"Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Sandy, "wrap her up, git in the skiff, an' I'll be with yer as soon as I tie this chuckle-headed idiot ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... "Take this idiot we've got now," he declared. "He expects me to be a sort of wet-nurse to the Government of India and do all their dirty work for them. They know local conditions, and they have ample powers if they would only use them, but ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... idiot ass Hungry for the fragrant fodder, Placed between two bales of grass, Lo, I ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... much as the rest of the crew on board the galleon in which he sailed. All were so absorbed by their own suffering and misery that none paid any attention to the idiot boy in their midst. He worked at such work as there was to do: assisted to haul on the ropes, to throw the dead overboard, and to do what could be done for the sick and wounded. Like all on board he was reduced almost to a skeleton, and was scarce ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... Pities the orphan's, idiot's want of sense; And rich in supernumerary pelf, Adopts posterity unlike himself. To one great individual wit's confined! Such eunuchs never propagate their kind. Thus nature's prodigies bestow the gifts Of fortune, their descendants are no Swifts. When did prime statesman, for a sceptre ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... this anonymous idiot?... He really ought to have known better than that," says a reviewer in The Near East. I quite agree. It is pleasant now and then to be able to agree with a paper which is so one-sided as to admit pro-Nikita and anti-Serbian diatribes by Mr. Devine, but which refuses to insert a letter on ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans with a heavy sigh. "They are all half afraid of the place; they call it the idiot's cottage." ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... representation I had somewhere seen of Silenus reproving his Bacchanals: the picture was the more striking by the contrasted subjects it was opposed to: on one side was a spare-looking stripling, of about the age of eighteen, with lank hair brushed smoothly over his forehead, and a demure, half-idiot-looking countenance, that seemed to catch what little expression it had from the reflection of its sire, for such I discovered was the ancient's affinity to this cadaverous importation from North Wales. The father, a Welsh rector of at least one hundred ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the courage you bring to it" ... this from old Frosted Moses in the warm corner by the door. There might have been an answer, but Dicky Tasset, the Town Idiot, filled in the pause with the tale that he was telling Mother Figgis. "And I ran—a mile or more with the stars dotted all over the ground for yer pickin', as ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... book. Either I'm an idiot, or blinded by conjugal conceit, or else Barty's book—which I've copied out myself in my very best handwriting—is one of the most beautiful and important books ever written. Come and dine with me to-night; Barty's dining in the City with the Fishmongers—you shall ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Mallalieu a fool, indeed, ever since the previous evening, when the police, conducting him to Norcaster, had told him of the Mayor's escape from the Town Hall. Nobody but an absolute fool, a consummate idiot, thought Cotherstone, would have done a thing like that. The man who flies is the man who has reason to fly—that was Cotherstone's opinion, and in his belief ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in Highmarket ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... right have you to guess? You're not to guess at all. Understand? Idiot! Shoulder arms, march! [As he goes off a short roll of drums ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... we, of the village, are the very dirt beneath her feet. I hear she's thinking of taking up Civic Improvement. I hope it is true—she'll likely run up against somebody who won't hesitate to tell her what an idiot she is." ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... on the grade and tried in vain to pierce the darkness. "Here—here, you blithering idiot! The police want you." ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... don't know what I was going to say. I am an abject idiot, which, all things considered, is not remarkable. - Ever your affectionate and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an idiot," admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-of-fact voice. "But she confessed to myself only the other day that she suffered from a sense of unreality. I told her that at any rate she had her own feelings surely. And she said to me: Yes, there was one of them ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... while into the other the genuine idiom of her native land flowed, ardently, from the now unsealed lips of Barty Mangan, began to wonder why the boys were talking like stage Irishmen; Georgy, she knew, was idiot enough for anything, but she had to admit to herself that Larry, also, was rather overdoing it. Christian was able to feel amused, but she also felt, quite illogically, that what had been distaste for Tishy Mangan was rapidly ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... considerable ingredient in the disposition of Euripides. Even his pathos is somewhat tinctured with this taste for painful images. As we have beheld in our own times a barbarian alternately glut his sight with executions, and then shed floods of tears, and sink into idiot despondency; so the poetry of Euripides in turn disgusts us with outrageous cruelty, and depresses us with the most painful ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Captain's youngest son. A poor idiot, who, thirty years of age, had the appearance of an overgrown boy. The other members of the Captain's large family were all married and settled prosperously in the world. Flora felt truly ashamed of the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... "This idiot," said he, indicating Jones, "has sold a coal mine, worth maybe a million, for five thousand. The Glanafwyn property has turned up coal. I only heard of it last night, and by accident. Struthers said to me straight out in the club, 'Do you know that ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... little idiot," she said, giving me a tender little shake that robbed the words of their harshness, "can't you see that ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... what he had gotten for the cow; to which he replied, that he had sold her to an honest woman named Am Solomon, who had promised to pay him on the next Friday ten pieces of gold. The wife was contented, and when Friday arrived, her idiot of a husband having, as usual, taken a dose of bang, repaired to the tree, and hearing the bird chattering, as before, said, "Well, my good mother, hast thou brought the gold?" The bird croaked. Supposing the imaginary woman refused to pay him, he became angry, and threw up his spade, which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... whether I was badly hurt. On my assurance that unless his back and legs and arms were broken, there was no damage done, he straightened up and declared he was unhurt but dreadfully humiliated. "How could a man be such a condemned idiot as to plunge head-first against a barricade like that?" This was the question suggested to his mind, only he did not say "condemned idiot" exactly, but he apologized for the emphatic words he did use, and as they do not look well in print, they need ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... son. Here, in England, you would cruelly designate him as something between a madman and an idiot, but the Easterns look not thus upon those who possess not their ordinary faculties. Through Helfa, Abou had seen many wonderful things, and now he was going to ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... began to abuse the swineherd. "You precious idiot," he cried, "what have you brought this man to town for? Have we not tramps and beggars enough already to pester us as we sit at meat? Do you think it a small thing that such people gather here to waste your master's property—and must you needs bring ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... makes racing up the treble of the piano keys: 'Ump! whew! Didn't I tell you so? The minute my back was turned, of course you made ducks and drakes of all your promises. Show me a "Flying Jenney," that the tip end of any idiot's little finger can spin around, and I'll christen it Edward McTwaddle Singleton!' Seems funny to you, doctor? Just wait till you are married, and your Susan shuts the door and interviews you, picking a whole flock of crows, till you wonder ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... I will not be at the initiating, passing, or raising a candidate in a clandestine Lodge, I knowing it to be such. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I will not be at the initiating of an old man in dotage, a young man in nonage, an atheist, irreligious libertine, idiot, madman, hermaphrodite, nor woman. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I will not speak evil of a brother Master Mason, neither behind his back, nor before his face, but will apprise him of all approaching danger, if in my power. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... do not place much stock in Professor Cortoran's theory, though I admit that I am prejudiced. Naturally one does not care to believe that the object of his greatest affection is descended from a gibbering idiot ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... what fools men are!" she ejaculated. "And do you think, now, I'm going to let that girl, who's just getting rid of her malaria, go star-gazing with any old idiot while all the mists are curling out ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... "I'm just a plain idiot, Miss Edith," he said. "I was only fooling. It will mean a lot to me to have a nice girl go with me to the movies, or anywhere else. We'll make it to-night, if that suits you, and I'll take a look through the neighborhood at noon and see what's ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Brahmana is the foremost among all castes, art thou the foremost of all bowmen! Dhritarashtra's son (Duryodhana) listened not to the words repeatedly spoken by me and Vidura and Drona and Rama and Janardana and also by Sanjaya. Reft of his senses, like unto an idiot, Duryodhana placed no reliance on those utterances. Past all instructions, he will certainly have to lie down for ever, overwhelmed by the might of Bhima!'—Hearing these words of his, the Kuru king Duryodhana became of cheerless heart. Eyeing him, Santanu's son said,—'Listen, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Idiot was one of the terms, the mildest, which I should have applied to that young man. I wanted very much to remove him from that car by what Lute would call the scruff of the neck. But most of all, just then, I wanted to be alone, to see the last of ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his eyes from the man coming down the trail. It was usually some good-natured idiot, with a predisposition to gabbling, that made most of the trouble in ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... her. They went into one of the rooms. The candle burning in it showed a bed, with posts reaching to the ceiling, and an ancient mahogany chest. A handful of fire burned in the deep fireplace, and before it crouched Mack, an old slave of Mr. Robinson's—a miserable idiot, with just mind enough to perform ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... biggest idiot unhung!" he confessed, as he took her in his arms. "But when I saw that the writing was yours, I fancied your father had by threats, or in some way, induced you to change your mind, and that you really thought, in duty ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... want then, and want till you're gray, and longer," retorted the little man. "So we might as well move on. Tummas, you idiot, gad up ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... repeated the Princess impatiently. "I explained very carefully what I desired. That new groom is stupid. Caron, my chauffeur, would never have made a mistake unless that idiot groom ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... on for a great while, and say all manner of entertaining things. But all's gone. I am now an idiot. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intoxication and without stupor, turning a visual radius of fifty leagues across the earth around a circumference of three hundred." On the Rigi his musings on the magnificence of the view are checked by the presence of a cretin. Behold the contrast! An idiot with a goitre and an enormous face, a blank stare, and a stupid laugh is sole participator with Victor Hugo in this ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the brown satiny forehead lovingly, and laughed at herself for a suspicious idiot. And yet, the occurrence would not go from her mind, and she wakened in the night to think about it hour after hour and when she did sleep she was oppressed with a constant feeling of uneasiness, and woke again and again with that sense of groping after something that had just occurred, but which ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... You blessed idiot, there's no use of both of us smashing. If anybody's got to stay—I can bluff it out a good deal better than you ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... said, with a sneer. 'And you come here to tell me that! You infernal idiot! You come here to put yourself in my power like this! Courtenay Ivor, I always knew you were an ass, but I didn't ever know you were quite such a born idiot of a fellow as that. Hold back there, you image!' With a rapid dart, before you could ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... it! Did anybody ever see such an idiot since girls were first created? Not help it, after having given him as good as a promise! You must help it. You must be ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... astrology. I tell you the beastly chest holds twenty-seven thousand point nine double eight recurring cubic inches of air. Some other fool can reduce that to rods, and there you are. I'm fed up with it. Thanks to the machinations of that congenital idiot with the imitation mustachios, I've paid more than four times its value, and I'm not going to burst my brains trying to work out which drawer would have had a false bottom if it had been built by a dipsomaniac who kept fowls. And ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... in the fields behind the house, and in front of it the patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one of them was an idiot from that day forward, and another, after a dreadful season of mental conflict, took holy orders and became renowned for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books, and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... undoing of the French would have been ruined. Ay, you may stare. That is another matter in which you have lacked discretion. You may be a fine engineer, O'Moy, but I don't think I could have found a less judicious adjutant-general if I had raked the ranks of the army on purpose to find an idiot. Samoval was a spy—the cleverest spy that we have ever had to deal with. Only his death revealed how dangerous he was. For killing him when you did you deserve the thanks of his Majesty's Government, as Grant suggests. But before you can receive those you ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... For my own part, when I neared the stove I was nearly suffocated; but I took heart when I saw but three more men between me and the hole. At this moment a sound as of tramping feet was heard, and some idiot on the outer edge of the mob startled us with the cry, "The guards the guards!" A fearful panic ensued, and the entire crowd bounded toward the stairway leading up to their sleeping-quarters. The stairway was unbanistered, and some of the men were forced off the edge and fell ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... that they were thus together. They were near, near, and all she had imagined of that had only become more true, more dreadful and overwhelming. She stared straight away in silence till she felt she looked an idiot; then, to say something, to say nothing, she attempted a sound which ended ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... those who can say, "I am sorry." Now, I am never sorry, and I consider that what is called repentance is the function of an idiot. If I do a thing, I intend to do it. Regret is the most weak-minded of all ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... but horrid recollection of having been on that occasion unlike himself, ill at ease, burning in the face, talking with idiot loquacity of his adventures in the Baltic provinces, and finding from time to time that he was addressing himself exclusively to Mrs. Wallace. The other lady, when he joined them, had completely lost the slight appearance ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... if he had been a builder: "My machine surpasses all expectations, and will soon be at work. In Paris I go to bed early and rise ditto, spending all day at Spad's. I have no other thought or occupation. It is a fixed idea, and if it goes on I shall become a perfect idiot. When peace is signed, let nobody dare to mention a weapon of any kind in ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... "unless something possesses that sappy little Parmlee to make one of his visitations. John Milton says that out on the road it blows so you can't stand up. It's just like that idiot Parmlee to be blown in here, and not have strength of mind ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... to say, the only explanation of a godless life, unless the man is an idiot, is that there lie beneath it, as formative principles and unspoken assumptions, guiding and shaping it, one or both of these two thoughts: either 'There is no God,' or 'He does not care what I do, and I am safe to go on for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... flow," explained the little man proudly. "Helps tap the unused eighty per cent. The pre-symptomatic memory is unaffected, due to automatic cerebral lapse in case of overload. I'm afraid it won't do much more than cube his present IQ, and an intelligent idiot is ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... "Why, you idiot and wife for Barabbas," said Sancho, "what do you mean by trying, without why or wherefore, to keep me from marrying my daughter to one who will give me grandchildren that will be called 'your lordship'? Look ye, Teresa, I ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... will not spend to gain an idiot's praise; Or to make sport For some slight Puisne of the Inns of Court. Then, worthy Stafford, say, How shall we spend the day? With what delights Shorten the nights? When from this tumult we are got secure, Where mirth with ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... was where there was no cause at all for it, and the more wholly unreasonable, the better still; that the motive should lie in the feeling itself and not in the object of it—and that the affection which could (if it could) throw itself out on an idiot with a goitre would be more admirable than Abelard's. Whereupon everybody laughed, and someone thought it affected of me and no true opinion, and others said plainly that it was immoral, and somebody else hoped, in a sarcasm, that I meant to act out my theory for ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... his brother into fits when he dressed up like a ghost and ran after him in the moonlight; but he did; and that bright, handsome little fellow, that might have been the pride of any mother's heart is just no better than an idiot, and never will be, if he lives to be eighty years old. You were a good deal cut up yourself, Tom, two weeks ago, when those young ladies left your hothouse door open, with a frosty east wind blowing right in; you said it killed a good many ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... too. The idiot! the patch! the slave! the booby! The property fit only to be beaten For your morning exercise? your football, or Th'unprofitable lump of flesh, your drudge, Can now anatomize you, and lay open All your black plots; level with the earth Your hill of pride, and shake, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... that the woman that rascal said was his wife is a courtesan, and he's given me the full history of the case—how he'd hired her for this year, how the money I'd promised him, like an utter idiot, was the sum due him for the months yet to run. This, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... "Don't be an idiot!" said Mrs. Hargrave, frowning. "That would be a nice thing to do with Rosanna heartbroken. Now, Minnie, all there is to this is that Mrs. Horton years and years ago had a younger sister who eloped with a no-account man whom she met when she visited his sister. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... aghast. Was he crazy, or did he mean to insult her master? Evidently neither. He seemed as sane as herself, while no one could associate an insult with him. He did not know anything. That was the solution of his audacity, and pityingly, as she would have addressed a half idiot, Mrs. Noah made him understand how impossible it was for him to think her master would lend ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... to the clown). Stick to it, friend Madhavya. I will humour the king a moment. (Aloud.) Your Majesty, he is a chattering idiot. Your Majesty may judge by his own case whether hunting ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... girl in the middle row. What beautiful hair she had! What an idiot she was to give up four years of her life to this round of work and play and pretence of living! Oh, to go back to Germany—to see Bertha and her mother again, and hear the father's 'cello! Hermann had loved her so! He ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... to what I said, ribbons or no ribbons," said Tom firmly. "But I see how it is—it's that scented idiot, Featherstone, has come betwixt you and me. O Jenny, my dear love, don't you listen to him! He'll not be bound to a word he says the minute it's not comfortable to keep it. He'll just win your heart, Jenny, and then throw you o' one ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... "Oh, you idiot!" Mary exclaimed, very nearly aloud, with a sense that Ralph had said something very stupid. So, after three lessons in Latin grammar, one might correct a fellow student, whose knowledge did not embrace ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... said, "and I shall have to ask Mr. Hethcote to disrate you, and get some one here who is not a born idiot. Here, take this horrible mess away! Pour the contents of your plates back into the pot, boys, and put the plates together. You must wash them, Tom, or the tallow will taste in everything ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... men, and out of his intense intellectual activity and scientific curiosity, grows one of Browning's greatest defects. He is often led too far afield, into intricacies and anomalies of character beyond the range of common experience and sympathy. The criminal, the "moral idiot," belong to the alienist rather than to the poet. The abnormalities of nature have no place in the world of great art; they do not echo the common experience of mankind. Already the interest is decreasing in that part of his poetry which deals with such themes. Bishop ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... "You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve, "why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... case, he would have restrained them in the public streets' (Boswell's Hebrides, under date of Aug. 11, 1773, note). Dr. T. Campbell, in his Diary of a Visit to England, p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:—'He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Shaftesbury of Charles II's time, is, indeed, not forgotten, but remembered with detestation. Ragged schools; provident schools; asylums for the aged governess; homes in which the consumptive may lay their heads in peace and die; asylums for the penitent; asylums for the idiot; homes where the houseless may repose,—these are the monuments to our Shaftesbury, to our younger sons. The mere political ascendency—the garter or the coronet—are distinctions which pale before these, as does the moon ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... fool such an idiot; for Nature had effectually done the job without human intervention. It was useless to waste words upon him; and Somers crept cautiously up out of his reach, and out of his hearing, unless he yelled out his insane speeches. Every moment he stopped to listen for sounds within the house; but ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... She might, for reasons of her own, have married me. There is no knowing what a woman will do. Bah! What a mollycoddle I have been! She, and he too, perhaps, have been laughing at me for the blind idiot I am—me, the man who thought he knew all there was to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... madness to resist... Once you're beaten, there's nothing for it but to submit to your conqueror, instead of allowing yourself to be tortured like an idiot... ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... jumping to his own feet and grabbing the South African in his arms. He glared at the newcomer. "Kenny, you idiot, you're lucky you don't have a ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... for no reason. My case is better than Dreyfus' and Sacco-Vanzetti's combined. Here I was prepared to remove the drug scourge forever, and at a piddling cost. Did I get courteous handling, or at least a fair hearing? Not bloody likely! I was an idiot to expect anything from the world's most inflated bureaucracy—Dickens' Circumlocution Office brought up ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges
... out. Can't you understand? You are an idiot. Rand-Brown's playing for the second, and I'm playing for ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... said the tattered man, rambling on in idiot fashion. His head was hanging forward and his words were slurred. "This thing won't do, now, Tom Jamison. It won't do. I know yeh, yeh pig-headed devil. Yeh wanta go trompin' off with a bad hurt. It ain't right—now—Tom Jamison—it ain't. Yeh wanta leave me take keer of yeh, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... waist, the Carabus is the glory of our collections, but only for the sake of his appearance. He is a frenzied murderer; and that is all. We will ask nothing more of him. The wisdom of antiquity represented Hercules, the god of strength, with the head of an idiot. And indeed merit is not great when limited to brute force. And this is the case with ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... attribute of persons who are partially idiotic. Father Murchison was moved to think of these poor creatures who will often, so strangely and unreasonably, attach themselves with persistence to those who love them least. Like many priests, he had had some experience of them, for the amorous idiot is peculiarly sensitive to the attraction of preachers. This bowing movement of the parrot recalled to his memory a terrible, pale woman who for a time haunted all churches in which he ministered, who was perpetually endeavouring ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Count under boyish police supervision, encouraged the lads to tell tales about him, rebuked him for his misconduct in the measles, lectured him before the whole school on his rank disgusting offences, and treated him as half a rogue and half an idiot. If he pleaded not guilty, they called him a liar, and gave him an extra thrashing. The thrashing was a public school entertainment, and was advertised on the school notice-board. "Next week," ran the notice on one occasion, "the Count is to have ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... "Oh, you idiot!" Alix laughed. "I don't mind being rich at all, I like it. I don't want to live in the city, or join women's clubs, and all that, but I like having my own check-book—truly, I do! As for all the silver and portraits and rugs and things, why, we ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... beneficent spirit, prying into the universe, not lording it over it; a thoughtful spectator of the scenes of life, or ruminator on the fate of mankind, not a painted pageant, a stupid idol set up on its pedestal of pride for men to fall down and worship with idiot fear and wonder at the thing themselves have made, and which, without that fear and wonder, would in itself ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... even i' this warl'.An' whan ye think o' the ages to come, truly it wad seem to maitter little what intellec' a man may start wi'. I kenned mysel' ane 'at in ord'nar' affairs was coontit little better nor an idiot,'maist turn a prophet whan he gaed doon upo' his knees. Ay! fowk may lauch at what they haena a glimp o', but it'll be lang or their political economy du sae muckle for sic a man! The economist wad wuss his neck had been thrawn ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... "No, idiot. We both know that Ryter is headed for Rehabilitation. Fifteen years or so of it, as a guess. The problem is little Reetal who has now learned a good deal more than she was ever intended to learn. Does she head ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... him. Oh, god of love, was this his precious Jennie? Had he made an irrevocable ass of himself over this lump of ancient human flesh? A hue of brilliant scarlet suffused his countenance. Oh, what an imbecile, a simple, drivelling idiot, he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... "I pretended to be half an idiot, and so got safely out, though I fell into Sheridan's hands. He suspected me at first, but at last he thought I was what I looked—a fool. He wanted to know where you lived, but I wouldn't tell him. I told him you told me not to tell anyone, 'cause, if I did, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... have only inflamed the violent passions of the person whom he addressed, when Dougal threw himself between them, and in his own language, which he spoke with a fluency and rapidity strongly contrasted by the slow, imperfect, and idiot-like manner in which he expressed himself in English, poured forth what I doubt not was a very animated pleading ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... up meat, that his stomach was satisfied with only the smell thereof. The choleric cook demanded of him to pay for his breakfast; the poor man denied having had any, and the controversy was referred to the deciding of the next man that should pass by, who chanced to be the most notorious idiot in the whole city: he, on the relation of the matter, determined that the poor man's money should be put between two empty dishes, and the cook should be recompensed with the jingling of the poor man's money, as he was satisfied ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... "ANOTHER IDIOT" wishes to know if there is such an appointment in the gift of the Crown as the office of "Court Sweep." Why, certainly; and, on State occasions, he wears the Court Soot, and his broom is always waiting for him at the entrance! At Balmoral and Osborne there is a beautiful sweep leading ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... from every book in the national library: to have these extracts superbly printed by Didot;—and to ... BURN ALL THE BOOKS FROM WHICH THEY WERE TAKEN!" It never occurred to this revolutionising idiot that there might be a thousand copies of the same work, and that some hundreds of these copies might be OUT of the national library! Of course, Mercier laughed at the project, and made the projector ashamed of it.[98] Robespierre, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Ye blundering idiot!" he whispered, "she's a half-breed. Och! But's time y'r eastern greenness was tannin' a good western russet! Let her follow with bowed head, or you'll have the whole pack on ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... lurking in the eye of the reader, whose only resource against the outbreak of his own laughter lay in lauding, from time to time, most vehemently, the sublimity of the verses;—particularly some that began "'Tis thus the goiter'd idiot of the Alps,'—and then adding, at the close of every such eulogy, "I assure you when I was in the Drury Lane Committee, much worse things were ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... like a perfect idiot," I remarked, with becoming modesty, as I surveyed myself in the glass. I did not think so, all the same. Indeed, I was saying to myself that I had had no idea I could look so well. Yet, after all, it is other ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... "'Run, you idiot!' I yells to Struthers as I jammed the youngster back into the cabin. All of a sudden the gas went out of him and he broke, hanging to me like ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... that, idiot. Our spies in Baghdad advised us yesterday. That's why I pretend to be with ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... very trying time. Near Messines my film suddenly ran out. I had to reload. This was anything but an easy operation. I unscrewed my camera from the gun socket, and in doing so had a near escape from doing a head-dive to earth. Like an idiot, I had unfastened my waist-strap, and in reaching over the fuselage my camera nearly over-balanced, the aeroplane contributing to this result by making a sudden dive in order to ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... to you for your intended civilities to my liking Madame Capello; but as I never liked any thing of her, but her prettiness, for she is an idiot, I beg you will dispense with them on my account: I should even be against your renewing your garden assemblies. you would be too good to pardon the impertinence of the Florentines, and would very likely expose yourself to more: besides, the absurdities ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Here we are at the Castle Hill—and that idiot Aunt Fulda has forgotten her carriage. Shall I remind her? There is still time to turn back. No, don't trouble yourself. 'Let them alone and they'll come home.' I wish I had no memory. It is a perfect nuisance to have to think in inverted commas ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether they are Lepidoptera or Steptopotera; but as for telling how you can get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike them—why Linnaeus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did. These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a great deal. He always kept up his exercise; and I never heard that he was ill. If any other man was ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... cart rattled up bearing a male citizen, who was too drunk to know what he was doing, or even to do anything. He was lying on his back in the cart, with feet and hands up, hurrahing at the top of his voice. This disgusting, drunken idiot was picked up out of the cart by two men, who put a ticket into his hand, carried him to the window (he was too drunk to stand), shoved him up and raised his arm into the aperture; his vote received, he was tumbled ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... redeem everything: and never does the impetuosity of lovers who have been caressing each other the whole evening with flaming gaze fail to do it! Yes, you can bring her home in triumph, she has now nobody but you, you have one more chance, that of taking your wife by storm! But no, idiot, stupid and indifferent that you are, you ask her, "What is ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... screamed Violet, raising her face, which became suddenly and violently flushed. "O good Lord! Are you a temperance preacher? Teach your granny! Bad for me? Say another word, and I'll box your ears for you! You braying jackass!—you snivelling idiot! Who makes the Brilliant draw? You or I? Tell me that, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... juvenile eccentricities, and aim at the appearance of a decided enemy to free trade in the article of Wild Oats. Accordingly, as the first step towards respectability, I eschewed coloured waistcoats, and gave out that I was a marrying man. No man under forty, unless he is a positive idiot, will stand forth as a theoretical bachelor. It is all nonsense to say that there is any thing unpleasant in being courted. Attention, whether from male or female, tickles the vanity, and although I have a reasonable, and, I hope, not unwholesome regard, for the gratification of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Meek little wolf in lamb's wool! Do you dream that you can deceive me? Do you think me an idiot, to be cajoled by your low-spoken denials of a fact which I know? A fact, to the truth of which I will swear till every ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... he'd think me a presumptuous idiot," said Austen. "Politicians are not idealists anywhere—the very word has become a term of reproach. Undoubtedly your father desires to set things right as much as any one else—probably more ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... been watching anxiously from the corrals, came across the yard to the veranda. He was dressed for riding, and he had a gun on his hip. Overland scowled. "You little idiot," he said, "when your Uncle Jack's brains get ossified, just give the sad news to the press. You're jest itchin' to get in a muss and get plugged. I ain't. I figure to ride down the Moonstone Trail, steerin' the Guzzuh with one hand and smellin' ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... far from being an idiot. Before leaving the camp he had several bullet-holes shot through his coat. He arranged also with a friendly Oneida Indian to follow and confirm his tale. Thus prepared, he set out for St. Leger's camp. Reaching it, he ran breathlessly among the Indians, seemingly in a state ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Hatchett, alias, a Fig for my Godsonne, or crake me this Nutt, or, a Countrie Cuffe, that is a sound Box of the Eare for the Idiot Martin, to hold his Peace: seeing the Patch will take no warning; written by one that dares call a Dog a Dog. Rare. Printed by Anoke and Astile ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... lost, and they are wandering helplessly in search of us. They will go on and on into the farther recesses of this awful place, and lie down at last to die—giving their lives for ours. There, there, I am babbling like some idiot. Forward, my men; there is no time to ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... will keep her occupied until six. But from now till then nix on the news. Take her out on the fool pond, walk her up Sunset Hill, quarrel with her, make love to her, anything, so she won't guess. I don't dare go near her. I'd give it away in a minute, I'm such an idiot. Besides I can't think of anything but Larry. Gee!" The boy swept his hand across his eyes. "Last time I saw him I consigned him to the devil because he told me some perfectly true things about myself and tried to give me some perfectly sound advice. And now—I'm ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... from school. When he appeared, "had a most delightful thrill shoot through her." The first impulse to fly was conquered; she never thought a boy beautiful before. They often met after dark, wrote; finally she grew tired of him because she could not make him feel deeply, sent him off, called him an idiot, and then soliloquized on the "most dreadful grief of her life." The latter stages of their acquaintance she occasionally used to beat him, but his attraction steadily waned. Once later, as she was suffering from a dull, irresolute feeling due to want of a companion ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... poor woman, she being unable to accustom herself to it, was compelled to inform her relations, who thereupon came to the house. When they arrived, the husband declared to them that his wife was an idiot, that she displeased him in every possible way, and made his life almost unbearable; that she would wake him out of his first sleep, never came to the door when he knocked, but would leave him out in the rain and the cold, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... development is seen in comparing the world-renowned philosopher Humboldt and the idiot figured by Spurzheim. The contrast of coronal and basilar development is seen in comparing the benevolent negro Eustace, who received the Monthyon prize for virtue in France with the skull of the cannibal Carib, as figured by Lawrence. As to the coronal or ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... here he comes." And, as the master spoke, a young man of some nineteen years of age came up the hatchway. He had a cloak and a sword under his arm, and was dressed in deep mourning, and called out, "Gumbo, you idiot, why don't you fetch the baggage out of the cabin? Well, shipmate, our journey is ended. You will see all the little folks to-night whom you have been talking about. Give my love to Polly, and Betty, and Little Tommy; not forgetting my duty to Mrs. Franks. I thought, yesterday, the voyage would never ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had, according to orders, been sent to him from town, under his assumed name, "Gibson." He ate but little, and that mechanically; and seemed to feel, for once, little or no interest in his newspaper. He had never paid the least attention to the eulogia upon Miss Aubrey of the idiot Titmouse, nor of Snap, of whom he entertained but a very little higher opinion than of Titmouse. One thing was clear, that from that moment Miss Aubrey formed a new element in Mr. Gammon's calculations; and for aught I know, may occasion very different results ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... and the new Burgrave of Ghent, and the escapades of Count Baldwin. He had lived much among gentlefolk and kept his ears open.... She felt stronger and cheerfuller than she had been for days. That rat-hunt had warmed her blood. She was a long way from death in spite of the cackle of idiot chirurgeons, and there was much savour still in the world. There was her son, too, the young Philip.... Her eye saw clearer, and she noted the sombre magnificence of the great room, the glory of the brocade, the gleam of silver. Was she not the richest woman in all Bruges, aye, and in all Hainault ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... normal one." Sir James Crichton-Browne speaks of the great numbers of feeble-minded girls, wholly unfit to become mothers, who return to the work-house year after year to bear children, "many of whom happily die, but some of whom survive to recruit our idiot establishments and to repeat their mothers' performances." Tredgold points out that the number of children born to the feeble-minded is abnormally high. Feeble-minded women "constitute a permanent menace to the race and one which becomes serious at a time when the decline of the birth-rate ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... 'prentice stage of reviewing, could make columns of fun out of it. The general theme is age-old, being not different from the themes of most other novels in that respect. A half-idiotic spendthrift (he ends as very nearly an actual idiot) not merely wastes his own property but practically embezzles that of his wife and daughter; the wife dies and the daughter is left alone with an extravagant establishment, a father practically non compos, not a penny in her pocket after she has paid his doctor, and a selfish baronet-uncle who ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... boy, very nervous and conscience-stricken, who thought he ought to be at prayers, crept quietly in. Dr. Turner looked up and said, in the same tone as he was reading, 'Go out—go out! Somebody put that idiot out!' Then he went on with his reading exactly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... district court of the county wherein he has any property, for the purpose of selling or otherwise controlling that and all other property of such minor within the state, unless a guardian has previously been appointed under the preceding section. The foreign guardian of any non-resident idiot, lunatic or person of unsound mind may be appointed the guardian of such ward by the district court in like manner and with like effect in all cases where the foreign guardian of a non-resident minor could be appointed the ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... as best I could, though they were utterly unable to fathom my reserve. What would they have said had they known of the minister's offers with regard to my laboratory and my jesting reply, in which I asked for a crocodile skin to hang from my ceiling! They would have taken me for an idiot. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... in numbers, whether it's the number of fools or anything else," he said. "One idiot's a risky proposition, but two or three in a bunch can watch each other. Come on, Judge, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bed of cane-work and mats, and, lighting my pipe, went outside, walked down to the beach, and seating myself on a canoe, looked out upon the wide expanse of ocean, heaving under a dark and lowering sky, and wondered moodily why I was ever such an idiot as to take charge of a trading station on such a God-forsaken place as Tarawa Island in the ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... will get well, I think; but I shouldn't wonder if mental complications followed. I have seen cases like that at the Bicetre, where operations on an alcoholic patient produced paresis. The man got well," he added harshly, as if kicking aside some dull formula; "but he was a hopeless idiot." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... latter end of the duke's life, it was even said that the seal of the finance department was in the hands of his valet-de-chambre, who, in his master's frequent absences, was in the habit of issuing drafts upon the receiver-general. As the valet- dechambre was described as an idiot who did not know how to read, it may be believed that the finances fell into confusion. Certainly, if such statements were to be accepted, it would be natural enough that for every million dollars expended by the king in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to mock with the aspersion of madness Cast on the inspired by the tame high finisher of paltry blots Indefinite or paltry rhymes, or paltry harmonies, Who creeps into state government like a caterpillar to destroy; To cast off the idiot questioner, who is always questioning, But never capable of answering; who sits with a sly grin Silent plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave; Who publishes doubt and calls it knowledge; whose science is despair, Whose pretence to knowledge is envy, whose ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... pleasant day," I said, because one is always expected to announce some result of observation of the atmosphere. It shows at once whether or not one is an idiot. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... Her case might now degenerate into one of common apathy such as Cutter had seen hundreds of times. There would be nothing to be done but to try the usual methods, with the usual unsatisfactory results, abandoning her at last to the care of her relations and nurses as a hopeless idiot. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... know, Net—I begin to think he's a beastly idiot. That fellow was bragging to me the other day that he bullied his sisters into fagging for him when he was at home. I think that's enough for me." And so holidays again came to an end, to Nettie's secret delight. She hated parting with ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... score had stood at one, while we were at two, and besides, we had had two by honours; as they made four by cards, they went out—and so did I—not without an obbligato accompaniment on muted strings; unwhispered whispers of "confounded blockhead!" "blundering idiot!" "well, of all the born fools!" and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... been blessed with such love as this, and who could have cast it away from him, can have been nothing but an idiot. On that ground—though I dared not confess it to Eunice—I forgave ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... were these faces, so malignant their staring eyes, and shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not occur to Mr. Bessel to attempt intercourse with these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms, they seemed, children of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden the boon of being, whose only expressions and gestures told of the envy and craving for life that was their one ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... muttered something in a rather surly fashion, whereupon the gentleman, who had not yet spoken, leaned forward, and said angrily, "You told us you knew this neighbourhood. You are an idiot!" ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... theorists had been more tolerant toward other people's inventions (they never invent anything themselves); but with regard to the one upon which he was now engaged, they had, with complete unanimity, decided that the thing could not be done, and charitably called every man an idiot or a lunatic who ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... who came bowing to her was a young man for whom she had a special dislike,—"a conceited idiot," she called him to her companions, "with an offensive familiarity of manner." In reality, Tom Jordan was a well-meaning young man, though rather silly, but his vanity and conceit happened to jar upon the same marked characteristics in ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... think she has one of the best understandings I ever met, and more knowledge of the world. I may be charmed with the French, but your ladyship must not expect that they will fall in love with me. Without affecting to lower myself, the disadvantage of speaking a language worse than any idiot one meets, is insurmountable: the silliest Frenchman is eloquent to me, and leaves me embarrassed and obscure. I could name twenty other reasons, if this one was not sufficient. As it is, my own defects are the sole cause of my not liking Paris entirely: the constraint I am ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the masters who, sipping a glass of punch, maintained that only an idiot could imagine that a human brain could remember at the same time: the three thousand dates mentioned in history; the names of the five thousand towns situated in all parts of the world; the names of six hundred plants and seven hundred animals; the bones ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... went to the Richtberg the very next day to see the place. There stood the executioner's house, from which the whole street was probably named. One wretched hovel succeeded another. Yonder before a door, Wilhelm the idiot, on whom the city boys played their pranks, smiled into vacancy just as foolishly as he had done twenty years ago, here lodged Kathrin, with the big goitre, who swept the gutters; in the three grey huts, from which hung ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wilfully cruel; no, he was simply and irremediably a heedless idiot of a man, just as every married man is, for a spell, at least. But it broke Em's ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... table with a faint smile. "Don't be a bear, Aubrey. It's all very well for you. You have Stephens to lather your chin and to wash your hands, but thanks to that idiot Marie, I have to ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Henry VI., was not only an invalid but almost an idiot. It is said that he was wan like an albino, and that the awe men had of him was partly that which is felt for a monster of mental deficiency. His Christian charity was of the kind that borders on anarchism, and the stories about him recall the Christian fools in the great anarchic novels of Russia. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... I was I sat mute, and looked as blank as an idiot. In all this description of hers I was struck by the resemblance between her vision and mine; but I was dreaming of some one else. She looked at me a moment, and took her hand away. She seemed hurt, and I thought I saw her wiping her eyes. I could not ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... in maintaining his dignity, he became ungratefully haughty at a moment when haughtiness must bring on him at once derision and ruin. He resented the friendly intervention which might have saved him. Was ever King so used? Was he a child, or an idiot, that others must think for him? Was he a petty prince, a Cardinal Furstemburg, who must fall if not upheld by a powerful patron? Was he to be degraded in the estimation of all Europe, by an ostentatious patronage which he had never asked? Skelton was recalled to answer for his conduct, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will, if able to walk across the road into the chapel, and will forget no word of the service, and make no blunder in the ceremony. To you he seems to be an idiot, but he is not so, though long suffering has made his mind to wander strangely, when he sees strange faces. There are many who have been called to a more active sphere of duty for their King and country than that poor Cure, but none who have suffered more acutely ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... growing angry.) The foul fiends of madness have possessed this doddering idiot. (Majestically.) ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return—the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame—shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte |
