"Besotted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... draws greatness from the inspiration of the former. There was a time in the history of the Jews in which, it is recorded, "there was no open vision". It can be said, emphatically, that in the time of Charles II. there was no open vision. And yet that besotted, that spiritually dark age, which was afflicted with pneumatophobia, flattered itself that there had never been an age so flooded with light. The great age of Elizabeth (which designation I would apply to the period of ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... confessors. They stood alone, sustained but little by intercourse among themselves, and wholly misunderstood by the people round them. Italy, sunk in sloth, priest-ridden, tyrant-ridden, exhausted with the unparalleled activity of the Renaissance, besotted with the vices of slavery and slow corruption, had no ears for spirit-thrilling prophecy. The Church, terrified by the Reformation, when she chanced to hear those strange voices sounding through 'the blessed mutter of the mass,' burned the prophets. The State, represented by ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... can give," he said, and dragged forth the rickety-legged chair that he might prop it against its back, for the moment looking less drunk and less a vagabond in his eagerness to do his work justice; there lurking somewhere, perhaps, in his besotted being, that love which the artist soul feels for the ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... started to go out. Deering had stood with bloodshot eyes fixed on Nell while Girty searched the loft, and as they passed the girl on their way to the open air, the renegade looked at Girty as he motioned with his head toward her. His besotted ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... heroine are already in love and engaged to one another at the opening; we are not told any details about their falling in love. The hero, Anton Trendellsohn is a successful businessman in his mid- thirties—not the typical Trollopian hero in his early twenties, still finding himself, and besotted with love. Anton is rather cold as lovers go, seldom whispering words of endearment to Nina. But it is the fourth difference which really sets this novel apart and makes it both a masterpiece and an ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... my mind; it is better than leaving it to the common hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in enlightened England: either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse than death in a criminal lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar quietus; it has stood on my table all night long, ready and pointed ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... "Fool, fool; enslaved, besotted idiot! I am lost, spelled; the victim of sorcery I cannot fight against. What am I to do, what am I to do? Surely I can keep my steps from going near her. If I were to swear now that I will never set ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... his besotted soul there lurked the hope that some day, in the long run, through the wife whom he was selling so basely, he might succeed in obtaining the upper hand of Bob Grand, and crush him ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... pain. But it was no more than recollection. When he looked at her he knew that he no longer loved her. He was very sorry for her, but he was glad to be free. Watching her gravely, he asked himself why he had been so besotted with ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... licking," Grief answered. "And let me tell you one thing, you besotted whelp, I'll keep on licking you as long as my knuckles hold out or until you yearn to hammer chain rust. I've taken you in hand, and I'm going to make a man out of you if I have to kill you to do it. Now go below and change your clothes. Be ready to turn to with a hammer this ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men.—Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the starlit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof and house and board. Make yourself ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... moulder in the howling wastes of the "overland passage;" just as the bones of the unbelieving Israelites whitened the sands of the desert. Of those who have reached the "land of" golden "promise," how many have died in despair, or worse still, are living so besotted by vice, so lost to all power of virtuous resolutions, that they shall never more see the happy homes from which they so thoughtlessly wandered, never more hear the soft accents of loving friends; never more worship ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... modern patriarch, spoke thus to a justice of peace before a large assembly of people: "Friend, take care what thou dost; God will soon punish thee for persecuting His saints." This magistrate, being one who besotted himself every day with bad beer and brandy, died of an apoplexy two days after, the moment he had signed a mittimus for imprisoning some Quakers. The sudden death with which this justice was seized was not ascribed to his intemperance, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... that all would probably, nay, almost certainly, have gone as Messer Simone desired if only Messer Simone had not been so bullishly besotted as to leave the name of a certain lady out of his table of calculations; for Messer Griffo liked the scheme well enough. Though it was, as it were, a double-edged weapon, cutting this way at the Florentines of one party and that way at Arezzo, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... beast!" said the father, digging his heels into the comfortable flanks of his mule with some human impatience, "or art THOU, too, a lazy renegade? Thinkest thou, besotted one, that the heretic will spare thee more work ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... demeanour and the fabrication of insulting nicknames, such as Prince Featherhead, which run from ear to ear and create a laugh throughout the country. Gondremark has thus some of the clumsier characters of the self-made man, combined with an inordinate, almost a besotted, pride of intellect and birth. Heavy, bilious, selfish, inornate, he sits upon this court and country ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sufferers from these evils. Compelled by their position in society to depend on men for subsistence, for food, clothes, shelter, for every chance even to earn a dollar, they have no way of escape from the besotted victims of appetite and passion with whom their lot is cast. They must endure, if not endorse, these twin vices, embodied, as they so often are, in the person of father, brother, husband, son, employer. No one can doubt that the sufferings of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... There has been but one man for many years past able to arrest this torrent, and that was Canning; and him the Tories—idiots that they were, and never discovering that he was their best friend—hunted to death with their besotted and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... has been besotted with ceremonies. Miserable monks have ruled all, entangling men's consciences for their own benefit. Dogma has been heaped on dogma. The bishops have been tyrants, the Pope's commissaries have been rascals. Luther has been an instrument of God's displeasure, like Pharaoh ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... ceremony was solemnized by the village parson on the 30th of September, 1830. With his bride he now settled down at home. For some years he lived the life of a farmer. His mother was riveted to the spot where her devoted husband fell at the hands of a besotted Indian. But her son was of a progressive spirit. He longed to leave the old home for one more comfortable. How strange that the old should sit by the grave of the past, while the young never weary of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... belonged to the boys' club, the establishment of which had led to the opening of Polktown's library and free reading-room. However, the boys pursued Tim Narnay no farther. They slunk back into the lane, and finally, with shrill whoops and laughter, disappeared. The besotted man stood wavering on the curbstone, undecided, it seemed, upon ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,—the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the confectionary idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and ditch-water. And thus Christianity and morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are hurried on to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... promised assistance early in the spring. It would indeed be a fine thing if you could commence operations during the Rhamadan; but I fear that is impossible. Any time, however, will do against the stupid, besotted Turks. Were they not led by Frenchmen, even the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... water you must knowe, The memory destroyeth so, That of our weale, or of our woe, It all remembrance blotted; Of it nor can you euer thinke: For they no sooner tooke this drinke, But nought into their braines could sinke, Of what had them besotted. 680 ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... been said the Indians are besotted against all improvements. The cordiality with which this was received is worthy ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... they once ask alms or attempt to push misery forward. The least charitable would be strongly tempted to succor any one of the throng individually, but here a hundred dollars in American money divided into Mexican centavos would hardly go round. Here and there were pulquerias full of besotted, shouting men—and who would not drink ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... not expect it—you are too much besotted by her," pursued Nowell; "but I conjure you to cast off this wicked and senseless passion, which, unless checked, will lead you to perdition. You have heard what abominable rites are practised at those unholy meetings called Devil's ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sullen murmurs through the comrades ran: Above the rest, were Thestius' sons,—their arms Out-stretching, clamor'd thus with a mighty noise;— "Let not thy beauteous form thy mind deceive, "When from thy eyes the donor of the spoil, "Besotted with thy love, shall far be mov'd. "Woman! restore the prize, nor hope to hold "Our intercepted claims."—Speaking they rob Her of the gift, him of the right to give. Nor passive stood the warlike ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... content with her new surroundings, wondered how she could ever have been so besotted as to object to the move. The place, the people, the mode of life were all delicious to her, and for the family at Lanarth, her enthusiasm was touching. Mrs. Mason was just her idea of "Mrs. Washington, or Cornelia, or Lady de Bourgainville," she explained to Norma, mixing history and fiction, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... to her. That poor little Daisy! The image of the baby swam vividly before her. What a terrible fate to be left in the hands of the public-house woman! Who knew what would happen to it? What if, in her drunken fury at the absence of Becky and Joseph, she did it a mischief? At the best the besotted creature would not take cordially to the task of bringing it up. It was no child of hers—had not even the appeal of pure Jewish blood. And there it lay, smiling, with its beautiful blue eyes. It had smiled trustfully on herself, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... and love at that juncture, and it ought not to be a cause of regret. His interest in the welfare of the church ceased not with his mortal life. How swiftly would his glorified spirit fly to see the landing of William, and hover with joy over the flight of the besotted James! He was now in a situation to prove the truth of that saying, 'the angels desire to look into' the truth and spread of the glad tidings. How he would prove the reality of his opinion, expressed in The Holy War, of the interest taken by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... afford the means of civilized habits; no literature worthy of the name; no colleges, or even common schools of any value; no industry and enterprise, and every motive for it crushed by arbitrary and tyrannical institutions: the mind degraded and besotted, inconceivably so, and preoccupied also with the vilest superstition, the most inveterate prejudices, and the most arrogant bigotry. Who can measure the vast disproportion? What mind sufficient to balance extremes so inconceivably immense? On the one hand a minister to a thousand souls, with many ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... elder Ptolemy dying before Cleomenes's affairs had received a full dispatch, and the successor being a loose, voluptuous, and effeminate prince, under the power of his pleasures and his women, his business was neglected. For the king was so besotted with his women and his wine, that the employments of his most busy and serious hours consisted at the utmost in celebrating religious feasts in his palace, carrying a timbrel, and taking part in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Pray tell that besotted —— to let the opera sink into its native obscurity. I did it in a fit of d——ble good nature long ago, for Hullah, who wrote some very pretty music to it. I just put down for everybody what everybody at the St. James's Theatre wanted to say and do, and that they could say and do best, and I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... a besotted idiot he had been! She was as they were. The nodding of their towering hats was before his eyes; the subdued titter that accompanied their whispered comments was in his ears; the lavender, white rose, and violet essences with which they perfumed their baths and sprinkled their clothes ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... it was easy to be honest? Do you find that in your Bible? Easy? It is easy to be an ass and follow the multitude like a blind, besotted bull in a stampede; and that, I am well aware, is what you and Mrs. Grundy mean by being honest. But it will not bear the stress of time nor the scrutiny of conscience. Even before the lowest of all tribunals,—before a court of law, whose business it is, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... II., also described by Froissart. He says that when the Londoners found the King 'besotted' with his favourites, they sent word to Queen Isabella that if she could land in England with 300 armed men she would find the citizens of London and the majority of the nobles and commonalty ready to join her and place her on the Throne. This the Queen ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... himself was made to take an oath (more oaths!) that he would never come back, and the Barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace, until they heard that he was appointed Governor of Ireland. Even this was not enough for the besotted King, who brought him home again in a year's time, and not only disgusted the Court and the people by his doting folly, but offended his beautiful wife too, who never liked ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... and unwelcome visit. In the exigency, the beldame was awakened and consulted; she averred that it was always unlucky to kill a seal, but suggested that the animal should be deprived of sight, and a third time carried out to sea. To this hellish proposition the besotted wretch who owned the house consented, and the affectionate and confiding creature was cruelly robbed of sight, on that hearth for which he had resigned his native element! Next morning, writhing in agony, the mutilated seal was embarked, taken outside Clare Island, and for the last time ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... a boy of fifteen I could hear you two together talking your poetry and your books till I was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you. But you were always a good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did. And I felt she didn't belong to me: and the children don't. And I besotted myself, and gambled, and drank, and took to all sorts of devilries out of despair and fury. And now comes this Mohun, and she likes him, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... force them to listen to us, we must begin by making a greater noise in order to attract their attention at all. In the same way it is of no use wasting subtleties on them; we have to go straight to the main points, which are clear and sharp enough to pierce their drink-besotted intelligences, or to reach any fragment of conscience they ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... and the vintage spread before them its irresistible temptations, and the herds feeding in the rich pastures seemed to promise an endless feast. The cattle, the corn and the wine were alike wasted with besotted folly, while the Turks within the walls received tidings of all that passed in the crusading camps from some Greek and Armenian christians to whom they allowed free egress and ingress. Of this knowledge they availed themselves ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... foreman, before the cowboys dispersed to their alloted tasks, "those lads are sure there when it comes to deliverin' the goods, ain't they? An' to think that once in a moment of besotted ignorance I referred to them as 'tender-feet.' Why, it don't seem possible them boys can be Easterners at all. It seems like they jest must 'a' been born west o' ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... worn with age, and surrounded by a slight railing. Can it be that there is a spirit hovering over that grave whose influence is peace and love? May not some mighty man lie buried there, the once frail tenement of a great mind whose noble thoughts have years ago wakened a besotted world to truths and aspirations hitherto unknown? There is veneration and respect in every countenance that gazes upon that simple stone; a solemn tread in every foot that trenches on its limits. This is the grave ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... be made equally besotted, and even more helpless than they, in order that his senses might be sapped away, and he should remember no story to tell. Perhaps if he had not had before him so vivid an illustration of the malign power that swayed them, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... under the bullets of the insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? A poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at least one telling word to say in his defence; for when the roof fell in and the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged him to the public place of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rouse him. It was safe with the Grand Duke Peter—a king at four months old! But what of sons, or kings or countries—nothing could make up for the loss of his Queen! And to think that she had died to save him! Save him from what? A brush with three besotted drunkards, whom it would have been ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... sorry," said Hyde. His wide black eyes, devil-driven beyond reticence, were riveted on Isabel's: apparently she no longer existed for him except as the Chorus before whom he could strip himself of the last rag of his reserve. "It brought it all back. I was besotted when I married her, and I remembered all that when I saw her dead. I forgot the other men. It was just as it was when Arthur died. I couldn't do anything for him, and he was in agony: he was shot through the stomach: it didn't seem to matter then that he had robbed me of Lizzie. I couldn't ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... land is undone! Suddenly undone my tents, In a moment my curtains! How long must I look for the signal 21 And hark for the sound of the trump! [Yea, fools are My people 22 Nor Me do they fear.(213) Children besotted are they, Void of discretion. Clever they are to do evil, To do ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... his love by it; indulgence is not love. It is no sign of meekness, but only of cowardice and carelessness, to be afraid to rebuke sin. Moses knew that he was doing God's work, that he was appointed to make a great nation of those slavish besotted Jews, his countrymen; that he was sent by God with boundless blessings to them; and woe to whoever hindered him from that. Because he loved the Jews, therefore he dared punish those who tempted them to forget the promised land of Canaan, or break God's ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... their ears against me, because I held it not according to conscience to kill Injuns as they did, and so refused. And so, friend, they drove me from their doors; seeing which, and perceiving the poor creatures were in a manner besotted, and bent upon their own destruction, and the night coming on fast, I turned my steps and ran with what speed I could to friend Bruce's, telling him the whole story, and advising that he should despatch a strong body of horsemen to the place, so as to frighten the evil creatures away; for, truly, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... both travelled far since then; but whither have you been travelling? The whole wide heaven was not too wide for you then; but now you can be jolly in your "nutshell." Then, you held spiritual, or human, values to be final, infinite, absolute, and could gibe in your own incomparable way at the besotted conventionalism which would place commercial values above them; now, who chants with such a roaring, pious nasal at that apotheosis of Property which our modern commercial slavery essentially is? Then, with Schiller, you desired, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... import books duty free, which has heretofore been enjoyed by the few public libraries that are struggling into existence from private liberality, was, by the tariff of 1846, peremptorily withdrawn; whether through a niggard parsimony, or a besotted indifference to learning, more worthy of Caliph Omar than of an enlightened state, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... hotel, and soon. An entertainment where the whites dance foolishly in foolish raiment, disguised as that which they are not and with covered faces. What easier than for me to obtain entry as one of them under my veils and have speech with the man I love? And if he is as thou sayest, besotted with love of this white girl, then will I use the man of barbarous name as a tool to bring about that which I desire. Know'st thou ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... sometimes forgotten for that of His frail and unworthy creature. True it was, I still, without slackening, spoke comfort to the ear of suffering or repentant sin—I still exhorted the weak and strengthened the strong. I still warned the besotted in corruption that the fruits of vice, blossom as she will, are but like those of the shores of the Dead Sea, seeming gay, but only emptiness and bitter ashes. But alas! the bearer of the blessed message spoke as if the ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... good courage, that Betty—turn to the light, please, Senora—I could not have acted better myself—I think it is a little high on the left shoulder. He never guessed a thing, the besotted fool, and that was before I gave him the wine, for he wasn't likely to guess much afterwards. Did the senora say it was tight under the arm? Well, perhaps a little, but this stuff stretches. What I want to know is, what happened afterwards? ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... denunciation of Judah, the vineyard of Jehovah, v. 1-7, merging thereafter into a sixfold woe, pronounced upon her rapacious land-holders, drunkards, sceptics, enemies of the moral order, worldly wise men, besotted and unjust judges, v. 8-24. This is fittingly followed by the announcement that Jehovah will summon against Judah the swift, unwearied and invincible ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... trial, execution or transportation, were girls of twelve to senile, helpless creatures of eighty. All were thrust together. Hardened criminals, besotted prostitutes, maidservants accused of stealing thimbles, married women suspected of blasphemy, pure-hearted, brave-natured girls who had run away from brutal parents or more brutal husbands, insane persons—all were herded ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... me, for I had not heard of their taking any body who had reached the dignity of a pair of inexpressibles, and the luxury of a pair of shoes. The Indians in the neighborhood of the capital, besotted by drink and misery, almost naked, and living or rather burrowing in caves, were usually the only victims of the recruiting sergeant. However, as the letter given by Arthur to Pedro could be ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Confucius or Gautama. "Heathenism" is the one brand which we have put upon all the non-Christian religions. I wish it were possible to exchange the term for a better.[29] Baalism was undoubtedly the most besotted, cruel, and diabolical religion that has ever existed on the earth. When we carefully study it we are not surprised at the strong language of denunciation which the Old Testament employs. But as I have already shown, we find in the New Testament a different spirit exercised toward ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... purse together in the common cause, and Will. the Conqueror's successor, which was Charles, was cast out; thereby we have recovered ourselves from under that Norman yoke. And now unless you and we be merely besotted with covetousness, pride and slavish fear of men, it is and will be our wisdom to cast out all those enslaving laws which was the tyrannical power the king pressed us down by.[108:1] O shut not your eyes against the light; darken not knowledge ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... makings of a dangerous flirt, he decided, though, at present, she was only feeling her way. Time would develop her powers and then, God help the young idiots who would lose their heads! Most of all, God help her fool-husband—the besotted idealist! In a few years, Joyce Meredith would be no better than most lovely women in the East—notably such as flourished in the hill stations ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... of incarceration the natives are separated from their women-folk and families. The consequence is one of the most striking and shocking features of the compound system. A number of the lowest, drink-besotted, coloured prostitutes, estimated at about 5,000, have collected at Beaconsfield, where, so to speak, they constitute a colony, occupying a revolting quarter of the township. When the natives come out for a short spell these unhappy women receive them. It is, no doubt, convenient ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... might not be stealing over him, borne on the fair sounds? for even the formless and the void was roused into life and joy by the wind that roamed over the face of its deep. No humanity jarred with hers. In the presence of the most degraded, she felt God there. A face, even if besotted, was a face, only in virtue of being in the image of God. That a man was a man at all, must he because he was God's. And this man was far indeed from being of the worst. With him beside her, she could pray with most of the good of having the door of her closet ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... conduct of the besotted boy, on whom at their marriage she had bestowed the title of king, began at once to justify the enterprise and to play into the hands of all his enemies alike. His father set him on to demand the crown matrimonial, which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... herself in the centre of a crowd, composed chiefly of that hideous scum, idle and in rags, insolent and malicious, besotted with ignorance, brutalized by want, and always loafing about the corners. Workmen are scarcely ever met with in these mobs, for they are for the most part engaged ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... his eyes that he might not see, and he believed what his eyes told him. He saw that Pantagruel worked very hard and spent all his time at it, and yet he got no good by it. And what was worse, he was becoming daft, silly, dreamy, and besotted through it. So Pantagruel was taken away from his former masters and handed over to Ponocrates, a teacher of quite a different sort, who was bidden to take him to Paris to make a new creature of him and complete his education there. Ponocrates was very careful ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... more than he puts in practice. Ask the young thief, in the subterranean haunts of vice and crime, if he does not know that it is wicked to steal, and if he renders an honest answer, it is in the affirmative. Ask the most besotted soul, immersed and petrified in sensuality, if his course of life upon earth has been in accordance with his own knowledge and conviction of what is right, and required by his Maker, and he will answer No, if he answers truly. The grade of knowledge ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... Harriet Hosmers, Harriet Beecher Stowes, Lydia Maria Childs, and Lucretia Motts, with millions of the mothers and matrons of quiet homes, where they preside with queenly dignity and grace, are begging of besotted, debauched white male citizens, legal voters, soaked in whisky, simmered in tobacco, and parboiled in every shameless vice and sin, to recognize them also as human, and graciously accord to them the rights of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the Maynooth men, who are mostly peasants and the sons of peasants. I do not think that the Maynooth course is sufficient in one generation to lift the sons to any great intellectual height above the besotted ignorance of the parents. I believe in heredity, and I say that most of my colleagues are only shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years. The low-bred men are now the dominant power. Instead of tranquillising the people, which I hold to be the duty of the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... was not so besotted but that lucid intervals now and again afflicted her. One seized her this afternoon, as she prepared to bid Damaris good-bye. Either conscience pricked with unusual sharpness, or the young girl's smiling and unruffled acquiescence in her departure aroused latent ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... somewhat chilly, yet the benches in the center of the square were more than half-filled by men plainly "down on their luck." Some of these men, of course, were hopelessly besotted or vicious, and Uncle Sam had no use for any of these in his Army uniform. There were other men, however, on the seats, who looked like good and useful men who had met with hard times. Most of these men on the benches had not breakfasted, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... have not effected anything but scattered work, which will be appropriated by other men? Why? but because my son, whom I had brought up to replenish my ripe learning with young enterprise, left me and all liberal pursuits that he might lash himself and howl at midnight with besotted friars—that he might go wandering on pilgrimages befitting men who know of no past older than the missal and the crucifix?—left me when the night was already ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... silence, and his now asserted wish for "not one word upon the subject,"—was at once kept in total ignorance of all; and yet, as ambassadorial John constantly gave out to Clements and Maria, in an amiable nervous state of natural acquiescence. Next day, then, the besotted father was about to be packed post for Yorkshire; the important letter, with its enclosed bank note, was already written and sealed, as like the governor's hand as possible; a license had been long ago ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... reverences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the sponge. These are the pretty responsories, these are the dear antiphonies, that so bewitched of late our prelates and their chaplains with the goodly echo they made; and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly Imprimatur, one from Lambeth House, another from the west end of Paul's; so apishly Romanizing, that the word of command still was set down in Latin; as if the learned grammatical pen that wrote it would cast no ink without Latin; or perhaps, as ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... enlightenment. Belle's family were sorry for him. On his wedding day her sisters looked at the big, handsome boy—he was twenty-four—as he walked down the aisle with his bride, and then they looked at each other. His besotted confidence, his sober, radiant face, his gentle, protecting arm, made them uncomfortable. Well, they were glad that he was going West at once, to fulfill his doom where they would not be onlookers. Anyhow, they consoled themselves, they had got ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... in our minds, where she meets with less resistance. What has she not the power to impose upon our judgments and beliefs? Is there any so fantastic opinion (omitting the gross impostures of religions, with which we see so many great nations, and so many understanding men, so strangely besotted; for this being beyond the reach of human reason, any error is more excusable in such as are not endued, through the divine bounty, with an extraordinary illumination from above), but, of other opinions, are there any so extravagant, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the fate of genius in an age, when in the unequal contest with sovereign wrong, every man is ground to powder who is not either a born slave, or who does not willingly and at once offer up the yearnings of humanity and the dictates of reason as a welcome sacrifice to besotted prejudice ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical subtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavish tradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and heaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale of grandeur and intensity wholly without a parallel elsewhere in the literature or faith of the world. Brahmanism, with its hundred million adherents holding ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... stayed my speech in the best manner and the most gracious, laughing low, so that, verily, I was clean besotted with love, and marvelled that any could be so fair as she, and how I could have won ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... even-handed justice was dealt out alike to rich and poor, high and low. Though the foreigners laughed at the fables of the priests and ridiculed the monks, they yet were honest in their dealings with the people instead of taking by violence. As there are no people so besotted that they do not admire courage and honesty, so the Paisano looks upon the heretic as a man of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... passengers would have been ordered above, and their den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the present, this was out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused to go among the defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the greater part of the emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of the case was forcibly painted to them, they would not lift a hand to assist in what ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Do yoo bleeve that the Memphis and Noo Orleans unpleasantnesses wuz brot about by the unholy machinashens uv them Radical agitators, actin in conjunction with ignorant and besotted niggers, to wreak their spite on the now loyal citizens uv ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... plantation, and spend more money than he could afford. He induced him to drink, and then George, who had not a very strong will, began to run after other women. I was furious, and told him about Denham. He was so besotted with the creature that he refused to listen to me. Powell tried to stop George's downward course, but without result. Then he was called back to England, and I was left to battle against my enemy alone. My father and mother were both dead, and I could do ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... of the gods had this piece of flawless jade fallen in the windy dust, among the flowers beneath the willow? When she was thirteen years old, Shih-niang had already "broken her claws." Now she was nineteen, and it would not be possible to enumerate the young Lords and Princes whose hearts she had besotted, whose thoughts she had set in a turmoil, whose family treasures she had swallowed without compunction. In the theatres, they had composed an epigram ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... Frau T——, we went to bed, but not to sleep. That would have been a vain endeavor, for shrill laughter, loud words and boisterous songs, in which the high tones of wild female voices rose painfully above the gruff singing of half-besotted men, penetrated the room, whilst the old rafters groaned and creaked from the heavy tramp of dancers below. All our belief in the sobriety and goodness of the Tyrolese seemed swept away, and a sense ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the orator worked on the same material, substantially, that our orators and statesmen do at the present day, and that all future orators will work upon to the end of time,—on the passions, the interests, and the aspirations which are eternally the same, unless kept down by grinding despotism or besotted ignorance, as in Egypt or mediaeval Europe, and even then the voice of humanity finds entrance to the heart and soul. "All men," said Rousseau, "are born equal;" and both Adams and Jefferson built up their system of government upon this equality of rights, if not of condition, and defended it ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... genius,—a man who had attained in early manhood the highest worldly fame together with the friendship of a king, and the love of a people, . . yet what was he in himself? A mere petty Egoist, . . a poor deluded fool, the unresisting prey of his own passions, . . the besotted slave of a treacherous woman and the voluntary degrader of his own life! What was the use of Genius, then, if it could not aid one to overcome Self, . . what the worth of Fame, if it were not made to serve as a bright incentive and noble example to others of less renown? As this thought passed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... worst vices of the heathen. Their abject and pitiable state, he told us, the Lord God had witnessed with Divine commiseration, and had determined that the light of Christian love should shine upon their darkness, and that Almighty wisdom should dissipate their besotted ignorance. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... nakedness the more plainly," said M'Brair. "Poor, blind, besotted creature—and I see you stoytering on the brink of dissolution: your light out, and your hours numbered. Awake, man!" he shouted with a formidable voice, "awake, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Ravensdale mortgage while rumaging in an old deed box of Coyle's father's, there was a folded paper inside the deed. I took both to Coyle unopened, like a besotted fool that I was. My belief is strong that the paper was the release of the mortgage that the money had been paid off, and the release executed without the seals having been cut from the original mortgage. I have ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... effectual to lull the senses. For, that it is the very sound of the sermon which bindeth up their faculties, is manifest from hence, because they all awake so very regularly as soon as it ceaseth, and with much devotion receive the blessing, dozed and besotted with indecencies I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... it and consult it when your mind begins wandering again. Those special mechanical devices to reduce fat people are contrived for the benefit of men and lazy women who are too slothful to take exercise or else too besotted in the matter of food indulgence to face the alternative of dieting. They may not do any harm—properly operated, they probably do not—but, at best, I would regard them as being merely temporary expedients specially devised as first aid to ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... at Sholto when he came near, but not as one who sees or recognises. Rather, as it were, dumb, drunken, besotted with grief, looked forth the soul of the Lady Sybilla upon the captain of the Douglas guard. She heeded not his angry shout, for another voice rang in her ears, speaking the knightliest words ever uttered by a man about to ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... prepossess. Adj. misjudging &c. v.; ill-judging, wrong-headed; prejudiced &c. v.; jaundiced; shortsighted, purblind; partial, one-sided, superficial. narrow-minded, narrow-souled[obs3]; mean-spirited; confined, illiberal, intolerant, besotted, infatuated, fanatical, entete[Fr], positive, dogmatic, conceited; opinative, opiniative[obs3]; opinioned, opinionate, opinionative, opinionated; self-opinioned, wedded to an opinion, opinitre; bigoted &c. (obstinate) 606; crotchety, fussy, impracticable; unreasonable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... said to recollect the unrecallable, I had vividly seen in that instant the two months' action just overpast, and its three participants,—the thin-lipped mother, the besotted millionaire, and the girl shakily hesitant between ideals and the habits of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... as I have knelt; Implore, beseech, and pray, Strive the besotted heart to melt, The downward course to stay; Be cast with bitter curse aside,— Thy prayers ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... pass, The hell-traps 'at stand like a curse; Bedizened wi' glitter an glass, To mak paupers, an likely do worse. Some say 'at th' millenium's near, But they're reckonin wrang aw should think, When they fancy the King will appear, In a world soa besotted ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... possibility of mistaking it, though it was greatly changed for the worse. Five years had wrought terrible havoc upon it. The scar on the left cheek was more conspicuous than of yore, and the features seemed to have settled into a perpetual frown. But, worst of all, the countenance was bloated and besotted. The nose had become bulbous and spongy, the eyes watery and weak. The man's clothes were patched and seedy, and presented a general aspect of being desperately out at elbows. His unsteady step indicated that he was at ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... terrify Bodhisattva; but not a hair of his was moved, and Mara's host was filled with sorrow. Then in the air the crowd of angels, their forms invisible, raised their voices, saying: "Behold the great Muni; his mind unmoved by any feeling of resentment, whilst all that wicked Mara race, besotted, are vainly bent on his destruction; let go your foul and murderous thoughts against that silent Muni, calmly seated! You cannot with a breath move the Sumeru mountain. Fire may freeze, water may burn, the roughened earth may grow ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... most glorious works of the period. Vittoria is perfect throughout; and in the justly-lauded trial scene she has no superior on any stage. Brachiano is a thoroughly lifelike portrait of the man who is completely besotted with an evil woman. Flamineo I have spoken of, and not favourably; yet in literature, if not in life, he is a triumph; and above all the absorbing tragic interest of the play, which it is impossible to take up without finishing, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... he was rich he would subscribe for a box and come there just to hear her sing. And now he was broke, and Drusilla was going East to run the perilous gauntlet of the tenors. He jerked up the stylus in the middle of a record and cursed his besotted industry. If he had let his ore go, and gone to see her like a gentleman, Drusilla might even now be his. She might have relented and given him a kiss—he cursed and stumbled blindly ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... doting citizen, who, it is thought, might be of the common-council for his wealth; a fellow sincerely besotted on his own wife, and so wrapt with a conceit of her perfections, that he simply holds himself unworthy of her. And, in that hood-wink'd humour, lives more like a suitor than a husband; standing in as true dread of her displeasure, as when he first made love to her. He ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... upon these groups, they were horrified at beholding that mass of red, seamed, haggard faces; solemn with suffering, withered, distorted, swollen with wine, pallid from liquor; some threatening, others resigned, some sarcastic or jeering, others besotted; all rising from the midst of those terrible rags, which no designer can surpass in ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... well dispenc't In unsuperfluous eeven proportion, And she no whit encomber'd with her store, And then the giver would be better thank't, His praise due paid, for swinish gluttony Ne're looks to Heav'n amidst his gorgeous feast, But with besotted base ingratitude Cramms, and blasphemes his feeder. Shall I go on? Or have I said anough? To him that dares 780 Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words Against the Sun-clad power of Chastity, Fain would ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Has freed the saints from dread of harm, Has smitten Janasthan and made Asylum safe in Dandak's shade. Enslaved and dull, of blinded sight, Intoxicate with vain delight, Thou closest still thy heedless eyes To dangers in thy realm that rise. A king besotted, mean, unkind, Of niggard hand and slavish mind. Will find no faithful followers heed Their master in his hour of need. The friend on whom he most relies, In danger, from a monarch flies, Imperious in his high estate, Conceited, proud, and passionate; ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Almost without an effort, plans too vast For their conception, which they cannot move. Conscious of impotence, they soon grow drunk With gazing, when they see an able man Step forth to notice; and besotted thus, Build him a pedestal, and say, "Stand there, And be our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... had no weight with the king, who never showed his native good sense more conspicuously than in the pains he took over the rebuilding of London; but none the less it had its effect in getting rid once and for ever of that spirit of excessive (besotted is Hallam's word) loyalty which ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... know, that though the town of Mansoul itself was not much, if at all concerned with the project, (for, alas for them! they were wofully besotted, for they chiefly regarded their pleasure and their lusts,) yet Diabolus their governor was; for he had his spies continually abroad, who brought him intelligence of all things, and they told him what was doing at court against him, and that Emmanuel would shortly certainly ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... Alas for the besotted soul who cannot bend the knee of humble adoration before nature's altar, where sacrifices are offered to the Jehovah, pavilioned in invisibility. There is an ardent love of nature as far removed from gross materialism or subtle pantheism on the one hand ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... government; that is to say, we find the Church, a body of priests, continually opposed to the sovereign power, and in virtue of their pretended divine mission and sacred office, pretending to give laws to all the sovereigns of the earth. We find the clergy, puffed up and besotted with the titles they have given themselves, laboring to exact the obedience due to the sovereign, pretending to chimerical and dangerous prerogatives, which none are suffered to question, without risking the displeasure of the Almighty. And so well have the priesthood managed this matter, that ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... cause but was unable to stem the tide of prejudice against granting women the vote. After the defeat in Michigan, she wrote in her diary, "Every whisky maker, vendor, drinker, gambler, every ignorant besotted man is against us, and then the other extreme, every narrow, selfish ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... his afternoon's nap, took it into his head while in a tipsy state to go down alone to bathe. He was seen only by the Juiz de Paz, a feeble old man who was lying in his hammock in the open verandah at the rear of his house on the top of the bank, and who shouted to the besotted Indian to beware of the alligator. Before he could repeat his warning, the man stumbled, and a pair of gaping jaws, appearing suddenly above the surface, seized him round the waist and drew him under the water. A cry of agony "Ai Jesus!" was the last sign made by the wretched ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... peace of Pitcairn, and darkened her moral sky, had been at least intelligently founded on hatred or revenge, with a definite object and murderous end in view. Now, for the first time, a furious battle had been fought for nothing, with no object to be gained, and no end in view; with besotted idiots for the champions, and with strong drink for ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the most ancient and powerful of the kingdoms of India, fell into the hands of the English, owing to the ambition, bigotry, and besotted cruelty of the ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... and the exchanges will all be full of men making promises and settling accounts in their sleep. They will finger their purses, and grasp their swords, and all in their sleep. And not children but devils will laugh as they hear the folly that falls from men's lips who are besotted with spiritual sleep and drugged with spiritual and fleshly sin. A dream cometh through the multitude of business. I had just got this length in this lecture the other night when I went to sleep. And in my sleep one of ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... begins, and, when it begins, how will it end? Ay—how will it end? It is not to be supposed that we can long be blinded by such a flimsy humbug as a transfer to Southern possession of these vessels 'for the Chinese trade!' Are the English mad, demented, or besotted, that they suppose we intend to endure such deliberate aid of our enemies? When those vessels 'for the Chinese' are afloat, and our merchants begin to suffer, let England beware! We are not a people to stop and reason nicely on legal points, when they are enforced in the form of fire and death. Better ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... true Lost City, and we are—oh, try to comprehend all that statement means, my lads! Picture to yourselves what boundless fame and unlimited credit awaits our report to the outer world! The benighted world! The besotted world! The—the—" ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... his ears back, raced parallel in the boulder-strewn stream-bed, wonderful in his avoidance of bad footing, precious in his selection of good, interested in the game, indignant at the wayward Dinkey, profoundly contemptuous of the besotted mule. At a bend in the canon interposed a steep bank. Up this we scrambled, dirt and stones flying. I had just time to bend low along the saddle when, with the ripping and tearing and scratching of thorns, we burst blindly through a thicket. In the open space on the farther side Bullet stopped, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... Pompeius was forced to deliver battle at Pharsalia, when there were strong military reasons for refusing to fight. That they were involved in their chief's fall was only in accordance with the usual course of things, there being nothing to equal the besotted blindness of faction, as our current ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the restoration of our land, and become the poet patriot of my people. But these English! They care only to make money and to stuff it down the throats of gorging reverends. My scholarship, my poetry, my divine dreams—what are these to a besotted, brutal congregation of Men-of-the-Earth? I sent Buckledorf, the rich banker, a copy of my little book, with a special dedication written in my own autograph in German, so that he might understand it. And what did he send me? A beggarly five ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... murderous servants who ate the bread of a holy and harmless Master, against "their intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of their casuistry, their besotted cruelty." [273] We have been betrayed into speaking thus strongly of the extreme lengths to which superstition will carry those who yield themselves to its ruthless tyranny. But perhaps we have not gone far from our subject, after all; for the innocent ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... you must know, The memory destroyeth so, That of our weal, or of our woe, Is all remembrance blotted; Of it nor can you ever think; For they no sooner took this drink, But naught into their brains could sink Of what had them besotted. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... table, the smoke of his pipe clouding the still air of the neat kitchen. He knew he was facing a critical moment in their lives. He saw dimly that he had, for his own interests, gone a shade too far. Eve was not a weakling, she was a woman of distinct character, and even in his dull, besotted way he detected at last that note of rebellion underlying her appeal. Suddenly he looked up and smiled. But it was not altogether a pleasant smile. It was against his inclination, and was ready to vanish on ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... certainly little to give away. Poverty-stricken and besotted, she had enough to do to struggle ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... it. One wonders, too, at the attraction this has for strangers. There is really nothing in the people, the place, or the onlookers worthy of a decent man's curiosity. The girls are, without exception, the nastiest, most besotted drabs that ever walked the streets. They haven't even the pride that clings to certain of their sisters who are in prison. The whole assemblage, with the exception of such stragglers as myself, who have a motive in studying ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... should be so besotted as to refuse a man who offers so much. A man who has wealth, rank, ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... for the besotted stupidity at this time of March Marston, who was naturally quick-witted, unless upon the principle that prejudice renders a man utterly blind. A hundred glaring and obvious facts, incidents, words, and looks, ought to ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... adopt strong measures, but the sight of Ould Michael, besotted and broken, was more ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... she cried, feeling that indeed, between her father and this madman, her life had ceased to be safe. She looked round her helplessly. Three or four besotted fools lying helpless across the tables, and all the village dancing and making merry some two hundred metres away, her father—implacable, as she well knew, where her conduct was concerned—and this madman ready to kill to satisfy his lust of vengeance and ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... round upon a lethargic, a luxurious, a self-indulgent, a self-seeking, a world-besotted professing Church, and asks: 'Are these the people on whose hearts a cross is stamped?' Do these men—or rather let us say, do we live as becometh the Gospel which proclaims the divinity of self-sacrifice, and that the law of a perfect human life is perfect self-forgetfulness, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... themselves to have reached the level of that true enlightenment which distinguished the close of the eighteenth century. But the Vonckists, as they were called, formed but a small minority compared with the besotted mass; and, overwhelmed by fanaticism on the one hand, and despotism on the other, they were unable to act effectually for the public good. Vander Mersch, a soldier of fortune, and a man of considerable talents, who had raised himself ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... yourself?" said Leonard angrily. "Well, go your own way, foolish that you are, but beware of the beer and the spirits. Now you are beginning to know this language, and when you are drunk you talk, and do you think that there are no spies here? That girl, Saga, is great-niece to Nam, and you are besotted with her. Be careful lest you ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... outside the stockades. 'Tis not a pretty picture, that memory of white-men besotting the Indian; but I must even set down the facts as they are, bidding you to remember that the white trader who besotted the Indian was the same white trader who befriended all tribes alike when the hunt failed and the famine came. La Chesnaye, the merchant prince, it was, who managed this low trafficking. Indeed, for the rubbing together of more doubloons in his money-bags I think that La Chesnaye's ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... a pang of dread lest his confession should cut short this very happiness,—a pang of the same dread that had kept his love mute through long months. A rush of self-consciousness told him that he was besotted to have said all this. Maggie's manner this morning had been as unconstrained and indifferent ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the end of the little play was murder; that its motive was a sacrilegious robbery—the theft of a diamond cross from the body of a woman lying dead in a church; that the man was a drink-besotted ruffian; that the woman was his illicit partner; that the atmosphere was assuredly brutal. Material eyes saw all this. Material senses reasoned that, given all these qualities, such a play must be horrible, and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... to you in your private wishes, Cecilia, unless my besotted vanity has led me to believe what it would now be madness to learn was false; and in your opinions of public things, you are quite as widely separated. I should think there could be but little happiness dependent on a connection where there ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... perfume the atmosphere of the Union." His most intense hatred and vehement denunciation were reserved for John Randolph, whom he thought an abomination too odious and despicable to be described in words, "the image and superscription of a great man stamped (p. 211) upon base metal." "The besotted violence" of Randolph, he said, has deprived him of "all right to personal civility from me;" and certainly this excommunication from courtesy was made complete and effective. He speaks again of the same victim as a "frequenter of gin lane and beer alley." He indignantly charges that ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness,—then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke-wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream! Can we wonder if those bred in the rugged and manly school of science should feel like spewing such subjectivism ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... put up the slight fastenings to the doors and windows, which, as they corresponded to the peaceful and unsuspecting character of the owner of the mansion, could not long resist the infuriate attack of the besotted populace. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... colour to indiscriminate condemnation of all. A bonus in the shape of a toll for horse or team remitted, is thus actually presented, many times a-day, to the rioter, the rebel, the midnight incendiary of toll-houses, for this good work, by the supine, besotted, or fear-palsied local authorities. Shall a man look on while a burglar enters his house, ransacks his till, let him depart, and then, in despair, leave the door he broke open, open still all night for his entrance, and then wonder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... reasonable, thankful human creature with whom Emily had to deal. After a few long moments, those still standing in the passage saw her stagger out, white, with singed clothes, half-carrying in her arms, half-dragging, her besotted brother. She placed him in her bed, and took away the light; then assuring the hysterical girls that there could be no further danger, she bade them go and rest—but where she slept herself that ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the more remarkable as his relations with Congress and the Committee were fast approaching a crisis. If McClellan failed-and by the showing of his own despatches, there was every reason to expect him to fail, so besotted was he upon the idea that no one could prevail with the force allowed him—the Committee who were leaders of the congressional party against the presidential party might be expected promptly to measure strength with the Administration. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... here omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; they go ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... attributed to him some share in his sisters' novels, particularly in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. But Charlotte distinctly tells us that her brother never knew that his sisters had published a line. He was too much under the effects of drink, too besotted and muddled in that last year or two of life, to have any share in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the metaphysician. I haven't the remotest notion what his jargon means. From Aristotle to William James, I have dipped into quite a lot of them—Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer (the thrice besotted Teutonic ass who said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... of railroad constructors at the world's end beyond New Castle, gone through the Black Hills on horseback, fished for trout in Dome Lake, watched a dance at Cripple Creek, where the lost souls who hide in the hills gathered for their besotted revelry. And now, last of all, before the return to thraldom, there was this little shack, anchored on the windy crest of the Divide, a little black dot against the flaming sunsets, a scented sea of cornland bathed in opalescent air and ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... seen a Dog and Sheep dye hardly: And thus may a wicked man doe, because there is an antipathy betwixt nature and death. But even while, even then, when Death and Nature are strugling for mastery, the soul, the conscience, may be as besotted, as benummed, as senceless and ignorant of its miserable state, as the block or bed on which the sick lyes: And thus they may dye like a Chrisom child in shew, but indeed like one who by the Judgment of God is bound over to eternal damnation; and that also ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... periods.' {12a} Now he 'glitters all over like the star which they tell you appeared at his nativity,' and which still shines beside him, Micat inter omnes, on a medal struck in his boyhood. {12b} Anon he is sunk in besotted vice, a cruel lover, a solitary tippler, a broken man. We study ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Besotted with whiskey,—unfitting to tell, Even Satan himself avoiding the "smell;" Before then we part, I would bid you adieu, Reform ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... am certain that my projects will and must succeed. The affairs of this world are regulated unquestionably by the immutable decrees of destiny. What is to be will be; and I, in putting this wretched, drunken, mad, and besotted being out of my way, am only an instrument in the hands of that destiny myself. The blame then is not mine, but that of the law which constrains—forces me to act the part I am acting, a part which was allotted to me from the beginning; and this ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... enthral me more than that—and here I had my first taste of it. I remember that my heart beat, I remember that I trembled. Nothing could have torn me from the spot but what precisely did, an alien intervention. The besotted Harkness stopped short in his recital and asked me what ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... insults. I have an eye, Elvira: I have a spirit of divination; and this place is accursed. The landlord has been discourteous, the Commissary will be brutal, the audience will be sordid and uproarious, and you will take a cold upon your throat. We have been besotted enough to come; the die is cast - it will be ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wondered at the evil spell which had bound him so long and made him an alien among those so lovable and so dearly beloved. He now felt sure that he would devote body and soul to their welfare for the rest of his days, and he could not understand why or how it was that he had been so besotted. The intense sufferings during the earlier stage of his treatment at the institution made him shrink with horror from the bare thought of his old enslavement, and during the first weeks after his return he did not dream it was possible that he could relapse, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... former if any one else had written the damn thing, but it'll go because it isn't time yet for the Clavering luck to break. You'll get it in the neck, old man, one of these days, and when you least expect it. You're one of Fate's pets, her pampered pup, and she'll purr over you until she has you besotted, and then she'll give you such a skinning that you'll wish you were little Jimmy Jones, cub reporter, with a snub nose and freckles. I only hope to be in at the death to gloat." Then he shot out his hand. "Good stuff, Clavey. Congratulate ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton |
