"Brained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ralph, as Snawley was about to speak. 'Let us cut this matter short, and not bandy words here with hare-brained profligates. This is your son, as you can prove. And you, Mr Squeers, you know this boy to be the same that was with you for so many years under the name of Smike. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... and weaker as the true humour of the project developed in his mind. He came at last to realise that Medcroft was in earnest, and that the situation was as serious as he pictured it. The Englishman's plea was unusual, but it was not as rattle-brained as it had seemed at the outset. Brock was beginning to see the possibilities that the ruse contained; to say the least, he would be running little or no risk in the event of its miscarriage. In spite of possible unpleasant consequences, there were the elements of a rare lark in ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... an Edison or a Roosevelt, seem to be constructed after the manner of a searchlight. All their energy may be turned in one direction and all the rest of the world disregarded. Others are what we call scatter- brained. They are unable to attend completely to any one thing. They respond constantly to stimulation in the environment and to ideas which seem to "pop up'' ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... his native country, had been a hairdresser, then a soldier in Prussia, and then had come to Russia to be "outchitel," without very well knowing the meaning of this word.[3] He was a good creature, but wonderfully absent and hare-brained. His greatest weakness was a love of the fair sex. Neither, as he said himself, was he averse to the bottle, that is, as we say in Russia, that his passion was drink. But, as in our house the wine only appeared at table, and then only in liqueur glasses, and as on these occasions ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... poet a worthy theme. There, alas! is my great lack—I have no poet. How wastefully on those who need them not are the most precious gifts bestowed! My uncle and godfather, Cardinal Ippolito—the saints rest his soul!—was a dull-brained barbarian and yet he had attached to his service that pearl of poets Ariosto, whom he had neither the intelligence to appreciate nor the justice to reward. What think you was Ariosto's meed for dedicating to his patron the Orlando Furioso? ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... enemy! Sacredie! 'Tis he! Thou cock-brained idiot! Ho—ho! Alone among the Sioux!" came the astonished, half-breathless exclamation of Louis Laplante, mixing his English and French as he was wont, when ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... complete line in front of us. General Carr, being desirous of striking their village, ordered the troops to charge, break through their line, and keep straight on. This movement would, no doubt, have been successfully accomplished had it not been for the rattle-brained and dare-devil French Lieutenant Schinosky, commanding Company B, who, misunderstanding General Carr's orders, charged upon some Indians at the left, while the rest of the command dashed through the enemy's line, and was keeping straight on, when it was observed ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... after this a country parson received a letter from a hare-brained member of his flock, who for many years had been good enough to keep him in touch with his doings in far lands. The old vicar had heard that the "young scoundrel," as he called him, had joined a volunteer regiment, and was in the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... any plots. Who said they was? Only if folks get an idea you're scatter-brained and unstable, you don't suppose they'll want to do business with you, do you? One little rumor about your being a crank would do more to ruin this business than all the plots and stuff that these fool story-writers could think up in a month ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the one whose place had been taken by Nazu, he came straight for the Earth-man and would have brained him with a huge stone had not his fellows interfered. He objected strenuously, his eyes red with hate and a torrent of harsh gutturals pouring from his lips. But the others held him off; this strange white giant from the ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... Spanish Curate is not impaired by the fact that Dryden chose to adapt it after his own fashion in The Spanish Friar. In Wit Without Money, though it is as usual amusing, the stage preference for a "roaring boy," a senseless crack-brained spendthrift, appears perhaps a little too strongly. The Beggar's Bush is interesting because of its early indications of cant language, connecting it with Brome's Jovial Crew, and with Dekker's thieves' Latin pamphlets. But the faults and the merits of Fletcher ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... little Arthur Vezin, something of the curious nature he described to Dr. Silence. Outwardly or inwardly, it happened beyond a doubt, and in spite of the jeers of his few friends who heard the tale, and observed wisely that "such a thing might perhaps have come to Iszard, that crack-brained Iszard, or to that odd fish Minski, but it could never have happened to commonplace little Vezin, who was fore-ordained to live and die according ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... will see that if there is anything at the back of this vast process, with a consciousness and a purpose in any way resembling our own—a being who knows what he wants and is doing his best to get it—he is instead of a holy and all-wise God, a scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi-impotent monster. They will recognise as clearly as they ever did the old familiar facts which seemed to them evidences of God's wisdom, love, and goodness; but they will find that these facts, when taken in connection with the others, only supply us with a standard ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... most abound, did one ever read of more monstrous, palpable folly? In any country, save this, would a poet who chose to write four crack-brained verses, comparing an angel to a dove, and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her tomb, and the little infant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have received a "gracious answer" ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... loyal-hearted," added Maximilian, smiling, "but ready- brained, which is less frequent among our youth. What is thy book, young knight? Virgilius Maro? Dost thou read the Latin?" he ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mag. It's all over. Cheap—that's what he is, this Tom Dorgan. Cheaply bad—a cheap bully, cheap-brained. Remember my wishing he'd have been a ventriloquist? Why, that man that tried to sell me to Obermuller hasn't sense enough to be ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... that we may punish them the more in the next world. This is a most abominable sentiment, and intolerable to a right-thinking mind. But I believe such a blasphemous opinion has also been held by some mad-brained Christians. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... worthless trash. Funny I didn't take in you meant that Hale when you spoke of him. I suppose you'll want to go there to-morrow Carter will take you in the car, and you'd better have one of the girls go with you. Bobby is all right—she may be scatter-brained but she ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... thereby. At the outset, I had no intention of seeking a title to the property by complying with the specification set forth at the instance of its late owner; and only looked upon it as a piece of crack-brained folly, that would serve for a nine days' comment and jest, and then be forgotten; but when I saw, that instead of being treated with the courtesy and respect no conscious act of mine had ever forfeited, I was ridiculed, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... they went, he still behaving in the same mad way, for when the priest asked Petruchio if Katharine should be his wife, he swore so loud that she should, that, all amazed, the priest let fall his book, and as he stooped to take it up, this mad-brained bridegroom gave him such a cuff, that down fell the priest and his book again. And all the while they were being married he stamped and swore so, that the high-spirited Katharine trembled and shook with fear. After the ceremony was over, while they were yet in the church, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... had provided one surprise for my readers. Then I turned to my psychological study, entitled "The Funk." There wasn't much story in this, but a good deal about a man's sensations when in danger. I could picture the horror of it from personal experience, for my rear rank man has nearly brained me a dozen times when the specials have bayonet drill (I also have nearly brained—but I am wandering from the subject). Well, the Funk at the critical moment ran away, but, being muddled by German gas clouds, ran straight into the German lines. He thought that people were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... not tell her without some hesitation. It was so silly—it was just like that scatter-brained Katrina, she said. Rachael, proudly asserting that nothing Katrina said would make any difference to her, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... in the United States, can "endure hardness.'' Let a hundred men anywhere be told that if they do not abandon their faith, their homes will be burned, their business ruined, their wives ravished, their children brained, and they themselves scourged and beheaded, and a proportion ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... anyway—they were publishers. He had almost forgotten that. Inciters to violence, instigators of strife, polluters of the mind ... Good Lord, he was beginning to sound like crack-brained ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... with a cent's worth of rat poison or a bullet in his head! It'll go on until his old partner—that softy George Barker—comes to the bottom of his d——d fool luck and is a penny-a-liner for the papers and a hanger-round at free lunches, and his scatter-brained wife runs away with another man! It'll go on until the high-toned Demorest, the last of those three little tin gods of Heavy Tree Hill, will have to climb down, and will know what I feel and what he's made me feel, and will wish himself in hell before he ever made the ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... Your Koko is a regular dolt; I can't bear him. A hare-brained fellow, a regular gad-about! Without any kind of occupation, eternally loafing around! ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... Advent a hare-brained young fellow, who had married a passably handsome young woman, continued none the less to run at the least as dissolute a course as did those that were still bachelors. The young wife, being advised of this, could not keep silence ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... realm, review its crimes, politics, discoveries, and inventions, and are entertained by their jesters, who, I have it on the authority of a current advertisement, all democratically smoke the same kind of tobacco. 'You know 'em all, the great fun-makers of the daily press, agile-brained and nimble-witted, creators of world-famed characters who put laughter into life. Such live, virile humans as they must have a live, virile pipe-smoke.' There are, to be sure, some who find in this agile-brained and nimble-witted mirth an element of profound melancholy; ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... on me, thou sodden-brained gull?" answered Lambourne, nothing daunted. "Why, dark and muddy as thou think'st thyself, I would engage in a day's space to sec as clear through thee and thy concernments, as thou callest them, as through the filthy horn ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... and afterwards sat in the last Scots Parliament and voted for the Union, having gotten, it was thought, a rug of the compensations—if his father could have come out of his grave, he would have brained him for it on his awn hearthstane. Some thought it was easier counting with the auld rough Knight than the fair-spoken young ane—but mair of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... off doing so? Besides, was it not too late, at his age, to recommence a career? not to speak of the absurd rumors that had been circulating about him, the name which they had given him of a crack-brained genius. He would not find a single patient now, it would be a useless cruelty to force him to make an attempt which would assuredly result only in a lacerated heart and empty hands. Clotilde, on the contrary, had used all her influence to turn him from the idea. ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... well enough that you are a crack-brained jackanapes, with your damned fantastics!" bellowed Mac, angry in his turn. "What do you mean,—you, who are a perfect little saint in your life,—what do you mean by thrusting all these foul heresies at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... way, Brenda's way," he said. "She's scatter-brained; you can't get round that. Going off after the dance in that ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Presently the policeman who had got out comes back and looks in to see if everything is straight. Not a bit of it again. Other door of the cab was open and—no Goddard. But the policeman was lying back in the corner and when they struck a light and looked, they found he was stone dead. Goddard had brained him with the irons on his wrists. No one ever saw him from that day to this. He must have known London well—they say he did, and he was a noted quick runner. Being nightfall and rather foggy as it generally is in those ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... this past day and night had been to her, they had left one curious mark on her face,—a hollow sinking of the lines about the mouth, as though years of pain had slowly crept over her. Suffering had not ennobled her. It is only heroic, large-brained women, with a great natural grasp of charity, that severe pain lifts out of themselves: weak souls, like Grey, who starve without daily food of personal love, contract under God's great judgments, sour into pettish discontent, or grow maudlin as blind devotees, knowing but two things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that in their hands, to a very large extent, lies the solving of the acutest problem of our race—the relation of the sexes. Will they fail us? Will they be content with a solution along lines that can only be called a second best? When we remember the clear-brained women in whose steps they follow, who opened the medical world for them, and whose spirits will for ever overshadow the women who walk in it, we know ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... said Mr. Penny, interrupting with a flash of his spectacles, and at the same time clawing at something in the depths of a large side-pocket. "If so be I hadn't been as scatter-brained and thirtingill as a chiel, I should have called at the schoolhouse wi' a boot as I cam up along. Whatever is coming to me I really ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... share in public life; the unhappy circumstances of France have made this impossible for years. Nevertheless, I put aside my scruples when it became necessary, to leave him free for his mission. I gave no opinion upon that mission itself, or how far he was right in obeying the advice of a hare-brained enthusiast like Lecamus. Nevertheless the moment had come at which our banishment had become intolerable. Another day, and I should have proposed an assault upon the place. Our dead forefathers, though I would speak of them with every respect, should not ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... life was preserved. The enemies of our Zion would have triumphed in your death. May God preserve you to see the opponents of religious liberty, and the abettors of faction frustrated in all their selfish designs and hair-brained hopes! ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... that had swept many another girl off her feet were not to be thought of here. Alix was different. She was not an impressionable, hair-brained flapper, such as he had come in contact with in past experiences. Despite her sprightly, thoroughly up-to-the-moment ease of manner, and an air of complete sophistication, she was singularly old-fashioned ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... your purpose. Of course you must have due regard for circumstances; details needed for one purpose may be superfluous for another. But all of us are familiar with the person who loses her ideas in a rigmarole of prosaic and irrelevant facts. Such a person is Shakespeare's scatter-brained Dame Quickly. On one occasion this voluble woman is shrilly reproaching Sir John Falstaff for his indebtedness to her. "What is the gross sum that I owe thee?" he inquires. She might answer simply: "If thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst promise to marry ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... she will love him; as long as he is faithful she will be faithful. Do you imagine that a woman who insists on her lover carrying her off can so easily turn away from the man of her choice? I know her well; I have had long talks with her, she and I alone: she is feather-brained, given to pleasure, entirely without prejudices and those stupid scruples which spoil the lives of other women; but a good sort on the whole; devoted to my uncle, with no deception about her; but at the same time extremely jealous, and has no notion of letting herself be sacrificed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... leg or a bare arm, and to shout their ribald criticisms in the full immunity of fellowship. It was enough for them that the women came unattended. Every mask that stepped from her coach was beset by hoots and yells and the vile wit of shallow-brained ruffians, or the criticism of the staring counter-jumpers. There was also the chance open to the rougher members of this assemblage of ultimately getting into the ball without paying. They had no well-defined plan, but ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... slowly up the path, rang the bell, chattered to the servant, left cards, and retired. Without much trouble I could have brained them with the brassie-spoon as they passed beneath me. But some odd impulse of chivalry restrained me. It is blunders like these that have wrecked the plans of the greatest generals. Just as they opened the gate who should appear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... of age, an orphan without lineage and almost without means. Thirsting for glory rather than for gold, slightly scatter-brained, but warm-hearted, generous, and brave, he was eminently formed to be the protege ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... lapses of memory, his nerves are shattered, his judgment is not good, he forgets things and is irritable. He cannot hope to compete with the clear-brained individual ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... the Czar's story, that the Holy Alliance was not formed till the autumn of 1815, and that he and Frederick William arrived at Paris in the spring of 1814; and that in the interval he and Francis II. came very near going to war on the Polish question. Alexander was crack-brained, and a mystic, and it is far more likely that he should have originated the Holy Alliance than that the idea should have proceeded from so wooden-headed a personage as the Prussian king, who had about as much sentiment as a Memel log. Alexander was always haunted by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... kept themselves as unobserved as possible. Four Yarmouth men—old sea-dogs, perhaps, who loved their pipe—were in 1687 fined 4s. each for smoking tobacco around the end of the meeting-house. Silly, ostrich-brained Yarmouth men! to fancy to escape detection by hiding around the corner of the church; and to think that the tithing-man had no nose when ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... from youth and hot blood. A shoe-maker in his shop tugs gently at the threads of illusion: how promptly up and down the lanes and streets the thing begins to rage; men, women, boys and children, fall upon one another like mad and blind; and the crack-brained spirit is not to be laid until a shower fall of blows—a shower of blows, kicks and cudgel-thwacks, to smother the angry conflagration. God knows how it all came about?" He smiles again, reflectively, over the recollection of the lovely quiet evening it was, the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... disconcerted; still he hesitated as to the course he ought to take. But when Annawon, who was nearer the scene, sounded the signal of retreat, he sprung towards the returned straggler, and with a single blow of his tomahawk brained the traitor. Glances of fierce revenge, and of inextinguishable though disappointed hatred, were exchanged between the victim and his chief, as the former lay on the rock gasping for breath; and then the latter turned ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mason, wearily. "Sim told me all about your looney suspicions about he and I making away with my uncle. But I defy you to prove any of your crack-brained theories. You are on the wrong trail, Brady. And I advise you to leave me alone, or by jingo, I'll defend myself and make it very warm ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... in the garden, Pollio. Supper will be served in half an hour. Tomorrow, Beric, we will, after breakfast, renew this conversation that my feather brained young nephew has ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... in No. 18, Corridor C. It was the room directly above Peggy; and was tenanted, as we have seen, by Lobelia Parkins. Lobelia was in bed at this moment, though it was before the usual bedtime. She had felt ill and dizzy-brained for several days, and Peggy had begged her to go to bed early and get a good long sleep. Peggy herself lay on a mattress on the floor. It was against the rule, but for once the law-abiding Peggy was wilfully breaking ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... Chancellor of SSE, however, would not risk a tenth-piece of the company's money on such a bird-brained scheme. Himself a Gunther First, he believed implicitly that Firsts were in fact tops in Gunther ability; that these few self-styled "Operators" and "Prime Operators" were either charlatans or self-deluded crackpots. Since he could not feel that ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... would appeal in vain to the law and could do nothing without it, and who would probably let the erring lady return to his home at the trifling price of a sound beating when Stradella was tired of her. That would have been bad enough, in all conscience; but this time the hare-brained singer had done much worse, even from a worldly point of view; and looking at it from another, Cucurullo thought that the irreparable nature of the deed made it more wicked, besides the fact that all the persons concerned might lose their lives by it. He was a very simple ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... the greater artist of the pair, knew that Tolstoy was on the wrong path with his crack-brained religious and social notions; knew that in his becoming the writer of illogical tracts and pamphlets, Russia was losing a great artist. What would he have said if he had lived to read the sad recantation and artistic ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... to maturity was uninterrupted by any metamorphosis, such as that of the frog when it passes from the tadpole stage. Yet in advancing from the amphibian to the reptile the evolution of the vertebrate was far from finished. The cold-blooded, clumsy and sluggish, small- brained and unintelligent reptile is as far inferior to the higher mammals, whose day was still to come, as it is superior to the amphibian ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... collision with her interests. I think she possessed an utterly selfish nature, was not at all scrupulous in the attainment of her purposes, and was, in effect, that most dangerous member of society, a strong-willed and large-brained woman without a vestige of principle. She had a diabolical magnetism which in her best part, Meg Merrilies, had a sensuous attraction I have never known so powerful in another woman. Her Queen Katherine was a failure, and she could not ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... hot-headed impulsive young Billy; and Ronald, knowing it, feels guilty also. Poor little Billy, who was as a son to Michael! There was no mistaking the emotion in his face just now, when I merely laid my hand on his. Oh, impetuous scatter-brained boy!... Dear heavens! I wish he wouldn't hand ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... have wept with rage. Here was this turtle-brained, ugly woman (so, in my presumption, I called her) daring to speak slightingly of my beloved master who had condescended to speak out of his Olympian wisdom, and no fire from Zeus shrivelled her up! She signified her disapproval with ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... a gasping, inarticulate cry of warning but in that instant Jessamy moved his head an inch or so and the heavy pewter tankard that should have brained him flew harmlessly by and rolled clattering a good twenty paces ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like tears, and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hair-brained vein of homefelt truth! What choice venom! How often did we cut into the haunch of letters! How we skimmed the cream of criticism! How we picked out the marrow of authors! Need I go over the names? ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... pomposity never were designed for the highest types of men. Our great national figures have almost without exception had one quality which was a keynote to their ultimate success—this was their simplicity. Next was their accessibility. There are numberless big-hearted and big-brained individuals in the world whose duties are so manifold that in order to accomplish what has been placed in their hands they must be saved from interruption, but the truly great individual is never hidden ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... of any value is the offspring of pride and will. The existence of what is called "natural courage" may well be doubted. What is frequently mistaken for it is either perfect self-command, or a stolid indifference, arising from dull-brained inability to comprehend what really ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... have been hammered on the nose and brained with logic, and should he still remain cold, a third course opens: lead him by the hand (himself half-willing) towards some sunlit and yet secret meadow and ask him who made the names of the common wild ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... The fermentation of the public mind received a fearful acceleration, when it was discovered that the Prussians and Austrians were advancing upon the capital, under the command of the Duke of Brunswick. All France was put in motion thereby, and thousands of hot-brained youth resorted to the capital to join the already overwhelming rabble there. Thus supported the legislative assembly determined on the deposition of the king, having first appointed a commission to examine what grounds could justify such a step, and whether such grounds ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... master an absolute villain, that loves his hawk, his hobby, and his greyhound, more than any mortal creature? Do but dispraise a feather of his hawk's train, and he writhes his mouth, and swears (for he can do that only with a good grace) that you are the most shallow-brained fellow that lives. Do but say his horse stales with a good presence, and he's your bondslave. When he returns, I'll tell twenty admirable lies of his hawk; and then I shall be his little rogue and his white villain for ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... give thee an eternal wound in thy heart, both at death and judgment, to be accused of the ruin of thy neighbour's soul, thy servant's soul, thy wife's soul, together with the ruin of thy own? Think on this, you drunken, proud, rich, and scornful landlords; think on this, you mad-brained blasphemous husbands, that are against the godly and chaste conversation of your wives; also you that hold your servants so hard to it that you will not spare them time to hear the word, unless it be where and when your lusts will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... little," said Isabelle, whose father wrote articles much appreciated by the public in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' "But he said at the same time that it was horrid to give such crack-brained stuff to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is much nicer. We have to make comparisons between La Tristesse d'Olympio, Souvenir, and Le Lac'. That will be ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... congratulate you most heartily, Mr. O'Connor," the colonel said. "What seemed at first a very wild and hare-brained enterprise, if you don't mind my saying so, certainly turned out a singular success. It would have seemed almost impossible that you, a young ensign, should be able to exercise any authority over a great body of mere peasants, who have everywhere shown themselves utterly insubordinate ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... to his digging again. A drink of thick, muddy water for his horse, and then with a dull sense of misery in his heart he led Bob up the bank and began the last stage of his ride home—home to his anaemic, complaining, shallow-brained wife and the weakly children who, instead of being the consolation of his life in his misfortunes, were an added and ever-present source of misery ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke
... could lay my hands on. The old boy'll think the end of the world has come." Razumov nodded from the couch, and contemplated the hare-brained fellow's gravity with ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... remote future; but Mr. Grayson can certainly claim that his achievement at Colne Valley brought the question of Socialism in to the very forefront at one bound. It is difficult to ignore Socialism, to dismiss it as a mere fad and fancy of a few hare-brained enthusiasts, after Mr. Grayson's success. The verdict of Colne Valley may be the verdict of many another constituency where the so-called working-class electors are numerically predominant. When we consider that the manual worker represents the majority of the electorate ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... have appeared hair-brained to one who did not know the man, and what he was capable of accomplishing under pressure. The very first step in this plan required the destroying of the three outflanking guards between him and ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... of his head, and you, Lionel, looking as pale and thin as if you had gone through a long illness. I told your father when we heard of your going that you ought to be brought back and whipped; but the earl talked him over into writing to Captain Francis to tell him that he approved of this mad brained business, and a nice ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... pity she is so spoilt! A coquettish, hare-brained flirt: that is all that she is now, and she promised to be a sweet little woman two years ago! What business had she to be out walking with Hugo Luttrell? I should have heard of it if they were going ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... cheer that rang over the valley, shrill above the thunder of hoofs, the shriek and scream of terrified squaws, the shouts of astonished braves. Away like the wind went the streaming swarm of ponies, in mad flight for the north! Away like scatter-brained rabbits, darting hither and thither in the firelight, rushing madly to shelter, leaping from the "bench" to the sandy bottom below, scurrying in wild panic anywhere, everywhere, went warriors, women, and children; for, close on the heels of the vanishing ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... identity, to render him among his own kindred and people perhaps tabooed, ostracised, despised—perhaps an object of pity. If he should succeed? Surely he had not come thus near success to suffer his splendid Yankee captain to be brained there before his eyes. Like a hawk he had watched every incident of the fight, and was on the alert to act the part of surgeon toward any who might be either wounded in the battery or taken prisoner. He had even resolved, in case of the capture of the place, to represent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... the house. Would he be disappointed? He had preserved her letters of the old school-days. She had burnt his. But she had not burnt the letters of Mr. Morsfield; and she cared nothing for that man. Assuredly she merited the stigma branding women as crack-brained. Yet she was not one of the fools; she could govern a household, and she liked work, she had the capacity for devotedness. So, therefore, she was a woman perverted by her position, and she shook her bonds in revolt ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... less than other men of wealth, was opposed to what he deemed a crack-brained idea—that of maintaining a parity between gold and silver by law. Confiscation was his word for it—the confiscation of the wealth of the few for the benefit of the many. Most of all was he opposed to it because he feared that this unrest, which was obviously growing, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... entirely liquidating all his debts. But from the fate which all my other memorials have had, I foresee that this one also will be thrown into the dust-hole. Lest, however, your worships should think me crack-brained, I will explain my project to you, though this be in some degree a ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... she trembled when we went into the house, expecting auntie would spring out upon her, and set her over the fire to steam. But she was such a patient, still little thing that she never complained, even to her own mother, and I was too rattle-brained to think much about it, though if I myself had expected to be cooked, the whole town would have ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... he said, "at the beginning. I thought him a crack-brained fool, and a meddler. But now—" And he would say ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... irony of fate, drew a tenderfoot horse. Tunemah was a big fool gray that was constitutionally rattle-brained. He meant well enough, but he didn't know anything. When he came to a bad place in the trail, he took one good look—and rushed it. Constantly we expected him to come to grief. It wore on the Tenderfoot's nerves. Tunemah was always trying ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... face was pale, but his gun arm swung up and down with the regularity of a machine as he threw shot after shot into the black tide that welled from the court-house doorway. A man near Waco pulled an automatic and leveled it. Waco swung his arm and brained the man with an empty whiskey bottle. He threw the bottle at another of his fellows, and, stumbling down the steps, called to Lorry. The three riders paused for an instant as Waco ran forward. The riders had won almost to the gun when Waco stooped and jerked it round and poured a withering ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... noiselessly for a minute. "Meaning that a gentleman shouldn't pounce upon any beautiful stone he may happen to see?" He got up and moved about restlessly in the little space between their two chairs. "Quite so; lay it to my being more than a gentleman; lay it to my being a crack-brained enthusiast, a confounded beauty worshiper, a vicious curio dealer, an ill-mannered ass! But"—and he flashed around at her with a snap of his nervous fingers—"where did ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... Mrs. Kent's two boys are in the trenches, actually fighting, not just parading round in uniform like you. She goes every day and works in the office of the Red Cross and tries to keep every tangle straightened out. She's not jealous of me—she despises me for a little feather-brained pinhead. She thinks I am even worse than I am. She thinks I am as bad as you would like me to be! Naturally enough, she ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... intensified wrath of these sympathizers; the generals whom he sends into the field, if, like Alcibiades, they are characterized by any spirit in their undertakings, are trammelled with political entanglements and rendered useless, while some slow, half-brained Nicias, with no heart in the cause, is placed at the head of expeditions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... time Francisco Pizarro had embarked in a hair-brained enterprise for the conquest of Peru, on the western coast of South America. Very slowly he had forced his way along, towards that vast empire, encountering innumerable difficulties, and enduring frightful sufferings, until he had reached a point where his progress seemed ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... Ho, ho, ho! And she was furious, the pretty dear! However, you'll soon see for yourself. You will see a woman, sir, who has loaded and fired cannon with her own hands, when the last man to serve it had been shot. Ay, and more than that, my lad—she's brained a hulking sans-culotte that was about to pin her servant to the floor. The lad has told me so himself, and I daresay he can tell you more if you care to practise your French with master Rene L'Apotre, that's the fellow! A woman who sticks ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... pale-cheeked and lean-bodied, he was the perfect picture of a man who had fed on windy schemes and empty hopes till he could neither live on such unwholesome trash nor stomach more substantial food. But, withal, this Peter Goldthwaite, crack-brained simpleton as, perhaps, he was, might have cut a very brilliant figure in the world had he employed his imagination in the airy business of poetry instead of making it a demon of mischief in mercantile pursuits. After all, he was no bad fellow, but as harmless ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said he; "why, take a shame on yourself that you stand skulking here, and leave the defence of those two fair maids to a crack- brained poet and a swashbuckling soldier. I tell you, Humphrey Dexter, those two fellows, little as I love them, are your friends and your master's; and, if the maids be still safe, they owe it to them, and not to your idle ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... of 1812—no doubt of some Scotch gillie or shepherd. Such a person, in England, would have no claim whatever to the intimate society of Elizabeth Merton. Yet here she was alone, really without protection—for what use was this young, scatter-brained brother?—herself only twenty-seven, and so charming? so much prettier than she had ever seemed to be at home. It was a dangerous situation—a situation to which she ought not to have been exposed. Delaine had always believed her sensitive and ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... head off the spike they'll stick it on, at the top of Temple Bar, out of spite because they could not get Sir Robert's. Good-bye, old usurper worshipper. I can't help liking you, all the same. Try and get my sword, and wear it for the sake of crack-brained Drew." ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... who, if you haven't sense enough not to addle your brains, never will have. But the young men oughtn't have the temptation thrust in their way. They think it looks smart and manly; and they make themselves so silly that I'm like a lump of ice to some of them. I like clear-brained people." ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... stopped galloping so fast, but as Tod began an endless fumbling with levers, plainly as nervous as his chum, Jerry's nerve oozed out at his fingertips; he might have climbed out had it not been for the straps—and the two men, who now came forward and insisted that the boys give up their hair- brained plan. Jerry would have been killed by inches rather than give ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... lived, as Ned put it, on the fat of the land, in addition to the other luxuries. Figgy duff, a luxury hitherto reserved for Sundays, being also served out to them. Bill was regarded as a big-brained benefactor of the human race; joy reigned in the foc'sle, and at night the hatch was taken off and the prisoner regaled with a portion which had been saved for him. He ate it ungratefully, and put churlish and inconvenient questions as to what ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... intimate with him, I kept my ears open for any account of his doings. From one point of view, the Club Window outlook, he was a very usual figure, one of those stout, rubicund, jolly men, a good polo player, a good man in a house party, genial-natured, and none too brilliantly brained, whom every one liked and no one thought about. All this he was on one side of the report, but, on the other, there were certain stories that were ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... of her speech struck home; the seemingly soft-brained weakness that had forbidden the rape and pillage of the schooner stood in part explained. And as the light filtered through thick skulls and shone upon all but atrophied brains, a deep muttering swelled into the embryo of a throaty cheer that needed ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... at herself, in a long pier-glass that represented almost the only concession to the typical feminine needs in the room. She was not admiring her own seemliness; far from it; she was rating and despising herself for a feather-brained ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... kills flies. And when the French quitted Vilna, the Russians were glad enough to seek its shelter, Kutusoff creeping in with forty thousand men, all that remained to him of two hundred thousand. He could not carry on the pursuit, but sent forward a handful of Cossacks to harry the hare-brained few who called themselves the rearguard. He was an old man, nearly worn out, with only three months more to live—but he had done ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... said his companion. "Thick-headed, muddy-brained brute; more like a quadruped than a man! The Kaffirs are gentlemen to some of these up-country farmers, and yet they are ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... already a computer in the Nautical Almanac office, then located at Cambridge, and we well knew work of that sort required brains of the best. Since Simon Newcomb's death an interesting story has been told about his heredity. His strong-brained father, measuring his own qualities with rigid introspection, discovering where he was weak and where capable resolved that whatever wife he chose should supplement in her personality the points to which he lacked. He would father sons and daughters who should come into the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... stood; and, before he could decide on what he would do, the second had appeared. He rushed forward with the loaded stick in his hand, but, knowing its weight, and remembering the possibility of the comparative innocence of the intruders, he hesitated to strike. A blow on the head would have brained a man, and a knock on the arm with such an instrument would break the bone. In a moment he found his left hand on the leading man's throat, and the man's foot behind his heel. He fell, but as he fell he did strike heavily, cutting upwards with his weapon, and bringing the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... are like the father of them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brained, nott-pated fool; ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... I ever met was more censorious of his own actions, or more obstinate in his defence of any principle or theory he was advocating in argument, no matter how hare-brained it might seem. We used to spend hours arguing over anything, from free-will to the "loose-head." I knew, of course, how much he disliked the class of work (requisitioning of local supplies) he was doing for me, though no one could have worked harder and few have done ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... inattentive; unobservant, unmindful, heedless, unthinking, unheeding, undiscerning^; inadvertent; mindless, regardless, respectless^, listless &c (indifferent) 866; blind, deaf; bird-witted; hand over head; cursory, percursory^; giddy-brained, scatter-brained, hare-brained; unreflective, unreflecting^, ecervele [Fr.]; offhand; dizzy, muzzy^, brainsick^; giddy, giddy as a goose; wild, harum-scarum, rantipole^, highflying; heedless, careless &c (neglectful) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... discovered. Only a beginning has been made, for the field stretches from ocean to ocean; but the man who, in 1873—the year of Livingstone's death,—should have predicted one-half of the achievement of the present generation would have been laughed at as a crack-brained visionary. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... grew out of anxiety respecting the children, and his own desire that they might be where they could enjoy the advantages of schools, &c.—sneered almost to his face at what he termed his crack-brained notions; and subsequently, in relating to another person the conversation he had had with Mr. Garie, spoke of him as "a soft-headed fool, led by the nose by a yaller wench. Why can't he act," he said, "like other men who happen ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... "This confounded hot-brained boy!" he said to himself; "now that he begins to get out of danger, I can tolerate this life no longer. All goes to sixes and sevensan universal saturnalia seems to be proclaimed in my peaceful and orderly family. I ask for my sisterno ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a man like me, seemed weak-minded, to say no more. A very selfish man in fact, and the thought of Jenny having a home of her own away from him, though to any decent father a right and proper thing to happen, got Joshua Owlet in a rage, and I had to exercise unbounded patience. He was a small-brained man, and that sort ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... instance, with feeling running as high as it was in some quarters, that crazy idea of seizing a few elevators at the point of a gun—! What in heaven's name would they do with them after they got them? Nevertheless, McNair might find rattle-brained listeners enough to cause a heap of trouble. There were always a few fellows ready for excitement; they might go in for the fun of it, then before they knew it the thing would curdle over night like a pan of milk in ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... a good way off in the pits belonging to the prince, came up now very much out of humour to Edward. "Another run over here to no purpose!" he cried peevishly: "I wanted to speak to the young shatter-brained jackanapes; and now I hear from the smelting-lads down in the town, that he has just been scampering through it, and not a soul can tell ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... who was very irritable that morning. Another boy entered, and left it open. Mr. Cipher was angry, and spoke to the whole school: "Any one who comes in to-day and does not shut the door, will get a flogging. Now remember!" Being very awkward in his manners, inefficient in government, and shallow-brained and vain, he commanded very little ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... "It was a mad-brained trick," said Lord Cardigan, who had marvellously escaped—"a monstrous blunder, but it was no ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... constitutionals, and took to the life of a hermit until Wildtree Towers should be rid of its visitors. But even so he could not be quite safe. Percy occasionally hunted him out and demanded his company with himself and a few choice spirits on some hare-brained expedition. Jeffreys did not object to Percy or the hare-brained expedition; but the "choice spirits" sometimes discomposed him. They called him "Jeffy," and treated him like some favoured domestic animal. They recognised ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... the Napoleon of bootblacks, or the Alexander of chimney-sweeps, let us say with Matthew Arnold, than a shallow-brained attorney who, like ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... nigh producing his expulsion. A report was brought to college that a scholar was in the hands of the bailiffs. This was an insult in which every gownsman felt himself involved. A number of the scholars flew to arms, and sallied forth to battle, headed by a hare-brained fellow nicknamed Gallows Walsh, noted for his aptness at mischief and fondness for riot. The stronghold of the bailiff was carried by storm, the scholar set at liberty, and the delinquent catchpole borne off captive to the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... community, and that it was a man's duty to button up his pocket at the first sound of a beggar's whine. While he was still intent upon this moral lesson, he gave a half-crown to a mendicant Irishwoman, who did most certainly look as if she were in need of it. The great-hearted, big-brained, eloquent man has even yet his monument in the hearts of those whom he inspired; but he left next to nothing as a lasting memento of his own genius. The truth is that, when he took pen in hand, the genial current of his soul was ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... I g-grabbed the wrong end of it. Oh, I'm so glad Daddy wasn't here to see my humiliation! I'm a dub, Mary Louise—a miserable, ignorant, foozle-brained dub!" ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... nothing more to say than that he was 'at first only a well-minded but weak enthusiast, afterwards a mere hypocrite and impostor;' of the other he spoke with a certain compassion as 'that errant, shatter-brained, visionary fanatic.'[609] And the Methodist, he thought, had a ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Cameron, a jolly Scottish lassie. She rolled her r's when she spoke, and was a trifle matter-of-fact and practical, but was evidently the dependable anchor of the rest of the scatter-brained crew, the one who made the most sensible suggestions, and to whom—though they teased her a little and called her "Grannie"—they all turned in the end for help and advice. Jess was slightly out of her element in a southern ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... first time, and I honestly believe the last time in her life, that other pretty blond, but woolly-brained, young woman rose to the occasion—God bless her—and answered stoutly, "No, Clara ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... sound of the wheels had died away; then she laughed. "He thinks me fool enough to share his disgrace! As if I had not long ago foreseen that this was to be the end of that hair-brained fool! In expectation of HIS fate, I have been countermining with Szekuly, and his foolish old hands have flung up shovelfuls of gold as we went along—bright, shining ducats, which shall go with me to Paris. Now I am free, free from my dangerous accomplice, free from ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... we must do something extra. Babbie is all the rage at school, and the girls are frantic with jealousy because I have cut everybody else out. To be honest about it, I can't understand it myself. Babbie's such a giddy scatter-brained youngster, ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... to the shop of Ti Hung and regain their lost youth. Our ninety-nine cash idols are worth a tael a set. We do not, however, claim that they will do everything. The ninety-nine cash idols of Ti Hung will not, for example, purify linen, but even the most contented and frozen-brained person cannot be happy until he possesses one. What is happiness? The exceedingly well-educated Philosopher defines it as the accomplishment of all our desires. Everyone desires one of the Ti Hung's ninety-nine cash idols, therefore ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... the door and seized my hand as a hint to be quiet. Then she laughed aloud. How can anyone find an amusing subject in a poor hard-brained "studiosus," who cannot grasp that rule, inevitable in every career in life, that the second syllable of dropax, antrax, climax "et caethra graeca" in the first case is long, in the second short—a rule extremely ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Maryland he would charge on horseback through the woods, "spouting" heroic speeches with a lance in his hand—a relic of the Mexican war—given to father by some soldier who had served under Taylor. We regarded him as a good-hearted, harmless, though wild-brained, boy, and used to laugh at his patriotic froth whenever secession was discussed. That he was insane on that one point no one who knew him well can doubt. When I told him that I had voted for Lincoln's reelection he expressed deep regret, and declared ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... was to bound down the steps to his rescue—but discipline did its work and checked him. Should he leave his post, what would become of the Queen? Des Huttes during the moment of this quick reflection, was brained from behind by a man in a red cap, and fell, pierced with countless pike-wounds. His eyes still moved when the rag-picker Gougeon ran in, and, placing his foot on the chest, chopped the head from the body with blows of an axe. In an instant it was stuck on ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... it should be Jot—little, wild, scatter-brained Jot— who should take the lead in that calm, determined way. What had come to the boy? With pale face and set teeth he quietly bound the handkerchief tightly above the wrist, and, inserting the fork handle in the knot, twisted it about. The ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... the cowering group of Indian women huddled above the deck. {87} On pretence of gathering berries, six sailors were landed with fourteen women. Two watched their chance and dashed for liberty in the hills. On the way back to the ship, one woman was brained to death by a sailor, Gorelin; seeing which, the others on board the jolly-boat took advantage of the confusion, sprang overboard, and suicided. But there were still a dozen hostages on the ship. These might relate the crime of their companions' murder. It was an old trick out of an ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... their flight, and notes that winter is at hand. This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round of petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood. Nothing is left but solitude. To the mortmain of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... came flocking from every side; For they knew their Gipsy Joe of old, His free wild words and his laughter bold: So high and low all gathered together By the village well in the autumn weather, Lured by the gipsy's bargain-chatter And the reckless lilt of his hare-brained patter. And there the Revd. Salvyn Bent, The parish church's ornament, Stood, as it chanced, in discontent, And eyed with a look that was almost sinister The Revd. Joshua Fall, the minister. And the Squire, it happened, was riding by, With ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... hopped mentally from one subject to another without the slightest difficulty, and could use a lot of language in saying nothing at all. I could see all that at the time, but I suppose I was too pleased with my own sharp business brains, and sick enough, although I did not know it, of my sharp-brained, business companions—dear Lord! I remember them well. It's easy enough to have brains as they call it, but it is not so easy to have a little gaiety or carelessness or childishness or whatever it was ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens |
