"Idiocy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everything—or, if she didn't explain, looked at me, and I thought she had explained. I forget now whether she did explain or not, rationally and satisfactorily, but it doesn't matter. There is no one like her, and I have reached a stage of idiocy concerning her which I would blush to describe. I see now that the feeling which a very young man, hardly out of boyhood, dignified with the name of love, is merely a kind of foundation that, when fallen into picturesque ruin, makes a good firm flooring of experience ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... independent being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then you will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect it—go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling—and suffer the results of your idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be. I tell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother's death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Voltaire. As a poet he was respectable, and as a writer he was original. He was indifferent to literary fame, and never attempted any higher style of composition than that in which he could excel. His last days were miserable, and he lingered a long while in hopeless and melancholy idiocy. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... respect and attachment which they all feel for the memory of the late Emperor. Esterhazy said it was remarkable, considering the condition of the Imperial House—the Emperor[9] in a state bordering on idiocy, not likely to live above four or five years at the outside, and his uncles all men of talent and energy; the next heir, the brother of the Emperor,[10] is a man of competent sense, but the late Emperor's brothers he describes to be all ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... boasts of her favors and allows some of her letters to fall into the hands of one of her numerous lovers, her perfidy is soon completely exposed. To add to her confusion she hears that the Baron, whom she had drugged into idiocy and sent into the country, has been cured by a skilful physician and is about to return. Du Lache despatches two assassins to murder him on the road, but the Baron by a lucky chance escapes the murderers, forces them to confess, and sets out to ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... arms may recover while the lower extremities remain in a spastic state, a condition known as Little's disease. The mental functions may be normal but more frequently they are imperfectly developed, the impairment in some cases amounting to idiocy. The affected limbs exhibit muscular rigidity or spasm, which is aggravated on movement but disappears under an anaesthetic; the reflexes are exaggerated, and sometimes there are perverted involuntary movements ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... and slender. He was a dreamy-looking little fellow, and one may easily find his like throughout the Cumberland-paler than his fellows, from staying much indoors, with half-haunted face, and eyes that are deeply pathetic when not cunning; ignorantly credited with idiocy and uncanny powers; treated with much forbearance, some awe, and a little contempt; and suffered to do his pleasure-nothing, or much ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... froze to death, others had their hands and feet frozen. The rebel guards would occasionally, and on the least pretence, fire into the prison from mere demonism and wantonness. All the horrors that can be named, starvation, lassitude, filth, vermin, despair, swift loss of self-respect, idiocy, insanity, and frequent murder, were there. Stansbury has a wife and child living in Newbern—has written to them from here—is in the U. S. light-house employ still—(had been home to Newbern to see his family, and on his return to the ship was captured in his boat.) Has seen men brought there ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... extraordinary brilliancy. The circumstance was so inexplicable, the value of the stone was plainly so enormous, that Francis sat staring into the open casket without movement, without conscious thought, like a man stricken suddenly with idiocy. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... round at my two companions. The servant had risen to his feet—he had taken the lantern, and was holding it up vacantly at the door. Terror seemed to have struck him with downright idiocy—he waited at my heels, he followed me about when I moved like a dog. The clerk sat crouched up on one of the tombstones, shivering, and moaning to himself. The one moment in which I looked at them was enough to show me that ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... off a mortgage to my grandfather, yes," he answered soberly, quite conscious of what he was doing and of its recklessness and, perhaps, idiocy. "And to ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... deception, and will injure him for the Sunday-schools. He has not judgment enough to know what is good to eat from what isn't. This amounts to ignorance, and will impair the world's respect for him. He cannot stroll around a stump and find his way home again. This amounts to idiocy, and once the damaging fact is established, thoughtful people will cease to look up to him, the sentimental will cease to fondle him. His vaunted industry is but a vanity and of no effect, since he never gets home with anything he starts with. This disposes of the last ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... organ is very likely to become a seat of disease and to thus enfeeble or destroy the whole body. And this disease effects the most complete ruin when its seat is in the highest organs. Dyspepsia is bad enough, but mania or idiocy is infinitely worse. And our moral powers are always enfeebled, and often diseased, from lack of strong exercise. And some blind guides, seeing only the disease, cry out for the extirpation of the whole faculty, as some physicians ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... compensate the absence of crimson cheeks.] will be done in this present case) of any man presumptuous enough to contradict me; but then, why? For a reason that makes all the difference in the world, and which, one would think, idiocy itself could not overlook, viz., that I, John Calvin, am right—right, through three degrees of comparison—right, righter, or more right, rightest, or most right. Calvin fancied that he could demonstrate ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as rational, 'cool', and imaginative as they consider themselves. This bias often contributes to weakness in communication skills. Hackers tend to be especially poor at ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of Hercules, upon which rested the vast edifice of his scorn, were these two—1st, my physics; he denounced me for effeminacy; 2d, he assumed, and even postulated as a datum, which I myself could never have the face to refuse, my general idiocy. Physically, therefore, and intellectually, he looked upon me as below notice; but, morally, he assured me that he would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his setting out countenance—the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains—the Lions so truly Allegorical and remote from any similitude to Pidcock's. The great head (the author's) capacious of dreams and similitudes dreaming in the dungeon. Perhaps you ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... as to those of their families whom cretinism has reduced to idiocy. They are attended to, fed, dressed clean, and provided with a pleasant place for the day, before doing anything else, even by very busy and ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of the whole tribe is defrauded of a voice, and at least one is an exquisite singer; or accuse the nightingale of the superfluous idiocy of holding his (though they always say her) breast to a thorn as he sings, as if he were so foolish as to imitate some forms of human self-torture,—if they would only be a little more sure of their facts, what a comfort it would be to those who ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... suggested Mr. Wedmore, in his driest tones, "the girl is shrewd enough to know that I should cut off a son who was guilty of such a piece of idiocy and leave ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... is so well wove In warp and woof, but there 's some flaw in it: I've known a brave man fly a shepherd's cur, A wise man so demean him, drivelling idiocy Had wellnigh been ashamed on't. For your crafty, Your worldly wise man, he, above the rest, Weaves his own snares so fine, he 's ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... "That's the idiocy of it. She's only fifteen, but you watch her the next time any of us fellows come into the room. Just can tell you; he's in a chronic state of laugh over it. She thinks she's a beauty, and she thinks we're all impressed with ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... chasing down to the water's edge to see that girl is enough to make you ashamed of yourself for life, Grenfall Lorry," he apostrophized. "It's worse than any lovesick fool ever dreamed of doing. I am blushing, I'll be bound. The idiocy, the rank idiocy of the thing! And suppose she should see me staring at her out there on the pier? What would she think of me? I'll not go another foot! I ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... You made it possible. I can't tell you what a help you were. And since I've left the San, I've looked forward to your letters to boost up my spirits. When I felt down in the mouth over my own idiocy, I used to re-read them, and they always were good medicine. I can't tell you ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... earth in visible form, it is the result of some disquieting influence immediately before the death of the body, or, as I might say, previous to the new life. At the hour of physical birth, such influences cause idiocy or such imperfection of the bodily functions that death ensues, and the spirit returns to seek another entrance into the world of matter. When a man dies dominated by some intense earthly desire, his mind is barred against ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... me, "As to his hair and his political opinions, they displease me." I begged the same lady to transmit my reply, which was as follows: His Majesty has every right in the world to judge me as seemeth well to him, nevertheless I venture to beg him not to think that I am an idiot. Now it would be idiocy on my part to proclaim political opinions. The Emperor shall know them when he deigns to put 300,000 ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... perception whatsoever of the poetry of farm-life: he considers a woodman's work crabbed prose. The idea of making poetry out of any part of it, or out of a herder's work either, is to him stark idiocy. Sheep-washing, for instance, is simply working a whole spring day in very chilly water, and sheep-shearing is a task at which he makes "ridgy" work and endures the horror of seeing the gentle, thin-skinned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Barbara, sharply. "It's sheer idiocy. Haven't you heard the things people are saying? They are calling him a fool, and in the clubs they are betting that he will be a pauper ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... Armstrong,” I asserted, yielding myself further to the joy of idiocy, and delighting in the mockery and changing moods of her talk. I did not make her out; indeed, I preferred not to! I was not then,—and I am not now, thank God,—of an analytical turn of mind. And as I grow older I prefer, even after many a blow, to take my fellow human beings a good deal ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... presumed to be incompetent; and the party seeking to enforce the contract must prove the other to have been sane. The general rule in the case of idiots is, that if the party is incapable of acting in the ordinary affairs of life, or in the particular contract, his idiocy will ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in "the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely—"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"—I wager he ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... forfeit their privileges. The power of selection of inmates was vested in the trustees, assisted by the vicar and churchwardens of the parish; a clause being added, that, in case of the trustees being incompetent, by reason of infancy or idiocy, the vicar and churchwardens should select. The weekly allowance to the inmates was to ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... they laugh lest they die of sadness. A shrug of the shoulders, a widening of the lips, a heaving forth of sound, and the life is saved. The remedy is as drastic as are the drugs used for epilepsy, which in quelling the spasm bring idiocy to the patient. If we are made idiots by our laughter, we are paying dearly for the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... than it is now; revolutionary fury had indeed spent itself upon many of its noblest monuments, but the interference of modern restoration or improvement was unknown. Better the unloosed rage of the fiend than the scrabble of self-complacent idiocy. The facade of the cathedral was as yet unencumbered by the blocks of new stonework, never to be carved, by which it is now defaced; the Church of St. Nicholas existed, (the last fragments of the niches of its gateway were seen by the writer dashed upon the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... is at hand. Come, let us twine round our brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in hand with sociology in ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... over at Acol began a slow and monotonous toll he felt as if his every nerve must give way: as if he must laugh, laugh loudly and long at the idiocy, the ignorance of all these people who thought that they were confronted by an impenetrable mystery, whereas it was all so simple ... ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... not suggesting any great love of work, and rather loutish in his manners. But, he knew his engine, said Charlie. And that was the main thing. The deck-hand proved to be a shackly, rather silly effeminate fellow, suggesting idiocy, but doubtless wiry and good enough for ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... congenital absence of the thyroid, diminutiveness of size, thickness of neck, shortness of arms and legs, prominence of the abdomen, large size of the face, thickness of the lips, large and protruding tongue, and imbecility or idiocy. It is popularly believed that coitus during intoxication is the cause of this condition. Osler was able to collect 11 or 12 cases in this country. The diagnosis is all-important, as the treatment by the thyroid extract produces the most noteworthy ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... existence before it was too late, envied these poor women, because they worked. She wondered vaguely now at her folly. "It is much better to be comfortable," she thought, going back to the fire as aimlessly as she had gone to the window, "and it is sheer idiocy quarrelling with a life that other people would think ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... sever your relations, and nobody need have been wiser—and she'd have had all the blame—and it's only what she's accustomed to—you—you! you, James North!—you must nonsensically go, and, by this extravagant piece of idiocy and sentimental tomfoolery, let everybody see how serious the whole affair was, and how deep it hurt you! and here in this awful place, alone—where you're half drowned to get to it and are willing to be wholly drowned to get ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... companions, Faust and Schoffer, ever have believed that, by the division of labor, their sublime invention would fall into the domain of ignorance—I had almost said idiocy? There are few men so weak-minded, so UNLETTERED, as the mass of workers who follow the various branches of the typographic industry,— compositors, pressmen, type-founders, book-binders, and paper-makers. The printer, as he existed even in the days of the Estiennes, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... not dwell here on the mere diabolical idiocy that can regard beer or tobacco as in some way evil and unseemly in themselves), there is the most important element in this strange outbreak; at least, the most dangerous and the most important for us. There is that main feature in the degradation of the old middle class: the ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... the three. You'll have to grow up, some day. In my opinion, forcing yourself to give up one of your hardest-held ideals—virginity—merely because of the utter bilge that those idiot head-shrinkers stuffed you with, is sheer, plain idiocy. I suppose that makes you like me even less, but I'm laying it right on ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... fresh agonies, till they gave him up as mad; and, tired by his violence, compelled him, with blows and curses, to remain quiet; and so the week wore out, in dull and stupefied despair, which trembled on the very edge of idiocy. Night and day were alike to him. The food which was thrust in through his grate remained untasted; hour after hour, day after day, he sat upon the ground, his head buried in his hands, half-dozing from mere exhaustion of body and mind. Why should he care to stir, to eat, to ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Their whole life has been spent on the open veldt (we are always fighting them on somebody's farm, who knows every inch of the ground), and they never risk anything except in the trap sort of manoeuvres. The brave rush of our Tommies is unknown to them, and their slim nature would only see the idiocy of walking into a death-trap, cool as in a play. Were there ever two races less alike?"' wound up the youthful philosopher in his tent. '"I really do not see how they are to ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... for Women; Mrs. Stanton on the Jubilee; Electricity; Progress of the Telegraph; The Mystery of the Ages; Progress of the Marvellous; A Grand Aerolite; The Boy Pianist; Centenarians; Educated Monkeys; Causes of Idiocy; A Powerful Temperance Argument; Slow Progress; Community Doctors; The Selfish System of Society; Educated Beetles; Rustless Iron; Weighing the Earth; Head and Heart; The Rectification of Cerebral Science Chapter IX.—Rectification ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... Sawdust Pile, Mr. Daney walked twice around the Bight of Tyee before arriving at a definite decision as to his future conduct in this intrigue, participation in which had been thrust upon him by his own loyalty to his employer and the idiocy of three hare-brained women. Time and again as lie paced the lonely strand, Mr. Daney made audible reference to the bells of the nether regions and the presence of panther tracks! This was his most terrible oath and was never employed ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... for Blanquette? But you ridiculous little lump of idiocy! will you never understand? She, like you, is part of myself." He thumped his chest as usual. "In the name of petticoats, what does she want? In Russia I met an honest German artisan who had married a peasant girl. After a month's unclouded ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Carewe repeated the word in a cracked falsetto, with the evident intention of mocking her, and at the same time hideously contorted his face into a grotesque idiocy of expression, pursing his lips so extremely, and setting his brows so awry, that his other features were cartooned out of all familiar likeness, effecting an alteration as shocking to behold, in a man ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... so strong and intelligent, deliberately refuse various kinds of work she might have done because they did not please her; and borrow money from a man in preference to earning her living. She exposes herself to insult and even danger with an idiocy that even a novel-reared child of sixteen would have scorned. She falls in love, healthfully enough, with a fine strong man; and sees no reason for avoiding him when she learns he is married. She cheerfully ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... a large brick building, with accommodations for several hundred patients. It contains at present about 150 of these, whose ages vary from six to thirty years. They represent nearly all the different phases of idiocy, and are well cared for. Some of them have been greatly improved in mind by the treatment and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... attempt to escape from despair. In 1740 he writes of being very miserable, extremely deaf, and full of pain. Sometimes he gave way to furious bursts of temper, and for several years before the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift died on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... make it a rule, for the most part, to read all the romances that other people are kind enough to write—and woe to the miserable wight who tells me how the third volume endeth. Have you in you any surviving innocence of this sort? or do you call it idiocy? If you do, I will forgive you, only smiling to myself—I give you notice,—with a smile of superior pleasure! Mr. Chorley made me quite laugh the other day by recommending Mary Hewitt's 'Improvisatore,' with a sort of deprecating ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... was not affected by my ignorance of the facts, motives, events and conclusions. I think that to understand everything is not good for the intellect. A well-stocked intelligence weakens the impulse to action; an overstocked one leads gently to idiocy. But Mrs. Fyne's individualist woman-doctrine, naively unscrupulous, flitted through my mind. The salad of unprincipled notions she put into these girl-friends' heads! Good innocent creature, worthy wife, excellent mother (of the strict governess type), ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... says Pinckney, "when you're not maundering over some such idiocy as this, you're the most entertaining good-for-nothing that ever graced a dinner table or spread the joy of life through a dull drawing room. Come home with ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... of the big cities has produced the child criminal. He is clearly marked and well defined. He is often subnormal even down to idiocy. In most cases he is the result of heredity. Many times he may have fair intelligence, but this is usually attached to an unstable, defective nervous system that cannot do its proper work, and he has had no expert treatment and attention. ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... legislative session, were wicked enough to say that they found the likelier appearing company at the former place. Other inmates partook more of the low cunning, the artful, leading them to accomplish their ends by more adroit means, while a small number seemed bordering on insanity, two on idiocy. ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... upon my application, to take any steps for the safety or salvation of his command. I could but conclude that the man was either insane, premeditated treachery to his troops, or perhaps that his grossly intemperate habits long continued had produced idiocy or monomania. In either case the command was imperiled, and a military necessity demanded that something be done, and that without delay. I took the only step I believed available to save your troops. I arrested this man, have drawn ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... of the centre of a contemplated empire." He declared that "it was not for these men that our fathers fought, not for them that the Constitution was adopted. Our fathers were not madmen: they had not taken degrees at the hospital of idiocy." He maintained with great vehemence that there was "no authority to throw the rights and liberties of this people into 'hotchpot' with the wild men of the Missouri, nor with the mixed, though more respectable, race of Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Americans who bask on the sands in the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... was not affected by my ignorance of the facts, motives, events and conclusions. I think that to understand everything is not good for the intellect. A well-stocked intelligence weakens the impulse to action; an overstocked one leads gently to idiocy. But Mrs Fyne's individualist woman-doctrine, naively unscrupulous, flitted through my mind. The salad of unprincipled notions she put into these girl-friends' heads! Good innocent creature, worthy wife, excellent mother (of the strict ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... moral resistance. Always in expectation of some new grief—as the martyrs expected some fresh blow—my whole being expressed, I doubt not, a sullen resignation which smothered the grace and gaiety of childhood, and gave me an appearance of idiocy which seemed to justify my mother's threatening prophecies. The certainty of injustice prematurely roused my pride—that fruit of reason—and thus, no doubt, checked the evil tendencies which ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... after that of the QUEEN and Royal Family, and could be fitted into Church and State as neatly as possible, that is, where such a toast is a necessity of the entertainment. But the stupidity of the incident has been surpassed by the idiocy of the notice taken of it, and, for the sake of the common sense of the Common Council, it is to be hoped that a large majority will be on the side of Alderman and Sheriff RENALS, and refuse to toast the LORD MAYOR ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... Hahnemann's "Organon," "This Psora is the sole true and fundamental cause that produces all the other countless forms of disease, which, under the names of nervous debility, hysteria, hypochondriasis, insanity, melancholy, idiocy, madness, epilepsy, and spasms of all kinds, softening of the bones, or rickets, scoliosis and cyphosis, caries, cancer, fungua haematodes, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... chiefly the perils of such endeavor and the bathos of the failure. Wieland includes in the letter some "specimen passages from a novel in the style of Tristram Shandy," which he asserts were sent him by the author. The quotations are almost flat burlesque in their impossible idiocy, and one can easily appreciate Wieland's despairing cry with which ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... unmistakable lunatics, and it afterwards struck me that in a land where even the natives go mad from sheer despondency of life, it is no wonder that men and women of culture and refinement are driven to suicide from the constant dread of insanity. Idiocy, however, is more frequent amongst the natives, and in one povarnia we found a poor half-witted wretch who had taken up his quarters there driven away from the nearest stancia by the cruelty of its ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... appeal to him. The schools are no good to me, but positively harmful, as I told you. For me the district institutions simply mean the liability to pay fourpence halfpenny for every three acres, to drive into the town, sleep with bugs, and listen to all sorts of idiocy and loathsomeness, and self-interest offers ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... complete the idiocy, or, as the novelists say, to complete the illusion, one goes to the refreshment-room and tosses off two or three glasses. And then something happens in your head and your heart, finer than you can read of in a fairy tale. I am a man of no importance, but I feel as though I ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... due, each shall glory in the sacred purity and strength of life; each shall develop and expand, but never at the expense of the other. I will have neither the renunciation which ends in a kind of idiocy dignified with a philosophic or a theologic name, nor the worldliness which ends in bestiality. I am a citizen of two worlds—a citizen of the Universe; I owe allegiance to two kingdoms. In my heart ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... prisoners except Gothard were now removed from the courtroom. When Gothard was left alone the president adjured him to speak the truth for his own sake, pointing out that his pretended idiocy had come to an end; none of the jurors believed him imbecile; if he refused to answer the court he ran the risk of serious penalty; whereas by telling the truth at once he would probably be released. Gothard wept, hesitated, and finally ended by saying that Michu had ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... manifested, and to which the phrenologists (I believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted general observation among writers on morals. Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... been flattered to the extent of destroying any stray sense he might ever have possessed. His utter ignorance of girls and their ways may have been partly responsible for his idiocy, or his mother's conviction that all that was necessary was for him to declare himself in order to be accepted had misled him and induced him to abandon any native diffidence he might have had. Anyway, the boy fell into the snare set by ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... in the house had the slightest suspicion of the avocations of the proprietor. Besides, even the humblest agent of police would be expected to possess a degree of acuteness for which no one gave M. Tabaret credit. Indeed, they mistook for incipient idiocy his continual abstraction ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... where he found an abundance of perplexing conditions and ample expense closely adhering to every bramble bush into which the tactics of Smith hurled him. Gabrielle could not save him and she did not try. Where the cause of the trouble is idiocy of the Tescheron quality, it has to go through a long course of pulverization, maceration and cure; if you hurry the process, the goods will be sour and hurt the business, if the lot gets out under the trade-mark. The best thing to do with it is to send ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... years by such a person as old Fraser, it were no wonder if the greater part had become either rogues or fools: he was a ruthless tyrant, Belle, over his own people, and by his cruelty and rapaciousness must either have stunned them into an apathy approaching to idiocy, or made them artful knaves in their own defence. The qualities of parents are generally transmitted to their descendants—the progeny of trained pointers are almost sure to point, even without being taught: if, therefore, all Frasers are either ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... unreasonable, that, since a woman was only allowed one husband, a man should, under any circumstances, be permitted to have two wives; while Raoul, glancing towards her a look of verjuice, pitied the deplorable idiocy of the man who could be fool enough to avail himself of such ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... joking. You are a born queen and you oughtn't to be a slave; but you are one, all the same. You're a slave to the 'daily round, the common task,' which were never meant for such as you; you're a slave to the conventional idiocy of your neighbors. You daren't even take your hat off till I make you; and now you see how nice it is to ride with your ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... quoted was an authority for his instinctive justice? It was obvious to her that he was only a fool who walked by the light of sundry flashes of genius, but there was still the chance that the sum of idiocy and the genius might prove greater than the intelligence of ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... bruises and tried to tell her a little about my trouble she was quite scandalized. She called me a sinful girl, a shameless creature. I assure you it puzzled my head so that, between Therese my sister and Jose the boy, I lived in a state of idiocy almost. But luckily at the end of the two months they sent him away from home for good. Curious story to happen to a goatherd living all her days out under God's eye, as my uncle the Cura might have said. My sister Therese was keeping ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... government is anxious; you know that Paris is preparing to stand siege if the Prussians double up Bazaine and the army of Chalons in the north. But you don't know what a pitiable fright the authorities are in. Why, Scarlett, they are scared almost to the verge of idiocy." ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Every helpless woman is such a blasphemy. So, indeed, is every helpless man, where helplessness is not born of idiocy or calamity; but society neither expects, provides ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... to have made such a fool of myself, sir," he said to Sir Reginald, with a faint, grim smile. "I shall not forget your kindness, though I hope you will forget my idiocy." ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... for six weeks more and I'll find myself fallen away to a perfect three-ton truck. Keep it up for three months and I'll be ready to rent myself out to the aquarium as a suitable playmate for the leviathan in the main tank. I shall stop this idiocy before it begins making me seasick merely to look down at myself as I walk. I may slosh about and billow somewhat, but I positively decline to heave up and down. I refuse to be known as the human tidal wave, with women and children being hurriedly removed to a place of safety at my ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... ferociously. 'They have all the crimes of the middle classes stamped on their faces; they reek of scrofula and idiocy. It serves them right. But hallo! our runaway friend is making off with them. What grovellers architects are! Good riddance. He'll have to look for us when he ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... try whether Viscount Wenman, "aged 19, of L5000 per annum estate in Oxfordshire," were an idiot or not. On the 14th February the Commission was superseded. In June 1709, a new Commission passed the Great Seal for inquiring into the Viscount's idiocy, and on July 29 they found that he was no idiot. On July 12, Peter Wentworth wrote thus to Lord Raby: "The prosecution of Lord Wainman is now order'd again, upon wch the Tatler is to day; the accation I am told is this, that last year when there was a stopt put to't 'twas upon the intercession ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... blinked. "You looking for an inn?" she said. "An inn in this town?" The idea appeared to strike her as the very height of idiocy. She covered her face with her hands and shook. After a second Jonas discovered that she was laughing. He waited patiently until the ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... only by knowing the witness's habits of thought in regard to all the circumstances of the case. I remember vividly a case of jealous murder in which the most important witness was the victim's brother, an honest, simple, woodsman, brought up in the wilderness, and in every sense far- removed from idiocy. His testimony was brief, decided and intelligent. When the motive for the murder, in this case most important, came under discussion, he shrugged his shoulders and answered my question—whether it was not committed on ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... and Engels speak of the "idiocy of rural life" from which capitalism, through the concentration of agriculture and the abolition of small holdings, would rescue the peasant proprietors (Communist Manifesto). In Capital Marx speaks of the manner in which modern industry "annihilates the peasant, the bulwark of the old society" ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... who marry young wives, and who pay the penalty by becoming martyrs to paralysis, softening of the brain, and driveling idiocy." ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... view is, that they will begin just where they left off. As they are, they are not fit for the better world; and it would be unjust to send them to a world of woe. Some were idiots from their birth, and so have acquired no evil propensities of which to be divested. In other cases the idiocy was simply due to a clot on the brain. They have left their bodies behind them now, and the clot too. They simply begin at the point where their reason deserted them; and it will ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... were abroad in all classes of society concerning his life in India, his conduct in the Highlands, and his moral idiocy, but he held them under with a strong hand, and more than one hinted that he had ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... "Most certainly; idiocy and mania always come from man's interference with the laws of health and of nature—never otherwise. The Soul placed within us by the Creator is meant to be fostered by man's unfettered Will; if man chooses to employ that unfettered Will in wrong directions, he has only ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... this with dignity, without deprecation, and without the idiocy of spoken gratitude. He agreed perfectly with everything I said! "Yes" was his only comment. I ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... the law now,—it was Claperon, the jailer, who loved Claudine, and had himself killed Alphonse de Bellefonds from jealousy. An unfortunate wretch had been several years in the jail for a murder committed during the frenzy of a fit of insanity. Long confinement had reduced him to idiocy. To save my life Claperon substituted the senseless being for me, on the scaffold, and he was executed in my stead. He has quitted the country, and I have been a vagabond on the face of the earth ever since that time. At length I obtained, through the assistance of my sister, the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... grotto, that childish plaything. Some zealously devout visitors had left their visiting cards in the cracks of the cement-work! For his part, he felt very sad, and followed his companion with bowed head, lamenting the wretched idiocy of the world. Then, on emerging from the wood, on again reaching the parterre, he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the light directly into the Body Politic, 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 illuminated ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... idiocy that's been talked to me this forenoon. I've done nothin' for the last hour but say 'No' to folks that come tearin' in to unload lies and ask questions. And some of 'em was people you'd expect to ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for a few weeks, but I comfort myself with my usual reflection on the chances of life, "Lucky it is no worse." Any impatience would have been checked by what I heard about Moseley this morning—that he has sunk into hopeless idiocy. A man in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... and this would account for the fact, often observed, that mediums 'take on' the conditions of certain spirits who are communicating, i.e. they suffer pro tem. from heart or bowel trouble, pains in the head, etc. Further, this seems to extend to the mental functions and conditions also. Idiocy and insanity, e.g., are supposed to gradually wear off in the next life, and a gradual return to normal conditions ensue. This is, at least, the statement made through several mediums, and it is only natural to suppose that such should be the case. The spirit gradually returns to a normal mental ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... drugged for Malaria, Neurasthenia, Consumption, Overwork, Brain Troubles, Paralysis and many equally as foolish and irrational complaints. They sicken, die, destroy themselves in hopeless despair of ever getting well and strong again, verge into hopeless idiocy or go raving mad, simply because their trouble is not understood; because day by day and hour by hour there is draining from them in their urine, at stool and otherwise, that precious vital fluid that represents life, health and ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... still asleep when I got back to the big room. I moved his boots back from the fire, and trimmed the candle. Then, with sleep gone from me, I lay back on my divan and reflected on many things: on my idiocy in coming; on Alison West, and the fact that only a week before she had been a guest in this very house; on Richey and the constraint that had come between us. From that I drifted back to Alison, and to the barrier my ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... so big and angry that she felt like a wren or sparrow in his hold. But the stupidity of him! the blind idiocy! She eyed him from head to foot with a bitterness and contempt unutterable—a handsome six-foot animal, with his small brain filled with smaller, worn-out prejudices! The way of escape had been set before him, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... night, and had no means of computing the passage of the hours. Food was left in his cell, and the attendants, who occasionally entered, were prohibited from holding any conversation with the child. This treatment, absolutely infernal, soon reduced the innocent prince to a state almost of idiocy. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... to the terms of the bargain, the entire enterprise, the figures on his check. His own amazing imbecility appalled him. What idiocy! What sudden madness had seized him to entangle himself in such unheard-of negotiations! True, he had played bridge until dawn the night before, but, on awaking, he had discovered no perceptible hold-over. It must have been sheer weakness of intellect that ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... laid up for many days. Eat, drink and be merry." Did ever you hear words that were more stamped with moral idiocy? You can see from them that his soul has not fared well up to this time. You can easily tell from these words that his moral nature has been starved and stunted. We can easily tell that all his gettings have not satisfied him in the past. And yet he is vainly expecting satisfaction ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... should conduct themselves in the same manner as Bharata, son of .Rishabha, the idiot Brahman (Ja.da- vipra), did in ancient times. [Footnote: The story is told in Vish.nu-pura.na, ii. 13. He feigned idiocy, that he might not be troubled with worldly society and might so give his ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... didn't know how the information about the device had been transported to the United States. As it was, he considered the drawings a hoax on the part of the Russians; if he had been told that they had been sent telepathically, he would probably have gone into fits of acute exasperation over such idiocy. ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... CHILDREN.—(Incontinence of Urine).—This refers to an escape of urine from the bladder uncontrolled by the will. It naturally occurs in infants under thirty months, or thereabouts, and in the very old, and in connection with various diseases. It may be due to disease of the brain, as in idiocy or insanity, apoplexy, or unconscious states. Injuries or disorders of the spinal cord, which controls the action of the bladder (subject to the brain), also cause incontinence. Local disorders of the urinary organs are more ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... voice went on, 'seems to have missed his opportunities, but I have always suspected him of idiocy.' ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... idiocy and epilepsy. Of five persons the one sane member only has a family. Nine children, ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... you bet! It will make quite interesting reading in the New York opposition papers some fine Sunday morning—about a column and a half, say. Won't there be some swearing in the Argus when that appears! It won't be your losing the despatch you were going to send, but it will be your utter idiocy in making the thing public, and letting the other papers on to it. Why, the best thing in the world for you to do, and the only thing, is to keep as quiet as possible about it. I am astonished at a girl of your sense, Dolly, making a public fuss like ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... "I may laugh at my idiocy, but you haven't any right to. I know I'm ridiculous. I've known it for months. But ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... borrowing the red Caddies exhibited a peculiar combination of burglarious genius and what looked to Malone like outright idiocy. This ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "Of your idiocy, very likely," shouted the Caliph, bored by the eternal flatteries of the barber. "Tell me, what are ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... ideas, no doubt, float through the brain of such a man; but he has little exact and reliable knowledge. The truth is, there is a sort of indolent, listless absorption of intellectual food, that tends to idiocy. I knew a person once, a gentleman of wealth and leisure, who having no taste for social intercourse, and no material wants to be supplied, which might have required the active exercise of his powers, gave himself up entirely to solitary reading, as a sort of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... degraded motley conspicuously forth amidst the fair colors of earth, and mix their incoherent cries with the melodies of eternity, break with their inane laugh upon the silence which Creation keeps where Omnipotence passes most visibly, and scrabble over with the characters of idiocy the pages that have been written by ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... you so well, Harry," said Duncan slowly, "I'd be certain you were mad. I'm not at all sure that I'm sane. It's raving idiocy—and it's a pretty damned rank thing to do, to start deliberately out to marry a woman for her money. But I've been through a little hell of my own in my time, and—it's not alluring to contemplate a return to ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... spades and hoes and rushed forward eagerly. "Only show us what you want," they said in one voice. The young girl stared at them, and at Jackson. Then with swift determination she turned her back scornfully upon him, and with a dazzling smile which reduced the three men to absolute idiocy, said to the others, "I'll show YOU," and ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... shocked he was at the mischief he had done. See how he had unsettled the little mind this poor, dear, good gentleman had ever had, till he was now a mere slave to preconception. And how many more had he not in like manner brought to the verge of idiocy? How many again had he not made more corrupt than they were before, even though he had not deceived them—as for example, Hanky and Panky. And the young? how could such a lie as that a chariot and four horses came down out of the clouds enter seriously into the life of ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... a dream, or work of the devil? To add to the worthy tradesman's ill-luck, his shepherd has stolen his wool and eaten his sheep. The dying Pathelin unexpectedly appears in court to defend the accused, and having previously advised his client to affect idiocy and reply to all questions with the senseless utterance bee, he triumphantly wins the case; but the tables are turned when Master Pathelin demands his fee, and can obtain no other response than bee from the instructed shepherd. The triumph of rogue over rogue is the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... scarcely looked at him. She rose to go; but it seemed to her pitiful to leave Fanny Newt in such utter desolation of soul and body, in which she seemed to her to be gradually sinking into idiocy. She went to Fanny and took her hand. Fanny listlessly rose, and when Hope had done shaking hands Fanny crossed them before her inanely, but in an unconsciously appealing attitude, which Hope saw and felt. Alfred still sprawled in his chair; laughing ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... imagine that Crossan had started one of those ridiculous industries by means of which Government Boards and philanthropic ladies think they will add to the wealth of the Irish peasants. Besides, even if Crossan had suddenly developed symptoms of kindly idiocy, neither wood-carving or lace-making could possibly have made Rose's freckly faced young man rich enough to buy a gold brooch. The thing puzzled me nearly as much as did the Finola's ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... intelligible word. Augusta is fifteen years old, weighs two hundred and five pounds, and possesses only slight traces of intelligence. Teething spasms, occurring when they were about two years old, is the cause of their idiocy. Both are subject to frequent and violent spasms or epileptic fits. They need constant care and attention. Should Bertha's hand fall into the fire, she has not sufficient intelligence to withdraw it ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... later monachism has so nearly succeeded in reducing the human mind to that condition of impassive quasi-somnambulism, which, but for its acknowledged holiness, might run the risk of being confounded with idiocy. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... issues from a cell about four feet six inches wide, and nine long, the hideous countenance of a poor, mulatto girl, whose shrunken body, skeleton-like arms, distended and glassy eyes, tell but too forcibly her tale of sorrow. How vivid the picture of wild idiocy is pictured in her sad, sorrowing face. No painter's touch could have added a line more perfect. Now she rushes forward, with a suddenness that makes Madame Montford shrink back, appalled-now she fixes her eyes, hangs down ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... strangeness of the fancy, which evidently fascinated him, he buried himself in the indulgence of the thought of the possibility of some sort of communication with his wife. Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to the fruitless idiocy of spiritualism, nor engage in that humiliating intercourse with illiterate humbugs who personate the minds of men and women almost too sacred to be even for an instant associated in ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... is the false belief that mind is in matter, and 103:21 is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful. This belief has not one qual- ity of Truth. It is either ignorant or malicious. The 103:24 malicious form of hypnotism ultimates in moral idiocy. The truths of immortal Mind sustain man, and they anni- hilate the fables of mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy 103:27 pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... a certain number so far below the normal rating in a complex of traits that go to produce intelligent (competent and facile) behavior that they will have to be classed as subnormal, ranging from feeblemindedness to idiocy. A certain number will be found so extraordinarily gifted in general traits and in specific abilities—in given subject-matters, as, for example, in mathematics and music—that they will be marked ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... declared firmly. "It's—it's dratted idiocy, that's all. Plain water would do well enough. There's a lot of people think whisky is poison with ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... final triumph of idiocy. If bad women could be shut up and made to say prayers most of the time, no harm at least would be done,—the good, problematical; but to immure a woman of sweet, natural, God-bestowed impulses is the devil's worst practical joke in this world. Come, little girl, it's late. Think over ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... and Doctor Johnson used collectively or individually the following expressions in describing the work of the author of "Hamlet": conceit, overreach, word-play, extravagance, overdone, absurdity, obscurity, puerility, bombast, idiocy, untruth, improbability, drivel. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... munificence. . . . Bad ink, and the dregs of it at that, but the heart in the right place. Still very cordially interested in my Barrie and wishing him well through his sickness, which is of the body, and long defended from mine, which is of the head, and by the impolite might be described as idiocy. The whole head is useless, and the whole sitting part painful: reason, the recent ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 26th of the second month, 1848, a full report of the results of this labor was made to the Governor, accompanied by statistical tables and minute details. One hundred towns had been visited by the chairman or his reliable agent, in which five hundred and seventy-five persons in a state of idiocy were discovered. These were examined carefully in respect to their physical as well as mental condition, no inquiry being omitted which was calculated to throw light upon the remote or immediate causes of this mournful imperfection ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in love, crazy in love. Every fiber of his long body glowed with it, ached with it. And every atom of his reason told him what mad folly it was, this love. Even if Harmony cared—and at the mere thought his heart pounded—what madness for her, what idiocy for him! To ask her to accept the half of—nothing, to give up a career to share his struggle for one, to ask her to bury her splendid talent and her beauty under a bushel that he might wave ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... emotions which had struck him as rather silly; now he plainly saw that this sentimental soul could never, never have been the friend of his father, who was so matter-of-fact, so narrow, so heavy, to whom the word "Poetry" meant idiocy. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... city, when we feel puzzled, by the almost total absence of reason in the countenance, to know whether the utter indifference to nakedness and the elements, be the consequence of drunken destitution, or pure idiocy. To this questionable appearance had the individual we speak of come. The day was now nearly past, and the crowd had considerably diminished, when this man, approaching Father Matthew, knelt down, and ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... so well wove In warp and woof, but there's some flaw in it; I've known a brave man fly a shepherd's cur, A wise man so demean himself, drivelling idiocy Had wellnigh been ashamed on't. For your crafty, Your worldly-wise man, he, above the rest, Weaves his own snares so fine, he's often caught ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... that in saving himself he had saved her, was no comfort. He had not been called upon to elect himself arbiter of Joyce's future. No; to put it baldly, in his loneliness he had dabbled in affairs that did not concern him—and he must pay for his idiocy. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... chew the end of his cigar—a bit of nervousness he had not been guilty of for twenty years. "At least, it would have been rather indecent not to have informed me," he answered. "But, of course, you don't expect my consent to such an act of idiocy." ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... my new acquirements of gait, of gesture, and of speech. What had taken me the better part of a laborious day he accomplished in a short half hour. Coming back unannounced he caught me bowing and scraping before a mirror, like a man stricken with idiocy. I felt as shamed as though I had been detected hiding in face of ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... all its gradations—including idiocy, imbecility, moronism, and so on—is strongly hereditary and is one of the most dysgenic factors we have to deal with. It is the most dysgenic of all factors. It is more dysgenic than insanity. Marriage ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... peace which flows from auricular confession. I solemnly declare that except in a few cases, in which the confidence of the penitents is bordering on idiocy, or in which they have been transformed into immoral brutes, nine-tenths of the multitudes who go to confess, are obliged to recount some such desolate narrative as that of Miss Richardson, when they are sufficiently honest to say ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Gemma, and he was for some reason ... ashamed to think of her. His conscience was stirring within him. But he consoled himself with the reflection that to-morrow it would all be over for ever, and he would take leave for good of this feather-brained lady, and would forget all this rotten idiocy!... ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... I'll tell you something funnier. Her playing WAS wonderful to me. The gates of heaven opened to me when she played. I can see myself now, worn out and dog-tired after the long day, lying on the mats of the palace veranda and gazing upon her at the piano, myself in a perfect idiocy of bliss. Why, this idea she had of her fine playing was the one flaw in her deliciousness of perfection, and I loved her for it. It kind of brought her within my human reach. Why, when she played her one-two-three, tum-tum-tum, I was in the seventh heaven of bliss. My weariness fell from me. I loved ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... was one of colossal exaggeration, both in talent and in idiocy, in virtue and in vice. Men sinned like giants and as giants atoned. Common sense, mediocrity—save upon the throne—were rare. Even the fools in their folly were great. The spectacle was recurrent of men who would smilingly stake ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... absurdity. A happy word here and there, the full title and rank given, even with a slight exaggeration, to each individual, brought a deep and guttural "So!" from lips that would have found it difficult to repeat a line of his ceremonious idiocy. ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... Frank Swinnerton can be more cruel than Irvin Cobb. Indeed, sometimes when he is telling a story, his face becomes exactly like the face of Mephistopheles in excellent humour with the world's sinfulness and idiocy. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... when they still argued in the opposite sense, and the interpreter refused to translate the harsh epithets he applied to such august personages, he took the dictionary, looked out the Chinese equivalent for "idiocy," and with his finger on the word, placed it under the eyes of each member of the Council. The end of this scene may be described in Gordon's own words: "I said make peace, and wrote out the terms. They were, in all, five articles; the only ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... spelling. One poor blind girl sat amongst them, with melancholy arms folded, and learned nothing,—they told us, nothing; for the instruction of the blind is not thought of in these parts. This seemed piteous to us, and made us reflect how happy are our blinds, to say nothing of our deafs and dumbs. Idiocy is not uncommon here, and is the result of continual intermarriage between near relations; but it will be long before they will provide it with a separate asylum ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Satan literally working in that prelate's heart; to his disciples he told stories of men who had been killed by rashly resisting the devil. Insanity, he was quite sure, was caused by Satan, and he exorcised sufferers. Against some he appears to have advised stronger remedies; and his horror of idiocy, as resulting from Satanic influence, was so great, that on one occasion he appears to have advised the killing of an idiot child, as being the direct offspring of Satan. Yet Luther was one of the most tender ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... by the civil M.P. and the professor. The host, who was of no party, supported his guest as long as possible, and then left him to his fate. The military M.P. fled to the drawing-room to philander with Mrs. Grey; and the man of science and the African had already retired to the intellectual idiocy of a May Fair "At Home." The novelist was silent, for he was studying a scene; and the poet was absent, for he was ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... house in which the Hewish family had run to seed in its latter generations, was very much to the point. Twenty miles from Galway—and Irish miles, at that—it stands at the foot of the mountains on the edge of the tract that is called Joyce's Country, a district famous for inbreeding and idiocy where everyone was called Joyce, excepting, of course, the Hewishes of Roscarna, who were aliens, Elizabethan adventurers from the county of Devon, cousins of the Earls of Halberton, who had planted themselves ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... now a bare barrack of a place, but comparatively clean. During the war and the first part of the revolution it was tenanted chiefly by officers, and owing to the idiocy of a few of these at the time of the first revolution in shooting at a perfectly friendly crowd of soldiers and sailors, who came there at first with no other object than to invite the officers to join them, the place was badly smashed up in the resulting scrimmage. I remember ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... fellow! He dreams and is happy. But I, it seems, must waste my youth in this wretched hole. I was utterly crushed before, and now this madness creeping into my mind! So suitable! Me give myself up to tender sentiments! Trampled upon, broken-spirited, and as if that's not enough, in my idiocy I must needs fall in love! And of all people in the world! With a woman, whom I may never have the luck to speak a word to. (Silence.) But for all that, I can't get her out of my head, try as I will. Here she is! Coming with her husband, oh! and ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... was compelled to remain in bed a long while. I could, indeed, have triumphed over these physical sufferings however cruel they might have been, but in the frightful complications of my position I was reduced to a condition of idiocy; I saw nothing of what was around me; I heard nothing of what was said; and after this statement the reader will surely not expect that I shall have anything to say about the farewell of the Emperor to his old and faithful guard, an account of which, moreover, has been ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... longevity, or feebleness, disease, and death. It clearly points out those temperaments which are compatible with each other and harmoniously blend, and also those which, when united in marriage, result in barrenness, or produce in the offspring imbecility, deformity, and idiocy. These matters are freely discussed from original investigations and clinical observations, thus rendering the work a true and scientific ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... chance inheritance and personal favor and yet we attempt to base the right to education on this foundation. The result is grotesque! We bury genius; we send it to jail; we ridicule and mock it, while we send mediocrity and idiocy to college, gilded and crowned. For three hundred years we have denied black Americans an education and now we exploit them before a gaping world: See how ignorant and degraded they are! All they are fit for is education for cotton-picking and dish-washing. When Dunbar ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... ran, and stumbled, and shambled home, buzzing with his lips all the time. She never missed him. He came back in a trice, bringing with him his cherished paper windmill, bought on that fatal day when Michael had taken him into Kendal to have his doom of perpetual idiocy pronounced. He thrust it into Susan's face, her hands, her lap, regardless of the injury his frail plaything thereby received. He leapt before her to think how he had cured all heart-sorrow, buzzing louder than ever. Susan looked ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... in the hope that change of scene might restore his health, and was even disposed, notwithstanding all that had passed, again to employ him in the public service. But from the moment of that sudden shock, the unhappy man sank gradually into idiocy. He who had formerly been distinguished by the strength of his understanding and the simplicity of his habits, now squandered the remains of his fortune on childish trinkets, and loved to exhibit himself dressed in rich garments, and hung with precious stones. In this abject state he languished ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
