"Imbecility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the appointment of a successor, had all sought safety by retiring to private places. 2. Some soldiers happening to wander about the palace, discovered Clau'dius, Calig'ula's uncle, lurking in a secret place where he had hid himself. Of this person, who had hitherto been despised for his imbecility, they resolved to make an emperor: and accordingly they carried him upon their shoulders to the camp, where they proclaimed him at a time when he expected nothing ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... must be taken into calculation when one considers what woman owes to religion. The Reformation reduced woman to the position of a mere breeder of children. During the sway of Puritanism woman was a poor, benighted being, a human toad under the harrow of a pious imbecility. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... believe that portions of the True Cross are at Rome and elsewhere, that the Crib of Bethlehem is at Rome, and the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul also.... Many men when they hear an educated man so speak, will at once impute the avowal to insanity, or to an idiosyncrasy, or to imbecility of mind, or to decrepitude of powers, or to fanaticism, or to hypocrisy. They have a right to say so, if they will; and we have a right to ask them why they do not say it of those who bow down before the Mystery of mysteries, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... The grip of the big hands of the painter, though powerful, was light. They all knew that the loud ravings of the painter never presaged violence. They had grown to like him, to accept him as almost one of themselves; though of course they looked down upon him with amused pity for his imbecility regarding ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... quite incomprehensible about her, for she was not an unusually good girl, and by no means a dashing girl, neither was she an intensely modest girl—and yet, plain Emma Gray had perhaps driven more young men into a condition of drivelling imbecility than any acknowledged ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... exulted that the gambler was no worse. But could this make the gambler an honest man, because other men were rogues? How desperate the cause that could clutch at so frail a straw for support! Yet Mr. Freeman appeared perfectly unconscious of the imbecility of his reasoning. More perfect ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... armor, or eternal scenes from Gil Blas, Don Quixote, and the Vicar of Wakefield, or mountain sceneries with young idiots of Londoners wearing Highland bonnets and brandishing rifles in the foregrounds. Do but think of these things in the breadth of their inexpressible imbecility, and then go and stand before that broken bas-relief in the southern gate of Lincoln Cathedral, and see if there is no fiber of the heart in ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... political matters everywhere the most numerous class of all, received their visiters well enough, and in many instances they treated their guests with delicacy and distinction. On the whole, however, the late governor derived but little pleasure from the intercourse, so much mouthing imbecility being blended with the expressions of regret and sympathy, as to cause him to mourn over the compliance of his fellow-creatures, more than to rejoice at their testimony ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Miss Starbrow pushed her angrily from her. "Sorry! Never dare to say such a thing again! Oh, I don't know which is most hateful to me, his villainy or your whining imbecility. Leave me—go to your room, and never come to ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... strange, half-forgotten magic, and all his old delight in the girl who had shared in and had provoked this ancient wonder-working, together with a quite new consciousness of the inseparability of Patricia's foibles from his existence; so that he was incuriously aware of his imbecility in not having known always that Patricia must come back some day, not as a glorious, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Uncle Henry's feelings, even if he didn't catch me at it, I partook again of the fervent stuff, and fell into new wonder at the seeming imbecility of Herman Wagner. I found myself not a little moved by the pathos of him. It was little enough I could get from Ma Pettengill at first. She spoke almost shortly to me when I asked her things she had to stop adding silly ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... insinuate what it was dangerous to announce; and Beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... manner in which they adjust themselves to the vision of their futility. Do they shriek aloud with horror in lonely bedrooms? There's a question there. How do people who are important to themselves reconcile themselves to their unimportance to others? And how are they able to forget their imbecility?" ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... former kindness he had so ill repaid. This humiliation falls upon his proud spirit and shattered nerves with an overwhelming force, and his reason fails beneath it. He is for some time a raving maniac, and then falls into a state of gay and compassionable imbecility, which is described with inimitable beauty in the close ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... baggage were just as related in the story—the only liberty I have taken being the bestowal of names. 'M. Arture' was really of the party, but I have made him Scotch instead of Irish, and I have no knowledge that the lackey was not French. The imbecility of the Abbe is merely a deduction from his helplessness, but of course this may ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... open crimes; as may be seen in the examples of the philosophers who, though they endeavored to lead moral lives, failed to accomplish their designs, and were guilty of many notorious crimes. Such is the imbecility of man, when he undertakes to govern himself by his own strength, without faith ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... previous Book we beheld the depravity of the Suitors, we now witness the imbecility of the People. Still the spark of hope flashes out brightly in this Ithacan night; something is at work to punish the guilty and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... had her interesting moments, the best of them, perhaps, in the First Act. In her big scene, where the knife is to be won from Ricardo, she was no doubt hampered by the tradition that it is necessary to play down to the carefully cultivated imbecility of the audience in order that they should not misunderstand the most obvious points. It's not flattering to us, but it can't be helped. Probably we deserve it. But need she have been quite so refined? Only very occasionally does she remember ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... Galignani's Messenger did not arrive at the usual hour, on the morning of my departure; to finish breakfast, or bathing, without Galignani's Messenger, was perfectly impossible, so I remained, till I was half boiled, in a state of the most indolent imbecility. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... continent, and the weakness of Austria and Prussia, mixed up with no inconsiderable amount of indecision and duplicity, are freely commented upon in letters from Mr. Grenville and Lord Malmesbury. Want of power, and want of will—fear, hesitation, and imbecility—were so conspicuous in the conduct of these Courts, as to destroy all confidence in their professions. The character drawn by Lord Malmesbury of the King of Prussia—which the reader will find confirmed in the subsequent communications of Mr. Grenville—shows ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... behalf of certain beneficiaries, while a sound population policy, according to the best knowledge we have, would be the real solution of a number of the most serious evils (alcoholism, sex disease, imbecility, insanity, and infant mortality) which now exhaust the vigor ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... it were between the prongs of a pitchfork, and in that condition scourged to death. Horror-struck with this account, he drew forth two poniards, or short swords, tried their edges, and then, in utter imbecility of purpose, returned them to their scabbards, alleging that the destined moment had not yet arrived. Then he called upon Sporus, the infamous partner in his former excesses, to commence the funeral anthem. Others, again, he besought to lead the way in dying, and to sustain ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... an extraordinary state of tension, had at length become relaxed in as extraordinary a degree—continued to struggle with a sort of imbecility, the growth of superstitious terror, when the shocking tidings were brought from Holland, which fulfilled ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... good deal of his time in endeavouring to mask, under a cloak of boisterous good humour, a really remarkable combination of malevolence and imbecility. He was what you call a remittance man. He got so much a quarter—a miserable sum it was—to keep out of England. He travelled about formerly. But no amount of travel, no association with his betters, could pierce his stolid pachydermatous obliquity. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... continually making of his kindness and the affection, that still subsists in England towards the people of this country. This has produced not the least effect here; all ranks of people consider it rather a proof of their imbecility, than of their good will, and the Legislatures of the several States will I imagine enter into resolutions, similar to those passed by Maryland, which you will find in the enclosed papers. I direct ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... his successors throughout Europe, whose imitation of the worst parts of his policy is only limited by their comparative impotence, and their positive imbecility.—[MS. M.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the heart of childhood, defy the rust of years, and outlive the more mature but less vivid pictures of after days. So deep, so lasting, indeed, are the impressions of early life, that we often see a man, in the imbecility of age, holding fresh in his recollection the events of childhood, while all the wide space between that and the present hour is a blasted and forgotten waste. You have perchance seen an old and half-obliterated portrait, and, in the attempt to have it cleaned and restored, ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... that string, And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong— Between whose endless jar justice resides— Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then every thing includes itself in power Power into will, will into appetite; And ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... lieutenant-general, second in command to the Earl of Manchester. The second battle of Newbury, though a success, gave Cromwell, then one of the most influential members of Parliament, an occasion to complain of the imbecility of the noblemen who controlled the army, and who were Presbyterians. The "self-denying ordinance," which prohibited members of Parliament from command in the army, was a blow at Presbyterianism and aristocracy, and marked the growing power of the Independents. It was planned by Cromwell, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... religion, as the basis of all our other hopes, and the more to be considered in regard of the looseness of the place where you are. I doubt not but you have well considered of the resolve to travel to Italy, yet I have this to say for my fond fears (besides the imbecility of my sex) my affections are all contracted into one head: also I know the hotness of his temper, apt to feverishness. Yet I submit him to your total management, only praying the God of Heaven to direct you for the best, and ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... fall victims to self-abuse, which helps to lead to neurasthenia. Then they may drift slowly into a state of mental weakness, and often require as much care as imbeciles. If the fits are severe from an early age, arrest of mental development and imbecility follow. If the disease be very mild in character, and especially if it be petit mal, the victim may be very precocious, get "pushed" at school, and ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... and were somehow sacred. The most preposterous inventions of its activity have been regarded in their time as the greatest feats of the human mind, and in its receptive form it has been nursed into an imbecility to which the truth is repugnant, and the fact that the beautiful resides nowhere else is inconceivable. It has been flattered out of all sufferance in its toyings with the mere elements of character, and its attempts to present ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... routine, have done much to cripple the patriotic efforts of our people. The patriotism of the man who at this day doubts the policy of their open reproof can well be questioned. West Point has, in too many instances, nursed imbecility and treason; but in our honest contempt for the small men of whom, in common with other institutions, she has had her share,—we must not ignore those bright pages of our history adorned with the skill and heroism of her nobler sons. McClellanism did not follow its chief from Warrenton; or Burnside's ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... who are capable of being unmoved by a discussion as to whether Mr. Stephen Phillips is or is not a true poet, that they are perfectly within their rights. It is not a crime not to love literature. It is not a sign of imbecility. The mandarins of literature will order out to instant execution the unfortunate individual who does not comprehend, say, the influence of Wordsworth on Tennyson. But that is only their impudence. Where would they be, I wonder, if requested ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... centralized power of the crown and the tiara, the ultramontane in religion, the despotic in policy—found their fullest expression and most fatal exercise. Her records shine with glorious deeds, the self-devotion of heroes and of martyrs; and the result of all is disorder, imbecility, ruin. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... irregularity; and since we cannot adjust every day by the balance or barometer, it is fit sometimes to depart from rigid accuracy, that we may be able to comply with necessary affairs, or strong inclinations. He that too long observes nice punctualities, condemns himself to voluntary imbecility, and will not long escape ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the side of a stream and consider two things: the imbecility of your private nature and the ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... those who rejected his teaching and thwarted his designs. The bishops he railed at as idiotic devotees, incredibly blind, supernaturally foolish. "The Jesuits," he said, "were grenadiers de la folie, and united imbecility with the vilest passions."[342] He fancied that in many dioceses there was a conspiracy to destroy religion, that a schism was at hand, and that the resistance of the clergy to his principles threatened to destroy Catholicism in France. Rome, he was sure, would help ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... mind, the sounder it appeared. When no longer called upon to speak or listen—either of which operations cost him an evident effort—his face would briefly subside into its former not uncheerful quietude. It was not painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the imbecility of decaying age. The framework of his nature, originally strong and massive, was not ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Macquarie's account of his own doings, although this may be somewhat tinctured with that vanity, which is said to have been his greatest weakness:—"I found the colony," he states, in a Report to Earl Bathurst, "barely emerging from infantile imbecility, and suffering from various privations and disabilities; the country impenetrable beyond 40 miles from Sydney; agriculture in a yet languishing state; commerce in its early dawn; revenue unknown; threatened with ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, was scarcely to be called one, upon account of the mental imbecility that confined his usefulness to such simple duties as running little errands from room to room about ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the Jacobite times, of the rebellion of '45. The hero, Edward Waverley, who is no such great hero either, his author calling him indeed "a sneaking piece of imbecility," gives his name to the book. He meets Bonnie Prince Charlie, is present at the famous ball at Holyrood, fights at the battle of Prestonpans, and marches with the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... which is condemned by clamorous imbecility, is so far from being a vice, that it is the greatest of all possible virtues,—a virtue which the uncorrupted judgment of mankind has in all ages exalted to the rank of heroism. To give up all the repose and pleasures of life, to pass sleepless nights and laborious ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... enough, it is the idea conveyed in the last two words—at once—which sticks in the throats of my strong-minded opponents! They agree with me as to the existence of the evils, they honestly deplore them, but they charge me with mental imbecility when I suggest that things should be put right at once. They counsel delay, and when the dispute reaches a certain stage they smile at me with contempt, or pity, or they storm, according to individual temperament, and usually wind up with a rasping reiteration of their original opinions, ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... armed with sticks, singing, howling, cursing and looking for someone to hit. Others stood in groups on the pavement with their hands thrust in their pockets, or leaned against walls or the shutters of the shops with expressions of ecstatic imbecility on their faces, chanting the mournful dirge to the tune of the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... of course, adding its vocal melody to the dulcet tones of the blacksmith's violin. Even the cats of the settlement were present, including that celebrated kitten which had been reduced to a state of drivelling imbecility by the furious advent of the Wild Man. Owls and other sagacious birds also came from afar to see the fun, attracted by the light of the fire; for the ballroom was the green sward of the forest, which was illuminated for the ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... whose objects, the baseless fabric of a vision, faded before the exhausted eye, they must have had iron frames. Shakespeare never grasped the airy dagger with a nerveless hand, nor did Milton tremble when he led Satan far from the confines of his dreary prison. These were not the ravings of imbecility, the sickly effusions of distempered brains; but the exuberance of fancy, that "in a fine phrenzy" wandering, was not continually reminded of its ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... generally, because he can keep his countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives. It comes natural ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... revival, in smoother numbers, of Dr. Donne's satires, which was recommended to him by the duke of Shrewsbury and the earl of Oxford. They made no great impression on the publick. Pope seems to have known their imbecility, and, therefore, suppressed them while he was yet contending to rise in reputation, but ventured them when he thought their deficiencies more likely to be imputed to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... qualified sense: that it presents but an imperfect image of their brilliancy, the ruins only of their grandeur, and a system that has experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of social events, political circumstances, and the ambitious imbecility of its improvers. After leaving Egypt, the Mysteries were modified by the habits of the different nations among whom they were introduced, and especially by the religious systems of the countries into which they were transplanted. To maintain the established government, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... clearly that at any moment he might kick over the traces, and that the starvation and misery of the Paris episode would have to be faced again. We can readily picture him coming in raging after a conflict at the theatre with official imbecility, and Minna, instead of sympathizing, counselling him to be wise and temporize. His exasperation grew, and only the events of 1849 prevented a rupture—so much seems certain—and he vented his spleen by making Elsa a stupid, shallow, faithless creature who feels no gratitude towards the hero who ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... contrast therewith than the inadequate standard of judgment and scope of criticism adopted by those who, actuated by partisan zeal and guided by narrow motives, apply to such characters the limited gauge of their own insight and estimation—endeavoring to atone by microscopic accuracy for imbecility in fundamental principles.' Hence the foreign publicist of large research and precise historical knowledge, the scholar of broad and earnest sympathies, the patriot of generous and tenacious principles, find in these exemplars of civic virtue objects of permanent admiration; while many ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... There you will greet David and the prophets. There will you tell to the astounded listeners, not only the great events of the extinct world, but also the ills they will never know: sickness, old age, grief, egotism, hypocrisy, abhorrent vanity, imbecility, and the rest. The soul, like the earth, will possess ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... drawing-room, and you must say nothing that would not be possible and indeed suitable in that milieu. To attempt to arouse any interest or show any intelligence is wrong, but then neither must you betray any sign of actual imbecility. Anything that approaches gibbering ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... chiefly young children, especially girls; that almost all of them had lived till then in ignorance and obscurity; that several of them were deformed, and some, in their natural state, even exhibited imbecility. Of such, for the most part, it was that God made choice, to show forth to us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the insane notion that, in some way, the association of ideas came from that bunch of waste. It—the waste—was grimy and anything but fragrant, as different from the dark lock which the wind had blown against my face as anything well could be, but the hurry with which I discarded it proves my imbecility at that time. Confound the girl! she was a nuisance. I wanted to forget her and her family, and the sulphurous personage to whose care I had once consigned the head of the family apparently took a characteristic delight in arranging matters ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... successors far outbid him in absurdity. To a number of people a precedent is always a point of departure—an example to be imitated with violent exaggeration. After our sculptor came a deluge of imbecility. We are then among stone-cutters who shrink from nothing; we are treated then to clouds that look like muffins—to waves that resemble pancakes. Apotheosis becomes preposterous; allegory goes fairly mad. Glancing at certain post-Roubiliac ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... pet phrase from our physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I do not say this as one who desires it, in my heart I should rather prefer the contrary—I mean such an increase in ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... I'm not yet reduced to imbecility and prefer to examine my own correspondence," returned the invalid, fretfully. Then as if ashamed of his petulance, and with a return to his ordinary manner, added: "This telegram might as well have walked. Would have saved time, judging by the date of it; and as for this letter—that, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... Lieutenant-General Scott," written by himself (2 vols., New York, 1864), i, p. 115.] It is small wonder that such troops were utterly unable to meet the English. Until near the end, the generals were as bad as the armies they commanded, and the administration of the War Department continued to be a triumph of imbecility to the very last. [Footnote: Monroe's biographer (see "James Monroe," by Daniel C. Gilman, Boston, 1883, p. 123) thinks he made a good Secretary of War. I think he was as much a failure as his predecessors, and a harsher criticism could not be passed on him. ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... was an aged man of grayish beard, who was particularly loud and zealous in his condemnation of the dishonest banker. He railed against the Government, which, he said, was priest-ridden under the whip of Mazarin; the imbecility of the police; and the apathy of the citizens, who bore so peaceably such glaring acts of injustice and imposition. He poured out a volume of calumny against the priesthood, and blasphemed so as to cast a chill of terror ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... affidavit from every member of his crew to say that they had been there too. This kind of logic is irresistible if you only grant the first little step; and Columbus had the art of making it seem an act of imbecility in any of his hearers to doubt the strength of the little link by which his great golden chains of argument were fastened ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... goitrous, came to the door and with sadly imperfectly co-ordinated movements, gestured a message which he could not speak. Almost as soon as he had gone a deaf-mute boy passed. As we sat at our doorway, we saw a half-witted child at play before the next house. Goitre, deaf-mutism, and imbecility, all are fearfully common, and all are relatedly ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... sense, be rectified by experience; but he knew the obstinacy of his sister's attachment to these phantoms, and that to bereave her of the good they promised was the most effectual means of rendering her miserable. For this end he set himself to thwart her wishes. In the imbecility and false indulgence of his parents he found the most powerful auxiliaries. He prevailed upon them to forbid that union which wanted nothing but their concurrence, and their consent to endow her with a small portion of their patrimony, to render completely eligible. The cause was that of ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... Hafiz is his intellectual liberty, which is a certificate of profound thought. We accept the religions and politics into which we fall; and it is only a few delicate spirits who are sufficient to see that the whole web of convention is the imbecility of those whom it entangles,—that the mind suffers no religion and no empire but its own. It indicates this respect to absolute truth by the use it makes of the symbols that are most stable and reverend, and therefore is always provoking the ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... too difficult. By a new mode of management, much of the homeliness and rude horror, that defaced and encumbered the reality, is thrown away. The Dauphin is not here a voluptuous weakling, nor is his court the centre of vice and cruelty and imbecility: the misery of the time is touched but lightly, and the Maid of Arc herself is invested with a certain faint degree of mysterious dignity, ultimately represented as being in truth a preternatural gift; though whether ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... and most relentless of men in his maxims, melted into absolute uxorial imbecility at the sight of that mute distress. He put his arm round his wife's waist, with genuine affection, and without a single proverb at his heart. "Carissima, do not grieve so; we shall be back soon, and travelling is expensive; rolling ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough to frescoe the heavens—pretty much all done by Michael Angelo. So with him we have played that game which has vanquished so many guides for us —imbecility and idiotic questions. These creatures never suspect—they have no idea ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is not an ideal being, he is still less a stolid mentally squalid brute. He is not reticent out of imbecility or mental weakness. He fails properly to understand much of what takes place around him, especially what happens within the circle of our modern civilization, but withal he is far from indifferent toward his surroundings. He observes, compares, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... imperious man, and was never disposed to be very complaisant to his superiors. Sternly the young captain rebuked Espinosa as a kidnapper, stealing the defenceless; and he demanded that the prisoners should be set at liberty. An angry controversy ensued. De Soto accused Espinosa of cowardice and imbecility, in ordering the troops of Spain to retreat before naked savages. Espinosa, whose domineering spirit could brook no opposition, accused De Soto of mutinous conduct, and threatened to report him to the ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... warn you that two of the four who attempted it lost their lives; a third is a cripple for life, minus a leg; and only the fourth, who ended by arresting the wrong man, after all, had any degree of success. And now he is frightened almost into imbecility, for his life has been sworn away by the yeggmen, and he expects to be murdered every ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... spoken, I realised the full imbecility of this remark. My only excuse for making such a fatuous observation was that the near vicinity of this weird beauty had paralysed my reasoning faculties, so that I hardly knew what I was saying. And then ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... more ardently than I do to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body and mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances which cannot be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... will probably have children taller than either, and mental imbecility is the usual attendant of extreme size. The union of persons prone to corpulency, of dwarfs, etc., would have parallel results; and so, likewise, of weakly and attenuated couples. The tall should marry the short, the corpulent the lean, the choleric ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... work, yet adding that she longs for rest and if we will only tell her where Campton is, whither we had gone, she would gladly join us. "I was a weary idiot," she continues, "by the time the wedding was over, and said 'yes ma'am' to the men and 'no sir' to the women in sheer imbecility." ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Dennis, who, considering the fundamental position of his criticism, that 'Chevy Chase' pleases and ought to please because it is natural, observes that 'there is a way of deviating from nature . . . by imbecility, which degrades nature by faintness and diminution'. . . In 'Chevy Chase' . . . there is a chill and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot possibly be told in a manner that shall make less impression ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... all the clear and lucid spaces of his brain in a moment; and then, after the dissipations which he could not resist, he sank, utterly exhausted in body, heart, and mind, into a collapsed condition bordering upon imbecility. Such a character will drag a man down into the mire if he is left to himself, or bring him to the highest heights of political power if he has some stern friend to keep him in hand. Neither Chesnel, nor the ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... impudent as the other passages below are imbecile—of course in each case (as before) with a calculated impudence and imbecility. The miserable creature had himself obliged her to "come out of the water" by declining to join her there on the plea that he was never good for an ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... He lived at one of his palaces on the Thames, a short distance above London, near Richmond. His government fell into great disorder, but he did nothing to restrain or correct the evils that occurred. In a word, he was fast relapsing into utter imbecility. ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean, and I was rather disappointed in finding the present Romans a race of fully average capacities, intellectual and physical. A face indicating mental imbecility, or even low mediocrity, is very rarely met in those streets where the greater portion of the Romans seem to work and live. The women are brown, plain, bare-headed, and rather careless of personal appearance, but ready ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... recoveries, and she continued through life to revisit, for periods of uncertain seclusion, this house of woe. This calamity of his fireside, followed soon after by the death of his father, who had for some time been in a state of imbecility, determined the future destiny of Lamb. Apprehending, with the perfect grief of perfect love, that his sister's fate was sealed for life—viewing her as his own greatest benefactress, which she really had been through her advantage by ten years ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and no longer the tutor of my children. Your views and mine! You ridiculous tyro! You and Schiller! Friedrich Schiller! I've told you a hundred times that your puerile little views of art are nothing but an innate striving toward imbecility! ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... been so bad as that; never. Kill him? Bah! If this magical north country of yours will make a man out of a human derelict it will surely work some sort of a transformation in a dog that has been clubbed into imbecility. Will ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... like plants of a hot-house which wilt when brought into the outer air. Accustomed to the life of a convent, they could not conceive of any other; and when one morning their bars and gratings were flung down, they had shuddered at finding themselves free. It is easy to imagine the species of imbecility which the events of the Revolution, enacted before their eyes, had produced in these innocent souls. Quite incapable of harmonizing their conventual ideas with the exigencies of ordinary life, not even comprehending their own situation, they were like ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... better of the Dragon, he adulterated his drink (Mr. Lemon played the Dragon) with sherry, the sly relish with which he watched the demoralization, by this means, of his formidable adversary into a helpless imbecility, was perfect. Here Dickens played the testy old Baron, and took advantage of the excitement against the Czar raging in 1855 to denounce him (in a song) as no other than own cousin to the very Bear that Fortunio had ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... misfortunes; when his gout troubled him less and he was in a somewhat more humane frame of mind, he would perhaps give the rector some money, after having bullied him in the most painful manner, and berated the whole parish for its shiftlessness and imbecility. But, whatsoever his mood, he never failed to make as many sarcastic and embarrassing speeches as possible, and to cause the Reverend Mr. Mordaunt to wish it were proper and Christian-like to throw something heavy at him. During all the years in which Mr. Mordaunt had ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... these terribly evil natures? Nay, perhaps with some what else, as a cross-grain'd pate, a grumbling gizzard, not wel in his sences, jealous thoughts, or the actions of a Cotquean are his companions; and that is more then all these, keeps hid a certain imbecility in his defective nature; which is no waies to be discovered till the nuptial ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... whole. I have, no doubt, the unenviable advantage over you of having wasted three mortal months in reading all the literary criticism extant of the first quarter of this century. It would be difficult to express my sense of its imbecility, its blundering, and its bad passions. But the good books it assailed are not lost, and the bad ones it glorified do not survive. It is not that the public has been the better judge, but that good work has the seeds of ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not able to travel very fast on account of the still feeble condition of the white stranger. Poor creature! I pitied him from the bottom of my heart. It seemed so terrible for a man to lapse into a state of imbecility after having survived the dreadful hardships and adventures that had befallen him. I tried over and over again to elicit sensible replies to my questions as to where he came from; but he simply gibbered and babbled like ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... life had he met a woman who inspired him with such invincible repugnance. He found himself talking to her at random like a man in a dream, and so indifferent to her opinion that he was not in the least distressed at his own imbecility; and Miss Tancred, like a lady in a dream, seemed to find his attitude entirely natural; perhaps she had read a similar antagonism in the faces of other men. (As it happened, repugnance was an emotion that Durant had frequently felt before, and certain emphatic lines about his nose and ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... We are divided as to whether it is to be a duel or a cold-blooded murder; but I know my part is to transform my face from that in which diabolical hatred and fiendish rage is depicted, into a gradual state of simpering, smiling imbecility, and I think the curtain will fall upon me and my rival locked in each other's arms, shedding maudlin tears of love into our ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... was universal: but it was evident that the two parties raised that cry for very different reasons. Montague spoke the sense of the Whigs. He declared that the disasters of the summer could not, in his opinion, be explained by the ignorance and imbecility of those who had charge of the naval administration. There must have been treason. It was impossible to believe that Lewis, when he sent his Brest squadron to the Straits of Gibraltar, and left the whole coast of his kingdom from Dunkirk to Bayonne ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... strong and silent and efficient. He could dissect a car and put it together again. He could drive through the thickest traffic. He could sit silent in company without having his silence attributed to shyness or imbecility. But—he could not get engaged to Muriel Coppin. That was reserved for Roland Bleke, the nut, the dasher, the young man of affairs. It was all very well being able to tell a spark-plug from a commutator at sight, but when it came ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... preference which we call Falling in Love, I believe that so far from improving man, you would only do one of two things—either spoil his constitution, or produce a tame stereotyped pattern of amiable imbecility. You would crush out all initiative, all spontaneity, all diversity, all originality; you would get an animated moral code instead of living ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... intelligence at various intervals to excite the public mind. It was not Wiggins, for he kept himself in strict seclusion; and people who went to stare at the gates of Dalton Park found nothing for their pains. It could not have been the vicar, for his terror had reduced him to a state of simple imbecility. There was some other cause, and that ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... their counsel has brought on their sovereign and their country. Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep,—to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy,—to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from imbecility, and without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison. They have seen the French rebel against a mild and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... though upon the manifest evidence just given them, awaited in painful suspense the return of the judges, interchanging with an air of mystery and inane importance the usual remarks prompted by imbecility on such occasions. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... no more than is usual in a man of Monsignor's temperament at any excitement. There is absolutely nothing wrong, and—Monsignor," he continued, looking straight at the wire-bedecked invalid, "not the very faintest indication of anything even approaching insanity or imbecility." ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... majority were of those, who having passed the prime of active life, might be considered to have reached the highest of mental power and capacity, removed alike from the greenness of inconsiderate youth, and the imbecility of extreme ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... have read every word of David Grieve. Owing to the unusual and unaccountable imbecility of the reviewing—(the Athenaeum man, for example, does not even comprehend that he is reading a biography!)—it may be three months or so before the public fully takes hold, but I have no doubt of the ultimate verdict.... The consistency of the leading characters is wonderful, and there is not ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... empty porter bottles lay near, which plainly told what was the matter with him—he was helplessly tipsy. Lemon, and Ernest, and Buttar went forward to help to drag him along. He looked a picture of imbecility and brutishness. He knew none of them; and only grinned horribly when they spoke to him. Though they felt he richly deserved punishment, it was a point of honour to endeavour to save a school-fellow from disgrace, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the first president of assize, in an eloquent speech, put on one side all questions of witchcraft and diabolical compact, and bestial transformation, and boldly stated that the court had only to consider the age and the imbecility of the child, who was so dull and idiotic—that children of seven or eight years old have usually a larger amount of reason than he. The president went on to say that Lycanthropy and Kuanthropy were mere ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... breaking benches and chairs to pieces—in short, they have a good time.—The next morning, having slept himself sober, he dictates his orders for the day, veritable masterpieces in which the silliness, imbecility and credulity of a numskull, the sentimentality of the drunkard, the clap-trap of a mountebank and the tirades of a cheap philosopher form an unique compound, at once sickening and irritating, like the fiery, pungent mixtures of cheap bars, which suit his audience better because they contain ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... eyes were bloodshot. His neck was buried in rolls of fat. But for a fringe of long curly hair, nearly white, at the back of his head, he was quite bald; and that immense, shiny surface of forehead, which might have given him a false look of intelligence, on the contrary gave him one of peculiar imbecility. He wore a blue flannel shirt, open at the neck and showing his fat chest covered with a mat of reddish hair, and a very old pair of blue serge trousers. He sat in his chair in a heavy ungainly attitude, his great belly thrust forward and his fat legs uncrossed. All elasticity had gone from ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... drawing general conclusions from this fact is shown by the additional fact that in idiots and imbeciles premature awakening of the sexual life is also of common occurrence. In cases such as were formerly described as moral insanity, but which in Germany to-day are classed with imbecility, sexual assaults on others are very common at an early age. This is true also of other forms of idiocy and imbecility. In asylums for such patients, feeble-minded children not infrequently make sexual ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... hesitated. There was a deep-seated prejudice in favor of the English government, and a strong personal liking for the people. Even when it was known that the second petition to the King—Dickinson's "measure of imbecility"—was disregarded, as it deserved to be, and that the Hessians were coming, and all reasonable men admitted that there was no hope for reconciliation, they still refused to abandon the pleasing delusion, and talked over the old plans for redress ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... commotion. This is conform to what is avouched by the most skilful physicians, when they affirm that shakings and tremblings fall upon the members of a human body, partly because of the heaviness and violent impetuosity of the burden and load that is carried, and, other part, by reason of the weakness and imbecility that is in the virtue of the bearing organ. A manifest example whereof appeareth in those who, fasting, are not able to carry to their head a great goblet full of wine without a trembling and a shaking in the hand that holds ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... vain. Pitt, having promised to support Addington, deemed himself in honour bound to fulfil that pledge. But, as the events of the year 1802 showed more and more the imbecility of the Addington Cabinet, torturing doubts preyed upon his mind. His friends, especially Canning, now began to discern the pathos of his position, but sought to draw him from his seclusion at Walmer. An opportunity occurred in the month of May. Pitt's ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... President. If the same want of capacity that has hitherto characterized the war on our part is to be exhibited hereafter, the Proclamation might as well have been levelled against the evils of intemperance as against the evils of slavery. Never, since war began, has there been such imbecility displayed in waging it as we have contrived to display in our attacks on the enemies of the Union. It used to be supposed that Austria was the slowest and the most stupid of military countries; but America has got ahead ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... to himself, "we reach the climax; pious imbecility can go no further. Among the subjects in sculpture in the ambulatory of the choir there is a group representing the Circumcision, Saint Joseph holding the Infant while the Virgin has a napkin ready and the High Priest is preparing to operate. And there has been a priest so ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... again and again, only that I might have the thought that one of them—though I knew not which—might be this lady's, and that in so infinitesimal a degree I had been near her again. Will it be estimated extreme imbecility in me when I ventured the additional confession that I felt a great warmth and tenderness toward the possessors of all these names, as being, if not ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... conscious only of the fact that he was going to be near her, to talk to her uninterruptedly—for hours, maybe. After that he would go back content, ask Beth to marry him, and recover from this fever, this unreasoning, uncontrollable longing to see Kate again, which made him weak to imbecility. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... courage, efficiency, from a doctor or a soldier as a matter of course, a solicitor or a house agent is not only permitted but expected to display nothing but a sort of greedy, greasy, obstructive, over-reaching imbecility—" etc.)—and then, greatly relieved, he went to the window and stared out at ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... of furry forearms, the heaviest objects were handled like playthings. Apart from the grizzled pelt on his chest, the menacing demeanour and the hoarse voice, he had none of the classical attributes of his rating. His good nature almost amounted to imbecility: the men did what they liked with him, and he had not an ounce of initiative in his character, which was easy-going and talkative. For these reasons Jukes disliked him; but Captain MacWhirr, to Jukes' scornful disgust, seemed to regard him as a ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... runs through the entire poem, where Satan alone is resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat, considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and advises him ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... his imminent peril, ventured down the bank, and shouted to him to fly to them. He moved not; they entreated him, and, knowing his great age and infirmity, and the utter imbecility of the poor old dame, insisted ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... possession of the fortune, he was struck down, as I have said, by the first instalment of nature's retribution, and was incapable of carrying out his plans. No one cared for me. No one thought of removing me from the sight and influence of his growing imbecility. I was brought up under the shadow of it. And so the horror was born in me—the belief that I was mad. What chance had I to resist it, in those surroundings? When I came to an age to do so, I searched out the story of my birth, of my father's excesses ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... classics are full of its every imaginable version or perversion; but Litton had seen it expressed only in the polished phrases of Anacreon, Bion, Propertius, and the others. He had not guessed that, however these men polished their verses, they doubtless addressed their sweethearts with all the imbecility of sincerity. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... though reason shines less in children than it does in such as are arrived at maturity, yet no man must imagine that the soul of an infant grows up with the child, for then would it again decay; but it suits itself to nature's weakness, and the imbecility of the body wherein it is placed, that it may operate the better. And as the body is more capable of recovering its influence, so the soul does more and more exert its faculties, having force and endowment at the time it enters the form ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... (and think it a strong objection) that, let a commonwealth be as equal as you can imagine, two or three men when all is done will govern it; and there is that in it which, notwithstanding the pretended sufficiency of a popular State, amounts to a plain confession of the imbecility of that policy, and of the prerogative of monarchy; forasmuch as popular governments in difficult cases have had recourse to dictatorian power, as ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... both of mind and body, had endowed them with great physical perfection; and the eye of the veteran was apt to scan the fair proportions and athletic frames of the colonists with a look that seemed to utter volumes of contempt for their moral imbecility, He was also a little addicted to the expression of a belief that, where there was so great an observance of the externals of religion, there could not be much of the substance. It is not our task ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... abstinence therefrom, he did signal service to a large portion of the human family. Although, for want of better teaching, Mohammedans cling to many vices, one never sees them howling through the streets in a state of wild ferocity, or staggering homewards in a condition of mild imbecility, from the ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... when confronted with "three or four people's" idea that "the future epoux of Miss Bronte is on the Continent", she defends herself against the "silly imputation". "Not that it is a crime to marry, or a crime to wish to be married; but it is an imbecility, which I reject with contempt, for women, who have neither fortune nor beauty, to make marriage the principal object of their wishes and hopes, and the aim of all their actions; not to be able to convince themselves that they are unattractive, and that they had better be quiet, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... he reigned upon: You looked up and he was gone. Gone, his glory of the pen! —Love, with Greece and Rome in ken, Bade her scribes abhor the trick Of poetry and rhetoric, And exult with hearts set free, In blessed imbecility Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet Leaving Sallust incomplete. Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter! —Love, while able to acquaint her While the thousand statues yet Fresh from chisel, pictures wet From brush, she saw on every side, Chose rather ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... properly speaking, never think about themselves at all, unlike our latter-day school of humourists, who seem to have revived the old horse-collar method, and try to raise a laugh by some grotesque assumption of ignorance, imbecility, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... her excitement, entirely forgot that she was in a place of worship. Then she ran forward to the child, who had swooned. Poor little unfortunate, she never recovered the shock. When she came to herself, it was found that her finely strung mind had given way, and she lapsed into a condition of imbecility. But her imbecility was not always passive. Occasionally fits of passionate terror would seize upon her. She would cry out that the fiends were coming to drag her down to torment, and dash herself against the wall, in fear hideous to behold. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... is an obviously doomed villain. The lady is surprised by George in the act of knocking thrice on the said postern within. When three knocks are heard without together with the voice of Richard, the Duke really begins to suspect something. Virtuous imbecility prevails over villainous stupidity. The final blow is dealt upon the Gorndyke nose. Diana is retrieved by this last of the safe-guarders, and we are left to a melancholy calculation as to what the mental capacity of their issue is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... anything as we ought, we lie down and die; therefore the devil hath good striving with us. When one is thirty years old, so hath he as yet Stultitias carnales; yea, also Stultitias spirituales; yet it is much to be admired that, in such our imbecility and weakness, we achieve and accomplish so much and such great matters; but it is God that giveth it. God gave to Alexander the Great, Sapientiam et fortunam, Wisdom and good success; yet, notwithstanding, he calleth him, in the Prophet Jeremiah, ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... magnificent in this scene which no pen can describe, because more than half its force was conveyed only by the eye and the ear. The strong contrast between human excitement and madness coupled with imbecility, and human calmness and self-possession coupled with ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... having teased his gentle spirit." They were big girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions with the silence necessary; and however old age and a long state of beggary seem to have reduced his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in those days his language occasionally rose to the bold and figurative: for, when he was in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, "Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... daubers of penny prints, who have stolen their reputations; a set of idiots or knaves on their knees before public imbecility! Not one among them dares to give the philistines a slap in the face. And, while we are about it, you know that old Ingres turns me sick with his glairy painting. Nevertheless, he's a brick, and a ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... cool, ironical tone: "O Ethiopian stranger, it is evident you know little of Athens; or you would have perceived that a belief in the gods is more vulgar than flute-playing. Such trash is deemed fit for the imbecility of the aged, and the ignorance of the populace. With equestrians and philosophers, it is out of date. You must seek for it among those who sell fish at the gates; or with the sailors at ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... eyelid to point her raillery, but the little twist she gave to her lips when she looked at Dade offered a fair substitute; and the flirt of her silken skirts as she turned to run back into the house was sufficient excuse for any imbecility in a man. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... despised and trampled under foot. The Directors were not suffered either to nominate or to remove those whom they were empowered to instruct; from masters they were reduced to the situation of complainants,—a situation the imbecility of which no laws or regulations could wholly alter; and when the Directors were afterwards restored in some degree to their ancient power, on the expiration of the lease given to their principal servants, it became impossible for them to recover any degree of their ancient respect, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke |
