"Idiotic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if the Chan Santa Cruz sentinels had seen that idiotic Jake, and followed him in order to learn where we were hiding," he said when Neal asked why they had left the ravine during the hottest portion of the day. "If the Indians should besiege us here, it would only be a few hours ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... Mr. Wooster. I am ashamed to say that there was a time when I was like other men, a slave to the idiotic convention which we call Class Distinction. But, since ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... copied the item, and several made editorial comment upon it as being the most shocking occurrence of the kind ever known on the Pacific Coast. Of course rival Virginia City papers at once denounced the item as a "cruel and idiotic hoax." They showed how the publication of such "shocking and reckless falsehoods" disgraced and injured the State, and they made it as "sultry" as possible for the ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Nothing made him happier than to be seen whispering mysteriously in corners with the prettiest woman in the room. He did not seem to perceive that for one woman silly or vain or vulgar enough to be flattered by his idiotic persecution, a dozen would loathe the very sight of him, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... not. He would report it to the governor, who, in his idiotic love for monarchy, would adjudge her responsible for a deed ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... insult the intelligence of the reader with these idiotic details but for the reasons stated, and additionally, that they carry conviction with them to thousands of minds, honest doubtless, but which are accustomed to grovel in superstition, and falsehood, which they are unable to test ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... phantasmal quality passed into the concrete familiar. There was the old glass still, with my notes on the albumens stuck in the corner of the frame, my old everyday suit of clothes pitched about the floor. And yet it was not so real after all. I felt an idiotic persuasion trying to creep into my mind, as it were, that I was in a railway carriage in a train just stopping, that I was peering out of the window at some unknown station. I gripped the bed-rail firmly to reassure myself. "It's clairvoyance, perhaps," I said. "I must write to the Psychical ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... surprising things in regard to the subjects whom he brought before us. In connection with each case he cried and carried on at a great rate, and finally insisted that he was going to bring me a raw egg as an offering of friendship, which he did. One of his subjects was his cousin, who was both idiotic and a deaf-mute. My impression was that there were several cases of deaf-mutism in the village. One man, whenever any of our party spoke to him, or in any way turned our attention to him, piously and vigorously crossed himself, grimaced and gesticulated as if ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... topsyturvydom, and failed entirely to see the real picture of a great and eminently sensible people; so in the case of primitive men we have been, and even still are, far too prone to catalogue their cruelties and obscenities and idiotic superstitions, and to miss the sane and balanced setting of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... de l'evolutionisme de Hegel-Hartmann, au nom des principes de Schopenhauer"). What a writer! Like a cuttle-fish in water, every movement produces a cloud of ink which shrouds his thought in darkness. And what a doctrine! A thoroughgoing pessimism, which regards the world as absurd, "absolutely idiotic," and reproaches Hartmann for having allowed the evolution of the universe some little remains of logic, while, on the contrary, this evolution is eminently contradictory, and there is no reason anywhere except ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for; unless, perhaps," Lady Grace went on, "your own peculiar one, as I understand you, of playing football with the old benighted traditions and attributions you everywhere meet: in fact I think you said the old idiotic superstitions." ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... with us!" exclaimed Hadad excitedly at last. "A little, little man—hardly any larger than Mrs. Ticknor—but a David against Goliath! And would you believe it?—there is an idiotic rumour that Lawrence has returned and is hiding in Damascus! The French are really disturbed about it. They have cabled their Foreign Office and received an official denial of the rumour; but official denials carry no weight nowadays. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... conceive," he wrote to M. de Constant, "how so agreeable a nation can at the same time be so ferocious, how it can so easily pass from the opera to the St. Bartholomew, be at one time made up of dancing apes and at another of howling bears, be so ingenious and so idiotic both together, at one time so brave and at another so dastardly." Voltaire fancied himself at a comedy still; the hour of tragedy was at hand. He and his friends were day by day weakening the foundations ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... have preferred something in a lower key; at least I thought I should till we got here. Now I see that this place is idiotic unless one is perfectly happy; and that then it's-as ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the censorship of the press has been variously estimated. The Index was early dubbed sica destricta in omnes scriptores and Sarpi called it "the finest secret ever discovered for applying religion to the purpose of making men idiotic." Milton thundered against the censorship in England as "the greatest discouragement and affront that can be offered to learning and learned men." The evil of the system of Rome was, in his opinion, double, for, as ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of horses with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker's assistant, who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic solemnity by dragging down the corners of the mouth. She ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... flatters a man to have a mistress—it flatters him, it amuses him, and then it tires him. But turn to the other picture and look at the woman of the stage. There is not one who has not at least five or six love affairs on the carpet; idiotic follies, causing bankruptcy, scandal, and suicides. Men love them; yes, they love these women because these women know how to inspire love, and because they are loving women. Yes, indeed, they know how ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... sorrow to him, evidently brought joy to her. Was she, then, after all, a mere shallow flirt? Had all her love been feigned? Was it possible that she could so soon forget? With these thoughts, and others like them, this idiotic youth ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... pardon—I cannot imagine what I was thinking of," he said, making the most idiotic excuse current ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... everything for which the world claimed it had been struggling and praying. But alongside of this revolt on his part had grown up an immense pity and belief in humanity as a mass—struggling, worm-like, aspiring, idiotic, heroic. The thought of it made him uncomfortable and at the same ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... shed. For the moment they stood disconcerted, while the agitated hen clucked alarm at her offspring. The pig, squealing in a high treble, was standing with snout twitching and front feet apart, a picture of idiotic confusion. Perhaps the hen, with the superior feminine knowledge of her age, understood something of the situation, and appreciated the young porker's inability. Anyway, she took the initiative in aggression, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... which is accordingly outside the sphere of practical politics altogether as things are at present. The same men who spouted infinite mischief because a totally unforeseen and unavoidable epidemic of measles killed some thousands of children in South Africa, who, for some idiotic or wicked vote-catching purpose, attempted to turn that epidemic to the permanent embitterment of Dutch and English, these same men allow thousands and thousands of avoidable deaths of English children close ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... with easily detected traces of remembered harmonies: very different from the strange, weird improvisations of every day. One would fancy that the mere attempt to bring this mysterious genius within him in bodily presence before the outer world woke, too, the idiotic nature to utter its reproachful, unable cry. Nor is this the only bar by which poor Tom's soul is put in mind of its foul bestial prison. After any too prolonged effort, such as those I have alluded to, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... probable replies that the Jinnee would meet with in the course of his inquiries. "I'm afraid he won't be particularly impressed by the politeness of a London crowd," he thought; "but at least they'll convince him that I am not exactly a prominent citizen. Then he'll give up this idiotic match of his—I don't know, though. He's such a pig-headed old fool that he may stick to it all the same. I may find myself encumbered with a Jinneeyeh bride several centuries my senior before I know where I ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... only conceivable, not also possible. These Judges could do it—their speeches, their actions, that Charge, this Indictment, proves all that—but you cannot;—not you. You are the Representatives of the People, the Country, not idiotic in ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... the lawyer for the defence that I should have to withdraw the charge against Hazel Rath at the next police court proceedings if I did not arrest Nepcote in the meantime. I do not want any dramatic developments—as the idiotic newspapers call it-in my cases. There is a certain amount of public sympathy ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... can do to manage it. But I mean to have a jolly good try. I'll show those girls I can do something, though I am the youngest! Oh, I say! I've only just remembered that Winnie'll be the under-mistress. I'll have to call her 'Miss Gascoyne' whenever I speak to her. How perfectly idiotic! I'm sure I shall laugh. I wonder if Miss Roscoe's told her yet? What a surprise it would be for her to come into the room and find ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... day I may be able to tell you all of it. But I can't do it now. You must take my word for it, Bob, that I haven't done a single thing that I didn't believe, at the time, I was compelled to do. That sounds idiotic, I know; but ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... idiotic enough to repeat the affront, on which, and as though a perfect understanding as to what was to be done subsisted among the three sailors, old Joe, Plum, and Robins fell upon Sloper, and, lifting him up in their arms, ran with him to the boat, into which they flung him, paying not the least heed ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... said. "I have never knowingly done you any wrong in thought, or word, or deed; all you have said to me to-day has been ridiculously wrong-headed; but never mind. Stop crying, do, and don't let us have any more idiotic jealousy. Why, it was Lady Galbraith who sent me the flowers and fruit, with a kind message of apology because she has not been able to call. Why should ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... underpinning of the bridge, and nothing was left but a few ties, the rails and the stringers. A half witted boy, who lived in Dunraven, had been fishing that day like "Simple Simon," and came tramping up to the office, telling Miss Marsh, in an idiotic way, that Peach Creek bridge had washed out. Just then she heard me "OS" the flyer and her office was the next one to mine. As the flyer did not stop at Dunraven, the baggageman and helper went home at six o'clock and she was ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... procession in the second act where you lost your head and said it was the finest music ever written. And those girls in white, waving palms in front of the hero—What's-his-name. There are some women who are born to do that and nothing else. Thin lips. Fixed idiotic smile. They don't think a bit about what they're doing. They're thinking about themselves all the time. They simply don't care a damn about the hero, or about the audience, or anything, and they scarcely pretend to. Arrogance isn't the word. It's something ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... buffeted by the torrent, Hilda had seen a well-dressed epileptic youth, in charge of an elderly woman, approaching the station. He had passed slowly close by her, as she modestly waited in her hasty mourning, and she had had a fearful vision of his idiotic greenish face supported somehow like a mask at the summit of that shaky structure of limbs. He had indeed stared at her with his apelike eyes. She had watched him, almost shuddering, till he was lost amid ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of home-sickness is of essential significance and must not be undervalued. It has been much studied and the notion has been reached that children mainly (in particular during the period of puberty), and idiotic and weak persons, suffer much from home-sickness, and try to combat the oppressive feeling ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... in that blond cranium, what romance-begotten dreams of intrigue and adventure! but they sufficed, when presently Ann Veronica went out into the darkling street again, to inspire a flitting, dogged pursuit, idiotic, exasperating, indecent. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... to bestowing his caresses on my columbine shoes, my tights, and my wigs. And I care not that for it, you understand! Not the slightest familiarity, and he began to grow thin over it, fell ill, and almost became idiotic. And while he implored me, and promised to marry me, with his eyes full of tears, I shouted with laughter; I reminded him of how he had beaten, abused, and humiliated me, and had often made me wish for death. And as soon as he left me, he emptied bottles of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... ascertain as far as possible the prime movers in the intrigue which pointed to Colonel Mashin and a gang of officers of the Sixth Regiment. All these regicides received Russian pay, for King Alexander had become dangerous to Russia, because of his flirting with Austria. Besides, his own idiotic behavior and the flagrant indiscretions of Queen Draga had by no means endeared ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... the window the spring was coming on, in waves of tree-bloom and bright grass; the birds bickered sweetly in the sun-patches; everything was reaching on tiptoe for the delicious thrill of May—and she was bounding Connecticut! It was idiotic. What was a knowledge of the uninteresting limits of her native State compared to that soft fresh wind on her cheek, that indescribable odor of ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... "Conditorei," &c., and yet it is the heart of tropical Africa. None of the natives, strange to say, talk German; all pigeon English. The Hausa boys are splendid chaps, as different from the Duala boys or Sierra Leone boys as chalk from cheese. Smile and make an idiotic but beautiful remark, they rush with a roar of laughter for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... at him and called him "Professor Walter," or when his sisters scolded him for his "idiotic groping among the bed-curtains," or when his mother punished him for eating up the rice that she intended to serve again "to-morrow"—then it was always Leentje who restored the equilibrium of his soul and banished his cares, just as, with her inimitable stitches, she banished the "triangles" ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... it may lead him to make the acquaintance of something entirely different. But who thinks of death at his age? Gustave wishes to know life, and when a fit of coughing interrupts him in one of his idiotic bursts of laughter, his comrades at the Gateux Club tell him that he has swallowed the wrong way. Wretched Gustave, so ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... three richest men in South Africa; and all he's got will come to me some day. As it is he gives me an allowance bigger than those of all the other men in the regiment put together. I hate the Service and its idiotic discipline. I want to be free—to go where money ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... Coates to move that Classics is a nobler study than Mathematics.' Amendment proposed: 'Instead of "nobler" say "viler."' Proposed by Bosher, further amendment: 'Instead of "nobler" say "beastlier."' Proposed by Telson—('Hear, hear,' from Telson)—further amendment: 'Instead of "nobler" say "more idiotic."' You see it can easily be worked, and when we've done with 'nobler' we can start on the 'is' and amend it to 'are,' do you twig? There'll have to be a division over each. I say ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... refining, so that he may get rid of the dross. I don't blame him; I blame Tolstoi. For instance, when I asked him if he had patented his liquid city invention, he said he did not wish to make a profit from his discovery, but intended it for the good of humanity at large. Imagine such an idiotic ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... of girls was inalienably connected in his memory with unnecessary washing up; with boring parties; with stiff collars; with unending polishing of shoes; humiliating walks down the avenue, stammering, idiotic phrases, while from every window the eyes of malicious friends were set in mockery. Girls never slid down the banisters or fell out of apple trees, or snapped garter snakes, or raised white mice or collected splinters ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... about real things, things worth millions of sols, and you want him to talk about that idiotic fantasy!" ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... miserable old miser must have been idiotic; for soon forgetting what he had but just told us of his utter toothlessness, he was so smitten with the pearly mouth of Hohora, one of our attendants (the same for whose pearls, little King Peepi had taken such a fancy), that he made the following overture to purchase its contents: ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... being watched. Presently we came to a place where there was a stone pedestal standing. It wasn't exactly a pillar—it wasn't high enough. And it was too high for a seat. Well, he stared at this for a moment; then he looked around again, very cautiously, and then—it sounds idiotic, but he began to prod the turf with his stick. At first he did it just casually, here and there: but, after a little, he started prodding at regular intervals, methodically. The ground was quite soft, and his stick seemed to go in like ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... the village and county while we live, but that to learn anything about the state and nation we must wait until we are dead. There are too many in the village who are familiar with both state and nation, and who have studied their laws, for this to be anything but idiotic. ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... provides that "When any passenger arriving on board any ship is either lunatic, idiotic, deaf, dumb, blind, or infirm, and is likely to become a charge upon the public," the owner, master, or charterer of the ship shall be required to enter into a bond in the sum of L100 for every such passenger, the person entering into ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... need in Groostock is a little more good American blood," announced Mr. Blithers, pointedly. "If you are going to cope with the world, you've got to tackle the job with brains and not with that idiotic thing called faith. There's no such thing in these days as charity among men, good will, and all that nonsense. Now, you've got a splendid start in the right direction, Prince. You've got American blood in ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the little wild Porto Santo rabbits. By the standard of the length of skull the capacity (see column 7) is only half of what it ought to have been! I kept this individual animal alive, and it was not unhealthy nor idiotic. This case of the Angora rabbit so much surprised me, that I repeated all the measurements and found them correct. I have also compared the capacity of the skull of the Angora with that of the wild rabbit by other standards, namely, by the length and weight of the body, and by the weight of the limb-bones; ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... to the window between the towers I could see! No, I wouldn't; I couldn't. I should scream—or faint—or do something else idiotic, if I saw Jim Beckett getting out of the car, and his mother flying to meet him. I had never felt like this in my whole life—not in any ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of my season erotic, When Eros was lord of my days, And I loved, with a love idiotic, The Mabels and Madges and Mays; When a purple and passionate lyric Would sing all the night in my head,— I yearned, like the young Mr. Viereck, ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... She's unhappy, and I don't like the life she's leading. Always out at cinematographs and theatres and restaurants, and with a lot of boys who mean no harm, I know—but they're idiotic, they're no good.... Now, when the war's like this and the suffering.... To be always at the cinematograph! But I've lost my authority over her, Ivan Andreievitch. She doesn't care any longer what ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... being simply let alone. So when we consider how easily it can be preserved in Labrador, and how beneficial its preservation is to all concerned, we can understand how the wanton destruction going on there is quite as idiotic as it ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... ascertain it; when I hear him further saying, that meantime he is disposed to make himself very easy in the midst of these uncertainties, and to await the great revelation of the future with philosophical, that is, being interpreted, with idiotic tranquillity, I see that, in point of fact, he has never entered into the question at all; that he has failed to realize the terrible moment of the questions (however they may be decided) of which he speaks with ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... you to show him how to hold his mallet, and then do idiotic things, such as managing to touch ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I couldn't bear to hear you say that your life was slavery. Your life is merely idiotic. Slaves were sturdy, magnificent people who understood massage, and you look as if a powder puff could blast ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... commanded by Capt. Walter H. Maze and the third by Capt. Geo. D. H. Watts. There were about 35 men to the company. In other words, there were but one hundred and five muskets for all of these officers to direct. I have often remarked on what I deemed to be a very idiotic policy pursued by the authorities of the State of New York at this time, and I have believed that Gov. Morgan was equally to blame with Seymour. What I refer to is this. When troops were to be furnished by the State of New York, these governors would, as I understand it, organize new regiments ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... 4) was one of the nicest of the many Australian horses I rode, during my sojourns in India, between the years 1885 and 1891. He was thoroughbred and was the winner of several races on the flat and across country. In those days, the idiotic custom of docking horses had not ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... mother and wretched daughter, as they sat brooding together, in deep silence, by the light of a feeble candle. The mother rocked a while in her easy-chair. The daughter, hands clasped in her lap, sat watching the candlelight in almost idiotic vacancy of gaze. At length she stood up and spoke—slowly, deliberately, and apparently in as calm a mood as she had ever felt in all ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... fixed the time mentally when he would speak Little feathers fluttering for an opportunity to fly away No one has ever been able to find out what her thoughts were Pass half the day in procuring two cakes, worth three sous She was of those who disdain no compliment Such artificial enjoyment, such idiotic laughter Superiority of the man who does nothing over the man who works Terrible revenge she would take hereafter for her sufferings The groom isn't handsome, but the bride's as pretty as a picture The poor must pay for ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... skeetos idiotic? You said people without brains were idiotic, and there isn't any place in ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... his fury had cooled down to a frigid third personality. "Mr. John Ford regrets to inform his late partners that their tender of house, of furniture," however, seemed too inconsistent with the pork-barrel table he was writing on; a more eloquent renunciation of their offer became frivolous and idiotic from a caricature of Union Mills, label and all, that appeared suddenly on the other side of the leaf; and when he at last indited a satisfactory and impassioned exposition of his feelings, the legible addendum of "Oh, ain't you glad you're out of the wilderness!"—the forgotten first line ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... unconscious from a fall, and carried to Burnt Ridge Ranch. But although the unfortunate man's life was saved by the operation, he had only momentarily recovered consciousness—relapsing into a semi-idiotic state, which effectively stopped the discovery of any clue to his friends or his identity. As it was evidently an ACCIDENT, which, in that rude community—and even in some more civilized ones—conveyed a vague impression of some contributary incapacity on the part of the victim, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Larry! No immediate scandal. I haven't any one in view, and living as I do it isn't likely that I shall be tempted by some knightly or idiotic man, who wants to run away with a middle-aged woman and three children. I am anchored safely—at any rate as long as dad lives and your mother, and the children need my good name. Oh!" she broke off suddenly; "don't let us talk any more ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Fried Cat," and so resolved to take his dinner in the gorgeous cafe of The Lorne. While he was waiting for the proper moment to descend thither, he could not get the shoe question out of his mind. Surely, the boot-boy could not have been so idiotic as to have left that ancient, broken-down pair at Littimer's threshold! And yet it was possible. Crombie felt another flush of humility upon his cheeks. Then he wandered off into reverie upon the multifarious errands of all the pairs of boots and shoes that had ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... dead silence. Mrs. Ellmother trembled horribly—her lips dropped apart—her eyes wandered round the room with a stare of idiotic terror. "Is it her ghost tells you that?" she whispered. "Where is her ghost? The room whirls round and round, miss—and the ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... a home!" exclaimed Mrs. V. "I hope you idiotic Kafirs are not going to be so foolhardy as to leave me, leave the Baas, and leave the farm upon which your fathers and mothers lie buried. Do not you know that during this very week numbers of Natives ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... that it was an idiotic question, but it slipped from his tongue before he could catch it. Esme turned her head and looked at him wonderingly. He knew that in the sunlight her eyes were as mistily blue as early meadow violets, but here they looked ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the remembrance of her ruin his future. He had a prospect now of regaining what he had lost when he first met her, and he would be a fool to imperil that prospect by mere foolish sentiment. Moreover, he would leave that wretched whisky alone; it was a weak and idiotic habit to drink as he had been drinking, and the knowledge of it would shock Vera terribly. Men in her world, which was, after all, his own world too, did not do those things. He saw it now. Before the Grimmers came down it had been different. For a time, he had lost all ambition, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... bones were laid in a sarcophagus which may still be seen forming the sill of one of the windows of S. Matteo (on the right as you enter). Over this sarcophagus stood the Bust of Lamba till 1797, when the mob of Genoa, in idiotic imitation of the French proceedings of that age, threw it down. All of Lamba's six sons had fought with him at Meloria. In 1291 one of them, Tedisio, went forth into the Atlantic in company with Ugolino Vivaldi on a voyage of discovery, and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... much of his celebrity to being so; he might have felt that he was rather at the top of fashion than of fame. Fashion soon changes, thought I eagerly to myself; a time will come, and that speedily, when he will be no longer in the fashion; when this idiotic admirer of his, who is still grinning at my side, shall have ceased to mould his style on Byron's; and this aristocracy, squirearchy, and what not, who now send their empty carriages to pay respect to the fashionable corpse, shall have transferred their empty worship to some other animate ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... consent, in their exchanges, to take any offer made to them by their equals, however insufficient it may be, because they fear revenge. Schoolcraft, Information etc., II, 178. As to the effects of cunning, the Tungusi, when they get a glass of brandy from the Russians, grow almost idiotic, and give away their goods at mock-prices in drink. (v. Wrangell, Nachrichten, I, 233.) In the higher stages of civilization, on the other hand, very distinguished people are, by no means, privileged because of their position, in the struggle for prices. In modern ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... traps. He often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic he'll get it out of me. Has he asked you ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... Adam Craig's grandson. His firstborn, Tom, was wild, and went to sea—the old story—leaving wife and unborn child for his father to look to. Six years had gone—the seventh began at New Year's; the boy was born, burnt, saved alive, and not idiotic; its mother had died; Adam's life was outrunning the child's, and he would soon have to leave it to go on by itself; but his faith in his son's return ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of an undeserved asperity!" I returned, "D'ye think the Marchioness, her flighty head crammed with scraps of idiotic romance, would elope without regard for the canons of romance? Not so; depend upon it, a letter was left upon her pin-cushion announcing her removal with you, and in the most approved heroic style arraigning the obduracy of her unsympathetic grandchildren. D'ye think Gerald Allonby will not follow ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... presently the upper part of an old lady's body was projected out of a window upstairs. She flung her arms above her white cap, and began scolding in a thin, cracked voice. The gardener remained glued to the tree looking on, his toothless mouth open in idiotic astonishment, and a little farther up the walk the pretty girl, as if held by a spell, ran to and fro on a small grass plot, wringing her hands and muttering crazily. She did not rush between the combatants. The onslaughts of Lieutenant ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... an idiotic fool when I gave away manhood and its rights," he groaned. "My mother took advantage ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... turning to me, "Old man, when you have a moment I wish you to meet Miss ——." I don't know what she said to me or what I said to her. I can remember that I tried to be clever, and experienced a growing conviction that I was making myself appear more and more idiotic. I am certain, too, that, in spite of my Italian-like complexion, I was as ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... never embarrass Alberian affairs. Her taste is not for Courts or politics." I know this is his true conviction, but he is in love, and he measures her by his own unselfishness. He won my heart strangely. In all my experience, he is the one honest man who is not a little idiotic into the bargain. I deplore the influence of women on such a character, and I would have saved ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... of ordinary humanity, though rarely its spirit; a few even held their own intellectually; but very many, bred in by constant intermarriage of kin, seem to have become as the Swiss cretins,—deformed, idiotic, repulsive. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Budlow?" asked my surprised woman child of Miss Lansdale. But that young woman only reached out one foot to point its toe idly at a creeping green worm and turn its vagrant course. The toe was by no means common-sense, and the heel was simply idiotic. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to headquarters to report. Next morning we sent for the burglar-alarm man, and he came up and explained that the reason the alarm did not 'go off' was that no part of the house but the first floor was attached to the alarm. This was simply idiotic; one might as well have no armor on at all in battle as to have it only on his legs. The expert now put the whole second story on the alarm, charged three hundred dollars for it, and went his way. By and by, one night, I found a burglar in the third story, about to start down a ladder ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... found to be a mistake, hundreds and thousands of the old physicians clung to it, carried around with them, in one pocket, a bottle of jalap, and in the other a rusty lancet, sorry that they couldn't find some patient idiotic enough to allow the experiment to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to a drug store kept by a young man I have known for five or six years. He keeps nearly all drugs in barrels, well watered, and drinks them regularly, and, as he calls it, moderately. That is to say, he has not been sober for five years. Always full, bloated, imbecile, idiotic—has no idea of quiting himself, and would suffer as keenly as any brute is capable of suffering, at the thought of any one else who is in the habit of drinking becoming a sober man. When I went in, he was leaning back in a chair dozing, dreaming, drunk, or as drunk as that kind ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... I'm very sorry, Rosamund. It was idiotic. Of course I hadn't an idea what you were doing, I mean, that you were looking at it. One ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... tower of ivory, the elect, who, in samite robes, traverses moody gardens. Really, I shudder at the idea of ever living again in yonder stewpot of humanity, with all its bad smells. To struggle with the fools for their idiotic prizes is beyond me. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... life is made easy to him, and as a matter of course avoids those in which the fare is poorest and the work most arduous. The honest seeker after work knows nothing of these things and the whole iniquitous and idiotic system is at once a direct bribe to the inveterate work-shirker and a scourge to the honest and industrious poor. I published the result of my own researches into it in the columns of Mayfair now nearly thirty ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... hands loose in her lap. She was wondering whether or not, should she make a vigorous protest, they would send her back to the convent. The Verlat gown was carefully hung in her closet. Last night she had been idiotic. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... evening dress. Teddy retired, left the hotel, and at the opposite pavement engaged a taxicab. He got inside, after instructing the man to be on the alert. He lit a cigarette, telling himself that, by a thousand to one, he had embarked on a futile, idiotic errand. However, within half-an-hour, Bullard appeared in the hotel doorway, and spoke to a braided personage who promptly whistled for a cab. By the time he was on board, the motor of Teddy's cab was running, the chauffeur in ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... mind to betray herself to this good-looking young Englishman who had been sent to her providentially on a very dull day. He would, no doubt, have been frantically interesting if he had not been so idiotic as to fall head ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... I fancied that she called me John, "your soul is at present running the machinery of a very inferior mind and body which plainly shows all the cruel passions and idiotic ideas of the Apeman. This has happened through no fault of your own but is the result of circumstances over which you had no control so that you are not responsible for your present condition. I now say however that you have ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... with the inordinate selfishness and candor of childhood, stamped her foot and whined hatred and fear of the odious being who had rescued her from the depths of sorrow and despair. Fuzzy wriggled himself into an ingratiatory attitude and essayed the idiotic smile and blattering small talk that is supposed to charm the budding intellect of the young. The Child bawled, and was dragged away, hugging her ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... tankard: but, in a Roger Acton's case, lately so wise, temperate, and patient, peculiarly distressing. Its chief features were these. Grace tasted nothing, but mournfully looked on: once only she attempted to expostulate, but was met—not with fierce oaths, nor coarse chidings, nor even with idiotic drivelling—oh no! worse than that she felt: he replied to her with the maudlin drunken promise, "If she'd only be a good girl, and let him bide, he'd give her a big Church-bible, bound in solid gold—that 'ud make the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... queer chap. I was in school three years with him and in some ways he was absolutely idiotic. For a while he'd work all right and then without a word of warning he'd break out and do some of the most absolutely fool ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... by which the lives of Melicent and Perion were guided. Demetrios thought these criteria comely, he had discovered them to be unshakable, and he despairingly knew that as long as he trusted in the judgment heaven gave him they must always appear to him supremely idiotic. To bring Melicent to his own level or to bring himself to hers was equally impossible. There were moments ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... punishment, and as a subtle way of letting him know what she thought of him and his idiotic jingle, she picked up the tablet, found the pencil Johnny had used, and did a little poetizing herself. She could have rhymed it much better, of course, if she had condescended to give any thought whatever to the matter, which ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... conditions it may be rendered luxuriant in its growth, or it may be stunted in its growth. It may barely exist under one class of conditions; it may be distorted and perverted, or it may perish utterly under another. And so in the idiotic mind the ideas of reason may be wanting, or they may be imprisoned by impervious walls of cerebral malformation. In the infant mind the development of reason is yet in an incipient stage. The idea of God ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... to be unlikely or impossible. Sometimes used to indicate that the speaker is interested in accomplishing the task, but believes that the opportunity will not arise. "I'll implement the automatic layout stuff in my copious free time." 2. [Archly] Time reserved for bogus or otherwise idiotic tasks, such as implementation of {chrome}, or the stroking of {suit}s. "I'll get back to him on that feature in my copious ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... her not being so idiotic as to hate Boilers,' he returns with angry emphasis; 'though I cannot answer for her views about Things; really not understanding what Things ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... is he to think of a Hamlet who takes so much trouble to find out whether his uncle is guilty, and then tamely submits to be sent out of the country by him, leaving his father unavenged? What opinion is he to form of the perfectly idiotic, complex conspiracy between the King and Laertes to get rid of Hamlet? Why should Hamlet appeal to him, except as a melodrama with a flabby hero, a feeble heroine, a very small amount of comic relief, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... of it, Aunt. Church of England. But I can see what has happened. You have been allowing old Bones to cloud your judgment. I never knew a fellow so prone to jump to idiotic conclusions. No doubt he heard that I had come in search of Indians and, without a single inquiry, decided ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... cross examiner; how long do you intend remaining so quietly here, the bond slave of this idiotic old man? And what will you do when ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... young fellow you do a lot of thinking,' said Mr. Smith to me as we walked slowly down to the ferry stage in leaving Manly. Of course I indulged in one of my idiotic blushes. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... "You idiotic person, of course there isn't!" Anne replied. "Why on earth you should all talk about a man directly a girl breaks away for a time, I can't imagine. Now sit down there and listen. I brought Julien along because if you bully me too much I shall ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a brave man should, the tears started to his eyes as he explained to me that the capture of the ship would leave him and his frau absolutely penniless in their old age. I endeavoured to soften the blow to him as much as possible by sympathetically murmuring some idiotic platitude about "the fortune of war," but of course it was no good; the poor old fellow simply shook his head and ejaculated—"Ay—the fortune of war! It is all very well for you, young sir, who depend upon war to ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... art of mute expression; his attitude said as clearly as possible: "No, no, you can't call me either ill-mannered or ill-natured. I'm the showman of the occasion, moreover, and I avert myself, leaving you to judge. If there's a thing in life I hate it's this idiotic new fashion of the drawing-room recitation and of the insufferable creatures who practise it, who prevent conversation, and whom, as they're beneath it, you can't punish by criticism. Therefore what I'm doing's only too magnanimous—bringing these benighted women here, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... were gone now—exposing me in this cruel way," said Rosa, angry with herself for having said an idiotic thing, and furious with him for having made ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... fish (perch) from Mofwe, and a large basket of dried cassava. I have taken lunars several times, measuring both sides of the moon about 190 times, but a silly map-maker may alter the whole for the most idiotic ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... authors, were prepared to trample down all good manners in the pursuit of utilitarian knowledge. The fact is, I begin to think that you have so muddled your head with mathematics, and with grubbing into those idiotic old books about political economy (he he!), that you scarcely know how to behave. Really, it is about time for you to take to some open-air work, so that you may clear away the cobwebs ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... the sheet, the house resounded with roars of laughter. The subject, however, was deaf to all of the noise. He was absorbed in his courtship, and he continued to hug the broom, and exhibit in his features that idiotic smile that one sees only upon the faces of lovers and bridegrooms. "All the world loves a lover," as the saying is, and all the world loves to laugh ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... think servants are so idiotic. They can't find her because she happens to be out of her own room. I would go and hunt her up myself, but really the fatigue of this day has ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... see you," she replied coolly. "What in the world put that in your head? Haven't you everything here a man could want? That's exactly what they were talking about; it's so—so idiotic. Those younger girls ought to be smacked and put to bed, with their one-piece swimming-suits and shimmying. They give ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to her with Marion's telegram in my hand and a falsely contrite expression on my face. 'I'm so awfully sorry, Gladys, but a most unforeseen thing has happened,' I said. 'Marion is coming to-day, and she'll have to take your room. Isn't it an idiotic situation?' ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... Cousin Tom must needs begin upon the maid, as if she were a child, or idiotic; and say what a good housekeeper his little maid was to him, and how she could do so many things; and the Duke took it all with courtesy, yet did not encourage it, as if he understood her ways better than her father did—which was, very likely, ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... was well worth seeing, but I think what this gentleman has just told us is no less curious. You can always find—at Strasburg, Cologne, or Milan—churches or cathedrals to equal the chapel of Brou; but where will you find an administration idiotic enough to destroy such a masterpiece, and a mayor clever enough to turn it into a barn? A thousand thanks, captain. Here are ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... form our ideas of the 'brownies,' 'bogles,' and other fanciful creations of a more superstitious age. Their heads, unlike those of dwarfs, are small and not ill-looking, but with very low foreheads and a general conformation strongly confirmatory of certain fundamental assertions of Phrenology. Idiotic they are not; but their intellect and language are those of children of three or four years, to whom their gait also assimilates them; but they have none of childhood's reserve or shyness, are inquisitive and restless, and articulate ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... can cling to a helpless, idiotic, deformed boy for fourteen years, and feed him mouth to mouth! Explain that a mother can sit up night and day, day and night, with a sick child! Look at those deep-set eyes, sorrow-sunken, their care-wornness, and tell me what is this Love that ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... on," he ordered. "I don't want you catching cold from idiotic carelessness, and I won't have you going sick on my hands. For the first and last time I'll admit that I don't enjoy driving you like a cursed galley-slave. But I'll do it, and do a thorough job of it, if you ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... was rather fond of strong drink. It must not, however, be supposed that he was a drunkard, in the ordinary sense at least of that term. No, he was never seen to stagger homeward, or to look idiotic: but, being gifted with a robust frame and finely-strung nerves, a very small quantity of alcohol sufficed to rouse within him the spirit of combativeness, inducing him sometimes to say and do things which afterwards could ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... said he, "and I won't protest any more while you're in this mood. Bear with me if I seem idiotic to-night—I've been burning old letters, and that always ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... rejected, she tries to drown herself, she dies. The sequence of ideas is in Dickens's vein; but read the tale, and I think you will see how little the thing is overdone, how simple and unforced it is, compared with analogous persons and scenes in the work of the English master. The idiotic yell of "plagiarism" has been raised, of course, by critical cretins. M. Daudet, as I understand what he says in "Trente Ans de Paris," had not read Dickens at all, when he wrote "Froment Jeune"—certainly had not read "Our Mutual Friend." But there is something of Dickens's genius ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... contortions of its body. If matters grow still worse, the child becomes unable to put out its tongue, it swallows with difficulty, it loses not only the power of distinct articulation but even the faculty of speech, while the mind itself becomes weakened, the child seems half idiotic, and even though the movements lessen in violence, power over the limbs is lost for the time, and they seem almost paralysed. Happily cases so severe are very rare, and it is rarer still for them to have a fatal termination. ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... retaliate, but went on without taking any notice of you. When you tried to shoot us down, we took some slight action, but did not kill anyone and are now discussing the situation. Listen carefully now, and remember—it is very possible that the next craft you attack in such utterly idiotic fashion will, without any more warning than you gave, blow this whole planet into a ball ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... is a level flight, performed on round, open wings, which beat the air vertically. This flight of ecstasy during the song season is common to many of our birds. I have seen even the song sparrow indulge in it, rising fifty feet or more and delivering its simple song with obvious excitement. The idiotic-looking woodcock, inspired by the grand passion, rises upon whistling wings in the early spring twilight, and floats and circles at an altitude of a hundred feet or more, and in rapid smackering and chippering notes unburdens his soul. The song of ecstasy with our ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... done? I was seventeen; and she, I imagine, was about twenty. But a girl of twenty is three times older than a boy of seventeen. She commanded. She mothered. I felt infinitely childlike and absurd. I thought of refusing; but that seemed an idiotic attempt at dignity which would only amuse this very mature young person. To accept seemed to throw away entirely one's masculinity. Somehow, I.... But she stepped right into the room then, instinctively patting her hair and ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... pawn his watch and make his experiment.... He already knew all about Lizaveta and she knew him a little too. She was a single woman of about thirty-five, tall, clumsy, timid, submissive and almost idiotic. She was a complete slave and went in fear and trembling of her sister, who made her work day and night, and even beat her. She was standing with a bundle before the huckster and his wife, listening earnestly and doubtfully. They were talking of something with special warmth. The moment Raskolnikov ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... before him, sat down alone when the others were at their sports and merry-makings, and brooded over strange things. Caves and woods were his dearest haunts; and there he talked on and on with beasts and birds, with trees and rocks—of course not one rational word, but mere idiotic stuff, to make one laugh to death. He continued, however, always moody and serious, in spite of the utmost pains that the squirrel, the monkey, the parrot, and the bullfinch could take to divert him, and set him in the right way. The goose told stories, the brook jingled a ballad between, a great ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... The ash-trays, which should be on the writing-table she sets in a silly row on the mantelpiece. The pen-tray, which should be beside the inkstand, she hides away cleverly among the books on my reading-desk. My gloves she arranges daily in idiotic array upon a half-filled bookshelf, and I always have to rearrange them on the low table by the door. She places my armchair at impossible angles between the fire and the light, and the tablecloth—the one with Trinity Hall stains—she puts on the table in such ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... "are people so idiotic as to discharge soldiers whose return is dreaded by civilians and whose presence is necessary to the comfort of the Staff? We English adopted a much more intelligent plan for our demobilization. The men were to be classified ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get. The man that first says it thinks he has made a discovery. The man he says it to, thinks the same. It departs on its travels, is received everywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as a piece of rare and acute observation, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... of confidence, "Our people are easily led; it merely requires a leader, a bright, audacious man, with plenty of 'cheek,' to create a following." There are hundreds of examples of this statement. No matter how idiotic the religion or philosophy may be, a following can be established among Americans. A man of the name of Dowie, "ignorant, impertinent, but with a superabundance of cheek" (I quote an American journal), announced himself ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... he comes afoot, with that idiotic face, giving her such a good chance to bait him—how can she resist baiting him? ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... as our quality was known, the Saints came crowding around us. The corral poured forth its contents—until nine-tenths of the whole caravan, men, women and children, stood gazing upon us, with that stare of idiotic wonder peculiar to the humbler classes of countries called civilised. We managed to withstand the ordeal of their scrutiny with an assumed air of true savage indifference. Not without an effort, however: since it was difficult to resist ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... that, excepting barnyard fowls, the horse is the most idiotic of all animals, and, pound for pound, even the miserable hen is his intellectual superior. Indeed, if horses had brains no better than those of hens, but proportionately larger, they would not be drawing wagons, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... spoke to them in this loud, emphatic way, as if she considered them deaf, or perhaps rather idiotic; it was a means, she thought, of making them feel that they were accountable creatures, and might be a salutary check on naughty tendencies. Bessy's children were so spoiled—they'd need have somebody to make them feel ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... which would be painfully illustrated by a serious crisis, is there equally in ordinary humdrum times of peace. The crippled and idiotic life which would bring disaster then is undermining our very existence now. Is it not time that a sensible nation should look to it that every one of its members, when adult, should at least be healthy, well-fed, and well-grown, and that each should ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... here, if you have to drag him. I don't know where the channel is, and I am liable to put the whole outfit aground any minute," shouted Phil Forrest. "Teddy, never mind that idiotic donkey. We're in a fix. Get downstairs, at one jump, and see that the pilot is brought ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... in his way, renders a gigantic service to all students of literature who are not profound Orientalists, and to many who are, by giving them a literal, honest, and accurate translation of the Arabian Nights. * * * Some idiotic persons here and there, and certain journals which have earned an infamous notoriety by doing their best to deprave public morals, have raised a foolish clamour against Captain Burton and his translation. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the Fog—To begin with, let me say that I, too, have laughed. But there was some degree of chagrin in my laughter. On my word of honor, it was a distinct shock to my sense of dignity when I saw that idiotic personal of mine in the paper. It is my first offense of the kind, and I am really ashamed. But the situation was not ordinary. Ordinary women do not sing in the streets after midnight. As you could not possibly be ordinary, my offense has greater magnitude. To indite a personal ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... stillness for an instant in that room. It may be (so supernatural is the word death) that each of those idle men looked for a second at his soul, and saw it as a small dried pea. One of them—the duke, I think—even said with the idiotic kindness of wealth: "Is ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... seem to care, now he had gained his end, whether the stories lasted out or not. He was nestling against Rosa's plump form with a look of satisfaction that was simply idiotic; and one arm had disappeared from view—was it round her waist? Rosa's natural blush seemed deeper than usual, her head inclined shyly—it must have been round ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... and one of these, I regretted to observe, was the jovially-inclined Dietrich. It can be imagined that our irritation with Mr. P. was great for having so foolishly mentioned names and places, and still more with the idiotic bird, the real origin of a very unpleasant two days. I reflected that, if these were the tricks carrier-pigeons were wont to play, I greatly preferred the old nigger as a ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... and find that a troublesome, quarrelsome race of Ana, especially if under the administration of Koom-Posh or Glek-Nas, resents our vicinity, and picks a quarrel with us; then, of course, as menacing our welfare, we destroy it: there is no coming to terms of peace with a race so idiotic that it is always changing the form of government which represents it. Koom-Posh," said the child, emphatically, "is bad enough, still it has brains, though at the back of its head, and is not without a heart; but in Glek-Nas the brain and heart of the creatures ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... clocks in Remonencq's shop. He sent for his sister, and La Remonencq came on foot all the way from Auvergne to take charge of the shop while her brother was away. A big and very ugly woman, dressed like a Japanese idol, a half-idiotic creature with a vague, staring gaze she would not bate a centime of the prices fixed by her brother. In the intervals of business she did the work of the house, and solved the apparently insoluble problem—how to live on "the mists of the Seine." The Remonencqs' diet consisted of bread and herrings, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... edification of contemptuous blacks. "They judge us, those fellows, you know. They are measuring us with their glazed eyes. The cud they chew has gall in it. I don't suppose anything offends them more deeply than our idiotic games. Is there a more frivolous race in the world ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... mental powers had been imperfectly developed from his childhood. The mischief had been aggravated, when he was about thirteen years old, by a serious fright. When he was placed in my asylum, he was not idiotic, and not dangerously mad—it was a case (not to use technical language) of deficient intelligence, tending sometimes toward acts of unreasoning mischief and petty theft, but never approaching to acts ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... inches) was, however, that of a woman; next to it comes the brain of Cuvier (1861 grammes), then Byron (1807 grammes), and then an insane person (1783 grammes). The lightest adult brain recorded (720 grammes) was that of an idiotic female. The brains of five children, four years old, weighed between 1275 and 992 grammes. So that it may be safely said, that an average European child of four years old has a brain twice as large as that of an ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... in seminaries of virtue. They have their reward. But in men whose bitterness of longing grew out of hideous fault. The distinction of beauty—not a payment for prayers or chastity. The distinction of love ... above chests of linen and a banker's talent and patents of nobility.... Divine need. Idiotic. But what else, what ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... One idiotic habit of the people is to attribute to the king what they do themselves. They fight. Whose the glory? The king's. They pay. Whose the generosity? The king's. Then the people love him for being so rich. The king receives a crown from the poor, and returns them a farthing. How generous ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... season, when I long to sit alone, In some clean and quiet garret, I can really call my own; Where no Christmas Cards can reach me with their idiotic rhymes— Where I never hear of HARRIS, and his splendid Pantomimes. Where the turkey and the goose would feel distinctly out of place, Where no pallid pie of mincemeat, dares to look me in the face; Where I don't see coloured plates from Christmas Numbers on the wall, Where, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... interest, grew even more responsive to this offer, yet as the tea came, he felt unaccountably stupid and idiotic. Utter disgust with himself filled his mind to think he couldn't get to the point then and there of telling his kind host about ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... the honour to entertain the high-born Lady Ygerne Bellaire at dinner," he said in mock deference. "Her request is my command. Shall I voice my second idiotic thought?" ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory |
