"Witless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "witless of the size, the sum, The value in proportion of all things, Or whether it be little ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... rotten and broken, to signify bankrupt—non and a corslet for non dur habit (otherwise non durabit, it shall not last), un lit sans ciel, that is, a bed without a tester, for un licencie, a graduated person, as bachelor in divinity or utter barrister-at-law; which are equivocals so absurd and witless, so barbarous and clownish, that a fox's tail should be fastened to the neck-piece of, and a vizard made of a cowsherd given to everyone that henceforth should offer, after the restitution of learning, to make use of any such ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... inhabitants, and here, within half an hour's train travel of the Lord Mayor's Mansion and the golden vaults of the Bank of England, transpired on the sweltering night of which I write, one of the most witless and appalling tragedies of the present war. Forever memorable in the hitherto colorless calendar of Walthamstow will be this tragedy in the second year ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... belly pleads they bribed been: And he, for want of better advocate, Doth to the ear his injury relate. The back, insulting o'er the belly's need, Says, Thou thyself, I others' eyes must feed. The maw, the guts, all inward parts complain The back's great pride, and their own secret pain. Ye witless gallants, I beshrew your hearts, That sets such discord 'twixt agreeing parts, Which never can be set at onement more, Until the maw's wide mouth be stopt ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... way from Freiberg, with its red-vined balcony and its dark laboratory, never again to visit it or them. And as the busy engine toiled and shrieked, and with each beat of its mighty steam-heart carried him further away, his thoughts flew back and clustered around witless, brown-eyed birdling. Poor child, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... farness thy slave can estrange * Nor am I one to fail in my fealty: I suffer such pains did I tell my case * To folk, they'd cry, 'Madness! clean witless is he!' Then ecstasy, love-longing, transport and lowe! * Whose case is such case how shall ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... strikes at an innocent life. Innocent beyond suspicion! Innocent beyond peradventure! Hear me prove it; observe how simple a fact can brush out of existence this witless lie. Listen. My friends, that lad was never out of my sight yesterday evening ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... go on. He was not sure that the boy had put himself beyond the pale; merely, the boy's actions pointed that way. If he laid his own suspicions boldly before the girl, and in the end the boy came clean, he would always be haunted by the witless cruelty ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... tell thee how I love thee best, And all my thoughts of thee shall be confess'd And none withheld, not e'en the witless one Which late I harbor'd when the mounting sun Burst from a cloud,—the moon a mile away, As if in hiding from the lord of day,— As if, at times, the moon were like thyself, And fear'd the semblance ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... her last hope, but in one instant's scrutiny she saw that this had vanished, too. Some terrible thought had sobered and engrossed him. Now he was eyeing her like a witless thing, his features drawn, his eyes burning. The moment was charged ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... gaed wi' Jeanie to the tryste, He danc'd wi' Jeanie on the down; And, lang ere witless Jeanie wist, Her heart was ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... none run women down, but such as are too old, or too ill-favoured, or too witless to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... you,"—she had meant to say "that arm," I judge, but there was a break in her voice, a swift movement, and she suddenly said "this arm," with a little shudder in which she could not meet my eyes; for, such as the arm was, she had finished her speech from within it. Close I held her, like a witless moonling, forgetting all resolves, all lessons, all treaties—all but that she ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... abuse, The coarse, unfeeling, witless jest, The threat obscene, the oath profuse, And all ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... clattering tongue of an active wife. As I once related to you, I recently went to New York, and there encountered sundry adventures, not all of them of a diverting nature. One you know, and it reeks in my memory with stale cigars, witless talk, and all the other monotonous symbols of Bohemia. Ah, that blessed Bohemia, whose coast no man ever explored except gentle Will Shakespeare! It is no-man's-land; never was and never will be. Its misty, alluring signals have ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... after awhile with that indefinable interjection of displeasure which defies all spelling. "You talk like the witless creature that you are. Didn't I tell the lad, two years ago, Michaelmas was, that the day he could pay off the mortgage on the farm, he should have you and the farm too? And eight hundred and fifty florins oughtn't to frighten a ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... foolish one, witless on whose side the gods were fighting that day, discharged yet other missiles, wavering and wide of the mark; for his wind had been taken with the first clod, and he shot wildly, as one already desperate and in flight. I got ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... the water," Jimmy Kelly said, "and were about to dive when one of the enemy skyrocketed up. He was blue in the face and scared witless. We hauled him out and then started to dive again. And along came Scotty, half dead and babbling about you. I started straight down to get you, but you met me halfway." He grinned. "You weren't in very good shape, either, for a ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... which he had ranked himself among imperishable things. He wondered a little if he hadn't at last, balancing always on the stretched tight-rope of his wit, fallen over on the wrong side. He had never before, of a truth, been so nearly witless, and would have to have gone mad in short to become so singularly simple. Perhaps indeed he was acting only more than usual in his customary spirit—thoughtfully contributing, for Nick's enlivenment, a purple rim of mystery to an horizon ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... tottering fortress of the ultra-masculine, abetted by a petty handful of witless traitors—those petticoated creatures who also see in women nothing but their sex. They may be, in some cases, honest in their belief; but their honesty does no credit to their intelligence. They are obsessed by this dominant idea of sex; due clearly ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... the costly offerings I had brought With sudden rust and mould grew dim: I found his tomb, indeed, where, by their laws, All must on stated days themselves imprison, Mocking with bread a dead creed's grinning jaws, Witless how long the life had thence arisen; Due sacrifice to this they set apart, Prizing it more ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... immediately take steps to tell the public what has happened, why I feel that it is necessary to put a man like Colonel Walther Mannheim in charge of the Nipe affair and keep him in charge until the matter is cleared up. Because the public is going to be scared witless if we don't do something ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Witless, jester to a noble and free-born man, Cedric of Rotherwood, called the Saxon: and I, Gurth, the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... refreshing shower of rain—truly refreshing to my thirsty soul, for it gave me that coveted whole glance. Heavens! I actually staggered, and would undoubtedly have fallen had it not been for a friendly sappling—you will sneer at witless I—that grew near me. But just try the effect upon yourself—a shock of electricity is nothing in comparison to a shock from a pair of bright eyes—such eyes as hers. The truth of the case was here, of a sudden, apparently from out the clear sky, came down, with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... extensive ground, Gilet lived very comfortably, although without a personal income. And that is why Max with certain inherited qualities and defects rashly went to live with his supposed natural father, Jean-Jacques Rouget, a rich and witless old bachelor who was under the thumb of a superb servant-mistress, Flore Brazier, known as La Rabouilleuse. After 1816 Gilet lorded it over the household; the handsome chap had won the heart of Mlle. Brazier. Surrounded by a sort of staff, Maxence contested the important inheritance ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... enough, upon the flank of Borrow. They are the three volumes of "Pugilistica," given me years ago by my old friend, Robert Barr, a mine in which you can never pick for half an hour without striking it rich. Alas! for the horrible slang of those days, the vapid witless Corinthian talk, with its ogles and its fogles, its pointless jokes, its maddening habit of italicizing a word or two in every sentence. Even these stern and desperate encounters, fit sports for the men of Albuera and Waterloo, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... say it! I, who had been so witless to let this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless to admit ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the speech men think that Halfdan spoke: he warned us it would soon come to pass that an understanding father should beget a witless son. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... hope from men of liberal mind, Faults, that indulgence crave, shall seek and find; For whose blames and of despite decries, Is wight right witless, clean ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Wimondesola Guilliam Wind Edward Windgate Joseph Windsor Stephen Wing Jacob Wingman Samuel Winn Jacob Winnemore Seth Winslow Charles Winter George Winter Joseph Winters David Wire John Wise Thomas Witham John Witherley Solomon Witherton William Withpane William Witless Robert Wittington W. Wittle John Woesin Henry Woist Henry Wolf John Wolf Simon de Wolf Stephen de Wolf Champion Wood Charles Wood (3) Daniel Wood (4) Edward Wood (2) George Wood Jabez Wood John Wood Jonathan Wood Joseph Wood (2) Justus Wood Matthew Wood Samuel Wood (2) William Wood ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... people without any fineness either of feeling or mind, unable to understand her misery, grossly curious, mistaking her manner for disdain, her silent shrinking for pride. The wife of the "odious person" was witless and fatuously conceited. Of the two girls of the house one was pious and the other a romp; both were coarse-minded—if they may be credited with any mind at all. The rather numerous men of the family were dense and grumpy, or dense and jocose. None in that grubbing ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... file, along the street, on their way to a holiday in the country. They halt, and count themselves with an air of triumph, to show that they are all there. Their gay chatter has disturbed a little group of peasants; a young woman and her husband, who have brought the old mother, now past work and witless, to place her in a house provided for such afflicted people. They are fairly affectionate, but anxious how the thing they have to do may go—hope only she may permit them to leave her there behind quietly. And the poor old soul is excited by the noise made ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... fashion among fools of both sexes to sneer at Susan B. Anthony and use her name to point witless jokes. But it seems to us—and we differ from her most emphatically on the question of woman suffrage—that her brave, unselfish life reflects a credit on womanhood which the follies of a thousand others can ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... tie or fetter, it couldna been better, But it would gae witless the world to see; The foe that it fear'd not, it saw not, it heard not, Was watching its wand'ring frae ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a witless azzy!" blurted Hodge. "If a 's so great a man amongst the lords and earlses, a 'd na come back to Stratford. An' I say a 's a witless ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... until he got balance for another leap. I followed the animal, knowing him wiser in such matters than I. From time to time Orivie urged me to ride and when I refused gave me the knowing look bestowed upon the witless, the glance of the asylum-keeper upon the lunatic who ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... identification of privileged noble with conquering Frank was of older date; and in this century it has been made the master-key to modern history. When Thierry discovered the secret of our national development in the remarks of Wamba the Witless to Gurth, under the Sherwood oaks, he applied to us a formula familiar to his countrymen; and Guizot always defined French history as a perpetual struggle between hostile nations until the eighteenth century made good the wrong that was done in ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... new and complex sensation. Uncle Charles had grown so witless that he could no longer be sent out on errands and the disorder in settling in the new house left Stephen freer than he had been in Blackrock. In the beginning he contented himself with circling timidly round the neighbouring ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... and, compared with the whites, 'animals, incapable of mental culture and moral improvement:' to this I can only reply, that if they are incapable of profiting by instruction, I do not see the necessity for laws inflicting heavy penalties on those who offer it to them. If they really are brutish, witless, dull, and devoid of capacity for progress, where lies the danger which is constantly insisted upon of offering them that of which they are incapable. We have no laws forbidding us to teach our dogs and horses as much as they can comprehend; nobody is fined or imprisoned ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... and the Crusades were to the witty son of Witless, Mexico and her politics are to moderns, not even excepting the predestined devourers of the Aztec land, who ought to know something of the country they purpose bringing within the full light of civilization through the aid of slaughter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... over the eyes, have a glimmering &c n.; wonder whether; not know what to make of &c (unintelligibility) 519; not pretend to take upon, not take upon one self to say. Adj. ignorant; nescient; unknowing, unaware, unacquainted, unapprised, unapprized^, unwitting, unweeting^, unconscious; witless, weetless^; a stranger to; unconversant^. uninformed, uncultivated, unversed, uninstructed, untaught, uninitiated, untutored, unschooled, misguided, unenlightened; Philistine; behind the age. shallow, superficial, green, rude, empty, half-learned, illiterate; unread, uninformed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... inches deep, and covered themselves with their clothes, their wraps, their filthy rugs, and tattered rags, and were as warm as possible. The tents had many advantages over a brick house. Besides having no draughts, there was no accumulation of snow upon the tops of the tents; and so these witless people were content to endure poverty, hunger, cold, and dirt for the sake of minimising their contribution to the general good of the whole commonwealth. The poorest working man in London who does an honest week's ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... quoth the Duke, "ye are witless, in faith, for there is no man here but is without wine, as in song ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... has run away from school, and is defiantly ready to take all the consequences of his disobedience to the rules of discipline and order. For years he had wanted a "new" experience of life. No one would give him what he sought. To him the "social" round was ever the same dreary, heartless and witless thing, as empty under the sway of one king or queen as another, and as utterly profitless to peace or happiness as it has always been. The world of finance was equally uninteresting so far as he was concerned; he ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... with pennoned spear, To prance upon a bold destrere: I will not have black Care prevail Upon my long-eared charger's tail, For lo, I am a witless fool, And laugh at Grief and ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its influence is not exerted to promote the cause of truth." He was true to his promise. The free soul of a free, strong man spoke out in his paper. How refreshing was it, after listening to the inanities, the dull, witless vulgarity, the wearisome commonplace of journalists, who had no higher aim than to echo, with parrot-like exactness, current prejudices and falsehoods, to turn to the great and generous thoughts, the chaste ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... made the swathe better there than any where else," they reply. "Witless now is Njal," says Hallgerda, "though he knows how to give counsel ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... had for years appeared so weak and witless, possessed in reality that fine quality of brain and heart which is so often a prey to the temptation of intoxicants. He was now working out all the theory of the new life in a mind that would not flinch before, or shirk the gleams of truth struck from, sharp contact of fact with fact as ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... witless, he had been floundering forward for over an hour, and made circle after circle knowing, when, by chance he set foot in a ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... There was a witless vanity about my friend that sat on him almost like a virtue. He made parade of his crafts less, I could see, because he thought much of them, than because he wanted to keep himself on an equality with me. In the same way, as I hinted ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... am learned, Madam," said Hugh modestly. "I am younger even than you, methinks, and far more witless. But I have heard them say that have been deep skilled, as methinks, in the ministeries [mysteries] of God, that wherein it is said that 'He mai save withouten ende,' it scarce signifieth ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... strength and might of Englishmen with this clerkly lore, so that her folk may have the better of them in France; and the poor, witless King gives in to her. And so while the ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... morning light, she cried out in amazement first, and then in rage—deeming me one of those parasites who tramp the world in the garb of folly, seeking here a dinner, there a bed, in exchange for some scurvy tumbling or some witless jests. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the cold-blooded statement. The shock of it produced a beating in the head, and a sickness. And I felt foolish, as though I might do something lunatic, like giving a witless shout, or running amok with a table-knife. I touched Doe, and whispered: "I'm going to get out of this. The old fool doesn't know ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... hyacinth, and upon it the ship lit up, her masts and sails glowing like a gold piece. And there was Billy, leaning over the bulwarks and waving his trumpet for "Good-bye!" Thought I, for I little dream'd to see these good fellows again, "what a witless game is this life! to seek ever in fresh conjunctions what we leave behind in a hand shake." 'Twas a cheap reflection, yet it vex'd me that as we turn'd to mount the road ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... the women therefore essayed the journey; but was so clumsy as to attract the enemy's attention. She was seized and made to confess how the house was protected and where it was most likely to fall before a sharp assault. Being a witless wench, she told them truly, and Master Ford then bade her help them collect sticks and leaves in order that they might be able to fire the place as a ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... dignity in danger, giving each other a sympathetic, if transitory, regret—one sorry that another "should be foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack." Words which seem to exhaust man's deepest sentiment concerning death and life are put on the lips of a gilded, witless youth; and the saintly Isabella feels fire creep along her, kindling her tongue to eloquence at the suggestion of shame. In places the shadow deepens: death intrudes itself on the scene, as among other [175] things "a great disguiser," blanching the features of youth and spoiling its goodly ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Doctor Holmes's trenchant sayings have become a heritage in our households, detached often from their original kinship, and seeming like the rightful property of every one who utters them. It is an amusing, barefaced, witless sort of robbery, yet surely not without its compensations; for it must be a pleasant thing to reflect in old age that the general murkiness of life has been lit up here and there by sparks struck from one's youthful fire, and that these sparks, though they wander occasionally masterless ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... him as we have with Byron's Corsair. When he stalks across the serious stage and rages and fumes and wipes his bloody sword, we are inclined to smile or to yawn. As for the villain Franz, with his abysmal depravity, and Amalia, with her witless sentimentalism, we find it hard to take them seriously; they do not produce a good illusion. And then the whole style of the piece, the violent and ribald language, the savage action, the rant and swagger, the shooting and stabbing,—all ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... now paints with liquid gold, will outrange the guns of a king's ship." Pausing, she bent upon the murmuring crew a look of blazing majesty; then concluded with a vibrant demand: "Now dost know why thy queen withheld thy senseless hands from witless destruction?" ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young. They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon. And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell, And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!) Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop, ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... Though strait the passage and the port [70] be made That leads to palace of my brother's life, Proud is [71] his fortune if we pierce it not; And, when the princely Persian diadem Shall overweigh his weary witless head, And fall, like mellow'd fruit, with shakes of death, In fair [72] Persia noble Tamburlaine Shall be my ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... cry from the north, a howl of witless fear. The singers stopped in mid-note, the drummer paused, his hand uplifted. Dane darted forward in a plunge which carried him to that man. The Khatkan did not have time to rise from his knees as the barrel of the ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... affectation of taking me off in speech and manner, was persuaded by the stricken mother to sing. "Sing that dear old plantation melody from London," she cried, "so that my poor boy may know there are worse things than death." And all this witless piffle because of a quite natural ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... didst thou detect in me Some touch of cowardice or witlessness, That made thee undertake this enterprise? I seemed forsooth too simple to perceive The serpent stealing on me in the dark, Or else too weak to scotch it when I saw. This thou art witless seeking to possess Without a following or friends the crown, A prize that followers and ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... idea to advance, but with the lessening of her fear and the gradual clearing of her mind she felt that she would not much longer be witless. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... And he talked and told me tales of the war unwaged as yet, And the victory never won, and bade me never forget, While I walked on, still unhappy, by the home of the dark-striped perch. Till at last, with a flash of light and a rattle and side-long lurch, I woke up dazed and witless, till my sorrow awoke again, And the grey of the morn was upon us as we sped through the poplar plain, By the brimming streams and the houses with their grey roofs warped and bent, And the horseless plough in the furrow, and things fair and innocent. And there ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... (unintelligibility) 519; not pretend to take upon, not take upon one self to say. Adj. ignorant; nescient; unknowing, unaware, unacquainted, unapprised, unapprized[obs3], unwitting, unweeting|, unconscious; witless, weetless[obs3]; a stranger to; unconversant[obs3]. uninformed, uncultivated, unversed, uninstructed, untaught, uninitiated, untutored, unschooled, misguided, unenlightened; Philistine; behind the age. shallow, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... night Set all its stars upon them as for spies On many a moon-bewildering mountain-height Where he rode only by the fierier light Of his dread lady's hot sweet hungering eyes. For the moon wandered witless of her way, Spell-stricken by strong magic in such wise As wizards use to set the stars astray. And in his ears the music that makes mad Beat always; and what way the music bade, That alway rode he; nor was any sleep His, nor from height nor ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... hardened properly, the mold was either held over the fire, or thrust in hot water half a minute, then the candles withdrawn by help of the reeds. They were cooled a bit, to save the softened outside, then nubbed of surplus wick, and laid in a dish outside. Careless or witless molders, by laying candles still soft upon the pile, often made themselves ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... their intolerable leisure to preparing an edition from which everything resembling an idea shall be excluded. We might then shut up our Marlowes and our Beaumonts and resume our reading of the bard, and the witless foists would confer happiness on many, and crown themselves with truly immortal bays. See the fellows! their fingers catch at scanty wisps of hair, the lamps are burning, the long pens are poised, and idea after idea is hurled out ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... well; but, Malcolm, you merit something from the damsel. You are ten times the man you were when she flouted you. If women were not mostly witless, you would be much to be preferred to any mere Ajax or Fierabras; and if this damsel should have come to the wiser mind that it were pity to be buried ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "The witless are under the protection of God," stammered a flat-cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. "They foretell ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... face towards her niece. It was a kindly face, but infinitely sad and lined with more cares than fall to the lot of most women of her age. The ingratitude of sons, the death of daughters, the poor troubled husband, old and witless in the King Charles ground-floor suite, weeping for his lost eyesight or sitting smiling mirthlessly over his violin, had marked her. But in spite of all she had kept the cult ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... three lads of ten or twelve in front, whose feet have known sunburn and frost but never a shoe, and a damsel or two in cotton homespun dress made of one piece from collar to hem, and pantalettes of the same reaching to the ankles—all standing and looking the picture of witless incapacity, and making no plea against tyranny! Is that a thing worth while to turn and look back upon? If the blow fell upon ourselves or our set, that would be different; but these illiterate and lowly ones—they are—you don't know—so dull and insensible. Yes, it may be true that it is ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the devil cannot suffer it. He must divide hearts and alienate love, allowing no one to take pleasure in another. He who is illustrious, of noble birth, or has power or riches, feels bound to despise others as silly geese or witless ducks. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... greatness of its glory, and of Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon! Now my story of this marvellous ignorance on the part of the poor monks is one upon which (though depending on my own testimony) I look “with considerable suspicion.” It is quite true (how silly it would be to invent anything so witless!), and yet I think I could satisfy the mind of a “reasonable man” that it is false. Many of the older monks must have been in Europe at the time when the Italy and the Spain from which they came were in act of taking their French lessons, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the old nurse it had seemed wise that the witless one should go to her bed, instead of into that gay scene at the barn. Luna had decided otherwise. Commonly so drowsy and willing to sleep anywhere and anyhow, she was this night wide awake. Nothing could persuade her to stay indoors, nothing that is, short ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... with him once more, the smouldering fire of his quarrel with the Harveys had burst again into flame. "Have with you to Saffron Walden," 1596, is devoted to the chastisement of "the reprobate brace of brothers, to wit, witless Gabriel and ruffling Richard." No fresh public outburst on Harvey's part seems to have led to this attack; but he bragged in private that he had silenced his licentious antagonists. Nash admits that his opponent's last book "has been kept idle by me, in a bye-settle out of sight amongst ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... princes, and, offence being given, never to flatter themselves that it has been pardoned; to live joyfully as long as they can, for men are for the most part worn out by care; never to take a wife from a witless stock or one tainted with hereditary disease; to refrain from deliberating when the mind is disturbed; to learn how to be worsted and suffer loss; and to trust a school-master to teach children, but not to feed them. One of the dicta is a gem of quaint wisdom. "Before you begin to ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... contemptuous glance of his gentleman-comrade taught him that falsehood was poltroonery. Blasphemous tongues learned to rein in their filthiness when this "beau lion" sauntered away from the picket-fire, on an icy night, to be out of hearing of their witless obscenities. More than once the weight of his arm and the slash of his saber had called them to account in fiery fashion for their brutality to women or their thefts from the country people, till they grew aware that "Bel-a-faire-peur" would risk having all their swords ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... foretop-gallant sail, and to my starting eyes she seemed to grow as I watched her. She was coming my way, and I have little doubt that, in the weakness of the moment and the sudden leap of hope when hope seemed dead, I laughed and cried and behaved like a witless man. I know that I prayed God, as I had never prayed in my life before, that she might keep her course and come close enough for some sharp eye to ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... came betimes, and, with his wife, witnessed the play from the large stage boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely draped with the national flag. The acts and scenes of the piece—one of those singularly witless compositions which have at the least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic or spiritual ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Jacky," coaxed his poor witless wife. "He's struck wi' her—you can see that. He called her Coz! He'll marry her, most likely, and make a lady of her; and then she'll ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... courageous as he was, ever attained to a more sublime indifference to calumny or depreciation. Having proved in his boyhood, at Fontarabia, and in his maturity: at Muhlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage; when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense. Conscious of holding his armies in his hand, by the power of an unrivalled discipline, and the magic of a name illustrated by a hundred triumphs, he, could bear with patience and benevolence the murmurs ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... him a Persian wife, no, three or four wives—although I have heard the custom of these witless Greeks is to be content with only one. There is no surer way to turn his heart ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... turn to letter G, article "GREEN," you will see that the Verdant Greens are a family of some respectability and of considerable antiquity. We meet with them as early as 1096, flocking to the Crusades among the followers of Peter the Hermit, when one of their number, Greene surnamed the Witless, mortgaged his lands in order to supply his poorer companions with the sinews of war. The family estate, however, appears to have been redeemed and greatly increased by his great-grandson, Hugo de Greene, but was again jeoparded in the year 1456, when Basil Greene, being commissioned ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... weak. When such a one tries to recall a date, or name, or place, or idea, or book, it frequently happens that the endeavor fails utterly. The more he tries, the more obstinately the desired object fails to respond. As the poet Pope wrote about the witless author: ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... hour Of healthy human intercourse and peace. 'T is not for me to tarry by the way. Farewell!" The impetuous, remorseful boy, Seeing sharp pain on that kind countenance, Fell at his feet and cried, "Forgive my words, Witless but innocent, and leave me not Without a blessing." Moved unutterably, The pilgrim kissed with trembling lips his head, And muttered, "At this moment would to God That I were worthy!" Then waved wasted hands Over the youth in act of blessing him, But faltered, "Cleanse me through his innocence, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Witless little Picklepip Manned again his mental ship And veered her with a sudden shift. Painted to the lady's thought How he wrestled and ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... to woman be a friend? I deal with man, and when I can Reclaim with interest all I lend. Who but a witless gambler plays For farthing stakes these golden days? No, woman—woman—woman— Must only play the ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... stand for her once in November When first she breathed, witless of all; Or in heavy years she would remember When circumstance held her in thrall; Or at last, when she answered ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... meager affair, just enough for comfort; it was far too small for the new style of wholesale entertainment which the plutocracy has introduced from England, where the lunacy for aimless and extravagant display rages and ravages in its full horror of witless vulgarity. Thus, the Severences from being leaders twenty years before, had shrunk into "quiet people," were saved from downright obscurity and social neglect only by the indomitable will and tireless energy ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... is as much my companion when I admire her on the stage from my seat in the pit. There are times when my wife seems no nearer to me than a beautiful picture. If I sit in a corner, and listen to her pretty babble about the last fan she bought at the Middle Exchange, or the last witless comedy she saw at the King's Theatre, is that companionship, think you? I may be charmed to-day—as I was charmed ten years ago—with the silvery sweetness of her voice, with the graceful turn of her head, the white roundness of her throat. At least I am constant. There ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... dear Hector! Look how thou diest. Look how thy eye turns pale. Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents. Hark how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out; How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth; Behold distraction, frenzy, and amazement, Like witless antics, one another meet, And all cry, Hector! Hector's ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... rose and fled in terror through the night, All witless whither her weak steps might stray, As some freed bird first wings its rapid flight From its close prison to the realms of day; But on a sudden beam'd an inward light Upon her troubled soul and bid her stay, With the warm blood sent swiftly to her cheeks, The ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the dog, and the witless sheep, Are bound to come home, for the snow will be deep. The mother is pickling a scornful word To throw at the head of the elder lad, Hugh; But talkative Jamie, as gay as a bird, Will have nothing beaten save snow from his shoe. He has fire in his eyes, he has curls on his head, And a silver ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... trouble. "You know the setup. But both sets are missing. Both sets." He raised his head, the picture of witless agony. "I've got an idea where they are, too. I'm just waiting for ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... very grand intrenchment, and a thousand years ere that perhaps it was still grander; for learned men say that it was a British work, wrought out before the Danes had ever learned to build a ship. Whatever, however, may be argued about that, the wise and the witless do agree about one thing—the stronghold inside it had been held by Danes, while severed by the Dike from inland parts, and these Danes made a good colony of their own, and left to their descendants distinct speech and manners, some ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... significant words, "to rid a treacherous subject. When Justice can take no place by process of law at home, sometimes she may be enforced to take new means abroad." But he had left hostages in Henry's hands. "Pity that the folly of one witless fool," Cromwell wrote ominously, "should be the ruin of so great a family. Let him follow ambition as fast as he can, those that little have offended (saving that he is of their kin), were it not for the great mercy and benignity of ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... Dean's "Frequent reproaching the [132] Animadverter with the Character of a Wit, tho join'd with such ill-favour'd Epithets, as his witless Malice has thought fit to degrade it with, as that he is a spiteful Wit, a wrangling Wit, a satirical Wit, and the WITTY, subtle, good-natur'd Animadverter, &c. the Dr. says, that tho there be but little Wit shewn in making such Charges; yet if Wit be a Reproach (be it ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... those two Truths, each gazing upon each, Embraced like sisters, thenceforth one. For her No arduous thing was Faith, ere yet she heard In heart believing: and, as when a babe Marks some bright shape, if near or far, it knows not, And stretches forth a witless hand to clasp Phantom or form, even so with wild surmise And guesses erring first, and questions apt, She chased the flying light, and round it closed At last, and found it substance. "This is He." Then cried she, "This, whom every maid should love, Conqueror self-sacrificed ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... For nature, heartless, witless nature, Will neither care nor know What stranger's feet may find the meadow And trespass there and go, Nor ask amid the dews of morning If ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... our railways, let me merely remark here that we have always insisted upon one uniform gauge and everything we buy fits into and develops our existing railway system. Nothing is more indicative of the wambling sort of parent and a coterie of witless, worthless uncles than a heap of railway toys of different gauges and natures in the children's playroom. And so, having told you of the material we have, let me now tell you of one or two games (out of the innumerable many) that we have played. Of course, in this ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... Greek chorus. He anticipated all the possible phases of drunkenness that awaited his companions. He went from silence to noisy mirth, when his unmeaning laughter rang through the house; he told long witless stories as he leaned against the bar; he became melancholy and described the loss of his wife five years before. From melancholy he passed to sullenness and seemed ready to fasten a quarrel on Yancy, but the latter deftly evaded any ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... filled with fear, Your shuddering hoot seems some bleak grief that croons Mockery and terror; or,—beneath the moon's Cloud-hurrying glimmer,—to the startled ear, Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes, The witless wit of outcast Edgar there In the wild night; or, wan with all despair, The mirthless laughter of the Fool ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... up at the lunar orb again as if in irrational appeal—a moon calf bleating to his mother the moon. But the face of Luna seemed as witless as his own; there is no help in nature against the supernatural; and he looked again at the tall marble figure that might have been made out of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Then, quite inconveniently, Mrs. Terry took leave of her senses. She was violent in her efforts to throw herself in the mill pond. She was sent to the asylum and remained there three years—until she was no longer violent. Then she was brought home, still witless, but able in a mechanical way from long habit to do the things she had always done. Terry thought that this was better than hiring some one. His children had married or "run off" and left him. So the old wife went back into the treadmill. She was obsessed with ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... which the characters of two robbers escaped from the galleys were introduced—Robert Macaire, the clever rogue above mentioned, and Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice, butt, and scapegoat, on all occasions of danger. It is needless to describe the play—a witless performance enough, of which the joke was Macaire's exaggerated style of conversation, a farrago of all sorts of high-flown sentiments such as the French love to indulge in—contrasted with his actions, which were philosophically unscrupulous, and his appearance, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... happier Orpheus stood unbound, And shamed it with a sweeter song. His mode be mine. Of Heav'n I ask, May I, with heart-persuading might, Pursue the Poet's sacred task Of superseding faith by sight, Till ev'n the witless Gadarene, Preferring Christ to swine, shall know That life is sweetest when it's clean. To prouder folly let me show Earth by divine light made divine; And let the saints, who hear my word, Say, 'Lo, the clouds begin to shine About the coming of ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... Ah, witless! it was to solve this very riddle that rode by my side now, to answer the question of the Sphinx. What had come of all my studies? Not so much as I was learning now, here in the open, with this sweet ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... seven children, six of them boys and the seventh a girl. They were very poor and all had to work hard for a living, but the drudges of the family were the youngest son, Yvon, and his sister, Yvonne. Because they were gentler and more delicate than the others, they were looked upon as poor, witless creatures, and all the hardest work was given them to do. But the children comforted each other, and became but the better favoured ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... poor fool! For it is in the presence of a fool, gentlemen, that we now find ourselves, and the case is all the more curious, all the more interesting, seeing that, in many points, it recalls the insanity of the unfortunate prince who recently died, of the witless king who reigned platonically over Bavaria. I shall hence ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the pool outside—cannot you hear them, Jac Hallen?" Impatience came to his voice; in truth, I must have been staring at him witless. "Maidens out there, Jac Hallen, who are seeking handsome youths like yourself for escort. Must I speak plainly? You ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... Ho thou! Wilt thou plead some errand hither from my sister? Dost thou deem me so witless as not to know that if she had sent thee hither thou wouldst not have come in this plight? Nay, I know; thou hast stolen thyself from her: thou art a thief, and as a thief ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... KING. Yet to die were witless, When Death, who with his fatal finger taps At princely doors, as freely as he gives His summons to the serf, may at this instant Have sealed the only life that throws a shade Between ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... At this witless, sweet impudence the Canadian looked very sheepish—for a beaver; and all the other people laughed; but the noble historical shades of Basil's thought vanished in wounded dignity beyond recall, and left him feeling rather ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his chamber is lanced through and through by the notes of a street bagpiper? When his harrassed brain should be solaced by music, will he listen patiently to stupid remarks? I fear not. The man of letters suffers keenlier than people suspect from sharp, cruel noises, from witless observations, from social misconceptions of him of every kind, from hard utilitarian wisdom, and from his own good things going to the grave unrecognised and unhonoured. And, forced to live by his pen, to extract from his brain bread and beer, clothing, lodging, and income-tax, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... or bird to this rough steep Your kind's first seed did bear; The breeze had better been asleep, The bird caught in a snare: [4] For you and your green twigs decoy 45 The little witless shepherd-boy To come and slumber in your bower; And, trust me, on some sultry noon, Both you and he, Heaven knows how soon! Will perish in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... the dull and witless, that he has established a class for the acquirement of an elegant and ready style of punning, on the pure Joe-millerian principle. The very worst hands are improved in six short and mirthful lessons. As a specimen of his capability, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... better been asleep, Whatever thing it were, Or Breeze, or Bird, or fleece of Sheep, That first did plant you there. For you and your green twigs decoy The little witless Shepherd-boy To come and slumber in your bower; And trust me, on some sultry noon, Both you and he, Heaven knows how soon! Will perish in ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... askest this,' said Folk-might, 'but thereof shall I tell thee, that when a Dusky Carle mingles with a woman of the Dale, the child which she beareth shall oftenest favour his race and not hers; or else shall it be witless, a fool natural. But as for the children of these poor thralls; yea, the masters cause them to breed if so their masterships will, and when the children are born, they keep them or slay them as they will, as they would with ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... to the fate of the lost sheep was so plain, as to admit of no misinterpretation of the meaning of the witless speaker. Animals of that class were of the last importance to the comfort of the settlers, and there was not probably one within hearing of Whittal Ring, that was at all ignorant of the import of his words. Indeed, the loud chuckle and the open and deriding manner with which ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... his eyes and rocked to and fro, "I laugh—who would not—that such a witless baby should talk of his sin. You know not what sin is, you ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... to use two English words to translate that single Greek one. The 'cunning' workman, thoughtful in experience, touch, and vision of the thing to be done; no machine, witless, and of necessary motion; yet not cunning only, but having perfect habitual skill of hand also; the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect, in connection with this passage of Pindar, Homer's ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... and Dact, whose full names were Trochee, Iambus, Spondee and Dactyl. Now Spond was the greatest and heaviest of the wolfhounds; Anap, rightly Anapaest, was a slender and swift greyhound; and whereas he found this pastime of names good sport he carried it further. Thus it came to pass that the witless creatures who shared his loneliness were reminders of many pleasant things. One of a pair of fleet bloodhounds which were ever leashed together was named Nich, and the other Syn, in memory that he had been betrothed on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
