"Stupid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there a few times more, if only to break it off gently," he reflected, "and I want to see old Rainham. It is stupid of me not to have written to him—yes, stupid! Wonder if he has heard? I mustn't give him up, at any rate. We'll—we'll ask him to dinner, and all that sort of thing. And what the deuce am I going to send to the Academy? Thank goodness, I have enough Swiss sketches to work up for the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Jack-in-the-box which had just sprung up into view, others like ignorant, but superstitious, people who had unexpectedly come upon a shrine by the wayside. One or two seemed disposed to laugh nervously, as the very stupid laugh at anything they see for the first time. But fear seized them. They refrained convulsively and shambled on to the gangway, looking sideways, like fowls, and holding their rugs awkwardly to their breasts with their ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... correctness of that vote? The law admitting those territories passed without any proviso. Is there a slave, or will there ever be one, in either of those territories? Why, there is not a man in the United States so stupid as not to see, at this moment, that such a thing was wholly unnecessary, and that it was only calculated to irritate and to offend. I am not one who is disposed to create irritation, or give offence among brethren, or to break up fraternal friendship, without cause. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... it often said of a great author, or a great actress, that they are very stupid people in private. But he was a fool that said so. Tell me your company, and I'll tell you your manners. In conversation, as in other things, the action and reaction should bear a certain proportion to each other.—Authors may, in some sense, be looked ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... refrain from complaining at the inconveniences and sufferings endured in time of sickness. He succeeded in inspiring his Daughters of the Visitation with his spirit, teaching them that true Christian patience, which is neither apathy nor insensibility, nor the dull stupid endurance of the Stoics; but a sweet and reasonable submission to the Will of God, coupled with cheerful obedience to the physician whom He commands us to honour, and a grateful acceptance of the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... me. How stupid I had been! I could scarcely retain an outward exhibition of my great joy. Why had I forgotten the great difference in the length of Martian and Earthly years! The ten Earth years I had spent upon Barsoom had encompassed ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... could not see her, and the dog's loud bark had prevented his hearing her coaxing call; so when Beki was quiet and stood still, Orion whistled to him. The obedient and watchful beast, ran back, wagging his tail; and his master, greeting him as "a stupid old cat-hunter," let him spring over his arm, hugged the creature and then pushed him off again in play. Then he closed the door and went into the apartments leading ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on cloudy winter days From dawn to dusk and I soap heads, Shave them and powder them and speak Indifferent words, stupid, foolish. Most heads are completely shut, They sleep limply. And others read again And look slowly through long lids, As though they had sucked everything dry. Still others open the red cracks of their mouths wide And tell jokes. For my part, I smile courteously. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... tortures and death, but the shafts of ridicule, and sneers of contempt. "Trials of cruel mocking," now exercise the faith and patience of the saints. Religion, the dignity and hope of man, hath become the sport of stupid infidels! The jest of sorry witlings! These hissings of the serpent are ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... loggerheaded, inapt, doltish, beetle-headed, blockish, sluggish; apathetic, unfeeling, insensate, callous; blunt, obtuse, dulled, pointless; dim, faint; tedious, uninteresting, prosaic, stupid, wearisome, jejune, depressing; lifeless, torpid, slow, inactive; matte, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Stupid little Picklepip Allowed the subtle hint to slip— Maundered on about the ship That he did not chance to own; Told this grievance o'er and o'er, Knowing that she knew before; Told her how he dwelt alone. Lady Minnow, for reply, Cut ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... saw how hurt she was at not being met, and he insisted on taking her home, she chattered and snickered hysterically at his most stupid remarks. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... of theory and sentiment, did I love my fellows any better than the average of mankind. I sought those who were congenial to me, and had no pleasure in the company of the common and the ignorant. I liked clever people. I gave them my best, but I had nothing to bestow upon the dull and stupid. How many times have I borne the society of inferior people with ungracious tolerance, and hastened from them with undisguised relief? How often when dealing with the poor and ignorant in the exercise of conventional ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... morning when I called Miss —— a nice person, "Don't say nice, child, 'tis a bad word." Once I said to Dr. Johnson, "Sir, that is a very nice person." "A nice person," he replied; "what does that mean? Elegant is now the fashionable term, but it will go out, and I see this stupid nice is to succeed to it. What does nice mean? Look in my Dictionary; you will see it means ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... governor and the captain arrived on board the Mayflower they found Jones too stupid with liquor to listen to any plans, and too short-handed when he had been made to understand to carry them out with half the dispatch the ardent spirit of Standish prompted, so that all they effected was to have two of the larger pieces ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... and were as stupid as possible. At all events, he had heard nothing, seen nothing. Then I took it into my head that the Vicomte had taken her away. And—and—I can't tell you what I thought, but did not like to go to the Vicomte. I knew if she was in his room, that he would not like any one ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... deeper than you think; you may tie a stone to a bed-cord and not get soundings in some of 'em. The country boys will tell you they have no bottom, but that only means that they are mighty deep; and so a good many stagnant, stupid-seeming people are a great deal deeper than the length of your intellectual walking-stick, I can tell you. There are hidden springs that keep the little pond-holes full when the mountain brooks are all dried up. You poets ought to ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles, and admire my clothes, and wish her little Jane was old enough to run to school with me, and flatter me on the beauty of my hair and eyes and complexion, in such a way that very few children would have been so stupid as not to have seen through it. Could you not have said something to discourage the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... to ourselves with no one to bother us, with no chaperone, or chaperone's husband either, which is generally worse. Why is it, my dear," he asked gayly, in a tone that he considered affectionate and husbandly, "that the attractive chaperones are always handicapped by such stupid husbands, and vice versa?" ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Patti. Well, that sort of thing don't answer in the long run. It is all very well to have love without money; but money without love is another matter. Mr. Hidehart turned out worse than the Colonel; for he was stupid, vulgar, and mean. And she was so nice, so delicate, so bright, so intellectual! Oh, what hours of bitter regret, what biting of lips, what flushes of shame, what heart-shocks that stopped the life-blood, and—well, truth must out—what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... "Am I unusually stupid, or are you rapt, beyond the realm of reason and mid-day common sense? Pray what is the fascination? It is neither so vast, nor so picturesque as the Colosseum. There, one expects to hear the roar of the beasts springing on their human prey; the ring of steel on steel, when ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... weather, and to transport me from place to place without fatigue.' But the man who asks him for that fine blue ribbon would say, if he had the courage and the honesty to speak as he feels, 'I am vain, and it will give me great satisfaction to see people look at me, as I pass, with an eye of stupid admiration, and make way for me; I wish, when I enter a room, to produce an effect, and to excite the attention of those who may, perhaps, laugh at me when I am gone; I wish to be called Monseigneur by the multitude.' Is not all this mere empty air? In scarcely any country will this ribbon ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk—(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)—but drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was fou, but he was never out o' gude humor." After this, we are not surprised to hear that Scott's father told him disgustedly that he was better fitted to be a fiddling peddler, a "gangrel scrape-gut," than a respectable attorney. As a matter of fact, however, behind the mad pranks ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... one did make very much, and yet she was one of the sweetest, dearest, quietest, little creatures that ever made glad a man's fireside. She was exquisitely pretty, always in good humour, never stupid, self-denying to a fault, and yet she was generally in the background. She would seldom come forward of her own will, but was contented to sit behind her teapot and hear Mackinnon do his roaring. He was certainly much given to what the world at Rome called ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... The prodigious stupid bigotry of the people also was irksome to me; I thought there was something in it very sordid. The entire empire the priests have over both the souls and bodies of the people, gave me a specimen of that meanness of spirit, which is nowhere ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... stupid postcards were sent when he tried to close a right of way through the park; but they were merely ridiculous, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... blow that stunned all words, it smote my stupid, wandering mind that all I had to speak and smile to, all I cared to please and serve, the only one left to admire and love, lay here in my weak arms quite dead. And in the anguish of my sobbing, little things came home to me, a thousand little things that showed how quietly ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... hand-straps, no leg-locks, nor any contrivance confining the trunk or limbs or any of the muscles, is now in use. The coercion-chairs (forty in number) have been altogether removed from the walls.... Several patients formerly consigned to them, silent and stupid, and sinking into fatuity, may now be seen cheerfully moving about the walls or airing-courts; and there can be no question that they have been happily set free from a thraldom, of which one constant and lamentable consequence was ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... "has a man of action—of brutal action in the eyes of universal prejudice—more magnificently glorified the spirituality of war. Mechanics—abominable mechanics—takes possession of the world, crushing it under its stupid and irresistible wheels. By the action of newly discovered and improved appliances the science of war assumes vast proportions as a means of destruction. Yet here, amid the din of this upset modern world we find a brain sufficiently master of its own thoughts as not to permit itself ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... 'smile through the tears of the storm.' Of this kind of thing there are no less than nine pages: and we can so far venture an opinion in their favour, that they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty nearly as stupid and tiresome. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... the Imagination. Such an Impression as this gives an immediate Ambition to deserve, in order to please. This Cause and Effect are beautifully described by Mr. Dryden in the Fable of Cymon and Iphigenia. After he has represented Cymon so stupid, that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... with the face of Chiquita constantly before her and the pangs of jealousy gnawing at her heart? How stupid to have imagined her to be one of those bovine women with large liquid eyes who, figuratively speaking, pass the major portion of their lives standing knee-deep in a pond, gazing stolidly out upon the world; a fat brown wench upon whose ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... yourself. Bella said it was—ex—something, and the word is in the spelling-book, but I never can remember the long words. Oh, I just wish I was fifteen and wasn't going to school any more. And then there's keeping company and getting married, and having your setting out. School seems stupid. There were two boys who wanted to come home with me, but mother said Ben must. Then I wished—well, I wished he was in college. He wants to go. Father says Mr. Leverett has infected ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... uncontrollable and constant in effect, adapted to the circumstances of the special life of the race in question. It is this curious instinctive adaptation—which is so intelligent when it carries out its proper task, so stupid and incapable when diverted to some other purpose—that has deceived so many scientists and philosophers by its insidious ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... simply crude," she said earnestly. "I was feeling reckless and I wrote recklessly. I knew she would disapprove and I wrote foolishly. It was the echo of her own stupid talk. I said that I did not love her brother but that I had no scruples whatever in ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... laughed the Nix. "When I go home and relate my adventures, no dwarfs pranks will be named again!" But when Bess looked into the pail, he was the same slimy, stupid-looking worm as before. She dared not return to the lake for more water—"for," said she, "I should be as much beaten for being late as for bringing short measure, and have the labour to boot." So she took up her burden again, and the Nix began his dance afresh, and ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... ago, during a storm at sea, a stupid sea-captain ordered his passengers to go below in the hold of the vessel. Then he covered up the hold, so that no fresh air could enter. When the storm was over he opened the hold, and found that seventy human beings had died for want ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... which smote with impartial hand the poor private and his titled chief. Various sick and wounded officers died in consequence of not having been removed in sufficient time to the Bosphorus, or to such other quarters as were not only possible, but convenient, had it not been for the heartless and stupid routine by which the heads of departments, at home and abroad, civil and military, were guided. It was the more remarkable that so few officers died in the camp in proportion to the men who perished, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that. I don't want to be found here. Besides, it's useless. In five minutes a clot of blood will have covered the lacerated brain, and I shall lose consciousness again. Stupid, isn't it?" ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... friend Mr. Brooke as a companion, who was likewise attended by a sampan and crew he had taken with him to Sarawak from Singapore. His coxswain, Seboo, we shall all long remember: he was civil only to his master, and, I believe, brave while in his company. He was a stupid-looking and powerfully-built sort of savage, always praying, eating, smiling, or sleeping. When going into action, he always went down on his knees to pray, holding his loaded musket before him. He was, however, a curious character, and afforded us great amusement—took ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... hope I haven't grown too stout for my habit. What are you going to wear, Rob? The blue cloth? You are perfectly irresistible in that! Do wear that rakish-looking soft hat with the scarf; it's wonderfully becoming, if it isn't quite so correct; and I'm sure Richard Kendrick won't take us to any stupid fashionable hotel. He'll arrange an outdoor affair, I'm confident, with the Kendrick chef to prepare it and the Kendrick servants to see that it is served. Oh, it's such a glorious June day! ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... of all animals are developed by their struggle for existence. The harder the struggle, the more their intelligence. Our skunk and porcupine are very stupid because they do not have to take thought about their own safety; Nature has done that ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... the money. Seems to me, Rufe, you're blamed stupid this morning. Why, you've only to take one look at that young ruffian's face to see the wickedness wrote there. He oughter be in prison this very minute, and he'll soon be there—take my word ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... field near Sagua, and had murdered them and then brought their bodies in a cart to that town, and had paid the local photographer to take a picture of them and of himself and his body guard. He claimed that he had killed the Cubans in open battle, but was so stupid as to forget to first remove the ropes with which he had bound them before he shot them. The photographs told the story without any aid from the letter press, and it must have told it to a great many people, judging from the number who spoke of it. It seemed as if, ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... succeeded in wringing forth a tear; but I did not think it was decreed that at my age I should really make love to a Russian serf, however charming. So off they went to the railway station, leaving me in a very dull, stupid, melancholy mood. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... professing to treat the garrison with the utmost kindness. They were answered, that they must deem the garrison to be still more brutally fools than themselves, to expect that they would place any confidence in the proposals of wretches who had already manifested such base and stupid treachery. They were bidden to fire on, for that their waste of powder and lead gave the garrison little uneasiness, and were assured that they could not hope the surrender of the place, while there was a man left within it. On the morning of the ninth day from the commencement of the siege, after ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... him, sir," said George, turning red in accordance with that inveterate and stupid habit ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... that he did not reply to the man even by a look. "Now, my lads, now: one, two, three, and a —-." Obedient to the call of the officer, with a simultaneous jerk at the sail, the holdfast of the stupid peasant was plucked from his cracking fingers; he fell back with a loud shriek from the yard, struck midway on the main rigging, and thence bounding far to leeward in the sea, disappeared, and for ever, amid the white ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the book itself out to him and let him have wisdom at its very source, administering it in doses while he worked. I quite recognise that this must be annoying, and only my anxiety not to lose a whole year through some stupid mistake has given me the courage to do it. I laugh sometimes behind the book at his disgusted face, and wish we could be photographed, so that I may be reminded in twenty years' time, when the garden is a bower of loveliness and I learned in all its ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... of Birkin's talk, and of Gudrun's penetrating being, he had lost entirely that mechanical certainty that had been his triumph. Sometimes spasms of hatred came over him, against Birkin and Gudrun and that whole set. He wanted to go back to the dullest conservatism, to the most stupid of conventional people. He wanted to revert to the strictest Toryism. But the desire did not last long enough to carry him ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Banion was anxious as he lightly shook the shoulder of the prone man, half afraid that he, too, had died. Stupid in sleep, the scout sprang up, rifle ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... conquered was delegated in trust to the Rajah of Pontiana. The Sambas rajah has forcibly taken possession of a part of it. Sultan Kassim, of Pontiana, governed this district during his father's lifetime. On his accession to the musnud, five years ago, he placed a half-brother there, a stupid fellow, about twenty-five years of age. This man, about eight months ago, was trying to establish his independence, which he found he could not maintain. It has the same trade as Pontiana, but the regulations of the sultan do not admit ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... back to his seat, Silver added to me in a confidential whisper that was very flattering, as I thought, "He's quite an honest man, Tom Morgan, on'y stupid. And now," he ran on again, aloud, "let's see—Black Dog? No, I don't know the name, not I. Yet I kind of think I've—yes, I've seen the swab. He used to come here with a blind ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the most tremendous editions of their books you can imagine. I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta every week, as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week, occasionally to the Tribune and the magazines (I have a stupid article in the Galaxy, just issued), but I am not going to write to this and that and the other ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of England on the other tack; and while a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, still sailed a lonely course by the stars and their own private compass, the cock-boat, Pepys, must go about with the majority among "the stupid starers and the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... awoke, I found the Indians wrapped in their blankets, and lying asleep all around me. The excitement of the night had passed off, and brought its corresponding depression. They were very docile and stupid, and it was with some difficulty I could arouse them for the duties of the day. I asked several of them what had become of the Sioux prisoners, but could get no other answer than, “Guess him ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... passage anywhere in a straight line. After 500 m. of anxious travelling we encountered more rapids and troublesome eddies. We had by that time got accustomed to the danger, and even felt travelling dull and stupid when we came to a few ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... He had not fired his musket a single time. He saw nothing to shoot at, and he saw no use shooting until he did have something to shoot at. It was terrible to see men dead and wounded, but the fight itself was stupid—blundering through a jungle, bullets zipping about, and the Spaniards too far away and invisible. He ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... The tedious hours, and ne'er indulged in song; Ye first seducers of my easy heart, Who promised knowledge ye could not impart; Ye dull deluders, truth's destructive foes; Ye sons of fiction, clad in stupid prose; Ye treacherous leaders, who, yourselves in doubt, Light up false fires, and send us far about;- Still may yon spider round your pages spin, Subtile and slow, her emblematic gin! Buried in dust and lost in silence, dwell, Most potent, grave, and reverend friends—farewell! ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... even though, as being a youth, he be partially under its influence. He shrinks from a vague subject, as spontaneously as a slovenly mind takes to it; and he will often show at disadvantage, and seem ignorant and stupid, from seeing more and knowing more, and having a clearer perception of things than another has. I recollect once hearing such a young man, in the course of an examination, asked very absurdly what 'his ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... to Madame Hulot's heart. She came out of her room and ran to her daughter, taking her in her arms, and asking her those questions, stupid with grief, which ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... "nice boy" about this amazing young woman, who might have been eighteen. Hamilton had repudiated the very suggestion of being a "nice boy." But he felt himself blushing, groping for words, saying stupid things, supplying every requisite of the "nice boy" as if he were acting the part. Her chaperon bore her away presently, and he was left with a radiant impression of corn-silk hair and a complexion that justified Bouguereau's mother-of-pearl flesh tints. And when she ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... "Stupid! Not that way! You have neither taste nor brains! Place the braid higher. No, not so high as that! Oh, you ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... you were not burdened with a certain degree of culture. An artist must be an idiot. The only perfect ones are the sculptors; then come the landscape painters; then painters in general; after them the writers. The critics are not at all stupid; and the really intelligent men never ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... How should you, you are of their kidney—you're only half a man. Thank God that my mother was of the people! I'd have died to have gone smirking through life with a brick for a heart and milk and water in my veins! Of all the stupid pieces of brutality I ever heard of, this is the most ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... twinkling up her eyes, and rubbing them with her knuckles as if she were crying. 'You barbarous wretch, taking Phoebe to feast on strawberries and cream with Miss Charlecote, and leaving poor me to poke in that stupid drawing-room, with nothing to do but to count the scollops ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a very proper thing that the service of the dogs should always be recognized promptly, that they be given their share of the spoils and that they be praised for their courage and fidelity. This makes them better hunters. Stupid men who drive off their dogs from the quarry, defer their rewards, and grudge them praise, kill the spirit of the chase within them and spoil ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... bony protuberance of variable size. He well describes the peculiarities of this protuberance; he attended also to the effects of the modified shape of the brain on the intellect of these birds, and disputes Pallas' statement that they are stupid. He then expressly remarks that he never observed this protuberance in male fowls. Hence there can be no doubt that this extraordinary character in the skulls of Polish fowls was formerly in Germany confined to the female sex, but has now been transferred to the males, and has thus ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... plan of using elephants was adopted, the guns were drawn by bullocks; but one elephant can easily draw a load which it would take thirty bullocks to move. The elephants are very tractable and clever, while the oxen are stupid, ill tempered, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is as nothing. It rests upon the illusion that sensual pleasures possess a positive or real value. Accordingly, future need and misery is the price at which the spendthrift purchases pleasures that are empty, fleeting, and often no more than imaginary; or else feeds his vain, stupid self-conceit on the bows and scrapes of parasites who laugh at him in secret, or on the gaze of the mob and those who envy his magnificence. We should, therefore, shun the spendthrift as though he had the plague, and on discovering his ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... wind is foul, which it now most certainly is, for I am writing anything but "Newton Forster," and which will account for this rambling, stupid chapter, made up of odds and ends, strung together like what we call "skewer pieces" on board of a man-of-war; when the wind is foul, as I said before, I have, however, a way of going a-head by getting ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... but he could think of no means of getting rid of his guest, for it would have been useless to have told him what he thought, so he determined that little by little he would behave in such a way that, if the young man were not too stupid, he would see that his frequent visits were far ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... happen to know that the game is not worth the candle. The wasp gets into the jam in hearty and hopeful efforts to get the jam into him. IN the same way the vulgar people want to enjoy life just as they want to enjoy gin—because they are too stupid to see that they are paying too big a price for it. That they never find happiness—that they don't even know how to look for it—is proved by the paralyzing clumsiness and ugliness of everything they do. Their discordant colours are cries of pain. Look at the brick villas ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... days' experience of life, the boy had already learned one great truth: that every man is exactly what he looks. The face always reveals or betrays. And in this face, wild with the wildness of storms and skies, there was nothing but the stupid innocence of one of ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Me, stupid as an idiot, that has to try a thing a thousand times before he can do it, and then never knows how he does it, that at last does it well. We have to educate ourselves through the pretentious claims of intellect, into the humble accuracy of instinct, and we end at last by ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... went on, clear to the saloon; and there they found him,—there he lay, perfectly stupid, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... says Vee. "I think gambling is just plain stupid. I mean some sort of legitimate ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... hastily exclaimed Pao-yue. "You stupid thing! gently a bit; is it likely you've never seen any one put one on before? let me do ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "How stupid you are!" returned the captive. "I shall only pretend to be hung, of course. See here!" and he fastened together several pieces strong string which had tied some of the other boys' books, piled the latter together, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... while her shrewd, light-grey eyes took him in with a cool stare that was humorously observant without being aggressive. "We heard how shamefully my husband abused your good-nature. Really, it was too bad of him to ask a busy man like you to put aside his work and go and spend a whole day at that stupid auction!" ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... so successful in the choir of the cathedral at Spoleto, where he undertook; to paint scenes from the life of the Virgin. Yet those who have not examined these frescoes, ruinous in their decay and spoiled by stupid restoration, can form no just notion of the latent capacity of this great master. The whole of the half-dome above the tribune is filled with, a "Coronation of Madonna." A circular rainbow surrounds both her and Christ. She is kneeling with fiery rays around her, glorified ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... coming away therefrom at five-fifteen. Punctuated by the barking of the terrier clerk, all this took time, during which there passed through Felix many thoughts. Here was a man who had done a wicked, because an antisocial, act; the sort of act no sane person could defend; an act so barbarous, stupid, and unnatural that the very beasts of the field would turn noses away from it! How was it, then, that he himself could not feel incensed? Was it that in habitually delving into the motives of men's actions ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was ordered to the seaside, then I went on a visit to some friends and didn't get back to Sutton till Christmas. We had a lot of stupid people staying with us. I couldn't do any work while they were in the house. When they left I began a picture, but I tried too difficult subjects and got into trouble with my drawing. You said I'd never succeed. I often ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... conferences, that I could scarce refrain expressing it. Probably it was visible enough, for he said, as if apologising for coming up, that so to do was the only regale their toils allowed them. He then regretted that it was a stupid day, and, with all his old civility about me and my time, declared he was always sorry to see me there when nothing worth attention was going ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... sequentur, naturally flowing, I take to import the Fitness and Propriety of Expression. I also gather from hence, that there is a very easy and natural Connexion between these two, and these same Antiquaries of OURS, must be either very dull and stupid Animals, or a strange kind of cross-gran'd and perverse Fellows, to be always putting a Force upon Nature, and running out of a plain Road. He must either insinuate that they are indeed such, or that Horace's Observation ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... future, ahead of his countrymen, ahead even of those who assumed to be the mentors of his people, and he must learn, as does every noble soul that labors "to make the bounds of freedom wider yet," the bitter lesson that nine-tenths, if not all, the woes that afflict humanity spring from man's own stupid selfishness, that the wresting of the scepter from the tyrant is often the least of the task, that the bondman comes to love his bonds—like Chillon's prisoner, his very chains and he grow friends,—but that the struggle for human freedom must go on, at whatever cost, in ever-widening circles, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... sympathy. I thought that you were in need of such. For I had heard, to my horror, how great your annoyance must be, and B.'s account confirmed my impression that you were deeply annoyed and grieved by ingratitude, faithlessness, and even treachery. Suddenly, however, I felt quite stupid, and all I intended to say to you appeared to me trivial and superfluous. I could think of nothing better than to copy out for you a few fragments of my last work. They are not the really important things, for those can be understood only in their larger ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... said the lady, "are not man and wife the same flesh and spirit? Ivan Mironoff, are you trifling? Lock up these boys instantly; put them in separate rooms—on bread and water, to expel this stupid idea of theirs. Let Father Garasim give them a penance on order that they may repent before ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... sorry that, amongst all the verses you have sent me, you should have forgotten what you commend the most, Les trois exclamations. I hope you will bring them with you. Voltaire's are intolerably stupid, and not above the level of officers in garrison. Some of M. de Pezay's are very pretty, though there is too much of them; and in truth I had seen them before. Those on Madame de la Vali'ere pretty too, but one is a ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... natural manner she has; how much pleasanter than the minanderies of the young ladies in the ball-rooms" (and here he recalled to himself some instances of what he could not help seeing was the artful simplicity of Miss Blanche, and some of the stupid graces of other young ladies in the polite world); "who could have thought that such a pretty rose could grow in a porter's lodge, or bloom in that dismal old flower-pot of a Shepherd's Inn? So she learns to sing from old Bows? If her singing voice is as sweet as her speaking voice, it must be ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with him, only the record of a frank, open bearing, and unfailing active kindness. "Setting aside his heroism," wrote Dr. Scott after Trafalgar, "when I think what an affectionate, fascinating little fellow he was, how dignified and pure his mind, how kind and condescending his manners, I become stupid with grief for what I have lost." "He is so cheerful and pleasant," wrote the public secretary, Mr. Scott, "that it is a happiness to be about his hand." Dr. Gillespie notes "his noble frankness of manners, freedom from vain ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... It is the worst kind of policy to be constantly blaming, chiding them, and positively cruel, bordering on criminality even, to suggest to them that they are mentally deficient or peculiar, that they are stupid and dull, and that they will probably never amount to anything ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Sally dear. Major Roper was a stupid old man, and evidently took more than was good for him." Intoxicants are often of great service ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... an occupation inconsistent with my profession, as because I perceived that the fools are more numerous than the wise; and, though it is better to be praised by the wise few than applauded by the foolish many, I have no mind to submit myself to the stupid judgment of the silly public, to whom the reading of such books falls for the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... white with thin virginal arms and bust, who seemed to be coming out of the picture, almost to be already out of it and in the room. "Come and talk to me. Don't think any more of your father and mother there. You have been curtsying to them for a hundred years; and they are rather dull, stupid people, after all. Come and tell us secrets. Tell us what you have seen in this room—all the foolish people making love, and the sad people ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... west toward the holy of holies. All the superstitions and idolatrous notions of man lead him to turn to the east, to worship the rising sun. 'The heathen made the chief gates of their temples towards the west, that these stupid worshippers, drawing nigh to their blind, deaf, and dumb deities, might have their idols rising upon them out of the east.'[4] The temple as a type, and Christianity as the antitype run counter to such idolatrous ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Mr. Gould, marvelling inwardly at the mobility of her physiognomy. "All over the country. He's famous for that sort of munificence." "Oh, he didn't boast," Mrs. Gould declared, scrupulously. "I believe he's really a good man, but so stupid! A poor Chulo who offers a little silver arm or leg to thank his god for a cure is as rational ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... intelligent insects, and would soon cease to visit flowers which did not supply them with food. Flies, however, are more stupid, and are often deceived. Thus in our lovely little Parnassia, five of the ten stamens have ceased to produce pollen, but are prolonged into fingers, each terminating in a shining yellow knob, which looks exactly like a drop of honey, and by which Flies are continually deceived. Paris quadrifolia ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... intelligence in so much as one individual; such mean, coarse, vulgar features and figures betraying unmistakably a low origin, and ignorant and brutal parents. They did not appear wicked, but only stupid, animal, and soulless. It must require many generations of better life to wake the soul in them. All America ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that for truth upon the authority of others, which would require a diligent and patient investigation. From hence may be traced the hatred man betrays for every thing that deviates from those rules to which he has been accustomed; hence his stupid, his scrupulous respect for antiquity, for the most silly, the most absurd and ridiculous institutions of his fathers: hence those fears that seize him, when the most beneficial changes are proposed to him, or the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... I know perfectly good and well that it's only half trying. The stupid gadget could beat me easily if you just turned that knob ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in some ways, a memorable dinner. I don't know what I expected in Mrs. Scherer—from Maude's description a benevolent and somewhat stupid, blue-eyed German woman, of peasant extraction. There could be no doubt about the peasant extraction, but when she hobbled into our little parlour with the aid of a stout, gold-headed cane she dominated it. Her very lameness ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... friend got a pair of "slaughter pen" boots and "jeans," and flung himself at his task. It was a weird sight, there on the killing beds—a throng of stupid black Negroes, and foreigners who could not understand a word that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced, hollow-chested bookkeepers and clerks, half-fainting for the tropical heat and the sickening stench of fresh blood—and all struggling to dress a dozen or two cattle in the same place where, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair |
