"Stupidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but Isabella trembled in silence while she followed her father through rough paths, now winding by the side of the river, now ascending the cliffs which serve for its banks. A single servant, selected perhaps for his stupidity, was the only person who attended them. From her father's silence, Isabella little doubted that he had chosen this distant and sequestered scene to resume the argument which they had so frequently maintained upon the subject of Sir Frederick's addresses, and that he ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... was, I gave the world every reasonable opportunity of knowing that they had a remarkable man amongst them, but, with a stupidity all their own, they wouldn't see it; so that when the solicitor who once gave me a brief died—I believe it was a softening of the brain—I burned my wig ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... husband's, to beguile the pain of separation. Some are reproaching the Grihini (house-mistress), some the Korta (master), some the neighbours; some reciting their own praises. She who may have received a gentle scolding in the morning from Surja Mukhi on account of her stupidity, is bringing forward many examples of her remarkable acuteness of understanding. She in whose cooking the flavours can never be depended upon, is dilating at great length upon her proficiency in the ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... soundless and, for the time at least, lonely; the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaptation of the means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so much more than attained. The Roman rigour was apt to overshoot ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... and overweening fault was that form of "moral stupidity" which we term selfishness. Something of it may have come with the faculties which he had inherited—in tendencies and inclinations mysteriously associated with his physical conformation; much had been added thereto by the indulgence ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of what she had felt then in her youth. When she had met for the first time at the opera the man for whom afterwards she had ruined herself, his fierce attraction had fallen upon her like a great blow struck by a determined hand. It had not stunned her to stupidity; it had roused her to feverish life. Now, after years, she was struck another blow, and again the feverish life leaped up within her. But between the two blows what great stretches of experience, and all the lost good ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... one for me, as I am a pupil still! It's the stupidity of pupils which has made her dislike music, but then—why does she come to a concert? Why couldn't she have had the decency to refuse, and let someone else have the ticket? Oh, I do dislike you—you cold,— cutting, disagreeable, ungrateful, snappy ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... parchment said 'at a right angle to the left-hand edge of the track.' I had started from my left hand, but I was descending the mountain, whereas the directions of course supposed the explorer to be ascending. Almost ready to laugh at my stupidity, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the ear of the duke. Within a few days he received an order to wait on the protector in London in company with Colonel White, who had secretly accused him; but both were lost[a] on the Goodwin Sands, through the ignorance or the stupidity of the captain.[1] ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... stopped, perplexed and doubtful, for he could not remember that it seemed so blind when he traveled it before. "But there is the pass," he thought. "I'm headed all right, and this must be the road. It is just another indication of my general stupidity about everything out of doors. I never look at a road, or think about directions, or notice the lay of the land, as long as there is anybody with me upon whom I can depend. I might as well pay no more attention to this trail and strike straight across ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... his stupidity. The astute French woman was hardly likely to return to the scene of her former triumphs with an innocent young daughter and an infamous name. Nor, apparently, had she carried it to Rouen after she ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... belie his looks, for he possesses these qualifications in a high degree. There is a gravity in his manner, somewhat rare in one so young; yet it is not the result of a morose disposition, but a subdued temperament produced by modesty, good sense, and much experience. Neither has it the air of stupidity. No: you could easily tell that the mind of this youth, if once roused, would exhibit both energy and alertness. His quiet manner has a far different expression. It is an air of coolness and confidence, which tells you he has met with dangers in the past, and would not fear ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and abominably respectable class of our society. Pah! I have no patience with them. They live apart, believing themselves rarities; the world is content to let them do it, because theirs is a segregation of stupidity. And Estabrook, though he had ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the street. A rogue picks it up. In his private conscience he says, "Honesty is a very good thing, perhaps, but it is by no means the best policy,—it is simply no policy at all,—it is sheer stupidity. What can be more politic than for me to pocket this windfall and turn the corner quick?"—So preacheth his crooked fag-end of a conscience, that very, very small still voice, in very husky tones; but he knows that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... and measured him with slow eyes. "I am not sure it is stupidity," she remarked; "some might call ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... was informed of it, he said, 'Twice may do.' CHAP. XX. The Master said, 'When good order prevailed in his country, Ning Wu acted the part of a wise man. When his country was in disorder, he acted the part of a stupid man. Others may equal his wisdom, but they cannot equal his stupidity.' ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... deal to think about of late. Affairs at the mines had been troublesome, as usual, and he had been often irritated by the stupidity of the men who were in authority over him. He began to feel, moreover, that an almost impalpable barrier had sprung up between himself and his nearest friend. When he came to face the matter, he was obliged to acknowledge ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have been thus effected. There is no argument which so touches the feeble reason of the madman as the argumentum ad absurdum. We have had men, for example, who fancied themselves chickens. The cure was, to insist upon the thing as a fact—to accuse the patient of stupidity in not sufficiently perceiving it to be a fact—and thus to refuse him any other diet for a week than that which properly appertains to a chicken. In this manner a little corn and gravel were ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... This may be deduced from the passage in Herodotus, where he says that " the Scythians were masters of Asia for twenty-eight years, and overturned everything by their brutality and stupidity: for, in addition to tribute, they exacted from every one whatever they chose, and, moreover, they prowled here and there, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... for the jelly fish to do now but to repent of his stupidity, and to return to the Dragon King of the Sea and to confess his failure, so he started sadly and slowly to swim back. The last thing he heard as he glided away, leaving the island behind him, was the ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... to him that he had spoken much too soon—that she was not ready for his ill-chosen, passionate words, which had wounded instead of firing her heart as he intended they should. He now berated his stupidity, but consoled himself with the thought that love is always a little blind. He saw that she liked Webb exceedingly, and enjoyed talking with him, but he now was no longer disposed to be jealous. She ever seemed to be asking questions like an ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... woodcraft. There were intervals when he regretted his haste to reach Skinner's by this shorter cut, and began to bitterly attribute it to his desire to serve Collinson. Ah, yes! it would be fine indeed, if just as he were about to clutch the prize he should be sacrificed through the ignorance and stupidity of this heavy-handed moralist at his side! But it was not until, through that moralist's guidance, they climbed a steep acclivity to a second ridge, and were comparatively safe, that he began to feel ashamed of his surly silence or surlier interruptions. And Collinson, either through his unconquerable ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... her these ornaments from the same shop in Paris that he ordered—at the same time—a diamond star for a well-known ballet dancer, and the two purchases were charged to his account. Through some stupidity, the star came to her. She ordered her horses and drove the same day to the jewelers, who was most humble and anxious to retrieve his error. He showed her the amber. She examined it carefully. "It is genuine, and very fine," ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... imbecile Peter, he had enough sense to appreciate the abilities of Catharine; and a sort of maudlin idea of justice, if it were not, perhaps, utter stupidity, dissuaded him from resenting her freedom in the choice of favorites. Upon commencing his reign, he yielded himself to the guidance of her imperial mind, hoping to obtain some dignity by the renown which her measures might reflect upon him. Catharine advised him very wisely. She caused seventeen ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... of organized labor as a whole. Socialists bark at communists. Charges of capitalist tendencies are made against the four Brotherhoods. The women's unions feel legislated against in the affairs of labor. Indeed, only utter stupidity on the part of capital ever could weld organized labor into enough solidarity to get society or anyone else agitated for long. Much of the "open shop" fight borders on ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... claim that the lamb is not half so much an emblem of innocence as he is of utter and profound stupidity. There is that charming old lyric about Mary's little lamb; I can explain that. After he came to school (which was an error of judgment at the very beginning), he made the ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Although Spain was mediaeval in its piety in the sixteenth century, this was the period of its highest intellectual culture, especially in the drama. De Vega and Cervantes were enough of themselves to redeem Spain from any charges of intellectual stupidity. But for the Inquisition, and the Dominican monks, and the Jesuits, and the demoralization which followed the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro, Spain might have rivalled Germany, France, and England in the greatness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... dictate to the world what it should believe in, what it should respect, and what it should curse. We will repeat the sorrowful cry of Israel and the complaints against the persecutions which are directed against us. Then, even though each individual may be against us, the masses, in their stupidity, will always be for us. With the press in our hands, we can turn wrong into right, dishonesty into honesty. We can shake all foundations, and separate families. We can destroy faith in all that our ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... my last letter; but it produced no bad consequences: it only made a little more care necessary. Accordingly I shall go from Choisy to Fontainebleau by water. My children are quite well. My boy will spend his time at La Muette while we are absent. It is just a piece of stupidity of the doctors, who do not like him to take so long a journey at his age, though he has two teeth and is very strong. I should be perfectly happy if I were but assured of the general tranquillity, and, above all, of the happiness of my much-loved ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... sanguine energy enabled him to lose the thought, at ordinary times, of the risks to which he himself was exposed; but occasionally he reflected that public life might even yet be made impossible for him, and then he cursed the moral stupidity ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... ruled, then, in our unhappy country; this is a matter of history; but I may say that however strong the colours used to paint the horrors of which these terrorists were capable, the picture will be less lurid than the reality. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the stupidity of the masses, who allowed themselves to be dominated by men, the greater part of whom lacked any ability: for whatever may have been said, almost all the members of the convention were of more than ordinary mediocrity and their ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... seen Eugene Sue's 'Mysteres de Paris'—and I am not deep in the first volume yet. Fancy the wickedness and stupidity of trying to revive the distinctions and hatreds of race between the Gauls and Franks. The Gauls, please to understand, are the 'proletaires,' and the capitalists are the Frank invaders (call them Cosaques, says Sue) out of the forests ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Co-operative Association the 3000 joch of sugar that were grown there during the War would not now be reduced to 88 joch. But as it is, what with the unfortunate inexperience of most of the new tenants and their lack of means, and what with the stupidity of the local authorities who left to the previous owner one field here and one field there in the most absurd fashion, it would have been better both for Count [vC]ekoni['c] and for the State if he had simply presented to the Dobrovoljci half his land. A great many mistakes have been ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... with the words: "Minoret is a thief." All those whom he met commiserated him and asked him who was the author of the anonymous placard. Fortunately for him, everybody made allowance for his equivocal replies by reflecting on his utter stupidity; fools get more advantage from their weakness than able men from their strength. The world looks on at a great man battling against fate, and does not help him, but it supplies the capital of a grocer who may fail and lose all. Why? Because men like to feel superior in protecting an ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... imitated; but she knew nothing about it. Whether she had lighted upon it unbeknown to Samoa, and dissected it as usual, there was now no way to determine. Indeed, upon this one point, she maintained an air of such inflexible stupidity, that if she were really fibbing, her dead-wall countenance superseded the necessity ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... in sleep, the brain loses blood, in intellectual excitement, attracts blood; in the illumination of the death-bed, or the delirium of drunkenness, the circulation through the brain is quickened; in torpidity, melancholy, stupidity, the circulation ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... better, it was strange and new to them. Even Nicodemus, a ruler among the Jews, failed to perceive what Jesus meant when he told him about the nature and necessity of the new birth. Our Lord manifests something of surprise at the ignorance and stupidity of Nicodemus. Such ignorance as Nicodemus exposes in the presence of Christ appears to us as wholly inexcusable, when we look at what had already been taught on the subject of a change of heart, or regeneration, in the law of ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... one—a cousin who had been brought up to observe degrees. She was so much cleverer than Archie that she couldn't help laughing at him, but she didn't laugh enough to exclude variety, being well aware, no doubt, that a woman's cleverness most shines in contrast with a man's stupidity when she pretends to take that stupidity for her law. Linda Pallant moreover was not a chatterbox; as she knew the value of many things she knew the value of intervals. There were a good many in the conversation of these young persons; ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... recently committed on his memory, than were his dust, like Wickliffe's, tossed out of his tomb into the Avon—his plays have been, with as much stupidity as malice, attributed to Lord Bacon! Homer, too, has been found out to be a myth; and we know not if even Dante's originality has altogether passed unquestioned in this age of disbelief and downpulling; although what brow, save that thunder-scathed pile, could wear those ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Margaret. She felt no fear in speaking to him, though he hurt her arm with his gripe, and wild gleams came across the stupidity of ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... get on faster than I, for you can get it spiritually or intuitively, while I get it only intellectually, and the intuition flies where reason walks. You had a perception of the unreality of matter last night and I had nothing at all but stupidity and sleepiness. But let us go on. I am more deeply interested than I can tell, and the Bible is a new book to me. I never dreamed there were such treasures of truth in it. No matter where I read in the Bible before, I could not understand, and then I stopped ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... were insufferably stupid to Miriam, so he thought they were to himself also, and he preached priggishly to Annie about the fatuity of listening to them. Yet he, too, knew all their songs, and sang them along the roads roisterously. And if he found himself listening, the stupidity pleased him very much. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Inverforth's reward from the public? From first to last he has been attacked by a considerable section of the Press, and has been accused in Parliament of incredible waste and incorrigible stupidity. Let it be supposed (I do not grant it for a moment) that he made mistakes, even very great mistakes, still, on the total result of his gigantic labours, does not the public owe him a debt of gratitude? Has he not been an honest ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... European intrigue. You ought to butt in, as you fellows express it, upon French statecraft which leaves nothing to be desired in the way of double dealings. You should try Austrian lies, or German brutalities, or Italian and Spanish sophistry, or English stupidity. Believe me, one of these would offer many points of interest which should interest and ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... lacks in depth of comprehension. And this is the distinguishing characteristic of "The Merry Wives," particularly in the beginning. Even without "the dozen white luces" in his coat, one would swear that this Justice Shallow, with his pompous pride of birth and his stilted stupidity, is a portrait from life, some Sir Thomas Lucy or other, and Justice Shallow is not so deeply etched in as his cousin, Master Slender—"a little wee face, with a little yellow beard,—a cane-coloured beard." ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... rabbits, and had already carried it quite a distance, when suddenly I began to be sorry for it, and thought how its mother would grieve, upon which I took it back to the spot where I had found it and returned to the institution as fast as I could, but said nothing at first about my "stupidity," for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... anything particularly lucky about it," said Jack, who suspected that much of the lad's stupidity was assumed. A healthy youngster never fails to have the organ of mirth well forward in development, and the promptings of Otto's innate love of fun seemed to have little regard for time, ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... compelled to submit to the search. He cursed his stupidity in not throwing away the worthless pocketbook, but this he had neglected to do, and, of course, it was very significant evidence against him. Not only was this found, but the variety ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... speak Italian and he resorted to the sign language. Lucia nodded in understanding. She might have pretended blank stupidity, but she wanted some milk herself, and this was a good way to get it. Besides, she decided that she would do something to make it impossible for them to lock her up ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... the less an erring human being after his elevation to the dais, and I could rake out of one good semi-criminal case twice the salary of any judge on the supreme bench. What is popularly regarded as respectability is oft-times in reality—if the truth were known— merely stodginess and stupidity. ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... accept the four words, why not accept all six? If we credit the head of the text, why cavil at the tail? Sometimes the absurdity of such irrational behavior will break upon a man and set him laughing at his own stupidity. Mr. Spurgeon had some such experience. 'Gentlemen,' he said, one Friday afternoon, in an address to his students, 'Gentlemen, there are many passages of Scripture which you will never understand until some trying ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... boots, all the time. I don't mean, of course, the authorities at Cape Coast, because I don't suppose any of these things could have been picked up there; but we should have been told, when we got our orders, that such things were essential. Really, the stupidity and thoughtlessness of the ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... several minutes before I recovered my mental balance and awoke to a realization of the fact that I was a young fool who had sold himself (perhaps to the devil) for a few empty compliments and a peep into the deep well of an artful woman's blazing eyes. I was inwardly cursing my stupidity while pacing up and down the floor of the "den" when I heard a timid knock at the door. In response to my invitation to "come in" a young lady entered. She was pretty and about twenty years of age, fair, with dark blue eyes ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... her from Mr Bott. But she did not dare to say a word that might seem to have been said playfully. "Yes, indeed," she replied. "How very cold it is to-night!" She was angry with herself for her own stupidity as soon as the phrase was out of her mouth, and then she almost laughed as she thought of the Duchess and the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... should incline to hold the Loyalists, without distinction, largely responsible for British pre-Revolutionary policy, asserting that they misinformed the Government as to conditions and sentiment in America, partly through stupidity and partly through selfish interest. It was therefore perfectly comprehensible that the feeling should be bitter against them in the United States, especially as they had given efficient aid to the British during the war. In various States they ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... is so unusual that it 's a positive inspiration," Edgar would say. "It is n't like any ordinary stupidity; there does n't seem to be any bottom to it, you know; it 's abnormal, it ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... her elbow and proposed that they should quit the table. For reply Gwendolen put ten louis on the same spot: she was in that mood of defiance in which the mind loses sight of any end beyond the satisfaction of enraged resistance; and with the puerile stupidity of a dominant impulse includes luck among its objects of defiance. Since she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose strikingly. She controlled her muscles, and showed no tremor ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... whether the B.P. requests him to do it or not. Dr. P. confidently expects to make some most extraordinary discoveries of various diseases—of greed, foolish ambition, ossification of the heart, moral leprosy, chronic stupidity, latent idiocy, and that very common and often unsuspected complaint usually known as Humbug. (Humbugna Communis.) His fee in no case will exceed ten cents per week; and patients WILL BE ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... of the Princess Elizabeth Christine of Brunswick, a girl famous for her awkwardness and stupidity. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Nature, and not to gape at it like a fool, is generally considered and proclaimed to be a heretic and impious by those whom the vulgar worship as the interpreters both of Nature and the gods. For these know that if ignorance be removed, amazed stupidity, the sole ground on which they rely in arguing or in defending their authority, is taken away also. But these things I leave and pass on to that which I determined to ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... great deal to interest an intelligent one. Had it found treatment duly intelligent;—which, however, how could it, lucky beyond its neighbors, hope to do! Commonplace Dryasdust, and voluminous Stupidity, not worse here than ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... unsolvable mystery. Cumnock persuaded Mr. Bowring to let him keep on. After five days' work he heard of a deaf and dumb woman who sat every afternoon at a back window of her flat overlooking the back windows of Thayer's house. He had a trying struggle with her infirmity and stupidity, but finally was rewarded. On the afternoon of the murder, in its very hour (which the police had been able to discover), she had seen a man and woman in the bathroom of the Thayer house. Both were agitated and the man washed his hands ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... any one he dislikes, is repeated over and over again in hope that the iteration will at last be taken for proof, such as the perfidy of Charles I, the profligacy and selfishness of Charles II, the cold and cruel stupidity of James, the baseness of Churchill, the indecent violence of Rochester, the contemptible subserviency of his brother, Clarendon, and so on through a whole dictionary of abuse on every one whom he takes or ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... have chilled us all into stupidity. Dinner languished; and afterward, Guy, after trying at first to be laboriously civil—the sense of duty was painfully evident—lapsed into silence, passing the claret rather faster than usual, so that Mr. Raymond, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... turned hotly upon the Church, exclaiming: "What has Christianity done by direct effort for our slave population? Comparatively nothing. She has explored the isles of the ocean for objects of commiseration; but, amazing stupidity! she can gaze without emotion on a multitude of miserable beings at home, large enough to constitute a nation of freemen, whom tyranny has heathenized by law. In her public services they are seldom remembered, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... disgust seized me. If the captain himself had stood by my side waiting to reply to requests for information, I doubt if I should have spoken. I felt like the spectator who is compelled to witness a tragedy which both wounds and bores him. I was obsessed by my own ill-luck and the stupidity of the rest of mankind. I was particularly annoyed by the spasmodic hymn-singing that went on in various parts of ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... followed her advice and went to the public gardens, which were so near to Everything, and meditated with annoyance on the stupidity, the ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... Lucretius, brought with him P. Valerius. They found her in an agony of sorrow. She told them what had happened, enjoined them to avenge her dishonor, and then stabbed herself to the heart. They all swore to avenge her. Brutus threw off his assumed stupidity, and placed himself at their head. They carried the corpse into the market-place of Collatia. There the people took up arms, and renounced the Tarquins. A number of young men attended the funeral procession to Rome. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... during her lifetime he had not liked, whom he had almost forgotten?—No! But he was in the power of ... in her power ... he no longer belonged to himself. He had been taken possession of. Taken possession of to such a point that he was no longer trying to free himself either by ridiculing his own stupidity, or by arousing in himself if not confidence, at least hope that all this would pass over, that it was nothing but nerves,—or by seeking proofs of it,—or in any other way!—"If I meet him I shall take him" he recalled Clara's words reported ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... with Barbier, he had supposed himself so familiar with French! With the woman from the loge, indeed, he could have talked at large, had she been conversational instead of rude. But here, with this little glancing creature, he felt himself plunged in a perfect quagmire of ignorance and stupidity. When he spoke of being half French, she became suddenly grave, and studied him with an intent piercing look. 'No,' she said slowly, 'no, at bottom you are not French a bit, you are all English, I feel it. I should fight you—a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... money? It isn't honest not to surrender it. I see the presence of love, which like measles has not yet come out, but soon will. Your face is already red. How tiresome that I fixed a limit, and so lose three hundred roubles by my own stupidity." ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... beloved and most useful ulster, but it was a light waterproof one, and just about half enough in the way of warmth. Still, as I had another wrap, a big Scotch plaid, I should have got along very well if it had not been for the still greater stupidity of the only other female fellow-passenger, who calmly took her place in the open post-cart behind me in a brown holland gown, without scarf or wrap or anything whatever to shelter her from the weather, except a white ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... view of the position. It was pain to her to contemplate the Chevalier's marriage, a deep, gnawing, rancorous pain, but the pain was less, once she could believe he was to marry a woman who did not love him. She despised the woman for her stupidity; none the less, that was the wife she would choose, if she must needs choose another than herself. "I have a mind to see this fool-woman of yours," she said doubtfully. "Why does she not ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... see." He waved the Venusian out the door and turned to Kielland with burden of ten months' frustration in his voice. "They're stupid," he said slowly. "They are so incredibly stupid I could go screaming into the swamp every time I see one of them coming. Their stupidity is positively abysmal." ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... allowed to go off on leave to some watering place at the very moment at which his services were most required. When the Embassy left, a sort of deputy-consul remained here; but with a perfect ingenuity of stupidity, the Foreign-office officials ordered this gentleman to withdraw with Mr. Wodehouse, the secretary. Heine said of his fellow-countrymen, "they are born stupid, and a bureaucratic education makes them wicked." Had he been an ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... a quick look, struck by the changed tone, but unable to make out whether it might not be stupidity. "You understand what I mean, Elsworthy," he said, with his loftiest air. "If Rosa does not return instantly, I shall be seriously offended. How you and your friends could be such utter idiots as to get up this ridiculous ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... fears and fled out into the plains again, charging themselves with stupidity for not being more diplomatic in dealing with Mrs. Levins. During the early hours of the morning they rode again to the Diamond K ranchhouse, thinking that perhaps Trevison had slipped by them and returned. But Trevison had not returned, and ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... without sense," commented Wasub with pitying superiority. "Some with no more comprehension than men of the bush freshly caught. There is Sali, the foolish son of my sister and by your great favour appointed to mind the tiller of this ship. His stupidity is extreme, but his eyes are good—nearly as good as mine that by praying and much exercise can ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... many weeks had passed they would be compelled to lay out some money for "the brat," as she had begun frequently to designate him to her husband, especially when she felt called upon to complain of him for idleness, carelessness, dulness, stupidity, wastefulness, uncleanliness, hoggishness, or some other one of the score of faults she found in a child of ten years old, whom she put down to work as steadily ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... stultify the old man's immediate intentions, they constitute nevertheless a testimonial to the Bismarckian doctrine in its purest form, to those immortal principles based on lies and the exploitation of "human stupidity," which the ex-Chancellor raised to such heights in German policy, from the commencement of his career to the date of ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... be upon my mettle. I didn't much care about the paper, but I had a definite antipathy to being done by Evans—by a mad Welshman in a stubborn fit. I knew what was going to happen; knew that Evans would feign inconceivable stupidity, the sort of black stupidity that is at command of individuals of his primitive race. I was in for a day of petty worries. In the circumstances it was a thing to be thankful for; it dragged my mind away from larger issues. One has ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... when he took off the coonskin cap. She always nodded a greeting when she saw him in the tannery yard or on the road, and sometimes he nodded back, but oftener he had not appeared to see her. She had thought this failure to nod stupidity, but it might after ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... home-made shirts and cowhide shoes, they could march to the cannon's mouth as well as in the finest scarlet broadcloth and gold epaulets. Their intelligence, their good cause, their sore extremity, made them learn to be soldiers more quickly than seemed possible to English officers who knew the sturdy stupidity of the English peasant of whom the British regiments were composed. And while the Yankees (as they began to be called) were learning how to march and countermarch, and do whatever else the system of the British regulars called ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... cigarette from the mantelpiece, lighted it, and replied: "But I do not defy him; quite the contrary. Only he irritates me by his stupidity, and I ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... stay at their posts. Memories of Bunker Hill, perhaps, made the British officers a trifle timid about crossing the inlet, and marching over the sandy shore, to attack intrenched sharpshooters. Thus it happened that Clinton and his men, through stupidity, were kept prisoners on the sand island, mere spectators of the thrilling scene. They had to content themselves with fighting mosquitoes, under the sweltering ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... is bad when it allows evils to go on which it can, and should, prevent. Gentleness in such a case is not gentleness, but weakness and cowardice. Patience in such a case is not patience, but absolute stupidity. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... him to prepare to set out with me. Raymond rolled his eyes vacantly about, but at length, having succeeded in grappling with the idea, he withdrew to his bed under the cart. He was a heavy-molded fellow, with a broad face exactly like an owl's, expressing the most impenetrable stupidity and entire self-confidence. As for his good qualities, he had a sort of stubborn fidelity, an insensibility to danger, and a kind of instinct or sagacity, which sometimes led him right, where better heads than his were at a loss. Besides this, he ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and I have decided that our ways must lie apart. I am going to marry Rudyard Byng next month. He is very kind and very strong, and not too ragingly clever. You know I should chafe at being reminded daily of my own stupidity by a very clever man. You and I have had so many good hours together, there has been such confidence between us, that no other friendship can ever be the same; and I shall always want to go to you, and ask your advice, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with a knowledge of passing events, and with a good idea of the world's general advance. If you read nothing, and make no effort to make yourself attractive, you will soon sink down into a dull hack of stupidity. If your husband never hears from you any words of wisdom, or of common information, he will soon hear nothing from you. Dress and gossips soon wear out. If your memory is weak, so that it hardly seems worth while to read, that ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... them is covetous, the other mad, and he fears their quarrel may end in wounds or murder. The matter disturbs his mind greatly, chiefly on account of Urbino, because he has brought him up, and also because of the time wasted over "their ignorance and bestial stupidity." The dispute was finally settled by the intervention of three master-masons (acting severally for Michelangelo, Urbino, and Giovanni), who valued the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Belgium and France, and deposited at the Town Hall, every weapon bearing the name of its owner. Would they have taken that for an arsenal? No, stupid as they may be, they are not so foolish as that. They feign stupidity simply because they know very well that the conscience of the civilized world is beginning ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... his indifference, and Boca herself actually frightened by the turn Malvey's drink had taken. That old Flores had knocked Pete out with a bottle was the one and extravagant act that even Malvey himself could hardly have anticipated had the whole miserable affair been prearranged. In his drunken stupidity Flores blindly imagined that the young stranger was the cause ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Should range the host, soliciting the Chiefs Of every band, as utmost need requires. Him answer'd Agamemnon, King of men. 140 Old warrior, times there are, when I could wish Myself thy censure of him, for in act He is not seldom tardy and remiss. Yet is not sluggish indolence the cause, No, nor stupidity, but he observes 145 Me much, expecting till I lead the way. But he was foremost now, far more alert This night than I, and I have sent him forth Already, those to call whom thou hast named. But let us hence, for at the guard I trust 150 To find them, since I gave them so ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... A.M. and thus was the American army saved (by an interposing providence from a probable total destruction.). I may be asked wherein this particular interposition of providence appears, I answer, first, in the stupidity of the British general, in that he did not early on the morning of the 20th send a detachment and take possession of the post and stores at Whiteplains, for had he done this we must then have fought him on his own terms, and such disadvantageous terms on our part, as humanly ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... I have written fully in my book "The Tragedy of St. Helena," and have contented myself here with pointing out how the crass stupidity and blind prejudice of his opponents have helped largely to bring about the world-war of our own times. I have also endeavoured to contrast the statesmanlike attitude of Napoleon with the short-sighted policy of England's politicians and their ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... sustain such a weight of grief. I know that there has been a time for dying, more honourable and more advantageous; and this is not the only one of my many omissions; which, if I should choose to bewail, I should merely be increasing your sorrow and emphasizing my own stupidity. But one thing I am not bound to do, and it is in fact impossible—remain in a life so wretched and so dishonoured any longer than your necessities, or some well-grounded hope, shall demand. For I, who was lately supremely blessed in brother, children, wife, wealth, and in the very nature ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... satirists of the world, Butler's saeva indignatio was aroused by the daily conflicts between reason and stupidity, between candor and disingenuousness, with all their mutations of hypocrisy, guile, deceit, and sham. In "Erewhon" it was human unreason, as a clever youth sees it, that he was attacking. We remember vividly the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... unconsciousness which was certainly rather unusual, for a woman almost always knows. Some tentacles of the soul seem brushed by the brutalities of the material fact, and she knows and retreats—or advances. Elizabeth did not know, and so did not retreat. Perhaps one reason for her naive stupidity was the commonplaceness of her relations with Blair. She had known him all her life, and except for that one childish playing at love, which, if she ever remembered it, seemed to her entirely funny, she had never thought of him in any ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... situation, infused a bitterness into the letters in which he first made known to his western friends that he had fixed his abode in Nithsdale. "I am here," said he, "at the very elbow of existence: the only things to be found in perfection in this country are stupidity and canting; prose they only know in graces and prayers, and the value of these they estimate as they do their plaiden-webs, by the ell: as for the muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet." "This is an undiscovered clime," he at another period exclaims, "it is unknown to poetry, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... being almost dusk, and no one very near, he slid an arm round her, and held her to him for one swift instant. When she let him kiss her, with a yielding as passionate as response, he was surprised at his own stupidity in not tasting such ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Mark. "I had no shadow of an excuse. From first to last she had never given me the remotest reason. It was simply my own egregious stupidity. To put it honestly, I acted like a bounder. I'm immensely ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... enough, but with a curious assumption of melancholy in his manner. "Ah, Dixon," he began, "I am glad to see you. Since our last meeting, I have learned much of the stupidity of the world, and it appears to me now that you are actually one of the more intelligent ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... impressions of the whole thing to my diary before I went to bed. It certainly seemed a happy life, and I was struck with the curious mixture of freedom, frankness, and yet courtesy about the whole. There was no roughness or wrangling or stupidity, nor had I any sense either of exclusion, or of being elaborately included in the life of the circle. I would call the atmosphere brotherly, if brotherliness did not often mean the sort of frankness which is so unpleasant to strangers. There certainly was an atmosphere about it, and I felt too ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... even to recklessness; but he rejects habitually the tone of mind distinctive of the soldier, who counts life naught if only by its sacrifice the end may be attained, or honour preserved. In so far, that element of stupidity which has been somewhat lavishly attributed to the British officers' too single-minded attention to their end, to the exclusion of care for their own persons and those of their men, has a military ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... absence, we must go a little way back and read her thoughts. At the time when Tylette called a meeting of the Animals and Things in the Fairy's hall, she was contemplating a great plot which would aim at prolonging the journey; but she had reckoned without the stupidity ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... admiration, in keeping public opinion down to a certain meanness of spirit, and happily preserved stationary the childish stupidity through the nation, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... haven't any patience with stupidity," said Croyden. "Nor have I—but we sometimes forget that a card player is born, not made. All the drilling and teaching one can do won't give card sense to one who ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... speeches of the heroes, and reducing them to the merest whisper when they replied as queens and love-sick maidens. On such days the sparrows were left in peace. In that remote province, amidst the sleepy stupidity of that small town, they had thus lived on from the age of fourteen, full of enthusiasm, devoured by a passion for literature and art. The magnificent scenarios devised by Victor Hugo, the gigantic ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the more into the unventilated, tobacco-poisoned beer-cellars and concert-halls, and persisted in supping on heavy food and cold beer in the open air, as though on purpose to spite the over-anxious magistrates and doctors. Nor was the stupidity confined entirely to the lower classes. People who ought to have known better defied the cholera in excess of rioting, while those of another turn of mind gave way to superstitious fears, and as soon as they felt the first ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... "Your stupidity is proverbial, Aunt Alice," Norma had laughed. She did not care where she went any more. Chris had greeted her casually, upon their meeting in October, and had studiously, if inconspicuously, ignored her. But even to see him at ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... corporal standing before him, with the mulatto woman,—the first capture under his order. She was tall, well-formed, but unmistakably showing the negro type, even in her small features. Her black eyes were excited, but unintelligent; her manner dogged, but with the obstinacy of half-conscious stupidity. Brant felt not only disappointed, but had a singular impression that she was not the same woman that he had first seen. Yet there was the tall, graceful figure, the dark profile, and the turbaned head that he had once followed down the passage by ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... prayer, as if he beheld with his eyes the calamity, as already come. And indeed it becometh us so to look on the word, as if it gave a present being to things as certain and sensible as if they were really. What strange stupidity must be in us, when present things, inflicted judgments, committed sins, do not so much affect us, as the foresight of them did. Love Isaiah! Always,(303) as this was registrate for the people's use, to cause them to still look on judgments threatened, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... to see that the general watchman of the ward did his duty by the fires and the wounds, the latter needing constant wetting. Not only on this account did I meander, but also to get fresher air than the close rooms afforded; for owing to the stupidity of that mysterious "somebody" who does all the damage in the world, the windows had been carefully nailed down above, and the lower sashes could only be raised in the mildest weather, for the men lay just below. I had suggested a summary ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... who, from either stupidity or laziness, were not completely converted to such political views, were nevertheless not entirely free from their influence. There would remain in their minds some vestige of these ideas, and this seed would be carried back by the peasant lads to their remote villages, where ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... difficult at times for those of lesser faith not to be appalled by the awful waste and stupidity of human life such as any great city unbares. But the Rector used the many instances to illustrate the requirements of wide sympathy, and to teach us to reverence the qualities of personality even when we could not fathom the reasons for ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... that supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the world can continue if the Pan-German plan is achieved and German power fastened upon the world is as fatuous as the dreamers in Russia. What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace, but I know how to get it, and they ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... parish in the marches of Calais of which the famous antiquary Leland was once Rector. TN: The inhabitants of Popering had a reputation for stupidity. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... eyes in gratitude that I had not allowed my stupidity to get away. I thanked The Abbot inwardly, too, for saying the words that set me clearer. The contrast between Addison and Fichte in life, in their work, in the talk they inspired here, and in The Valley-Road Girl's two papers—held the substance of the whole matter—stumbled upon as usual. We had ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... agitation of fury; his eyes sparkled, his mouth foamed, his hands were clenched "don't mention his name, sir," he vociferated, "unless you would see me go mad in your presence! That I should have been such a miserable dolt such an infatuated idiotsuch a beast endowed with thrice a beast's stupidity, to be led and driven and spur-galled by such a rascal, and under such ridiculous pretences!Mr. Oldbuck, I could tear myself when ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to the flame. The following day one of the papers said that, as I felt things were all going wrong, I wanted to set my hair on fire so that the piece should come to an end before I failed completely. That was certainly the very climax of stupidity. The Press did not praise me, and the Press was quite right. I had played badly, looked ugly, and been in a bad temper, but I considered that there was nevertheless a want of courtesy and indulgence with regard to me. Auguste Vitu, in the Figaro of ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... instant looking at her, but not heeding her words. "Will you listen to me again? Will you forget the wrong I did you?—my stupidity and folly and unworthiness? Will you blot out the past and let me begin again. I see you as clearly now as the light of that window. Will you give me ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... congregation condescendingly rise, stare about them, and converse in whispers. The clergyman enters the reading-desk,—a young man of noble family and elegant demeanour, notorious at Cambridge for his knowledge of horse-flesh and dancers, and celebrated at Eton for his hopeless stupidity. The service commences. Mark the soft voice in which he reads, and the impressive manner in which he applies his white hand, studded with brilliants, to his perfumed hair. Observe the graceful emphasis with which he offers up the prayers for the King, the Royal Family, and all the Nobility; and ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... myself, I was so angered by the stupidity of these brutes who were capable of crediting the work of charity to the avarice of a cure. I was about to reproach them for their ingratitude and treat them as they deserved, when Madame Pierson took one of the children in her arms and said with ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... his own joke, he departed, leaving Mary accusing herself of stupidity in having imagined that every one was as well acquainted with the facts concerning the trial as she was herself; for indeed she had never doubted that the doctor would have been aware of the purpose of poor Mrs. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... an accumulation of that gas in the house where the plant is situated, or when, in disregard of rules, he takes a naked light into the house and an explosion follows, the builder dismisses the episode as a piece of stupidity or wilful misbehaviour for which he can in nowise be held morally responsible; whereas the builder himself is to blame for designing an apparatus from which an escape of gas can be accompanied by sensible risks to property or life. However ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... the Middle Ages a common culture was so universal, that even the barriers of nationality did not prevent men from understanding one another. Now there is such a total lack of a uniform culture that men of the same nation speak an unknown tongue to one another. That is the recipe for stupidity." ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... have said enough to show that, though not a fool, I have frequently passed for one, even among people capable of judging; this was the more vexatious, as my physiognomy and eyes promised otherwise, and expectation being frustrated, my stupidity appeared the more shocking. This detail, which a particular occasion gave birth to, will not be useless in the sequel, being a key to many of my actions which might otherwise appear unaccountable; and have been attributed to a savage humor I do not possess. I love society ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... appear to be his superiors. I have heard him called a cave man by some, by others a boor; but he is neither. He observes the amenities of life so far as they are necessary, but only so far. He is impatient of mediocrity; he will not tolerate stupidity and he loathes hypocrisy. I would not say that he has bad manners; ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... intellectual repute, does the Turkey deserve his name for stupidity? He does not appear to be more limited than another. Audubon depicts him as endowed with certain useful ruses, in particular when he has to baffle the attacks of his nocturnal enemy, the Virginian Owl. As for his actions in the snare with the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... of health can the teacher do a more distinct service than in looking after the eyesight of the pupils. Children suffering from defective vision are sometimes punished by teachers for supposed stupidity. Such pupils, as well as the deaf, are peculiarly sensitive to their defects. Every schoolroom should have plenty of light; it should come from either side or the rear, and should be regulated with suitable shades ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... in so many gallons of water." When dinner was served up, first came the French ambassador's dish—then that of the Spanish ambassador—and next, two fellows bearing an immense pan, and bawling, "Room for the English ambassador's dish!" "Confound my stupidity!" cried his lordship; "I forgot to tell them of the bag, and these stupid scoundrels have boiled it without one; and in five gallons of water too. It will be ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... sustained. I wrote a letter yesterday to Barnes,[7] remonstrating upon the general tone of the 'Times,' and inviting him to adopt some Conservative principles in the midst of his zeal for Reform. Stanley told me that his election (at Preston) was lost by the stupidity or ill-will of the returning officer, who managed the booths in such a way that Hunt's voters were enabled to vote over and over at different booths, and that he had no doubt of reducing his ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... abortion away," cried the king; "and if he resists, chop off his ears. He will have the lesson all the same, and will spare us the sight of his stupidity." ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... matter. Democracy, even Social-Democracy, though as hostile to British Junkers as to German ones, and under no illusion as to the obsolescence and colossal stupidity of modern war, need not lack enthusiasm for the combat, which may serve their own ends better than those of their political opponents. For Bernhardi the Brilliant and our own very dull Militarists are alike mad: the war will not do any of the things for which ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... belonged to the organizations. Mr. Seward well said: "These persons will be trying to forget, years hence, that they ever opposed this war." These societies gave expression to a terrible blunder, for Copperheadism was even more stupid than it was vicious. But the fact of their stupidity made them harmless. Their very names labeled them. Men who like to enroll themselves in Golden Circles and in Star galaxies seldom accomplish much in exacting, especially in dangerous, practical affairs. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... fallen from the skies must not be received with too much stupor. Everything which falls in that way is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. The pun is the dung of the mind which soars. The jest falls, no matter where; and the mind after producing a piece of stupidity plunges into the azure depths. A whitish speck flattened against the rock does not prevent the condor from soaring aloft. Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... fool, exclusively American, whose stupidity arises from love and tenderness. Very often she is a woman. She has been responsible for the arrival in France of a number of narrow-minded and well-intentioned persons; their errand is to investigate vice-conditions in the U.S. Army. This suspicion of the women at home concerning ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson |
