"Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Don't pay any attention to those silly things. I ought to know best, for I've three separate hair-pins sticking into my scalp at the present moment. Jim took me to my first dance when he was at home for Christmas. It was s-imply lovely! I was awfully nervous, for I generally manage to make an idiot of myself if I get a chance; but I got on finely. I fell down full length as I was entering the room, but that was only because the floor was so beautifully polished. I danced every single dance—all waltzes, and the most ex-quisite music. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... an angel, and headstrong as a devil.' And what's her name?—Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects omniscience, he delights in every small chicane. He is rather droll. Yesterday he knew from ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... him out! Never mind; he can beat the town at one or two things, and it is for these we will use him. Some call him an idiot. The expression is neat and vigorous, but not precise; so I have christened him the Anomaly. Anomaly, this is Mr. Little; go and shake hands with him, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... strange enough. But this is not all. Many persons who have conducted themselves foolishly in active life, and whose conversation has indicated no superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very justly described by one of his contemporaries as an inspired idiot, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bite the stick they've been thrashed with," said Henderson. "You're right, Dubbs, and I respect you; ay, you fellows may sneer if you like, but I advised you not to do it, and I won't make myself an idiot ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... life acquires ideas as he may, causes them to combine, change and generate in his own mind, and then translates them into action of some kind. He who omits any of these things cannot be said to have really lived. He cannot, it is true, fail to acquire ideas unless he is an idiot; but he may fail to acquire them broadly, and may even make the mistake of thinking that he can create them in his ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... he who is convinced without a vestige of doubt, without the faintest hope of any saving uncertainty, that his soul is not immortal, should prefer to be without a soul (amens), or irrational, or idiot, that he should prefer not to have been born, is a supposition that has nothing, absolutely nothing, absurd in it. Was he happy, the poor Jewish intellectualist definer of intellectual love and of happiness? ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... way of Civita Castellana! Darn that old idiot of a woman! what's she up to now? If she's running away from me, she'll wish herself back before she gets far on that road. Why, there's an infernal nest of brigands there that call themselves Garibaldians; and, by thunder, the woman's ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... appearance excluding the suspicion of mere sly malice, I came to the conclusion that he was simply the most tactless idiot on earth. I almost despised myself for the weakness of attempting to enlighten his common understanding. I started to explain that I did not think anything whatever. Hamilton was not worth a thought. What such an offensive loafer . . . "Aye! that he is," interjected Captain ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... to get tired of it than of most healthy and innocent diversions, and cricket kept him out of mischief; so it was very unlucky, both for himself and for those over whom he had influence, that his jealousy of Crawley had led him to make such an idiot ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... I am eager to commit murder when I see a poor girl brought to ruin in this senseless way. Personally, it is a matter of utter indifference to me whether you marry Lida or go to the devil, but I must tell you that you are an idiot. If you had got one sound idea in your head, would you worry yourself and others so much merely because a young woman, free to pick and choose, had become the mistress of a man who was unworthy of her, and by following her sexual ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... question of the genetic linkage between the two species, but, in spite of the physical similarities, their actions were controlled almost entirely by instinct instead of reason. They were like some sort of idiot parody of ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "yes, she pretended she could show me I was wrong. It was easy, was it not, with the proofs I held against her? The fact is she adores her son, and her heart is breaking at the idea that he may be obliged to restitute what he has stolen from me. And I, idiot, fool, coward, almost wished not to mention the matter to her. I said to myself, I will forgive, for after all she has loved me! Loved? no. She would see me suffer the most horrible tortures, without shedding a tear, to prevent a single hair falling ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... an idiot!" said his lordship angrily. "—Old and young," he went on, unaware of utterance, "the breed is idiotic. 'Tis time it were ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... exclaimed, in transports of just indignation; "the azure waters of a silver lake! I didn't see that. This poet is an idiot. I'll bet he never saw a lake, or silver either. A stupid ballad too, in every way; the length of the lines cramps the music. For the future I shall compose my verses myself; and without waiting, since I feel in the humour, I shall manufacture some couplets ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Nur, "I might know a good deal and yet be an idiot. But I possess the knowledge of how to learn some of the innumerable things I do not know, and that is the reason I am so justly famous ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... "For an old idiot who notices as much as I something particular's always happening. If ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... think me a born idiot!'—Nelly would say, not without resentment. 'I really could understand, Bridget, ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... own world I had the habit of solitary song; here not a crooning murmur ever parted my lips! There I sang without thinking; here I thought without singing! there I had never had a bosom-friend; here the affection of an idiot would be divinely welcome! "If only I had a dog to love!" I sighed—and regarded with wonder my past self, which preferred the company of book or pen to that of man or woman; which, if the author of a tale I was enjoying ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... worth while even to feed and clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their places could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the parish authorities, in order to get rid of imbeciles, that one idiot should be taken by the mill owner with every twenty sane children. The fate of these unhappy idiots was even worse than that of the others. The secret of their final end has never been disclosed, but we can form some idea of their awful sufferings from the hardships ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... suspected him then, either, idiot that she was. She had been too busy being rested, being thankful, being happy in the big garden, tucked away from the people who had failed her and the ghastly city and the memory of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... world who have a soul for its beauties. Women, for instance," he went on, smoking furiously. "What help do you make of women? None! You sit at one end of the table, your secretary at the other. You don't look at her. She might have pig's eyes, for anything you know about it. Idiot! And she—not quite as bad, perhaps. Women feel a little, you know, that they don't show. Why not marry, Maraton? No? Perhaps you are right. And yet women are wonderful. You can't do your greatest work, Maraton, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... general mirth of the class burst out in sundry half-stifled noises, which roused the master from his reverie, and he again resumed the book, to continue the examination. As ill luck would have it, he once more repeated, "Avoir, avant," and then half abstractedly, "avu." "Ah, you young idiot!" cried he, in a discordant voice, "can't you manage avoir yet? Whatever ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... population of those domestic affections which were certain to decay gradually under the influence of manufactories and poor houses. Mr. Fox wrote a civil acknowledgment, saying that his favorites among the poems were "Harry Gill," "We are Seven," "The Mad Mother," and "The Idiot," but that he was prepossessed against the use of blank verse for simple subjects. Any political significance in the poems he was apparently unable to see. To this second edition Wordsworth prefixed an argumentative ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... are open hours When God's will sallies free And the dull idiot may see The flowing fortunes of a ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... made the most thoughtless think. There, among them, at the very stove round which they were gathered, stood one with a haggard eye and vacant gaze, and at his feet clung two half-naked infants; a quarter of an hour before he was a hale man, a husband, with five children; now, he was an idiot and a widower, with two. No tear dimmed his eye, no trace of grief was to be read in his countenance; though the two pledges of the love of one now no more hung helplessly round his legs, he heeded them ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... know what that old muff means," he says innocently, when he has finished his bitter draught. "He's always flying out at me, the old turkey-cock. He quarrels with my play at whist, the old idiot, and can no more play than an old baby. He pretends to teach me billiards, and I'll give him fifteen in twenty and beat his old head off. Why do they let such fellows into clubs? Let's have a game at piquet till dinner, Heavyside. Hallo! That's my uncle, that ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thought better of it and lay back again with eyes closed, while Markham moved on tiptoe around the room putting things to rights, all the while swearing silently. What in the name of all that was unpleasant did this philandering little idiot mean by trying to destroy herself on the front lawn of his holiday house? Surely the world was big enough, the air broad enough. He glanced at her for a moment, then crept over on tip-toe and peered at her secretively. He straightened and scratched his head, fumbling for his pipe, puzzled. She ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... cane-work and mats, and, lighting my pipe, went outside, walked down to the beach, and seating myself on a canoe, looked out upon the wide expanse of ocean, heaving under a dark and lowering sky, and wondered moodily why I was ever such an idiot as to take charge of a trading station on such a God-forsaken place as Tarawa Island in ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... would be, subject to the remarks of men. "There is he," men would say of him, "who has maundered away his mind in softnesses;—who in his life has loved two girls, and has, at last, been thrown over by both of them because he has been no better than a soft maundering idiot." It would be thus that his neighbours would speak of him in his vain effort to ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Camp was struck in haste, and they travelled down the Rhine. When their boat was detained at Marsluys, all three sat writing in the cabin—Shelley his novel, Mary a story called 'Hate', and Claire a story called 'The Idiot'—until they were tossed across to England, and reached London after borrowing passage-money ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... a mediaeval wooden figure of a king which I remember seeing in a town in the east of Europe: a crown blazing with many-coloured glass, a long crimson robe covered with ornaments and beneath them an idiot face, no bones, no muscles, no attitude. That is not what a Greek meant by beauty. The same quality holds to a great extent of Greek poetry. Not, of course, that the artistic convention was the same, or at all similar, for treating stone and for treating language. Greek poetry is statuesque ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... all," I continued, savagely. "Those women followed us, and who do you think one of them turned out to be? Well, it was Professor Smawl, of Barnard College, and I'll bet every pair of boots I own that she starts for the Graham Glacier within a week. Idiot that I was!" I exclaimed, smiting my head with both hands. "I never recognized her until I saw her tip-toeing and craning her neck to listen. Now she knows about the glacier; she heard every word that young ruffian said, and she'll go to the glacier ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... I have just said to you," cried Madeleine, still in bed; "you will not have the cruelty to take away Morel; what do you think will become of me, with my five children, and my idiot mother? There she is, huddled up on her mattress. She is foolish, my good gentlemen; she is quite out ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... a blamed idiot. You know I want you to go ahead and use him; only—I'd hate to see ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... moon-faced idiot grinning back at her. He was complete, and not bad-looking! But just before she touched the red button once and the blue button twice—which sent Pascal stumbling out to the backyard to finish weeding the circle of pansies before dinner—she wondered about the gash that was ...
— Weak on Square Roots • Russell Burton
... it of ours?" said others. "Let the idiot go," and went away. But the rest gathered up stones and mud and threw at him. At last, when he was bruised and cut, the hunter crept away into the woods. And it ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... logic of Hume." Perhaps the finest answer to the charge that Shakspeare was an unregulated genius, full of great absurdities and great beauties, is contained in Hudson's ironical statement of it: "He has sometimes been represented as a sort of inspired and infallible idiot, who practiced a species of poetical magic without knowing what he did or why he did it; who achieved the greatest wonders of art, not by rational insight and design, but by a series of lucky accidents and lapsus ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... me for a child, that I should be thus lectured by boys and a gray-headed idiot? You don't ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... be, Olive called herself a blind idiot for having, in spite of all her first shrinkings, agreed to bring Verena to New York. Verena had jumped at the invitation, the very unexpectedness of which on Mrs. Burrage's part—it was such an odd idea to have come to a mere worldling—carried a kind of persuasion with it. Olive's ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... got to see our girl and then he will be, unless he's a natural born idiot, which, of course, he couldn't be," replied Brenda's father in a tone of absolute conviction. "Now, I wonder what that man Marmion's going to let ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... Padishah said L180 just after the hammer came down—so Potter declared. At any rate the Jew merchant secured it, and there and then he got a gun and shot it. Potter made a Hades of a fuss because he said it would injure the sale of the other three, and Padishah, of course, behaved like an idiot; but all of us were very much excited. I can tell you I was precious glad when that dissection was over, and no diamond had turned up—precious glad. I'd gone to one-forty on that ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... idiot!" I shouted, "and let us look for the others. This is the end of your folly in making me attack a herd of buffalo in reeds. Get up. Am I to stop ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Maksoud has demanded her from me; but I have found, upon private inquiry, he is addicted to the intemperate use of opium, and my daughter shall never be the wife of one who is a violent madman one-half the day and a melancholy idiot during the remainder. I have nothing to apprehend from the pacha's resentment, because I have powerful friends with the grand vizier, who will oblige him to listen to reason, and to submit quietly to a disappointment he so justly merits. And now, Saladin, ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... ordinary school work. As a young man he had suffered the insolence of these wretched people about him; their cackling laughter at his poverty jarred and grated in his ears; he saw the acrid grin of some miserable idiot woman, some creature beneath the swine in intelligence and manners, merciless, as he went by with his eyes on the dust, in his ragged clothes. He and his father seemed to pass down an avenue of jeers and contempt, and contempt from such animals as these! ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Majesty will get a new Chamberlain—one who isn't an absolute idiot," said the Duchess severely, "your house-party would be in less danger of being recruited in this ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... Don Quixote, "if your highnesses would order them to turn out this idiot, for he will ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the piano has stopped. He stretches his head to listen, and does something to his ear that sends it another inch nearer the door; he chuckles and groans on the sly; and I—I notice nothing. Oh, he is becoming quite fond of me; he thinks me an idiot." ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... spire, the sober schoolhouse, the smithy of the ringing anvil, the corner grocery, the cluster of friendly houses; the venerable parson, the wise physician, the canny squire, the grasping landlord softened or outwitted in the end; the village belle, gossip, atheist, idiot; jovial fathers, gentle mothers, merry children; cool parlors, shining kitchens, spacious barns, lavish gardens, fragrant summer dawns, and comfortable winter evenings. These were elements not to be discarded lightly, even by those who perceived ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... right, Fred. Goodness knows I like the flowers. But I'm not a young idiot who expects her honeymoon to last forever. I've had one experience, ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... the Countess believe that brother of hers, idiot as by nature he might be, and heir to unnumbered epithets, would so far forget what she had done for him, as to drag her through the mud for nothing: and so she told ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... devil can have become of that butler? I never allow a servant to—Oh, confound that idiot, he's got the keys. Can't get into the other ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on, "walking" a circle round him, Mr. Atwater's eye furiously searched the borders of the path, the lawn, and otherwheres, for anything that might serve as missile. He had never kicked a dog, or struck one with his hand, in his life; he had a theory that it was always better to throw something. "Idiot poodle!" ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... administered in profusion, and crammed down with epithets; not more than two or three of the convention having ever heard the account given of Mr Young by his worthy colleagues, and its reaching them thus for the first time thro' his huffing friends, it sounded truly like "a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Their pride was alarmed, and their sympathies excited, by being told that Judge Spencer had first cheated Mr. Young out of the Secretary's office, and that his wrath now burnt after ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... said Jack, "any idiot would have known that she would take it like that. How could she do otherwise? You, her brother, ought to know that to a girl like Miss Gordon the idea of marrying such a low brute as Durnovo could only be repugnant. Durnovo—why, he is not good ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... mind through the service of his limbs: where man is made the possession of another, the possessor loses at once and for ever all that is most valuable in that for which he has paid the price of crime. He becomes the owner of that which only differs from an idiot in being less easily drilled into habits, and more capable of ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... stare at that idiot in the corner,' angrily exclaimed Parsons, as the extraordinary convulsions of Watkins Tottle's countenance excited the wondering gaze of Timson,—'but have the goodness to tell me in three words the contents of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... her hands on her hips. At the brutal tone of her voice, a sort of moaning, or rather a mewing, the lamentable cry of an idiot, came from the adjoining room. I shivered to the marrow of my bones. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... she then true? O madman! idiot! To let the feeble breath of empty rumour Drive me ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... feelings. I went hot all over. "Shar," of course, not "Shah." How ever could I have been such an idiot as to have thought it was "Shah"? S-h-a-h obviously spelt shash, not shar. How nearly I had exposed my appalling ignorance to my fellows! "Vote for the—"; I blushed again, hardly able to think of it. And oh! how thankful I was now that everybody ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... you that makes you so stupid? You played the prude—I didn't know—Oh! yes, yes, now I remember; that's what it is—What was it you said to me about the little one? I believe you didn't want anyone to touch him! Idiot!" ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... a change from last year, I should say. I used to be friends with Susan Atwell and Jerry Macy, but this Stevens girl made mischief between us and broke up our old crowd entirely. Your friend, Miss Dean, took sides with them, too, and helped the thing along. She made a perfect idiot of herself over Constance Stevens. Oh, well, never mind. I'm not going to say another word about it. I'm sorry we can't be friends. I'm sure we'd get along famously together. It is impossible, though. ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... An idiot of a woman has written to me to get her a place as governess in an 'European or Arabian family in the neighbourhood of Thebes!' Considering she has been six years in Egypt as she says, she must be well fitted to teach. She had better learn to make gilleh and spin wool. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... his feet. "My parable," he cried. "Don Quixote and the damsel in distress. Where's my hat? Where's the time-table? Get a cab! Simpson, you idiot, why didn't you make me read this before, confound you! I mean God bless you. Your salary's ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sir: Some idiot must have put a scaffold pole on it and cracked it right down the middle, and it's thick enough you'd think to stand hanythink.' Geoffrey was silent for quite a minute, and then said in a constrained voice and with ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... matches, pile them up carelessly, and set fire to them in that inflammable room. A steward came up and modestly explained that it was his duty to ask him to refrain from what he was doing. At which the jackanapes dismissed him with "Get out of here, you idiot." ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... (aside, Oh, you old blackguard! What's bred in the bone won't come out of the flesh. I really must frighten the old coward a little; besides, the council has got to settle what's to be done with him, or the old idiot will put us to shame by dying on our hands of fright and stupidity.) (To N.) Nupkins, I really don't know what to do with you as a slave; I'm afraid that you would corrupt the morals of my children; that you would set them quarrelling and tell them lies. There's nothing for it but you ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... appears in modern society, is also less subject to variation than man;[4] she is much less liable to be a genius or an idiot than her brother.[5] She offers greater resistance to disease, endures pain and want more stoically, and lives longer; so that while more boys than girls are born in all parts of the world, where statistics are kept, in mature years ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... gazed at him with the look of an idiot. He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... was! idiot!—upon my return to the fort, to have been anxious about my personal appearance, and to have spent a couple of hours in removing the artificial blackening from my beard and complexion, instead of going to examine my prisoner—when his escape would have been prevented. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not mean to frighten his brother into fits when he dressed up like a ghost and ran after him in the moonlight; but he did; and that bright, handsome little fellow, that might have been the pride of any mother's heart is just no better than an idiot, and never will be, if he lives to be eighty years old. You were a good deal cut up yourself, Tom, two weeks ago, when those young ladies left your hothouse door open, with a frosty east wind blowing right in; you said it killed a good many ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... oh yes! He did not say much to us; but we did not like him. He called the driver an idiot, and I ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... said the butcher. 'What right has any one to bring an abomination like that into our city? The horror is enough to make an idiot of every child ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... wild woman that I don't know a real man when I see one, Doug,—even if you are making an idiot of yourself just now! You should have planned to be more tactful about bringing your ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... mot d'entre ses levres sorte, Regarde le roi d'Arle et d'une telle sorte, Avec un si superbe eclair, qu'il l'interdit; Et Ratbert, furieux sous ce regard, bondit Et crie, en s'arrachant le poil de la moustache —Je te trouve idiot et mal en point, et sache Que les jouets d'enfant etaient pour toi, vieillard! Ca, rends-moi ce tresor, fruit de tes vols, pillard! Et ne m'irrite pas, ou ce sera ta faute, Et je vais envoyer sur la tour la plus haute Ta tete ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... a strangely mingled feeling in his breast; one moment it was horror, the next disgust, that they two should join hands: she so young and beautiful, he prematurely aged and little better than an idiot. Then it was misery—then despair, which swept over his soul to join forces and harrow him so that he felt that ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... some more, with a few plantains from a garden, when I was to eat, as kings lived upon flesh, and "poor Tom" wanted some, for he lived with lions and elephants in a hovel beyond the gardens, and his belly was empty. He was precisely a black specimen of the English parish idiot. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... man, goes yachting with Tompkins in later days, these two sinners are quite capable of enjoying themselves immensely in the present without raking about among the ashes of the past to seek the reason why Tompkins persisted, in spite of his friends' advice, in making an idiot of himself over that Robinson girl—Jones standing by all the while with the ring in his waistcoat pocket. Whereas, if the friendship existed between the respective ladies of Jones and Tompkins, their conversation will usually be found to begin with: "I always told you, Maria, when we ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... the mutineers; and then as we proceeded leisurely downhill to where the boats were lying, related, in a few words, what had taken place. It was a story that profoundly interested Silver, and Ben Gunn, the half-idiot maroon, was the hero ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most interesting lecture on the Venus, demonstrating it, as he proceeded, by reference to the points which he criticised. The figure, he seemed to allow, was admirable, though I think he hardly classes it so high as his own Greek Slave or Eva; but the face, he began with saying, was that of an idiot. Then, leaning on the pedestal of the cast, he continued, "It is rather a bold thing to say, isn't it, that the sculptor of the Venus de' Medici did not know ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... coughed several times, each cough being louder than the last, and then, treading softly, was about to return to the workshop when the girl stirred and muttered in her sleep. At first she was unintelligible, then he distinctly caught the words "idiot" and "blockhead." ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... it! Did anybody ever see such an idiot since girls were first created? Not help it, after having given him as good as a promise! You must help it. You must ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... in reviewing "The Antiquary" that the immortal idiot of the "Quarterly" complains about "the dark dialect of Anglified Erse." Published criticism never greatly affected Scott's spirits,—probably, he very seldom read it. He knew that the public, like Constable's friend Mrs. Stewart, were "reading 'Guy Mannering' all ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... indeed, is more definitely, more explicitly, and in further ways of exodus, a departure from the subjects and treatment of most of the books noticed in the last chapter. It is true that its author attributes to the reading of the regular romances the conversion of his pretty idiot Javotte from a mere idiot to something that can, at any rate, hold her own in conversation, and take an interest in life.[258] But he also adds the consequence of her elopement, without apparently any prospect ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... fat and plump. Sometimes as one whose limbs have been broken by the action of disordered wind in the system, sometimes as a bird, and sometimes as one of exceedingly ugly features. Sometimes he appears as a quadruped. Capable of assuming any form, he sometimes appears as an idiot destitute of all intelligence. He assumes also the forms of flies and gnats. O Vipula, no one can make him out in consequence of these innumerable disguises that he is capable of assuming. The very Creator ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... anything about the habits of the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether they are Lepidoptera or Steptopotera; but as for telling how you can get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike them,—why Linnaeus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did. These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a great deal. He always kept up his exercise; and I never heard ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... after our common interests. I felt exceedingly disturbed, and yet could not believe it; but at any rate there has been some gossip of the sort. Pray look into the whole matter, learn the truth, find out the author, and get the empty-headed idiot out of the country, if you possibly can. Valerius mentions Cn. Plancius as the origin of this gossip. I trust you thoroughly to investigate and find out what is at the bottom of it. I have good reason to believe that ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "The drivelling idiot!" he thought. "So he's gone and married her—that slut of a barmaid! Mount Rorke will never forgive him. I wouldn't be surprised if he ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... I'm all right for summer games, but winter is coming on, and I shall have to play that horrid old hockey, and I haven't the remotest idea how it is done. I've never seen a match, but you have, and I want you to tell me all about it, so that I may know what to do, and not make an idiot of myself. You went to the Betham ground when you were staying there, and saw the girls' team play. Go on! Describe it! Tell me all about it, ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... it can't be helped. I've done my three cards with pictures of flowers, and the rest of the calendar will have to be plain," said Lizzie. "You were rather an idiot, Ulyth." ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... is called. He then came forward, trembling, as if about to receive sentence of death, and taking off his greasy fez, said, "I drink to our prince Kara Georgovich, and to the progress and enlightenment of the nation." I looked with astonishment at the torn, wretched habiliments of this idiot swineherd. He was too stupid to entertain these sentiments himself; but this trifling circumstance was the feather which indicated how the wind blew. The Servians are by no means a nation of talkers; they are a serious people; and if the determination to rise were ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... meat. My aunt called him a respectable man, a cavalier, and even a grenadier. He had a way of tapping children on the forehead with the hard nails of his long fingers (he used to do it to me when I was younger) and saying, "Hear how empty your head sounds," and then laughing at his own wit. And this idiot was to have my watch? Never! was what I determined as I rushed from the room and flung myself at full length on my bed, my cheeks burning with the box on the ear I had just received. But in my heart was burning the bitterness of outraged dignity and thirst for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Noises of wood and metal, clattering of wheels, banging of implements, jangling of bells—all such things are bad enough, but worse still is the clamorous human voice. Nothing on earth is more irritating to me than a bellow or scream of idiot mirth, nothing more hateful than a shout or yell of brutal anger. Were it possible, I would never again hear the utterance of a human tongue, save from those few who ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... the clown). Stick to it, friend Madhavya. I will humour the king a moment. (Aloud.) Your Majesty, he is a chattering idiot. Your Majesty may judge by his own case whether hunting is ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... an idiot," said Beth. "Just follow me, and don't look at anything but the tiles. That's the way I ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Broek, mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans with a heavy sigh. "They are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... coming down to see what was the matter. I hear from the Brigade that some doddering idiot has cut our wire. Who in the hell ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... an idiot, an awpy; we call him 'Dickon the devil,' because the devil's almost the only word that's ever in ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... exclaimed Haight, angrily, "why couldn't you come around and give me the tip on the quiet, instead of standing there grimacing like an idiot, making a fool of yourself and me, too? Where ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... does. We're in a hell of a hole, figure it out any way y'u like. Instead of having shot up a casual idiot, I've killed Ned Bannister's right-hand man. That will be the excuse—shooting Morgan. But the real trouble is that I won the championship belt from your cousin. He already hated y'u like poison, and he don't love me any too hard. He will have us arrested by ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... to confess it, I also have been in love with her; and how! But I was too small a personage, and too poor a devil, to be worth a serious thought of Miss Brandon. As soon as she felt sure that her abominable tricks had set my head on fire, and that I had become an idiot, a madman, a stupid fool—on that very day she laughed in my face. Ah! I tell you, she played with me as if I had been a child, and then she sent me off as if I had been a lackey. And now I hate her mortally, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... IDIOT, means merely the non-proficient in anything, the "layman," he who was not technically trained in any art, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... apparently lost all control of himself, and his voice and red face showed the anger he was simulating so well. "If you think you're going to frame me out of this class and out of graduating, you're a confounded idiot! Ask any of these chaps here—they all know I'm not ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... Graces are this Lady's handmaids. She was certainly born to adorn the age she was given to.'—Well said, Jack—'And would be an ornament to the first dignity.' But what praise is that, unless the first dignity were adorned with the first merit?—Dignity! gew-gaw!— First dignity! thou idiot!—Art thou, who knowest me, so taken with ermine and tinsel?—I, who have won the gold, am only fit to wear it. For the future therefore correct thy style, and proclaim her the ornament of the happiest man, and (respecting herself and sex) the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Idiot slaves Ignatius Ignorance of northern citizens of slavery " " slaveholders Impunity of killing slaves Inadequate clothing Income from hiring slaves Incorrigible slaves Incredibility of evidence against slavery Incredulity ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... all this he knew nothing, and what he thought, as he listened, was that she was as weak in mind as in body; and what he said was that a man must be an idiot who would not complain when he saw the bread taken from ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... developed. I am quite ready to admit that this is the correct explanation in many instances, as in those figured by Prof. Meyer, in which there are several minute points, or the whole margin is sinuous. I have myself seen, through the kindness of Dr. L. Down, the ear of a microcephalous idiot, on which there is a projection on the outside of the helix, and not on the inward folded edge, so that this point can have no relation to a former apex of the ear. Nevertheless in some cases, my original view, that the points are vestiges of the tips of formerly erect and pointed ears, still ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... his frenzy, suddenly quieted down. This was the idiot butcher of whom people had been chattering. No use to bluster ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... flourishing in their utmost quickness and perfection; suppose him likewise, if you please, nimble and active, nay, give him riches, honours, authority, power, glory; now, I say, should this person, who is in possession of all these, be unjust, intemperate, timid, stupid, or an idiot, could you hesitate to call such an one miserable? What, then, are those goods, in the possession of which you may be very miserable? Let us see if a happy life is not made up of parts of the same nature, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the back of your hand," Honoria replied, warming to her subject. "They hardly repaid felling for firewood. It made me wretched. Some idiot threw down a match, I suppose. There had been nearly a month's drought, and the whole place was like so much tinder. There was an easterly breeze too. You can imagine the blaze! We hadn't the faintest ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... twentieth year) Preclude my wit of his sweet liberty, And make it still the yoke of wardship bear? I fear he [i.e. my lord] hath another title [i.e. right to my wit] got And holds my wit now for an idiot. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... idiots among the number of their servants. The first wife of Seneca had followed this fashion, and Seneca in his fiftieth letter to his friend Lucilius[21] makes the following interesting allusion to the fact. "You know," he says, "that my wife's idiot girl Harpaste has remained in my house as a burdensome legacy. For personally I feel the profoundest dislike to monstrosities of that kind. If ever I want to amuse myself with an idiot, I have not far to look for one. I laugh at myself. This idiot girl has suddenly become blind. Now, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... be. The man who believes in peaceable secession must be an idiot. Secession means a military nation living side by side with a non-military nation, which it hates and will do its best to crush. It means a successful rebel flashing the sword in our face at every fancied insult, and all the work of war perennially renewed. It means conservative traitors and doughface ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... idiot, are you goin' to stand there all day? We didn't give you that stump to rest on. ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... has to say," Brand said, "will you? and give him distinctly to understand that if he tries again to see Miss Lind, I will break his head for him. What idiot could have ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... be shot if she's a day more than twenty-eight! Idiot that I am, why can't I keep calm! But, Yoletta, how you distress me! It almost frightens me to ask another question, but do tell me how ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... the latter end of the duke's life, it was even said that the seal of the finance department was in the hands of his valet-de-chambre, who, in his master's frequent absences, was in the habit of issuing drafts upon the receiver-general. As the valet- dechambre was described as an idiot who did not know how to read, it may be believed that the finances fell into confusion. Certainly, if such statements were to be accepted, it would be natural enough that for every million dollars expended by the king in the provinces, not more than one hundred ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... an infernal jackass. The inscription on the gate of hell ran through his mind. He thought he would make his life— his desolate, broken life—a perpetual exile, like Dante's. At the same time he ground his teeth, and muttered: "Oh, what a fool I am! Oh, idiot! beast! Oh! oh!" The pipes reminded him to smoke, and he took out his cigarette case. The Italians looked at him; he gave all the cigarettes among them, without keeping any for himself. He determined to spend ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Antiochian Anthropology? Why do you not give us some uncommon words, and instead of 'looking back upon your subject,' sometimes 'recapitulate,' and instead of talking about a man's 'peculiarities,' mention his 'idiot-sin-crasies,' and describe the hair as the capillary adornment; and instead of speaking of a thing as tied ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... months' leave coming on shortly, which I intend to spend in St. Petersburg. I shall make it my business to see privately some of the officials in the Admiralty there, and when they realize by personal inspection what a well-intentioned idiot I ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... the man in the corner with a sarcastic chuckle. "So severely alone, in fact, that one quarter of an hour after another passed by and still the magnificent police officer in the gorgeous uniform did not return. Then, when it was too late, Schwarz cursed himself once again for the double-dyed idiot that he was. He had been only too ready to believe that Prince Semionicz was a liar and a rogue, and under these unjust suspicions he had fallen an all too easy prey to one of the most cunning rascals he had ever ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... try to equivocate, you shining idiot! For now you see for yourself you are talking nonsense. And I repeat that such unheard-of nonsense irritates me," ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... its manufacture is regarded with suspicion by United States officials who want to be considered zealous. Rather than be drawn into any difficulty with these people, I have always courted retirement and avoided the busy haunts of men. Still some strolling idiot or other will occasionally see the smoke from my little home and drop ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... country of Switzerland. He was educated tolerably well; he was a good musician, and could draw excellently. He possessed a small, though independent fortune. However, notwithstanding his advantages and acquirements, he proved, when he became a lover, to be an idiot. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... Dickens, tells the story exactly in his picture of Dr. Blimmer's system of teaching. That poor babe, Paul Dombey, might as well have been fed to an insatiable ogre as to have been placed in the hands of that pompous idiot. And our country is full of little Paul Dombeys, blossoming for eternity. How much better to have let the poor little fellow play in the sands upon the beach with his sister Florence and old Glubb. But the precocious ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... I responded irrelevantly in French, and then we looked at each other and grinned. He subsequently, thinking he had made an impression, ventured to press my hand; I drew it away and told him he was an idiot, at which he was greatly flattered; and then we grinned at each other again. It was very exciting indeed. I won the game easily, because he knew nothing of chess, and then he said something in his mother-tongue, placing his hand upon his heart. I could have sworn that it meant, "Of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... idiot; yet for her I've behaved like one. Don't ask me— you mustn't know. It was all done in a day, and since then fancy my condition; fancy my work in such a torment; fancy my coming ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... enough to prevent anything of the kind. If there had been cause for jealousy, he would have been reticent. Besides, Amy is too high-toned to yield readily to this vice, and Burt can never be such an idiot ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... that book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,—mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... section, the boys once again tendered us the glad mitt, but looked askance at us out of the corners of their eyes. They could not conceive, as they expressed it, how a man could be such a blinking idiot to join the Suicide Club. I was beginning to feel sorry that I had become a member of said club, and my life to me ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey |
