"Addled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I always suspected him of being tolerably highminded, but I guess if ever a man climbed on top of his soul and knew that he was the boss of it with the help of Almighty God, that man is Tom Kirkwood. It's got me fuddled, Phil. It's addled me like the report of a tariff commission or an argument for government ownership of laying hens; but I respect it, and I admire it. Be good to your daddy. So far as I know he hasn't any ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... say she is his mother is an utter bit of folly! Oh, fie! our Strephon is a rogue! Perhaps his brain is addled, and it's very melancholy! Taradiddle, taradiddle, tol lol lay! I wouldn't say a word that could be reckoned as injurious, But to find a mother younger than her son is very curious, And that's a kind of mother that is usually spurious. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... see a young hawk, and there a goslin, and next a strutting turkey, and then a dodo, a loon, an ostrich, a wren, a magpie, a cuckoo, and a wag-tail. But the old continental hen has now set so long, that we conclude that her eggs are addled, and incubation frustrated. During all this time, the Gallick cock is on his roost at Elba, with his ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Many a thought is a Leda egg, imprisoning twin life-principles, which,, incubated in the eccaleobion brain of an author-borrower, have blessed the world; but without such a foster-parent, in some neglected nest staled and addled, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... I put into it— Each a chick, if you ensue it. Pray you, let me not be saddled With a single "clear" or addled. See! the temperature is steady. Now ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... good deal due to the lack of matter. Speech is often barren, but silence does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... as these, entricadas razones, as Cervantes calls them, that addled the brains of poor Don Quixote. Tom. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... altogether smiled on theirs. The wind, of late breath'd gently forth, Now shifted east, and east by north; Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know, Could shelter them from rain and snow, Stepping into their nests, they paddled, Themselves were chill'd, their eggs were addled. Soon every father bird and mother Grew quarrelsome, and peck'd each other. Parted without the least regret, Except that they had ever met, And learn'd in future to be wiser Than to neglect a ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... that late breath'd gently forth, Now shifted east, and east by north; Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know, Could shelter them from rain or snow; Stepping into their nests, they paddled, Themselves were chill'd, their eggs were addled; Soon every father bird, and mother, Grew quarrelsome, and peck'd each other; Parted without the least regret, Except that they had ever met; And learn'd in future to be wiser Than to ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... may take it from me, That of all the afflictions accurst With which a man's saddled And hampered and addled, A diffident nature's the worst. Though clever as clever can be - A Crichton of early romance - You must stir it and stump it, And blow your own trumpet, Or, trust ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... into Brock's face. He did not observe that it was a beautiful child and that it had a look of terror in its eyes; he only knew that he was glaring wildly at the fiendish nurse, the truth slowly beating its way into his be-addled brain. For a full minute he stared as if petrified. Then, administering a sickly grin, he sought to bring his wits up to the requirements of the extraordinary situation. He lifted his hand and mumbled: "Come, Raggles! I haven't a biscuit, but here, have a roll, ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... What? (With a puzzled glance at him.) I can't quite follow that. Those sonnets of yours have perfectly addled me. Why should there be a ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... make out that child to save my soul," remarked Miss Polly as he shut the door carefully and ran down the hall to the nursery. "The more I study him the curiouser he seems to me. If he wan't so quick about some things you might think his wits were sort of addled—but they ain't, are they? Now, whatever do you reckon put the notion in his ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... this bird I have only found one nest, and that was at Allahabad on the 9th July, and contained one half-fledged young one and an addled egg. The nest, which was placed at the very top of a large mango-tree, was constructed of branches and twigs of the same lined with fine grass-roots. The egg is a yellowish white, thickly speckled, chiefly at the large end, with rusty. Length ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... dog that you are! I, by the sovereign efficacy of my recommendation, got you the place where you are now living in clover, and yet not a word of gratitude, or even acknowledgment, have you ever offered in return; but I am coming to see you, and small conception can you, with your addled aristocratic brains, form of the sort of moral kicking I have, ready packed in my carpet-bag, destined to be presented to ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... she answered slowly; "I daresay my fancies are very foolish; they may have come, perhaps, out of thinking about this so much, till my brain has got addled, as one may say. But it flashed upon me all of a sudden one night, as Mr. Holbrook was standing in our parlour talking about his wife—it flashed upon me that he was in the secret of her disappearance, and that he was only acting with us in his pretence ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... muddy flux of his racing mind, searching a momentary flash of clearness in which he can find mirrored some delicate beauty or truth, he tosses between the alternatives of self-grandeur and self-disgust. It is a painful matter, this endless self-scrutiny. We are all familiar with the addled ego of literature—the writer whom constant self-communion has made vulgar, acid, querulous, and vain. And yet it is remarkable that of so many who meddle with the combustible passions of their own minds so few are ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... have anything to do with bombs?" asked the young man; and Jimmie answered "Sure, I did!" And his poor head was so addled that he didn't even realize that in his reply he had told what he had been vowing he ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... therefore, and think twice before we batter down Chiavari. The organ nuisance is a bore, no doubt; but what are the most droning ditties that ever addled a weary head, compared to the tiresome grind of British moral assistance, and the greatness of that Civis Romanus who hugs his own ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... decisions, a dozen different indecisions, rioted tempestuously through his mind. To go was just as awkward as not to go! Not to go was just as awkward as to go! Over and over and over one silly alternative chased the other through his addled senses. Then just as precipitately as he had bolted to his room he began suddenly to hurl himself into his riding-clothes, yanking out a bureau drawer here, slamming back a closet door there, rummaging through a box, tipping ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg, We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yolk of an addled egg, We know that the tail must wag the dog, as the horse is drawn by the cart; But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... sight the mother's grief No mortal tongue can tell. A broken heart, an addled brain, When all should have ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... sea. For the seafowl that harboured and lived there at the epoch of my visit were then scattered into the uttermost parts of the ocean, and had left no traces of their sojourn besides dropped feathers and addled eggs. It was to this they had been sent, for this they had stooped all night over the dripping oars, hourly moving further from relief. The boat, for as small as it was, was yet eloquent of the hands of men, a thing alone indeed upon the sea but yet in itself ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... better able to look after itself. But come, we have been serious long enough. You are tired with your day's work, Miss Julia, and Aaron, too. I've been in the committee room of the House of Commons half the day, and my head's addled with figures. Here comes our supper. Let us drop the more serious things of life. We'll try and put a little colour into your ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... knew of course that at Headquarters he would be at once released, the entire incident properly regretted. When he found himself not only elaborately wrong but in court, laughter ceased. Anger replaced it. He had been first amused, then surprised, afterwards exasperated, emotions that finally addled into rage, not at others but at himself, which was rather decent. In any of the defeats of life, the simple blame others; the wise blame themselves; the evolved blame nobody. Lennox had not reached that high plane then but in directing his anger at himself he showed the advantages ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... wildstaring eye, sings that there shall be a Sign; that the heavenly Sun himself will hang out a Sign, or Mock-Sun,—which, many say, shall be stamped with the Head of hanged Favras. List, Dom Gerle, with that poor addled poll of thine; list, O list;—and hear nothing. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... something to drink—ugh! it was addled," spluttered he, while the wood rang again with the merry ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... its eggs. When thus removing the moss and rough bark, the eggs may often be destroyed, and in the absence of rough bark to shelter them, it is probable that the insect would probably not lay the eggs at all, or that, if it did, they would either become addled, or fall to the ground. I may add here that we have found a piece of square tin the best thing for scraping down the trees, and that the hair-like fibre of the sago palm is an excellent thing ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... sermon. It would not be fair to the reader to give an abstract of that. When a man who has been bred to free thought and free speech suddenly finds himself stepping about, like a dancer amidst his eggs, among the old addled majority-votes which he must not tread upon, he is a spectacle for men and angels. Submission to intellectual precedent and authority does very well for those who have been bred to it; we know that the under-ground ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... well lik'd by each village maid, At races, wake or fair, For my father had addled a vast(1) in trade, And I were his son and heir. And seeing that I didn't want for brass, Poor girls came first to woo, But tho' I delight in a Yorkshrre lass, ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... don't leave me, Jim. Whatever you do, don't leave me. I couldn't get along without you. Hit Bob a crack over the head and addled him so he ain't at himself yet. They took him away round here to his uncle's to keep him out of the way, and I drove out there to see him and stopped at distillery and stayed too long. Ever stay too ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... sensibly moved, and Mistress Betty vindicates her womanliness by jumping at a conclusion and settling in her own mind that his brain is addled with this great London—its politicians, its mohawks, its beggars in Axe Lane, its rich tradesmen in Cranbourne Alley, its people of quality, fashion, and taste in their villas ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... cried the Colonel, suddenly smiting his forehead with violence. "Of course! Fool! Fool that I am! Merciful God in Heaven—it's her boy—and I have saved him! Her boy! And I've been cudgelling my failing addled brains for months, wondering where I had seen his face before. He's my godson, Sister, and I haven't set eyes on him for ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... forth. It would, I am sure, move his pity to think how many old dogs he hath set to learn new tricks, how many venerable parrots he hath taught to sing a new song, how many gray heads he hath addled by vain attempts to exchange their old Mumpsimus for his new Sumpsimus. But let it pass. Humana perpessi sumus—All changes round us, past, present, and to come; that which was history yesterday becomes fable to-day, and the truth of to-day is hatched into ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... him, sir, but the moon shone on his face when he took his hat off to wipe his forehead, and it looked for all the world like an addled duck-egg." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of Macaulay's "Essays." It seems entwined into my whole life as I look backwards. It was my comrade in my student days, it has been with me on the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part of my humble kit when I went a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners have addled their brains over it, and you may still see the grease stains where the second engineer grappled with Frederick the Great. Tattered and dirty and worn, no gilt-edged morocco-bound volume could ever take its place ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... garden, where a small gate led directly into the street at the end of which he dwelt. There! Again Frau Kahle and uncouth, elephantine Lieutenant Pommer! The May bowl, he thought, has been too strong for his addled brain. And he stepped silently aside on the velvety sward, under the clump of lilacs. The nightingale, from the centre of a thicket a score of paces away, still fluted and trilled a song of passion. And something like it, he made sure, big Pommer ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... n't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land I hed,' says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry an' sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up strife. There's some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if there wa'n't good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of 'em, when it comes ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... would be an expert horseman and a deadly rifle shot as well; at sixteen he would be able to perform all farm duties and rank with pride and confidence as an efficient burgher to take the field against any enemy. His brain is not addled with school lore, but is thoroughly versed and taught from nature's book. Hardened to the fatigue of long rides over unfamiliar country in search of stray cattle, the Boer youth has often to subsist upon a bit ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... in the fork of a little hemlock, about fifteen inches from the ground, and was a thick, firm structure, composed of the finer material of the woods, with a lining of very delicate roots or rootlets. There were four young birds and one addled egg. We found it in a locality about the head-waters of the eastern branch of the Delaware, where several other of the rarer species of warblers, such as the mourning ground, the Blackburnian, the chestnut-sided, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... breathed the simple fragrance of her hair, and felt the faint warmth of her body, close to his. Then silence seized upon Thomas Frye; he grew sad without knowing why. The figures at his side, curled in the hay, seemed to him ghostly as a dream. Poor Thomas; he was addled with moonlight; moonlight over Anna, over him, moonlight over the hills, over the road, and voices unseen in the shadows, and shadows ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... despised by the Indians that they did not think it worth their while to stop his progress, having been certainly informed by their spies that his camp was destitute of warriors, and that he had only with him a crew of drunken females, a low-built, old, effeminate, sottish fellow, continually addled, and as drunk as a wheelbarrow, with a pack of young clownish doddipolls, stark naked, always skipping and frisking up and down, with tails and horns like those of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... yu' know about them, and what they'll do to aiggs? A big case o' lightnin' and thunder will addle aiggs and keep 'em from hatchin'. And I expect one came along, and all the other aiggs of Em'ly's set didn't hatch out, but got plumb addled, and she happened not to get addled that far, and so she just managed to make it through. But she cert'nly ain't ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... madam. Things don't happen because they are bad or good, else all eggs would be addled or none at all, and at the most it is but six to the dozen. There's good chances and bad chances, and nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.... There's a good deal of pleasure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... going to get away pretty soon, according to all predictions," replied Tom Reade. "Though, perhaps, Mr. Hibbert, you may have an idea that hasn't occurred to our addled brains." ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill Mountains—there ran the silver Hudson at a distance—there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been—Rip was sorely perplexed—"That flagon last night," thought he, "has addled my ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... utter folly! Really, when I think of the way in which I have helped you, and the splendid productions which are being palmed off to the world as yours, you might treat me with a little more consideration. My head is addled with all I have to do, and now you come down to ask me to ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... aren't quite such an ass as to suppose a court is going to regard any schoolboy obligation as paramount to that which your oath of office demands. Look hyuh, Billy, your head's just addled! I can't work on you, but ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... very quiet for a while. There was a great stir in his brain; an addled vision of bright outlines; an exciting row of rousing songs and groans of pain. He suffered, enjoyed, admired, approved. He was delighted, frightened, exalted—as on that evening (the only time in his life—twenty-seven years ago; he loved ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... a spokesman appeared and praised Tamino, threw another veil over him and led him out; but when a priest inquired of Papageno how it was with him, that fine gentlemen was so addled that he ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Bray is dead in love with Dr. Rudd—really addled about him. And whenever he comes to see any of the children who are sick she is so solicitous and sweet and smiley that we call her, to ourselves, Ipecac Mollie. Other days, plain Mollie Cottontail. It seemed ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... know when such eggs are addled,' retorted Clara. 'You'd better put them under some sensible fowl or other first,' she added, looking back from ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Well now, if "Thief" and "Profligate" they roar, Or lay my father's murder at my door, Am I to let their lying scandals bite And change my honest cheeks from red to white? Trust me, false praise has charms, false blame has pains But for vain hearts, long ears, and addled brains. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... last of the dinner service that had belonged to his grandmother, old Vixen Tod. Then the midges had been very bad. And he had failed to catch a hen pheasant on her nest; and it had contained only five eggs, two of them addled. Mr. Tod ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... no doubt,' says he, or something to the same effect, 'that, after fifty years' exegetical grubbing, weeding, and pruning at 'the mighty primitive forest of the Bible, the next generation should persist in saying that the Rationalist had destroyed the forest only in his own addled imagination, and that it is just ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... about his business, and that has addled her wits. There! she is crying upstairs. It will do her good to snivel a bit. It's the first time she has cried ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... that this came to much the same as murdering a live one. Stale eggs, if it was quite certain that they were too far gone to be able to be hatched, were grudgingly permitted, but all eggs offered for sale had to be submitted to an inspector, who, on being satisfied that they were addled, would label them "Laid not less than three months" from the date, whatever it might happen to be. These eggs, I need hardly say, were only used in puddings, and as a medicine in certain cases where an emetic was urgently required. Milk was forbidden inasmuch ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... to Jim Lough's explanations of his arrangements for a splendid funeral. At last he spoke. "Jim, I used to think that ye'd make a fine gov'ner. I know ye make a dandy good district marshal, but ye are slippin'—goin' addled 'bout this funeral business. A-settin' here tryin' to run things en you deceased, that-a-way. Ye know, well en' good, that the folks livin' will take charge of them obsequies; hit'll be about ten years from now, I figger; en yore plans will fit in about like a last-year's birdnest. Ye have ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... vain. We stood for a moment between the two horses, and as I lowered my hand on my knee to afford her a stepping-stone in mounting, I thought she did not offer to mount with the same alacrity as she had done before. Something flashed through my addled mind, and, withdrawing the hand proffered as a mounting block, I clasped the demure maiden closely in my arms. What transpired has no witnesses save two saddle horses, and as Wolf usually kept an eye on his rider in mounting, I dropped the reins and ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... as she was leaving Number 9,—what then? The contingency dismayed him incredibly, in view of the fact that it did not avail to make him pause. To the contrary he disregarded it resolutely; mad, impertinent, justified of his unnamed apprehensions, or simply addled,—he held ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... disuse, that, although the pamphlets were generally written in such simple language that a child might have understood, the argument was generally too obscure to be grasped by men whose minds were addled by the stories told them by their Liberal and Tory masters. Some, when Owen offered to lend them some books or pamphlets refused to accept them, and others who did him the great favour of accepting them, afterwards boasted that they had used them as ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... crossed, he could not make up his mind which turn to take. In his youth a girl had jilted him, or a bank had failed on him, or a horse had kicked him in the head—or maybe it was all three of these things that had addled his poor brains. Anyhow he went his pitiable, aimless way for years, taunted daily by small boys who were more cruel than jungle beasts. How he lived nobody knew, but when he died some of the men who as boys had jeered him turned out to be ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... you can, as much indiscipline as you can bear. The brutal old Tories used to master the crew and hang the ringleaders; and for that matter, they might have hanged the whole ship's company. We know better, Kearney; and we have so confused and addled them by our policy, that, if a fellow were to strike his captain, he would never be quite sure whether he was to be strung up at the gangway or made a petty-officer. Do you see ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... again—he has a weakness for turning up in your neighborhood!—and sooner or later he's bound to settle accounts with Chauvenet. Now that I think of it, who in the devil is he! And why didn't Armitage call him down there at the club? As I think over the whole business my mind grows addled, and I feel as though I had been kicked by ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... Payson ranches gave him a vicious kick, Show Low putting in an extra one for his murdered bunkie. Last of all, McKee approached the prostrate man, and made the mistake which was to cost him his life by booting Peruna cruelly. The man was a stupid fellow by nature, and what wits he had were addled by the habit he had acquired of consuming patent-medicines containing alcohol, morphin, and other stimulating and stupefying drugs. He was as revengeful as stupid, and could have forgiven McKee's putting the rope around his neck more easily than ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... as if he understood. "A queer country; I've been here before! Beautiful, bits of it; shining surf, yellow sands, and palms, but it plays some funny tricks with white men. About half of them at the factories get addled brains if they stay long. Believe in things the bushmen believe, ghosts and magic, and such. Perhaps it's the climate, but on this coast you get fancies you get nowhere else. I'd sooner take look-out on the fo'cas'le in a North Sea gale than keep anchor watch ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... name!" cried Danton. "Challenges are flying right and left between these bully-swordsmen, these spadassinicides, and poor devils of the robe who have never learnt to fence with anything but a quill. It's just ——— murder. Yet if I were to go amongst messieurs les nobles and crunch an addled head or two with this stick of mine, snap a few aristocratic necks between these fingers which the good God has given me for the purpose, the law would send me to atone upon the gallows. This in a land that is striving after liberty. Why, Dieu me damne! I ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... tricks Their own heresiarchs called them heretics, (Strange that one term such distant poles should link, The Priestleyan's copper and the Puseyan's zinc); Poems that shuffle with superfluous legs A blindfold minuet over addled eggs, Where all the syllables that end in ed, Like old dragoons, have cuts across the head; Essays so dark Champollion might despair To guess what mummy of a thought was there, Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise; ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
