"Imbecile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confess my truth!—Didst thou imagine that I was altogether passive, a mere worm, organised to feel sensations of pain, but no emotion of resentment? Didst thou imagine that there was no danger in inflicting on me pains however great, miseries however dreadful? Didst thou believe me impotent, imbecile, and idiot-like, with no understanding to contrive thy ruin, and no ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... and kindliness when any one spoke to him or looked at him, and even if he had not long been a well-known figure, could not have concealed for a quarter of an hour the fact that he was a harmless and well-meaning imbecile. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the slightest effect in restoring peace to the minds of unscientific Frenchmen. M. Lalande's study was crowded with anxious persons who came to inquire about his memoir. Certain devout folk, 'as ignorant as they were imbecile,' says a contemporary journal, begged the Archbishop of Paris to appoint forty hours' prayer to avert the danger and prevent the terrible deluge. For this was the particular form most men agreed that ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... meadows after all so broad, that did not metaphysics 'teach man his tether,' they would seem illimitable. The book of nature is not spread before us, turning leaf after leaf at every sunrise, with new delineations on every page, to be stared at with vacant inanity, or criticized with imbecile verbosity. The rivulet does not tinkle and the sky does not look blue that people may feed the ear alone with the one, or satisfy the eye alone with the other; the nerves which carry the sensation to the brain, flutter with the news, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... this child, in consequence of his pale and melancholy countenance, and apparently miserable condition. I observed that no one took any notice of him; and that he was allowed to wander about the great straggling workhouse, among the insane, the idiotic, and the imbecile, without the slightest attention being paid to his going and coming; in short, he lived the wretched ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a more operative cause, than all these, of the alleged evil, was the conduct of those imbecile princes, who, with heedless prodigality, squandered the public resources on their own personal pleasures and unworthy minions. The disastrous reigns of John the Second and Henry the Fourth, extending over the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... atmosphere and society Shaw might even have met the monstrous mother in The Devil's Disciple, the horrible old woman who declares that she has hardened her heart to hate her children, because the heart of man is desperately wicked, the old ghoul who has made one of her children an imbecile and the other an outcast. Such types do occur in small societies drunk with the dismal wine of Puritan determinism. It is possible that there were among Irish Calvinists people who denied that charity was ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... he snapped out harshly—"it is your own fault, not mine!... Like the rest of your imbecile nation you poke your nose where it has no business! And I—" He ceased speaking, realizing that ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... more as if to herself. "Perhaps, after all, I may be wrong! Yes, what a fool, to forget all the proofs of his courage! What a blind imbecile, to think him afraid! It must be that he acts from a delicate conception of honor. He would not encroach where another had the prior claim. He considers Colden in the matter. That's it, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... curse of your father's golden girl involving us all in disaster. Let me cut the wretched history as short as I can. At first money was plentiful enough, and luck in that direction seemed to border on the marvelous. To give you an instance your father—imbecile that he was—swore he would test it in your own interests. He hunted round till he found the most hair-brained, wildcat company ever floated for the purpose of robbing moneyed fools, and invested ten thousand dollars ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... particular hobby, and the leisure he had to apply to it had given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over him—pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. The poor old imbecile! Why, this child was a firebrand, a wrecker, if ever he had seen one; and the worst kind because she was unconscious ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... visionary to hold that all persons of every age, degree, and character, should be entitled to vote in all elections of all public officers. Idiots, infants, minors, and persons insane or utterly imbecile, have been, without scruple, denied the right as not having the sound judgment and discretion fit for its exercise. In many countries, persons guilty of crimes have also been denied the right as a personal punishment, or as a security to society. In most ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "Imbecile! That is their art; to confound a plain man with dark words, till his hissing flesh lets him know their meaning. Now listen to what I have seen. When a soldier bleeds from a wound in battle, these leeches say, 'Fever. Blood him!' and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... clutching hands as gently as he might, but she resisted like a tigress at bay, and before he could drag her aside they heard the iron-barred door of the elevator glide open and clang shut. And there they stood in the strange place, the old man staggered with the realization of the future, the old woman imbecile with fear. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... reaper—this quick-moving, noisy thing smelling of oil, made up of sliding chains—appalled him; there were five wheels at an angle, and all the time an oil-wet, black, flat, chain-band ran round over them! Underneath, the heavy central wheel ran round and round! To the imbecile the waggoner's ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... imbecile that Your Highness will not see him," responded Glueck, impassively, his ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... misfortune overtook him. I shall see his face no more." Sitting in his new feebleness and despair, supporting his head between his hands, with blank eyes and lips that moved uncertainly, he looked so much like a hopelessly imbecile old man, that his owners were contented to be rid of him, and allowed a Genoese merchant, who had compassion on him as an Italian, to take him on board his galley. In a voyage of many months in the Archipelago and along the seaboard of Asia Minor, Baldassarre ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... step how I should be met by this mother who had shown herself so little of a mother to me, and from whom, during eight years, I had heard nothing beyond the two letters of which you know. Judging it unworthy to simulate an affection I could not possibly feel, I put on the air of a pious imbecile, and entered the room with many inward qualms, which however soon disappeared. My mother's tack was equal to the occasion. She made no pretence of emotion; she neither held me at arm's-length nor hugged me to her bosom like a beloved daughter, but greeted me as though we had parted the evening before. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... gesture spoke for itself; and, besides, poor Phelim cowered behind her with an air that caused a word and sign to pass round, which the captives found was equivalent to innocent or imbecile; and the Mohammedan respect and tenderness for the demented spared him all further violence or molestation, except that he was lost and miserable without the attentions of his foster-brother; and indeed the shocks he had undergone seemed to have mobbed him of much ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "them confounded drummers, with their everlasting samples," was, while plodding his lonely way homeward, seized upon by these commercial freebooters, conveyed forthwith to the Half-Way House, and there deluged with such a perfect torrent of brow-beating eloquence as to reduce him to an imbecile state, in which condition he would willingly order large bills of goods, a custom still somewhat in vogue, and known as ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... at hand give up their population,—only the blind, the sick, and the imbecile being left to guard ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... explain the exact truth to Luttrell. When last, my dear Tedcastle, Molly was invited to meet the Rossmeres, she behaved so badly and flirted so outrageously with his withered lordship, that he became perfectly imbecile toward the close of the entertainment, and his poor old wife was reduced almost to the verge of tears. I blushed ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... time Clapart, who was ill, was being nursed by his wife,—a painful task, a duty without reward. The sick man tormented the poor creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful teasing a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily savage, could be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless day. Delighted to turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the mother, he had, in a measure, studied the fears that Oscar's behavior and defects inspired in the poor woman. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... inspiring, but Billy had somehow adopted the ditty and made it his own, so far as eternally singing it could do so, and his comrades had found it not unpleasant; for the voice of Billy was youthful, and had a melodious smoothness that atoned for much in the way of imbecile words and ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... traditions of the rat than any other living person. The third of my guests is Professor Wilson. He is the psychologist who has tried to breed different strains of rats, some of superior intelligence and others of the imbecile type. What I want you gentlemen to tell me is why these rats congregate at times in certain buildings of New York City, in such large numbers that they are a serious menace to property and even human life, and, then, as ...
— The Rat Racket • David Henry Keller
... him!" said he suddenly, as if answering the voices which whispered in his soul; "that would be an imbecile, miserable resort, and, moreover, we would not obtain our object; ho would not be humiliated, but a martyr's crown would be added to his laurels. When, however, ho is completely humbled, when, to this great victory at Hochkirch, we add new triumphs, when we have taken Silesia and ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... ten in number, only four at most were normally endowed, the remainder were either stupid or slightly imbecile. This agrees with the experience of previous writers. Study of her cases showed that there was report of previous mendacity, four had been liars from childhood. She found in them the combination of the general habit of lying underneath the more accentuated ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... before the Government in London could seriously believe that a Stuart in arms was in the island. There were other and minor elements of success, too, to be noted in the great game that the Stuart prince {210} was playing. The Ministry was unpopular: the head of that Ministry was the imbecile Duke of Newcastle, perhaps the most contemptible statesman who has ever made high office ridiculous. The King was away in Hanover. England was in the toils of a foreign war, and her prestige had lately suffered heavily ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... meaning accepted by civilisation—this crusade of light against darkness, of cleanliness against corruption, this battle of normal minds against the diseased, perverted, and filthy ferocity of a people not merely reverted to honest barbarism, but also mentally mutilated, and now morally imbecile and utterly incompetent to understand the basic truths of that civilisation from which they had relapsed, and from which, God willing, they are to be ultimately and definitely kicked ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... heard by anybody downstairs, drank all the water he could find in the dark. And he tasted the torments of jealousy, too. She would marry somebody else. His very soul writhed. The tenacity of that Feraud, the awful persistence of that imbecile brute came to him with the tremendous force of a relentless fatality. General D'Hubert trembled as he put down the empty water ewer. "He will have me," he thought. General D'Hubert was tasting every emotion that life has to give. He had ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... whose privileges it consecrates, to the wealthy whom it protects, and to the entire nation, to which it assures all the liberty desired by a people methodical and slow in character, and who, absorbed in their commercial interests, do not like being perpetually worried about the imbecile George III. or public affairs. Vainly have the friends of reform protested their attachment to the Constitution. Vainly they declare that they desire to demand nothing, to obtain nothing, save in lawful ways. They are persistently disbelieved. Payne alone ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them. Imbecile and vicious men cannot do any of these things. Their thoughts are scattered, vague, uncertain, cumbersome: and the worst stick to them the longest; many indeed by choice, the greater part by necessity, and accompanied, some by weak wishes, others ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... on the ruins at Westminster:—"To the lasting disgrace of the English Nation, this Building, together with the other beautiful and interesting parts of London, was ruined, for the sake of some impossible and imbecile schemes, by an assemblage of the most ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... told us, monsieur," cried the fisherman reproachfully, "that your friend was imbecile, and that we need ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... imbecile, who gave you the right to betroth our daughter to a wine merchant? Is there no son of decent family who would marry her? Do you wish to make us ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... and Dine forevermore at Swell Joints where famous Show Girls pass so close to your Table that you can almost reach out and Touch them. I'm going to Travel 12 months every Year and do all the Stunts known to the most imbecile Globe-Trotter." ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... he broke out suddenly into a tirade against the world. "But I am bored by this jostling unreasonable world. At the bottom of my heart I am bitterly resentful to-day. This is a world of fools and brutes in which we live, a world of idiotic traditions, imbecile limitations, cowardice, habit, greed and mean cruelty. It is a slum of a world, a congested district, an insanitary jumble of souls and bodies. Every good thing, every sweet desire is thwarted—every one. I have to lead the life of a slum missionary, a sanitary ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... been ripped-up in print. If the offender happens to be a man who doesn't paint, then he is called an ignoramus; if he paints or etches, or even sketches in crayon, he is well within the Balzac definition—poor, miserable imbecile, he is only jealous of work that he could never have achieved. As for literary critics, it may be set down once and for all that they are "suspect." They write; ergo, they must be unjust. The dilemma has branching horns. Is there no midway spot, no safety ground ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... tones, 'Exeter Hall.' A sudden light broke in upon the meeting. It was unanimously resolved, that a deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated orator, imploring his assistance, and the favour of a speech; and the deputation should also wait on two or three other imbecile old women, not resident in the parish, and entreat their attendance. The application was successful, the meeting was held; the orator (an Irishman) came. He talked of green isles—other shores—vast Atlantic—bosom of the deep—Christian charity—blood and extermination—mercy ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... cannot force him away. But if you, sir, if you would tell him how great the chances are against him, if you who know would tell him how foolish he is not to be content with what he has, he would listen. He says to me, 'Bah! you are a woman'; and he is so red and fierce; he is imbecile with the sight of the money, but he will listen to a grand gentleman like you. He thinks to win more and more, and he thinks to buy another third from old Carbut. Is it not foolish? It is so ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... this being so queer? Anyway, I fancy I've done nothing unsuitable so far. But anyway, it won't do to ask her now. They say they make one say one's prayers. I only hope they won't make me! That'll be too imbecile. And what stuff it is she's reading! but she has a good accent. Landau—Bezzubov— what's he Bezzubov for?" All at once Stepan Arkadyevitch became aware that his lower jaw was uncontrollably forming a yawn. He pulled his whiskers ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... say, for who would not laugh at a philosopher who would set snares for the stars, and fix his net to catch the sun, and regulate their indiscreet shining. Darkness and silence are excellent for knaves and tyrants; but the attempt to command the one or the other in the North, changes the knave to an imbecile and the tyrant ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... exclaimed. "It is wicked for you to say such things. Do you suppose that Mr. Atkins would find it necessary to work as he is doing to beat a fool? And, besides, you're not complimentary to me. Should I, do you think, take such an interest in one who was an imbecile?" ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... toes I have ever seen!" cried Antoinette in imbecile admiration. She has bewitched ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... to keep us going—so did I and, as I believed, Leonora, imagine that the whole world ought to be arranged so as to ensure the keeping alive of heart patients. You have no idea how engrossing such a profession may become—how imbecile, in view of that engrossment, appear the ways of princes, of republics, of municipalities. A rough bit of road beneath the motor tyres, a couple of succeeding "thank'ee-marms" with their quick jolts would be enough to set me ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... merry! The sundown is near— And Error is shivering And shrinking with fear. Power unmolested For centuries, vested In impotent sinew and imbecile brain, Altars that rested On mummeries ilested, Tatters to ruin and not in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... slender spire of the Riddarholm, soaring above the ashes of Charles XII. and Gustavus Adolphus, was always a welcome sight; but we had seen enough of the hideous statues which ornament the public squares, (Charles XII. not among them, and the imbecile Charles XIII. occupying the best place); we grew tired of the monotonous perambulators on the Forrbro, and the tameness and sameness of Stockholm life in winter: and therefore hailed the lengthening days ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... prowling in nearly every scene of real life; him, the ever present, the king of the Middle Ages, whose triumph we have seen on the cloister wall at Pisa, the lord "Death." His fleshless face peers from behind a bush at Zatzinger's stunted, fever-stricken lady and imbecile gentleman; he sits grinning on a tree in Orso Graf's allegory, while the cynical knights, with haggard, sensual faces, crack dirty jokes with the fat, brutish woman squatted below; he puts his hand into the basket of Duerer's tattered ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... stableboy's habit of whistling slang airs upon the mere mechanical excitement of a bar or two whistled by some other blockhead in some other stable. The very stage has grown weary of ridiculing a folly, that having been long since expelled from decent society has taken refuge amongst the most imbecile of authors. Was Mr. Hazlitt then of that class? No; he was a man of great talents, and of capacity for greater things than he ever attempted, though without any pretensions of the philosophic kind ascribed to him by the Sergeant. Meantime the reason for resisting the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... terror expressed by the manuscript-writer before quoted, complaining of "this deluge of building, that we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one another's faces." The police of the metropolis was long imbecile, notwithstanding their "strong watches and guards" set at times; and bodies of the idle and the refractory often assumed some mysterious title, and were with difficulty governed. We may conceive the state of the police, when "London apprentices," growing in number and insolence, frequently ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Napoleon's favourite maxims was, "The truest wisdom is a resolute determination." His life, beyond most others, vividly showed what a powerful and unscrupulous will could accomplish. He threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies—"There shall be no Alps," he said, and the road across the Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost inaccessible. "Impossible," said ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... she forgets, that she does not care. Only, it is better like this, because it could never be as before. I could not help her. I want nothing that she can give me, no not anything; I have my memories! I hear of her, from time to time; I hear what the world says of her, the imbecile world, and I smile. Do I not know best? I, who carried her in my arms, when ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... wills; he suffers; for to will is to suffer. Yes, I am jealous. I know what there is in my jealousy. When I examine it, I find in it hereditary prejudices, savage conceit, sickly susceptibility, a mingling of rudest violence and cruel feebleness, imbecile and wicked revolt against the laws of life and of society. But it does not matter that I know it for what it is: it exists and it torments me. I am the chemist who, studying the properties of an acid ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... yes; but with such flames of fanaticism under the nose of him. In regard to the Dissident and all other curative processes he is languid, evasive, for moments recalcitrant to Russian suggestions; a lost imbecile,—forget him, with or without a tear. He has still a good deal of so-called gallantry on his hands; flies to his harem when outside things go contradictory. [Hermann, v. 402, &c.] Think of malign Journalists printing this bit of Letter at one time, to do him ill in a certain ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the Man in the Street is a better judge of literature than the Critic—the man who knows little than the man who knows more—wears (to my mind, at least) a slightly imbecile air on the face of it. It also appears to me that people are either confusing thought or misusing language when they confer the title of "supreme critic" on the last person to be persuaded. And, again, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sinister for Old France and for New. Marie de Medicis, "cette grosse banquiere," coarse scion of a bad stock, false wife and faithless queen, paramour of an intriguing foreigner, tool of the Jesuits and of Spain, was Regent in the minority of her imbecile son. The Huguenots drooped, the national party collapsed, the vigorous hand of Sully was felt no more, and the treasure gathered for a vast and beneficent enterprise became the instrument of despotism and the prey ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... of infamy, from financing a thieves' fence to organizing an association of common criminals to bring it business; from maintaining a corps of agitators to foment social discontent to fostering this last, most imbecile scheme of all, which comes to naught to-night, an attempt to overthrow the British Empire and set up in its stead a Soviet England, with Victor Vassilyevski in the dual role ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... turn round, but, with a sharp exclamation of profanity, drew Foulik Pasha on his imbecile way. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of things, and the inability people have to conceive the inconvenience of it... I am driven to speculate.... Is insanity excessively rare here, so that outrages, if they do occur, are naturally very few? or is the insanity... always of the imbecile kind? Or is insanity, at its worst, mollified by the respectful treatment which it meets, as ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... psychological tools when he deals with the exultations of the maniac and the depressions of the melancholic, with the hallucinations of persecution or the erotic insanities of the paranoiac. Still more the whole register of psychology has to be used, when we are to educate the idiot and the imbecile. But the disappearance of the disease or of the chief symptoms through the mental agencies is in all these cases out of the question. Only in incipient cases, especially of melancholia and mania, the psychotherapeutic work seems not entirely ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... first time as might have been expected, and it was brought to abrupt conclusion by the sudden charge of two of them from the rear. Being coupled, they mowed his legs from under him as irresistibly as chain shot and being puppies, and of an imbecile friendliness they remained to lick his face and generally make merry over him as he struggled ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... idiot, imbecile, natural; simpleton, dolt, dunce, defective, witling, dotterel, driveler, blockhead, beetlehead, ninny, ignoramus, numskull, booby, clodpate, nincompoop, ass, wiseacre, dunderhead, halfwit, oaf, dullard, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... power at Paris had as yet shown no organizing capacity. The administration of the War Department by "papa" Pache had been a masterpiece of imbecile knavery which infuriated Dumouriez and his half-starving troops. We have heard much of the blunders of British Ministers in this war; but even at their worst they never sank to the depths revealed in the correspondence of Dumouriez with Pache. In truth, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... be owned, the Cote Droit makes a still madder figure. An irrational generation; irrational, imbecile, and with the vehement obstinacy characteristic of that; a generation which will not learn. Falling Bastilles, Insurrections of Women, thousands of smoking Manorhouses, a country bristling with no crop but that of Sansculottic steel: these were tolerably didactic lessons; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... party" (says Prof. Stuart), "with this strange, wild, terribly clever man, with his red hair and brazen nose, sometimes flashing with wit and knowledge, sometimes making the whole company, princes and servants alike, hold their peace and listen humbly to the ravings of a poor imbecile." ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... body may fear and tremble, while the mind is calm and courageous, or vice versa. This is the key to many moral eccentricities. When the two are united in one man, that man will be a cipher all his life; such double-sided timidity makes him what we call "an imbecile." Often fine suppressed qualities are hidden within that imbecile. To this double infirmity we may, perhaps, owe the lives of certain monks who lived in ecstasy; for this unfortunate moral and physical disposition is produced quite as much ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Great Desert, and they were not the banners of Caesar. Some vigorous hand was demanded at this moment, or else the funeral knell of Rome was on the point of sounding. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that, had the imbecile Carinus (the brother of Numerian) succeeded to the command of the Roman armies at this time, or any other than Dioclesian, the empire of the west would have fallen to pieces within the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... then broke into an imbecile laugh. "My gum," he cried; "this IS a start, this is! You don't mean to tell me YOU are ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... doing the best thing for him." Then, as Jenny made an indignant sound, "See, Jenny, when he came to Rockpier, Camilla had been a widow about three months. She never had been very sad, for Lord Tyrrell had been quite imbecile for a year, poor man! And when Frank came, she could not make enough of him; and he and I both thought the two families had been devotedly fond of each other, and that she was only too glad to meet ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Fool, imbecile, idiot, that I am!" he thought. "He was waiting to be questioned about this circumstance. He is so wonderfully shrewd that, when he saw me take the dust, he divined my intentions; and since then he has managed to concoct this story—a plausible story enough—and one that ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... fate. All my future depends upon it, whether for weal or woe. Lady Chetwynde, do not call it nonsense—do not underrate its importance. Do not, I implore you, underrate me. Thus far you have tacitly assumed that I am a feeble and almost imbecile character. It is true that my abject devotion to you has forced me to give a blind obedience to all your wishes. But mark this well, Lady Chetwynde, such obedience itself involved some of the highest qualities of manhood. Something like courage and fortitude and daring was necessary to carry ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... he would if you should do so suddenly or clumsily. But you must insinuate the idea very slowly and subtlely. Clarence is not for the works; Clarence is too good for this world—at least for the business of this world. I think him half an imbecile! My father does not hesitate to call him a perfect idiot. Do you begin to see your way now? Clarence can be moderately provided for, but should have no share in ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "An imbecile without friends and twelve bajocchi in his pocket," he muttered savagely. "Perhaps the night without food will restore his senses. Come, fool!" and he roughly pushed me into a dark little chamber adjoining. ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... ready enough. She didn't have much fun, anyway, except sitting with him in the office such times as he was lookin' over his accounts and reckonin' his money. She liked that. She always liked to handle money. That proved her a Sands, even if she was imbecile! ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... said I, "no doubt," as one humors an imbecile. "I confess, however," I added, "that this tiny human figure puzzles me. If it were an Indian we could set it down as evidence of some pigmy race in America, but it appears to be a European ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a wife, think you, the old man could long have endured his existence? or what consolation would his wretched daughter have had to offer him, but silent and imbecile tears? ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... great spiritual power that could have interposed to prevent the outbreak of the World War was the papacy. Pope Pius X had his Nuncio admonish the Austrian emperor, but he failed even to get an audition from that old imbecile. The next Pope, Benedict XV, was under the influence of a majority of pro-German cardinals. He strove to remain neutral. He attempted to solace the Belgians with words, but he did not reprove the murderous invaders. He protested against the new and devilish methods of warfare but he did not condemn, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... accommodates our democratic menage to the taste of the richest and most extravagant plebeian amongst us. He, unhappily, minds danger and oppression as little as he minds money, so long as he has a spectacle and a sensation, and it is this ruthless imbecile who will have lace curtains to the steamboat berth into which he gets with his pantaloons on, and out of which he may be blown by an exploding boiler at any moment; it is he who will have for supper that overgrown and shapeless ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... "honors"), in a free college, of which the professors are responsible only to a judicious board of directors, examinations for admissions and for advancements will be rigid and impartial, the administration will be vigilant and firm, the reckless who will not and the imbecile who cannot acquire a good education, will be dismissed for more congenial pursuits, the rich and the poor will be upon an equality, and only desert ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... believe she cared particularly for them; but she is good natured, and the ranch is large, and they are rather amusing. At the time of my first visit the original pair had multiplied. Gazing on that yardful of imbecile-looking canines, my admiration for Noah's wisdom increased; he certainly needed no more than a pair to restock the earth. Redmond claimed there were twenty-two of them, though nobody else pretended to have been able to disentangle ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... as President—which every other historian and biographer from Hildreth to Sydney Howard Gay has pronounced, and which has become a stock historical convention; holds Jackson's campaign ending at New Orleans an imbecile undertaking redeemed only by an act of instinctive pugnacity at the end; gives Scott and Jacob Brown the honor they have never before received in fair measure; and in many other points redistributes praise and blame with entire ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 'em down to the post office at Kulanche the other day showing 'em off, each one in a red shawl; and sneering at people with only one. And this imbecile ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... noticed with astonishment the wonderful change for the better that had taken place in the man. For with the restoration of his mind all the evil lines of his face had been obliterated, as it were, and in the place of the doddering half-imbecile they found a genial, kindly, and distinguished gentleman who, with the utmost hospitality, brought chairs and begged them ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... we have indicated, our watering-place has none. There are a few old used-up boatmen who creep about in the sunlight with the help of sticks, and there is a poor imbecile shoemaker who wanders his lonely life away among the rocks, as if he were looking for his reason—which he will never find. Sojourners in neighbouring watering-places come occasionally in flys to stare at us, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... was the deathblow to the power of the Empire. With the Protestant Princes armed behind his back, the imbecile called Charles would never dare to set his troops on board ship in Flanders to aid the continual rebellions, conspiracies and risings in England. He had done it too often, and he had repented as often, at the last moment. It was true that the marriage had thrown Charles into the arms of ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... which they act in criminal trials, viz., that "ignorance of the law excuses no one." As if it were in the nature of things possible that there could be an excuse more absolute and complete. What else than ignorance of the law is it that excuses persons under the years of discretion, and men of imbecile minds? What else than ignorance of the law is it that excuses judges themselves for all their erroneous decisions? Nothing. They are every day committing errors, which would be crimes, but for their ignorance ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... small territory with a population that hardly amounted to four millions of subjects. The partition excited great indignation all over Europe, but in 1772 England was sufficiently occupied with the troubles beginning to arise in America, and France was still too completely under the profligate and imbecile rule of Louis XV. and Mme. du Barri, and too much weakened by her disasters in the Seven Years' War, for any manly counsels or indication of justice and humanity to be expected ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... often see that one part of their understanding is nourished to the prejudice of the rest—the imagination, for instance, at the expense of the judgment: so that whilst they have acquired talents for show they have none for use. In the affairs of common life they are utterly ignorant and imbecile—or worse than imbecile. Early called into public notice, probably before their moral habits are formed, they are extolled for some play of fancy or of wit, as Bacon calls it, some juggler's trick of the intellect; they ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... lacked only the courage to trust his instinct. Coward's luck! It served him right. He had held her in his arms and had let her slip through; her lips had been raised to his, and he had refused to press them. Imbecile! ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... met by a doctor. Mrs. Gurrage had lost her reason, he told me, upon hearing the news. She had been weak and ailing and in bed ever since her return from London, and this had proved the last straw, and now she lay, a childish imbecile, in her gorgeous ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... wild men, their garments of pitched flax caught fire. Four were burnt, and the shock brought back the king's madness. He became subject to fits of insanity of longer or shorter duration, and in their intervals he seems to have been almost imbecile. No provision had then been made for the contingency of a mad king. The condition of the country became worse than ever, and power was grasped at by whoever could obtain it. Of the king's three uncles, the Duke of ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... present inmates, which two women were preparing, consisted of meat and vegetables, soup and sweet things; excellent meat, and well-dressed frijoles. A poor little boy, imbecile, deaf and dumb, was seated there cross-legged, in a sort of wooden box; a pretty child, with a fine colour, but who has been in this state from his infancy. The women seemed very kind to him, and he had a placid, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... mere instrument of an ambitious relative;" Tillotson was "a contemptible shuffling apothecary, without ingenuity or devise, or spirit to pursue any systematic plan of iniquity;" Richard Riker was "an imbecile and obsequious pettifogger, a vain and contemptible little pest, who abandoned the Federal standard on the third day of the election, in April, 1800;" John McKisson, "an execrable compound of every species of vice," was the man whom Clinton "exultingly declared a great ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... least hurt by such uncomplimentary threats, McCoy smiled as he filled the cup held by his comrade. The spirit was beginning to tell on him, and the smile was of that imbecile character which denotes perfect self-satisfaction and good-will. Having poured the remainder into his own cup, he refixed the bottle to the tube of the "still," and while more of the liquid was being extracted, the cronies sat down on low stools ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the command, and gave the example, too, by going himself to the handles, but it seems that these men did actually hang back for a moment, looking at each other dubiously before they followed him. "He! he! he!" He broke out into a most unexpected, imbecile, pathetic, nervous little giggle. "Their hearts were broken so! They had been played with too long," he explained apologetically, lowering his ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... mind, and one full of scornful irony towards the indescribable sufferings of humanity. When a philosopher like Strauss is able to frame it into a system, it becomes more than a vicious attitude of mind—it is then an imbecile gospel of comfort for the "I" or for the "We," ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... frequently offer still greater obstacles to social contacts. The idiot and the imbecile are obviously debarred from normal communication with their intelligent associates. The "dunce" was isolated by village ridicule and contempt long before the term "moron" was coined, or the feeble-minded segregated ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the bishops to 'set their house in order,' and some of the prelates had been insulted and threatened in the streets of London. The vital question was. How were we to keep the Church from being Liberalised? There was so much apathy on the subject in some quarters, such imbecile alarm in others; the true principles of Churchmanship seemed so radically decayed, and there was such distraction in the councils of the clergy. The Bishop of London of the day, an active and open-hearted man, had been for years ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... stopping at home because the wind is in the east. "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold." If the ploughman means to succeed he must count on suffering; and if the devil cannot find anyone on his side to oppose, he will raise up some imbecile Christian to do so, who by some sneer or cold criticism, will try to keep the plough idle. Instead of looking which way the wind blows, ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... up. On the contrary, he bobbed his head in a foolish and imbecile way towards Frank, as though seeking unconsciously to find a place on which to rest it. But Frank wouldn't allow anything of the sort He made Bob sit erect, and held him in this way for some time, bawling, yelling, and occasionally shaking him. David and Clive were a little roused by this, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... wasting away,—like a candle burnt down to the socket, flitting and flaring alternately; at one time almost imbecile, at others, talking and planning as if he were in the vigour of his youth. O what a curse it must be—that love of money! I believe—I'm shocked to say so, Philip,—that that poor old man, now on the brink of a grave into which he can take nothing, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... D'Arragon and Barlasch found the remains of a fire, where, amid the ashes, the chains and rings showed that a gun-carriage had been burnt. The trees were cut and scored where, as a forlorn hope, some poor imbecile had stripped the bark with the thought that it might burn. Nearly every fire had its grim guardian; for the wounds of the injured nearly always mortified when the flesh was melted by the warmth. Once or twice, with their ragged feet in the ashes, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... denunciations and abuse of the prince, some of the sheets asserting, by way of explanation of his conduct, that he was mentally unbalanced, his mother having been an acknowledged lunatic, and his brother. Prince Alexander, an imbecile. Nothing can be further from the truth. It cannot be denied that he has a few harmless and kindly eccentricities which would attract no attention whatever in an ordinary septuagenarian, but which excite comment ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... shall lose our imbecile pupil up-stairs, Ag. I brought a doctor in to see him last night, and he says he ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... some conventional inquiries, and she answered that she had been thirty years there, and had one son living with her, and he was an imbecile. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... every evening at some place where they hadn't dined before; to meet lots of nice amusing people with demobilised minds who wouldn't talk to him about the war; to let himself go in bursts of exquisitely imbecile laughter; never to be quiet for an hour, never to be alone with himself, never to be long alone ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... his heart he loved Zora. Deep down in his heart, too, dwelt the idiot hope that the miracle of miracles might one day happen. He loved the hope with a mother's passionate love for a deformed and imbecile child, knowing it unfit to live among the other healthy hopes of his conceiving. At any rate, he was free to bring her his daily tale of worship, to glean a look of kindness from her clear eyes. This was his happiness. For her sake he ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... bad behavior, I committed mistakes (arising out of my helpless position) which prejudiced people against me. Sometimes, I asked questions which appeared to be so trivial, to ladies and gentlemen happy in the possession of a sense of hearing, that they evidently thought me imbecile as well as deaf. Sometimes, seeing the company enjoying an interesting story or a good joke, I ignorantly appealed to the most incompetent person present to tell me what had been said—with this result, that he lost ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... with his foot and thought sourly of the rot he had read about love begetting love. He had not noticed it. It more often begot laughter, and his case was an instance of it. Helene Spenceley laughed at him—he was sure of it—and fool that he was—imbecile—it did not seem to make any difference. There was just one girl for him and always would be—he was like that ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... possessed this despotic imbecile to form a senate? His action in this can only be accounted for in the light that it was one of those unpremeditated whims of a narrow-minded faddist. One naturally wonders what the newly created senators were doing ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... a heap of critics and a lot of enemies. Some good men say I've no experience in Government, and that's about true. Up in New England the papers are asking who is this political huckster, this county court advocate? Mr. Stanton says I'm an imbecile, and when he's cross calls me the original gorilla, and wonders why fools wander about in Africa when they could find the beast they are looking for in Washington. The pious everywhere don't like me, because I don't hold that national ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... not to be?" Then, as Existence flickers into sight, A marsh-flame in the night of Nothingness— The great, soft, restful, dreamless, fathomless night— We know the Affirmative the primal curse, And loathe, with all its imbecile strain and stress, This ostentatious, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... presented to that public. And when this is said and endorsed by those who do not personally much care for the book, it is at once a sufficient testimony to the position of the author, and a vindication of the not absolutely imbecile position of those who thought that he might have written Waverley and its successors. The way in which Godwin in his later novels came down from the mountain-tops of theory and paradox just as he came down from those ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... the gifts of life, there remained at his side only Claudius, the clownish old man, the plaything of slaves and freedmen, whom no one molested because all could make game of him. A madman and an imbecile,—or at least one who was reputed such by everybody,—this was all that remained of the family of Augustus seventy years after ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... imbecile to let this chance go and not resume my authorized position. Ah, his time, without infamy, I can preside at the board where the high officials will gladly sit—I shall have generals at my feet, perhaps a marshal! Yes, I will go home ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... intelligence unless age is taken into account. The question should be, not, "Is this child doing his school work well?" but rather, "In what school grade should a child of this age be able to do satisfactory work?" A high-grade imbecile may do average work in the first grade, and a high-grade moron average work in the third or fourth grade, provided only they are sufficiently over-age for the ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... regain my affections. I scorned her. I trod on her heart! I stamped her pride into the dust! I was cruel. I was contemptuous. I was well-nigh insane. Then she went back to Samuel, and made him marry her. Then she forced my imbecile old father, on his death-bed, to will all the property to Samuel, except this piece of rough hill-land and one thousand dollars. But here I built this castle. My thousand dollars I put in books. I learned how, to weave the coverlets of which our country people are so fond, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... old blighter," he said good-humoredly. "It was 4 on the road, and 3 at the mill, and I'm as sure of it as that you're an amiable imbecile." ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... her being cracked, as you call it," laughed Laura. "Just because she's queer is no proof that she is an imbecile. You know the old parody on 'Lives of Great Men All Remind Us,' don't you?" and she went ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... something of this ancestral connection. He knew the Contrat Social, and the Nouvelle Heloise by heart, and all those philosophical books which prepared in advance the overthrow of our old usages, prejudices, superannuated laws and imbecile morality. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... had had sense enough to beat it, but he stuck because his father had posted him there. There was no good purpose he might serve by sticking, except to furnish added material for the poetess, but like the leather-headed young imbecile that he was he stood there with his feet getting warmer all the time, while the flame that lit the battle's wreck shone round him o'er the dead. ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... but she smiled often with a smile so childlike as to be almost silly in expression. Father Ignatius loved the silent smile, and a word from him was always sure to bring it; but it angered Father Francis Xavier more than many a more repulsive thing would have done. It seemed so utterly imbecile and babyish to him, he had got so far away from innocence and smiles and childhood himself, that the sight of them irritated him. The young Indian girl had a long and almost unpronounceable name. Pere Ignace had baptized her Marie, and the new name had gradually taken ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... is daring enough to make use of them if there is any resistance to that which he has undertaken. To the Directory, through their envoy Dottot, he says in substance, and not without vigour, "Do not sicken me with your imbecile arguments and lame, impotent conclusions. What I want to know is: What have you done with this France which I left you so glorious? I left you peace; I return and find war! I left you victories; I find reverses! I left ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... son, Kai-Khosrau, who was saved by Piran, a kind-hearted nobleman, and given into the care of a goatherd. When Afrasiyab learned of his existence he summoned him to his presence, but the youth, instructed by Piran, assumed the manners of an imbecile, and was accordingly freed by Afrasiyab, who feared no ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... close there now," my friend remarked. "This fellow Merryweather is a bank director and personally interested in the matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog, and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon any one. Here we are, and they are ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... people,—he could tell them that the days of their thraldom were coming to an end, and that their enfranchisement was near at hand. That friend of the people, Mr. Turnbull, had a clause in his breeches-pocket which he would either force down the unwilling throat of Mr. Mildmay, or else drive the imbecile Premier from office by carrying it in his teeth. Loughton, as Loughton, must be destroyed, but it should be born again in a better birth as a part of a real electoral district, sending a real member, chosen by a real constituency, to a real Parliament. In those days,—and they ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... is the real manager of everything, had some good reason for the present double occupancy of the throne. It struck me that it would answer one purpose at any rate: it would show the people that the young king looked as imbecile as the old one, while his countenance was far less prepossessing, as he seemed only to have just sense enough to be able to gratify the brutal and sensual passions to which he is a prey; whether the stories of wholesale executions of ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... dutiful" petition to the king was moved, but met with strong opposition. John Adams condemned it as an imbecile measure, calculated to embarrass the proceedings of Congress. He was for prompt and vigorous action. Other members concurred with him. Indeed, the measure itself seemed but a mere form, intended to reconcile the half-scrupulous; ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... rendered against her on the plea that the ballot was under control of the respective States, and that the United States has no voters in the States of its own creation; which I have shown to be an ignorant, imbecile, and false plea. Neither let them forget that of Susan B. Anthony, decided against her on the ground that she was a woman at the time she voted. If States have the sole control of the suffrage, there was interference in the rights of the State ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... with an involuntary sigh, "I had been following his movements for some time; but the Camorra stepped in. They are foolish people, those Camorristi—foolish and ignorant. They punish for very trifling offences, and they do not make sufficient warning of their punishments. Then they are quite imbecile in the way they ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... considerations. But what is to be done when our existence as a nation is at stake, and when we are opposed by a remorseless foe which would gladly ruin us irretrievably? There is no halting half-way. It was these endless scruples which interfered with the prevention of the war under the imbecile or traitorous Buchanan; it is lingering scruple and timidity which still inspires in thousands of cowardly hearts a dislike to face the grim danger ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... with disgust that while of yore, when I own I was guilty, you never spared me abuse—but now, when I am so virtuous, where is the praise? Do admit that I have become an excellent letter-writer—at least to you, and that your ingratitude is imbecile.—Yours ever, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chesterfield and Macpherson and in occasional passages of his pamphlets, we see that he could be pithy enough when he chose to descend from his Latinized abstractions to good concrete English; but that is only when he becomes excited. His face when in repose, we are told, appeared to be almost imbecile; he was constantly sunk in reveries, from which he was only roused by a challenge to conversation. In his writings, for the most part, we seem to be listening to the reverie rather than the talk; we are overhearing a soliloquy in his study, not a vigorous discussion ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... "Imbecile!" replied his neighbor. "It's Prince Villardo whom we saw last night in the play!" And the alcalde, in the character of giant-slayer, rose accordingly in the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... trifle calculated to prove that the palsied fingers can no longer grasp the intellectual sceptre, and that the well-worn and hard-earned bays are as a crown of thorns to the pulseless brow. It was, in those days whispered in London that the great orator had become imbecile immediately after the publication of his "Letter to a Noble Lord;" and that he wandered about his park kissing his cows ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... tightly grasping their collars. Yet I believe his touch was as gentle as with the violets. His face was preternaturally grave; theirs, to my intense astonishment, while they hung passive from his arms, wore that fatuous, imbecile smile seen on the faces of those who lend themselves to tricks of acrobats and strong men in the arena. He slowly traversed the whole length of one side of the house, walked down the steps to the gate, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... I am partly responsible. Besides, since I'm English, they keep coming to me to have all the steps that are being taken explained; and they want the same explanation over and over again. Since the archduke came it has been very trying. I think that he is more of an imbecile than any royalty I ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... it will be necessary, as was at first proposed, to speak of the origin of Florence, that it may be clearly understood what was the state of the city in those times, and by what means, through the labours of a thousand years, she became so imbecile. ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... which still intervened between them and the sound. To add to the sufferings of the troops, the supply of fresh water gave out. Much of that with which the transports had been provided by dishonest or imbecile contractors, had been put up in old oil casks, which imparted to it a taste and odor far from agreeable. But even of such wretched stuff as this, there was at length none ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... the imbecile voice of a man in love, "why do you tremble so when I am here to protect you? Don't you love ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... all the voice of Lady Georgina observing, tartly, 'Why the idiots can't make braces to fit one at first passes my comprehension. But, there, my dear; the people who manufacture them are a set of born fools, and what can you expect from an imbecile?' Mr. Ashurst was Lady Georgina, veneered with a thin layer of ingratiating urbanity. Lady Georgina was clever, and therefore acrimonious. Mr. Ashurst was ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... art," says Bulwer, "a man may be so trivial you would mistake him for an imbecile—at best, a grown infant. Put him into his art, and how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of which he has become a denizen, and unlocking the gates with his golden key, admits you to follow, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Big Cottonwood, and saw the meeting of the Grand Council. He had Murrell arrested, and he was tried, convicted and sent to the Tennessee penitentiary in 1834 for ten years. There he worked in the blacksmith shops, but by the time he got out, was broken down in mind and body, emerging an imbecile and an invalid, to live less ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... compelled in the sole cause of freedom. Fenelon wished that France should surrender the ill-gotten conquests of which she was so proud, and especially that she should withdraw from Spain. He declared that the Spaniards were degenerate and imbecile, but that nothing could make that right which was contrary to the balance of power and the security of nations. Holland seemed to him the hope of Europe, and he thought the allies justified in excluding the French dynasty from Spain for the same reason that ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... nursed a dear gazelle; But I was given a parroquet - (How I did nurse him if unwell!) He's imbecile, but lingers yet. He's green, with an enchanting tuft; He melts me with his small black eye: He'd look inimitable stuff'd, And knows it—but ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... I saw General Saxton he seemed to think our whole destiny depended on the success of this negro recruitment. It is certainly a very important matter, but I think as before that it is doomed to fail here at present, from the imbecile character of the people. I thought while at work with Mr. Fowler that if I were to go as Captain I might get a company without trouble, but I failed to get a single man when seriously proposing it to them. If I had been able to raise a company ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... is tantamount to saying that he was not capable of ignoring the somnolent influences of human nature. To his own extreme surprise his head fell forward with an abrupt nod while he was engaged in the act of depicting Big Waller's nose, and he found, on resuming work, with an imbecile smile at what he deemed his weakness, that that member of the Yankee's face was at least two feet long, and was formed after the pattern of a somewhat irregular Bologna sausage. Indiarubber quickly put this to rights, however, and he set to again ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... comical disappointment passed between them as they gazed upon the sterile flat, dotted with unsightly excrescences that stood equally for cabins or mounds of stone and gravel. It was so feeble and inconsistent a culmination to the beautiful scenery they had passed through, so hopeless and imbecile a conclusion to the preparation of that long picturesque journey, with its glimpses of sylvan and pastoral glades and canyons, that, as the coach swept down the last incline, and the remorseless monotony of the dead level spread out before them, furrowed by ditches ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... the imbecile young man who, by the absurd law of hereditary descent, was the destined heir to the throne of more than twenty millions of people. The king was anxious to obtain for his son a bride whose alliance would strengthen him against his enemies. With that policy alone ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... harrowing spectacle; Badenhorst; old father; old mother; bedridden 15-year-old boy; water head; simple; old mother feeds it mouth to mouth[14]; "Die kind, leeraart, het ik nou al lang afgege aan de Heere Jesus!" (This child, Pastor, I have given to the Lord Jesus long ago.") She dotes on this imbecile, poor mother. Such a simple, homely, gladsome, believing old heart. "Ik ben velen een wonder geweest" ("I am a wonder unto many"); me certainly; daughter with sick girlie; "De Heere het haar ver ons terug gege" ("The Lord ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... as he sat, having finished his own, looking out of the window at two girls in Sunday splendour kissing one of the stable boys behind a farm cart. They were all three apparently enjoying themselves very much, the girls laughing, the boy with an expression at once imbecile and beatific. They thought the master's eye could not see them there, but the master's eye saw most things. He took up his pen again and added a postscript. "If you come soon you will be able to enjoy the society ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... firmer nerves than Olivia's, and hearts more callous, assume the offices from which they shrink not. 'Tis the fate, the hard fate of all endued with exquisite sensibility, to be palsied by the excess of their feelings, and to become imbecile at the moment their exertions ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... used them if I could against the magnificent Marian herself. Odious insinuations both! All my interests were concerned (as will be seen presently) in the preservation of Anne Catherick's life. All my anxieties were concentrated on Marian's rescue from the hands of the licensed imbecile who attended her, and who found my advice confirmed from first to last by the physician from London. On two occasions only—both equally harmless to the individual on whom I practised—did I summon to myself the assistance of chemical knowledge. On the first of the two, after following Marian to ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... just as imbecile, just as infernal, to have to go to the office on Monday," said Jonathan, "as it always has done and always will do. To spend all the best years of one's life sitting on a stool from nine to five, scratching in somebody's ledger! It's a queer use to make of one's... one and only life, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... else than what he pretends to be, there will be fraud. The Germains, though they think as I do, are frightened and superstitious. They are afraid of this imbecile who is coming over; but they shall find that if they do not move in the matter, I will. I want nothing that belongs to another; but while I have a hand and tongue with which to protect myself, or a purse,—which ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... should honour their husbands as if they were gods, and never offend them with improper language, though they be diseased, indigent, or imbecile. ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... functions argues a faith lurking somewhere in the possibility of talking the Chinese into reason. Such a chimera, still surviving the multiform experience we have had, augurs ruin to the total enterprise. It is not absolutely impossible that even Yeh, or any imbecile governor armed with the same obstinacy and brutal arrogance, might, under the terrors of an armament such as he will have to face, simulate a submission that was far from his thoughts. We ourselves found in the year 1846, when in fidelity to our engagements we gave back the important ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... whom he had kept such strange company so long. But once only, the following night, I saw Clarimonde. She said to me, as she had said the first time at the portals of the church: 'Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done? Wherefore have hearkened to that imbecile priest? Wert thou not happy? And what harm had I ever done thee that thou shouldst violate my poor tomb, and lay bare the miseries of my nothingness? All communication between our souls and our bodies is henceforth for ever broken. Adieu! Thou wilt yet ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... Liberal measures; the Liberals at the Tories, by their consciousness of getting everything that is to be got in Church and State; and all at one another, by substituting low ribaldry for argument, bad jokes for principle, and an openly avowed, vainglorious, imbecile vanity as a panoply to guard himself from the attacks ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... only those who suffer from affective stupidity, and who, for the rest, may be persons of a certain cerebral distinction. For it is possible to possess great talent, or what we call great talent, and yet to be stupid as regards the feelings and even morally imbecile. There have been instances. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... devil is there to ask in this imbecile place? We must find out, for time is passing," he observed suddenly, as though speaking ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... pompous dullness, the mean aims, the base successes—all these were present to him; it was with the din of these curses of the world, blasphemies against Heaven, shrieking in his ears, that he began to write his dreadful allegory—of which the meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate, and imbecile, and his passions are so monstrous, and his boasted powers so mean, that he is and deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance is better than his vaunted reason. What had this man done? what secret remorse was rankling at his heart? what fever was boiling in him, that he ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... replied Sir Arthur, "was an officer of the French Courts. He had a warrant authorising her detention in a home for chronic inebriates. She is there still, little better than an imbecile, I regret to say, and with no hope of recovery. The physicians I consulted told me that she must have had the germs of alcoholic insanity in her blood from her very birth. She told us that she had a daughter, and we traced you to the school, though she obstinately refused to tell ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith |
