"Witless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of grey and pale green, and with the glister of wine-tinted, ribbon-like leaves, and the air is alert with rich and spicy odour, there is ample apology ever ready for the season and the direct results thereof. The trees are manifestly over-exerting themselves, in a witless competition with others which may never boast of painted, scented fruit. There is not a sufficient audience of aesthetics to tolerate the change of which ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... new and complex sensation. Uncle Charles had grown so witless that he could no longer be sent out on errands and the disorder in settling in the new house left Stephen freer than he had been in Blackrock. In the beginning he contented himself with circling timidly round the neighbouring square or, at most, going ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... white man's conception by the midnight visitation of ladrones within a half-mile of their village, cowed, witless, they were reassured merely by the uniforms the two riders wore—the red-piped uniform of the small, scattered force of five thousand Filipinos, who, ably officered, highly trained, intrepid, have never tasted defeat: have wiped out every murderous band that raised treacherous ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... who fearless snatched at bliss so high, Witless! and yet to be of slight esteem And little worth is sometimes well, no dream Of high unrest, no awful afterglow Affrights us simple ones when that we die. Vain flickering lamps soon quenched—we but go From this brief day, this short transition, This interlude of farcial joy and ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... to thy sovereign, madman? To us, whose dignity and person have been insulted, lowered, trampled on! By all the saints, thou hast tempted us too far! What ho, there, guards! Am I indeed so old and witless," he muttered, sinking back again upon the couch from which he had started in the moment of excitement, "as so soon to forget a knightly nobleness, which in former days would have knitted my very soul to his? Bah! 'tis this fell disease that spoke, not ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... contrary, the termination less added to substantives, makes adjectives signifying want; as, worthless, witless, heartless, joyless, careless, helpless. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... the fashion among fools of both sexes to sneer at Susan B. Anthony and use her name to point witless jokes. But it seems to us—and we differ from her most emphatically on the question of woman suffrage—that her brave, unselfish life reflects a credit on womanhood which the follies of a thousand ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... music of thy breast has throbbed the faster, If I have touched it with my charming-wands. And yet,—the wonder any woman knows Thou dost deny the proud Soul that has fed Among the lilies of the White Eros.— Ere I go down among the witless Dead Give, give the secret, for my bliss or rue, Lest lack of that ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... We be soldiers three (Deuteromelia) We be three poor mariners (Deuteromelia) We must not part as others do (Egerton MS. 2013) We shepherds sing, we pipe, we play (Weelkes) Wedded to will is witless (Byrd) Weep no more, thou sorry boy (Tomkins) Weep you no more, sad fountains (John Dowland) Welcome, sweet pleasure (Weelkes) Were I a king I might command content (Mundy) Were my heart as some men's are, thy errors would not move me (Campion) What hap had I to marry a shrow (Pammelia) ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... witless vanity about my friend that sat on him almost like a virtue. He made parade of his crafts less, I could see, because he thought much of them, than because he wanted to keep himself on an equality with me. In the same ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... She is but a poor harmless body," said Kenric. "Only the witless carls and cottar folk are so simple as to believe that she has aught of evil ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... with his wife, witnessed the play, from the large stage boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely draped with the National flag. The acts and scenes of the piece—one of those singularly witless compositions which have at least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic or spiritual nature—a piece ("Our ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... at the window looking out, And the rain came down like silken strings That Swithin's day. Each gutter and spout Babbled unchecked in the busy way Of witless things: Nothing to read, nothing to see Seemed in that room for her and me ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... At this witless, sweet impudence the Canadian looked very sheepish—for a beaver; and all the other people laughed; but the noble historical shades of Basil's thought vanished in wounded dignity beyond recall, and left him feeling rather ashamed,—for he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... it is not to be forgotten, that the aristocracy was just then intoxicated by its recent victory and the democracy deeply humbled, and that the aristocracy was led by the pedantically stiff and half-witless Cato, and the democracy by the supple ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the Regent's power seemed on the point of slipping from him; Marshal Villeroy, aged, witless, and tactless, irritated at the elevation of Dubois, always suspicious of the Regent's intentions towards the young king, burst out violently against the minister, and displayed towards the Regent an offensive distrust. "One ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... The witless are under the protection of God, stammered a flat-cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. They ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... that you will?" returned his wife. "Once a witless fool, always a witless fool!" and giving free rein to her vexation and ill-temper she continued to upbraid her husband until his anger also was stirred, and he had wellnigh made a second bid and wished himself ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... my offerings few, While witless wisdom fool'd my mind; But now I trim my sails anew, And trace the course I left behind. For lo! the Sire of heaven on high, By whose fierce bolts the clouds are riven, To-day through an unclouded sky His thundering ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... the Dean's "Frequent reproaching the [132] Animadverter with the Character of a Wit, tho join'd with such ill-favour'd Epithets, as his witless Malice has thought fit to degrade it with, as that he is a spiteful Wit, a wrangling Wit, a satirical Wit, and the WITTY, subtle, good-natur'd Animadverter, &c. the Dr. says, that tho there be but little Wit shewn ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... 's a witless azzy!" blurted Hodge. "If a 's so great a man amongst the lords and earlses, a 'd na come back to Stratford. An' I say a 's ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... other Gods, and anon the Immortals bethink them of harp and minstrelsy. And all the Muses together with sweet voice in antiphonal chant replying, sing of the imperishable gifts of the Gods, and the sufferings of men, all that they endure from the hands of the undying Gods, lives witless and helpless, men unavailing to find remede for death or buckler against old age. Then the fair-tressed Graces and boon Hours, and Harmonia, and Hebe, and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, dance, holding each by the wrist the other's hand, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... without any fineness either of feeling or mind, unable to understand her misery, grossly curious, mistaking her manner for disdain, her silent shrinking for pride. The wife of the "odious person" was witless and fatuously conceited. Of the two girls of the house one was pious and the other a romp; both were coarse-minded—if they may be credited with any mind at all. The rather numerous men of the family were dense ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... her last hope, but in one instant's scrutiny she saw that this had vanished, too. Some terrible thought had sobered and engrossed him. Now he was eyeing her like a witless thing, his features drawn, his eyes burning. The moment was charged with ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... soft violence, she grasped his hands. Perhaps the moment had come. She was not afraid, but the suddenness of her extremity left her witless. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... all these were when no man did them know, Yet have from wisest ages hidden been: And later times things more unknown shall show. Why then should witless man so much misween That nothing is but that which he hath seen? What if within the moon's fair shining sphere, What if in every other star unseen, Of other worlds he happily should hear, He wonder would much more; yet such ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... cried, now rising too. "What are you saying? Are you turned witless? Come, sirs, since you are both my friends, be friends each with ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... gods, stupid conventions, traditions, examples, your lapses from that consistency? His Seigneurie, at all events, delightfully, hadn't the least real idea of what any John Berridge was talking about, and the latter felt that if he had been less beautifully witless, and thereby less true to his right figure, it might scarce have ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... Witless, jester to a noble and free-born man, Cedric of Rotherwood, called the Saxon: and I, Gurth, the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... eternal garb of woe; And yet I owe you thanks for one sweet hour Of healthy human intercourse and peace. 'T is not for me to tarry by the way. Farewell!" The impetuous, remorseful boy, Seeing sharp pain on that kind countenance, Fell at his feet and cried, "Forgive my words, Witless but innocent, and leave me not Without a blessing." Moved unutterably, The pilgrim kissed with trembling lips his head, And muttered, "At this moment would to God That I were worthy!" Then waved wasted hands Over the youth ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... "Ignorant and witless, you know not what you say. The plant thus tossing to and fro may well look down upon the rank and vulgar herbs. If it tosses, it is, at least, all self-contained—itself both flower and seed. Do thou be ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... of connected calcite bowls whose beautifully fluted rims are of regular and uniform height, and all are equally filled with clear, still water. A great number of these basins are said to have been destroyed by an ax in the hands of a poor witless creature for the gratification of a burst of temper, and a magnificent stalagmitic column, too heavy for one man to lift, lay detached and broken, in proof that his body did not share the ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... laddies, the dog, and the witless sheep, Are bound to come home, for the snow will be deep. The mother is pickling a scornful word To throw at the head of the elder lad, Hugh; But talkative Jamie, as gay as a bird, Will have nothing beaten save snow from his shoe. He has fire in his eyes, he has curls on his head, And a silver ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... quoth the Duke, "ye are witless, in faith, for there is no man here but is without wine, as in ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the whole thing just witless, accidentally cruel perhaps, but not malignant? Or is it wise, and merely refusing to pamper us? Is there somewhere in the immensities some responsive kindliness, some faint hope of toleration and assistance, something sensibly on our side against ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... to use two English words to translate that single Greek one. The 'cunning' workman, thoughtful in experience, touch, and vision of the thing to be done; no machine, witless, and of necessary motion; yet not cunning only, but having perfect habitual skill of hand also; the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect, in connection with this passage of Pindar, Homer's three verses about getting the lines of ship-timber ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... he reached the gates, passing through without discovering her, and was struck dumb and witless with relief when she stepped quietly from the shadows of a low branching tree, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... he say it. I, who had been so witless as to let this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless as to ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... a wailing cry from the north, a howl of witless fear. The singers stopped in mid-note, the drummer paused, his hand uplifted. Dane darted forward in a plunge which carried him to that man. The Khatkan did not have time to rise from his knees as ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... knows when or how Diane de Poitiers first came to fascinate Francois, or how or why her power waned. At any rate at the time Francois pardoned her father, the witless Comte de St. Vallier, for the treacherous part he played in the Bourbon conspiracy, he really believed her to to be the "brightest ornament of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... etiquette, Waiving his function at the scowl of power, And seeks the rustic cot to stretch his limbs In homely freedom. I fulfil a doom. We who are topmost on this heap of life Are nearer to heaven's hand than you below; And so are used, as ready instruments, To work its purposes. Let envy hide Her witless forehead at a prince's name, And fix her hopes upon a clown's content. You, happy lowly, know not what it is To groan beneath the crowned yoke of state, And bear the goadings of the sceptre. Ah! Fate drives us onward in a narrow ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... cannot explain now. But you seem to understand. Or am I drunk? Ein galgen gelachter, nicht wahr? I will take quarters at the hotel. I know the management well. I saved the place from being looted in the November excitement. Have you seen the Kaiser Salle? His Majesty dined there once. A witless popinjay. Liebknecht is a man. Flames in his heart. But a poor orator. He will be killed. They must kill him. A little Jew, Haase, has brains. You will meet him. And the Dadaists—they know how to laugh. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... to the cold-blooded statement. The shock of it produced a beating in the head, and a sickness. And I felt foolish, as though I might do something lunatic, like giving a witless shout, or running amok with a table-knife. I touched Doe, and whispered: "I'm going to get out of this. The old fool doesn't know what ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... of these words, more unexpected than any other words could have been, was first and chiefly to convince him that he was dealing with a witless person. Leaving him again, the speaker had hurried on in front, making his way still toward the wood. When Trenholme came up with him the wanderer had evidently found the place where he had been before, for there was the irregular circular track of his former ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... hours ago wert my willing vassal, now wish to break away from my gentle rule, because, forsooth, of the words of an old woman, who is no longer vassal of mine, as if, like her, thou art now unwitting of what delights I am the source? O most witless of women! forbear, and reflect whether thou shouldst not find befitting happiness in that which makes the happiness of Heaven and earth. All things that Phoebus beholds during the bright day, from what time he emerges from Ganges, until he plunges with his tired ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... glimpse dazzles their dimmed eyes and weakling forces, and this glimpse mocks at their lean might Through these rent places, when the opening is made large enough, a few men here and there, not quite so witless as their fellows, know how to summon us of Audela when for an hour the moon is void and powerless: we come for an old reason: and we ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... or ball. Or take the converse case, of gawky country lads, hooked in by knowing widows or other female adventurers, and the chain riveted in an unguarded moment, before their unhappy parents, or even the witless victims themselves, had dreamed that it was forging. But even this kind of publicity is not necessary. As far as we see, the registrar may, at any hour, be summoned to attend at the most private spot of his district, and there be compelled to witness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Doctor Holmes's trenchant sayings have become a heritage in our households, detached often from their original kinship, and seeming like the rightful property of every one who utters them. It is an amusing, barefaced, witless sort of robbery, yet surely not without its compensations; for it must be a pleasant thing to reflect in old age that the general murkiness of life has been lit up here and there by sparks struck from one's youthful fire, and that these sparks, though they wander ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... speech men think that Halfdan spoke: he warned us it would soon come to pass that an understanding father should beget a witless son. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... pleasure draw it all around him, its width, contrasted with its want of longitude, formed a fantastic piece of drapery. He had thin silver bracelets upon his arms, and on his neck a collar of the same metal bearing the inscription, "Wamba, the son of Witless, is the thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood." This personage had the same sort of sandals with his companion, but instead of the roll of leather thong, his legs were cased in a sort of gaiters, of which one was red and the other yellow. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... arouse the village to their help. One of the women therefore essayed the journey; but was so clumsy as to attract the enemy's attention. She was seized and made to confess how the house was protected and where it was most likely to fall before a sharp assault. Being a witless wench, she told them truly, and Master Ford then bade her help them collect sticks and leaves in order that they might be able to fire the ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... privilege of connecting various threads of action in one plot, disregarding chronology, and hazarding an ethical solution of motives which mere fidelity to fact hardly warrants. He shows us Vittoria married to Camillo, a low-born and witless fool, whose only merit consists in being nephew to the Cardinal Monticelso, afterwards Pope Paul IV.[9] Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, loves Vittoria, and she suggests to him that, for the furtherance of their amours, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... wrath, and when he is stirred up a little too much his patience gives way, and he has a manner of shaking his mane and sweeping round with his tail which is dangerous to his enemies and a delight and fascination to his friends. He took up the witless and unhappy Cochrane, shook him, and dropped him sprawling and mutilated, in about as limp a condition as the late Lord Wolmer—I call him late in the sense of a person politically dead—when that distinguished nobleman was called to account for his odious calumny ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... always forgot what he was going to do. He was much more sensitive than Maria, more shy and reluctant. But his shyness, his sensitiveness only made him more aimless and awkward, a tiresome clown, slack and uncontrolled, witless. All day long his mother shouted and shrilled and scolded at him, or hit him angrily. He did not mind, he came up like a cork, warm and roguish and curiously appealing. She loved him with a fierce protective love, grounded ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... though cords were strong; But happier Orpheus stood unbound, And shamed it with a sweeter song. His mode be mine. Of Heav'n I ask, May I, with heart-persuading might, Pursue the Poet's sacred task Of superseding faith by sight, Till ev'n the witless Gadarene, Preferring Christ to swine, shall know That life is sweetest when it's clean. To prouder folly let me show Earth by divine light made divine; And let the saints, who hear my word, Say, 'Lo, the clouds begin to shine About the ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... saith Hooker,(791) they are as sacraments. But in Augustine's dialect, they are not only as sacraments, but they themselves are sacraments. Signa (saith the father) cum ad res divinas pertinent, sacramenta appellantur; which testimony doth so master Dr Burges, that he breaketh out into this witless answer,(792) That the meaning of Augustine was to show that the name of sacraments belongeth properly to divine things, and not to all signs of holy things. I take he would have said, "belongeth properly to ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... say it! I, who had been so witless to let this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... From a witless puppy I brought thee up: gave thee fire and food, and taught thee the self-respect of an honest dog. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... what going ashore on Malaita meant—one hand for the ship and the other hand to fight off the natives. What they held on with I don't know, and they needed to hold on as the Minota lifted, rolled, and pounded on the coral. The bushmen clung in the rigging, too witless to watch out for the topmast. The whale-boat was run out with a tow-line endeavouring in a puny way to prevent the Minota from being flung farther in toward the reef, while Captain Jansen and the mate, the latter pallid and weak with fever, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... treasure knowledge, say, Increased beyond the fleshly faculty— Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven: The man is witless of the size, the sum, The value ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... knew Ere mated with his being. Conscious then Of his high theme alone, he smiled again Straight back upon himself in many a hue And tint, and light and shade, which slowly grew Enfeatured of a fair girl's face, as when First time she smiles for love's sake with no fear. So wrought he, witless that behind him leant A woman, with old features, dim and sear, And glamoured eyes that felt the brimming tear, And with a voice, like some sad instrument, That sighing said, "I'm dead there; ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... delightful to sit there in the crisp October air, with the brook seemingly humming tender legends of the woods, which witless men could not translate, with an uncertain breeze playing through the newly fallen maple-leaves, now turning them one by one in lazy curiosity, then of a sudden making them caper and swirl in a scarlet merry-go-round. Still, the young Farrars were ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... ape our race? Such truckling is called virtue by the base Hucksters of sophistry, the priest and friar,— Gilt claws of tyrant brutes,—who lie for hire, Preaching that God delights in this disgrace. Look well, ye brainless folk! Do fathers hold Their children slaves to serfs? Do sheep obey The witless ram? Why make a beast your king? If there are no archangels, let your fold Be governed by the sense of all: why stray From men to worship every ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... her face towards her niece. It was a kindly face, but infinitely sad and lined with more cares than fall to the lot of most women of her age. The ingratitude of sons, the death of daughters, the poor troubled husband, old and witless in the King Charles ground-floor suite, weeping for his lost eyesight or sitting smiling mirthlessly over his violin, had marked her. But in spite of all she had kept ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... stretching away leafless, treeless, without bud or flower, herd or herdsman, church or cottage, to the shadowed horizon, looming dark as the twilight deepened, was in sympathy with the gloom which had come upon me as Martin Hall ceased to speak. I had thought the man a fool and witless, flighty in purpose and shallow in thought, and yet he seemed to speak of great mysteries—and of death. In one moment the jester's cloak fell from him, and I saw the mail beneath. He had made a great impression upon me, ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... not because he was not trying hard, and studying for all he was worth, that "Witless Abner," as Wittemore had come to be called, had won his nickname. He worked night and day, plunged in a maze of things he did not quite understand until long after the rest of the class had passed them. He was majoring in sociology through the advice ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... vindictive urgings of the Hollander newspaper, the Volksstem, few could believe that the death sentence would be carried out and most people recognized that the ebullitions of that organ expressed the feelings of only a few rabid and witless individuals among the Hollanders themselves and were viewed with disgust by the great majority of them. At the same time the scene in court had been such as to show that the Government party—the officials and Boers then present—had not regarded the death sentence ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... the marriage of St. Catherine," observed his visiter, stepping through the casement, "I wish I could break all marriages as easily; and as to the motive, your honour, I did not like to wait quietly, and see a pistol-ball walk towards my witless pate, to convince, by its effects thereupon, the unbelieving world that Robin Hays had brains. As to the domestics, the doors were locked, and they, I do believe, (craving your pardon, sir,) too drunk to open them. As to the wall, it's somewhat straight ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... wound a blast so strong That it shook both bush and tree, And to his side came witless Will, And Jem of Netherbee; With all the worst of Robin's band, And ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... known sunburn and frost but never a shoe, and a damsel or two in cotton homespun dress made of one piece from collar to hem, and pantalettes of the same reaching to the ankles—all standing and looking the picture of witless incapacity, and making no plea against tyranny! Is that a thing worth while to turn and look back upon? If the blow fell upon ourselves or our set, that would be different; but these illiterate and lowly ones—they are—you don't know—so dull and insensible. Yes, it may be true that it ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... preposterous affectation of taking me off in speech and manner, was persuaded by the stricken mother to sing. "Sing that dear old plantation melody from London," she cried, "so that my poor boy may know there are worse things than death." And all this witless piffle because of a quite ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... confidently as we adjured him to use caution, and then slipped back along the track so that he could climb to the level of the one-eyed person's perch before attempting to creep upon him. We sat down to await developments. The witless one was evidently a lookout, and it was advisable to wait and see the success of Maru's expedition before we attempted ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... contrast between "witless Gabriel and ruffling Richard." The astronomer Richard was continually baiting the great bear in the firmament, and in his lectures set up atheistical questions, which Nash maliciously adds, "as I am afraid the earth would swallow me if I should but rehearse." ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... some peculiar things With brighter hues resplendent, and portray'd With features nobler far than e'er adorn'd Their genuine objects. Hence the fever'd heart Pants with delirious hope for tinsel charms; Hence oft obtrusive on the eye of scorn, Untimely zeal her witless pride betrays! 160 And serious manhood from the towering aim Of wisdom, stoops to emulate the boast Of childish toil. Behold yon mystic form Bedeck'd with feathers, insects, weeds, and shells! Not with intenser view the Samian sage Bent his fix'd eye on heaven's intenser fires, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... The wind blew over pleasantly and it was a curiously protected and hidden place, sheltered and quiet, with its one small crop of cider apples dropping ungathered to the ground, and unharvested there, except by hurrying black ants and sticky, witless little snails. ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... article "GREEN," you will see that the Verdant Greens are a family of some respectability and of considerable antiquity. We meet with them as early as 1096, flocking to the Crusades among the followers of Peter the Hermit, when one of their number, Greene surnamed the Witless, mortgaged his lands in order to supply his poorer companions with the sinews of war. The family estate, however, appears to have been redeemed and greatly increased by his great-grandson, Hugo de Greene, but was again jeoparded in the year 1456, when Basil ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... at home we fed, Like witless fools, with fostering bread, Have impiously come to this— They've stolen the Acropolis, With bolts and bars our orders flout And shut ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... me, so haply she may make shift for my release.' 'Verily,' answered the fox, 'the excess of thy gluttony and thy much greed have brought thee to destruction, since thou art fallen into a pit whence thou wilt never escape. O witless wolf, knowest thou not the proverb, "He who taketh no thought to results, Fate is no friend to him, nor shall he be safe from perils?"' 'O Aboulhussein,' said the wolf, 'thou wast wont to show me affection and covet my friendship and fear ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... the notes of a street bagpiper? When his harrassed brain should be solaced by music, will he listen patiently to stupid remarks? I fear not. The man of letters suffers keenlier than people suspect from sharp, cruel noises, from witless observations, from social misconceptions of him of every kind, from hard utilitarian wisdom, and from his own good things going to the grave unrecognised and unhonoured. And, forced to live by his pen, to extract ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... there's a cold breeze blowing, I'm afraid that I'll change, that I'll grow wrinkled and old in eight footsteps, or shrink down to the witless blob of a baby, or forget altogether who ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the pool outside—cannot you hear them, Jac Hallen?" Impatience came to his voice; in truth, I must have been staring at him witless. "Maidens out there, Jac Hallen, who are seeking handsome youths like yourself for escort. Must I speak plainly? You are ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... charities. When a poor ruined fellow at his elbow saw him win at a throw L200, and murmured 'How happy that would make me!' Nash tossed the money to him, and said, 'Go and be happy then.' Probably the witless beau did not see the delicate satire implied in his speech. It was only the triumph of a gamester. On other occasions he collected subscriptions for poor curates, and so forth, in the same spirit, and did his best towards founding an hospital, which has since proved of great value to those afflicted ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... emotion, "it cuts me to the heart to hear his very name. Would that it might be as thou sayest!—but 'tis an idle dream. Peace be unto his ashes! And may the gods at least preserve unto us his son, Telemachus, who lately departed on a witless errand, led thereto, as I think, by some malign deity who hates the house of Odysseus. But no more of this! Tell me rather of thyself, who and whence thou art, and how ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... beer from hops that are freshly picked, Nor even Benedictine to tempt a benedict. For wine has a spell like the lure of hell, and the devil has mixed the brew; And the friends of ale are a sort of pale and weary, witless crew— And the taste of beer is a sort of a queer and undecided brown— But, comrades, I give you coffee—drink it up, drink it down. With a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Stunner contemptuously. "Of course I seemed, and the difficulty it required to seem! Do you think I was so witless as to let my manoeuvres be seen? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... world—for the world's delight, for mankind's wonder. And here unfortunate circumstances—my poverty and not my will—constrain me to stint the world of its due: to languish in this lost corner of Nowhere, like Wamba the son of Witless, the mere professed buffoon of a merer franklin. Well, my unassuageable craving to write a song is, in its essence, just a great, splendid, generous desire to indemnify the world. The world needs me—the world has me not—but the world shall have me. For the world's behoof, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... a rustle overhead. She fancied that a squirrel could not have climbed more swiftly; for, glancing up, she discovered the witless youth already upon the projecting branch, moving toward its slender tips, which swayed beneath his weight, threatening instant breakage. Below him roared the rapids, hurrying to dash over the great ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... dying Achaians. But when the host were conven'd, thus spake swift-footed Peleides:— "Wand'ring again is our doom, as it seems to my mind, Agamemnon! Home to escape as we may, unless death be the issue to welcome, Since not the battle alone, but the pestilence wastes the Achaians. Come, without witless delay, let some prophet or priest be consulted, Yea, or expounder of dreams, (for the dream, too, comes from Kronion,) Who may interpret the wrath unrelenting of Phoebus Apollo; Whether for forfeited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... boy and the gifts, she gazes and takes fire. He, when hanging clasped on Aeneas' neck he had satisfied all the deluded parent's love, makes his way to the queen; the queen clings to him with her eyes and all her soul, and ever and anon fondles him in her lap, ah, poor Dido! witless how mighty a deity sinks into her breast; but he, mindful of his mother the Acidalian, begins touch by touch to efface Sychaeus, and sows the surprise of a living love in the long-since-unstirred spirit ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... that terrifying, motionless presence beneath him, than able to distinguish it by power of vision, he endured interminable minutes of trembling horror, in a witless daze, before he thought of his match-box. Immediately he found it and struck a light. As the wood caught and the bright small flame leaped in the pent air, he leaned forward, over the body, breathlessly dreading ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... expectation, and resents a scarcity of the supernatural. Mr. Sludge is not so much to blame: the people at length push the thing so far that he is obliged to cheat in self-defence. And when a man tasks his wits successfully, if it be only to mislead the witless, he has a sense of satisfaction in the effort akin to that of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... intrenchment, and a thousand years ere that perhaps it was still grander; for learned men say that it was a British work, wrought out before the Danes had ever learned to build a ship. Whatever, however, may be argued about that, the wise and the witless do agree about one thing—the stronghold inside it had been held by Danes, while severed by the Dike from inland parts, and these Danes made a good colony of their own, and left to their descendants distinct speech and manners, some traces ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... few minutes wiped off the coating with which he had bedaubed the picture, and instead of a copy, restored the original in all its beauty to his holiness. Although this story is related by many writers, it is doubtless a gross libel on the fair fame of this great artist, originating with some witless wag, who thought nothing too horrible to impose upon the credulity of mankind. It is discredited by the best authors. A similar fable is related of Parrhasius. See the Olynthian Captive, vol. I. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... This poor witless youth, plied with champagne; the older men who flattered him with lies; the suggestion of champagne made as though it were a sudden inspiration, and the six bottles standing ready in the cupboard; ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... distant future they were vague, though rosy. He would make the ten miles to Brig Tickle in less than three hours, and from there turn a point or two westward from the coast and strike across country to the head of Witless Bay. He had a cousin in Witless Bay and could afford to rest in that cousin's house for a few hours. There he would hire a team of dogs and make the next stage in quick time. Dennis Nolan, who would not discover the theft of the diamonds until after sun-up, would be left ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... no idea to advance, but with the lessening of her fear and the gradual clearing of her mind she felt that she would not much longer be witless. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... approaches them. In Humphrey Prideaux's letters there is not a trace of any such feeling. He does his business, but it is hack-work. In this he differs from the modern student, but in his caustic description of the rude and witless society of the place he is modern enough. In his letters to his friend, John Ellis, of the State Paper Office, it is plain that Prideaux wants to get preferment. His taste and his ambition alike made him detest the heavy, beer-drinking doctors, the fast "All ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... on through the twilit gloom. The horror of the life gathered about him is no more grim than is the condition of his witless brain. Over hills and through brakes; in valleys and along winding tracks made by the forest lords; now pushing his way through close-growing scrub, now passing like a fierce shadow among the bare, primeval tree-trunks, he moves forward. His goal is ahead, and one ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... O'Shaughnessy and I found ourselves with the children upon our largest wagon; that was absolutely all the protection to be had. It would have gone down like a house of cards if that heaving sea of destruction had turned our way. I was scared witless. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy knelt among the children praying with white lips. I stood up watching the terrible scene. The men hastily set the horses free. There was no time to mount them and ride to safety with so many little children, and as there was nothing to tie them to but the wagons; ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... masked ball! Indifference and pique swung Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... he cursed out, too witless to see that this same hero of his was the one human being, himself barely excepted, for whose life his sister cared. He charged her of never having forgiven Hilary for making Anna godmother of their flag, and of being in some dark league against him—"hell ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... of good threescore; Cure them of tours, hussar and highland dresses; Tell them that youth once gone returns no more, That hired huzzas redeem no land's distresses; Tell them Sir William Curtis is a bore, Too dull even for the dullest of excesses, The witless Falstaff of a hoary Hal, A fool whose bells have ceased to ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... dusk heavens silvery, when they Thus sprang direct towards the Galaxy. Nor did speed hinder converse soft and strange— 490 Eternal oaths and vows they interchange, In such wise, in such temper, so aloof Up in the winds, beneath a starry roof, So witless of their doom, that verily 'Tis well nigh past man's search their hearts to see; Whether they wept, or laugh'd, or griev'd, or toy'd— Most like with joy gone ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... not imagine this dustless, spotless, sweet apartment as anything but beautiful. Its appearance is a little unfamiliar, of course, but all the muddle of dust-collecting hangings and witless ornament that cover the earthly bedroom, the valances, the curtains to check the draft from the ill-fitting windows, the worthless irrelevant pictures, usually a little askew, the dusty carpets, and all the paraphernalia about the ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... awhile with that indefinable interjection of displeasure which defies all spelling. "You talk like the witless creature that you are. Didn't I tell the lad, two years ago, Michaelmas was, that the day he could pay off the mortgage on the farm, he should have you and the farm too? And eight hundred and fifty florins oughtn't to frighten a man as has got the right spirit in ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "Ay, and thou, witless boy, the first of all. Oh, that my beloved spouse, Philippus Primus, could rise from his grave—what would he say to his lost son, who, like the prodigal in Scripture, loves strange women and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... will tell thee how I love thee best, And all my thoughts of thee shall be confess'd And none withheld, not e'en the witless one Which late I harbor'd when the mounting sun Burst from a cloud,—the moon a mile away, As if in hiding from the lord of day,— As if, at times, the moon were like thyself, And fear'd the semblance of a ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... way, put grace in their soul for this end, begin resolutions in them, and sow the seed of faith; and so stay their course which they were violently pursuing, and make them look about and consider what they are doing. As the former was good news to poor, blind, and witless creatures that were wandering and knew not whither they were going; so this is good news to poor souls that find their heart inclining to wander, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... filcher of my crown? Come, answer this, didst thou detect in me Some touch of cowardice or witlessness, That made thee undertake this enterprise? I seemed forsooth too simple to perceive The serpent stealing on me in the dark, Or else too weak to scotch it when I saw. This thou art witless seeking to possess Without a following or friends the crown, A prize that ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... grounds. I left the happy pair tete-a-tete, in their princely parlor together, little fancying that there was another argument which had been prepared to overthrow my feeble virtue. But all this had been arranged by the small cunning of this really witless couple. I was left to find my way down stairs as I might; and just when I was about to leave the dwelling—vexed to the heart at the desperate stolidity of the miserable man, whom avarice and weakness were about to expose to a loss which might be averted ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... particularly, the call to monotheism and the denunciation of idolatry, with the pictures of the Divine reward for the righteous, and of the Divine judgment for the ungodly, remind us of the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah; as when the poet says,[25] "Witless mortals, who cling to an image that ye have fashioned to be your god, why do ye vainly go astray, and march along a path which is not straight? Why remember ye not the eternal founder of All? One only God there is who ruleth alone." And again: "The children of Israel shall mark out the path ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich |
