"Ninny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plain as sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius linguae: in English, illiterate, a dunce, a ninny. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... and arranged her face, and courageously met her mother. Her mother had not at first perceived the unusual; for mothers, despite their reputation to the contrary, really are the blindest creatures. Sophia, the naive ninny, had actually supposed that her walking along a hundred yards of pavement with a god by her side was not going to excite remark! What a delusion! It is true, certainly, that no one saw the god by direct ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... would balk at your using the car if he knew the circumstances," piped another boy. "We have got that match to play off, and now that the electric cars are held up by the strike how are we to get to Torrington? Don't be a ninny, Steve." ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... mean time you've "Galley"[86] Whose verses all tally, Perhaps you may say he's a Ninny, But if you abashed are Because of Alashtar, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... patient quaff'd a frothy bowl Of asinine new milk, Robbing a shaggy suckling of a foal Which got proportionably spare and skinny— Meanwhile the neighbors cried "Poor Mary Ann! She can't get over it! she never can!" When lo! to prove each prophet was a ninny The one that died was the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Pike snapped, striding toward the door. "I never thought you'd do a thing like that. You are no more like the old Badger than a calf is like a mountain-lion. You had some fire in you once, but you have become as soft as a ninny. The whole thing simply makes ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... day that I set out with such tyrants! A pretty figure of fun I should make before your beautiful German, covered with mud to the knees. No, you shall hang me first! Why couldn't O'Toole do his own work, the ninny, I hate him! He's tall enough, the great donkey; but no, I must do it, who am shorter, and even then not short enough for him and you, but you must drag me through ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... you ninny!" growled the cook. "Why, the magic hand is only as big as a baby's hand. I've seen it many times. The master carries it in his pocket, and puts it under his pillow while ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... trick got up by Doctor Slade With Deborah the chambermaid And that sly cretur Jinny. That all the revelations wise, At which the Brownites made big eyes, Might have been given by Jared Keyes, A natural fool and ninny, And, last week, didn't Eliab Snooks Come back with never better looks, 890 As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks, And bright as a new pin, eh? Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers (Though to be mixed in parish stirs ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... six months, his acquaintance began much to doubt him: For his skin, "like a lady's loose gown," hung about him. He sent for a Doctor; and cried, like a ninny, "I have lost many pounds—make me ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... from shore to shore, With sluices made to drown the French, if e'er they would come over, sir, Has long been talk'd of, till at length 'tis thought a monstrous bore. Amongst the many scheming folks, I take it he's no ninny, sir, Who bargains with the Ashantees to fish the coast of Guinea, sir; For, secretly, 'tis known, that another brilliant view he has, Of lighting up the famous town of Timbuctoo with oil gas. Run, neighbours, run, you're just in time to get a share In all the famous bubbles that amuse John ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... I cannot think that he has been fortunate in his treatment of Lovborg's character. It has been represented as an absurdity that he would think of reading abstracts from his new book to a man like Tesman, whom he despises. But though Tesman is a ninny, he is, as Hedda says, a "specialist"—he is a competent, plodding student of his subject. Lovborg may quite naturally wish to see how his new method, or his excursion into a new field, strikes the average scholar of the Tesman type. He is, in fact, "trying it on the dog"—neither an ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... Hammond may be a chronic sufferer from acute Come-Outiveness, but he ain't a ninny. Nobody'll see you, anyway. This fog's like charity, it'll cover a heap of sins. Do come right along. Wait till I get ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hour more'n I gave her leave to; and now she's perched out there on the woodpile talking to Matthew, nineteen to the dozen, when she knows perfectly well she ought to be at her work. And of course he's listening to her like a perfect ninny. I never saw such an infatuated man. The more she talks and the odder the things she says, the more he's delighted evidently. Anne Shirley, you come right in here this minute, ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Lent: Mister curate, for all your grave looks, I'm afraid You cast a sheep's eye on her ladyship's maid: I wish she would lend you her pretty white hand In mending your cassock, and smoothing your band: (For the Dean was so shabby, and look'd like a ninny, That the captain supposed he was curate to Jinny.) 'Whenever you see a cassock and gown, A hundred to one but it covers a clown. Observe how a parson comes into a room; G—d d—n me, he hobbles ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... imbecile, natural; simpleton, dolt, dunce, defective, witling, dotterel, driveler, blockhead, beetlehead, ninny, ignoramus, numskull, booby, clodpate, nincompoop, ass, wiseacre, dunderhead, halfwit, oaf, dullard, coot, mooncalf; zany, harlequin, buffoon, jester, merry-andrew, droll, clown, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... sweet ninny! If the boss grabber is on this ship, we should draw a new nibble from him." He appraised the green dress in the mirror again. His expression grew absent. It might be best, Trigger suspected, a trifle uneasily, to keep Major ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... Silver-Locks went strolling One day, in that pretty wood, With Ninny, the nurse, and all at once They came where the bears' ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... dullard, dolt, numskull, witling, blockhead, coot, lackbrain, ninny, oaf, nincompoop, mooncalf, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... parody of this melodramatic nonsense is so amusing that I cannot forbear quoting it. This time the despairing lover is Sir Abraham Ninny, who quotes Kyd to his companions, and they with the cry of "Ha God-a-mercy, old Hieromino!" begin the game of parody, which must have been keenly enjoyed by the audience. Field improves on the original by putting the alternate lines ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... love-sick letters to —-, and I would not give sixpence for your suit." So much for Mr. Vincent. Now Miss —-'s turn comes to swallow the black bolus, called a friend's advice. Say to her: "Is the man a fool? is he a knave? a humbug, a hypocrite, a ninny, a noodle? If he is any or all of these, of course there is no sense in trifling with him. Cut him short at once—blast his hopes with lightning rapidity and keenness. Is he something better than this? has he at least ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Mam'selle Catherine. I smarted under your mockery. You sneered at my beardless chin. Many a time you have told me that I am but a ninny." ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... heroine! My queen! And it was you against whom I was plotting treason—ninny that I was! You that have saved my house from pillage and my people from slaughter! Oh, Cap, what a ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... but, as Miss LESLIE cleverly lets you see for yourself, the belief in her own principles and their application, which is the essence of her character, alienates her husband and makes something like a ninny of Arnold, her son. A Mouse with Wings is not only the sobriquet of Beryl, the cheerful young Suffragette whom he loves, but has its application also to poor Arnold, who finds the courage to face life and a way out of it fighting in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... their livelihood, and deserve, therefore, not to go in want of the very bread they have sown." Few people at the court, and in La Bruyere's day, would have thought about the sufferings of the country folks, and conceived the idea of contrasting them with the sketch of a court-ninny. "Gold glitters," say you, "upon the clothes of Philemon; it glitters as well as the tradesman's. He is dressed in the finest stuffs; are they a whit the less so when displayed in the shops and by the piece? Nay; but the embroidery ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... said; 'there ain't no accounting for that ninny, 'is 'ead's full of starch. Anyhow, I don't take 'er on while I'm myself. ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... his usual tokens of kindness consisted in a little rap on the head or a slight pinch of the ear. In his most friendly conversations with those whom he admitted into his intimacy he would say, "You are a fool"—"a simpleton"—"a ninny"—"a blockhead." These, and a few other words of like import, enabled him to vary his catalogue of compliments; but he never employed them angrily, and the tone in which they were uttered sufficiently indicated that they ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... me a young fool, rather than an old— A plucky plunger, than a canny crone Who's old enough to ken she doesn't ken. You're right: for doubting is a kind of dotage: Experience ages and decays; while folk Who never doubt themselves die young—at ninety. Age never yet brought gumption to a ninny: And you cannot reckon up a stranger's wits By counting his bare patches and grey hairs: It's seldom sense that makes a bald head shine: And I'm not partial to Methuselahs. Keep your cocksureness, while you can: too soon, Time plucks the feathers off you; and you lie, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... Cranceford had spoken to him, not directly, but with gentle allusion, and he had replied with an angry denunciation of such meddlesomeness. "I'm not going to marry a dying woman," he declared; "and I'm not going to take up any faded ninny that you and father may pick out. I'm going to please myself, and when you decide that I mustn't, just say the word and I'll hull out. And I don't want to hear anything about crackers or white trash, either. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... "You must think I'm a ninny. And you have been sleeping sure! Got to keep this sort of ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... ninny, stay where you are. Is that chattering girl gone? Didn't I tell you we would have a practice of our dance? they are all ready on the lawn. Mark me; I represent the Count, and you the Baron. [Exit, with affected ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... "Ninny!" she exclaimed in a half-whisper. "What you must do is to get out to-night and hustle dog-teams. I know of two. There's Hanson's team, seven big Hudson Bay dogs—he's holding them at four hundred each. That's top price to-night, but it won't be to-morrow. And ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... out laughing. "What a ninny you are!" he exclaimed. "You are as easily frightened as a bird with a pop-gun. And now, I suppose, you will go with this nice little story to some good friend and make something interesting and romantic ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... not seem to believe it of him even yet. I try to think of Walter as a murderer of little children, and it is not possible. Why, it seems but yesterday that I stood plaguing him on the stone doorstep at Guy Park—calling him Walter Ninny and Walter Noodle to vex him. You remember, Euan, that his full name is Walter N. Butler, and that he never would tell us what the N. stands for, but we guessed it stood for Nellis, in honour of Nellis Fonda.... Lord! What a world o' trouble for us ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... here, Alec, you are laughing at me again, and I don't like it; laugh some other time, but for the present give me your full attention, and don't be a ninny. It is no joking matter, but one upon which I am very serious and anxious, as I believe there is something attached to this quest which is really worth a little trouble ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... very great lady, sufficiently high in station to allow herself such compromising caprices,—but even so, she would scarcely have cared to play the role of a coquette in a vaudeville where he himself played the part of ninny,—or she was some noted adventuress who was in the pay of this du Portail and the agent of his singular matrimonial designs. Evil life or evil heart, these were the only two verdicts to be pronounced on this dangerous siren, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the sheltered life system, nursery governess, private tutor, etc., who when he came of age just ran amok, drank, fought with the colliers on his own estate, and then enlisted in an irregular corps and went to fight the Spaniards in Cuba, just to prove to himself that he wasn't the ninny his father had tried to make him. He shocked his neighbours thoroughly, but he's a man today, listened to when he speaks and just adored by the miners on his estate.... I want to make good, and though Mrs. Grundy would chatter if she knew that I had deliberately ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... think me ninny enough to be satisfied with reading no more than what you consider proper for me ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... younger son, whom I once classed as a ninny, but who came back so ill from Nigeria. He's gone out there again, Evie Wilcox tells me—out ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... Humphrey," she said solemnly, and then bade the maid set wine and biscuits in the parlor, and never to forget to ask a gentleman in instead of keeping him at the door, gaping like a ninny! ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... "You're a great ninny, Rebecca Thayer," Rose said, laughing, "but I'll go if you want me to. I know William won't like it. You run away from him the whole time. There isn't another girl in Pembroke treats him as ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... failure, with me in bed with an arm or leg broken. Heavens! I never was so frightened in all my life. We went so fast against the wind that I could scarce breathe. And when it was all over, I fainted like a ninny." ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... you, for an Irish ninny. Do you think the captain would board a devil! The fellow's a Tuscarora, and is as well known here as the owner of the Hut ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... nevino. Niggard avarulo. Nigh proksima. Nigh (time) baldauxa. Night nokto. Nightly nokta. Night, by nokte. Nightingale najtingalo. Night-watch nokta patrolo. Nightmare terursongxo. Nimble vigla. Nimbus glorkrono. Nine naux. Ninny simplanimulo. Nip pincxi. Nippers prenileto. Nitre salpetro. Nobility nobelaro. Noble nobla. Nobleman nobelo. Nobleness nobleco. Nobody neniu. Nocturnal nokta. Nocuous pereiga. Nod (beckon) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... I continue the tail? If Mr. Dawkins had been the least bit wiser, it would have taken him six months befoar he lost his money; as it was, he was such a confunded ninny, that it took him a very short time to ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... any stock (he called it stawk) in that sort of gush." He knew that there was only one four-legged domestic animal of which Mrs. Turner was more desperately afraid, and that was a cow. She made a ninny of herself when she went out to drive, and the mere pricking up of the horses' ears was to her mind premonitory symptom of a runaway, and excuse for immediate demand to be set down on the open prairie and allowed to walk home. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... her maid, who shrank hesitating in the boat. "Berthe, you pitiful little ninny, are you coming? Then do, and do not forget the satchel." For a promenade of an hour the inhabitants of two imperial courts must needs have a satchel, filled of course with mysteries of the toilet. The maid obeyed, and followed her mistress up the lazy ascending street. They passed ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... fiercely, and as though the words almost choked her. "You are the most heartless, selfish, senseless creature, that ever lived; I never will forgive you! You haven't got a thought above looking like a wax doll, and acting like a ninny, and I ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... alone, let him alone; there's no being rid of you'... said the Blinkard with vexation; 'let him sit down on the bench; he's tired, see... You're a ninny, brother, a perfect ninny! What are you sticking to him like ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... when I arrived at Melanie's, I found the bird had flown. That great ninny of a Ferussac, whom I never had suspected, and had introduced to her myself, had turned her head by making capital out of her love for the stage. As he was about to leave for Belgium, he persuaded her to go there and dethrone Mademoiselle Prevost. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... the spring is here, With a hey nonny nonny; The sweet love season of the year, With a ninny ninny nonny; Now lad and lass Lie in the grass That groweth green With flowers between. The buck doth rest The leaves do start, The cock doth crow, The breeze doth blow, ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... to be no end to this?" the giant had growled. "Will you spend your days moping and swilling 'cause a white-faced ninny in Port Royal'll have none o' ye? 'Sblood and 'ounds! If ye wants the wench, why the plague doesn't ye go and ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... were two other servants who enjoyed it very much. I heard them laughing and I don't blame them. It was a rare treat. A child would have laughed at it. All my fault too. I behaved like a ninny. But my great mistake was in telling my father. I would give the world if I had not. Won't you please send for Mr. Jones? As I told you, I don't know why I ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... you're a ninny! Why the devil should you suppose that the powerful divinity of the waters has any fear of long-robed monks? It is they, more likely, who would have cause to tremble in her presence, and prostrate themselves ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Prince, now that he recognised her, embraced her with a joy that would amaze you, telling his father what he had done and suffered for her. Then they sent to invite her parents, the King and Queen of Long Field; and they celebrated the wedding with wonderful festivity, making great sport of the great ninny of a fox, and concluding at the last ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... congratulations, condolences, are unknown rites; that invitations, acceptances, and regrets are ancient Hebrew to us, and calls, teas, dinners, and dances are exalted functions far above our comprehension? And then I read the question again, and saw I was making a ninny of myself—an easy thing to do with the thermometer at ninety-nine in the shade. That it said "behind the scenes," and with a laugh I recalled the little child who had delightedly witnessed her first Christmas ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... needn't just sit there like a ninny," she cried. "Get up and help us think what we can do to get out of ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... species of poetical massacre, this rifling of old Etruscan tombs of their honourable spoil, a very pleasant ninny would that poetaster stand forth, whose inanely conceited daring exhibited specimens from his own mint, as medals in fit contrast with those slandered "things of base alloy." No, as with politics, so with poetry; in public I abjure and do renounce the minx: and although privately my author's ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... is a dear old ninny. Viola is a mighty bright girl suffering from a well-developed ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... before you started—looked before you leaped—this would never have happened. Anybody but a chump could have seen that, on the face of it, the whole thing was a scheme to entice you away. Oh, you bonehead! You ninny!" ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... Nobody had moved there. Those workingmen were without doubt waiting for the rebuttal of his answer from their venerable spokesman. Rafael felt that the swarthy heads above all those dirty blouses and shirt-fronts without collars or neckties were eyeing him with stony coldness. "Now we'll see what this ninny has got to say!" ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... explanation set him right. 'Never mind.' he said. 'Tell him we didn't mean to have dinner so early, but we flew around and got them a bite—then let's do it.' 'But what will the bite be?' I asked, and I stood looking up at him like a ninny who had never gotten a meal in her life. 'Why, bread, and butter, and coffee, and a dish of sauce, and a pickle, or something of that sort;' and the things really sounded appetizing as he told them off. 'Come,' he said, 'I'll grind the coffee, and make it; I used to be a dabster at that dish when ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... The deed is, so far, safely accomplished. The slyboots, how she wheedled him! What a helpless ninny is a love-sick man! He is but as a lute in a woman's hands— she plays upon him whatever tune she will. But the Colonel comes. I' faith, he's just in time, for the Yeomen parade here for his execution ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... let the lad bide?" he said; "ye'll not rest till ye make him a greater ninny nor he is by natur. He might as well ha' bin a gell, an better, for all the good ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... greatness is that Englishmen hate to look fools. The fear of being taken for a ninny will spur an Englishman to the most surprising deeds of courage. Ellis said 'Good!' with apparent enthusiasm, and arranged to be waiting for her at half-past two at the Turk's Head. Then he left the saloon and struck out anew into the ocean. He ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... My bonny laddy, Dance to your ninny, My sweet lamb; You shall have a fishy In a little dishy, And a whirligiggy, And ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... you wouldn't. You are too good, and too sensible, and too considerate, and all the other kind of too's, while I am just an unaccountable ninny. If you ever did anything crazy you wouldn't like to have it ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... news of the composition: they abused him and his wife most shamefully. "You silly, awkward, ill-bred country sow," quoth one, "have you no more manners than to rail at Hocus that has saved that clod-pated numskulled ninny-hammer of yours from ruin, and all his family? It is well known how he has rose early and sat up late to make him easy, when he was sotting at every alehouse in town. I knew his last wife: she was a woman of breeding, good humour, and complaisance—knew how to live in ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... Bodinus de Periodis saith of such an one, arrident amici ridet mundus, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwhile the world thinks him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... entrance. The mother was dashed, stricken, a little humiliated. But as she arranged the folds of her beautiful dress in the hansom which was carrying her away from Lamb's Conduit Street towards South Kensington, she said to herself firmly, 'I am not a ninny, after all, and I know that Rose will be ill soon. And there are things in that hospital ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... your voice ... Poor ninny, dead so long, And all your pride forgotten like your name. 'One April morn I heard a blackbird's song. And joy was in my ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... not say, but from this moment the Prefect of Police was condemned. Guy's arrest, which was an act of brutal aggression, was tantamount to a dismissal signed by the Prefect himself. And Marianne! she then made a sport of Sulpice and took him for a child or a ninny! ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... superior human being of the party there assembled. He saw in the count a manufacturer of the second-class, whom he took, for some unknown reason, to be a chandler; in the shabby young man accompanied by Mistigris, a fellow of no account; in Oscar a ninny, and in Pere Leger, the fat farmer, an excellent subject to hoax. Having thus looked over the ground, he resolved to amuse himself at the expense of ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... began to lose patience again: and, in spite of all his efforts, he did at last explode angrily, one day during a lesson, at the silly little ninny, who had been maddeningly impertinent and laughed at his accent, and had taken a malicious delight in doing exactly the opposite of what he told her. The girl screamed in response to Christophe's angry shouts. She was frightened and enraged at a man whom she paid daring to show ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... waiter to get mine for me," said Jack, "and he acted as if he thought me a ninny. He gave it to me all the same, and asked what I was up to. ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... from Mrs. Dwight, who is different herself....I'd rather you'd stayed discontented. The whole scheme's all wrong and you know it. You've suffered from it. You should be the last to tolerate it. When they're jabbering away about their ninny affairs they pay as little attention to you as they do to me. They forget our existence. We don't belong, as they say. There isn't, one of them except Mrs. Dwight that I wouldn't give my eye teeth to see hanging out the wash or running ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... ninny!" snarled the dwarf, "you want to call more people; you are two too many for me now. Can't ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... before her. She meets him by accident. Suffering gives him a certain sort of dignity: but how is one to retain patience with the blindness of this insufferable ass? Don't you see, man—don't you see that she is waiting to throw herself into your arms? and you, you poor ninny, are giving yourself airs, and doing the grand heroic! And then the shy coquetry comes in again. The pathetic eyes are full of a grave compassion, if he must really never see her more. The cat plays with the poor mouse, and pretends that really the tender thing is gone away at last. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... but they saw now he was like all the rest of the men—his head had been turned by one smile on a pretty face. Instead of attending to his work, he was following that Baskerville creature about, gazing at her yearningly, like a moon-calf, making a ninny of himself before the whole room. And he with a wife and three babies at home, waiting for him and thinking he was hustling for the cause. When the meeting adjourned, and the Baskerville creature accepted the invitation of Comrade Gerrity to escort her home, the dismay of Comrade Higgins was so ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... there, Ninny. It is not everybody who could be up to such a dodge; and I feel sure the governor could make a shrewd guess who ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... state of mind of a young man of twenty-seven who has knocked about all over the globe, and been in and out of the usual sentimental coils—and who has to ask his parents' leave to get married! Don't let us try: it's no use. We should only end by picturing him as an incorrigible ninny. But there isn't a man in France who wouldn't feel it his duty to take that step, as Jean de Rechamp did. All we can do is to accept ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... that utter bore, "the Elder Germont," so gay and eccentric as Figaro, and so dashing and reckless as the unscrupulous Don Giovanni. That milksop, Germont Junior, known as Alfredo, was adequately played by Signor GIANNINI, whose name, were it spelt GIA-"NINNY," would partly describe the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... cried she, "but who's fool then? no, no, you needn't trouble yourself to make a ninny of me neither, for I'm not so easily ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... a Parody, made by a ninny On some little song with a popular tune, Not worth a halfpenny, sold for a guinea, And sung in the Strand by the light of the moon. I'd never sigh for the sense of a Pliny, (Who cares for sense at St. James's in June?) I'd be a Parody, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... you ninny!" cried his brother Joe. "There wasn't any Fourth at all till George Washington ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... girls alone among strangers. It was a rainy, dreary day, and the moment her aunt was gone, Ida threw herself upon the bed and burst into tears. Jenny, who occupied the next room, was also low spirited, for Rose was terribly cross, calling her a "ninny hammer," and various other dignified names. Among the four girls, Mary was the only cheerful one, and after a time she succeeded in comforting Ida, while Jenny, catching something of her spirit, began to laugh loudly, as she told a group of girls how many ludicrous blunders she made when they ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... arrived. She is angry with you, and calls you for some reason an "eloquent gossip." To begin with, she is free and independent; and then she has a poor opinion of men; and further, according to her, everyone is a savage or a ninny—and you dared to give her my address with the words "the being you adore lives at ...," and so on. Upon my word, as though one could suspect earthly feelings in astronomers who soar among the clouds! She talks and laughs all day, is a capital mushroom-gatherer, and dreams of the Caucasus ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... to me it was a marvellous story. I conceived a deep admiration for the doctor's boy, and saw myself with eyes of worship walking reverently by his side. I suppose my poor lonely heart was hungering after comradeship, for being a sentimental little ninny I decided to offer myself to the doctor's ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... and as sure as my name is Vauthier, I took you for a student until I saw you giving your wood to that old Bernard. Ha! you're a sly one; and what a play-actor! I was so certain you were a ninny! Look here, will you guarantee me a thousand francs? As sure as the sun shines, my old Barbet and Monsieur Metivier have promised me five hundred to keep my ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... It seems to me to have been the period in all history when society was the least natural, and perhaps the most dissolute; and I have always fancied that the bloated artificial forms of the architecture partake of the social disorganisation of the time. Who can respect a simpering ninny, grinning in a Roman dress and a full-bottomed wig, who is made to pass off for a hero? or a fat woman in a hoop, and of a most doubtful virtue, who leers at you as a goddess? In the palaces which we saw, several Court allegories were ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Felicity won't agree to it. You know yourself, Bev, how contrary she's been lately over anything I mention. And if she goes against it Peter will too—the ninny!—and it wouldn't be any fun if we weren't all ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "My dear father," he replied, "I will gladly learn—in fact, if it were possible I should like to learn to shudder; I don't understand that a bit yet." The eldest laughed when he heard this, and thought to himself: "Good heavens! what a ninny my brother is! he'll never come to any good; as the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined." The father sighed, and answered him: "You'll soon learn to shudder; but that won't help you ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... they say!" roared Ames. "Cable Wenceslas at once to see that those fellows remain permanently in Colombia. He has ways of accomplishing that. Humph! Fools! Judge Harris, eh? Ninny! I guess Wenceslas ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... have been expected, our liking for Vienna had been thoroughly damped. From that moment Kate never saw an officer without fear and trembling, and officers were everywhere. "To think," she exclaimed, "that I have grown to be such a ninny! My brothers always said, 'Oh, we can trust Kate to go anywhere: she never gets nervous or afraid;' and here I am actually afraid to cross a street! I shall never have a moment's peace until I get out of this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... to bed, ninny!" Then Coru-hin-Irigod wrinkled his brow. He could remember, clearly enough, the sale of the slaves, but after that—Oh, well, he'd been drinking; it would all come back to him, after ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... I must have acted like a ninny," she concluded. "But isn't he just splendid!" and as Cousin Will's handsome face, with its daring, kind eyes, came to her vision she felt comforted. "I don't believe but what he'll make every allowance ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... going to marry MINNIE, The wealthy farmer's freckled frump, A little narrow-chested ninny! Into Pound's pond I'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 26, 1891 • Various
... ijjit," he growled. "I've no grudge ag'in you. If we pull out of this mess you'll 'ave to square matters wi' David Verity an' that other ole ninny, Dickey Bulmer. She's promised to 'im, you know. Told me so 'erself, so there's no mistake. I got me rag out, I admit, an' 'oo wouldn't after bein' 'owled down by those swine forrard. My godfather! Watch me put it over 'em w'en I get the chanst. Stop 'er, Norrie! ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... smother a good many more hours than she shivers. Trust her for that. Such a little ninny as you are! Don't forget that you have agreed to room with my best little sister when she enters next fall. You would not have been thrust in with Lucine Brett this year if I ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... say, that Signior Bononcini Compared to Handel's a mere ninny; Others aver, that to him Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... afraid, Nelly, I shall lose my labour,' he muttered to me. 'Miss Catherine, as the ninny calls her, will discover his value, and send him to the devil. Now, if it had been Hareton!—Do you know that, twenty times a day, I covet Hareton, with all his degradation? I'd have loved the lad had he been some one else. ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... said the star, rising impressively, "if we played that act the way you wrote it, we'd last just about four minutes of the opening night. You gave me absolutely nothing to do! Other people talked at me and I had to stand there and be talked at for twenty minutes straight, like a blithering ninny!" ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... without any other demonstration or sufficient argument, the world would be pleased to make his blockish and ridiculous impositions the rule of their devices. In effect, according to the proverb, To a shitten tail fails never ordure, he hath found, it seems, some simple ninny in those rude times of old, when the wearing of high round bonnets was in fashion, who gave some trust to his writings, according to which they carved and engraved their apophthegms and mottoes, trapped and caparisoned their ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... on Louie. We must just hold together. It won't do for the thing to leak out. I was a ninny to propose such a thing." They kissed each other and walked down stairs together. Most of the girls were in the school room discussing the newspaper account. The town was clean and in excellent shape, there were no fears ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... begins, 'or if anybody wishes the idiom changed, the book of a goose. There is not an idea in it beyond what might germinate in the brain of a washerwoman.' He then proceeds to call the author by such elegant names as 'lickspittle,' 'beggarly skittler,' jackass, ninny, haberdasher, 'fifty-fifth rate scribbler of gripe-visited sonnets,' and 'namby-pamby writer in twaddling albums kept by the mustachioed widows or ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... third one who carried the candles had a chance to eat a penny-dip, without any person seeing him. The king rode in his chariot, drawn by two wasps. He was a very warm gentleman, and not only carried a parasol to keep off the sun, but the head ninny-hammer squirted water on the small of his ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... compar'd to Buononcini, That Mynheer Handel's but a Ninny; Others aver, that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a Candle; Strange all this Difference should ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... charmed. Also, should you catch me smirking like an infatuated ninny, remember I am only doing my own indifferent best ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... "What a ninny I am!" she said aloud as she looked at herself, her tongue chiding her apprehensive eyes, her laugh contemptuously adding its comment on her tremulousness. "It was a real nightmare—a waking nightmare, that's what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... we have at the Rose and Crown. Come now, Alice, it's no use looking like that; you can't expect me to be a ninny. Besides, Waterman's a swell, he is the son ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... garment to make. Bacbouc carried it to him the next day. When the miller drew out his purse, the young slave gave my brother the usual sign, on which he said to the miller, "Neighbour, there is no haste, we will reckon another time;" so that the poor ninny went to his shop again, with three terrible distempers, love, hunger, and an empty purse. The miller's wife was not only avaricious, but ill-natured; for, not content with cheating my brother of his due, she provoked ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... daughter chid; "You never do as you are bid, Have I not told you o'er and o'er, That awkward gait to use no more? Learn, ninny, once for all to know, Folks forward and not backward go." "Mamma," says Miss, "how strange you talk! Have I not learn'd from you to walk? Were I to move the other way, How could ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... forgot what a ninny she has made of you. Well, David, it is all as plain as my hand. The ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... of two hundred thousand francs. And you, who talk of the Marechal de Richelieu, the prototype of Lovelace, you could be taken in by such a stale trick as that! I could get hundreds of thousands of francs out of you any day, if I chose, you old ninny!—Keep your money! If you have more than you know what to do with, it is mine. If you give two sous to that 'respectable' woman, who is pious forsooth, because she is fifty-six years of age, we shall ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to display his healing art. He took out his lancet, and forthwith bled everybody in the Kaëd's caravanseria. When his brother begged of him not to bleed any more people unless they paid him something—not to be such a sciocco ("ninny,") he turned round upon him, and indignantly exclaimed "Ancora voglio lasciare il mio nome qui" (Here I will leave my name also!) It was the delight of Gameo to be the grand tabeeb of Tripoli, and even to prescribe for the officers and subordinate ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... gone—skipped. No one knew where. I made guesses. Knew the girl would know if anyone did. I went to her, told her how you'n me had been pals, an' she give me the idee you was goin' up to the river's end. I resigned from the Betty M., that night. Told her, though, that she was a ninny if she thought you'd go up there. Made her believe the note ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... "Well, you old ninny, does that ruffle you?" asked Tonsard, attracted by the idea of damages. "If they had broken twenty crowns' worth of my mother's bones we could turn it into good account; we might make a fine fuss for three ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... woman more learned, more scientific, more eloquent, more offensive to a fellow's vanity, than I ever saw, or even read of—a woman of genius, starving, like a genius and a ninny, with a ring on her finger worth thirty guineas. But my learned goose would not raise money on that, because it was her father's, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... suggestions of his suspicious brain, it took me fully three months to descend in his bearish estimation from a highwayman to a ninny. There was an incredibility in my apparent lack of motive that puzzled him. His dubious cordiality was doled out under protest. As an exhibitor would clutch a vicious ape, he grabbed at every show of feeling, and almost throttled the most pitiful courtesy, in his nervous dread of its ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... incomparable sugar and cotton ground, full sixteen feet deep of river slime—Egypt was a sandy desert compared to it—and as to the climate, the zephyrs that disported themselves there were only to be paralleled in Eldorado and Arcadia. I, like a ninny as I was, although fully aware of the puffing propensities of our newspaper editors, especially when their tongues, or rather pens, have been oiled by a few handfuls of dollars, fell into the trap, and purchased land in the fever-hole in question, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... looked at the country, then at Morin and smiled. She smiled like a happy woman, with an engaging and bright look, and Morin trembled. Certainly that smile was intended for him, it was a discreet invitation, the signal which he was waiting for. That smile meant to say: "How stupid, what a ninny, what a dolt, what a donkey you are, to have sat there on your seat like a post ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the ironical George. "About what, you little ninny?" Poor Elizabeth blushed desperately. She was ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole |
