"Asinine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cause less weighty than one, having for its object to deliver his honored name from a load of the most brutal malignity. Never more, we hope and venture to believe, will any thoughtless biographer impute to Shakspeare the asinine doggerel with which the uncritical blundering of his earliest biographer has caused his name to be dishonored. We now resume the thread of our biography. The stream of history is centuries in working itself clear of any calumny with which it has ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... his impatient steed, taking him quietly, as one treats a fractious baby, and mounting gently. Then he stood under the tree to see them ride down the paddock, valises containing necessaries for the "asinine picnic" strapped on Nan and Betty's saddles. Norah, as the lady of the party, was exempt from carrying burdens, and Monarch brooked no ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... danger which would prove overwhelming and for encountering which there could be no excuse. He knew he had been idiotic now, for he could see indications that Indians were closing in on him from every side; but, worse than that, he knew that he had added to his idiocy a performance that was simply asinine: he had lost his temper and said an outrageous thing to Ray, and some of the men had heard it. From earliest dawn the lieutenant had been out with the pickets eagerly scanning the surrounding country. Indians, of course, were not to be seen. They ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... they have mine. My knowledge of the Kempton Course dates back at least fifty years. To be sure, it was not at that time a racecourse, but was mostly ploughed fields and thickets. But if the anserous and asinine mooncalves, whose high priest is Mr. JEREMY, suppose that that fact in any way weakens the authority with which I may claim to speak on the subject, I can only assure them, that they prove themselves fit inmates for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... out perfectly if Kellogg had only kept his head and avoided collision with Holloway. Why, even the killing of the Fuzzy and the shooting of Borch, inexcusable as that had been, wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been for that asinine murder complaint. That was what had provoked Holloway's counter-complaint, which was what had done ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... contained the sound proposition that the president's services should be limited to one term, thereby endorsing a material part of Governor Hayes' letter of acceptance in advance. It also contained what some have called the rascally, others the asinine propositions that the volume of currency should be made and kept equal to the wants of trade; that all National Bank circulation should be promptly and permanently retired, and legal tenders be issued in their stead, and that the payment of at least one-half of the customs ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... the moose is certainly the most ungraceful of the deer family. His head is long, out of all proportion; so, too, are his legs; while his neck is short in an inverse ratio. His ears are nearly a foot in length, asinine, broad, and slouching; his eyes are small; and his muzzle square, with a deep sulcus in the middle, which gives it the appearance of being bifid. The upper lip overhangs the under by several inches, and is highly prehensile. A long tuft of coarse hair ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... an anecdote as an illustration—an interpretive picture—will help to hold us to its true purpose, for a purposeless story is of all offenses on the platform the most asinine. A perfectly capital joke will fall flat when it is dragged in by the nape without evident bearing on the subject under discussion. On the other hand, an apposite anecdote has saved many a speech ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... old chap, no offence, I assure you," said Cleek, more asinine than ever, as Zuilika, having picked up the piece and looked at it, disclaimed all knowledge of it, and laid it on the edge of the table without any further interest in it or him. "Just to show, you know, that I—er—couldn't have meant anything disrespectful, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... to be shod, geared, kept roadworthy and regular; say six thousand country wagoners, thick-soled peasants: then, hanging to the skirts of these, in miscellaneous crazy vehicles and weak teams, equine and asinine, are one or two thousand sutler people, male and female, not of select quality, though on them, too, we keep a sharp eye. The series covers many miles, as many as twenty English miles (says Tempelhof), unless in favorable points you compress them into five, going ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Italians and French, and theatrical Americans, and English swells, could not endeavour to make the apology which I have just made for the Irish Brigade generally. She knew that her father had made an ass of himself. All the asinine proportions of the affair had been so explained to her as to leave no doubt on her mind as to the matter. But the more she was sure of it, the more resolved she became that Lord Castlewell should not call her father an ass. She might do so,—and undoubtedly would after her own fashion,—but ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... with ingenious coquetry so as to make around the legs patterns which make them look as if they were wearing open-worked stockings. When they are white, the end of the tail and the mane are dyed with henna. Of course this is only in the case of thorough-bred animals, of the aristocracy of the asinine race, and is not indulged ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... pronounced ass. Trefusis, on the contrary, was the last man of her acquaintance whom she would have thought of as a very nice fellow or a virtuous gentleman; but he was not an ass, although he was obstinate in his Socialistic fads. She had indeed suspected him of weakness almost asinine with respect to Gertrude, but then all men were asses in their dealings with women, and since he had transferred his weakness to her own account it no longer seemed to need justification. And now, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw |
