"Fool" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spare your lives," said he. And that condition had been pounded into their ears with unceasing violence, day and night, by officers high and low, since the hour of their capture. It was a very simple condition, declared the Germans. Only a stubborn fool would fail to take advantage of the opportunity offered. The exact position of that mysterious battery,—that was all the general demanded in return for his goodness in sparing their lives. He asked no more of them than a few, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... "Poor fool!" he said, sinking into his chair again; "I will never be more honest than any woman can ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... though he was, could not think of leaving his wife's brother here, working like a Chinaman. "Dave has acted the fool," he privately said to me, "but we will help him. If you can spare a little, we'll lend him enough to buy one of these fruit farms ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... up on that. He's to horsewhip you for that fool trick you played on us and to make good our ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... baptized at the fountain of religion. And instead of glooming life, it because it is the power of love. "God is love." It is simple as the story of love in the human heart. "The wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein." All can easily learn how to love God. Ask the Saviour, and he will say, "Love thy Father." This is the burden of the glorious sermon of His life. If we love the Father, it must be in ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... my most narrow escape from death was being shot at by a lot of fool emigrants, who, when I took them to task about it on my return trip, excused themselves by saying, "We thought ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... are other places. But you won't get one as long as you stay here and we graft off of you. You've been buying half the grub for the four of us. You fudge the bills against yourself. You're a goddam fool. ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... summoned up courage to be host at a picnic in the hills. He was still shy and quiet, but he no longer looked abject and listless. His shoulders were less bowed, even his skin grew more normal of hue, the flesh beneath it firmer. It might be a fool's paradise; these spoilt people of the world might have forgotten him before their return next winter, but the mere fact that they overlooked his flagrant insults to society and once more permitted him ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... substance as a tinted shell filled with sea foam. If power and efficiency are the two supreme attributes of success, then by all the laws and principles of logic, Florrie ought to have been a failure. But she was not a failure. She was a fool whose incomparable foolishness had conferred not only prosperity, but happiness upon her. She shone, she scintillated, she diffused the glow of success. Though she was undeserving of admiration, she had been surfeited on it from her childhood; though she was devoid of the ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... what Andrew Martin's got to say to it. He's a tough hand at speakin'—he'll tell us the rights on it.' An' before I knew a'most I wur sittin' in my usual place next the fire, with a glass of beer in my hand. I wur pleased, like a fool, to think I could speak better nor any of 'em; an' I went on an' on, an' it wasn't till I heard the clock strike that I thought as how I'd left my little gal alone in the circus for a whole hour. I got up pretty quick then, ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... Cummins. Of course, Cummins was a fool. A man of such character would not miss a few thousand dollars in the long run. What a fool he had been to risk his life! Of course, he, Collins, had risked his life, too. But how different were the two ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... "Pushpin as good as poetry!" seems to some the height of sarcasm. Socrates says in the Philebus, "Do we not say that the intemperate has pleasure, and that the temperate has pleasure in his very temperance, and that the fool is pleased when he is full of foolish fancies and hopes, and that the wise man has pleasure in his wisdom? And may not he be justly deemed a fool who says that these pairs of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... "The picture is already boxed and in its lead coffin. No doubt by now it is on its way to Liverpool. I am sorry." But his thoughts, as Philip easily read them, were: "Fancy my letting this vulgar fool into the Tate Street workshop! Even HE would know that old masters are not found in a half-finished state on Chelsea-made frames and canvases. Fancy my letting him see those two half-completed Van Dycks, the new Hals, the half-dozen Corots. He would even ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... won't," said the old man, smiling, and wagging his head. "Do you think I am a fool? That isn't the way I do ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... desks. They turned me down—every one. Some of them played me—as though I'd been a fish. They referred me to other ends of the same big game, laughing in their sleeves, I guess, at the knowledge of how hopeless it was. Oh, they made a fine fool ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... received Balliol's formal defiance. "Has the fool done this folly?" the king cried in haughty scorn; "if he will not come to us, we will come to him." The terrible slaughter however had done its work, and his march northward was a triumphal progress. Edinburgh, Stirling, and Perth opened their gates, Bruce ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... grew! How it spread to the entranced vision! It became a thing of still, soaring wings with a human atom in its centre, Captain Arthur Lanstron, already called a fool for his rashness by a group of Brown officers on the aviation grounds beyond the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... it and to prove it are different propositions. How am I going to hang it on them? I can't make a bally fool of myself by prodding around in their bales and boxes. If I didn't find anything—and it'd be a long shot against me—West and his gang would stick their tongues in their cheeks and N.W.M.P. stock would shoot down. No, I've got to make sure, jump 'em, and tie 'em up ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... one is out the scrape another gets in. Here you have got clear, and now he must go and make a fool of himself. If he's got taken, that's the meanest ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... volatility and delicacy; open, broad ones of elevation or extension (airy, flee; large, far). The consonants which are hard to pronounce will give the impression of effort, of shock, of violence, of difficulty, of heaviness,—"the round squat turret, black as the fool's heart;" those which are easy of pronunciation express ease, smoothness, fluidity, calm, lightness, (facile, suave, roulade);—"lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon," a line like honey on the tongue, of which ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... first saw thee, my mind laboured with a strong puzzle, whether I should put thee down for a great fool, or a smatterer in wit. Something I saw was wrong in thee, by thy dress. If this fellow, thought I, delights not so much in ridicule, that he will not spare himself, he must be plaguy silly to take so much pains to make his ugliness more conspicuous ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... give the bag a pretty weight, and this he had unconcernedly increased by the insertion into the straining receptacle of many a "specimen" picked up by the way. For the eyes were keen and observant that looked out from under the strongly marked brows, and bits of fluorite and "fool's gold," and of rarer minerals as well, which had lain for years beside the road, noted as little by cowboy and ranchman and mountain tourist as by the redman whose feet first trod the pass, were destined ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... look at that big dyke and what do you think he done? He went off and left me and never looked back until he struck them Blackwater saloons! And the first chunk of rock that I knocked off of that ledge would assay a thousand dollars—gold! I ran after that danged fool until I fell down like I was dead, and then I ran after him again, but he never so much as looked back—and all the time I was trying to make him rich and put him next ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... and brooding away in the city." The lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... blankly. "What fool has left a bundle out on the path on such a night? Pitch dark, with half the lamps out, and rain and mist enough to ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... goblins and witches; and I know he hadn't seen a thing except rabbits and red deer all that night. (The People of the Hills are like otters—they don't show except when they choose.) But the novice wasn't a fool. He looked down at the horse's feet, and saw the new shoes fastened as only Weland knew how to fasten 'em. (Weland had a way of turning down the nails that ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... holidays," he adds, "are sufficiently long to counteract it, however, provided the boy has sisters and they have friends; the change from school fare and work to home naturally results in a greater surplus of nerve-force, and I think most boys 'fool about' with servants or their sisters' friends." Moll (Kontraere Sexualempfindung, 1889, pp. 6 and 356) does not think it proved that a stage of undifferentiated sexual feeling always occurs, although we have to recognize that it is of frequent ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... which, I thank you; though, indeed, I scarcely know why I turned traitress to my husband in the matter, for the girl is a poor little fool. I was a poor little fool once myself; I can find no better reason.' Seeing the effect she produces on him by her indifferent laugh and cold look, she keeps her eyes upon him as she proceeds. 'Mr Twemlow, if you ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... You believe that I am in love with you, and do this to keep you near me. Don't be quite such a brute, for you are a brute, a grasping, egotistical, intolerant brute." She smiled slightly. "But don't think that I am such a fool as not to ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... it is passing strange; Last week I was a child, but now I am not. And I begin my womanhood with weeping; I know not why.—La, what a fool I ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... the centuries, the comment of that King for whom Berkeley was so zealous, a man who fell behind his colonial Governor in singleness of interest but excelled him in good nature. "That old fool," said the second Charles, "has hanged more men in that naked country than I have done for the ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... a little fool as to throw this splendid chance away?" she questioned with herself. "No—no;" was the answer. "Jessie will not dare to do it! She is a strange girl in some things, and wonderfully like her mother; but she will never refuse Leon Dexter, if so lucky ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... say, Fred, did ye iver saa the loikes of him? We must git him to run a race and jump and swim and stand on his head and show jist what he can do. I'm glad as I say to obsarve that he is aslaap, for he must naad the same. I say, Fred, let's stay awake till daylight, so as to fool him." ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... like old Parson Hoodenpyle, what his wife hears stumpin' round the house an' preachin' every night, though she air ez deef ez a post, an' he hev been in glory twenty year—twenty year an' better. Yer Aunt Malviny hed luck, so mebbe 'tain't no killin' complaint fur a gal ter git ter talking like a fool about marryin' an' sech. Leastwise I ain't ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... excitable, more readily carried away than the rest, weaker in character. At eighteen he married a little factory girl, a pale, plump, quiet thing with sly eyes and a wheedling voice, who insinuated herself into him and bore him a child every year and made a fool of him. When he had taken over the butchery business, already a growing callousness to it, and a sort of contempt made him neglectful of it. He drank, and was often to be found in his public house ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... laugh, and Saffy into silent tears, for she thought she had made a fool of herself. She was not a priggish child, and did not deserve the mockery with which her barbarian brother invaded her little temple. She was such a true child that her mother was her neighbor, and present to all her being—not her eyes only or ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... freely you've dined, or too heavily wined, or munched too many walnuts or filberts; When your brain is a maze, and creation a haze, then each queer social craze—there are many!— Gets your wits in a spool, and there isn't a fool for your thoughts would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... should make a fool of myself;" replied Ratcliffe, pleased to think that Mrs. Lee should put him on a level with Washington. She had only meant to ask why the thing could not be done, and this little touch of ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... appearance of Gullah Jack made on those who witnessed the workings of his cunning and rude address. When arrested and brought before the court, in company with another African named Jack, the property of the estate of Pritchard, he assumed so much ignorance, and looked and acted the fool so well, that some of the court could not believe that this was the necromancer who was sought after. This conduct he continued when on his trial, until he saw the witnesses and heard the testimony as it progressed against him; when, in an instant, his countenance was lighted ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... his luggage. Leave nothing unexamined. In particular look into every hole and corner where none but a fool would attempt to hide anything. This fine gentleman imagines we value his intelligence too highly to believe he would leave the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Monsieur du Miroir. Or, out of a mere wayward fantasy, were I to go, by moonlight, and stand beside the stone Pout of the Shaker Spring at Canterbury, Monsieur du Miroir would set forth on the same fool's errand, and would not fail to meet me there. Shall I heighten the reader's wonder? While writing these latter sentences, I happened to glance towards the large, round globe of one off the brass ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... members of our association equally affected, had one hundred and twenty-five thousand head of beeves and through steers on its range, and unless some relief was granted, a wayfaring man though a fool could see ruin and death and desolation staring us in the face. Fortunately Major Hunter had the firm's trail affairs so well in hand that Edwards could close up the business, thus relieving my active partner to serve on the committee, he and four others offering to ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... talked along," Jane continued, much pleased;—"an' Mr. Parcher said when he was young he wasn't any such a—such a word fool as these young word fools were. He said in all his born days Willie Baxter was the wordest fool ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... Mary Wortley Montague, the lady's answer was "a fit of immoderate laughter." In an appendix to the 'Dunciad' Pope collected some of the epithets with which his enemies had pelted him, "an ape," "an ass," "a frog," "a coward," "a fool," "a little abject thing." He affected, indeed, to despise his assailants, but there is only too good evidence that their poisoned arrows rankled in his heart. Richardson, the painter, found him ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... Juno type, haughty, unapproachable, given to irony and a caustic wit. Mrs. Mackridge had no wit, but she had acquired the caustic voice and gestures along with the old satins and trimmings of the great lady. When she told you it was a fine morning, she seemed also to be telling you you were a fool and a low fool to boot; when she was spoken to, she had a way of acknowledging your poor tinkle of utterance with a voluminous, scornful "Haw!" that made you want to burn her alive. She also had a way of saying "Indade!" with a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... innocent, ignorant child then," he said; "of course you could not understand. I was an ass and a brute and a fool not ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... by the Greek Fathers in their controversies with the Pneumatomachians to prove the divinity of the Holy Ghost. St. Athanasius writes to Serapion:(1137) "If we by receiving the Holy Ghost are allowed to participate in the Divine Nature, no one but a fool will assert that the Holy Ghost is not of divine but of human nature. For all those in whom He abides become deified(1138) for no other reason. But if He constitutes them gods, there can be no doubt that His nature ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... discussed. If, after three days' patient hearing of the witnesses and lawyers, he has one tangible idea floating in his head, he is either an Alcibiades or a Bavius—a heaven-born genius or the mere incarnation of a fool! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... on a fool's errand. He has business on board of this particular steamer," replied Flint, speaking out of his musing mind. "Ah! now I have it!" he suddenly exclaimed. "Hungerford was the executive officer of the Killbright, or the Yazoo, as they called her afterwards. I had a very slight inkling that ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... murmured, sleepy and surly: "Spring's too young yet—the air is cool; I don't believe in a sun so early,— He's just playing at April fool!" ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... I made up the fire and got slowly into bed. My head did ache a little, but not enough to make me unhappy, and it seemed to me, as I lay in the midst of that apparently dead Irish town, that I was coming perilously near to playing the fool. But my confidence in St. Alleyne was unbounded, and under all his lightness of manner it was plain that he was in deadly earnest; so presently, thinking of him and of the face I had seen, and being horribly tired after the previous night, I fell ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... must be making of him, if he had been their dupe since the first day? Was it possible to make a fool of a man, of a worthy man, because his father had left him a little money? Why could one not see these things in people's souls, how was it that nothing revealed to upright hearts the deceits of infamous hearts, how was it that voices had the same sound for adoring as for lying, why was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... good old man, whom they loaded with plunder, and day after day continued to treat with the most shocking cruelty, painting him all over with various colours, plucking the white hairs from his beard, and telling him he was a fool for living so long, and many other tortures which he bore with wonderful composure, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... honourably to him, and know likewise that he will lend you money, if you are a gentleman, and are in need of it; but depend upon it, if he refuse you, there is something not altogether right about you, for Griffiths knows HIS WORLD, and is not to be made a fool of. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the other. He perhaps takes too little pains, and indulges in too much wayward caprice in both. A wit and a poet, Mr. Hunt is also distinguished by fineness of tact and sterling sense: he has only been a visionary in humanity, the fool of virtue. What then is the drawback to so many shining qualities, that has made them useless, or even hurtful to their owner? His crime is, to have been Editor of the Examiner ten years ago, when some allusion was made in it to the age of the present king, and ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... a candle, and keep calm if you can," he said in an abrupt military voice. "This is no time to play the fool." ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... of comparison in the book of Proverbs is simply to put together the object compared and the thing or things with which it is compared, thus: "A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back" (chap. 26:3); that is, As a whip is appropriate for, the horse, and a bridle for the ass, so is a rod for the fool's back. Again, "Where there is no wood the fire goeth out, and where there is no tale-bearer the strife ceaseth" (Prov. 26:20); "Charcoal ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... certainly nothing in the play calculated to please the pulpit. There is a clergyman who is pious and heartless. John Storm is the only Christian, and he is crazy. When Glory accepts him at last, you not only feel, but you know she has acted the fool. The lord in the piece is a dog, and the real gentleman is the chap that runs the music hall. How the play can please the pulpit I do not see. Storm's whole career is a failure. His followers turn on him like wild beasts. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Matthew Arnold's Persian cat but—the Persian Queen, daughter of Cyrus, wife of Cambyses and Darius, mother of Xerxes, and in more than her queenly status a sister to Jezebel. Atossa had not a wholly amiable reputation, but she was assuredly no fool: and if, to borrow a famous phrase, it had been necessary to invent letters, there is no known reason why she might not have done it. But it is perfectly certain that she did not, and no one who combines, as all true scholars should ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... of sense on one hand and foolishness on the other, and he put some of each inside every empty skull. He got mighty interested in his work and so absent-minded he used up the sense first. Leastways, some skulls got an unrighteous dose of fool that I can't explain no other way. I ain't blaming the Almighty; he'd got the stuff on his hands and he'd got to get rid of it somehow. It's like rat poison—mighty good in its place, but dangerous to have lying around loose. He just forgot ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... found a pearl—such a pearl. Never was there one like it ever fished up in Hikueru, nor in all the Paumotus, nor in all the world. Buy it from him. He has it now. And remember that I told you first. He is a fool and you can get it ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... and shook his shield with his left hand, and made many acclamations to the Roman army, and exulted over the dead man, and jested upon the Romans; till at length one Priscus, a centurion, shot a dart at him as he was leaping and playing the fool with himself, and thereby pierced him through; upon which a shout was set up both by the Jews and the Romans, though on different accounts. So Jonathan grew giddy by the pain of his wounds, and fell down upon the body of ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... am de biggist fool dat I ebber seed. How's anybody gwine tu git under de groun' to dig. Whar's dey gwine tu put de dirt, and whar is de water to cum fum to mash it down?" Yah, yah, yah. "Go 'way nigger, I 'spec you bin mole huntin'." "Dat am fac', Tony, I didn't tink 'bout dat," said Uncle Jim, with an apologetic ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... orders for the movement up the south side of the Appomattox for the purpose of heading off Lee; but Meade was so much impressed by this man's story that he thought we ought to cross the Appomattox there at once and move against Lee in his new position. I knew that Lee was no fool, as he would have been to have put himself and his army between two formidable streams like the James and Appomattox rivers, and between two such armies as those of the Potomac and the James. Then these streams ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Martineau is about Liverpool, and while I was at the island Mr. Bright took Mr. Hawthorne to see her. She was extremely agreeable and brilliant. She has become quite infidel in her opinions. . . . It must be either a fool or a madman who says there is no GOD. . . . I had a delightful visit from the Cochrans, and went with them to Chester. Martha was deeply affected by the Cathedral, especially by the cloisters. Tears filled her eyes. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... or I will die and perish as others have perished." "For God's sake," answered the Vizier, "do not thus adventure thy life!" But she said, "It must be so." Whereupon her father was wroth with her and said to her, "Fool that thou art, dost thou not know that the ignorant man who meddles in affairs falls into grievous peril, and that he who looks not to the issue of his actions finds no friend in time of evil fortune? As says ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... make him a cabinet clerk. I say cabinet-clerk, for the so-called secretaries of the Cleveland regime were merely stool-pigeons for the Stuffed-Prophet. And now this erstwhile seneschal of the Buffalo Beast, this pitiful stool-hopper for the d—est fool that ever disgraced the presidency, turns up his beefy proboscis at the intellectuality of the Bryanites. If J. Sterling Morton would only shave his head he could get four dollars a day for playing What-Is-It in a dime museum. As an anthropological curio Oofty-Gofty or the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the way shown to him several times previously, and rejoining his brother-in-law, the wise and good Mr Verloc, outside the precincts of the park. Fifteen minutes ought to have been enough for the veriest fool to deposit the engine and walk away. And the Professor had guaranteed more than fifteen minutes. But Stevie had stumbled within five minutes of being left to himself. And Mr Verloc was shaken morally to pieces. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... light, but it was a fire that would not be put out. He cursed the shop-windows and the lamps for shining so brightly on him; he cursed the few people whose curiosity induced them to pause and look back at him, and he cursed himself for being such a fool. ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... them both in an vniust behalfe (As Both of you, God pardon it, haue done) To put downe Richard, that sweet louely Rose, And plant this Thorne, this Canker Bullingbrooke? And shall it in more shame be further spoken, That you are fool'd, discarded, and shooke off By him, for whom these shames ye vnderwent? No: yet time serues, wherein you may redeeme Your banish'd Honors, and restore your selues Into the good Thoughts of the world ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... an obligation to offer the burnt offering except the following: A deaf man, a fool, a child, one of doubtful sex, one of double sex, a woman, a slave, a lame man, a blind man, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Ned, gathering his knees into his arms. "That's what I want to know. I know we're robbed. Any fool can see that those who work the least or don't work at all get pretty much everything, but I don't quite see how they get it. We're only just beginning to think of these things in the bush, and we don't know much yet. We only know there's ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the man—- the selfish, self-absorbed fool—on whom you threw yourself away, six months after you had cast me adrift. At this moment he is my guest, snoring in an adjoining room while I sit up writing ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... Strasbourg, requests to be reinstated with the army in the field. "Impossible," replies Servan; "your place is given to another." Thereupon one of the personages present, with a peculiar visage and a rough voice, takes him aside and says to him: "Servan is a fool! Come and see me to-morrow and I will arrange the matter." "Who are you?" "I am Danton, the Minister of Justice."—The next day he calls on Danton, who tells him: "It is all right; you shall have your post back—not under Kellerman, however, but under Dumouriez; are you content?" The young ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I didn't write. What a fool I have been altogether!' He gave a twitch, as of one in pain. 'I won't dance again when this one is over. The fact is I have travelled a long way to-day, and it seems to have knocked me up ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... left of me but a rivulet. I eat oranges all day long. We have a basket full put by our bedsides at night, and I never leave one by breakfast time if I can help it. It is a horrid nuisance being so sick at sea. I really thought in the Bay of Biscay that I should make a fool of myself and wish I was at home again. I don't like this place much, one is so stewed; there is not a shadow, all seems baked hard as pie-crust twice done. I like being on the sea better now I have got over being ill; there is a breeze to ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... also, the fool made no effort to disguise his folly by going to Congress or fussing with the currency, but wore a uniform which designated his calling and saved time in estimating ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... son of Menoetius who had killed so many, striking him from close at hand, and vaunting over him the while. "Patroclus," said he, "you deemed that you should sack our city, rob our Trojan women of their freedom, and carry them off in your ships to your own country. Fool; Hector and his fleet horses were ever straining their utmost to defend them. I am foremost of all the Trojan warriors to stave the day of bondage from off them; as for you, vultures shall devour you here. Poor wretch, Achilles with all his bravery availed you nothing; and yet I ween when ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... "Fool-dog," said Hermy, carelessly smacking him across the nose. "Always hit him if he shows his teeth, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you know that you are yourself? Are you sure you are not your own father?—or, excuse me, your own fool?—Who are ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... "I guess you think that's due to your dignity, but you don't fool me. Look into your mirror, Helen, if you really want to know. Did you hear that he put every dollar he'd made in Canada into the scheme? Of course you didn't; he made Tom promise he would never tell you. Besides—but I forgot, I must not ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... when one supposed him to be ill-humoured, he was in an amiable mood. No one could ever guess him rightly, and I do not believe that his like ever was or ever will be born. It cannot be said that he had much wit; but still less was he a fool. Nobody was ever more prompt to seize the ridiculous points of anything in himself or in others; he told stories agreeably; he was a keen observer, and dreaded nothing so much as to be one day King: not so much ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... because of his pull! James saw himself doing it. He was sore in every outraged nerve of him. Never before in his life had anybody sat and sneered at him openly before his eyes. He would show the big boss that he had been a fool to treat him so. And he would show P. C. Frome and Ned Merrill that he ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... questioned me further, and found that I was an infidel, that I had no belief in God or in goodness, and that I was unhappy. Some officers would have cared nothing for this, or just abused me, called me a fool, and let me alone; others, who called themselves religious, would have cast me off as a reprobate. But Mr Morgan, whom I always thought only a good-natured, merry young gentleman, did neither; but he ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... world. But a funny one, too. I was quite shy of meeting Aunt Caroline again this morning, lest the remembrance of what she had told me over-night should make her feel ill at ease; lest, in fact, she had repented of her confidence. And I stood quite a while outside the breakfast-room door, like a fool. But as I entered, her beaded cap was bobbing over an ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... protect my innocence from the designs of this new Potiphar's wife, he would not only give me a lodging in the Episcopal palace, but confer on me the additional protection of the minor orders. This was rather more than I had bargained for, but he that wants the melon is a fool to refuse the rind, and I thanked the Bishop for his kindness and allowed him to give out that, my heart having been touched by grace, I had resolved, at the end of the season, to withdraw from the stage and prepare ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... under the reign of West, and such houses as we built under the reign of Nash, till the English eye required to rest on that which was constrained, dull, and graceless. For the last two score of years it has come to this, that if a man go in handsome attire he is a popinjay and a vain fool; and as it is better to be ugly than to be accounted vain I would not counsel a young friend to leave the beaten track on the strength of his own judgment. But not the less is the beaten track to be condemned, and abandoned, and abolished, if ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... who suddenly saw a pointer go unexpectedly beyond the fifty mark, and who immediately began having delusions of grandeur. He was a dreamer—but dreams and reality were two different things, and sometimes he confused them. He shook his head, feeling like a fool. ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch
... and there a sail just skipping In sight, then lost amid the forestry Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; A huge dun cupola like a foolscap crown On a fool's head—and there ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... weeping mothers; visit dying child; fool of myself, broke down in prayer; the helplessness in ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... hour before lunch," he said. "Can I convince you in that time, I wonder, that I'm not an absolute fool?" ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... bee bite with me at the wrong end of the stinger. Still, I was just mulish enough to stick around. I had nearly three hours left before I'd have to listen to the major's mirthsome cackle, and I might as well spend part of it thinkin' up fool schemes. So I walks around that cluster of cement-set spools some more. I even climbs on top of one and gazes up ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... sentiment on the slavery question which had taken place there, since the murder of Lovejoy, eighteen years before. Lovejoy died defending the right of free speech and the liberty of the press, yet the Attorney-General of Massachusetts declared that "he died as the fool dieth." Brown died in an invasion of a slave State, and in an effort to emancipate the slaves with a band of eighteen followers, and he was acclaimed, from one end of the free States to the other, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... and kings too. The mountebank is wanted in the streets, the jester at the Louvre. The one is called a Clown, the other a Fool. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... your displeasure, I suppose? What signifies your displeasure to a man who is at war with himself? Fie, Moor. I already abhor you as a villain; let me not despise you for a fool. I can open graves, and restore the dead to life! Which of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "The little fool's alarmed, I do believe!" said he; "He's only a cow-boy, I dare say!" And with this sapient, but unsatisfactory conclusion, he opened his book, and read aloud, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... the ten-thousandth time, and what a weak fool I, for what can it signify now!) whether he confided the charge of their orphan child to me, because he knew—Good God, how like her mother she ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Spirit of God dwells in you? [3:17]If any one destroys the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God which you are is holy. [3:18]Let no one deceive himself; if any one seems to be wise among you in this life, let him be a fool, that he may be wise. [3:19]For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written; He takes the wise in their craftiness. [3:20]And again; The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they are vain. [3:21]Let no one therefore glory in men; for all things are yours, [3:22]whether ...
— The New Testament • Various
... because he was usually timid, but never applied a suitable remedy, because he had more fear than wisdom. He had wit, indeed, together with a most insinuating address and a gay, courtly behaviour; but a villainous heart appeared constantly through all, to such a degree as betrayed him to be a fool in adversity and a knave in prosperity. In short, he was the first minister that could be called a complete trickster, for which reason his administration, though successful and absolute, never sat well upon him, for contempt—the most dangerous disease of any State—crept ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... seems to me as how you've brought us here on a fool's errand. I don't see no signs of a canoe, and it aint likely that the British would be along the lake here, seeing as how there's a score of canoes with your people in them ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... discourtesy that which we call having a friendly interest in each other's doings. Volunteered advice comes, so he thinks, from pure self-conceit, and is intolerable; help that he has not asked for conveys the assumption that he is a fool, and the helper ever so much wiser than he. It is in his eyes simply a form of self-assertion, an attempt at governing other people, an infringement of good manners not ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... fool a little, else I shan't know I am writing to you. And really I must break out somewhere, [224] life is such a solemn abstraction in Washington to a clergyman. What has he to do, but what's solemn? The gayety passes him by; the politics pass him by. Nobody wants him; nobody holds him by the ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... both fleets sailed into the harbor together. It is true, however, that the man who places faith in a Spaniard is a fool, and so it proved to us. No sooner had they reached the port than they began to plot, secretly among themselves, how to fall upon us. Even then, though they had thirteen big ships, the smallest of which was larger than the Jesus, they feared ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... stick the bright stars there. And so he repeated many times, "God, no; God, no," until she could not bear to hear him; for she knew that Satan was trying to take away from him the thought of God, and make this poor boy like the fool of whom the fourteenth Psalm speaks, who "said in his heart, No God." Jack's lady was silent, for she knew not what to say; but again she prayed to God to teach her how to teach him; and then she did what the boy thought a very strange ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... "Chicken-hearted fool!" said the Chevalier; "is this the end of all your promises and all your pledges? But remember, sir! remember. I have no taste for scenes. Good night, gentlemen. Baron, I expect to ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... undeniable gift for mendacity, an inexhaustible fertility of invention. Such liars, like poets, are born, not made, though doubtless their natural gifts have been improved and developed by constant practice. Like Parolles, they "lie with such volubility that you would think Truth were a fool." The seed has been industriously sown, and John Bull is reaping the harvest. Is there no means of enlightenment available? Is there no antidote to this poison? I am disposed to believe that if the country were stumped by men of known position and integrity ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... her, and see how pale and ill she looks; and I hope that will be enough to make you never go and do a thing again which will cause her anxiety and grief. The time will come when you will have to run all sorts of risks and dangers, but it is a very different thing to run your head into danger from fool-hardiness, and to go into danger because it is your duty." These remarks of my father made a deep impression on me. I hurried below, and there I saw my poor mother looking more ill and distressed than I had ever seen her:—her eyes red from weeping, and her ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... interrupted, "one look at you would tell an Austrian your nationality. You cannot expect to fool them as we did the peasant of the hills. I am sorry, but there ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... the fragrant mixture and warming her favourite ankle; 'when old Mr Harmon made such a fool of me (not to mention himself, as he is dead), what do you ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... What were my claims to his—an exile and a foreigner, with nought but my good sword, and a love so deep, so faithful (his voice softened), that it formed my very being? But what was love to thee before ambition? Oh, fool, fool that I was, to believe a woman's tongue—to dream that truth could dwell in those sweet-sounding words—those tears, that seemed to tell of grief in parting, bitter as my own—fool, to believe thy specious tale! There could ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... heroic ballads, their German home life, their German women, their love of little old towns on hillsides or in valleys, by all the meaning to them of that word Germany, which is like the name of England to us—who is fool enough to think otherwise?—and fought often, a thousand times, to the death, as I saw their bodies heaped in the fields of the Somme and round their pill-boxes in Flanders and in the last phase of the war behind the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... unknown to old Mr. Crow, Old Mother Nature knew just what was going on, for you can't fool her, and it's of no use to try. One morning Mr. Crow discovered Mr. Coon just sitting down to a good breakfast. He stole up behind Mr. Coon and opened his mouth to bark like Mr. Coyote, but instead of a bark, there came forth a harsh 'Caw, caw, caw.' It is a question which was the more surprised, ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... spared yourself this trouble," said Dupin. "D—, I presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these waylayings, as ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... controversy. Such behavior is not calculated to invite confidence, and not likely to induce this enemy-surrounded nation to put its destinies in such hands, not at any rate for some time to come. "Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... boasts, I had come to waiting in a restaurant and quarrelling with drunken boys?" he cried, shaking his head and waving an arm to deny my demand. "Of course, if there were any possibility of Penelope marrying that fool it would be different. But, David, I know Rufus. He is not brilliant, but he is shrewd, and I'll trust him to find out if anybody is after his money. And Penelope? Haven't I seen Penelope many a night stepping into her carriage—don't you think I can trust her to look ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the word Morpheus, the god of sleep. The Hebrew word chanah, to dwell, is the parent of the Anglo-Saxon inne and Icelandic inni, a house, and of our word inn, a hotel. The Hebrew word naval or nafal signifies to fall; from it is derived our word fall and fool (one who falls); the Chaldee word is nabal, to make foul, and the Arabic word nabala means to die, that is, to fall. From the last syllable of the Chaldee nasar, to saw, we can derive the Latin serra, the High German sagen, the Danish sauga, and our word to saw. The Arabic nafida, to ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Cowen had told him before. This is the man too who tells so much about private conversation, and Mr. Cowen's hesitating to tell him names; and enjoining him to secresy, and who so very spunkily says that he called Gen. Dunning "a fool." Mr. Cowen must, I think, feel himself greatly indebted to these brother certifiers for their honor and patriotism. This too is the man, who sometime before wrote a fawning letter, asking Mr. Cowen to give him an office ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... nor Fashion's fool, Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool; Not proud, nor servile—be one poet's praise That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways; That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame, And thought a lie in prose ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... a policeman watched me as though I were a house-breaker, and I felt like a fool, but at last, by perseverance and tact, I managed to capture a fairly good specimen of the species, and carried it in my arms to the laboratory with some ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve |
