"Ass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep: And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass Stamps o'er his Head, and ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... Paisley you'd understand just why I was so glad to beat him. He is a most insufferably conceited ass about his golf, for a man who plays as badly as he does; in addition to which he usually beats me. It's not that Paisley plays a better game, but he has a way of making me pull my drive or over-approach just by his confounded manner ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... to live. In Samuel we learn how Jahweh, because of an attack upon the Israelites four hundred years before the time of speaking, ordered Saul to destroy the Amalekites, "man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." And Saul did as he was directed; but because he spared King Agag, the Lord deprived him of the crown and made David ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... to us as he appeared at a dinner, "whereto he was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and anarchical views regarding the 'Golden Ass' of Apuleius. The festivities of the afternoon are far on, when a commotion is heard in the hall, as if some dog or other stray animal had forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival; he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... before thine inferior and soften thine utterance and be courteous and tread in the paths of piety, and shun impudence and louden not thy voice whenas thou speakest or laughest; for, were a house to be builded by volume of sound, the ass would edify many a mansion every day.[FN25] O dear my son, the transport of stones with a man of wisdom is better than the drinking of wine with one blamed for folly. O dear my son, rather pour out thy wine upon the tombs of the pious than drain it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... imbecile La Brede borrowed money from his little sister to lavish it upon that Sarah. This was so unnatural that you may believe it first disgusted, and then irritated me. One day at the club I could not resist saying, 'You are an ass, La Bride, to ruin yourself—worse than that, to ruin your sister, for the sake of a snail, as little sympathetic as Sarah, a girl who always has a cold in her head, and who has already deceived you.' 'Deceived me!' cried La Brede, waving his long arms. 'Deceived me! and with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... tempting, and Balaam was weak, And wicked he certainly proved; E'en the Ass that he rode, that man's conduct condemned, Who the ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... struck it," cried Philip, as he gave the arm of his chair a resounding thump. "What an ass I've been not to have thought of that before, particularly as she has been so constantly in my thoughts. It's another case of a thing being too close to one for ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... study of the subject see an article by Ogburn and Kelley in the Journal of the American Statistical Ass'n. for ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... nervous motion of protest. "No; not the same as me, Flood—not the same. It's sink or swim with me, and if you can't help me—oh, I'd take my gruel without whining, if it wasn't for Di! It's that knocks me over. It's the shame to her. Oh, what a cursed ass ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... only a monkey, but what a genius! and what a friend and companion to us! How could we confide such a wonderful, talented creature to the care of a simple veterinary surgeon? Every one knew that the village veterinary was an ass, while every one knew that doctors were scientific men, even in the smallest village. If one rings at a door which bears a doctor's name, one is sure to find a man of knowledge, and of generosity. Although the monkey is only an animal, ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... a custom is the idea it gives that poor man of his own worth. Like King Midas he sees all things turn to gold at his touch, but he does not see the ass' ears growing. Let us keep Emile's hands from money lest he should become an ass, let him take the work but not the wages. Never let his work be judged by any standard but that of the work of a master. Let it be judged as work, not because it is his. If anything is well done, I ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... or so very quick-sighted; but this assistant, prompter, and director[90] of mine, Chremes, outdoes me in that. Any one of those epithets which are applied to a fool is suited to myself, such as dolt, post, ass,[91] lump of lead; to him not one can {apply}; his stupidity surpasses ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... prove me an ass," cried Bruce, "for talking about a lady whom I have never seen." Looking repentantly at Piney, he felt a sudden ache for him. He was not very familiar with conditions in Canaan, but it occurred to him suddenly that even in Canaan there might ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... without repining, would certainly not permit us to cross the seas, merely because murderers clothed in scarlet, and wearing caps two foot high, enlist citizens by a noise made with two little sticks on an ass's skin extended. And when, after a victory is gained, the whole city of London is illuminated; when the sky is in a blaze with fireworks, and a noise is heard in the air, of thanksgivings, of bells, of organs, and of the cannon, we groan in silence, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... you an animal would be to state the truth"—to which you would agree; and, "To call you an ass would be to call you an animal"—to which you would also agree; from which I might conclude that, "To call you an ass would {30} be to state the truth"—which you might have a vague idea was not ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... the door; the fool and the aloes-wood; the fool and the cotton; the cup lost in the sea; the fool and the thieves; the simpletons who ate the buffalo; the princess who was made to grow; the washerman's ass transformed; the foolish herdsman—Noodle-stories moralised—The brothers and their heritage—Sowing ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... and exhilarating, seemed strange. In this transparent air, objects which were twenty miles distant seemed to be no farther than two or three miles at most. In such a country it would not have surprised anyone to meet the Saviour face to face, riding an ass or burro over the stony road, followed by His disciples and a multitude of people, who, with the most implicit faith in the Lord's power to perform miracles, expected Him to provide them with an abundance of loaves and fishes. Here we were in a country, a territory of the United States, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... a man must have either ass's ears or a cloven foot; and, soon or late, most of us expect to find our hero in Bottom's predicament. But I would rather have acknowledged the beam in my own eye than have discovered this diabolical split in your heel. All my life ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... I rather think he'll find he has no such power. Let him try it, and see what the press will say. For once we shall have the popular cry on our side. But Proudie, ass as he is, knows the world too well to get such a hornet's ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Masouda," he said. "I forgot that you are a Christian, and naturally side with Christians. The money will not pay for the wear of my ass's hoofs, but give it me, and let me go to pilgrims ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... never been any trouble over the birth of an heir at Pardons.) Now where the dooce is it?" She felt largely in her leather-boundskirt and drew out a small silver mug. "I sent a note to your wife about it, but my silly ass of a groom forgot to take this. You can save me a tramp. Give her my love." She marched off amid her guard of ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... these conditions is that of the series of extinct animals which culminates in the Horses; by which term I mean to denote not merely the domestic animals with which we are all so well acquainted, but their allies, the ass, zebra, quagga, and the like. In short, I use "horses" as the equivalent of the technical name Equidae, which is applied to the whole group ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... that solemnly demanded of grown men and women in the twentieth century that they should sit and listen with reverential awe to a prehistoric edition of "Grimm's Fairy Stories," including Noah and his ark, the adventures of Samson and Delilah, the conversations between Balaam and his ass, and culminating in what if it were not so appallingly wicked an idea would be the most comical of them all: the conception of an elaborately organized Hell, into which the God of the Christians plunged his creatures for all eternity! Of what use was such a religion as that going ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... and of justification by faith; points, he thought, which it was superfluous for any man to know exactly, and which certainly much exceeded the comprehension of the vulgar. A famous martyrologist calls Gardiner, on account of this opinion, "an insensible ass, and one that had no feeling of God's spirit in the matter of justification."[*] The meanest Protestant imagined, at that time, that he had a full comprehension of all those mysterious doctrines; and he heartily despised the most learned ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... feel such a limp ass to be detained by a fat policeman at the door of Spain, while Carmona and Lady Monica ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... an infernal ass to mix myself up in a mad scheme like this," said Edward Henry to his soul, perusing the documents. "It's right off my line, right bang off it ...! But what a lark!" But even to his soul he did not utter the remainder of the ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... done their search, and the spoil was brought on deck, we thought we had found all that we should need. "As for me," said my wife, "I have brought good news, for I find we have still on board a cow, an ass, two goats, six sheep, a ram, a pig, and a sow, and I have found ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... as well for a hundred men as for one. The ass complains of cold even in July. A myrtle in the desert remains a myrtle. Teach thy tongue to say, "I do not know." Hospitality is an expression of Divine worship. Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend's friend ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... the features in myth which provoke, for example, the wonder of Emeric-David. "The lizard, the wolf, the dog, the ass, the frog, and all the other brutes so common on religious monuments everywhere, do they not all imply a THOUGHT which we must divine?" He concludes that these animals, plants, and monsters of myths are so many "enigmas" and "symbols" veiling some deep, sacred idea, allegories of some ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... it be? I've not been the smallest use all this time. When he was ill, I left him to Ernescliffe, and lay on the floor like an ass; and if he were to ask me to touch his arm, I should be as bad again. A fine thing for me to have talked all that arrogant stuff about Richard! I hate the thought of it; and, as if to make arrows and barbs of it, here's Richard making as much ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Jonah on his mission in a whale's belly, I have no fault to find with Him for so doing. He has the right to do His own will and pleasure; and if He instructed Nephi how to fashion his boat, or Noah to build an ark against the deluge, or caused Balaam's ass to speak and rebuke the madness of his master, or Moses to lead the children of Israel through the Red Sea, without any boat at all, or the walls of Jericho to fall to the ground, and the people to become ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... and child, had no disposition to embark in such a troublesome affair. He therefore hung back and Palamedes was sent to urge him. When Palamedes arrived at Ithaca Ulysses pretended to be mad. He yoked an ass and an ox together to the plough and began to sow salt. Palamedes, to try him, placed the infant Telemachus before the plough, whereupon the father turned the plough aside, showing plainly that he was no madman, and after that could no longer ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... are commonly shewed to strangers, and which the Turks call Eski Stamboul, i.e. Old Constantinople. For that reason, as well as some others, I conjecture them to be the remains of that city begun by Constantine. I hired an ass (the only voiture to be had there) that I might go some miles into the country, and take a tour round the ancient walls, which are of a vast extent. We found the remains of a castle on a hill, and of another in a valley, several broken pillars ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... as the day, too honest. But he's an infernal little ass," said Sir Winterton. "Somebody's got hold of him and is using him, or he's heard some gossip and caught it up. I won't say a word." And he went on to ask if he were to degrade himself by making explanations ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... to know the charm of quiet cloisters; the delight of a strange, rare volume; the interest of a quaint bit of pottery; the unutterable loveliness of some perfect painter's vision, making a glory in some dusky, world-forgotten church: and so my life was full of gladness here in Rome, where the ass's hoof ringing on a stone may show you that Vitruvius was right, where you had doubted him; or the sun shining down upon a cabbage garden, or a coppersmith's shreds of metal, may gleam on a signet ring of the Flavian women, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... old witch (who had long been suspected) in the neighbourhood! This useful faculty of transformation also extended, in some measure, to the persons of others; for Dr. Bulwer gives the following easy recipe for "setting a horse or ass' head" on a man's neck and shoulders:[3]—"Cut off the head of a horse or an ass (before they be dead, otherwise the virtue or strength thereof will be less effectual,) and take an earthen vessel of a fit capacity to contain the same. Let ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... it will depend upon YOU to say what are and what are not articulate expressions of love. We all know that among the lower animals, with whom you may possibly be called upon to classify the defendant, there are certain signals more or less harmonious, as the case may be. The ass brays, the horse neighs, the sheep bleats—the feathered denizens of the grove call to their mates in more musical roundelays. These are recognized facts, gentlemen, which you yourselves, as dwellers among nature in this beautiful land, are all cognizant of. They are facts that no one ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... "You touchy ass!" said Thurnall to himself. "If we were in the blessed state of nature now, wouldn't I give you ten minutes' double thonging, and then set you to work, as the runaway nigger did his master, Bird o' freedom Sawin, till you'd learnt a thing or two." But blandly still ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... grammarian, the other priest and astrologer. There is nothing very original in their libels, which are modeled upon those of Posidonius and Molon; but some fresh detail is added. It was said that the deity worshiped at Jerusalem was the head of an ass, to which human sacrifices were offered, and that the Jews took an oath to do no service for any Gentile. Apion, a man of some repute, was the head of the Alexandrian Stoic school, and called "the toiler," ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... many blemishes; the accents, yells; the intentions of the poor composer are totally disfigured and perverted; while those of the orchestral conductor—however politely meant they may be—are none the less injurious: like the caresses of the ass in the fable, who crushed ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... owner, And the ass his master's crib: Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... of persons, either living or dead." Speaking of bewitched persons, he says: "What they affirm, concerning others, is not to be taken for evidence. Whence had they this supernatural sight? It must needs be either from Heaven or from Hell. If from Heaven (as Elisha's servant and Balaam's ass could discern Angels) let their testimony be received. But if they had this knowledge from Hell, though there may possibly be truth in what they affirm, they are not legal witnesses: for the Law of God allows of no revelation from any other Spirit but himself. Isa., viii., ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... possessing all the external appearances and characteristics of perfect animals, are physiologically imperfect and deficient in the structural parts of the reproductive elements necessary to generation. It is said to be invariably the case with the male mule, the cross between the ass and the mare; and hence it is that although crossing the horse with the ass is easy enough, and is constantly done as far as I am aware, if you take two mules, a male and a female, and endeavor to breed from them, you get no offspring whatever; ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... shrink back into nothing before that lion eye which saw and guided the destinies of the world, and all the flunkey-nature (if such a vice exist beyond the grave) come out in utter abjectness, as if the ass in the fable, on making his kick at the dead lion, had discovered to his horror that the lion was alive and well—Spirit of Quevedo! finish for us the picture which we ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... With too much quickness ever to be taught; With too much thinking to have common thought: You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live. Turn then from wits; and look on Simo's mate, No ass so meek, no ass so obstinate; Or her, that owns her faults, but never mends, Because she's honest, and the best of friends; Or her, whose life the Church and scandal share, Forever in a passion, or a prayer; Or her, who ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... sturgeon; when rescued from the waters, it proved to be a young donkey. This mistake led to the one party being styled "Godmanchester black pigs," and the other "Huntingdon sturgeons," terms not altogether forgotten at this day. Pepys's colt must be taken to be the colt of an ass.—B.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... John; "he did not answer courteously—he said, that I was a malapert little ass, and demanded again where this young Montfort's tent was. So then I said, that if a Montfort dared to show his traitor's face in this camp, the Prince would hang him as high as Judas; for I wanted to be rid of him, Richard! it was so dreadful to see thy face, and hear thy voice talking French, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at great crises with a ready-made solemnity. If they say little, it naturally follows that they say little that is foolish; their extreme lack of confidence leads them to think a good deal over the remarks that they are obliged to make; and, like Balaam's ass, they speak marvelously to the point if a miracle loosens their tongues. So M. de Bargeton bore himself like a man of uncommon sense and spirit, and justified the opinion of those who held that he was a philosopher of ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... his foot on dry land again he felt hungry. At once a table stood before him, covered with a fine and plenteous meal. He ate and drank. After he had gone on a while, he felt weary. And there stood an ass, waiting for him, on which he mounted. After he had ridden for a while, the ass's gait seemed too uneven, and along came a wagon, into which he climbed. But the wagon shook him up too, greatly, and he thought: "If I only had a litter! That would suit me better." No more had he thought so, than the ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... relates to the grave-mounds near Pensacola, Fla., and was originally published by Dr. George M. Sternberg, surgeon United States Army. [Footnote: Proc. Am. Ass. Adv. of Science, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... through with her for good, I tell you! I'm not your kind: I don't let a girl like that upset me till I can't think of anything else, and go making such an ass of myself that the whole town gabbles about it. Cora Madison's seen the last of me, I'll thank you to notice. She's never been half-decent to me; cut dances with me all last winter; kept me hanging round the outskirts of every crowd she was ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... whisper. I make the little children smile; I give wit to the dullest-minded nurses. Leaning above the cradles, I play, I comfort, I lull to sleep—and you doubt whether I exist! Sylvestre Bonnard, your warm coat covers the hide of an ass!" ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... listen, you know, so that it's quite rowdy—saying 'Yes—that's Linford—there he is,' quite as if they were on one of those coaches seeing New York; and you feel, by Jove, I give you my word, like the solemn ass who goes up on the stage to help the fellow do his tricks, you know, when he calls for 'some ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... and wrote in praise of a quartan ague. Synesius pleaded in behalf of baldness; and Lucian defended a sipping fly. Seneca drollingly related the deifying of Claudius; Plutarch the dialogue betwixt Gryllus and Ulysses; Lucian and Apuleius the story of an ass; and somebody else records the last will of a hog, of which St. Hierom makes mention. So that if they please, let themselves think the worst of me, and fancy to themselves that I was all this while a playing at push-pin, or riding astride on a hobby-horse. For how unjust ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... that I do not like hornets. When I see them, they remind me of the story of a donkey told me by a man in these parts. He in his youth saw an unlucky ass that, quietly browsing, unconscious of indiscretion, disturbed a hornets' nest. Suddenly the animal showed symptoms of unusual excitement, which became rapidly more violent, until, after some amazing antics, first on ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Tim Rokens, who in his disappointment unceremoniously contracted his name, "it's my opinion—private opinion, mark'ee—that you're a ass, an' you'll come for to ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... section of the tropical belt a silent, frightened, little woman with long ringlets, who smiled at one stupidly, showing a blue tooth. I don't know why so many of us patronized his various establishments. He was a noxious ass, and he satisfied his lust for silly gossip at the cost of his customers. It was he who, one evening, as Morrison and Heyst went past the hotel—they were not his regular patrons—whispered mysteriously to the mixed company assembled ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... have borrowed his ass, Nasir replied that he had already loaned the animal. Thereupon, the honest creature brayed from the stable. "But the ass is there," the visitor cried indignantly. "I hear it!" Nasir Eddin retorted ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... and could not endure that one should run shouting before him, whenever any fine object came in sight." On one occasion of this kind, a lady at the poet's side said, "Burns, have you nothing to say of this?" "Nothing, madam," he replied, glancing at the leader of the party, "for an ass is braying over it." Burns is not the only person who has suffered from this ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... in Minnesota Ass'n. v. Benn, 261 U.S. 140 (1923), that a similar Minnesota mail order insurance company could not be viewed as doing business in Montana where the claimant-plaintiff lived, and that the circumstances under which its Montana contracts, executed and to ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... from the inconvenience of marrying his victims and from the physical violence of outraged Anglo-Indian chivalry. And when George, now a colonel and on the verge of a quarrel with the second Mrs. Coventry about a young ass of a tertium quid, caught sight of poor Rafella at a window in the Bazaar, he was so genuinely upset that he rushed back to his wife, forgave her (nothing in particular) and lived happily ever after. Which, of course, is just ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... day, he retired to his saloom, and the friends and familiars came and seated themselves, each in his rank and degree. Presently, in walked Abu Nowas and was about to take his usual seat, when the Caliph cried to Masrur, the sworder, and bade him strip the poet of his clothes and bind an ass's packsaddle on his back and a halter about his head and a crupper under his rump and lead him round to all the lodgings of the slave-girls, —And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... to be a frightened fool, for Mr. Abernethy was not the brute the world was pleased to make him out;" and after a stiff and rough examination shook the student heartily by the hand, and pronounced him "not an ass, like all the world, but a sensible shrewd fellow, who, instead of muddling his head with books, had passed his days, very properly, where real life was only to be met with"—videlicet, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... went, and many a score Of riders did the same, On horse and ass—like high and low And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... while waiting for his breakfast. In a mirror opposite he saw his face. It did not look haggard; it looked very much as it always did. He fancied playing a part through life—hiding a broken heart under a smile. "O you incorrigible ass!" he said to himself, and was afraid he had said it to the young lady who brought him his breakfast, and looked haughtily at him from under her bang. She was very thin, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Herbert, "impress women by just keeping still. Griswold pretends the reason he doesn't speak to you is because he's too superior, but the real reason is that he knows whenever he opens his mouth he shows he is an ass." ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... the said anniversary to be kept. And, lastly, in the south wall, opposite to the said Oratory, erected a glorious tabernacle, which contained the image of the said blessed Virgin, sitting as it were in childbed; as also of our Saviour, in swaddling clothes, lying between the ox and the ass, and St. Joseph at her feet; above which was another image of her, standing with the child in her arms. And on the beam, thwarting from the upper end of the Oratory to the before-specified childbed, placed the crowned images ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... own prisoner she earns her liberty, as far as I am concerned. I never did like your style, Perkins, especially your methods of handling—or rather mishandling—women. You could have made her give up the stuff she recovered from that ass Brookings inside of an hour, and wouldn't have had to kill ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... by choice, like Burnell's ass, I ponder— The flesh on this side, and the spirit yonder. Which were it wiser I ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... that women should work physically or morally to an extent which impairs beauty. In France, where woman is harnessed with an ass to the plough which her husband drives,—where she digs, and wields the pick-axe,—she becomes prematurely hideous; but in America, where woman reigns as queen in every household, she may surely be a good and thoughtful housekeeper, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that it is better to pass away an Evening in this manner, than in Gaming and Drinking: But at the same time says, with a very agreeable Raillery upon himself, that if his name should be known, the ill-natured World might call him, The Ass in the Lion's skin. This Gentleman's Temper is made out of such a happy Mixture of the Mild and the Cholerick, that he out-does both his predecessors, and has drawn together greater Audiences than have been known ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... them all," said Morley, with gentle melancholy. "I have a full report of all the cases I was engaged in yonder"—he nodded to a distant shelf. "Sometimes I take those volumes down and think what an ass ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... fellow didn't lose any time either. Almost as soon as they met, he began to butter her up, and tell her how beautiful she was. Why, before he left her side, he had asked himself to tea to-morrow at Mercy Farm. Stupid ass! He might see that the girl isn't his sort! I never saw anything like it. It was just like a hawk and ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... will almost always feel himself justified in extracting a slightly pleasurable sensation from the transaction. He will say to himself probably, unconsciously indeed, and with no formed words, that the husband is an ass, an ass if he be in a twitter either for that which he has kept or for that which he has been unable to keep, that the lady has shewn a good deal of appreciation, and that he himself is—is—is—quite a Captain bold of Halifax. All the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... "Ass that I am, of course they are. Steady, Mistress Margaret, while I go through the pockets. The odds are we shall find something useful ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... having heard some Grasshoppers chirping, was highly enchanted; and, desiring to possess the same charms of melody, demanded what sort of food they lived on to give them such beautiful voices. They replied, "The dew." The Ass resolved that he would live only upon dew, and in a short time died ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... content with being an ass merely, he is a pompous and a stupid ass. (Laughs again to himself.) Now there is something very important that he ought to know, and he wouldn't let me tell him. ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... is just outside the wall. He has ridden up to Jerusalem on an ass, with a multitude before and behind; and some, poor dupes, have hailed him as he passed as King of Israel. That finally is the pretext with which Hanan will compel Pilate. Truly, though not yet taken, the sentence is already written. This ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... general quite illusory. For Hellenism, for the thinking side in man as distinguished from the acting side, the attitude of mind of Protestantism towards the Bible in no respect differs from the attitude of mind of Catholicism towards the Church. The mental habit of him who imagines that Balaam's ass spoke, in no respect differs from the mental habit of him who imagines that a Madonna of wood or stone winked; and the one, who says that God's Church makes him believe what he believes, and the other, who says that God's Word makes him believe what he believes, are for ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... large marble font in an old Byzantine baptistry was broken up for that purpose while we were there. We stood on the very rostrum in the theatre where St. Paul and the coppersmith had trouble—while at the time of our visit, the only living inhabitant of that once great city was a hungry ass which we saw harboured in a dressing-room beneath ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... trooper, we've fought 'em in dock, and drunk with 'em in betweens, When they called us the seasick scull'ry-maids, an' we called 'em the Ass Marines; But, when we was down for a double fatigue, from Woolwich to Bernardmyo, We sent for the Jollies—'Er Majesty's Jollies—soldier an' sailor too! They think for 'emselves, an' they steal for 'emselves, and they never ask what's to do, But they're camped an' fed an' they're up an' ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... ass-drivers rush to and fro, jostling against one another. Here and there a priest of Osiris with a panther's skin on his shoulders, a Roman soldier, or a group of negroes, may be observed. Women stop in front of stalls where artisans are at work, and the grinding of ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... ass!" I grunted. "Be off, Arthur, there's a good chap, and don't listen to him. He hasn't the least idea what ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mode! These characters always put us in mind of the statues of Louis XIV, in which he is represented as Jupiter or Hercules, nude, with the exception of the lion's hide thrown round him—and the long, flowing peruke of the times! O Jupiter tonans! let us have either the lion or the ass—only let ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... this sage opinion with the sententious solemnity of an oracle, or the portentous gravity of "an ass"—as modern slang might put it—the youth resumed his pipe and continued the stupefaction of ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... because it is printed in a book, and swallow without winking the most colossal lying; critical and captious readers, who quarrel with the blunders or the beliefs of their author, and who cannot refrain from calling him an idiot or an ass—and perhaps even writing him down so on his own pages; admiring and receptive readers, who find fresh beauties in a favorite author every time they peruse him, and even discover beautiful swans in the stupidest geese that ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... band, on a terrace appearing, Perform'd many tunes that enchanted the hearing; The Ape, on the haut-boy much science display'd— The Monkey the fiddle delightfully play'd— The Orang Outang touch'd the harp with great skill, } The Ass beat the drum, with effect and good will, } And the Squirrel kept ringing his ...
— The Elephant's Ball, and Grand Fete Champetre • W. B.
... on his way to serve under his father in Asia, said and did many foolish things. A friend describing him as a great ass, 'Not even a great ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... a trap! Slocum would have taken it! If I had been ass enough to make any such offer, he would have jumped at it. What do you and Slocum take me for? You're a ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the neighing steed, The lowing ox, the deer, The sheep, the hog, the braying ass, The sea-gulls hovering near, With groups of various birds and beasts, Of sorts both tall and scrimp, Were gather'd there upon the sands; ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... also a professional fool in his ass cart with two dogs, one a white little curly dog, who sat upon the ass's head behind his ears, and another a black shaggy mongrel, with longish ears, who sat up in a begging attitude on the hinder part of the ass, and whom the fool-knave ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... hollow to him. He was in that peculiar condition when a man knows that he is making an ass of himself, and knows that he is going right ahead doing it. He was more attentive to Dora than ever. He brought her a glass of water, talked to her continually with his back to the hostile room. He was fully capable of carrying the thing through, even ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... time a crowd of gamins—the gamins are always up, no matter how early—had gathered in the middle of the street around the object of the disturbance. It was a marchand of vegetables in a greasy blouse, leading an ass. There was a huge pannier on the ass's back full of kitchen vegetables, which the marchand was crying and praising to our sleepy faubourg. With an economy worthy of Silhouette, the scamp had taught Adrienne—for that was the beast's name—to bray every ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... modification is a thing impossible to nature, the number of contrary probabilities is so enormous that, even philosophically, we can scarcely doubt it; for if any species has been produced by the modification of another, if the species of ass has been derived from that of the horse, this could have been done only successively and by gradual steps: there would have been between the horse and ass a great number of intermediate animals, the first of which would gradually differ from the nature ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... primordial form, yet from the facts above given, we must conclude that these three forms are now as fixed in character as are many others which are universally ranked as true species. Consequently they have as good a right to receive distinct specific names as have, for instance, the ass, ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... therefore, that when she came a little shamefacedly to consult my father, as she sometimes did in days of difficulty—for under a show of contempt she often really submitted to his judgment—it was given to Agnes Anne to say suddenly, "Let me go to Marnhoul, grandmother!" If Balaam's ass (or say, Crazy), had spoken these words, grandmother could not have been ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... Dalton Hooker need take no notice of the attack in the "Athenaeum" in reference to Mr. Charles Darwin. What an ass the man is to think he cuts one to the quick by giving one's Christian name in full. How transparently false is the statement that my sole groundwork is from pigeons, because I state I have worked them out more fully than other beings! He muddles ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... been better employed," said John Minute gruffly. "That silly ass has summoned me three times. One of these days I'll get him ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... half naked and drenched with wet, having traversed an almost trackless country over dreadful rocks and mountains, laid me up at a village for a few days, but I have since crossed the island on an ass, going for six hours a day, which proves I am pretty well, now, at least.... My locket, and the valuable snuff-box Lord Sligo gave me, and two pelisses, are all I have saved—all the travelling-equipage for Smyrna is gone; the servants ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... nie sein Brod mit Thraenen ass, Wer nie die kummervollen Naechte Auf seinen Bette weinend sass, Er kennt Euch nicht, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and such as I might have had." Another defect was his not having a skilful and effective private tutor at a time when he felt that he stood specially in need of one. "I could not form my reading habits alone, and I had not sufficient help. I did enough, however, to show I was not an ass. I got a scholarship. I was twice in goodish places in the first class. I had a name for flute-playing;" and then, ending this retrospect, which he wrote with some disgust, he tells how he left Cambridge in his third year, going out B.A. with no contest ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... wooden wardrobe, with a few plates on the top, and one bed close to the fire. There was no chimney but the door, on the threshold of which stood, looking exceedingly unhappy, four dripping wet fowls; at the far end of the chamber was a regular dungheap, on which stood an ass. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... grace of the throne, The folly of monarchs, and screen of a crown— Take a prince for his purpose, without ears or eyes, And a long parchment roll stuff'd brimful of lies: These mingled together, a fiat shall pass, and the thing be a Peer, that before was an ass. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... it! You have no idea of the tortures I should suffer, Mr. Hartright, if Louis dropped that portfolio. Is it safe on the chair? Do YOU think it safe, Mr. Hartright? Yes? So glad. Will you oblige me by looking at the drawings, if you really think they are quite safe. Louis, go away. What an ass you are. Don't you see me holding the tablettes? Do you suppose I want to hold them? Then why not relieve me of the tablettes without being told? A thousand pardons, Mr. Hartright; servants are such asses, are they ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... as Mr. Webster, and I say that the Fugitive Slave Law is unconstitutional,—is an outrage and an imposition of which you will all soon be ashamed. It is a disgrace to humanity and to your republicanism, and Mr. Webster should be hung for advocating it. He is a humbug or an ass," continued the Count, his wrath growing fiercer as he poured it out,—"an ass if he believes such an infamous law to be constitutional; and if he does not believe it, he is a humbug and a scoundrel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... hand, from these; instead of applying himself practically and modestly to the observation of that universe, in which man's part is so humble. 'Vain man,' says our oldest Poet, 'vain man would be wise, who is born like a wild ass's colt.' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... fool else! Even the ass that often travels the same path comes in time to tell its turns and windings. Art not satisfied with touching the pride of the worthy Nicklaus Wagner, by putting the well-warmed burgher to his proofs, but ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the popular notion concerning the antagonism of whisky and snake-bites, and Willson reports that several of the fatalities in his series were directly due to alcohol rather than to the bite."—Editorial, Journal of the American Medical Ass'n. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... spluttered the old liar, "dost want that loose-legged slut of thine in trouble? I tell thee she's playing in a corner with Carlo Formaggia. Already he's pinched her cheek twice, and who knows what the end may be? Mud-coloured ass, wilt thou let thy child slip to the devil while thou standest gaping at a horse-race?" And this before all the neighbours! What to say to such a man? Maso babbled with rage; but he had to go, for Carlo Formaggia was well known. He ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... supposed house of Martha and Mary. We passed a little field where Christ withered the tree, marked by an excavation in the rock, where there is always a fig. The way we returned to Jerusalem was that by which Jesus rode upon the ass in triumph upon Palm Sunday, down the Mount of Olives, and in at the Golden Gate of ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... little distracting, he was, and he talked, we recall, of many things. He impressed us, we found afterwards, as a poseur beyond question, a conscious Ishmaelite in the world of wit, and in some subtly inexplicable way as a most consummate ass. He talked first of the excellent and commodious trams that came from over the passes, and ran down the long valley towards middle Switzerland, and of all the growth of pleasant homes and chalets amidst the heights that ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... very kindly it is true, and was grieved at my want of simplicity and trust in my aunt. She thought I had a big scruple, and was not giving the real reason of my tears. At last, getting nothing for my pains, I made up my mind not to imitate other people any more. I thought of the fable of the ass and the little dog; I was the ass, who, seeing that the little dog got all the petting, put his clumsy hoof on the table to try and secure his share. If I did not have a beating like the poor beast, at any rate I got what I deserved—a severe lesson, which cured me once ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... mariner, reminders to the landsman of the Eye that never slumbered. The clouds—shade and shower—they were mercifully for Man. Nothing had meaning, possessed value, save as it derived meaning and value from him. The great laws of Nature—they, too, were ordered for Man's service, like the ox and the ass; and as he drove his ox and his ass whither he would, caused them to move forward or to stop at the word of command, so Man had only to speak properly (in prayer) and these laws would move faster or less fast, stop still, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... undressed himself, and cast in his nets. As he drew them toward the shore, he found them very heavy, and thought he had a good draught of fish, at which he rejoiced; but a moment after, perceiving that instead of fish his net contained nothing but the carcass of an ass, he ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... dear fellow, that I revolted against the directions of that ass of a doctor, and I resolved to go out, whether it suited him or not; and, consequently, I told the valet who waited on me to bring me ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... in respect of subject matter. It is a convenient working hypothesis to take the classic tragedy of Hellas as the progenitor of the opera. It can also be taken as the prototype of the Festival of the Ass, which was celebrated as long ago as the twelfth century in France; of the miracle plays which were performed in England at the same time; the Commedia spiritiuale of thirteenth-century Italy and the Geistliche Schauspiele ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Madonna with red hair and green eyes! Only the idealism of a German would attempt to use this thorough-bred woman as a model for a picture of virginity. The poor fellow really is an almost bigger donkey than I am. Our misfortune is that our Titania has discovered our ass's ears ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... Ovide, in Paris, were placed ten blind beggars, muffled up in grotesque dresses and long pointed caps, with large paste-board spectacles on their nose, without glass: music and lights were set before them; and one of them was characterized as Midas, with the ears of an ass, and the addition of a peacock's tail, spread behind him. He sang, while all the others played the same parts of a monotonous tune, without either taste or measure; and the unfeeling public turned into derision the unfortunate actors in this infamous scene. This happened ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... birth present no alluring features. In point of fact the ambitions and hypocrisies, pretences and prejudices of the Cingalese "burgher" with the tell-tale finger-nails are merely those of Bristol or Amsterdam evolved under Colonial conditions. Jack van der Beck, for example, the pompous medical ass with a flourishing practice among the local nabobs, can be found in every provincial town in Europe. The Dice of the Gods has no plot worthy of the name, but Mr. DE ZILWA has both satire and philosophy at his command, and a flair for atmosphere. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... dotted here and there with fallen stones. A few sheep of a dwarf breed crop the scanty herbage on the slopes; sometimes the winter is so severe that they die; in the distance we perceive a shaggy ox, with savage eyes, the size of a small ass. Both plants and animals perish, or are stunted. In order to make such a land yield anything it must first be replanted with trees, as has been done in Sutherlandshire; a tree renews the soil; it also shelters crops, flocks ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... How cleverly she had deceived him, and what an ass he had been! She had been playing with him all the while, and as he paced the floor, revolving what course to pursue, he wondered how he could have been so simple. True, she was different from any woman he had ever met, but dazed though ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... adornment as they had stolen or adopted from intercourse with splendor-loving nations, and where long trains of camels dragged quarried stones to the building, in former times only an occasional ox-cart with creaking wheels was to be seen, an Egyptian riding an ass or a bare-backed nag, and now and then a few insolent Greek soldiers. On all sides he heard the sharper and more emphatic accent of the sons of the desert instead of the language of his forefathers and their Greek conquerors. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Poor dear brother! Poor dear friends of the family! Poor dear Tabbies and Grimalkins. Poor dear everybody except the woman who is going to risk her life to create another life! Tavy: don't you be a selfish ass. Away with you and talk to Violet; and bring her down here if she cares to come. [Octavius rises]. Tell her ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... happy, the red of Daphne's felt hat, the gorgeousness of Bertuccio's blue trousers and yellow waistcoat lighting the gloom of the cool, green-shaded ways. Hermes always ran frisking to meet them, outstripping by his swiftness the slow plodding of the little ass. Perhaps the lambkin felt the shadow of a certain neglect through these long absences, but at least he was generous and loved his rival. Quitting the kitchen and dining-room, he chose for his portion the pasture where the donkey grazed, in silence ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... the first to recover herself. She stood up and brushed herself, remarking: "By jove, that parachute cloak of yours is a great dodge. I wish I'd thought of it. I always keep my full-dress togs put away, like the ass that I am. A stitch or two, and a few lengths of whalebone ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... It would seem that an advocate is bound to defend the suits of the poor. For it is written (Ex. 23:5): "If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lie underneath his burden, thou shalt not pass by, but shall lift him up with him." Now no less a danger threatens the poor man whose suit is being unjustly prejudiced, than if his ass were to lie underneath its burden. Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... lads. Cousin Harry, take first ride on St. Patrick (the name of the ass)—here's a leg up. The two Dicks can have Scrub and Rasper. Jack and Billy, boys, catch a hold of the bridles, or devil a ha'p'worth of ride and tie there'll be in at all, if them Dicks get the start—Shanks' mare will take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... might be instantaneously removed. Having obtained this, he purchased a long false beard, a black gown, and various boxes and retorts, so that he could readily pass for a travelling physician; these articles he placed upon an ass, and rode back to the castle of Thiuli-Kos. He was certain, this time, of not being recognised, for the beard disfigured him so that he scarcely ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... same time he seized and carried off Eesuree Purshad, a Brahmin, who had fled from Palpore, in Deogon, and gone for shelter to the Bazaar of Ottergow; and after cutting off his nose, he put him on an ass with a young pig tied to his neck, and paraded him through the bazaar, with a drummer before him, to render him ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... of the laughter of the house if he had played less subtly. I should put it as quite the best piece of playing in a well-played piece. Mr. DAWSON MILWARD has made a deserved reputation as the strong silly ass. He sustained it—with something in hand. Mr. STEPHEN EWART'S James was a quite excellent performance, not very coherent and consistent in conception on the author's part, perhaps, and on that account all the more difficult. Miss ESM HUBBARD gave us ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... ludicrous figures of the farmers, who enter the town preceded by soldiers, and reposing with doleful visages on their sacks of wheat. Sometimes you see a couple of dragoons leading in triumph an old woman and an ass, who follow with lingering steps their military conductors; and the very ass seems to sympathize with his mistress on the disaster of selling her corn at a reduced price, and for paper, when she had hoped to hoard it till a counter-revolution should ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... description or belief in the way a chastised child clings to and kisses the hand that chastised it. But poor old Spare-the-Rod never had experiences like that. And young Obstinate, having been born like Job's wild ass's colt, grew up to be a man like David's unbitted and unbridled mule, till in after life he became the author of all the evil and mischief that is associated in our minds ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... body of something still more extraordinary, in a communication, entitled 'Two Hundred, Five Hundred, or even a Thousand new Vegetables, created ad libitum.' Having been struck by the fact, that the ass so often feeds upon the thistle, he took some specimens of that plant, and, by careful experiment, has succeeded in producing for the table 'a savoury vegetable, with thorns of the most inoffensive and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... was no lightning or thunder and the rain came down in the gentlest manner and continued in this way three days. With this marvelous manifestation in direct answer to prayer, many people said "we would have had the rain any way." "Truly the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but my people doth not know, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... able folk, remain savages. So, too, in central and southern Africa, where the mammalian life, though rich, affords no large forms which tolerate captivity, the people have failed to attain any considerable culture. On the other hand, in the great continent of the Old World, where the horse, the ass, the buffalo, the camel, and the elephant existed in the primitive wilds, men rose swiftly toward ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... was on the earth going up to Jerusalem, He rode on the colt of an ass, and the blind and the lame and the sick came to Him, and He healed them. Humanity is sick and blind and lame to-day, brothers, but the Vicar of Christ ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... pockets, and walked up and down uncomfortably. He thought, in fact, that Daphne was spoiling the dear nondescript old place, and he knew that the neighbourhood thought so too. Also he particularly disliked the young architect who was superintending the works ("a priggish ass," who gave himself abominable airs—except to Daphne, whom he slavishly obeyed, and to Miss Farmer, with whom Roger had twice caught him gossipping). But he was determined not to anger his wife, and he held ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stopping short. "What a fool I'm getting to be-meeting old Elias, in a place like this! The theatre crowds—everybody in town will be here by eleven! Curse me, for a hopeless ass! I must get him away ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... ridiculous. If it be not point blank to his humour, his method, his conceit, [112]si quid, forsan omissum, quod is animo conceperit, si quae dictio, &c. If aught be omitted, or added, which he likes, or dislikes, thou art mancipium paucae lectionis, an idiot, an ass, nullus es, or plagiarius, a trifler, a trivant, thou art an idle fellow; or else it is a thing of mere industry, a collection without wit or invention, a very toy. [113]Facilia sic putant omnes quae jam facta, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... toothpick, but he looked as if he was made of steel wire. We soon struck up a conversation, and his "Cockney" sure did sound funny to me; he was one of the sappers, and when he found that I had left the Infantry to join them he was disgusted. "Well," said he, "you are a bloomin' ass. Why, blime me, mite, this here's the worst bleedin' job in the Army; a man digs till the sweat rolls off, and all he gets for it is a bleedin' shilling, and he has to give six-pence of that to the old woman; blime, it doesn't leave ye enough for bacca, and all ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... Pharisees, no enemy of Christianity ever attacked it more radically than by attributing the power of miracles to Beelzebub, the prince of the devils! M. Huc reminds us of a preacher whom we once heard, in an enlightened capital, explaining the miracle of speech in Balaam's ass, by reminding his congregation that parrots—nay, even bull-finches, have been made to speak, and therefore why not an ass? It never occurred to him, that in the impossibility of the thing the miracle consisted. There is a little of the same kind of oversight in the explanations of our missionaries. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Ass Buffalo Camel Chamois Elephant Goat Human (see Mother's milk) Llama Mare Reindeer Sea cow (Amazonian legend) Sheep Whale (legendary; see Whale Cheese) Yak ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... known here, but that does not matter. Take these gold pieces and in the flower-market buy with one of them the most beautiful bunch of flowers you can find, with another you may make merry, and out of the remainder spend a drachma in hiring an ass. The driver will conduct you to the garden of Pudeus' widow where stands the house of dame Hannah; you remember ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... your closest woman-friend marries. What she can see in him you cannot for the life of you perceive, while he, on his part, secretly wonders why the woman he loves ever sought friendship with such a pompous, dull ass as you are. Love is blind, so they say. Well, so is friendship—so are relations—blind ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... "I am a clumsy ass!" I interrupted quickly. "I am asking you questions which you do not wish to answer. A little later on, perhaps, you will tell me everything of your own accord. But to-night I shall ask you nothing. We will remember only ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Ass!" says the master, "Go drink that Water, That drowns not the Fire, That burns not the Whip, That thrashes not the Doggie, That bites not the Johnnie, Who chases not the Nanny, that eats the grapes, Down in ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in his Captain's mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed—"The thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Malkin began. 'How the deuce shall I tell you? Oh, the ass I have made of myself! But I couldn't help it; there seemed no way ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... how could you be such an ass?" said Mackinnon. "As it has turned out, there is no very great harm done. You have insulted a respectable middle-aged woman, the mother of a family, and the wife of a general officer, and there is an end of it;— ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... which sent him reeling. "Look after your hounds, you blind ass! How are you now, Trebooze?" And he caught the squire round the waist, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... understanding Difficulty gives all things their estimation Dignify our fopperies when we commit them to the press Diogenes, esteeming us no better than flies or bladders Discover what there is of good and clean in the bottom of the po Disdainful, contemplative, serious and grave as the ass Disease had arrived at its period or an effect of chance? Disgorge what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed Disguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice Dissentient and tumultuary drugs Diversity of medical arguments ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... should any distinction have been made about the cultivation of plants. Therefore it was unfittingly prescribed (Lev. 19:19): "Thou shalt not sow thy field with different seeds"; and (Deut. 22:9, seqq.): "Thou shalt sow thy vineyard with divers seeds"; and: "Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... and remarked to him that, "Those mighty men who could kill a jaybird with a sling-shot a quarter of a mile off didn't stay to see the show." "No," he answered; "when the sons of Belial beheld our warlike preparation, their hearts melted, and became as water; they gat every man upon his ass, and speedily fled, even beyond the brook which is called Cache." He then went on to tell me that on our arrival at Augusta there was a body of Confederate cavalry near there, supposed to be about a thousand strong, under the command of a General McRae; that they were bivouacked in the woods ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... only say, that I hope a little of your good nursing, with ass's milk, will set me up for another campaign; should the Admiralty wish me to return, in the spring, for another year: but, I own, I think we shall ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... little church St. Etienne du Mont, and that was one of the first places to which I drove after looking at my student-quarters. All was just as of old. The tapers were burning about the tomb of St. Genevieve. Samson, with the jawbone of the ass, still crouched and sweated, or looked as if he did, under the weight of the pulpit. One might question how well the preacher in the pulpit liked the suggestion of the figure beneath it. The sculptured screen and gallery, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Gouverneur Morris to Alexander Hamilton in 1796, that the French people in general were royalists at heart, and utterly averse to the general overthrow of their institutions by the legislative mob at Paris, or, as Mirabeau comprehensively called them, 'that Wild Ass ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... a gloomy ass! The money I left with Old Man Taylor; the money you got down here for preliminary ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... "he sucks blood;" and taking up a stone, she made it whiz past his ear as he disappeared from view. A general scream of contempt and hatred followed. "Where's the ass's head? put out the lights, put out the lights! gibbet him! that's why he has not been with honest people down in the vale." And then they struck up a blasphemous song, the sentiments of which we are not going even to conceive, much ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... gravely, smoothing the crumpled paper on his knee, "this sort of thing might do a lot of harm if it fell into the hands of a nervous subject. I should be inclined to punch the head of the ass who perpetrated it. Have you turned that address up in ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... me, as I was Lucas's guardian. And it's serious for him. If he goes and plays the fool, it may spoil his career—the young ass! ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... that he too was aware of her recovery of normal joy and was refreshing himself with it. She drooped down towards his mouth, but at the last minute he avoided her kiss and said irritably: "I wonder if Roger made an awful ass ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... had taken place after reiterated offences. A horse was seen, for the first time, to take his bit in his teeth and rush through the streets of Quiquendone; an ox was observed to precipitate itself, with lowered horns, upon one of his herd; an ass was seen to turn himself ever, with his legs in the air, in the Place Saint Ernuph, and bray as ass never brayed before; a sheep, actually a sheep, defended valiantly the cutlets within him from ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... two for you." The filthy object of universal charity shook his fist at the youngster.—"I'll make you keep this 'ere fo'c'sle clean, young feller," he snarled viciously. "Never you fear. I will learn you to be civil to an able seaman, you ignerant ass." He glared harmfully, but saw Singleton shut his book, and his little beady eyes began to roam from berth to berth.—"Take that bunk by the door there—it's pretty fair," suggested Belfast. So advised, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... cultivated were wheat, millet, barley, beans and lentils; to which it is supposed, on grounds not improbable, may be added rice and cotton. The chief implements were a wooden plough of simple and light construction, a hoe or mattock, and a light harrow. The ox and the ass were used for labour. The word "oxen,'' which occurs in our version of the Scriptures, as well as in the Septuagint and Vulgate, denotes the species, rather than the sex. As the Hebrews did not mutilate any of their animals, bulls were in common use. The quantity ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia |
