"Silly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silly girls occasionally inquired through the newspapers as to "the significance" of the postage stamp when placed in certain positions on the envelope. One paper made reply that to place it anywhere but on the upper right hand corner ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown by the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... touching did the words sound as they fell from Lancy's lips, for genuine feeling was behind them. It was like a passage in a love-story, and where is the person that does not enjoy the repetition of some passages, even though they may, at the same time, pronounce them silly and sentimental in ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... but if you put him behind the counter a little, he will mend exceedingly. When I was reading the Treaty, I thought all the names of foreign places, viz. Poindicherry, Chandenenagore, Cochin, Martinico, &c, all cessions. Not they—they are all so many traps and holes to catch this silly fellow in, and make a merchant of him! I really think the best way upon this principle would be this:—let the merchants of London open a public subscription, and set him up at once. I hear a great deal respecting a certain ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... vaquero called it the "Huarahua." He told Leon it preyed only on carrion, and never killed its own food; that it was very harmless and tame—which was evidently true, as, shortly after, one of them seated upon a stone allowed the Indian to approach and knock it over with a stick! Such a silly bird ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Allready; can I putt it in for more? Our army was some 14000 men Of which more than 12000 had spirits so high Mine never shall come neere them: would some of them Were here to feed your expectations! Yet, silly as I am, having faire pardon From all your Graces and your Greatnesses, Ile try if I have strength in this chayned arme To breake ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... but a pack of silly schoolboys?" growled the German. "Perhaps you thought you were doing a wonderful thing spying around our house and our barn? You didn't know we had someone watching you ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... headstrong as a devil.' And what's her name?—Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... tortured by doubt, anxiety, fear, despair, and he may violently hate the other man, though (as I know from personal experience) not necessarily, feeling that the rival has as much claim to the girl's attention as he has. Duels between rival lovers are not only silly, but are an insult to the girl, to whom the choice ought to be submitted and the verdict accepted manfully. A man who shoots the girl herself, because she loves another and refuses him, puts himself on a level below the lowest ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Haller with what will be the physiology of future times. Man praises the Eternal for his own poor views; and the Eternal who hears from the elevation of his throne, and who knows his own design, accepts the silly praise and smiles at ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... "Silly girl, hold that whimpering noise, you deserve all this disgrace, did I not tell you how I would punish you before the whole school next time?" said Madame, evidently with some excitement, as she opened the girl's drawers behind, and pinned up the tail of her chemise ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... too sad—just as if they wanted merry tragedies. Everybody is clamouring arrogantly for "the joy of life," and all theatrical managers are giving orders for farces, as if the joy of life consisted in being silly and picturing all human beings as so many sufferers from St. Vitus' dance or idiocy. I find the joy of life in its violent and cruel struggles, and my pleasure lies in knowing something and learning something. And for this reason I have selected ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... looks like twelve! The child is silly. Can't even tell her own age. No wonder, with her ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... was a mere child in intelligence, ignorant, silly, suppressed between petticoat government and this kind old man who belonged to ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and I had no time to think, because I was so confused. But that is a long time ago, and this has been a very sad winter, and I have thought a great deal. I know, and you know, too, that I am a foolish little thing; I have been silly little Amy always; you and Charlie have helped me to all the sense I have, and I don't think I could ever be a clever, strong-minded woman, such as ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stories of the external soul are not wanting. In a tale told by the Saxons of Transylvania it is said that a young man shot at a witch again and again. The bullets went clean through her but did her no harm, and she only laughed and mocked at him. "Silly earthworm," she cried, "shoot as much as you like. It does me no harm. For know that my life resides not in me but far, far away. In a mountain is a pond, on the pond swims a duck, in the duck is an egg, in the egg burns a light, that ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... it! That explains the whole business. These idiots take us for spirits, since they saw us scramble out from the lake without any boat in sight. Spirits! It's almost too silly to believe." ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... given—we don't ask for it, and no conditions come with it. Why should one, if it gets unendurable, keep an unasked, unwanted gift? If somebody put a ball of bright metal into your hands and it was pretty at first and nice to play with, and then turned red-hot, and hurt, wouldn't it be silly to go on holding it? I don't know much about God, anyway," she went on a bit forlornly; not irreverently, but as if pain had burned off the shell of conventions and reserves of every day, and actual facts lay bare. "I don't feel as if He were especially real—and ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... blazing. "You silly fool, what do you think you're doing when you play games with a mob like this? Do you think they're going to play fair? You're no clod, you know better than that—" He leaned over her, trembling with anger. "You set me up for a sucker, but the ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... "Silly!" said Minerva. "There are oceans of them. Doesn't the river look perfectly lovely in ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... charged are said to be no greater than in any other retail shops. This is really eating your cake in order to keep it; the more you spend the richer you will be; indeed it sets at defiance the whole of Franklin's code of proverbs, and proves "Poor Richard" a silly fellow. Imagine Jones lecturing his wife on her economy, and reproaching her for a spirit of saving, "My dear, if you had bought this camel's hair shawl thirty years ago, it would now be a source of income to us; if you had not been so close we should now ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... deliberately adopt such a conclusion should trouble himself any more to look for truth. If a mere absurdity could make its way out of a little fishing village in Galilee, and spread through the whole civilised world; if men are so pitiably silly, that in an age of great mental activity their strongest thinkers should have sunk under an abortion of fear and folly, should have allowed it to absorb into itself whatever of heroism, of devotion, self-sacrifice, and moral nobleness there was among ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... "the vanity of men in their faces! Talk of women!" and the silly creature looked up at her lover with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... "Silly young people," he seemed to be saying to himself; but Houpet was not to be put down so. With a shrill, clear crow he descended from his perch, stepped close up to Dudu, looked him in the face, and then quietly marched off, followed by his two ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... next day on what proved to be the most disagreeable stage of my illness. McMeekin called on me in the morning. He performed some silly tricks with a stethoscope and felt my pulse with an air of rapt attention which did not in the least deceive me. Then he intimated that I might sit up for an hour or two after luncheon. The way he made this announcement was irritating enough. Instead of saying straightforwardly, "You can get out ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... can get nothing else out of a man. Someone says, I forget who, that "a woman can always know in what opinion she is held by the conversation addressed to her," and is it not true? The foolish compliments paid to the pretty, but silly little debutante; the small talk to the fools; the sparring with the witty; the risque tales enjoyed by those of a more rapid style. Men find out first what are our tastes, and then dish up their conversation accordingly, and they do ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... indefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be,—and allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman who kept the house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did not quite suit us, and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... hot!' Lena yawned. She was supine under a little oak, resting after the fury of her elder-hunting, and had taken off the high-heeled slippers she had been silly enough to wear. 'Come here, Jim. You never got the sand out of your hair.' She began to draw her fingers slowly through ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... placed his hand upon mine, and I looked at him. It was Eugen Courvoisier. His face and his eyes were full of sadness; but I knew that he loved me, though he said but one word, "Forgive!" to which I answered, "Can you forgive?" But I knew that I alluded to something much deeper than that silly little episode of having cut him at the theater. He bowed his head; and then I thought I began to weep, covering my face with my hands; but they were tears of exquisite joy, and the peace at my heart was the most entire I had ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... touching sight to see a serious person becoming the comrade of a young scamp, and virtue putting up with the speech of licence in order to triumph over it more completely. When the young fool came to him with his silly confidences and opened his heart to him, the priest listened and set him at his ease; without giving his approval to what was bad, he took an interest in everything; no tactless reproof checked his chatter or closed ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... superstition of that sort in the family, but no one except the servants believes it, of course. In times of illness some silly maid or croaking old woman can easily fancy they see a phantom, and, if death comes, they are sure of the ghostly warning. Benson saw it before my father died, and old Roger, the night my uncle was seized with apoplexy. Patty will never be made to believe ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... riding when they saw it went silly and yelled and yelled. Those who did not know anything about it caught the infection and roared. The judges galloped about, backing away from the living whirlwind and yelling with the rest. Came a lull when the roan stood still because he lacked breath to continue, and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... boy be expected to feel as he did? Would he even understand if his father should explain it to him? . . . It was useless to expect anything from this lady-killing, dancing clown, from this fellow of senseless bravado, who was constantly exposing his life in duels in order to satisfy a silly ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to McLean with her silly worries and her anxious concern which he had probably taken ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of the silly people who are not brave enough to refuse to do a wrong or unwise thing if anybody dares them ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... let us be silly, Danny," Tresler said, coming over to the girl's side and taking possession of her forcibly. In spite of protest his arm slipped round her waist, and he drew her to him and kissed her tenderly. "My people are not marrying you. Nor are the folk—who, by ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... interim. Now, Miles, I've conversed with you, as with an old friend, and because I knew my father would tell you the whole, when you get up to Clawbonny; but you will take it all in strict confidence. It gives a fashionable young fellow so silly an air, to be thought dependent on a sister; and she three years younger than himself! So I have hinted the actual state of the case, round among my friends; but, it is generally believed that I am in possession already, and that Lucy is dependent on me, instead of ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... now to language entirely free from every thought of unmanly fondness and silly displays of affection, finding himself with one who sought to lay open to him the deficiencies of his mind, and repress his vain ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... your sex Was never in the right! y'are always false, Or silly; ev'n your dresses are not more Fantastic than your appetites; you think Of nothing twice; opinion you have none. To-day y'are nice, to-morrow not so free; Now smile, then frown; now sorrowful, then glad; Now pleas'd, now not: and all, you ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... woman who had been found with a camera in their possession. At first there was no objection raised to the taking of photographs, but now our friends are getting a little touchy about it, and lock up anybody silly enough to get caught ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... bother the boy, here comes our John Munching a piece of currant cake, Who says the lance is a broken rake, And the sword with its keen Toledo blade Is a hoe, and the dinted shield a spade, Bent and useless and rusty-red, In the gardener's silly old ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... done her best" to indoctrinate the child with the pure milk of the emancipating social gospel; "but the child herself seemed to hark back, of internal congruity, to the lower and vulgarer moral plane of her remoter ancestry. There is," he proceeds, "no more silly and persistent error than the belief of parents that they can influence to any appreciable degree the moral ideas and impulses of their children. These things have their springs in the bases of character; they are the flower of individuality; and they cannot be altered ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... nimble creature, having swooped up to a high limb, seats itself there, and looks down upon its impotent pursuer with a nonchalant defiance—at intervals more emphatically expressing the sentiment by a saucy jerk of its tail. But this false security proves the squirrel's ruin. Deceived by it, the silly animal makes no effort to conceal its body behind the branch; but, sitting upright in a fork, presents a fair mark to the rifle. The girl raises the piece to her ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... was in the air. Rodzianko, to whom I spoke at the Club only a fortnight before the abdication, said that everything would turn out all right. In fact, the Court, and people around it,—were much better posted; perhaps they felt something growing instinctively, as they were too silly to crystallize their fears in some concrete conception. Maroossia was in Tsarskoye Selo not long before the old Admiral's death; they said that the danger was expected from the "Town and Country Union." But all these whispers and chatterings were always of the category of a "so-and-so, ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... sonnet-scheme, he conceives certain modes of music and methods of rhyme, and the mere form suggests what is to fill it and make it intellectually and emotionally complete. From time to time the world cries out against some charming artistic poet, because, to use its hackneyed and silly phrase, he has 'nothing to say.' But if he had something to say, he would probably say it, and the result would be tedious. It is just because he has no new message, that he can do beautiful work. He gains his inspiration ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... bleat for the open gate. Beelzebub, as the Turner mother had christened the mischievous brute, had been placed in the wrong stall and Beelzebub was making for freedom. He gave another triumphant baa as he swept between Dolph's legs and through the gate, and, with an answering chorus, the silly sheep sprang to their feet and followed. A sheep hates water, but not more than he loves a leader, and Beelzebub feared nothing. Straight for the water of the low ford the old conqueror made and, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I couldn't ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... but lose everything by your bullying tactics. Dash it all, the fellow downed you like a prize-fighter. Who was he? Not Jean de Courtois, I'll swear, so where has de Courtois gone? Can't you stand up? It's damn silly to sit there, nursing your nose. Our motor-car is out of action. We had better interview this clergyman, and learn ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... the people were very superstitious, and believed in signs and wonders, and frightened themselves silly with every strange noise or unusual occurrence, for everything that occurred was supposed to be a sign that something ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 41, August 19, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... delightful, engaging and invincible of gay delicious creatures defending that position you can possibly imagine. And even when the case is not so bad as that, there still remains the quality. We "take up our positions," silly little contentious creatures that we are, we will not see the right in one another, we will not patiently state and restate, and honestly accommodate and plan, and so we remain at sixes and sevens. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... have a greater wealth for my old age than the National City Bank could pay me, Burke. Lorna has told me of her experience and her escape when all escape seemed hopeless. She has learned that the sensual pleasures of one side of New York's glittering life are dross and death. In the books and silly plays she has read and seen it was pictured as being all song and jollity. Now she knows how sordid and bitter is the draught which can only end, like all poison, in one thing. God bless you, my boy, and ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... than Dick when he talks sensibly, she thought, "but I'm sure he'll be silly and worry me, and I'm sure I can't tell him anything he'd like to hear. If he'd only be sensible, I should ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... escapade was the general topic of conversation. Never before had that unaccountable individual been the cause of so much gossip, he judged. No! Not even in the beginnings of the Tropical Belt Coal Company when becoming for a moment a public character was he the object of a silly criticism and unintelligent envy for every vagabond and adventurer in the islands. Davidson concluded that people liked to discuss that sort of scandal better ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... "No, silly. How could I when they are all plastered over thick with snow?" was Bob's scornful retort. He was silent for a moment. "But don't you worry," he declared. "I am certain we came this way—at least ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the town—but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms—not that I am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... of American Independence, so often disappointed the hopes of the British. The records of war on land and by sea—especially the extracts from them included in the enumeration already given—lend no support to the silly suggestion that efficient defence can be provided for a country by 'an untrained man with a rifle behind a hedge.' The truth is that it was not the absence of organisation or training on one side which enabled it to defeat the other. If the beaten side had been elaborately organised ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... be reasonable?" he replied. "Here, look at me. I'm driving this bus for hours and hours every day. I'm cold and wet. I'm putting on the brakes from morning to night, saving people's silly lives, until I'm sick of the sight of them. If you was to drive a motor bus in London you'd want a little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... you and I should live so separate! I'll be bound you're the best fellow in the world, the very backbone of the country. To be sure there's a silly old-fashioned lot of Lumpkins in our part that will have it you're no gentleman, but I say, 'Gentle is as Gentle does,' and fair play's a jewel. I will enter your counting-house as soon as drink to you, as ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... softened the heart of the vilest "Legree;" but probably, had one of those gentlemen, whose highly respectable occupation it is to deal in the traffic of buying and selling—man, been present, they might have been led to remark, "The silly creatures seem to ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... if she marry not for love, she disobeys the ordinance of nature and must pay the penalty. But at the same time all her material fortune depends upon the nature of that love. An industrious man may marry a silly fretful woman, and may be triumphant in his counting-house though he be bankrupt in his drawing-room. But a woman has but the one chance. She must choose her life's companion because she loves him; but she knows how great is the ruin of loving one who cannot win for her that worldly success ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... this may have been the cause for the assault upon me in the Inner Lobby, which has afforded the stale House some little excitement, which has been the salvation of the silly season. So many papers have given startling accounts of this attack upon me, some stating that I was caned, others that I was pummelled, shaken like a dog, and so on, that I am glad to take the opportunity of giving a clear statement of what really occurred. I was standing close ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Johnson suddenly challenged him to produce twenty lines in a series that would not disgrace the poet and his admirer. Garrick produced a passage that he had once heard the Doctor commend, in which he now found, if I remember rightly, sixteen faults, and made Garrick look silly at his own table. When I told Mr. Johnson the story, "Why, what a monkey was David now," says he, "to tell of his own disgrace!" And in the course of that hour's chat he told me how he used to tease Garrick by commendations of the tomb-scene in Congreve's ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... as those silly, chattering people round her would let me be—that niece of hers and the rest. I'm sure I was careful to ask after her ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... "Oh, you silly! You are building the same house every time, and taking it down again. How can you be so baby as to call that building ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... of things. In the first place she apologized for having been so silly the time before—after the ball. She said she was ill then, she didn't want to talk about it. Now she had come to make ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... other responsibilities. Your position, your fortune, they make demands. I'm not one to underestimate the leisure class; I know the old joke about tramps being the only leisure class in America; it's a silly joke, but it ought to make us think. After a bit, if we don't look out, the leisure class, here, will be all women. They'll dominate art and poetry and society—and I must say I like a good team. I never cared for too much of ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... being, apparently, because the kings of the fallen dynasty had received support from the valley of the Tigris. Hosea continually reproached his countrymen with this vacillating policy, and pointed out the folly of it: "Ephraim is like a silly dove without understanding; they call unto Egypt, they go unto Assyria; when they shall go I will spread My net upon them," ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... I wanted to show them that though my grandfather was gone, his example and his wishes still inspired me. And though I was not a studious cadet, I was a smart soldier, and my demerits, when they came, were for smoking in my room or for breaking some other such silly rule, and never for slouching through the manual or coming on parade with my belts twisted. And at the end of the second year I had been promoted from corporal to be a cadet first sergeant, so that I was fourth in command over a company of seventy. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... suffering from a sharp fit of goose, such as attacks many boys who, because matters do not go exactly as they like at home, consider that they are ill-used, and long for what they call their freedom—a freedom which is really slavery, inasmuch as they make themselves the bond-servants of their silly fancies, and it takes some time to win ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... back to my brother," put in Tom, who had come up. "You think you're a regular masher, as they call such silly fellows, but I don't think your game is going to ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... 'ee go on like that, Nance; I'll 'ave to take you 'ome. That's silly, now we've a-come. I might be dead and buried by the fuss you're makin'. You've ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... walked up and down beside the sea, crying as if her heart would break. All at once she stopped crying. "How stupid I have been," she said. "My old playmate Labismena told me that if ever I was in trouble she would come back and help me. With all my silly crying ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... half so good. Alas! Agnes was, indeed, unsophisticated, to be in such ecstasies with a midshipman's love-letter. Once more she hastened to her room to weep, but it was from excess of joy and delight. The reader may think Agnes silly, but he must take into consideration the climate, and that she was not ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sat in a tall cherry-tree at midnight and sung to the moon until the owls scared her to bed; and of having sung Mignon's song under his window in very bad German, and strewed wild flowers over his door-step in the darkness. This sounds very sentimental and silly, but Louisa was never that. She had a deep, intense nature, which as yet had found no outlet or expression, and she could have had no safer hero to worship than this gentle, serene, wise man whose ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... may imagine, if we like, that there is nothing beyond the village limits, and nothing in it but that which relates to the village. We have the right to be silly, if we wish to be. And it is no sign of wisdom to say that there is a county beyond, but that the county boundaries end all, and only village and county politics may be studied. The European who believed—no Asiatic or African or American could have ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... must! you must! You must all like him! You don't know—his thoughts, his ideals—they are wonderful. He's like some knight of the Middle Ages.... Ah, but you'll think that silly, Mr. Durward. You're a practical ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... thanks to that little kink in our disposition. We got a nasty knock in South Africa and we had to pay our own loss. It did us good for a year or two. Now the pendulum has just reached the other extreme. We've swung back once more into our silly dream. Oh, Maraton, it's true enough that we have great problems to face sociologically! Don't think that I underrate them. You know I don't. But every time I sit and talk to you, I have always at the back of my mind that other fear. . . . ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... along, "I sorter think my specs is muggy; "But Solon started out from hum "This mornin' in the new top buggy. "Jeddiah rid old chestnut Jim, "An' Sammy rid the roan filly; "I told 'em when they started off "It looked redikless, soft and silly, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... don't be silly,' he said, trying to comfort her, kissing her, holding her in his arms. 'I want you, I want to marry you, we're going to be married, quickly, quickly—to-morrow ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... one then, to a certainty. They have become a unit in the great scheme of existence. And so, darling, I have thought and thought much. I have dreamed of you as the little mother, the one who would not be of the silly modern type, the one who, with me, would not be ashamed any more than were our sturdy ancestors of a sturdy family, should we be blessed so. The one who would be glad with me in the womanhood and manhood of it. And, as I said, it could never part us. It would but make me more totally your own, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... prepared for the outburst of wrath of the Czar at hearing this news. Early in his reign he had concentrated into a single phrase—"silly Pole"—the spleen of an essentially narrow nature at seeing a kinsman and a dependant dare to think and act for himself[198]. But on this occasion, as we can now see, the Prince had marred Russia's plans in the most serious way. Stambuloff and he had deprived her of her unionist trump card. The ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... children taught we pay the price; but if we want our children instructed in the fundamentals of prosperity upon which their future depends, we send them to a Sunday School for a half-hour a week with the possibility of having them taught by a silly girl who doesn't know her work. In any event the parent seldom takes the trouble to ascertain the quality ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... is no end of a bother, because I sort of promised I would be home early to tea. The girls had got some friends coming, and wanted me to show off the magic-lantern. When I came in, Mother was crying, and the servant out looking for me. It's too silly! I'm ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... these simple men; for many sweat Under this act, that knows not the law's debt Which hangs upon their lives; for silly men Plod on they know not how, like a fool's pen, That, ending, shows not any sentence writ, Linked but to common reason or slightest wit: These follow for no harm; but yet incur Self penalty with those that raised this stir. A God's name, on, to ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... Such a weary, silly smile, letting her lead him away like a little child. He would even have passed the bed where his wife lay without a look, but that his daughter stopped him at ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... heard Sir Tiglath's opinion of the practice of trying to turn the stars into money-makers, and the planets into old gipsy women who tell fortunes to silly servant girls, I'm sure you'll never study ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... put away for another generation. Foolish women! They are plentiful enough, and they muster in fair numbers at the Wauxhall meetings which have been going on here, to the infinite amusement of the superior creatures who drink absinthe, smoke cigars, and gamble, hours after we silly things have gone to bed. I am not writing to deny woman's weakness, nor her vanity, nor the ridiculous exhibition she makes of herself when she takes to "orating"—as the Yankees say—and lecturing, and dressing herself up ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... am sorry you were disturbed," he had pronounced, after standing and regarding her for a silent, frowning space; "but for me there is something unendurable in men herding like cattle, protecting their fat with warning boards and fences. I can't manage the fiddling lies that keep up the whole silly pretence of the stuffy show. If it gets much thicker," he had threatened, waving vaguely toward the west, "I'll go out to the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the white soldiers delight in frightening the women on the plantations with doleful tales of plans for putting us in the front rank in all battles, and such silly talk,—the object being, perhaps, to prevent our being employed on active service at all. All these considerations they feel precisely as white men would,—no less, no more; and it is the comparative freedom from such unfavorable influences which makes the Florida men seem ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... a great disappointment to me," he said, trying to look disappointed, but his back would wriggle. "This chain business—silly of us not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... present, he would nominate the favoured men, who were known as gurus. Next morning the married couple were seated together in the courtyard, and the head priest or his representative tied a kanthi or necklace of wooden beads round their necks, repeating an initiatory text. [389] This silly doggerel, as shown in the footnote, is a good criterion of the intellectual capacity of the Satnamis. It is also said that during his annual progresses it was the custom for the chief priest to be allowed access to any ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... than those between the States and any of the really foreign powers. So patent and so inevitable is the essential unity of the Anglo-Saxon world that such an essay as this ought really to be superfluous; but its practical justification is found in the silly clamour of those Anglophobes who are unfortunately permitted to reside within our borders. "Insomnia," by Winifred Virginia Jordan, is a remarkable piece of verse whose dark turns of fancy are almost worthy of a Poe. The grotesque tropes, the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... shy: Laud, says I, Sir, I hope you don't intend to be rude; no, says he, my Dear, and then he kissed me, 'till he took away my breath——and I pretended to be Angry, and to get away, and then he kissed me again, and breathed very short, and looked very silly; and by Ill-Luck Mrs. Jervis came in, and had like to have spoiled Sport.——How troublesome is such Interruption! You shall hear now soon, for I shall not come away yet, so ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... Don't be silly! Carried it unrolled, you know, and generally a paper parcel in the other hand; and he ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... to him, tried to draw him out; and it was an easy matter; for he loved to oblige people, and it is always pleasant for an old soldier to fight his battles over again. In this readiness to recount his own exploits, there was nothing that seemed like silly or obtrusive vanity. It often reminded me of the following just remark in the Westminster Review, applied to Jeremy Bentham: "The very egotism in which he occasionally indulged was a manifestation of a want of self-thought. This unpopular failing is, after all, one of the characteristics of a ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... offered it, but he didn't seem to know anything at all. I can't make out what the young men are a-coming to; I wish the horn may blow for me and the worms take me this very night, if it's not enough to make a woman stand before God and strike the one half on 'em silly to see the way they goes on, and many an honest girl has to go home night after night without so much as a fourpenny bit and paying three and sixpence a week rent, and not a shelf nor cupboard in the place and a dead wall ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... existence. A French survey party arrived too, and set to work, but as they had not enough boys with them, I could not join them. I spent my days as well as I could, collected a few zoological specimens, and read Mr. Ch.'s large stock of French novels until I felt quite silly. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... dear Lord our Brother is among us every day, and every one may see Him. Listen," she said, standing up suddenly among them, feeling strong as an angel. "I have seen Him; though I am nothing, so little as you see, and often silly, never clever as some of you are, I have seen Him! and so will all of you. There is no more that I know of," she said softly, clasping her hands. "When you see Him it comes into your ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... from which this paragraph is extracted, would not complain of the writer's paucity of ideas. His ideas are not below the average of his age. He would keep his wrath for the broken, distorted sentences, the silly spelling, the lack (which would appear in the whole composition) of even a rudimentary construction to carry the thought. Spelling, the fundamentals of punctuation, and the compacting of a sentence must be taught in the schools, for it is too late ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... over, too. He gazes down at his face in the stickiness. "Ah! how pretty I am! This sticky flypaper shows me up better than anything at home. What a fine place to skate. Just see how close I can fly over it and not get stuck a bit. Mother is such a silly old worryer. She means all right, of course, but she isn't up-to-date. We young set of modern flies are naturally bright and have so many more advantages. You can't catch us. They were too strict ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... should have married that silly Charmian Mansfield! Ever since then Mrs. Shiffney had resolved to wipe them both off her slate—gradually. Charmian had been right in her supposition. But now Mrs. Shiffney thought she was perhaps on the edge of something that might be more amusing ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... reach a settee). Don't be silly, Ernest. If you want to know how we are, we are dead. Even to think of entertaining the servants is ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... felt in his society. The last few weeks had been the happiest she had ever known. No words of his would justify her, either. She was vexed at herself. Here it had turned out that she was just like any other silly girl, holding her heart in her hand, ready to bestow it unasked. In her self-accusing spirit, she forgot that looks and tones may speak volumes in the absence ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... Among such distractions Israel lost her innocence, forgot what her own God was or had done for her, and ceased to enquire of Him. Hence her present vices and misery in contrast with her early troth and safety. Hence the twin evils of the time—on the one hand the nation's trust in heathen powers and silly oscillation between Egypt and Assyria; on the other the gross immoralities to which the Baals had seduced its sons. There was a double prostitution, to gods and to men, so foul that the young prophet uses the rankest facts in the rural ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... And then, thing of silly, cruel impulses that I was, I saw what I had done. The very thing that I wished to avert I had precipitated. For Allan, in his sudden terror and pity, had bent and caught her in his arms. For the first time they were together; and it was I who had ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... they none with her?" demanded the Queen. "But whom can they have, save her own terrified women? Inez—Leonor—go to her at once! Your skill and tenderness will soon revive her; this silly child is terrified at shadows. 'Tis but a faint, such as followed the announcement of her husband's death. If any one dare refuse you entrance, tell them you go in your Queen's name. Foolish trembler," she added, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... between hunger and this sickness," continued he who had addressed her last, "they say an' I know that there's great number of people silly; but I think this lady is downright mad; what do you ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Sidney Hill's name to it. He's the handsomest and richest fellows at Payzant, and belongs to one of the best families in town, and he's awfully fastidious besides. No doubt she will feel immensely flattered and, of course, she'll accept. Just think how silly she'll feel when she finds out he never sent it. Let's write it now, and send it at once. There is no time to lose, for the 'prom' is ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... made those silly things of wood and clay," said Abraham, and at last they refused to answer his ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... has told me some more about what you did last week—I mean, how you took a room across the street and spied upon that hateful man and saw through the whole thing when we were too blind to know what was going on. And I want to apologize for the silly things I said that Sunday morning. Will you ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... He was an excellent campaigner. He had faith; he was certain that if Lincoln were alive, he would be electioneering for Mr. W. G. Harding—unless he came to Zenith and electioneered for Lucas Prout. He did not confuse audiences by silly subtleties; Prout represented honest industry, Seneca Doane represented whining laziness, and you could take your choice. With his broad shoulders and vigorous voice, he was obviously a Good Fellow; and, rarest of all, he really liked people. He almost liked common workmen. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... and the two following ones were written; they gave at full length all the particulars which I must now abridge, for my silly servant has taken the three chapters for her own purposes. She pleaded as an excuse that the sheets of paper were old, written upon, covered with scribbling and erasures, and that she had taken them in preference to nice, clean paper, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... never take the pains To seek the prize that labor gains, Until the time had passed; For, all his life, he dreaded still The silly bugbear of uphill, And ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close together, near some dwarf apple trees, I must needs show my wit, by a silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their language as it does in ours. Whereupon, the malicious rogue, watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... raging weakly: "Oh, you rascals! My father would have known what to do with you! But don't think I can't handle it. Don't think you can hoodwink me." He punched a button ferociously; his silly face was contorted with rage and there was a certain tension on all the faces around ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... without it. One old gentleman, whose name is not to be mentioned, was sealed thus for eternity to Martha Washington and to Empress Josephine. It sounds farcical and foolish in the extreme; fit only to be counted as a silly joke, unworthy the attention of a sane soul for a minute; but it is terribly sober when it is remembered that there are hundreds of thousands of innocent, honest, and unsuspecting Mormons who really and truly believe this to be the only road ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... beseech you," I said, as I held up my hands, and got in position to knock him silly the first move he made. "I am no walking drug store, I am a good girl." Around my awful form I draw an imaginary circle. "Step but one foot within that sacred circle, and on thy head I launch the ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... have failed humanity if it is so blinded by the monstrous agony in Flanders as to miss the essential triviality at the head of the present war. Not the slaughter of ten million men can make the quality of the German Kaiser other than theatrical and silly. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... saw a poor old dog, Wicked Willie whacked it; If it had a spot of white, Silly Willy blacked it, If he saw a sleeping cat, Horrid Willie kicked it; If he caught a pretty ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... half-tipsy lad and a giddy lass, passing the registrar's house, after a fair, may be irrevocably buckled in three minutes, though they should change their minds before they are well out of the door. A fortune-hunter has only to prevail on a silly girl, who has a few thousand pounds, to walk with him to the office, and there, with two of his associates, make her sign her name in a book, and his purpose is fully and effectually accomplished; while the lady's maid of the family will find it as easy, on the other side, to make a match with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... rest, feel these modern tendencies (from all the prevailing intellections, literature and poems,) to turn everything to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfaction, death. Yet how clear it is to me that those are not the born results, influences of Nature at all, but of one's own distorted, sick or silly soul. Here, amid this wild, free scene, how healthy, how joyous, how clean and vigorous ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... sore-headed. He's hardened. He was rather a silly boy, I remember. Had enthusiasms. Much in love. He isn't now. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... up with Farmer Bates and his men. They stopped and touched their hats when they saw us, and we put the same silly question ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford |
