"Silly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough of such moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his doubts and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... is, Hans," said one, "give her up. You have no chance of gaining the required sum for many years, and it's a hard case to keep a poor girl waiting. Give her up, man, and don't go on like a silly love-sick boy." ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird—a silly little bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern, a Company for trade on that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself, they can't trade without using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water—steamboats! Why shouldn't I try to get charge of one? ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Lord of Callice, Sterne Falconbridge commands the Narrow Seas, The Duke is made Protector of the Realme, And yet shalt thou be safe? Such safetie findes The trembling Lambe, inuironned with Wolues. Had I beene there, which am a silly Woman, The Souldiers should haue toss'd me on their Pikes, Before I would haue granted to that Act. But thou preferr'st thy Life, before thine Honor. And seeing thou do'st, I here diuorce my selfe, Both from thy Table Henry, and thy Bed, Vntill that Act of Parliament ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... as it was no longer daylight, the faces of none could be easily distinguished. The mate and captain would not have been missed more than any others. Their authority existed no longer, and their silly behaviour in belabouring the cook, when they should have been using the time to better advantage by endeavouring to stifle the fire, had led to the belief that both were "half-seas over," and, therefore, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... "Why, the silly great bull will let the bear get close up to him!" cried Steve at last, after looking at one of these evolutions. "He managed quite six yards then. Why doesn't the creature give ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Lichfield, England. On market-days he used to carry a package of books to the village of Ottoxeter, and sell them from a stall in the market-place. One day the bookseller was sick, and asked his son to go and sell the books in his place. Samuel, from a silly ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... what they heard, and what I have now to tell, was perfectly incredible. When 'some' years (two apparently) had passed, Will Harrison, Gent., like the three silly ewes in the folk-rhyme, 'came hirpling hame.' Where had the old man been? He explained in a letter to Sir Thomas Overbury, but his tale is as hard to believe ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... know; I would not be frightened, only it is all so horrible. I am never afraid when I can see and understand what the danger is. You do not believe me a silly girl?" ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... doctor. He was, I daresay, not less unhappy than we were, but he told us not to give way to unmanly fears, and scolded us for talking about our dreams. "It is a foolish and bad practice silly people are apt to indulge in. It makes them nervous, promotes superstition, and, worse than all, frequently causes them to doubt God's superintending care and watchfulness. Your dreams have just been made up of what has occurred, and ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... years before that the child, then but ten years old, had nearly managed to make a quarrel between Harry Esmond and his comrade, good-natured, phlegmatic Thomas Tusher, who never of his own seeking quarrelled with anybody: by quoting to the latter some silly joke which Harry had made regarding him—(it was the merest idlest jest, though it near drove two old friends to blows, and I think such a battle would have pleased her)—and from that day Tom kept at a distance from her; and she respected ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... verge of doom. I saw a Monster, a malign, marine, Mysterious, many-whorled, mug-lumbering Bogey, Stretched (like Miltonian angels on the marl) In league-long loops upon the billowy brine. Beshrew thee, old familiar ocean Bogey, Thou spectral spook of many Silly Seasons, Beshrew thee, and avaunt! Which being put In post-Shakspearian vernacular, means Confound, you, and Get out!!! The monstrous worm Wriggling its corkscrew periwinkly twists Of trunk and tail alternate, winked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... the ferry, and then we had to wait for hours on the other side. When I came out of the ferry-house, I put my foot on the grass, and I thought, 'This is Virginia!' It was as if I had stepped on some place where a murder had been done. I was as silly as a half-witted person," blushing apologetically. "I have had great kindness done to me in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof—for of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women, laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. And because it is so, he exhorteth to give diligence to make your calling and election sure, by giving all diligence to add to faith ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... between the older magazines and the recent ones is the conspicuous absence from the journal of a century ago of what is commonly called "light literature." Magazines were then conducted by scholars for scholars. "Popular" essays and silly novels had not yet depraved the taste of readers who could relish Somerville and Shenstone, Savage and Johnson. Articles appeared monthly in the Port Folio that could not by any chance win recognition from an editor of these days. One of the favorite ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... hateful porcupine quills again this winter! I will not! It's wicked, WICKED to expect me to! Oh! How I wish there never had been any porcupines in the world, or that all of them had died before silly, hateful people ever thought of trimming hat with them! They curl round and tickle my ear! They blow against my cheek and sting it like needles! They do look outlandish, you said so yourself a minute ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... responsible for your present condition. I now say however that you have been chosen by nature for a great and glorious work and from this time forward you must make use of your reasoning faculties for reasonable purposes and cast aside all the animal passions, silly ideas and antiquated superstitions which you have inherited from the ignorant of ages, and begin afresh. Before starting on our journey perhaps it would be well for us to take some refreshments in order that our minds may remain strong and clear during the trip. We take our nourishment in a different ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... these People, that I compos'd my ninth Satire; where I think I have shewn clearly enough, that without any prejudice either to one's Conscience or the Government, one may think bad Verses bad Verses, and have full right to be tir'd with reading a silly Book. But since these Gentlemen have spoken of the liberty I have taken of Naming them, as an Attempt unheard-of, and without Example, and since Examples can't well be put into Rhyme; 'tis proper to say one word to inform 'em of a thing of which they ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... his head perhaps, and now I confess to you, unprovoked. I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it. I do not even 'see the better part,' I am so silly. ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... years old—by that time I was engaged to be married—I took him round to all the day schools. I went from one to the other, and no one would take him. And he cried. . . . 'What are you crying for, little silly?' I said. I took him to Razgulyay to the second school, where—God bless them for it!—they took him, and the boy began going every day on foot from Pyatnitsky Street to Razgulyay Street and back again . . . . Alyosha paid for him. . . . By God's grace the boy got on, ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... empress expect to bribe me, for I hope she does not think me so silly and childish as to consider her words commands, merely because they fall from the lips of an empress. No, the little Morien is at this moment a more important person to the empress than the empress is to me, and it is, therefore, very natural ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... doubtless, are superstitious. But I appeal to every master mariner here, whether the superstitious men are generally the religious and godly men; whether it is not generally the most reckless and profligate men of the crew who are most afraid of sailing on a Friday, and who give way to other silly fancies which I shall not mention in this sacred place. And I appeal, too, to public experience, whether many, I may say most, of those to whom seamanship and sea-science owes most, have not ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... am not so silly or so wicked as to try to persuade you that my mother will open her arms to you. She knows neither ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... universal and particular grace respectively embody? The Jesuit doctrine of sufficient grace is certainly, to use the familiar expression, a very pleasant doctrine conducive to the due feeding of the whole flock of Christ, as being, as assuming them to be, what they really are, at the worst, God's silly sheep. It has something in it congruous with the rising of the physical sun on the evil and on the good, while the wheat and the tares grow naturally, peacefully together. But how pleasant also the opposite doctrine, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... can fancy that an easy-going butterfly should laugh at the painful industry of the ant; and I should think much of the butterfly who should own that he was only a butterfly because it was the age of butterflies. "The few wise," said I, "have ever been the laughing-stock of silly crowds." ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... me exactly, or careless of my enjoyment, because, to be sure, Harry Jardine is courting all of us. Nonsense, Joanna, you need not affect to be sage and precise and unconcerned. I am not so silly, and it is very conceited of you, and I have no patience with you. Of course I was not blind and deaf, and I have not lost my memory. Harry Jardine is continually looking after you, whatever his mother persuades herself. He never notices what ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... my boy, to-morrow you will be standing on your own feet, as it were; you'll be responsible for yourself. For it's like this: before one has served one is a silly youth: but afterwards, a man. Therefore you want something that you can steer by; and I tell you, you must make a rule for yourself that you can look to. The printed ones—they're only just by the way. Always ask yourself: is it right, is it honest, what you're doing? If yes, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... think the German bogey is very silly?" was Bob's retort. "I was in Germany last summer with my mother, and we had a great time. She knew some German families there, and we became great friends with them. They don't want war any more than we do. All they desire is to develop their ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... mean those silly things you have been teaching me? Why should I learn them? I'm happy as I am. I love you, you love me, and that ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... chimerical," Pecuchet ended by declaring. "He believes in the occult sciences, in monarchy, in rank; is dazzled by rascals; turns up millions for you like centimes; and middle-class people are not with him middle-class people at all, but giants. Why inflate what is unimportant, and waste description on silly things? He wrote one novel on chemistry, another on banking, another on printing-machines, just as one Ricard produced The Cabman, The Water-Carrier and The Cocoa-Nut Seller. We should soon have books on every trade and on every province; then on every town and ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... the mischievous brute, had been placed in the wrong stall and Beelzebub was making for freedom. He gave another triumphant baa as he swept between Dolph's legs and through the gate, and, with an answering chorus, the silly sheep sprang to their feet and followed. A sheep hates water, but not more than he loves a leader, and Beelzebub feared nothing. Straight for the water of the low ford the old conqueror made and, in the wake of his masterful summons, the flock swept, like a Mormon household, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... a kind of apology for this moment of weakness in her look and manner. Her face seemed to say: "It's silly ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... torments of his life. It was here that they made those products with the wonders of which they pestered him so—by placards that defaced the landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in the newspapers and magazines—by silly little jingles that he could not get out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked for him around every street corner. Here was where they made Brown's Imperial Hams and Bacon, Brown's Dressed Beef, Brown's Excelsior Sausages! Here was the headquarters of Durham's Pure ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... love with a term that Othello hit upon; only they used it not once, but fifty times a day, and struck decent women with it on the face, like a scorpion whip; and then the scalding tears were sure to run in torrents down their silly, honest, burning cheeks. But this was not all; they had got a large tank in a flagged room, nominally for cleanliness and cure, but really for bane and torture. For the least offence, or out of mere wantonness, they would drag a patient stark naked across the yard, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... hers,—"I was just as bad by little Sue. I was only fourteen then, but it was the same evil, unsuitable vanity and selfishness. I was busy, while she was sick, making a white muslin burnouse to wear to a fair. I had teased mother for it. It was a silly thing for a girl like me to wear; it had a blue ribbon run in the hem of the hood, and a bow and long blue ends behind. Poor little Sue was just down with the fever. Mother had to go out, and left me to tend her. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... down with accuracy and good faith. Every turn of phrase, awkward or coarse though it may seem to cultured ears, must be unrelentingly reported; and every grotesquery, each strange word, or incomprehensible or silly incident, must be given without flinching. Any attempt to soften down inconsistencies, vulgarities or stupidities, detracts from the value of the text, and may hide or destroy something from which the student ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Then it struck her for the first time that he was a very handsome young man—quite the Prince Charming of the girls' dreams. A thousand times finer than Moravia's Italian prince with whom for her part she had been horribly disappointed when she had seen his photograph. Only it was too silly to consider this one in that light, since he wasn't really going to be hers—only a means to an end. Oh! the pleasure to be free and rich and to do exactly what she pleased! She had been planning all these days what she would do. She ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... said softly, and the colour flamed in her sensitive face. Miss Craven nodded. "You mean that in unearthing the buried treasure of a dead past she has found the living treasure of a man's love? Yes, and not any too soon, poor silly child. Men like Horringford don't bear playing with. I wonder whether she knows how near she has been to making ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... sound of subdued laughter at this from the guests, who had all kept silence to listen to the dean's jokes, that Pennie saw she had said something silly, though she had no idea what it could be. All the faces were turned upon her with smiles, and the dean, quite ignorant of the misery he was causing her, drank up his coffee ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... was very silly," agreed Helmsley, watching her narrowly from under his half-closed eyelids. "But most thinkers are silly, even when they don't take opium. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... afterwards," I answered, laughing with a silly, unbelieving air; "after you have had me hanged by those gendarmes to whom I have just given such a drubbing. Come, now; prove that you love me at once; I will save you afterwards. You see, I can talk ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... of "honor and vital interests." Honor and vital interests—could any words be more vague and indefinite? Are these not the very cases which interested nations are least competent to decide? A complete answer to that silly reservation is found in our hundred years' peace with Great Britain. As John W. Foster, that keen student of our diplomatic history, has said, "The United States can have no future dispute with England more seriously involving the territorial integrity, the honor of the nation, its vital ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... as if he were trying to take it out of the ball. It was a grisly sight to see him, head and shoulders above the ditch, hewing at his obstinate colonel. It was a similar spectacle that once induced a lay spectator of a golf match to observe that he considered hockey a silly game. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... without the least surprise at his figures, "I don't know what he could have been thinking of—your Priam Farll! I call it just silly. It isn't as if there wasn't enough picture-galleries already. When what there are are so full that you can't get in—then it will be time enough to think about fresh ones. I've been to the National Gallery twice, and upon my word I was almost the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... my little pigeon of God, what are they doing now? Do you see Mishka Gurki? She is a silly woman. Tell me, my little pet, if you see her. Watch her well, and tell me how she looks at me. That woman is an enemy of the Revolution and a friend of Sophia Kensky.... Ah! it is ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... see it. On this point I will tell a little story from Mr. Kirk's Study of Silent Minds. At a concert behind the front, an audience of soldiers had listened to the ordinary items, a performance, as Mr. Kirk says, 'clean, bright, and amusing', which means of course silly and ugly. Then the orchestra played the introduction to the Keys of Heaven, and a gunner remarked—'Sounds like a bloody hymn.' That was his fear of beauty, his false shame. But when the Keys of Heaven was ended, the whole ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... the former and latter part of the service. For a while, regardless of the worship of God, I looked around me, and was anxious to attract notice myself. My dress, like that of too many gay, vain, and silly servant girls, was much above my station, and very different from that which becomes an humble sinner, who has a modest sense of propriety and decency. The state of my mind was visible enough from the ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... The latter was placed between them in such a way that the heads of the bull and cow were in opposite directions, and thus both flanks were guarded. In this way the buffaloes might have held their ground, but the silly calf when closely menaced by the wolves foolishly started out, rendering it necessary for its protectors to assume ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... to our heart's desire. Taylor has dropped the "London." It was indeed a dead weight. It had got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand, like Christian, with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and strangers'-greeting to Lucy,—is it Lucy, or Ruth?—that gathers wise ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... grabbed him. Come out of it. What are you giving me, you josser?" said Collins, with a wink and a grin. "Ain't you found out even yet, you silly? Why, it was only a faked-up thing, the taking of a kinematograph picture for the Alhambra. You and Petrie ought to have been here sooner and got your wages, you goats. I got half a quid for my share when I let ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... take them to a river or pond to drink, when they say that sorrowfully discerning their loss of beauty these mares lose their self-respect and allow themselves to be covered by asses.[77] To select a wife for wealth rather than for her excellence or family is dishonourable and illiberal; but it is silly to reject wealth when it is accompanied by excellence and family. Antigonus indeed wrote to his officer who had garrisoned Munychia[78] to make not only the collar strong but the dog lean, that he might undermine the strength of the Athenians; but it becomes not the husband of ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... propos of her father, "She always let us have her own way." If the bottle of ink was upset, or the back of a book burst, she never waited to find out who had done it, but in a torrent of words crashed into the first girl she suspected, her face becoming a silly mauve and her bust heaving with passion. This made me so indignant that, one day when the ink was spilt and Mlle. de Mennecy as usual scolded the wrong girl, I determined I would stand it no longer. Meeting the victim of Mademoiselle's temper in the ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... this fire, but, on the contrary, claim that we saved what of Columbia remains unconsumed. And without hesitation I charge General Wade Hampton with having burned his own city of Columbia, not with a malicious intent or as the manifestation of a silly 'Roman stoicism,' but from folly, and want of sense, in filling it with lint, cotton, and tinder. Our officers and men on duty worked well to extinguish the flames; but others not on duty, including ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... billiard-rooms, we ran up to town for the day, we had wine in one another's rooms after hall in the evening, and behaved like young fools, and threw oranges wildly at one another's heads, and generally enjoyed ourselves. It was all very silly and irrational, no doubt, but it was life, it was reality; while the pretended earnestness of those pallid Somerville girls is all an affectation ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... He tried to keep his mind on the flower-beds, but it drifted away to the cave below. He thought of the danger of coming into some underground body of water, where he would be drowned; but he knew that was a silly idea. If the shell had gone through [v]subterranean reservoirs, the water of these would have run out, and before it reached the bottom of the shaft ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... her husband presently disclosed The love these cit-gallants to her proposed; Both known for arrant blockheads through the town, And ever boasting of their own renown. To him she gave their various speeches, tones, Each silly air: their tears, and sighs, and groans; They'd read, or rather heard, we may believe, That, when in love, with sighs fond bosoms heave. Their utmost to succeed these coxcombs tried, And seemed convinced they ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... only knew what that lady gave us!" "It matters nothing to me!" "But to-morrow evening you must go!" "Yes, yes! you would have had it!" Their father says: "Let us go to supper and let her alone; you are really silly!" ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... would become so fixed in his mind that he would forget that no such association existed in the minds of others. And suppose that in pursuance of this general idea, which is a perfectly clear and intellectual idea, though a very silly one, he were to say that he believed in Puritanism without its theology, and were to repeat this idea also to himself until it became instinctive and familiar, such a man might take up a pen, and under the impression that he was saying something ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... will make a nice mess for the Bosnians and Servians because they have been rather troublesome about wanting to be united into one country instead of two, and called Greater Serbia. That seems a silly sort of reason for throwing bombs and killing people. But foreigners have a way of thinking bombs settle everything. Harriet brought out her old school geography and we looked up Sarajevo on the map of Austria-Hungary. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... intolerably fatiguing unless very sparingly used. Take the song which Blondel sang under the window of King Richard's prison. There was not one syllable in it to say that Blondel was there, and was going to help the king to get out of prison. It was about some silly love affair, but it was a letter all the same, and the king made language of what would otherwise have been no language, by guessing the meaning, that is to say by perceiving that he was expected to enter then and there into a new covenant as to the meaning of the symbols that were ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... cam' an Irish beggar, wi' a stripy cloot him and a bellows under 's arm, and ca'd himsel' a Hielander, the lad wad gi'e him his silly ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... policy; he has enough sympathy to be kind to his old mother, and help a friend in distress; but the need of romantic and elevated conduct rarely occurs to him; and the heroic, if he meets it, appears to him as an exception, not far removed from the silly. He does not reflect—especially if he cares nothing for history—how even the society in which he is a contented unit has been built up, and how much loyalty and heroism has been needed for the work; nor even, to ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... share in the sacrifice she made of her virtue. She had felt poverty, and was far from disliking power. Mr. Howard was probably as little agreeable to her as he proved worthless. The King, though very amorous, was certainly more attracted by a silly idea he had entertained of gallantry being becoming, than by a love of variety; and he added the more egregious folly of fancying that inconstancy proved he was not governed; but so awkwardly did he manage that artifice, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... silly as we can act!" she cried, speaking loud so that they could all hear her. "We mustn't give up hope. The boys, or Mr. Cameron, will find us. It can't keep on ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... know. But really, really, I can't. It was so silly of me to be frightened. I am not generally silly ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... ran into quite a peace demonstration, called by placards the night of the Peace Interpretation in the Reichstag. Soon disbanded by the police with many arrests. One man told me that they were tired of a silly war and days without meat. There has been nothing in the papers about these demonstrations; of course, each arrest makes an ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... so she whispered soft words of love to it and told the little flower that it must never follow the breeze, for he was a wanderer and might take it far from its home, where it would be very unhappy and perhaps die out in the cold world. But the silly little Morning-glory still wanted to leave the big vine, and the next time the breeze came along it pushed up its head and the breeze took it off the big vine and bore it along with ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... them die. The first it sall be wind and weet, The next it sall be snaw and sleet, The third it sall be sic a freeze, Sall gar the birds stick to the trees, But when the Borrowed Days were gone, The three silly hogs came hedglin home." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... particles and absorbing others. So long as they are mere representatives, elected by the whims of universal suffrage, their meaning will be a perfect volatile, and to cork it up for the next century is an employment sufficiently silly, (to speak within bounds,) for a modern Bible dictionary maker. There never was a shallower conceit than that of establishing the sense attached to a word centuries ago, by showing what it means now. Pity ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... himself. A poor shift indeed, for him to think that he could hide himself from him to whom darkness is as light, and to flee from him whose kingdom is over all, and who is present in all the corners of his universal kingdom,—in hell, in heaven, in the utmost corners of the earth. But this silly invention shows ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... subsequently edited by Bode, the reader will find some allegorical explanations of these benefits given by Prometheus. See Myth. primus I. 1, and tertius 3, 10, 9. They are, however, little else than compilations from the commentary of Servius on Virgil, and the silly, but amusing, mythology of Fulgentius. On the endowment of speech and reason to men by Prometheus, cf. Themist. Or. xxxvi. p. 323, C. D. and xxvi. p. 338, C. ed. Hard.; and for general illustrations, the notes of Wasse on Sallust, Cat. ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... startled from repose by the shrill squeal of some unlucky brute, complaining of the torture inflicted by the sharp teeth of its ill-natured mate or vicious neighbor; or, perhaps, the flutter of fans is suspended at the obstreperous neigh by which some anxious dam recalls the silly foal that has strayed from her side; or the dissonant creaking of a cramped wheel makes doleful interludes between the verses of the hymn. Here naughty boys, escaped from the confinement of the sanctuary, are wont to lounge in the wagons during prayer and sermon time, munching green pears and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... hasty ones are generally the most generous. There are hundreds and hundreds of leaves in it, and I expect it will be years before it's finished. I'm not going to write things every day—that's silly! I'll just keep it for times when I want to talk, and Lorna is not near to confide in. It's quite exciting to think all that will be written in these empty pages! What fun it would be if I could ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... secretary, "there is all the information that I can obtain on the subject; and here, take the order, and go and see your friend the Duke. Tell him I will come and see him to-morrow, and give him what consolation you can; but yet do not act like a silly boy, and make too light of the business, for two reasons: first, because the matter is really serious—the good folks of London have an appetite for blood upon them just now, and will not be satisfied unless they see a head struck off every now and then; and ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... him.] Silly, have you forgotten that this is Tuesday—Maggie's night out? She's gone—I told her she needn't wait to clear away. We've arranged master's supper. Master! ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn't ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Phonzie; the whole evening don't need to be spoiled for you just because I went and got a silly fit of blues on. You—you go get some live one like Gert and—and take ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... but she might lace or not just as she pleased. No one would look at her in any case since her kind, good-humoured, silly ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... for doing that!" she exclaimed afresh, when she had finished the brandy he had poured out for her. "Did I say anything foolish, silly—did I? Oh, I hope I didn't. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Joan, no—you don't understand. At the worst, this is some virtuous but silly school-girl, who, though she may be intending only an innocent flirtation with him, has made this man actually and deeply in love with her. Yes; it is a fact, Joan. I know Dick Demorest, and if ever there was a man honestly in love, it ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters. Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it seems Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard! It was a silly ass thing to do," protested the purser. "Everybody knows Meyer hasn't a brother, and if he hadn't made THAT break he might have got away with the other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless ahead to Mr. Meyer and ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... nervous dread of losing you. It is not selfishness, for I do love to have treats; but when you go away I don't seem to take any pleasure in anything; it is all so flat and disagreeable. Sometimes I lie awake and cry when I think what I should do if you were to die. I know how silly and morbid it is, but how am I to help it?" And here Hatty broke down, and hid her ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... has the right idea, sir," he replied. "While the report indicates that a group of people on Venus are meeting regularly and secretly, and wearing some silly uniform, I think we need more information before ordering a ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... secretary told Lennard[6]), and said 'he was sure it was all Leach's doing.' What a man! how wonderful! how despicable! carrying into the administration of justice the petty vanity, personal jealousy and pique, and shuffling arts that would reflect ridicule and odium on a silly woman of fashion. He has smuggled his Privy Council Bill through the House of Lords without the slightest notice ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... correspondent from Williams College says, "We speak of a person whom we despise as being a nuts." This word is used in the Yorkshire dialect with the meaning of a "silly fellow." Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, remarks: "It is not applied to an idiot, but to one who has ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... present silly system of restricted production, with the majority of the population engaged in useless, unproductive, unnecessary work, and large numbers never doing any work at all, there is enough produced to go all round after a fashion. More than enough, for in consequence of what they call "Over-Production", ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... that you thought me so silly? I really liked that account of himself better than anything else he said. Everything else revolted me, from its hardness; but he spoke about himself so simply—with so little of the pretence that makes the vulgarity of shop-people, and with such tender respect ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... have a song made by one of these prisoners, wherein he bids them "come all, and dine upon him, and welcome, for they shall withal eat their own fathers and grandfathers, whose flesh has served to feed and nourish him. These muscles," says he, "this flesh and these veins, are your own: poor silly souls as you are, you little think that the substance of your ancestors' limbs is here yet; notice what you eat, and you will find in it the taste of your own flesh:" in which song there is to be observed an invention that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... deuce is that?' thought Val. 'What silly brutes lawyers are! Not for months! I know one thing: I'm not going to dine in!' And ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Turtlets fared wonderfully well that day; but the poor little Partridges went hungry, and had dreadful headaches, and went home peeping sadly to their silly mother. And Mrs. Partridge had no more sense than to be angry with Madame Tortoise, which I think was very unfair, don't you? For the latter had only done as she was bidden by her silly and ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... very honourable, and I thank you. Mon Dieu, they talk enough about me—you have heard them—do not deny it, Monsieur Marche. It is always, 'Lorraine did this, Lorraine did that, Lorraine is shocking, Lorraine is silly, Lorraine—' O ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... see why you ask such silly questions," retorted the Lefthandiron. "What do we sit on? Why, you might just as well ask a dog what he barks with, or a lion what he eats his breakfast with—and that would be as stupid as the Poker's poem ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... ha! the silly creature! Tell me who would lose the most? Nonsense, you are not so foolish as to play such ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... the kings of the fallen dynasty had received support from the valley of the Tigris. Hosea continually reproached his countrymen with this vacillating policy, and pointed out the folly of it: "Ephraim is like a silly dove without understanding; they call unto Egypt, they go unto Assyria; when they shall go I will spread My net upon them," said ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... voice to say, "Oh, Ester, I don't see but what you will have to give it up," and Ester would have turned quickly and with curling lip, to that pan of potatoes, and have sharply forbidden any one to mention the subject to her again. Once more Sadie, dear, merry, silly ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... madam, it is so very large a majority of your fellow-countrymen that are of this insignificant stamp. At least eighty out of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in the last census are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... been for some time—silly, And lengthy correspondences are rife. We have, alas! to read them willy-nilly; They take a deal of pleasure out of life. To flee such evils here's an easy way— Let morning dailies idly rant or vapour, At the Lyceum go and see the play, The programme ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... of returning into the absolute nothingness whence he had crept—to commit a horrible crime against immortal society, and creep back again, with a heart full of love and remorse and self-abhorrence, into the black abyss. Therefore, why should he not let them tell their lies and utter their silly incantations? Aloof and unharmed he stood, safe on the shore, all ready to reach the rescuing hand to Helen, the moment she should turn her eyes to him, for the help she knew he had to give her. Certainly, for her sake, he would rather ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... neighborhood was to be married that morning, and all the little girls of John's acquaintance were dressed in white and had strewn flowers along the main street and the road beyond as far as the castle gates. He thought it a silly business and a sinful waste of posies; but in the church-yard he took his place in the throng with ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... silly as it is, was exceedingly well received, both in England and on the Continent. And the reason is evident. The classical scholars who saw its absurdity were generally on the side of the ancients, and were inclined rather to veil than to expose the blunders of an ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... daughter, and asked for the ring in order to set matters to rights again. But when he heard the fatal trick played by the false merchants he was ready to throw himself out of the window, cursing a thousand times the ignorance of his daughter, who, for the sake of a silly doll had turned him into a miserable scarecrow, and for a paltry thing of rags had brought him to rags himself, adding that he was resolved to go wandering about the world like a bad shilling, until he should ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... "Silly to act like that," he said. Then, seeing his father's look of concern, he added, "I feel as though I'd like ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... silly thing down," I told him, as he ran up to me with his head lowered and that indescribably desperate look in his big frightened eyes. "If you're not a fool I can get you hidden," I told him. It reassured me to see that his ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... appeared in the streets of the town. He is worn out, shabby and half-witted. Almost always intoxicated, he appears now gloomy, with knitted brow, and with head bent down on his breast, now smiling the pitiful and melancholy smile of a silly fanatic. Sometimes he is turbulent, but that happens rarely. He lives with his foster-sister in a little wing in the yard. His acquaintances among the merchants and citizens often ridicule him. As Foma walks along the street, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... a wild-haired youth in tarred boots and a pink shirt, exclaimed, uncovering his pale gums in a silly grin, that Ziemianitch had got his skinful early in the afternoon and had gone away with a bottle under each arm to keep it up ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... unsuspectingness of our friend has sometimes laid him open to attacks, which, though savouring (we hope) more of waggery than malice—such is our unfeigned respect for G.D.—might, we think, much better have been omitted. Such was that silly joke of L[amb], who, at the time the question of the Scotch Novels was first agitated, gravely assured our friend—who as gravely went about repeating it in all companies—that Lord Castlereagh had acknowledged himself to be the author of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Such silly paradoxes provoked, of course, merely a smile of compassion; what alarmed the sensible, respectable "Philistine" was the method of cleansing the Augean stable recommended by these enthusiasts. Having discovered in ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... simplicity gives even to the most forcible reasoning and the most brilliant wit an infantine air, generally delightful, but to a foreign reader sometimes a little ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use it. It becomes Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely more silly. We may add, that the verses with which the Mandragola is interspersed, appear to us to be the most spirited and correct of all that Machiavelli has written in metre. He seems to have entertained the same opinion; for he has introduced ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... knee. "My own grandfather heard it and he told daddy and daddy told me that to hear her sing made a man think he was in Heaven. So when Mrs. Lenox gave me this beautiful bird for my very own, of course, I named her Jenny Lind. Mrs. Lenox called her Cleopatra. Wasn't that a silly name for a bird? Mrs. Lenox must have liked it or she wouldn't have given it to anything. Isn't it the luckiest thing that everyone hasn't the same likes? Just suppose everyone had been like my father and my mother and all the little girls were named Mary Rose? I think it's the most beautiful name ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett |
