"Stupidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horse instead of the mule? It is a question I have never been able to answer to this day. I can only account for the fellow's preference for the mule on the score of downright honesty, or the most perverse stupidity. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... sometimes laughed since at my stupidity, yet there might be found some excuse for it. During my absence from Lima I had often thought of my little playmate, but it had never occurred to me that time would change her as well as myself. And ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... admiring her with his serious eyes. He marveled now at the stupidity which had caused him to think of Margalida for all these months as a child, as an undeveloped creature, without realizing her graces. He remembered with scorn those senoritas of the city for whom the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... think that Miss Donovan will never be a first-rate queen. She is constitutionally incapable of that particular kind of stupidity which is called dignity. In that hour of her country's destiny, her chief feeling was amusement at the appearance of the admiral. She did not know, perhaps, that the guns of the Megalian navy were trained on her palace. But she ought ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... point, and though possessed of such perfect powers of diving and swimming, nothing would induce it to enter the water; and as often as I threw it in, it returned in the manner above described. Perhaps this singular piece of apparent stupidity may be accounted for by the circumstance that this reptile has no enemy whatever on shore, whereas at sea it must often fall a prey to the numerous sharks. Hence, probably, urged by a fixed and hereditary instinct that ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... brought up by a mother trained from youth at the hand of the samurai grandmother. Thus dragged out into the light by indiscreet curiosity the tiger's eye had fallen upon her. Shu[u]zen marvelled at his stupidity, his oversight. This woman was indeed a beauty, the concubine for long sought, and to hand free of her charms. He stood adjusting his robes; then lost in thought. There were obstacles—in the girl's position. But that night O'Kiku was ordered to serve the wine. The intelligence and training, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... perhaps more so, that a horse has been taught to do similar things. When I was in Paris, I saw some horses dance a quadrille very respectably, and keep excellent time. One of the Roman historians relates, "An elephant, having been punished for stupidity in executing some feat which he was required to learn, was observed, at night, endeavoring to practise what he had failed to perform in the daytime." It is mentioned that elephants have been observed practising their lessons by moonlight, without any directions from ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... follows. The problem of international peace is the problem of expanding the area of love and social unity. It is the sin of Christendom that so few took this problem seriously until we were chastised for our moral stupidity and inertia. The young men and women of today will have to take this problem on their intellect and conscience for their lifetime, and propose ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... of explaining myths by etymological guesses at the meaning of divine names as "a philosophy which came to him all in an instant". Thus we find Socrates shocked by the irreverence which styled Zeus the son of Cronus, "who is a proverb for stupidity". But on examining philologically the name Kronos, Socrates decides that it must really mean Koros, "not in the sense of a youth, but signifying the pure and garnished mind". Therefore, when people first called Zeus the ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... itself to a continuous rapid expansion. Disease, misery, and poverty flourished in this prosperous new industrial era. Filth and insanitation, immorality and crime, were fostered by overcrowding in ill-built urban areas. Ignorance and stupidity abounded, for the child, placed in the monotonous routine of the factory when little more than an infant, was deprived alike of the education of the school and of the world. Higher wages brought no higher refinement ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... ignoring of the spirit, is suicide. The increased hankering after physical excitements and animal pleasures, to the utter abandonment of the search for that which is real and satisfying, is an exhibition of gross, mesmeric stupidity, to say the least. It shows that our sense ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... foolish it was of her to worry. Doubtless Mr. Benton had a copy of the document, and if she made full confession of her stupidity he would know what to do. Didn't lawyers always keep copies of every legal paper they drew up? They ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... speedily removing the French warships from Toulon to a Spanish port, or of making preparations for burning them. Whereas Pitt, who regarded Toulon, not as a windfall, but as a base of operations for a campaign in Provence, maintained that such conduct must blight their prospects. With phenomenal stupidity, Langara allowed his secret instructions on this topic to leak out, thereby rousing the rage of the Toulonese and the contempt of his British colleagues. The Duke of Alcudia (better known as Godoy) expressed sincere regret ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Should range the host, soliciting the Chiefs Of every band, as utmost need requires. Him answer'd Agamemnon, King of men. 140 Old warrior, times there are, when I could wish Myself thy censure of him, for in act He is not seldom tardy and remiss. Yet is not sluggish indolence the cause, No, nor stupidity, but he observes 145 Me much, expecting till I lead the way. But he was foremost now, far more alert This night than I, and I have sent him forth Already, those to call whom thou hast named. But let us hence, for at the guard I trust 150 To ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... choice. She, however, granted his request, that he should become the most excellent philosopher of the age; but set this drawback to his pleasure, that he should relapse, when at the height of his fame, into his former incapacity and stupidity. Albertus never took the trouble to contradict the story, but prosecuted his studies with such unremitting zeal, that his reputation speedily spread over all Europe. In the year 1244, the celebrated ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... I really cannot call you Cyril now," Nellie said, curtseying almost to the ground after taking a survey of the lad, "your costume becomes you rarely; and I am filled with wonder at the thought of my own stupidity in not seeing all along that you were a prince in disguise. It is like the fairy tales my old nurse used to tell me of the king's son who went out to look for a beautiful wife, and who worked as a scullion in the king's palace without anyone suspecting his rank. ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... steps had been taken to protect the Capitol, or the country round about; what little was done, was done entirely too late, and bungled badly in addition. History has not yet done justice to the ludicrous and painful folly and stupidity of which the government founded by Jefferson, and carried on by Madison, was guilty, both in its preparations for, and in its way of carrying on, this war; nor is it yet realized that the men just mentioned, and their associates, are primarily responsible for the loss we suffered in it, and the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... or lack of thyroid secretion will inhibit sexual emotion and conception, will produce stupidity and inertia; will diminish vitality. On the other hand, excessive thyroid secretion drives the entire mechanism at top speed; the emotions are intensified; the skin becomes soft and moist, the eyes are brilliant and ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... die for nothing, and for nothing wilt thou die to-day. And if thou beest really evil-disposed and devoid of all virtue, do thou render us back our weapons and ravish Draupadi after fight. But if through stupidity thou must do this deed, then in the world thou wilt only reap demerit and infamy O Rakshasa, by doing violence to this female of the human race, thou hast drunk poison, after having shaken the vessel.' Thereupon, Yudhishthira made himself ponderous to the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... precursors of whom Rolland writes are those of kindred spirit to the persons to whom the book is dedicated. It is published "in memory of the martyrs of the new faith in the human international, the victims of bloodthirsty stupidity and of murderous falsehood, the liberators of the ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... whether the blacks were different from the whites, who saw them only in a state of slavery and wretchedness? Do we estimate beauty by the figure of a Laplander? magnanimity by the soul of a courtier? or intelligence by the stupidity of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... OF 1763 AND 1765. The regulations of 1763 were issued, so the introduction reads (R. 274), because "the instruction of youth" in the country had "come to be greatly neglected" and "the young people were growing up in stupidity and ignorance." The King, therefore, issued the new regulations "to the end that ignorance, so injurious and unbecoming to Christianity, may be prevented and lessened, and the coming time may train and educate in the schools more enlightened ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... to laugh" to "see the heathen rage and devise a vain thing." No hierarchy of earth, no multitudinous howl of ignorance and stupidity that "having eyes that see not; and having ears that hear not" can block the wheels of progress. It has worked in the past, "quite some," routing out tortured souls and bodies by the millions, sending them flying off from this planet which was, and is their real home, turning rack ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... novelty, or hardened against them by accidental prejudice; it can scarcely be conceived, how frequently, in these extemporaneous controversies, the dull will be subtle, and the acute absurd; how often stupidity will elude the force of argument, by involving itself in its own gloom; and mistaken ingenuity will weave artful fallacies, which reason can scarcely find means ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... her heroism was hardly more than a silly affectation, a patriotic pose. In these surroundings the memory of her daily life was disgusting, plain stupidity. Here she was in her element, at her superlative. She breathed deeply of the atmosphere of luxury, the incense of rich food served ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... one for me, as I am a pupil still! It's the stupidity of pupils which has made her dislike music, but then—why does she come to a concert? Why couldn't she have had the decency to refuse, and let someone else have the ticket? Oh, I do dislike you—you cold,— cutting, disagreeable, ungrateful, snappy ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... class and lineal rank. But the third-classman was my junior in both, and therefore could not, by any military regulation, get possession of what I was entitled to by my superior rank. And the effort to do so must be regarded a marvellous display of stupidity, or a belief on the part of the cadet that I could be imposed upon with impunity, simply because I was alone and had shown no disposition to quarrel or demand either real or ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... IN DOING INJUSTICE, AGGRAVATES IT, AND TAKES UPON HIMSELF ALL THE GUILT OF HIS PREDECESSORS: The right to be free is a truth planted in the hearts of men, and acknowledged so to be by all who have hearkened to the voice of nature, and disproved by none but such as through wickedness, stupidity, or baseness of spirit, seem to have degenerated into the worst of beasts, and to have retained nothing of men but the outward shape, or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they have learnt from their master ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... stupidity or carelessness, make a cartoon of yourself, when with a proper appreciation of your possibilities you can be a pleasing picture? It is just as glorious to be a fine picture or a poem as it is to paint the one, or write the other. Indeed, a woman ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... Spirit—the fruit of the Spirit is love—it is the want of lovingness. If you want to live in the joy of the Holy Ghost make your covenant with God. "But," you say, "there is a Christian man who makes me so impatient; he does trouble me and vex me so with his stupidity. And there are those worldly men; how they have tempted me in times past and done me harm! And there is that business man who is trying to ruin me." Take them all, and your own wife and children and every one around you and say, "I understand ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... we were particularly fond of him. He was rather rough, and even we children were struck by his German stupidity. His redeeming feature was that he was a devoted sportsman. Every morning he used to jerk the blankets off us and shout, "Auf, Kinder! auf!" and during the daytime plagued us with ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... the dripping fog, and the iron railings for which I sought seemed to have melted away. For many minutes I beat the mist with my arms like one at blind man's buff, turning sharply in circles, cursing aloud at my stupidity and crying continually for help. At last a voice answered me from the fog, and I found myself held in the circle ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... idled over the year upon year of respectable stupidity that represented life in Fairfield, while her eyes and soul were in the boiling gold of the ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... would have been less serious and fatal had his orders been obeyed. There is also a disposition to deal leniently with the far heavier errors and omissions of the Exploration Committee; and an unaccountable tendency to feel sympathy for Brahe, whose evidence left it difficult to decide whether stupidity, selfishness, or utter disregard of truth ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... sees instances of decided stupidity on the part of elephants as of sagacity, but I think the amount of intelligence varies in individuals. I have known cases where elephants have tried to get their mahouts off their backs—two cases in my own district—in the one the elephant tried shaking and then lying down, both of which ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... nurses; of the stupidity of one, the untidiness of another, or the overbearing nature of the third. It can do no good, and it lowers you in the estimation of every one ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... with hysterical anger, born of the inevitable days in his society and in the kitchen, that she could have thrown at him the battered pot which she carried, or could have pushed him passionately against the mantelpiece in her fierce hatred of his helplessness and his occasional perverse stupidity. He was rarely stupid with Jenny, but giggled ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... Percival. But the temper of Hastings was equal to almost any trial. It was not sweet; but it was calm. Quick and vigorous as his intellect was, the patience with which he endured the most cruel vexations, till a remedy could be found, resembled the patience of stupidity. He seems to have been capable of resentment, bitter and long enduring; yet his resentment so seldom hurried him into any blunder, that it may be doubted whether what appeared to be ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gloriously—most gloriously! As to the Collingwoods, they were simply cut to pieces, losing 25 officers out of 28 in a few minutes. Down at the roots of this unhappiness lie the neglect to give us our fair share of howitzers and trench mortars—in fact stupidity! The rank and file all round looked much better for their short rest, and seemed to like the few halting words of praise I was able to say to them. Lunched with Backhouse in a delicious garden under a spreading ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... obtrude upon, and thrust their sickles into harvests of secular businesses quite contrary and diametrically opposite to the quality, state, and condition of their callings, professions, and vocations; or the superstitious stupidity and senseless scrupulousness of married folks, who have yielded obedience, and submitted their bodies, fortunes, and estates to the discretion and authority of such odious, perverse, barbarous, and unreasonable laws. Nor do they see that which ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... and eloquence, she was taught and saw the corruption of society and marriage, the disrespect to modesty; in such an atmosphere all trace of innocence was destroyed. She was taught that faithfulness to a husband belonged only to the people, that it was an evidence of stupidity. Manners, customs, and even religion were against the preservation of innocence and purity; and in this depravity the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Bodine. With all my faults—and they are legion—I'm good-natured, and do not intentionally hurt people's feelings. What a fine proof of that I gave you in my insufferable stupidity!" ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... ignoramuses—that I have never written a moral tale, or, in more precise words, a tale with a moral. They are not the critics predestined to bring me out, and develop my morals:—that is the secret. By and by the "North American Quarterly Humdrum" will make them ashamed of their stupidity. In the meantime, by way of staying execution—by way of mitigating the accusations against me—I offer the sad history appended,—a history about whose obvious moral there can be no question whatever, since he who runs may read it in the large capitals which form the title ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... too much sagacity to exhibit. Of course, as soon as your back is turned, the broad grin is on him, and one of his cheeks is stuck out two inches beyond the other, because his tongue is in it at your stupidity, simplicity, or folly. Of all the national characters on this habitable globe, I verily believe that that of the Irish is the most profound and unfathomable; and the most difficult on which to form a system, either ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... symbolises that irresistible force of human stupidity by which the rottenest and basest institutions are enabled to thrive in the teeth of the logic that has demolished them. Thus, for the author, the close of the play is essentially tragic. But what ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... get ahead of me without paying for my own stupidity. Do you go to Sunday School, and church, and missionary meetings?" asked the captain, with ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... damned if I do—" he ejaculated. He was white with chagrin to think that his stupidity had trapped him into such an annoying situation. He was moving blindly toward the stairway; all he wanted was a quick termination of the whole ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... eighteenth and the nineteenth century, these representing Imperial Britain, as the former represent national or feudal England. Erigena in the ninth century surveying all things as from a tall rock, Dunstan, Roger Bacon wasting in a prison "through the incurable stupidity of the world," as he briefly explains it, Michael Scott, Hooker, Bacon, Glanvil, Milton, and Locke, formed by England, these men have in turn guided or informed the highest aspirations, the very heart of the race. The greatest empire in the annals of mankind is at once the most earnestly religious ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... at all. It is just living life on ordinary terms. I won't have anything different at all. I'm ashamed of myself for my moans. When I have anything in the way of work to do, it may be different. But now I see what I have to do. I am suffering from the stupidity of so-called clever people; and you mustn't mind it. Only don't, for Heaven's sake, try to contrive, or to spare me things. That is how the ugly paterfamilias is made. You mustn't spoil me or manage me; if I ever suspect ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... cart with myself in it. There will be hot work presently, if I mistake not, in the Pere Blanchard's hut. We shall corner our game there, I'll warrant, for this impudent Scarlet Pimpernel has had the audacity—or the stupidity, I hardly know which—to adhere to his original plans. He has gone to meet de Tournay, St. Just and the other traitors, which for the moment, I thought, perhaps, he did not intend to do. When we find them, there will be a band of desperate men at bay. ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... another, that the right to life is inherent in every individual like the right to liberty and to light; instead of replying that if it is an abuse on the part of governments to punish in a culprit the faults and crimes to which they have driven him by their own negligence or stupidity, how much more so would it be in a man, however great and however unfortunate he might be, to punish in a wretched people the faults of its governments and its ancestors; instead of declaring that God alone can use such methods, that God can destroy because He can create, God who holds in His ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... is appallingly stupid." He paused, with an effect of still more profound exhaustion, then breathed, "He hates me, no doubt because I resent his stupidity. I resent stupidity," he repeated, giving her a glance of weak alarm, as if wondering, "Are you stupid, too?" He seemed reassured by his scrutiny of her. A coldness began to ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... this duty. The officer replied, and ridiculed the scruples of the young man; but, finding him inflexible in his resolution, he at last turned from him with an air of contempt, and called his men to follow him, muttering, as he went, reflections on the stupidity and cowardice ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... sorry sight, and in pointed contrast to the graceful Californians on their groomed steeds, handsomely trapped, curvetting and rearing and prancing as lightly as if on the floor of a circus. Kearney cursed his own stupidity, and Pico laughed in his face. Beale felt satisfaction and compunction in saturating the silk and silver of one fine saddle with the blood of its owner. The point of the dying man's lance pierced his face, but he noted the bleaching of Kearney's, as one dragoon ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... recalled or re-established their sovereigns, and entrusted them with power such as they had never possessed before. How they used it may be inferred from the general outbreak of 1848. A popular indignation, such as could have been excited only by long years of folly, stupidity, and tyranny, swept away or shook every throne from Berlin to Palermo. The people was everywhere for some months triumphant; and its abuse of power produced a reaction which restored or introduced despotism in every kingdom except Prussia and Piedmont, and even in Prussia gave to the King ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of eight young partridges, of that spring's hatching, coolly marched out of the woods and into the clearing, as if they were bent on investigating their new neighbors. Partridges appear to be subject to occasional fits of stupidity, and to temporary (or possibly permanent) loss of common-sense; but it may be that in this case the birds were too young and inexperienced to realize what they were doing. Or perhaps they knew that it was Sunday, and that the rules of the household forbade ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... the world every reasonable opportunity of knowing that they had a remarkable man amongst them, but, with a stupidity all their own, they wouldn't see it; so that when the solicitor who once gave me a brief died—I believe it was a softening of the brain—I burned my wig ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... English. The first belongs to the party of the right among the Do-Nothings—the older teachers who come from the generation which sent only picked men to college; the second, to the party of the left—the younger men who are distressed by the toil, the waste, the stupidity which accompany so much ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... over the country w'ere he get los' an' I know it, every tree an' stone. It is a wil' place, an' the men up there know not'ing but cut down trees. Very t'ick in the 'aid." Jean tapped his gray head significantly, better to demonstrate the vast stupidity of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... the Neva by the allied fleet. A great opportunity lost. Russian caricatures during the Crimean War. Visit to Moscow. Curious features in the Kremlin, the statue of Napoleon; the Crown, Sceptre, and Constitution of Poland. Evidences of official stupidity. Journey from St. Petersburg to Warsaw. Contest with the officials at the frontier; my victory. Journey across the continent; scene in a railway carriage between Strasburg and Paris. Delivery of my despatches in Paris. Baron Seebach. The French Exposition of 1855. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... at one at least, and though he would rather have faced a Sweetgrass blizzard than an interview he set his lips and with bitterness in his heart made his preparations. The incident only renewed his confidence in his incredible stupidity, but what he felt was that a girl with such eyes as hers could never be brought to ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... public mulcted, was due to the same cause,—that their readiness to become the prey of unionists and agitators is traceable to their want of the most elementary principles of thought,—that most of the accidents, which are of weekly occurrence, are occasioned by their stupidity and ignorance,—that wherever they have advanced in intelligence, they have become more skilful, more subordinate, and more industrious. These facts have convinced the more thoughtful and far-sighted masters, that the only sure means of maintaining ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... sundry others relative to the horrible cold of the place, the intense dulness of delay, the stupidity of leaving a warm bed and a breakfast in order to witness a procession that is much better performed at a theatre)—while these thoughts were passing in the mind, the church began to fill apace, and you saw that the hour of ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... the President can force a demand for the cessation of the submarine warfare, he ought also to have the right to demand the lifting of the starvation blockade. The tragedy was chiefly due to either stupidity or design on the part of the British Admiralty in failing to afford proper protection to the ship. While we do not agree with the President on some points in his note, we repose the fullest confidence in his patriotism ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... usurpation of the scriptures—the infallibility of the church—the dreams of insane hermits—the absurdities of the fathers—the mistakes and falsehoods of saints—the hysteria of nuns—the cunning of priests and the stupidity of the people. He found that the Emperor Constantine, who lifted christianity into power, murdered his wife Fansta and his eldest son Crispus the same year that he convened the council of Nice to decide whether Christ was a man ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... they had only to rearrange themselves to be comfortable. Everywhere, all over the world, the historian of the early twentieth century finds the same thing, the flow and rearrangement of human affairs inextricably entangled by the old areas, the old prejudices and a sort of heated irascible stupidity, and everywhere congested nations in inconvenient areas, slopping population and produce into each other, annoying each other with tariffs, and every possible commercial vexation, and threatening each other with navies and armies that grew every ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... bastard honesty,—by precept out of stupidity. There is no real conviction in it, begotten by thought." This little bit of criticism, harsh as it was, had the effect, and the Prime Minister became less ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... denomination, over and over, saying, These things were done on the first day, on the first day, on the first day of the week, while all other days are, as to name, buried in everlasting oblivion! And shall we not take that notice thereof as to follow the Lord Jesus and the churches herein? Oh stupidity! ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... an advertisement for tailored skirts was thrown on the screen some one started the applause, and the crowd, like sheep, blindly imitated—until someone saw the joke and laughed; then the crowd again followed a leader and laughed at and applauded its own stupidity. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... to either Oxford or Cambridge, but I went to the "Nouvelle Athenes." What is the "Nouvelle Athenes"? He who would know anything of my life must know something of the academy of the fine arts. Not the official stupidity you read of in the daily papers, but the real French academy, the cafe. The "Nouvelle Athenes" is a cafe on the Place Pigale. Ah! the morning idlenesses and the long evenings when life was but a summer illusion, the grey moonlights on the Place where we used to stand ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... man against whom his jealousy should have been directed at first astounded him. By now he had come to a full perception of his stupidity in never entertaining such a thought. The revelation was equivalent to a second offence just discovered; for he found it impossible to ignore his long-cherished suspicion of Barfoot, and he even surmised the possibility of Monica's having listened to love-making from that quarter ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... only security she possesses. The chances are that she did so before her father's cable message came, and that was the reason she so confidently wished information to be given to the police. She expected to have money to redeem her jewels, and being a bright woman, she knew the traditional stupidity of the official police, and so thought there was no danger of her little ruse being discovered. But when the cable message came saying no money would be sent her, a different complexion was put upon the whole affair, for she did not know but if the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... and how it is expressed. Very little thinking should be necessary to show the absurdity of the belief that the body is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case of twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely unlike. The real man is superphysical. His intelligence or his stupidity, his genial disposition or his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are but the manifestations of himself through the body by which they are expressed. The body itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a planet is, so organized that they constitute an ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... possession which brings them so much lucre and profit. This does not say much for the duty when the favoured ones themselves forget it and trample upon it. To die to-day for cowardly Spain! This implies not only want of dignity and delicate feeling, but also gross stupidity in weaving a sovereignty of frightened Spaniards over the heads of brave Filipinos. It is astonishing that in the face of such an eloquent example of impotence there should still be a Filipino who defends the sovereignty ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... there was Sammy, standing with his innocent fat face as close to the dining-room shutters as he could hold it, with his fingers in his mouth, uttering shrill whistles loud and long and hard and fast enough to rouse the whole neighbourhood. Beth, impatient of such stupidity, returned to the dining-room and sat down again, leaving Sammy ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... candidate proposed to their suffrages by the Liberal party that were quite inaudible, and sought his yellow pinewood schoolroom chair with rather a forced smile. It had been used once before that day to isolate conspicuous stupidity. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... before him, with the mulatto woman,—the first capture under his order. She was tall, well-formed, but unmistakably showing the negro type, even in her small features. Her black eyes were excited, but unintelligent; her manner dogged, but with the obstinacy of half-conscious stupidity. Brant felt not only disappointed, but had a singular impression that she was not the same woman that he had first seen. Yet there was the tall, graceful figure, the dark profile, and the turbaned head that he had once followed down the ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... him to describe Rocca [Footnote: Second husband of Madame de Stael.] to me, said he heard him give an answer to Lord Byron which marked the indignant frankness of his mind. Lord Byron at Coppet had been going on abusing the stupidity of the good people of Geneva: Rocca at last turned short upon him—"Eh! milord, pourquoi donc venez-vous vous fourrer parmi ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... going down stairs this minute to put a stop to all this at once. I could not have believed stupidity could have gone so far. I shall see my brother and have an end put to his journeys here: good heavens! to think ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... only repeat to herself the wild words that had burst from Plantagenet's lips in reference to her father. What could they mean? His morals might be misrepresented, his opinions might be misunderstood; stupidity might not comprehend his doctrines, malignity might torture them; the purest sages have been accused of immorality, the most pious philosophers have been denounced as blasphemous: but, 'a traitor to his king,' that was a tangible, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... but when Dulness is lodged in a Person of a quick Animal Life, it generally exerts it self in Poetry. One might here mention a few Military Writers, who give great Entertainment to the Age, by reason that the Stupidity of their Heads is quickened by the Alacrity of their Hearts. This Constitution in a dull Fellow, gives Vigour to Nonsense, and makes the Puddle boil, which would otherwise stagnate. The British Prince, that Celebrated ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... thought and electricity has not been exactly determined, but the cat is mentally very alert in certain conditions of the atmosphere. Feasting his eyes on the beautiful out-doors does not prevent his attention to the slightest noise in the wainscot. And the snow-storm brings content, but not stupidity, to all the rest ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was just a little increased when Mrs. Stanley announced her intention of returning to New York. The lady had been amiable on the whole, as she meant always to be; but she could not help daily taking up her parable concerning the tyranny and stupidity of man and the superior virtue of woman; and sometimes she felt it her duty to put it to Thurstane that he owed everything to his wife; all of which was more or less wearing, even to her niece. At the same time she was such a ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... by right, and as if it were only a stable, not a temple hallowed to a diviner significance. The ass, instead of looking devoutly into the cradle, stretches out his lazy length in the foreground; the ox winks his eyes with a more than bovine stupidity. In some of the old German pictures, while the Hebrew ox is quietly chewing the cud, the Gentile ass "lifts up his voice" and brays with open ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... consciousness of his own superiority over his fellow-mortals. It was the pride of intellect and a belief that man showed himself best by following the judgements of the reason. His disgust with people was born of their unreasonable selfishness, their instinctive greed and rapacity, their blind stupidity, all which resulted for them in so much injustice. Had they been reasonable, he would have argued, they would have been better and happier. The sentiments and the passions were impulsive, and therefore unreasonable. Swift seemed to have no faith in their elevation to a ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... himself, he failed to respond to this interesting confession. He was thinking of something else: his amazing stupidity in not foreseeing the very situation that now presented itself. Why had he neglected to settle upon a meeting place with Sprouse in the event that circumstances forced them to part company in flight? Fearing ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... which he made of Austria or any other Power, and of the various little complaints which His Majesty thought he had against Her Majesty's Government, and which had been magnified into importance by the malevolence or the stupidity of the persons who had more or less the ear ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... But as I have at different times succored, defended, protected, this one and that, I might perhaps be called, in my own fashion, brave. You need not take these mighty airs with me. I came here knowing that you would come. That rose was dangled to afford you the opportunity for brutal stupidity. You did not fail to nibble at its petals. ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... thought the contributor, "this is more like literature than ever"; and he hardly knew whether to be more provoked at his own stupidity in not thinking of a street of the same name in the next village, or delighted at the element of fatality which the fact introduced into the story; for Tinker, according to his own account, must have landed from the cars ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... danger which in itself was a sort of pollution. His sanguine energy enabled him to lose the thought, at ordinary times, of the risks to which he himself was exposed; but occasionally he reflected that public life might even yet be made impossible for him, and then he cursed the moral stupidity of people ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... effort to clear himself, he exhibits the foulest stains. He thinks he made a most plausible excuse when he said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" But this very excuse becomes his most shameful accusation. The maxim of Hilary, that wickedness and stupidity always go hand in hand, finds unvarying application. If Cain had been as wise as he was wicked, he would have excused himself in quite a different manner. Now, under the operation of the divine rule that wickedness and stupidity ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... furniture and the garden was like a blessing. There was not a chair there that I would have exchanged for any other chair—not a tree that I would have parted with—not a custom of that simple, busy place that I would have changed. I knew now all my stupidity—and ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... say to Love: "Stand and deliver!" was not the way to touch Gyp. It seemed to her mere ill-bred stupidity. She froze against him in soul, all the more that she yielded her body. When a woman refuses nothing to one whom she does not really love, shadows are already falling on the bride-house. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a battle royal. Trumbull's old associates were promptly joined by Sumner. These three rallied against the resolution all the malignancy, all the time-serving, all the stupidity, which the Senate possessed. Bitter language was exchanged by men who had formerly ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... counted by many, and indeed unintelligible, for it ranged over a vast surface, and was the talk of two wise children, wise not above their own years only, but immeasurably above those of the prudent. Riches indubitably favour stupidity; poverty, where the heart is right, favours mental and moral development. They parted at the gate, and Cosmo went ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... individuality, an imperceptible deviation to the right or to the left, above or below the tracing, which impresses on the design the accent of strength or weakness, of indecision or determination."[369] I would add, of intelligence or stupidity; of knowledge or ignorance. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... us say through a small opening. He peeks. Playfulness gives place to curiosity; he looks quickly and furtively, perhaps through some tiny aperture, and probably at something he has no business to see. He peeps. The while he looks his mouth falls open, as from stupidity or wonder. He gapes. He looks at something a long time to study it. He cons or pores. His study is not of the thing itself; it is meditation or reverie. He pores. A member of the opposite sex is present; he looks at her with the effort of a flirt to attract attention to himself, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the dearth of the raw material; for maleable iron was selling in Rome at upwards of L21 per ton, at a time when the cost of bar-iron in this country was only from L6 to L7 per ton. Such insane legislation on the part of the sacerdotal Government could not be committed through ignorance or stupidity. There must be some strong reason that does not appear at first sight for this wholesale sacrifice of the interests of the country. We shall speak of this anon: meanwhile we pursue ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... formed by God to help each other, but which have let go their business and have turned to hindering one another all they can. You are a pair of feet fashioned on the Divine plan to work together, but which have neglected this in order to trammel each other's gait. Now is it not insensate stupidity (8) to use for injury what was meant for advantage? And yet in fashioning two brothers God intends them, methinks, to be of more benefit to one another than either two hands, or two feet, or two eyes, or any other of those pairs which belong to man from his birth. ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... me for one of their party," thought Hilary; and, dark though it was, he felt astonished at the man's stupidity, for it did not occur to him then that he was hatless, that his hair was rough, his face and hands anything but clean, and his old uniform shrunken by his immersion, and so caked with mud and dirt, and withal so torn and ragged, that even by broad daylight anyone would have ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... evidently among working dyers, as among all other classes, an unknown amount of carelessness, ignorance, and stupidity, from which employers are constantly suffering in the shape of spoiled colors and rotted cloth. It is not for us to say that the public may not at times have to suffer also from neglect of the most common treatments which should remove injurious ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... it all to the last word struck him as loathsome and flat. The feeling of guilt grew greater at every step. He raged inwardly, clenched his fists, and cursed his coldness and his stupidity with women. Trying to stir his feelings, he looked at Verotchka's beautiful figure, at her hair and the traces of her little feet on the dusty road; he remembered her words and her tears, but all that only touched his heart and did not ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a soldier's mind; I grew up in the field, and a man like me troubles himself little about a million men." The Austrian statesman further reported the French emperor to have characterized his second marriage as a piece of stupidity, and to have charged his ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of dullness and stupidity, and from their nature this disease is sometimes known as "dumminess" or "immobility." A horse so afflicted is called a "dummy." Among the symptoms are loss of intelligence, stupid expression, poor memory, etc. The appetite is irregular; the horse may stop chewing with ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... all my thoughts and deeds might lie, as the "open secrets" of Nature, free to all who are able to understand them. I have no reserves, except intellectual reserves; for to speak of things to those who cannot receive them is stupidity, rather than frankness. But in this case, I alone am not concerned. Therefore, dear James, give heed to the subject. You have received a key to what was before unknown of your friend; you have made use of it, now let it be buried with the past, over whose passages profound and sad, yet touched ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... darkens as much, whether it is a nightmare of atheism or a daydream of idolatry. And just as we have all sprung from sleep with a start and found ourselves saying some sentence that has no meaning, save in the mad tongues of the midnight; so the human mind starts from its trances of stupidity with some complete phrase upon its lips; a complete phrase which is a complete folly. Unfortunately it is not like the dream sentence, generally forgotten in the putting on of boots or the putting in of breakfast. This senseless aphorism, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... she was afraid of being deceived. Though her jealousies and fears were troublesome, I think they were useful. Sometimes she had light and comfort; oftener otherwise. In her twentieth year she had a fever, and from the first she thought she should not live, complained of her stupidity of mind, impenitence and unbelief. I came home from afternoon exercise, found her so ill that her mother thought herself obliged to tell her, upon which she thanked her for her kindness, but quickly fell into great distress on being unprepared ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... roof of it was crowded with people curiously dressed; they all looked down on me as they came abreast, and their faces had a sort of strange roughness. I saw them as clearly as all that—a coarseness, it was—a kind of cruel stupidity. Several of them seemed to be pock-marked, too. It struck me; I wondered how a coach-load of such people had been gathered together; and I might have wondered longer; but one of them laughed, a great neighing guffaw of a laugh, as the ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... a quiet, gentle, pale lad of fourteen, without cockney vivacity, and so shy that Armine grew shyer, did little but mark the errors in his French exercise, hear a bit of reading, and retreat, bemoaning the hopeless stupidity of his pupil. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... frontiersman did a thing for which, when she heard of it one sunset later, his better half said words of him and to him that overstepped all bounds of parliamentary usage, and that only a wife would dare to employ. With the blundering stupidity of his sex, poor Arnold "settled things" for many a day and well-nigh ruined the sweetest romance that Sandy had ever ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the national spirit, hampered though it is by the traditions of party government and a legacy of intellectual and social heaviness, has been in uneasy and ineffectual revolt against deadness, against stupidity and slackness, against waste and hypocrisy in every department of life. We have come to see more and more clearly how little we can hope for from politicians, societies and organised movements in these essential things. It is this that has ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... arranging his life in accordance with his desires, that Florent grew to feel a sort of respect for him, mingled with irritation. After all, the young fellow was very resolute and energetic, in spite of his seeming stupidity. He made straight for the goal he had in view, and would doubtless reach it in perfect assurance and happiness. On the evenings of these visits from the apprentice, Florent could not settle down to work again; he went off to bed in a discontented ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... that; and when, as to-night, it is my privilege to meet some of this country's expressionists, it appears that none has any intention of trying to reveal what is fine in your life as a people—you seek only to satirise, caricature, or damn altogether. If I believe my ears, there is nothing but stupidity and insularity in England. If I listen to my senses, to my subconscious mind, I feel that a great crisis would reveal that she is ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the best of these relics of ancient wit—or witlessness, rather—it is often difficult to decide whether a particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to place the story of the men of Cumae, who were expecting shortly to be visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they filled it afresh, and ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... one that must be familiar to most thinking people. "The undevout astronomer is mad," said eighteenth-century deism: to-day we are more apt to think that the uncritical astronomer is dense. There is a sort of colossal stupidity about the stars in their courses that overpowers and disquiets us. If (as Alfred Russel Wallace has argued) the geocentric theory was not so far out after all, and the earth, holding a specially favored place in the universe, is the only home ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... Sator Throg and his poor slaves to accomplish what the lesser therns of the guard were unable to do—we have killed one and captured the other; for this had Sator Throg given us our liberty. And now in your stupidity have you come and killed all but myself, and like to have killed the mighty Sator ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the dancer's existence with the stupidity of her still-life poses. She longed to run and pirouette and leap into the air. She wished she could kick herself in the back of the head to music the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... out of patience with dulness. Perhaps I ought to say, never get out of patience with any thing. That would perhaps be the wisest rule. But above all things, remember that dulness and stupidity, and you will certainly find them in every school, are the very last things to get out of patience with. If the Creator has so formed the mind of a boy, that he must go through life slowly and with difficulty, impeded by obstructions which others do not feel, and depressed ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... in our narrative to say here that much of the abuse of the so-called "trusts" by their victims took no account of the folly, stupidity and greed of the victims themselves. A favorite method by which the great corporations crushed out the competition of the smaller ones and of the "individual dealers" was by underselling them—a method made possible ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... attitude of mind may be allowed. They treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh, but after that with indifference (an indifference, as I recognise, the result of a certain stupidity), and therewith the commonplace conviction that your child is merely animal. At a very early age I remember realising in a quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that stupidity, and its tremendous influence in the world; while there grew up in me, as in the parallel case ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... fact, leaves altogether out of his reckoning certain factors of humanity which his first practical advocate only partially takes into account. These are stupidity, apathy, ignorance, greed, indolence, and the Easy Way. There are doubtless others, because in humanity as in physics no one can estimate all the forces, but these are the most readily recognised; and the last ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... especially in some way that would give the subject control or authority over others. If one of the lines be found partly arrested or stopped at the Line of Head (2-2, Plate X.), it indicates that the subject has by some mental error of judgment or stupidity, broken or prevented the effort, which started well, from reaching a successful termination. If one of these lines reaches and stops at the Line of Heart, it indicates that the affections have, or will, interfere with the subject's ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro |
