to go into an imbecile ward." ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... distance," he insisted. "The sun was not hot, and the streets were all in shade." The cavaliere retorted that "it was too hot for any lady to walk," swung his stick menacingly in the air, called Baldassare "an imbecile," and peremptorily ordered him to call a fiacre. Baldassare turned scarlet in the face, and ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Who comes imbecile to the world 'mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, error, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... indeed see in Lord Fisher something quite childlike. At any rate it is only when the overmastering purpose is forgotten that he can be seen with the eyes of his enemies, that is to say as a monster, a scoundrel, and an imbecile. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... men of Terry's class knows full well that when they strike a blow they mean to follow it up to the death, and they mean to take no chances. The only way to prevent the execution of Terry's revengeful and openly avowed purpose was by killing him on the spot. Only a lunatic or an imbecile or an accomplice would have pursued any other course in Neagle's place than the one he pursued, always supposing he had Neagle's nerve and cool self-possession to guide ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... from his horrid father. But Graydon is a good boy. He couldn't long follow the impulses of his father. I dare say he could be a sinner if he tried, too. I' hate an imbecile. An imbecile to my mind is the fellow without the capacity to err intentionally. God takes care of the fellow who errs ignorantly. Give me the fellow who is bright enough to do the bad things which might admit him to purgatory in good standing, and I'll trust him to do the good things ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the strength of the senseless words of a poor imbecile I am charged with incendiarism, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... criminal trials, viz., that "ignorance of the law excuses no one." As if it were in the nature of things possible that there could be an excuse more absolute and complete. What else than ignorance of the law is it that excuses persons under the years of discretion, and men of imbecile minds? What else than ignorance of the law is it that excuses judges themselves for all their erroneous decisions? Nothing. They are every day committing errors, which would be crimes, but for their ignorance ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... ought not to be admitted. Of similes, metaphors, and figures of every kind the same may be affirmed: whatever does not enlighten confuses. There are two extremes, against which we ought equally to guard: not to give a dry skeleton, bones without flesh; nor an imbecile ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... negatively against Lincoln, but positively for Fremont. Therefore they made connection with the Central Fremont Club, a small organization in New York, and issued a call for a mass convention at Cleveland on May 31. They expressed their disgust for the "imbecile and vacillating policy" of Mr. Lincoln, and desired the "immediate extinction of slavery ... by congressional action," contemning the fact that Congress had no power under the Constitution to extinguish slavery. Their call was reinforced by two or three others, of which one ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... dozen slaves to help you," he cried. "For aught I care the people may carry all their rubbish into a new house, but I will never set eyes again on that howling old woman, nor her imbecile husband. As for the sculptor I will make him feel that Caesar has a heavy foot and can unexpectedly crush a snake ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... so pig-headed! You are talking like an imbecile. Your secretary, Miss Dore, is a nice girl. But how would you feel if Percy were to come to you and say that he was engaged to be ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... individual who broke in upon her was that animated piece of ragged door-mat, Toozle. This imbecile little dog was not possessed of much delicacy of feeling. Having been absent on a private excursion of his own into the mountain when the schooner arrived, he only became aware of the return of his lost, loved, and deeply-regretted mistress, when he came back from his trip. The first thing that ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... me," replied Sir Arthur, "was an officer of the French Courts. He had a warrant authorising her detention in a home for chronic inebriates. She is there still, little better than an imbecile, I regret to say, and with no hope of recovery. The physicians I consulted told me that she must have had the germs of alcoholic insanity in her blood from her very birth. She told us that she had a daughter, and we traced you to the school, though she obstinately refused ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... through interrogations on Miss Delavie's home and breeding, how she had travelled, and what were her accomplishments, also whether she were quite sure that none of the triad was either imbecile nor deformed. Mrs. Hunter seemed to have heard wonderful ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... around this palace: the inviolable asylum of all plots against the nation, there a perverse queen lords it over an imbecile king and rears the cubs of tyranny. Lawless priests there consecrate the arms of insurrection against the people. They prepare the Saint Bartholomew of patriots. The genius of Austria is there, hidden in the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... think that it was an unselfish desire to spare my companions anxiety that made me keep my discovery to myself. But I am afraid that my reticence was due far more to the fact that I shrank from letting the Nugget discover my imbecile carelessness. Even in times of peril one retains one's human weaknesses; and I felt that I could not face his comments. If he had permitted a certain note of querulousness to creep into his conversation already, the imagination recoiled from the thought of the caustic depths he would reach ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... dropped backwards, trusting to my thick head for easy lighting. Then I heard a little fizz and sputter from below. At that my hair riz right up so I could feel the breeze blow under my hat. For about six seconds I stood there like an imbecile, grinning amiably. Then one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of grunt, and I sabed that they'd seen the original exhibit your Uncle ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... was, so to speak, only one of continual distraction. In the midst of society, he was absent from it. Regarded almost as an imbecile by the crowd, this clever author, this amiable man, only permitted himself to be seen at intervals ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... which would be seen through easily enough by a person of your intelligence (or, if I may say so without violating modesty, of my own), but which to the ordinary imbecile would have the persuasiveness of what is marvellous and incredible. He contrived various methods of undoing the seals, read the questions, answered them as seemed good, and then folded, sealed, and returned them, to the great astonishment of the recipients. And then it was, 'How could he ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... what you are about And Mr. Benyon strikes me as more fantastic even than yourself. I never heard of a man taking such an imbecile vow. What good can ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... excited by the attitude of the government. Such a panic knew no distinctions of station, sex or age; it seized on citizens who cared nothing for the problems of administration, it was strong in proportion to the weakness of its victims, and gathered from the dark thoughts and wild words of the imbecile the poison which infected the sober mind and assumed, from the very universality of the sickness, the guise of a healthy effort at rooting out some deep-seated pollution from the State. The gloomy record ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... write a common official paper; and it is said, that he was absolutely obliged to resign his place, because he could not decide in time whether he should write a that or a which. No business could have been transacted by such an imbecile minister. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... A beggarly shyster whose oath is worthless, and an imbecile old servant, who could ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... expressionless crayon portrait staring out from the gilt frame. "He has to stay in this room always. And I believe another two hours would drive me hopelessly insane." The word caught her attention. "Hope!" she laughed ironically. "What imbecile ever thought of hope in the same breath with this place? What they really ought to do is paint that 'Abandon-hope' admonition across the whole front ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... friends with whom they took refuge; every professor quitted the city; some went to Paris, some to Boue-Marine; M. Paul set forth on a pilgrimage to Rome; the house was left quite empty, but for me, a servant, and a poor deformed and imbecile pupil, a sort of cretin, whom her stepmother in a distant province would not allow to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... instantly made to seize the fool or the madman who had started the train, but a revolver shot quickly drove back the passengers and Juve, furious with the imbecile Wulf for having disarmed him, was obliged to take cover ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... Juliana Maria, the queen-dowager, had from her first arrival taken a dislike to her, and this aversion was increased when she saw that Matilda, Struensee, and Brandt, a young nobleman, exercised complete authority over the imbecile monarch, and directed the affairs of government at their pleasure. The queen-dowager had numerous and powerful friends, and these were likewise incensed at seeing Struensee at the head of the government, and a strong party was formed against him; Juliana ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... with disgust that while of yore, when I own I was guilty, you never spared me abuse—but now, when I am so virtuous, where is the praise? Do admit that I have become an excellent letter-writer—at least to you, and that your ingratitude is imbecile.—Yours ever, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... light broke in upon the meeting. It was unanimously resolved, that a deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated orator, imploring his assistance, and the favour of a speech; and the deputation should also wait on two or three other imbecile old women, not resident in the parish, and entreat their attendance. The application was successful, the meeting was held; the orator (an Irishman) came. He talked of green isles—other shores—vast Atlantic—bosom of the deep—Christian charity—blood and extermination—mercy in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... his head sadly. "I'm afraid I should have said, Mr. Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately, an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we were able ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... shadow of a provincial palazzo? On the face of the matter, I know, there is often no very salient peg to hang a romance on. A sort of dusky blankness invests the establishment, which has often a rather imbecile old age. But a hundred brooding secrets lurk in this inexpressive mask, and the Chigi Palace did duty for me in the suggestive twilight as the most haunted of houses. Its basement walls sloped outward like the beginning of a pyramid, and its lower windows were ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... mere call of ceremony, but a stay at the chateau long enough for me to get acquainted with her. Not only was she the only sister of my dear Philippe, but the Marquis, her uncle, was her guardian and only near relative, so that he had a right to insist, more especially as the old Countess was imbecile and bedridden. ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the deathblow to the power of the Empire. With the Protestant Princes armed behind his back, the imbecile called Charles would never dare to set his troops on board ship in Flanders to aid the continual rebellions, conspiracies and risings in England. He had done it too often, and he had repented as often, at the last moment. It was true that the marriage ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... fear in my soul—nothing but an apathetic, but indescribably sweet feeling of rest, and a complete inactivity of all the senses except hearing. A moment came when even this sense forsook me, because I remember that I listened with imbecile intentness to the dead silence around me. Is this death? was my indistinct wondering thought. Then I felt as if mighty wings were fanning me. "Kind wings, caressing, kind wings!" were the recurring words in my brain, like the regular movements of a pendulum, and interiorily under an unreasoning ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... duty to explain the exact truth to Luttrell. When last, my dear Tedcastle, Molly was invited to meet the Rossmeres, she behaved so badly and flirted so outrageously with his withered lordship, that he became perfectly imbecile toward the close of the entertainment, and his poor old wife was reduced almost to the verge of tears. I blushed for her; ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... owned, the Cote Droit makes a still madder figure. An irrational generation; irrational, imbecile, and with the vehement obstinacy characteristic of that; a generation which will not learn. Falling Bastilles, Insurrections of Women, thousands of smoking Manorhouses, a country bristling with no crop but that of Sansculottic steel: these were tolerably ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and ludicrous, sounded silly enough to provoke a shrug of the shoulders, sounded like one of those sentences which only an imbecile or a lunatic could utter. And yet Valenglay remained impassive. He knew that, in such circumstances as the present, the man before him was not the man ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... science of Homoeopathy, to which you are asked to trust your lives and the lives of those dearest to you. A mingled mass of perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition, of imbecile credulity, and of artful misrepresentation, too often mingled in practice, if we may trust the authority of its founder, with heartless and shameless imposition. Because it is suffered so often to appeal unanswered to the public, because it has its journals, its patrons, its ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... men in power at Paris had as yet shown no organizing capacity. The administration of the War Department by "papa" Pache had been a masterpiece of imbecile knavery which infuriated Dumouriez and his half-starving troops. We have heard much of the blunders of British Ministers in this war; but even at their worst they never sank to the depths revealed in the correspondence ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... to tell the imbecile that Your Highness will not see him," responded Glueck, impassively, ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... going to visit my son, an officer in the Federal army." Now, as I have barely entered on my eighth lustre, I can only suppose that the great bitterness of my heart imparted to my face, for the moment, a helpless—perhaps imbecile—look of senility. I had no alternative, however, but to retreat, as my men had done; the place was evidently too hot to hold me: already, through the window, I saw a shabby dragoon paying auspicious attention to my horses, contraband, and saddle-bags. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... evening, Joe Tallant, the mining secretary, one of our liveliest members, was observed to be awkward and distrait during dinner, forgetting even to offer the usual gratuity to the Italian waiter who handed him his hat, although he stared at him with an imbecile smile. As we chanced to leave the restaurant together, I was rallying him upon his abstraction, when to my surprise he said gravely: "Look here, one of two things has got to happen: either we must change our restaurant ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... you imagine that I shall be imbecile enough to expose myself in so reckless a fashion as to render that probable?" he returned. "No! If I fight, it will be for life, not for glory, therefore I shall take every reasonable ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... planned a Pantisocracy where all the virtues were to thrive. Lamb did something far more difficult: he played cribbage every night with his imbecile father, whose constant stream of querulous talk and fault-finding might well have goaded a far stronger man into ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... this really is the wild man from Borneo begins to lose his zest for it and to answer snappishly and sarcastically. An infinite supply of courtesy would, of course, be a priceless asset to him, but does not this work both ways? What right have people to bother other people with perfectly foolish and imbecile questions? Is there any one who cannot sympathize with a "sucker-sore" attendant? And with the people who are stationed about for the purpose of answering questions almost anywhere? There are not many of us who ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... before his lordship for signature. It was with some difficulty that he was made to understand that he was to sign it. The old gentleman appeared much more imbecile than when I last saw him. I thanked him, folded up the letter, and put it in my pocket. At last he looked at me, and a sudden flash of recollection appeared ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... height, chin shaven, with gray moustache," etc., which might mean Mr. Balfour or Sir Redvers Buller. It does not seize the first fact of impression, as that a man is obviously a sailor or a Jew or a drunkard or a gentleman or a nigger or an albino or a prize-fighter or an imbecile or an American. These are the realities by which the people really recognise each other. They are almost always ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... President Wilson's messages. He saw something comic in shaking a long fore-finger and saying, "Tut, tut! I shall consider being very harsh, if you commit these outrages three more times.." To shake your fist at all, and then to shake your finger, seemed to Roosevelt almost imbecile. Cut off from serving the cause of American patriotism in any public capacity, Roosevelt struggled to take his part by writing. Every month in the Outlook, and subsequently in the Metropolitan Magazine, he gave vent to his pent-up indignation. The very ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... caballero, Don Esteban Briones, he came in, and say, 'Hola! Don Jorge has forgotten his pret-ty girl: he have left her over on the garden bench. Truly I have seen.' And they say, 'We will too.' And they go, and there is nossing. And they say, 'Imbecile and pig!' But he is not imbecile and pig; for he has seen, and Don Jorge has seen; and why? For it is not a girl, but what you call her—a ghost! And they will that Don Esteban should make a picture ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... bloody fields in Hungary, and the princes in the vicinity of Vladimir soon found that Constantin had no spirit to resent any of their encroachments. Enormous crimes were perpetrated with impunity. Princes were assassinated, and the murderers seized their castles and their scepters, while the imbecile Constantin, instead of avenging such outrages, contented himself with shedding tears, building churches, distributing alms, and kissing the relics of the saints, which had been sent to him from Constantinople. Thus he lived for ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... not see, imbecile, that it's on my head," and he drew the cap from his pocket and proudly put it on his head, while he ran to ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... but reason, no. These are not the eyes of an imbecile or an idiot, but they are the eyes of a child. It is possible that when she fully recovers we may find her mind a perfect blank—a virgin page on which the story of her new life will have to ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... to be imbecile, and Stratton grasped now his friend's object in bringing them face to face. It was to show him how little so mindless a creature ought to influence the future of two people's lives, and to consult with him as to ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... I should send for the property which is truly no longer mine, nor for my brother who will amuse himself after the fashion of his country in the company of so honorable a caballero as yourself? Stay! oh imbecile that I am. I have not remembered. You would possibly say that he has no longer of horses! Play him; play him, admirable yet prudent Hamlin. I have two thousand horses! Of a surety he cannot exhaust them in four hours. Therefore play him, trust to me for recompensa, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... is not perfectly imbecile and void of understanding, is an epicure in his own way. The epicures in boiling of potatoes are innumerable. The perfection of all enjoyment depends on the perfection of the faculties of the mind and body; therefore, the temperate man is the ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... of their duties. The King forbids them to preach; then, he persecutes them and us. In the thousand and one religions which exist, the cause of the priests and the sanctuary becomes the cause of the faithful. Our priests are not imbecile Trappists and Carthusians, to be reduced to inaction and silence. Since their tongues are tied, they are resolved to depart; and their departure becomes an exile which it is our duty to share. If you will entrust me with your portraits which have been commenced, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... has never heard, the man who has never uttered these absurdities, these paltry remarks, is an imbecile and a malicious fellow. Cosette said ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... may be placed under a rain of ethical and philosophic ideas, and may be forced to put on a System of Thought, as men put on a mackintosh. But his true education is what he makes of these things. If he hears of Theodoric with a yawn, we say—the college-folk—He must be imbecile. No, not imbecile! he may become a successful toreador, or snake-charmer, which things are out of our line! And a man may be an upright citizen, a good husband, and a sincerely religious man, who has never ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... sometimes what it all meant. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... of the power of the personal structure to react upon the sexual elements, that is not open to serious objection." Some of the cases of apparent inheritance he regards as coincidence of effect. Thus "the fact that a drunkard will often have imbecile children, although his offspring previous to his taking to drink were healthy," is an "instance of simultaneous action," and not of true inheritance. "The alcohol pervades his tissues, and, of course, affects the germinal matter ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... Mansolah's carelessness and the imbecile cowardice of his subjects had enabled the Fellatahs to establish themselves in Yarriba, to entrench themselves in its fortified towns, and to obtain the recognition of their independence, until they became sufficiently strong to assume an absolute sovereignty ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... atmosphere and society Shaw might even have met the monstrous mother in The Devil's Disciple, the horrible old woman who declares that she has hardened her heart to hate her children, because the heart of man is desperately wicked, the old ghoul who has made one of her children an imbecile and the other an outcast. Such types do occur in small societies drunk with the dismal wine of Puritan determinism. It is possible that there were among Irish Calvinists people who denied that charity was a Christian virtue. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... heart like some dead thing killed At the moment of birth. Then, deadly sick, He would lie in a swoon for hours, while thick Phantasmagoria crowded his brain, And his body shrieked in the clutch of pain. The crisis passed, he would wake and smile With a vacant joy, half-imbecile And quite confused, not being certain Why he was suffering; a curtain Fallen over the tortured mind beguiled His sorrow. Like a little child He would play with his watches and gems, with glee Calling the Shadow to look and see How the spots on the ceiling ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... story, and were filled with denunciations and abuse of the prince, some of the sheets asserting, by way of explanation of his conduct, that he was mentally unbalanced, his mother having been an acknowledged lunatic, and his brother. Prince Alexander, an imbecile. Nothing can be further from the truth. It cannot be denied that he has a few harmless and kindly eccentricities which would attract no attention whatever in an ordinary septuagenarian, but which excite comment merely by reason of his rank as a prince of the blood. He is a ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... lone and forsaken one, who had found care, and food, and shelter, beneath her lowly but hospitable roof. It wasn't strange then that, with such a heart, Good Molly should consent to leave the home that was endeared to her by a thousand associations in order to watch over the failing and imbecile old woman and her diseased and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... young soul gleams through these impediments, and would be poorly expressed in figures of age. Accepting, therefore, this ideal representation, age and wisdom can never be companions; youth is wise, and age is imbecile. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... and of her daughter's imprudence, had spread through the city, losing nothing in the telling. And Nathalie's open stubbornness and rebellion confirmed it only too clearly. To her mother's mind, Nathalie was behaving in an imbecile fashion. Suppose she had acted in such a way, when, as Mademoiselle Blashkov of Moscow, she had been besieged by a handsome, impecunious young officer; and, instead of throwing him over for the wealthy ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... "What an imbecile you are!" sighed Tchelkache, and he again turned his back on his interlocutor, thinking this time that he would not vouchsafe him another word. This robust peasant awakened something ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... to have been written by one G. W. Bailey, from West Point, Columbus, McComb, Magnolia, and other places in Mississippi, and are the most brutally slanderous of the South and the Southern people of anything yet put in print. As the writer is too grossly ignorant and hopelesly imbecile to concoct a falsehood to deceive a diapered pickaninny, I should pay no attention to his screeds, but for the indignant protests of the Iowa people. One gentleman sends me some excerpts from the articles and says: "Do ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... pause, during which he was clearly debating how much or how little it was wise to give to his audience, he continued: "And if the Double does not succeed in getting back to its physical body, that physical body would wake an imbecile—an idiot—or ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... fluted pilaster and pouted while he kept watch upon Laura's every movement. His other shoulder stole the bloom from many a lovely cheek that brushed him in the surging crush, but he noted it not. He was too busy cursing himself inwardly for being an egotistical imbecile. An hour ago he had thought to take this country lass under his protection and show her "life" and enjoy her wonder and delight—and here she was, immersed in the marvel up to her eyes, and just a trifle more at home in it than he was himself. And ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... least is supposed to be affected by Lumawig, the Igorot god, and is said, when he hallooes, as he does at times, to be calling to Lumawig. Bontoc pueblo has a young woman and a girl of five or six years of age who are imbecile. Those four people are practically incapacitated from earning a living, and are cared for by their immediate relatives. There are two adult deaf and dumb men in Bontoc pueblo, but both ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... another armful of wood on the fire for the pleasurable sensation of comfort there was in the bright, dancing flame, and Lapoulle, who was engaged in the luxurious occupation of toasting his shins, suddenly went off into an imbecile fit of laughter without in the least understanding what it was about, whereon Jean, who had thus far turned a deaf ear to their talk, thought it time to interfere, which he did by ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... shouted, making straight for Lyman. "I mean you, sir," he cried, shaking his fist at Lyman. "You, sir. You try to bunco me and now you conspire with an imbecile to humble me into the dust. I mean you, sir. You have married my daughter. That fool is an ordained preacher, and your sockless legislature ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... interrupted his friend, somewhat impatiently; "you seem to me to be growing more and more imbecile every day. We did not sit down to ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the din of these curses of the world, blasphemies against heaven, shrieking in his ears, that he began to write his dreadful allegory—of which the meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate and imbecile, and his passions are so monstrous, and his boasted powers so mean, that he is and deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance is better than his vaunted reason. What had this man done? what secret remorse was rankling at his heart? what fever was boiling in him, that he should see all ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the Duke never took eyes from his face—that face so facile in the display of feeling or emotion. The voice also had a lilt of health and vitality which rang on the ears of age pleasantly. As he listened he thought of his eldest son, partly imbecile, all but a lusus naturae, separated from his wife immediately after marriage, through whom there could never be succession—he thought of him, and for the millionth time in his life winced in impotent disdain. He thought too of his beloved second son, lying in a soldier's grave in Macedonia; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... staggered about like drunken men, falling down upon each other and going through the most agonizing contortions in their attempts to work their way from one chair to another and thus about the room. Their heads were no longer erect, but drooped like wilted flowers. On their faces was a blank, imbecile expression, with a few traces of former intelligence still left. The mouth was open, from the drooping of the lower jaw, and the saliva constantly dribbled upon the clothing. Altogether, it was a spectacle which one does not care to meet every day; the impression ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... fellow," said Lefevre, "do you consider what you are so promptly offering? Do you know that my experiment, if successful, might leave you a paralytic, or an imbecile, or even—a corpse?" ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... dotard!" muttered the artist, glaring and grinding his teeth; "the sixty-five-year-old imbecile! It is the first time I ever heard her decline a waltz under the plea of fatigue. She's a heartless coquette, that Mollie Dane, and I am a fool to waste a second thought ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... anyway, except sitting with him in the office such times as he was lookin' over his accounts and reckonin' his money. She liked that. She always liked to handle money. That proved her a Sands, even if she was imbecile! ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... the more reasonable—as he now became aware that the women and children were left almost to their own protection; for the house was in a lonely situation; and all the men of the family were abroad, except an imbecile grey-beard whom one of the young women addressed as her grandfather. All fears however, Bertram flattered himself, should have been dispersed immediately by his appearance and the gentleness of his demeanour: much therefore it perplexed him to observe after the lapse of some time ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... tightly grasping their collars. Yet I believe his touch was as gentle as with the violets. His face was preternaturally grave; theirs, to my intense astonishment, while they hung passive from his arms, wore that fatuous, imbecile smile seen on the faces of those who lend themselves to tricks of acrobats and strong men in the arena. He slowly traversed the whole length of one side of the house, walked down the steps to the gate, and then gravely deposited them OUTSIDE. I heard him say, "Dot vins ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... idiot. She was obliged to explain to her, to repeat two or three times things that Germinie had always grasped on the merest hint. She asked herself, when she saw how slow and torpid she was, if somebody had not exchanged her maid for another.—"Why, you're getting to be a perfect imbecile!" she would sometimes say to her testily. She remembered the time when Germinie was so useful about finding dates, writing an address on a card, telling her what day they had put in the wood or broached the cask of wine,—all of which were things that her old brain ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... bleakness around. The water of the pits obtained in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects. Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, when Bombay reported, after an attempt to settle the Muhongo, that the chief's head had grown big since he heard that the Musungu had come, and that its "bigness" could not ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... resurrection here. If she dreams that I am in my dotage, and may relent, she strangely forgets the nature of the blood she saw fit to cross with that of a beggarly foreign scrub. Go back and tell her, the old man is not yet senile and imbecile; and that the years have only hardened his heart. Tell her, I have almost learned to forget even ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... truly unfortunate cases which, so far as present knowledge goes, cannot be guarded against. Eunice, age 31, mentally 2, is a low-grade imbecile. There is not in the whole family, for generations back, a single case of feeble-mindedness, nor of disease that would undermine the nervous organization. Close scrutiny does not reveal a single assignable cause. She came, as an accident, to ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... disconcerted by an event which, as Clara said, placed Marian in mourning in good earnest, namely, the death of her great aunt, old Mrs. Jessie Arundel, who had always lived at Torquay. For the last four or five years she had been almost imbecile, and so likely to die at any time, that, as it seemed for that very reason, every one took her death as a surprise ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... fair madam, if I die doing my duty to my God and my queen? The thought never moves me: nay, to tell the truth, I pray often enough that I may be spared the miseries of imbecile old age, and that end which the old Northmen rightly called 'a cow's death' rather than a man's. But enough of this. Mr. Leigh, you have done wisely to-night. Poor Oxenham does not go on his voyage with a single eye. I have talked about him with ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Edward reeling by the roadside, was sometimes startled to hear the fragments of classical lore, or wild bursts of half-remembered poetry, mixing strangely with the imbecile merriment of intoxication. But when he stopped to gaze, there was no further mark on his face or in his eye by which he could be distinguished from ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... were going to wear; but still it was Christmas, and all the newspapers, and a good deal of the light literature which is especially current at that season, persistently represented all the world as in a state of imbecile joviality, and thus, for the moment, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... "It is wicked for you to say such things. Do you suppose that Mr. Atkins would find it necessary to work as he is doing to beat a fool? And, besides, you're not complimentary to me. Should I, do you think, take such an interest in one who was an imbecile?" ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the small circle, he employs not only the fingers, but the arm, the shoulder, the whole body. He is an imbecile. He wastes too much effort in ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... legs. The white plume, the coppery tint of his broad face, the blue-black of the moustaches under the curved beak, the mass of gold on sleeves and breast, the high shining boots with enormous spurs, the working nostrils, the imbecile and domineering stare of the glorious victor of Rio Seco had in them something ominous and incredible; the exaggeration of a cruel caricature, the fatuity of solemn masquerading, the atrocious grotesqueness of some military idol of Aztec conception and ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... and bark for ever shamefully around lonely Cynossema. Young David ends as a dotard—Solomon as worse. Glorious Alexander must die, half of fever, half of drunkenness, as the fool dieth. Charles the Fifth, having thrown all away but his follies, ends in a convent, a superstitious imbecile; Napoleon squabbles to the last with Sir Hudson Lowe about champagne. It must be so; and the glory must be God's alone. For in great men, and great times, there is nothing good or vital but what is of God, and not of man's self; and when He taketh away that divine breath they die, and return ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... that had come in its way for years, and the appearance of the paper created the most profound amazement throughout the town and district. Gable was described as a cunning scoundrel whose affectations of almost imbecile simplicity might easily have deceived intelligences less keen than those at the service of the Mercury, and neither Messrs. Billson and Hogan nor Master Mathieson hinted that their assailants were anything less than ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... long grass bordering the road a face glided past the carriage at the level of the wheels as we drove slowly by. The imbecile face was red, and the bullet head with close-cropped hair seemed to lie alone, its chin in the dust. The body was lost in the bushes growing thick along the bottom of ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... worthy Heer, believe me, nothing to your hurt. Oh! yes, I know that tales are told against me, who only earn an honest living in an honest way, to keep my poor husband, who is an imbecile. Once alas! he followed that mad Anabaptist fool, John of Leyden, the fellow who set up as a king, and said that men might have as many wives as they wished. That was what sent my husband silly, but, thanks be to the Saints, he has repented of his errors and is reconciled ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Hundred and Eleven the "Star of the Evening" rises with a chorus. I am inclined to think that there is something in the utter vacuity of the refrain in this song which especially commends itself to the young. The simple statement, "Star of the evening," is again and again repeated with an imbecile relish; while the adjective "beautiful" recurs with a steady persistency, too exasperating to dwell upon here. At occasional intervals, a base voice enunciates "Star-r! Star-r!" as a solitary and independent effort. Sitting here in my balcony, I picture the possessor of that voice as a small, stout ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... if you should do so suddenly or clumsily. But you must insinuate the idea very slowly and subtlely. Clarence is not for the works; Clarence is too good for this world—at least for the business of this world. I think him half an imbecile! My father does not hesitate to call him a perfect idiot. Do you begin to see your way now? Clarence can be moderately provided for, but should have no share ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... persuade the officer not to hold that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence with the same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with a smile. For a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome face assumed a melodramatically gentle expression and he held ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... for a collegian! Ingrate! good-for-nothing! vagabond! I began to think you were not coming. Where have you been, imbecile? How dare you delay, as if you had no interest in the matter, when the salt of the earth is melting for you, and the sum of beauty ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... critically speaking. But youth and health, and an arrow-straight bearing, and a flawless complexion, in a flood of evening light, make a bold bid for beauty even in the eyes of others than young men already half-imbecile with love. Sally's was, at any rate, enough to dumbfounder the little janitress with the key, who stood at gaze with violet eyes in her sunbrowned face in the shadow, looking as though for certain they would never close again; while, as for Dr. Conrad, he was too far gone to want a finishing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... "O imbecile, I saw you hungry in the field and took pity on you; so I picked up for you some grain and took hold of you that you might eat; but you fled from me, and I know not the cause of your flight, except it were to put upon me a slight. Come out, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... beautiful toes I have ever seen!" cried Antoinette in imbecile admiration. She has ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... prehistoric man or beast has been interred; Planetians, i.e. spirits inimical to dwellers on this earth that inhabit various of the other planets; and earthbound spirits of such dead human beings as were mad, imbecile, cruel and vicious, together with the phantasms of vicious and mad beasts, and beasts of ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... me?" Wayne said. "With that? How do you know it's even a gun? Looks more like a fire extinguisher to me. Aw, you poor little imbecile, I haven't had a chance to ...
— High Dragon Bump • Don Thompson
... mine. The city of a new empire, the conquest of a new Attila! There, every circumstance combines in my favour!—the absence of the Pope, the weakness of the middle class, the poverty of the populace, the imbecile though ferocious barbarism of the Barons, have long concurred to render Rome the most facile, while the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... world has accepted as the natural expression of their various owners, we at once decided that the case was a hopeless one. And when one night we picked him up out of the Union Ditch, a begrimed and weather-worn drunkard, a hopeless debtor, a self-confessed spendthrift, and a half-conscious, maudlin imbecile, we knew that the end had come. The wife he had abandoned had in turn deserted him; the woman he had misled had already realized her folly, and left him with her reproaches; the associates of his reckless life, who had used and abused him, had found him no longer of service, or ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... me, Fani!" snapped Don Loris. "I am a reasonable man, but I indulge you too much—even to allowing you to refuse that young imbecile Ghek, with no end of inconvenience as a result. But I will not have you question my decision about ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... his senses. Honor to all the great arts! The limit to their beauty and their usefulness has never yet been found and never will. Painting was the golden key this thinker held to the Bramah lock of an imbecile's understanding the ponderous wards were beginning to revolve—when a blockhead came and did his best ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Badenhorst; old father; old mother; bedridden 15-year-old boy; water head; simple; old mother feeds it mouth to mouth[14]; "Die kind, leeraart, het ik nou al lang afgege aan de Heere Jesus!" (This child, Pastor, I have given to the Lord Jesus long ago.") She dotes on this imbecile, poor mother. Such a simple, homely, gladsome, believing old heart. "Ik ben velen een wonder geweest" ("I am a wonder unto many"); me certainly; daughter with sick girlie; "De Heere het haar ver ons terug gege" ("The Lord has given her back to us"); there was a fire in their tent, ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... pater's private keys!" gasped Lord James. "You don't tell me the rascal was imbecile enough to keep those keys in his pocket?— certain means of identification if he'd ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... first Rovinski refused to make any answers to the questions put to him, but at last, apparently enraged by the imputation that he must be a weak-minded, almost idiotic, man to behave himself in such an imbecile ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... extreme old age and to continue my story with the years, I, an old man of seventy, shall be found dreaming dreams just as impossible and childish as those I am dreaming now. I shall be dreaming of some lovely Maria who loves me, the toothless old man, as she might love a Mazeppa; of some imbecile son who, through some extraordinary chance, has suddenly become a minister of state; of my suddenly receiving a windfall of a million of roubles. I am sure that there exists no human being, no human ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... may be meted out in mind and body to the descendants of the drunkard or the debauchee. Intellectual blemish will almost always accompany material blemish. The soul will be attacked simultaneously with the body; and it matters but little whether the victim be imbecile, mad, epileptic, possessed of criminal instincts, or only vaguely threatened with slight mental derangement: the most frightful moral penalty that a supreme justice could invent has followed actions which, as a rule, cause less harm and are less perverse ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... All these manoeuvres to-day availed him nothing; Jeremy held his neck in a vice, and dug his fingers well into the skin. Hamlet whined, then lay still, and, in the midst of indignant reflections against the imbecile tyrannies of man, fell, to his own ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... sons shall be the reapers, and their sons, in the ordinary course of things, must yield the possession of the harvest, to new competitors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his hand, and an imbecile smile flitted over his ghastly face. "Ah! then, you love ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... "I should just like to remark that you are the most unspeakable old imbecile in seven States and ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... stand that!" exclaimed Irene. "It's too imbecile. It really is what our slangy friend calls 'rot,' and very dry rot. Have ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... was rich, Jimmie. She wanted me not; and she married a wealthy fool and the imbecile made her happy. I could almost forgive her for not loving me, for I was a mate on a steamboat, but to let that fool make her happy—it was too much and I cast her out of my mind. But when is your wedding to take place? In the sweet ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... warned his daughter Dreux, the only one of the family to whom it was possible to speak with profit. The mother, with little wit and knowledge of the Court, full of apparent confidence and sham cunning, received all advice ill. The, brothers were imbecile, the son was a child and a simpleton, the two other daughters too light-headed. I had often warned Madame de Dreux of the enmity of the Duchesse de Bourgogne; and she had spoken to her on the subject. The Princess had answered very coldly that she was mistaken, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to help themselves. It makes them hop with rage. They say, 'What! do you drink THIS?' Then, when we tell them that all their water supply comes from this lake, they grin like a dog and go about the city, —I mean depart on their imbecile way. But these people are all dressed up. Oh, Momus and Comus! There are girls on board! ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... needed outlet and relief. But he disappointed her. That was one of the situations in which one appeals in vain to the resources of language. He shrank and sank back in his chair, his jaw dropped, and he vented a strange, imbecile cackling laugh. It was not an expression of philosophic mirth, of sense of the grotesqueness of an anti-climax. It was not an expression of any emotion whatever. It was simply a signal from a ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Caligula, came to the imperial chair, the opportunity of the anti-Semites returned. Gaius, after reigning well a few months, fell ill, was seized with madness, and proved how much evil can be done in a short space by an imbecile autocrat. Flaccus, the governor of Egypt, who had hitherto ruled fairly, hoping to ingratiate himself by misrule, allowed himself to be led by worthless minions, who, from motives of private greed, desired a riot at Alexandria; he was won over by the anti-Semites ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... are doing so now; and, besides, it's so imbecile to stand out there and stare at ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... art—cheap art. As a general rule they are not true; unless indeed they happen to be mere platitudes, as for instance the proverb, "Half a loaf is better than no bread," or "A miss is as good as a mile." Some proverbs are simply imbecile, others are immoral. That one evolved out of the naive heart of the great Russian people, "Man discharges the piece, but God carries the bullet," is piously atrocious, and at bitter variance with the accepted conception ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... his eunuch brother, who was the only one besides his master and himself to know that the dancer had been Zulannah, in the grip of such terror and physical pain as to be almost imbecile, though a look of cunning had shone for a moment in his bloodshot eyes when Qatim had inadvertently let drop a hint as to the accumulated riches ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... frenzied anxiety that her second one should not enter it? The facts, as I read them, are something like this: This woman was married in America. Her husband developed some hateful qualities, or, shall we say, that he contracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile. She fled from him at last, returned to England, changed her name, and started her life, as she thought, afresh. She had been married three years, and believed that her position was quite secure—having ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... persuaded. But if any one feels a little shaken, let him try it another way. There is a character in M. Alphonse Daudet's "Froment Jeune et Rissler Aine"—a character who, people say, is taken bodily from Dickens. This is Desiree Delobelle, the deformed girl, the daughter of un rate, a pretentious imbecile actor. She is poor, stunted, laborious, toiling at a small industry; she is in love, is rejected, she tries to drown herself, she dies. The sequence of ideas is in Dickens's vein; but read the tale, and I think you will see how little the thing is overdone, how simple and unforced it is, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... life. When at last he emerged from the anguish and confusion of her folly, her extravagance, her rage, her despair, and her devotion, he was left alone with endless memories of intermingled farce and tragedy, and an only son, who was an imbecile. But there was something else that he owed to Lady Caroline. While she whirled with Byron in a hectic frenzy of love and fashion, he had stayed at home in an indulgence bordering on cynicism, and occupied his solitude with reading. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... could wander off to remote tribes, and, armed with rifle or bow, could easily secure his game, sufficient for his own wants, from the contiguous forest. But these were resources inaccessible to the weak, the old, the timid, and the imbecile. Surely, it was a cruel measure of war, and if necessary to the safety of the whites, renders still more criminal the wanton excesses of the latter, by which it was originally provoked. It is pleasing to be able to show that Marion felt, in this matter, as became that rare humanity ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... never should have perished on a scaffold! Most assuredly I would have pardoned him; but with the sentence of death hanging over his head he could no longer have proved dangerous; and his name would have ceased to be a rallying-point for disaffected Republicans or imbecile Royalists. Had the Council expressed any doubts respecting his guilt I would have intimated to him that the suspicions against him were so strong as to render any further connection between us impossible; and that the best course ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... "Oh, they were imbecile!" added Lady Garnett; "try the Moselle, my dear, and leave that terrible sweet stuff to Mary. Yes, I was glad to come away from Lucerne. Everything is very bad now except my Constant's vol-au-vent, which you don't seem to have tried; but lovers ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... in which Kent stared at Marette Radisson after her announcement that it was Dirty Fingers who had planned his escape must have been, he thought afterward, little less than imbecile. He had wronged Fingers, he believed. He had called him a coward and a backslider. In his mind he had reviled him for helping to raise his hopes to the highest pitch, only to smash them in the end. And all the time Dirty Fingers had been planning this! Kent began ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... all that, viewing it calmly in perspective, her action and attitude struck Helen as somewhat imbecile. Prayer and penitence have too often a tendency to kick the beam when fear ceases to weight the balance. And so it followed that the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, presented themselves to her as powers by no means contemptible, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Arab. "What means this?" said Luis to the horseman by his side. "It means," was the answer, "that Bishop Oppas is betraying the king." At this moment Don Alonzo rode up and cheered their march with explanations. "No more," he said, "will we obey this imbecile old king who can neither fight nor govern. He and his troops are but so many old women; it is only these Arabs who are men. All is arranged with Tarik, and we will save our country by joining the only man who can govern ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to him. It may well be doubted whether he was aware that Sicily was an island, that Christopher Columbus had discovered America, or that the English were not Mahometans. In his youth, however, though too imbecile for study or for business, he was not incapable of being amused. He shot, hawked and hunted. He enjoyed with the delight of a true Spaniard two delightful spectacles, a horse with its bowels gored out, and a Jew writhing in the fire. The time ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a curious spice of malice in him, which prompted him to speak evil of all, and to as many as he dared. After we had inspected the ruins of the emperor's villa, a clownish imbecile of a woman, professing to be the wife of the peasant who had made the excavations, came forth out of a cleft in the rock and received tribute of us—why, I do not know. The patriarch abetted the extortion, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... said the conducteur as he came round to the door, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "qu'est ce que vous voulez, M'sieur?"—"Je vous avais dit qu'il fallait me faire descendre chez M. Dubois, et maintenant nous voila a——ou sommes-nous, par exemple?" "Imbecile! il y a encore trois bonnes lieues a la Pissotte!" and the angry conducteur, who had been roused from his sleep, and climbed over and round the lumbering vehicle to the back-door, now climbed round and over again to the banquette. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... what he had said, but of what he thought and had not said, and with an added subtle suggestion of what he might have thought. "That's tellin'," she said, dropping her long lashes again. The Colonel laughed vacantly. Then feeling himself growing imbecile, he forced an equally weak gravity. "Pardon me—I understand there are no letters; may I know the way in which he ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... to salute with a wave of his hand the phantom that had just appeared before him. It was the same that he had summoned one evening at the Hotel Steinbock, and treated there as an addle-brain, as a visionary, and even as an imbecile; but this time he gave him a more indulgent and gracious reception. He bore him no ill-will, he wished him well, he was under essential obligations to him, and ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez |
