"Asinine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where—promoting cabals in favor of a General, and exciting opposition, in order to eventually crush him—urging Southern rights and amnesties—deluding and confounding every thing. No wonder, after all, that the London Times, comprehending nothing, should have been so wildly asinine as to see in the Message only a bid to conciliate the South!—a timid, making-up measure. The Times is behind our times, and no wonder, when a Russell flounders about for it among us, becoming more densely befogged and confused with every new idea which entangles ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and so he stared again, and again, and again, till at last Rudesheimer, by dint of kicking his shins under the table, the Margrave the whole time seeming perfectly motionless, at length extracted a sentence from the asinine Landgrave. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... followed Jennie from Cleveland to Chicago, how she had been coy and distant and that he had to court her a long time to win her consent. This was to explain their living together on the North Side. Lester realized that this was an asinine attempt to sugar-coat the true story and it made him angry. Still he preferred to have it that way rather than in some more brutal vein. He took the paper out of his pocket when he arrived at the house, spreading ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... trifling too long on this asinine subject. I have already passed the Pons Asinorum, and will desist, remembering the old pedantic pun of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... least consoling to feel that only a very small minority of those who read this is destined to enliven our thoroughfares with such grotesque images as is furnished by the plate for 1945. The confidently asinine demeanour of this youth is hardly relieved by the absurdity of a watch suspended by a chain from the crown of his hat. That society protested against this aspect of idiocy is evinced by the harmonious costume for 1950, in which a complete revolution is to be noted. We ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... which native humour reigns Is often useful, always entertains, A graver fact enlisted on your side, May furnish illustration, well applied; But sedentary weavers of long tales, Give me the fidgets and my patience fails. 'Tis the most asinine employ on earth, To hear them tell of parentage and birth, And echo conversations dull and dry, Embellished with, he said, and so said I. At ev'ry interview their route the same, The repetition makes attention lame, We bustle up with unsuccessful speed, And ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... loyalty of Englishmen to make them meanly submissive; their piety is turned into persecution, their courage into useless and obstinate contention; they are plundered because they are ready to pay, and soothed into asinine stupidity because they are full of virtuous patience. If England must perish at last, so let it be: that event is in the hands of God; we must dry up our tears and submit. But that England should perish swindling and stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar houses ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... prove overwhelming and for encountering which there could be no excuse. He knew he had been idiotic now, for he could see indications that Indians were closing in on him from every side; but, worse than that, he knew that he had added to his idiocy a performance that was simply asinine: he had lost his temper and said an outrageous thing to Ray, and some of the men had heard it. From earliest dawn the lieutenant had been out with the pickets eagerly scanning the surrounding country. Indians, of course, were not to be seen. They kept out of sight behind the bluffs and ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... little far. For it affirms that people are a confounded nuisance at art exhibitions, and should not be permitted to be there, to distract one's attention from the peaceful contemplation of works of art, and to infuriate one by their asinine remarks in the holy presence of beauty. I have heard it declared with very impressive spirit, and reasoned with much force, that only one person, or at most only one person and his chosen companion, should be allowed in an art gallery at a time. ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... so often affect when disinclined to talk or to make themselves agreeable,—and there was a pleasantly subdued murmur of voices,—cultured voices, well-attuned, and incapable of breaking into the sheep-like snigger or asinine bray. Innocent, keeping close beside her "god- mother," watched the animated scene with happy interest, unconscious that many of those present watched her in turn with a good deal of scarcely restrained curiosity. For, somehow or other, rumour had whispered a flying word or two that it ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... puddle of black water. The clothes have to be re-washed; the ammunition-box, thanks to my provision, was waterproof. Kamna perhaps knew the art of donkey-driving, but, overjoyful at the departure, had sung himself into oblivion of the difficulties with which an animal of the pure asinine breed has naturally to contend against, such as not knowing the right road, and inability to resist the temptation of straying into the depths of a manioc field; and the donkey, ignorant of the custom in vogue amongst ass-drivers of flourishing sticks before ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... state: That is masculine which belongs to the male—to any or all males, irrespective of species. That is feminine which belongs to the female, to any or all females, irrespective of species. That is ovine, bovine, feline, canine, equine or asinine which belongs to that species, irrespective ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... seemed a little monster in my eyes, who ought to have been sent out of the way at once of all companions capable of abandon and enjoyment; and, as to the "father" she quoted from, I could imagine him as the embodiment of asinine wisdom, so to speak—the quintessence of the practical, which so often, I observe, inclines its ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... condescending to be worshipped by a crowd of fawning slaves, civilian, soldier and sailor of all stations and ranks, from purple-faced admirals and general officers to pink, downy-whiskered subalterns. 'Egad, Loveliness,' says I, jerking at my cravat, 'what asinine fools brave men and gallant gentlemen can make of themselves for lovely woman—look yonder!' 'Where?' says she. 'There!' says I, 'the dark, dazzling beauty yonder!' So Loveliness looks, and at ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... in the midst. Such perceptions made occasions—well, occasions for fairly wondering if it mightn't be best just to consent, luxuriously, to be the ass the whole thing involved. Trying not to be and yet keeping in it was of the two things the more asinine. He was glad there was no male witness; it was a circle of petticoats; he shouldn't have liked a man to see him. He only had for a moment a sharp thought of Sir Luke Strett, the great master of the knife whom Kate in London had spoken ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... agitator, a lazy, dissipated mechanic, perverting his fellow workmen, constantly spouting the ill-digested odds and ends of political harangues that he had heard, belching forth in the same breath the loftiest sentiments and the most asinine revolutionary clap-trap. He knew it all, and tried to inoculate his comrades with his ideas, especially Lapoulle, of whom he had promised to make a lad ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... an illustration—an interpretive picture—will help to hold us to its true purpose, for a purposeless story is of all offenses on the platform the most asinine. A perfectly capital joke will fall flat when it is dragged in by the nape without evident bearing on the subject under discussion. On the other hand, an apposite anecdote has saved many ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... is to produce the aspect of a madwoman in one of her worst fits. This method, less troublesome and costly than the other, may be considered even more striking, so that it is largely adopted by a number of persons who are rather disreputable, and poor. As is well known, not all of the asinine tribe wear asses' ears; nevertheless some of these votaries of dress find their ears too long, or too large, or ill-placed, or, what comes to the same thing, inconveniently placed, but a prettier or better-shaped pair are easily purchased, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Nance, and the most imbecile thing you could do just now, when your foot is already on the ladder, would be just this—to get off in order to pick up a trinket out of the mud, when there's a fortune up at the top waiting for you. Clever people don't do asinine things. And other clever people know that they don't. You're clever, but so am I—in my weak, small way. Come ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... preferred walking, and pushed on at a pace which suited none of my company, human or asinine. We had got ahead about a mile, when shouts from behind opened a scene perfectly ludicrous. There was the little mule trotting up the road at most unusual speed, impelled by my friend's shouts and the big stones with which he was pelting the miserable ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... and seemed greatly rejoiced at our arrival. — After tea, we were entertained with a sonata on the harpsichord by lady Bullford, who sung and played to admiration; but Sir Thomas seemed to be a little asinine in the article of ears, though he affected to be in raptures, and begged his wife to favour us with an arietta of her own composing. — This arietta, however, she no sooner began to perform, than he and the justice fell asleep; but the moment she ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... are twelve thousand horses, for one thing, to be shod, geared, kept roadworthy and regular; say six thousand country wagoners, thick-soled peasants: then, hanging to the skirts of these, in miscellaneous crazy vehicles and weak teams, equine and asinine, are one or two thousand sutler people, male and female, not of select quality, though on them, too, we keep a sharp eye. The series covers many miles, as many as twenty English miles (says Tempelhof), unless in favorable points you compress ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle |
