"Stupid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as Mr. Foker. They met heavy dragoons of the regiment always quartered at Chatteris; and stopped and talked about the Baymouth balls, and what a pretty girl was Miss Brown, and what a dem fine woman Mrs. Jones was. It was in vain that Pen recalled to his own mind what a stupid ass Foker used to be at school—how he could scarcely read, how he was not cleanly in his person, and notorious for his blunders and dulness. Mr. Foker was no more like a gentleman now than in his school ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fortune had been gained in Europe it would probably have been consumed in what is there called "founding a family." Mansions would have been built with it, parks laid out, a title of nobility purchased; and the income, wasted in barren and stupid magnificence would have maintained a host of idle, worthless, and pampered menials. Here, on the contrary, it is expended almost wholly in providing for the people of New York the very commodity of which they stand in most pressing need; namely, new houses. The simple reason ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... awake and work; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca University or Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptuous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all alone their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... men, and women mad on music and the theatre—well, it is that the men are silly and frivolous, and the women horrid and—and fast! Some are cold and just as hard as nails, others are positively wicked! I admit most of the men have nice manners and the women are not stupid. They all dress well." ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... to ken ye, sir," said Meg. "That muckle sumph [stupid], Saunders Mowdiewort, telled me a' aboot ye comin' an' the terrible store o' lear [learning] ye hae. He's the minister's man, ye ken, an' howks the graves ower by at the parish kirk-yard, for the auld betheral there winna gang ablow ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... impossibility—the imminent danger—of adopting the course of procedure which that adviser has been strenuously recommending, he would go away with slightly increased distrust of himself, and consideration for the Minister. Neither Sir Robert Peel, nor any other Minister, would be so arrogantly stupid as to disregard free information and advice, merely because it came from such persons, who, if they have no right to expect their advice to be followed, have yet a clear right to offer it, and urge it with all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... "he is much too heavy for you! How stupid of me not to think of it! If you don't promise me never to do that at home, I will take him to sea ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Templar, hastily, "if you impute what I could neither foresee nor prevent to my purpose or agency.—Could I guess the unexpected arrival of yon dotard, whom some flashes of frantic valour, and the praises yielded by fools to the stupid self-torments of an ascetic, have raised for the present above his own merits, above common sense, above me, and above the hundreds of our Order, who think and feel as men free from such silly and fantastic prejudices as are the grounds of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... talents, are the only persons who speak ill of him. In his profession of a surgeon, he is skilful and assiduous, but his modesty has always prevented him from pushing his practice to any extent, so as to render it lucrative. How many unfeeling, stupid block-heads are there in London, who ride in their carriages, and keep elegant establishments, clearing thousands a-year as surgeons, who do not possess a tenth part of the talent and skill of Mr. Gale Jones! It may be asked, why then is he not rich, like ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... we call a union station. I stopped at the first ticket-office where I saw the word "Berlin" on the glass, asked for a ticket good in the train that was going to leave at eight o'clock the next morning for Berlin, and took what the seller gave me. He was a stupid-looking fellow, so when I got to my hotel I showed the ticket to a friend. "That is not the ticket that you want at all," said he; "it will take you by a circuitous route in a train that does not leave until after nine, and you will not reach Berlin until long after dark." I went directly back ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... "Why she did this is none of your business or mine. Why she substituted herself concerns her and this gentleman only. Now go, and be hanged to you and your Prince and your Count, and your whole stupid country. Come, Jack." ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... (H.) is made of this fungus, and its spores, rubbed up with inert sugar of milk powdered, and it proves an effective remedy against dull, stupid, sleepy headache, with passive itchy pimples about the skin. From five to ten grains of the trituration, diluted to the third decimal strength, should be given twice a day, with a little water, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... stodgy thing mere domesticity can be. Yes! it can be all that for people who let it be all that. Even love that once was passionate cannot redeem the life of two people unless there is something there to redeem. Two lifeless and stupid people living together can make of life something duller than either could make alone. If it be part of general wisdom to try to live widely and fully, and to use as much of our natures as is possible, ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... he was, yet he was probably aware in the depths of his soul that there was nothing to justify his vanity, and that others might perhaps look down on him ... but I, a boy of nineteen, put no constraint on him; the dread of saying something stupid, inappropriate, did not oppress his ever-apprehensive heart in my presence. He sometimes even chattered freely; and well it was for him that no one heard his chatter except me! His reputation would not have lasted long. He not only knew very little, but read hardly anything and confined himself ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the dignity of the Christian character; and an enthusiast, of another creed, thinks all lovers of the stage belong to the schools of Voltaire and Hume, and that dancing is a link in the chain of seduction. Stupid, leaden-heeled people, who constantly mope in melancholy, and neither enjoy nor impart pleasure, will naturally be enemies to dancing; and such we are induced to think ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... time passed most tediously; the half-breeds were too stupid to converse with, and the Yankee traders constantly tipsy. Had it not been that Gabriel was well acquainted with the neighbourhood, we should positively have died of ennui. As it was, however, we made some excursions among the rancheros, or cattle-breeders, and visited several Indian ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... the opposite as just as real as the thing itself. The opposite of love is hate; of health, disease; of good, evil; of the real, the counterfeit. God is positive—Truth. His opposite, the negative, is supposition. Oh, stupid, blundering, dull-eared humanity, not to have realized that this was just what Jesus said when he defined evil as the lie about God! No wonder the prophet proclaimed salvation to be righteousness, right thinking! But would gross humanity have understood the Master better if he had defined it ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to the saloon; and there they found him,—there he lay, perfectly stupid, and dead ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... arrangements with them for the yearly purchase of their peltry. It was not easy to obtain suitable persons for this important office. Those who had the intellectual qualifications, and who had any high aspirations, would not naturally incline to pass years in the stupid and degrading associations, to say nothing of the hardships and deprivations, of savage life. They were generally therefore adventurers, whose honesty and fidelity had no better foundation than their selfish interests. Of this sort was this ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... dog, on this occasion occupied his official position ahead, although, as has been pointed out, he was sometimes alternated with the hound, who now ran just behind him. Third trotted Wolf, a strong beast, but a stupid; then Claire, at the sledge, sagacious, alert, ready to turn the sledge from obstruction. For a long, time all these beasts, with the strange intelligence of animals much associated with man, had entertained a strong interest ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... among people who knew him, and lest he should be overheard he was habitually silent. He now appeared to me quite a different person to what I had fancied him to be. I had thought him what the world calls a very worthy, faithful, but rather stupid old man. I found him to be kind, thoughtful, and intelligent, and I felt very sure that my dear brother and sisters would find him the same, and that he would, in some way or other, prove a valuable ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of episcopacy—"an excellent man." Then a visit of Mr. ——, "an accomplished and able man, somewhat strong of the popish leaven." That was in 1842, and on the margin is written—"Gone over to the Church of Rome, 1845." He mentions also the "stupid business at Portobello and squabbles," and his going down to make peace. On September 4th we have some things which seemed important at their time—the Queen's visit to Scotland. He says, "It was a stirring subject for old Scotland." ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... which he had hitherto done for me, and could do infinitely better than I could. Moreover, I had set my heart upon making him a real convert to the Christian religion, which he had already embraced outwardly, though I cannot think that it had taken deep root in his impenetrably stupid nature. I used to catechise him by our camp fire, and explain to him the mysteries of the Trinity and of original sin, with which I was myself familiar, having been the grandson of an archdeacon by my mother's side, to say nothing of the fact that ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... children fidgeted uneasily in their seats and even the teacher became nervous and impatient, glancing often at the big clock which ticked so monotonously and slowly. Soon it would be twelve o'clock and teacher and pupils would have a respite for a few hours. If only those stupid children would solve those problems in arithmetic, the most difficult study, they would not have to stay after school. But it happened just as the teacher had feared: A dozen children, of whom two were boys, did not give correct answers. After the school was dismissed ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... stubborn will, Wound the callous breast, Make self-righteousness be still, Break earth's stupid rest. Strangers on a barren shore, Lab'ring long and lone, We would enter by the door, ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... reverently every "superstition," every anodyne and nepenthe offered to the inmates of this House of the Incurable. Such "sprinkling with holy water," such "rendering ourselves stupid," is the only alternative. Anything else is the insight of the hero, or the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... could take that from her, if he was in for it to that extent, why did he bother about the other stupid things? ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... man says that democracy is false because most people are stupid, there are several courses which the philosopher may pursue. The most obvious is to hit him smartly and with precision on the exact tip of the nose. But if you have scruples (moral or physical) about this course, you may proceed to employ Reason, which in this case has all the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... shining wit Sets all the room a-blaze, Don't think yourself a "happy dog," For all your merry ways; But learn to wear a sober phiz, Be stupid, if you can, It's such a very serious thing To ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... be a stupid sort of joke to get me from Boston to Idaho on a wild-goose chase. No, there is no joke about this," went on Mr. Clark, rising and pacing the floor. "Sandy McCulloch is real, and he has some real reason for wanting ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... him every hour, but he was too stubborn to go back to John Pontiac. Indeed, he soon got it into his stupid head that the old boss was responsible for his misfortunes, and he consequently came to hate Mr. Pontiac ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... cried out, "Ho, hop!" and immediately a voice from the woods near by answered, "ho, hop!" Being surprised at this, he called out, "who be you?" The voice answered, "who be you." Charles thought this very strange, and cried out "you're a stupid fellow," and "stupid fellow," was the ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... answer ready. The voice was masculine, if he analyzed it correctly. Dumb and stupid he stood poised upon ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... beginning, and when the physician is called the condition is dangerous. Usually the patient complains but little. There is a slight headache, low fever, no heat in the head, patient is pale most of the time, has little appetite, vomits occasionally and desires to sleep. He is nervous, stupid and lies on his side curled up with eyes away from the light. This disease appears mostly in delicate children, who are poor eaters and fond of books; usually in those inheriting poor constitutions. The mortality is very high. Parents ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderful pearl—glanced for a moment only; and carelessly he dropped ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... German pictures, Joseph is not only old, but appears almost in a state of dotage, like a lean, wrinkled mendicant, with a bald head, a white beard, a feeble frame, and a sleepy or stupid countenance. Then, again, the later Italian painters have erred as much on the other side; for I have seen pictures in which St. Joseph is not only a young man not more than thirty, but bears a strong resemblance to the received ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... illustrated by the following passage (as quoted by Lacassagne): "If there are beings in the world whose acts shock all accepted prejudices, we must not preach at them or punish them ... because their bizarre tastes no more depend upon themselves than it depends on you whether you are witty or stupid, well made or hump-backed.... What would become of your laws, your morality, your religion, your gallows, your Paradise, your gods, your hell, if it were shown that such and such fluids, such fibers, or a certain acridity in the blood, or in the animal spirits, alone suffice to make a man ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... reality reach below the surface, except in Epirus. The bishops were felt to be foreigners and extortioners. There was no real process of assimilation at work, either in Bulgaria or in the Danubian Provinces. The slow and plodding Bulgarian peasant, too stupid for the Greek to think of him as a rival, preserved his own unchanging tastes and nationality, sang to his children the songs which he had learnt from his parents, and forgot the Greek which he had heard in the Church when he ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... or injure us, and makes us moody, dark, peevish, always thinking about ourselves, and our plans, or our own pleasures, shut up as it were within ourselves—all these sins, in proportion as anyone gives way to them, darken the eyes of a man's soul. They really and actually make him more stupid, less able to understand his neighbours' hearts and minds, less able to take a reasonable view of any matter or question whatsoever. You may not believe me. But so it is. I know it by experience to be true. I warn you that you will find it true one ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... to hold gossip in too much discredit. It gives life fascination, makes the most stupid neighbors interesting. It keeps up the love of the great art of fiction and the industry of character-analysis. A small wonder that human beings are addicted to it, when we are so emphatically assured that heaven itself is devoted to it, and that we are ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to think that when the ear, that "gateway of knowledge," is shut, a poor child may, for want of teaching, and often for want of love and sympathy, grow up almost like an animal; his friends thinking him stupid, because he cannot ask questions or tell anything that is in his mind, until at last he really becomes stupid, and his mind grows dull from want ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... 'They're stupid things, and I don't want to talk like them. Anyway, they don't pronounce lots of their words right; they say "wat" and "ware" for "what" and "where;" so of course I got a lot of mistakes in my English dictation. But I beat them in my French,' ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... again for a time. The unparalleled addition to the world's heroic deeds will be to the good of mankind, as the unparalleled suffering has eclipsed all records. The survivors will be in an heroic mood for the rest of their lives. In general, life will start on a new plane and a lot of old stupid habits and old party quarrels and class prejudices will disappear. To get Europe going again will call for new resolution and a new sort of effort. Nobody can yet see what far-reaching effects ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... and the vast importance of liberating the prisoners the first thing upon an uprising. The speech of Doolittle was variously received; many of the members were much interested; others who were in the higher degrees of the order were vexed beyond measure that Doolittle should be so stupid as to proclaim, in this public manner, a matter which really belonged to higher degrees of the organization to decide. One of the number, James Geary, a second-hand clothes dealer and broker on Wells street, who will ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... the glance of a man, a young man, a painter?—No, no! I would kill on the morrow the man who polluted her with a look! I would kill you,—you, my friend,—if you did not worship her on your knees; and think you I would submit my idol to the cold eyes and stupid criticisms of fools? Ah, love is a mystery! its life is in the depths of the soul; it dies when a man says, even to his friend, Here is she ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... the very last place in the world that my father would think of looking for me. Besides I am curious to see the place. I understand that the great Mr. Blithers is to be there soon, and the stupid Prince who will not be tempted by millions, and it is even possible that the extraordinary Miss Blithers may take it into her head to look the place over before definitely refusing to be its Princess. I ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... wrong. It was not his wife's folly alone that stood between him and her. Gaston had been using him. He was lending him money—hush money! And while he had gone his stupid way, thinking he held the whip hand over Joyce, the two had had their laugh at him. Money has done much for good and evil in this world, but it saved Gaston that night from ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... a man with a very heavy purse and a very empty head, whose contributions to the county papers were never read but to be laughed at. Not having the slightest personal knowledge of the author, I answered innocently enough, 'Oh, he's a stupid, conceited fellow. It is a pity he has not some friend to tell him what a fool he makes of himself, whenever he appears in print. His poetry is such dull trash, that I am certain he must pay the Editor of the paper for allowing ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... abominable preface to his Platonic discourses? The disclosures he there makes are so insipid and intolerable that I feel very much inclined to step out and chastise him. It would be a very simple matter to hold up to view the senseless unreasonableness of this stupid set of people, if, in so doing, one had but a rational public on one's side; this would at the same time be a declaration of war against that superficiality which it has now become necessary to combat in every department of learning. The secret feuds of suppressing, misplacing, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... stupid," I said. "The bat. This is the only riding crop of its kind in the world. We don't want it damaged. All you have to do is carry it. ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond
... Merril flatteringly suggests, I should enjoy nothing better than such an experiment," he replied deliberately. "It would be quite a novel sensation to revolutionize one's ordinary rule of conduct so as to make a point of seeming bad or stupid. There would be as much psychology in it as in an extra term, at least. A man would find out, for instance, how much there was in him besides personal vanity and love of approbation. It would be a devilish small residue with ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... scenting something good to eat, proceed to fill up on the dosed stuff. It seems pretty hard to take advantage of a weakness that they appear to have in common with the other branch of the two-legged family, don't it? But every time they get so stupid that they stagger all around, and seem to lose all fear of mankind. Then one of the watchers will step out, take hold of a monkey's hand, and lead a whole string of them away, each trying to support the others. And so they walk into cages, and upon recovering from ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... she exclaimed. "How very stupid of me to forget. But do you know, I've never experienced such a strange sensation before. My memory is a perfect blank. How ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... she said flatly, her taste outraged and her sensibilities set on edge by the stupid, blundering, hammer-and-tongs onset which from first to last he had made. She loved him, and had meant to accept him, but if she had loved him ten times as much she couldn't have helped refusing him just then, under those circumstances,—not if she died for it. As she ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... its varying and changeful moods. Others have excelled in this or that interpretation of child-life: Greuze with his sentimentalism, the Dutch painters with their stolidity. In Velasquez every child is the scion of some Royal House, in Murillo they are all beggars. They are too often stupid in Michelozzo: in Andrea della Robbia they are always sweet and winsome; Pigalle's children know too much. Donatello alone grasped the whole psychology. He watched the coming generation, and foresaw all that it might portend: tragedy and comedy, labour and sorrow, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... THIRD READER. 73 "How stupid it is in you to stand there all the while like a stock! 2. "You never tell the hour till a bright sun looks forth from the sky, and gives you leave. I go merrily round, day and night, in summer and winter the same, without asking his leave. 3. "I tell the people the time to rise, to go to dinner, ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... served the ice cream, and said that as far as he was concerned, this was the best birthday party he had ever been to. And the Phoenix said, "Quite so, my boy, but might I make so bold as to ask why?" And David answered, "Well, the reason is that usually during birthday parties you have to play stupid games, like pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and button-button-who-has-the-button, in spite of the fact that eating good things is the real reason for having a party, as everybody knows." And the Phoenix said, "Precisely, my boy, but people have somehow lost the main ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... meet greets you with a Resurrexit Jesus; a good Imitation of the primitive Christians, were it the real Effect of Devotion. And all Sorts of the best Musick (which here indeed is the best in all Spain) proclaim an auspicious Valediction to the departed Season of superficial Sorrow and stupid Superstition. But enough of this: ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... be men, and sit round stiff and stupid like grown-up folks, and dance to please the girls. Then we eat up everything, and come away as ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... predecessor Victor. His opponents deserved far greater credit for the sturdy independence with which they upheld their individual rights than for the scriptural skill with which they unmasked the sophistry of a delusive theory; for all their reasonings were enervated and vitiated by their stupid admission of the claims of the chair of Peter as the rock on which the Church was supposed to rest. [358:3] This second effort of Rome to establish her ascendancy was, indeed, a failure; but the misinterpretation of Holy ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... words last night. I paid no heed at the time to the innuendo that I had come on deck to find him—to waylay him, as I have heard men say when speaking of a type of woman I despise. So I resolved to straighten out a stupid little tangle. It would be ridiculous, in our present state of suspended animation, to let such a slight thing ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... charmed and charming circle they should not set foot, and we are quite willing in addition, for them, to gird themselves about with the circumference of another thousand. It is not that they are disagreeable or stupid, or in any way obviously objectionable. Bores are more frequently clever than dull, and the only all-round definition of a bore is—The Person We Don't Want. Few people are bores at all times and places, and indeed one ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... cries she, "you look pensive and dismal. Do fling down that stupid thing; for even if it should speak it would not be worth attending to. Let us talk with one another, and with the sky, and the green earth, and its trees and flowers. They will teach us better knowledge than we ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these years, and fretted and fumed because I'd lost them, and then as soon as He gives 'em back to me, I go and shove them off into the House! No, no, my dear,' said grandmother, 'I'm not such an old stupid as that. And as for Poppy, my lass, why, she'll be my right-hand woman! They shall come home with me, my dear, and I'll be their mother—dear, blessed little chaps—and Poppy shall be their nurse, and we'll all be as happy as ever we can be ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... railings for airing and drying cushions and rags. These plats and railings were for ornament, and there was soon a protest against putting them to "such vile uses." I had gone into the hospital with the stupid notion that its primary object was the care and comfort of the sick and wounded. It was long after that I learned that a vast majority of all benevolent institutions are gotten up to gratify the asthetic tastes of the public; exhibit the wealth and generosity of the founders, and furnish ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... and I have been damnably imposed on. O, confound my stupid head, I shall be laughed at over the whole town. I shall be stuck up in caricatura in all the print-shops. The DULLISSIMO MACCARONI. To mistake this house of all others for an inn, and my father's old friend for an innkeeper! What a swaggering puppy must he take me for! What a silly puppy ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... Saviour. To complicate matters again, the Chevalier de St. George (of whom there is no recollection except that he was anonymous, both as a prince, and as a man) sent his son, the fifth remove in stupidity, of the most stupid line of monarchs (not even excepting the Georges) that ever wore crowns, to stir up an insurrection among the most obtuse race of people that ever wore, or went without, breeches. A war between France and England followed the descent of the Pretender. A war naturally ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... consciousness returned, they gathered into a little terror-stricken, gibbering group. At first they babbled. At first inarticulate, confused, they dripped strings of mere words; expletives, exclamations, detached phrases, broken clauses, sentences that started with subjects and trailed, unpredicated, to stupid silence; sentences beginning subjectless and hobbling to futile conclusion. It was as though mentally they slavered. But every phrase, however confused and inept, voiced their panic, voiced the long strain of their fearful buffeting and their terrific final ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... that it should be explained. This woman should have married a man who kept no journal, and one for whom no one cared. As it was, no doubt she suffered up to her capacity, which perhaps was not great, for God puts a quick limit on the sensibilities of the stupid. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... less elaborately educated. After having been for some time after the death of Louis XIII. the favorite, the confidant, the first man, in short, at the court, he had been obliged to yield his place to Mazarin and so became the second in influence and favor; and eventually, as he was stupid enough to be vexed at this change of position, the queen had had him arrested and sent to Vincennes in charge of Guitant, who made his appearance in these pages in the beginning of this history and whom we shall see ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... will appear in the world again for centuries; most of the princes are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few are credulous. While England is confiding in our loyalty, we might expatiate on her perfidy, and our tears fall copiously on the broken sceptre in the dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the king's ministers may be, the East India Company is well-informed on its interests, and alert in maintaining them. I wonder that a republic so wealthy and so wise should be supported on the bosom of royalty. Believe me, her merchants will take alarm, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... after the health of my mother and grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles, and admire my clothes, and wish her little Jane was old enough to run to school with me, and flatter me on the beauty of my hair and eyes and complexion, in such a way that very few children would have been so stupid as not to have seen through it. Could you not have said something to discourage ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... task as is here undertaken. Adonais is a composition which has retorted beforehand upon its actual or possible detractors. In the poem itself, and in the prefatory matter adjoined to it, Shelley takes critics very severely to task: but criticism has its discerning and temperate, as well as its 'stupid ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... the occasion of her accident—Accident? Bah! All affectation! I don't think she was squeezed more than she richly deserves for her airs. And now there is quite an intimacy struck up: I heard something about 'auld lang syne,' and what not. Oh, how stupid ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... back on him and talked with The Spider. She was hurt, and a little angry. Surely she had been his good friend. Was Pete so stupid that he did not realize why she had ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... inquired Jean, as they went across the yard. "I hate to ask stupid questions, but you see I do not know anything ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... going to be rather stupid for you at first, of course," Grace said. "Lent, and then so many of the men are not at home. Would you like to ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Latin word "brutus" means "senseless," "stupid." The Cumaei, the inhabitants of Cume in AEolis, were reckoned very stupid. Strabo (p. 622) gives two reasons why this opinion obtained; one of which was, that it was not till three hundred years after the foundation of the city that they thought ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... music of Jean's violin drew him like a magnet. Every evening when she played on the afterdeck of the Hoonah he slipped down to the Point beyond the Indian Village and listened—listened hungrily, with a longing to join her and explain his stupid innocence in connection with the dead Naleenah. His youth called to hers, and he wanted this clean-hearted girl ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... congregated there, that there were nightly pistol affrays in bar-rooms, etc., but as he admitted that a lady was sure of respect, and Mr. G. strongly advised me to stay and see the lakes, I got out, much dazed, and very stupid with sleep, envying the people in the sleeping car, who were already unconscious on their luxurious couches. The cars drew up in a street—if street that could be called which was only a wide, cleared space, intersected by rails, with here and there a stump, and great piles ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... most of those things which they need not have known and they knew none of those things thoroughly which they ought to have known. After twenty years of experience Mr. Ambrose ascertained that it was easier to teach a stupid boy than a clever one, but that he would prefer not ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... that, and have turned as white as a chicken! Speaking in this wise, M. Vigneron glanced at Madame Chaise, the aunt, who was standing in front of the sofa, looking in good health that morning; and his hands shook yet more violently at the covert idea that if that stupid attack had carried off his son, they would no longer have inherited the aunt's fortune. He was quite beside himself at this thought, and eagerly opening the boy's mouth he compelled him to swallow the entire contents of the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of the feelings that were associated with the gun in times past is called up. So the ox and the horse learn to associate certain movements with the voice and gesture of man. And so a fish, about the most stupid of all animals, comes to a certain spot at a certain signal to be fed. These combinations are quite elementary. This is quite another thing from that reciprocal action of ideas on each other by which man perceives the relations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... bearer of this. She has given you the quills, and you have again told an untruth. Alas! farewell. I await your report about the book. She is going to-day to Katel, so she will have very little time for her stupid blundering. May the Lord one day deliver me from her! Libera ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... world. The rock whereon the stone resteth hath crumbled beneath the swinging weight. And now that he," nodding towards Job, who was sitting on the floor, feebly wiping his forehead with a red cotton pocket-handkerchief, "whom they rightly call the 'Pig,' for as a pig is he stupid, hath let fall the plank, it will not be easy to return across the gulf, and to that end must I make a plan. But now rest a while, and look upon this place. What think ye that ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... was kneeling by the bedside of his dying wife, and her last words revealed to him a magnanimity of devotion for which he had been wholly unprepared. He had thought her merely amiable and stupid—except in her love for him—and his sentiments towards her had been a mixture of boredom, and the tolerant consideration due to the bestower of substantial benefits. Nevertheless, she had awakened, during a spasm of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... you mean quicker progress?" he asked, so naively that she concluded he was a trifle stupid. The best-looking ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... man grinned; it was Yankee Jake Dillon, one of the giant twins. Chad looked at him curiously; that blow on the head that his brother, Rebel Jerry, had given him, had wrought a miracle. The lips no longer hung apart, but were set firmly, and the eye was almost keen; the face was still rather stupid, but not foolish—and it was still kind. Chad knew that, somewhere in the Confederate lines, Rebel Jerry was looking for Jake, as Yankee Jake, doubtless, was now looking for Jerry, and he began to ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... live in this stupid place, like a nun in a convent, just because my brother desires to amuse himself in California," she said, when Elizabeth would have dissuaded her from leaving home. "I tell you, Grant would not wish it. I am not married and obliged to shut myself up and play proper like you. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... and besieged me in the dark. According to all the rubbish I had read, I should have been sustained by the warm consciousness of virtue. Alas, I had but the one feeling: that I had sacrificed my sick friend to the fear of prison-cells and stupid starers. And no moralist has yet advanced so far as to number cowardice amongst the things that ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... made my pretext for obtaining leave of absence from the king. This time I had determined to take with me a Swiss youth who had entered my service only a few weeks before. His name was Bauer; he seemed a stolid, somewhat stupid fellow, but as honest as the day ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... speaking slowly and sleepily, says: Look here, Jack, something's going on in my inside. He opens the other eye, and his nose and mouth appear. He speaks more briskly: It feels as though there were something hot in there. Do you suppose those stupid people in the house down below have forgotten all about Santa Claus, and are lighting the fire on the hearth? I believe they are. I wish you'd just climb up on my shoulder, and shout down to them to stop. Do: there's ...
— Down the Chimney • Shepherd Knapp
... the glass and see whatever was taking place among the roses. He walked swiftly across the turf to that point. He looked in and saw Maud, whose back was turned toward him, talking as if she were pleading for her life, while Farnham listened with a clouded brow. Sleeny stood staring with stupid wonder while Maud laid her hand upon Farnham's shoulder. At that moment he heard footsteps on the gravel walk at some distance from him, and he looked up and saw Mrs. Belding approaching. Confused at his attitude of espionage, he walked away from his post, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... author, "since it is written in many volumes of veracious Greek history that the Myrmidons were generated by ants. Such are some of the many legends which pretended sages expound with calm and unmoved visage from pulpits and tribunals to a stupid gaping crowd."] ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... know, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he was saying, "that while I suggested that the secrets of his breast might well be bared to you, I meant that as an honest lady and faithful postmistress they were not. It was my awkward joke—a stupid gambolling by an old man ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... moue of disappointment, and shrugged her shoulders. Surely he might have stayed with her on her birthday. What did the stupid State-affairs matter? Or had he gone to that gloomy chapel, where the candles were always burning, and where she was never allowed to enter? How silly of him, when the sun was shining so brightly, and everybody ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... ponies, until, having come within a hundred yards, the mass broke into single file and raced past the camp, each warrior lying along the off side of his pony and firing beneath its neck—the usual but utterly stupid and suicidal Sioux tactics, for accurate fire under such conditions is ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... the gander, and said it was a stupid creature, and could learn no tricks, and he only kept it on account of its affection for the pony. He had got them both on a Vermont farm, when he was looking for show animals. The pony's master had made a pet of him, and ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... apartments, I was convinced that the inhabitants of these houses were not peculiar people at all, but precisely such persons as those among whom I lived. As there are among us, just so among them; there were here those who were more or less good, more or less stupid, happy and unhappy. The unhappy were exactly such unhappy beings as exist among us, that is, unhappy people whose unhappiness lies not in their external conditions, but in themselves, a sort of unhappiness which it is impossible to right by any sort ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... think hearts can be stupid as well as heads? I do. I think people can be muddle-hearted as ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... and a hot supper prepared for the crowd. We arrived at last, and when I entered that fairy place my indignation reached high-water mark, and without any reserve I delivered my opinion to that friend of mine for being so stupid as to put us into a boarding-house whose terms would be far out of my reach. Then Mr. Langdon brought forward a very pretty box and opened it, and took from it a deed of the house. So the comedy ended very pleasantly, and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... mind that Lord and Lady St. Leger did not blame her, so there could be nothing to blame. It was some stupid and ignorant prejudice of old Maureen's. I knew she had fostered my Uncle Luke, and that she loved him, as the foster-mother does, with an ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... mine proceeds from a certain gentleness and uprightness of mind and comes nearer to virtue than its opposite, austerity, or a morose and troublesome peevishness, as Horace calls it. This supports the dejected, relieves the distressed, encourages the fainting, awakens the stupid, refreshes the sick, supplies the untractable, joins loves together, and keeps them so joined. It entices children to take their learning, makes old men frolic, and, under the color of praise, does without offense both tell princes their ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... peeping and twinkling, encircled about the middle with many folds of cloth; the medicine or dance man in his costume of rags, crane heads and feathers, with a girdle of jangling tin and bones, his little drum with curved sticks, his dance and music the convulsions and noises of a stupid beggar; and many, very many, blind;—who seem to have no home but the sidewalk, where you see them asleep at any time, day or night, waiting in darkness for alms and the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... on; for the British farmer is by no means the stupid personage which townsfolk are too apt to fancy him. This bed of phosphates was found everywhere in the Greensand, underlying the Chalk. It may be traced from Dorsetshire through England to Cambridge, and thence, I believe, into Yorkshire. It may be traced again, I believe, all round ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... dramatist had penned these words, the management of Blackfriars met with disaster. The cause, however, went back to December 13, 1600, when Giles and Evans were gathering their players. In their overweening confidence they made a stupid blunder in "taking up" for their troupe the only son and heir of Henry Clifton, a well-to-do gentleman of Norfolk, who had come to London for the purpose of educating the boy. Clifton says in his complaint ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... accomplish in a day, surprised all who knew him. He seemed to electrify everybody about him. His invincible energy thrilled the whole army. He could rouse to immediate and enthusiastic action the dullest troops, and inspire with courage the most stupid men. He would sit up all night, if necessary, after riding thirty or forty leagues, to attend to correspondence, dispatches and details. What a lesson his career affords to the shiftless ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... the baskets, too," went on the doctor. "It will save me a hot, stupid journey to ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... American and honest, why are you going there?" asked this boy, a peasant, and rather stupid in ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... Lancaster, where the Cumberland hills are seen over Morecambe Bay; on the north, at Carlisle, where the moors of Skiddaw are seen over the rich plains between them and the Solway. No one who loves mountains would lose a step of the approach, from these distances, on either side. But the stupid herds of modern tourists let themselves be emptied, like coals from a sack, at Windermere and Keswick. Having got there, what the new railway has to do is to shovel those who have come to Keswick to Windermere, and to shovel those who have come to Windermere ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... most famous are Nagracut and Syba, formerly mentioned; where, if Mr Coryat may be believed, who says he carefully observed the same, people cut off part of their tongues out of devotion. It were easy to enlarge on this subject, but I will not any farther describe their stupid idolatry. The sum of the whole is, that both the Hindoos and Mahometans ground all their opinions on tradition, not on reason, and are content to perish with their fore-fathers, out of preposterous zeal and fond perverseness, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... know—because there is too much to do. If I go out that stupid girl will burn the cake," and she pointed to a Kafir intombi (young girl), who, arrayed in a blue smock, a sweet smile, and a feather stuck in her wool, was vigorously employed in staring at the flies on the ceiling and sucking her black fingers. "Really," ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... foolish. It is no less foolish for people to take up a position of dislike, and to turn away from the gospel of Jesus Christ because it speaks in like manner. I said that men are very foolish animals; there is surely nothing in all the annals of human stupidity more stupid than to be angry with the word that tells you the truth about what you are bringing down upon your heads. It is absurd, because Micaiah did not make the evil, but Ahab made it; and Micaiah's business was only to tell him what he was doing. It is absurd, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... into the English camp. But it was not with one camp only that we had to deal: the English were everywhere: a whole army lay before us—an army so immense that many Englishmen thought that it would be a task beyond the stupid and illiterate Boer to count it, much less to understand its significance. I will pander to the English conception of us and say, "We have seen them: they ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... and richly worth digging for. The hint of least moment, as you may imagine it, is often pregnant with events of the greatest. Be implicit. Am I not your general? Did I ever lead you on that I brought you not off with safety and success?—Sometimes to your own stupid astonishment. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... ready to cry; she dropped her head on his shoulder and began to bemoan herself. "Why on earth didn't you say something? How could I know? How stupid you are, David! If I'd known you minded, I'd just as lief have been engaged to—" Elizabeth stopped short. She sat up very straight, and put her hand to the neck of her dress to make sure it was fastened. At ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... genuine Aino matter in the present collection. For instance, we learn from Professor Chamberlain's above-mentioned treatise why it is that Panaumbe ("on the lower course of the river") does the clever things, while Penaumbe ("on the upper course of the river") is the stupid imitator who comes to grief. It is simply the expression of the dislike and contempt of the coast Ainos, who tell the stories, for the hill Ainos further up the rivers. It is needless to mention here the many touches of Aino ideas, morals, and customs, which their ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... stupid we all are! Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Agnostics; the whole lot of us. We all believe the same things, to a great extent; but we must keep wrangling about the data from which we infer these beliefs . . . I believe a great deal ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... first 'cause he wrote till half past two last night, an' in the end he went back to bed an' it certainly was a relief to see the last of him, for I may in confidence remark as I never see him look quite so stupid afore. After he was gone back to bed I washed up the breakfast dishes an' then I went out in the wood shed in the dark an' there I got another surprise, for I thought I'd look over the rags I was savin' for the next rag rug an' when I poured ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... a sailor!" said Johnny Liston mockingly. "Why, there it is, as plain as a pikestaff, on the lift of that wave to the right there! Where are your eyes, stupid?" ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... to have him. Suppose, now, Herbert Greyson was to take a fancy to another girl, would I let uncle go to him and put a pistol to his head and say, 'Cap is fond of you, you varlet! and demmy, sir, you shall marry none but her, or receive an ounce of lead in your stupid brains'? No, I'd scorn it; I'd forward the other wedding; I'd make the cake and dress the bride and—then maybe I'd break—no, I'm blamed if I would! I'd not break my heart for anybody. Set them up with it, indeed! Neither would ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... curiously searched into Thy counsels; but, indeed, I have dishonoured Thy Holiness, wronged Thine Excellency, disgraced Thy saints' glory by my own exceeding disproportionate pourtraying. I bewail that my conceivings fall so short, my apprehensions are so dull, my thoughts so mean, my affections so stupid, expressions so low, and unbeseeming such a glory. But I have only heard by the hearing of the ear. Oh, let Thy servant see Thee and possess these joys, and then I shall have more suitable conceivings, and shall give Thee ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... necessary to dispose of all the crew which Captain Horn might have on board, Banker had not determined. But of one thing he was certain: he would leave no one on board of her to work her to the nearest port and give news of what had happened. One mistake of that kind was enough to make, and his stupid partner, who had commanded the vessel from Toulon, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... when you get back up there to your office. He's got the boys sized right up to the last hair of their stupid heads. But I'll hand you something I've reckoned to hand you a while back, only I wanted to be sure. There's nothing of this truck about the 'hands' of the old mill. It's the new hands you've been ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... am tired of this life. I am dull—stupid. I want to go out." Her lovely eyes are flashing, her face is white—her lips trembling. "Take me out," says ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... shone like satin, and a drooping moustache slightly discoloured by tobacco. His appearance, which she had never objected to before, seemed to her grotesque; but in spite of this, she could smile almost naturally at his jokes, which she thought inconceivably stupid. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Bud was not stupid. He was merely concerned chiefly with his own affairs—a common enough failing, surely. But now that he had thought himself into a mental eddy where his own affairs offered no new impulse toward emotion, he turned over and over ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... the floor to no avail. La banniere d'Alice Roussillon had disappeared, and Captain Farnsworth went forthwith to report the fact to his commander. When he reached the shed at the angle of the fort he found Governor Hamilton sitting stupid and dazed on the ground. One jaw was inflamed and swollen and an eye was half closed and bloodshot. He turned his head with a painful, irregular motion and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Atlas who bore, ere Hercules was born, And is to go on bearing that same load When Hercules turns ash on Oeta's top. 'Tis the transition-stage, the tug and strain, That strike men: standing still is stupid-like." ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... by abstract truthfulness. When a bad writer is inexact, even if he can look back on half a century of years, we charge him with incompetence and not, with dishonesty. And why not extend the same allowance to imperfect speakers? Let a stockbroker be dead stupid about poetry, or a poet inexact in the details of business, and we excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinct and palpable as the sun at noonday, or the moon in a cloudless night, I saw the ogre head of that dog; his great glassy, fishy eyes, his half drooping, half erect ears, his slavering jaws, and as he gazed in a stupid meaningless stare upon me, uttered his everlasting bow, wow! Tell me that the room was dark; that not a ray of light penetrated the closed doors or the curtained windows. What of that? That dog's head, I repeat, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... "How stupid you are! Go look up your friend Mme. Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. You're quite thick enough with ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... at Holland House to meet Kean. He is worth meeting; and I hope, by getting into good society, he will be prevented from falling like Cooke. He is greater now on the stage, and off he should never be less. There is a stupid and under-rating criticism upon him in one of the newspapers. I thought that, last night, though great, he rather under-acted more than the first time. This may be the effect of these cavils; but I hope he has more sense than to mind them. He cannot expect ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... news of his lost father soon roused the prince from the stupid fit into which he had fallen. He followed in amazement the sound of Ariel's voice, till it led him to Prospero and Miranda, who were sitting under the shade of a large tree. Now Miranda had never seen a man before, except her ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... on the morrow of one of these intimate gatherings, "we will have a little chat about your Justinian, whom the recent drama of "Thodora" has just made the fashion. Do you know the history of that terrible hussy and her stupid husband? Perhaps not entirely; it is a treat I am ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... the 6th of August, 1775, "the very year," as he himself says, in a letter to the Dublin Evening Post, "in which the stupid obstinacy of British oppression forced the reluctant people of America to seek for security in arms, and to commence that bloody struggle for national independence, which has been in its results beneficial to England, whilst it has shed glory, and conferred ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... on rare occasions, especially round Christmas time, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set with flashy imitation stones—or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of him. "Now," said I, "it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to do is to take a bath-chair and go around ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... turned up full, a pipe in his mouth, and an open Bible in his hand. Some one had always to go during the night to put out the light, take the book from his hand, and the pipe from between his teeth. "For"—Belfast used to say, irritated and complaining—"some night, you stupid cookie, you'll swallow your ould clay, and we will have no cook."—"Ah! sonny, I am ready for my Maker's call... wish you all were," the other would answer with a benign serenity that was altogether imbecile and touching. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Diggens. This fellow had been so beastly drunk, that he scarce knew what he was about when awoke; and Marble rather dragged him on deck, and aft to the taffrail, than assisted him to walk. There we got him at last; and he was soon dangling by the tackle. So stupid and enervated was the master's mate, however, that he let go his hold, and went into the ocean. The souse did him good, I make no doubt; and his life was saved by his friends, one of the sailors catching him by the collar, and raising ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... deprive these laws of practical importance. They represent essential criteria of sound policy in the sphere of social reorganization no less than in ordinary business. In our days a curious obsession has led many people to disparage these criteria, as though they were the sordid prejudices of a stupid tradesman. Because it has been found a matter of obvious practical convenience to maintain the roads out of taxation or of rates, and to dispense with charges for their use, it is suggested that the same principle should be applied to the railways. Or, more commonly, because ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... he dreaded he knew not what. As he stood listening to the silence, he thought he heard a child's laughter, and he sighed in relief. The servant came to the door, a sleepy-eyed German maedchen as strong as an ox and nearly as stupid. "Oh, it's Herr Poons," she said. "Come in. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... and the captain arrived on board the Mayflower they found Jones too stupid with liquor to listen to any plans, and too short-handed when he had been made to understand to carry them out with half the dispatch the ardent spirit of Standish prompted, so that all they effected was to have two of the larger pieces hoisted out of the hold, and one landed ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... animals that people persist in calling stupid, when they are only strong-minded and more intelligent than the other animals," said Kit Summers, quietly breaking ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... proper at her age. Some came to the conclusion that M. Regis chose subjects for composition not suited to young girls. A committee waited on the unlucky professor to beg him to be more prudent for the future. He even lost, in consequence of Jacqueline's success, one of his pupils (the most stupid one, be it said, in the class), whose mother took her away, saying, with indignation, "One might as well risk the things they ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... thoughtfulness. When I was assuming that her mind had wandered off to something else she said: "The people must be very stupid—not ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... are going to sermonize me, the moment is ill chosen," replied the lieutenant, sulkily. "I know perfectly that I have done a stupid thing, and am in for a lecture from my papa. I do not wish to hear from another what I must listen ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... "Awfully sorry. Stupid of me. Get your mind off it again—quick. What were we saying? Oh, yes, this girl. I always think it helps one to form a mental picture of people if one knows something about their tastes—what sort of things they are interested in, their favourite topics of conversation, and so on. This Miss ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... two feet, you stupid Oliver," cried Miss Lavinia, shaking her curls at him. "Did you ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... how these stupid boys have obstructed my work here," replied Hemmingwell angrily. "I can't see why they have to interfere this way. And they always pick ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... the queries, every one of which took several minutes, as he was constantly interrupted by the Kajee, who was very fat and stupid: the Lama scarcely spoke, and the bystanders never. My connection with the Indian government was first enquired into; next they came to political matters, upon which I declined entering; but I gathered that ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... vicious kick, Show Low putting in an extra one for his murdered bunkie. Last of all, McKee approached the prostrate man, and made the mistake which was to cost him his life by booting Peruna cruelly. The man was a stupid fellow by nature, and what wits he had were addled by the habit he had acquired of consuming patent-medicines containing alcohol, morphin, and other stimulating and stupefying drugs. He was as revengeful as stupid, and could have forgiven McKee's putting the rope ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... dear, dear little girl!" cried the shocked lady, with a gush of self-reproach and sympathy, "I'm so sorry—so very, very sorry. It was so stupid of me! Have I hurt you much, dear little girl? Come—come ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... I pray you—how should that book have taught you this strange notion? Why? What book is it? That stupid story!" was the gasping exclamation of the astonished girl—astonished no less by the impetuous manner than the strong language of the youth; and, with the tenderest concern she laid her hand upon his arm, while her eyes, full of the liveliest interest, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... latent nobility in the Greek character, in the midst of that levity with which all Europe taxes it, that never, except once, were the secrets of the society betrayed; nor was there the least ground for jealousy offered either to the stupid Moslems, in the very centre of whom, and round about them, the conspiracy was daily advancing, or even to the rigorous police of Moscow, where the Hetria had its head-quarters. In the single instance of treachery which occurred, it happened that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... their breakfast. Over all—Fanchon and her puppies—covering them with his faithful body—shielding them with his never-failing love and devotion, was my noble hound—as noble, as faithful a dog, as ever man or woman loved. I called to him, and rubbed him, but all in vain, and meanwhile stupid, silly Fanchon, that had foolishly left her warm bed in the cellar, looked on with cheerful indifference, and wagged ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... eyes. "No," she said with her old calm decision, and moved away. Four years ago she would have supplemented her refusal by the words, "You are stupid. You tease me," Now she contented herself with action ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... man everlastingly maddened by slightness and weakness. As a boy, when his father and mother still kept up their position a little, he had broken a priceless Venetian glass simply because he could not resist the temptation to close his hand on it. His father had flogged him, being of the stupid kind who believe that corporal punishment can influence the soul. And Reddin had done the same thing next day with a ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... earth's acknowledged Sovereign, finds at once Its only just proprietor in Him. The soul that sees Him, or receives sublimed New faculties or learns at least to employ More worthily the powers she owned before; Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze Of ignorance, till then she overlooked, A ray of heavenly light gilding all forms Terrestrial, in the vast and the minute The unambiguous footsteps of the God Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds. Much conversant with heaven, she often ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... thought of turning upon this man and talking to him. But there was something in his face at once stupid and invincible that told her he would go on forcing himself upon her, that he would esteem speech with her a great point gained. In the twilight he had ceased to be a person one could tackle and shame; he had become something more general, a something that crawled ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... and the American could easily have put in twelve months in Burma if so disposed. But one obstacle—and one only—interposed, and detained her from joining her friends in Cairo. (This is in the strictest confidence.) She was awaiting the moment when that great, big stupid Irishman would speak! ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Drayton, precisely," said Hugh Ritson. He paused and watched Drayton closely. That worthy had removed his pipe, and was staring, with stupid eyes and open ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... downcast eyes and trembling; and as though he had remembered and comprehended then, for the first time, all that he had made the little fellow suffer, and all the goodness, the heroic constancy, with which the latter had borne it, he displayed in his countenance a certain stupid wonder, then a sullen remorse, and finally a sorrowful and impetuous tenderness, and with a rapid gesture he caught the boy round the head and strained him to his breast. We all passed before them. I invited him to come to the house on Thursday, with Garrone and Crossi; others saluted him; one ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... society of piping bullfinches, pink canaries, gray parrots, goldfish, green squirrels, Italian greyhounds, and French poodles, she sought a refuge from despair. But even these varied charms, after a while, failed to please. The bullfinches grew hoarse; the canaries turned brown; the parrots became stupid; the gold fish would not eat; the squirrels were cross; the dogs fought; even a shell grotto that was constructing fell down; and by the time the aviary and conservatory were filled, they had lost ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... heard the scissors that fair lock divide, And while my heart with transport panted big, She cast a fiery frown on me, and cried, 'You stupid puppy—you have spoilt ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange |
