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More "Besotted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that afternoon, through the doors of which workmen were thronging. Coming along George street, they had heard from more than one bar-room the howling of a drunken chorus. Men had staggered by them, and women too, frowsy and besotted. But there was none of this in Paddy's Market. It was a serious place, these long dingy arcades, to which people came to buy cheaply and carefully, people to whom every penny was of value and who had none to throw away, just then at least, either on a brain-turning carouse or on a painted ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... a heart of flint: let my intreaties, My tears, the Sacrifice of griefs unfeigned, Melt it: yet be a Father to thy son, Unmask thy long besotted judgement, see A low obedience kneeling at the feet Of nature, I ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... of a dangerous flirt, he decided, though, at present, she was only feeling her way. Time would develop her powers and then, God help the young idiots who would lose their heads! Most of all, God help her fool-husband—the besotted idealist! In a few years, Joyce Meredith would be no better than most lovely women in the East—notably such as flourished in the ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Isaiah the restoration of our land, and become the poet patriot of my people. But these English! They care only to make money and to stuff it down the throats of gorging reverends. My scholarship, my poetry, my divine dreams—what are these to a besotted, brutal congregation of Men-of-the-Earth? I sent Buckledorf, the rich banker, a copy of my little book, with a special dedication written in my own autograph in German, so that he might understand it. And what did he send me? A beggarly five ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... peace of Pitcairn, and darkened her moral sky, had been at least intelligently founded on hatred or revenge, with a definite object and murderous end in view. Now, for the first time, a furious battle had been fought for nothing, with no object to be gained, and no end in view; with besotted idiots for the champions, and with strong ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... solemnized by the village parson on the 30th of September, 1830. With his bride he now settled down at home. For some years he lived the life of a farmer. His mother was riveted to the spot where her devoted husband fell at the hands of a besotted Indian. But her son was of a progressive spirit. He longed to leave the old home for one more comfortable. How strange that the old should sit by the grave of the past, while the young never weary of chasing ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... when he came near, but not as one who sees or recognises. Rather, as it were, dumb, drunken, besotted with grief, looked forth the soul of the Lady Sybilla upon the captain of the Douglas guard. She heeded not his angry shout, for another voice rang in her ears, speaking the knightliest words ever uttered by a man about ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... which they have detected various crimes against the laws of harmony, the fixed rules of counter point—and behold the men of the schools, how they will shrug their classic shoulders in contempt at his name and besotted ignorance! Or, should he venture to delight in the original and naive lyrics of some untaught bard of nature, without being able to justify his admiration by learned citations from Virgil and Horace, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "overland passage;" just as the bones of the unbelieving Israelites whitened the sands of the desert. Of those who have reached the "land of" golden "promise," how many have died in despair, or worse still, are living so besotted by vice, so lost to all power of virtuous resolutions, that they shall never more see the happy homes from which they so thoughtlessly wandered, never more hear the soft accents of loving friends; never more worship God, in a peaceful Sanctuary, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... Yonder lies the true Lost City, and we are—oh, try to comprehend all that statement means, my lads! Picture to yourselves what boundless fame and unlimited credit awaits our report to the outer world! The benighted world! The besotted world! The—the—" ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... be the People's: but Mexico may be a harder bone to pick. Already is a newspaper published there, named El Tiemps, The Times, to advocate a return to monarchy, in order to save the Spanish race from the Stars and the Stripes; and the besotted and wretched Republics of the South, conceived in folly, and born of the splendid dream of Canning, are falling to pieces from internal wars. Will his Ophirian Majesty, the Emperor of Brazil, humbly lay his crown at the feet of the Eagle, and are all our West India islands ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... sister Vivien, becomes so infatuated with the latter lady, that she is able to coax from him all his secrets, and even to learn the spell whereby a mortal can be kept alive although hidden from all eyes. Having obtained the magic formula by bringing all her coquettish wiles to bear upon besotted old Merlin, Vivien is said to have decoyed the wizard either to an enchanted castle, where she enclosed him in a stone sepulchre, or into the forest of Broceliande, in Brittany, where she left him, spellbound in a flowering thorn-bush. Another ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... night. Our mad merriment scarce ever abated. We were a blare of revelry and a blaze of light. Excitement mounted to fever heat. In the midst of it the women with the enamelled cheeks reaped a bountiful harvest. I marvel now that, with all the besotted recklessness of those that were our pilots, we met ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... of dread lest his confession should cut short this very happiness,—a pang of the same dread that had kept his love mute through long months. A rush of self-consciousness told him that he was besotted to have said all this. Maggie's manner this morning had been as unconstrained and indifferent ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... ruin is summoned, 20 The land is undone! Suddenly undone my tents, In a moment my curtains! How long must I look for the signal 21 And hark for the sound of the trump! [Yea, fools are My people 22 Nor Me do they fear.(213) Children besotted are they, Void of discretion. Clever they are to do evil, To ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical subtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavish tradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and heaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale of grandeur and intensity wholly without a parallel elsewhere in the literature or faith of the world. Brahmanism, with its hundred million adherents holding sway over India, and Buddhism, with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... heeding the interruption, "can a Christian man find in traveling in a land where the people grovel in ignorance and a besotted superstition, which manifests that God has given them over to a reprobate heart. I cannot speak their language; I can only look on their wanderings in the dark, and think ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... said Hyde. His wide black eyes, devil-driven beyond reticence, were riveted on Isabel's: apparently she no longer existed for him except as the Chorus before whom he could strip himself of the last rag of his reserve. "It brought it all back. I was besotted when I married her, and I remembered all that when I saw her dead. I forgot the other men. It was just as it was when Arthur died. I couldn't do anything for him, and he was in agony: he was shot through the stomach: it didn't seem to matter then that he ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... a little. He doesn't disguise his liking for him, personally. He's rather ... rather besotted about him, I ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... months of incarceration the natives are separated from their women-folk and families. The consequence is one of the most striking and shocking features of the compound system. A number of the lowest, drink-besotted, coloured prostitutes, estimated at about 5,000, have collected at Beaconsfield, where, so to speak, they constitute a colony, occupying a revolting quarter of the township. When the natives come out for a ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... mortgage while rumaging in an old deed box of Coyle's father's, there was a folded paper inside the deed. I took both to Coyle unopened, like a besotted fool that I was. My belief is strong that the paper was the release of the mortgage that the money had been paid off, and the release executed without the seals having been cut from the original mortgage. I have ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... other occupants of the room. They are accustomed to it. One wonders, too, at the attraction this has for strangers. There is really nothing in the people, the place, or the onlookers worthy of a decent man's curiosity. The girls are, without exception, the nastiest, most besotted drabs that ever walked the streets. They haven't even the pride that clings to certain of their sisters who are in prison. The whole assemblage, with the exception of such stragglers as myself, who have ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... insanity. They colour so deeply the entire texture of Rousseau's prolix second part as to make it not only unreliable, but almost unreadable. Only its human interest gives value to the first part; from the second part human interest is totally absent. The unhappy creature, besotted with intellectual pride, was already insane, inhuman; and this morbid condition had been aggravated by years of brooding rancour before he wrote this miserable indictment of men who had done their best ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... courage than Appleton possessed, though he determined to look at the rooms on his next visit, so he stole down the path and went about his business, wondering why in the world he had done such a besotted thing as to take a walk among the furnished lodgings of ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... besotted but that lucid intervals now and again afflicted her. One seized her this afternoon, as she prepared to bid Damaris good-bye. Either conscience pricked with unusual sharpness, or the young girl's smiling and unruffled acquiescence in her departure aroused latent alarms. She ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Spaniards had risen to defend,—and without feeling the force and sanctity of which, they neither could have risen, nor can oppose to their enemy resistance which has any hope in it; but I will ask, of any man who is not dead to the common feelings of his social nature—and besotted in understanding, if this be not a cruel mockery, and which must have been felt, unless it were repelled with hatred and scorn, as a heart-breaking insult. Moreover, this conduct acknowledges, by implication, that principle which by his actions the enemy has for a ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... by her prosecutors, who pursued her with all the dogged pertinacity of blood-hounds. Neither the imploring appeal for mercy, in her case, from her wretched mother, who did not ask for any in her own, nor the want of even the shadow of a ground for the charge, had the slightest effect upon the besotted prejudices of the judge and jury. Acquitted on one indictment, she is now put on her trial on another; the imputed crime being her having caused the death of a person, who did not even accuse her of being accessory to it, nearly eighteen ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... human race there can be found no evidence more damming to absolutism and the union of Church and State than is to be found in the degraded, besotted condition of the common people of France immediately proceeding ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... pandemonium of savages raving outside the stockades. 'Tis not a pretty picture, that memory of white-men besotting the Indian; but I must even set down the facts as they are, bidding you to remember that the white trader who besotted the Indian was the same white trader who befriended all tribes alike when the hunt failed and the famine came. La Chesnaye, the merchant prince, it was, who managed this low trafficking. Indeed, for the rubbing together of more doubloons in his money-bags I think that La Chesnaye's servile ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... not dramatic. Little Jim never knew what his father might have said. Instinct told the boy when the end had come. His dry sobs changed to the abandoned tears of childhood as he ran down the street of elms and besotted mansions to ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... with his conquering arm Has freed the saints from dread of harm, Has smitten Janasthan and made Asylum safe in Dandak's shade. Enslaved and dull, of blinded sight, Intoxicate with vain delight, Thou closest still thy heedless eyes To dangers in thy realm that rise. A king besotted, mean, unkind, Of niggard hand and slavish mind. Will find no faithful followers heed Their master in his hour of need. The friend on whom he most relies, In danger, from a monarch flies, Imperious in his high estate, Conceited, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... and father of the bride, begging that Messieurs would be so benevolent as to seat themselves, and would honour him by partaking of refreshment; both which requests Messieurs were nothing loth to fulfil. It was hardly to be realized that these were the besotted habitans, the unimprovable race, the blotch on the fair face of Canadian civilisation; these happy-looking, simple-minded people. Hiram Holt was a slanderer. Full an hour passed before the Wynns could get away from the embarrassing hospitalities and politeness of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... prepared to adopt strong measures, but the sight of Ould Michael, besotted and broken, was ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... April forenoon was somewhat chilly, yet the benches in the center of the square were more than half-filled by men plainly "down on their luck." Some of these men, of course, were hopelessly besotted or vicious, and Uncle Sam had no use for any of these in his Army uniform. There were other men, however, on the seats, who looked like good and useful men who had met with hard times. Most of these men on the benches had not breakfasted, and had no assurance that they would lunch ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... Universalists who, though their error was great, did not appear to me so far astray. I cannot understand it! I cannot understand it!" he went on; "I cannot understand the influence that he has obtained over our more educated class; for twenty years ago he was himself a low, besotted drunkard, and his wife is the daughter of a murderer! Still less do I understand how such people can claim to be religious at all, and yet not see to what awful evil the small beginnings of vice must lead. I tell you, if a man is allowed by Providence to lead an easy life, and remains ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... "of course it is war. We are about to fly at each other's throats, with half of Europe to back each of us. We begin the greatest game we have ever played. And we will manage it very badly, I dare say, since we are each of us just now besotted with ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the work of Simon Girty, one of the most detestable characters that the drama of American history ever brought upon the stage. He was the offspring of crime, his parents being irredeemably besotted and vicious. Of their four sons, two, who were taken prisoner by the Indian at Braddock's defeat, developed into monsters of wickedness. James was adopted by the Delawares, and became the fiercest savage of the tribe. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... had no weight with the king, who never showed his native good sense more conspicuously than in the pains he took over the rebuilding of London; but none the less it had its effect in getting rid once and for ever of that spirit of excessive (besotted is Hallam's word) loyalty which had characterised ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... father, digging his heels into the comfortable flanks of his mule with some human impatience, "or art THOU, too, a lazy renegade? Thinkest thou, besotted one, that the heretic will spare thee more ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... wrought terrible havoc upon it. The scar on the left cheek was more conspicuous than of yore, and the features seemed to have settled into a perpetual frown. But, worst of all, the countenance was bloated and besotted. The nose had become bulbous and spongy, the eyes watery and weak. The man's clothes were patched and seedy, and presented a general aspect of being desperately out at elbows. His unsteady step indicated that he was at least half ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... though the town of Mansoul itself was not much, if at all concerned with the project, (for, alas for them! they were wofully besotted, for they chiefly regarded their pleasure and their lusts,) yet Diabolus their governor was; for he had his spies continually abroad, who brought him intelligence of all things, and they told him what was doing at court against him, and that Emmanuel would shortly ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... recollection of his pain. But it was no more than recollection. When he looked at her he knew that he no longer loved her. He was very sorry for her, but he was glad to be free. Watching her gravely, he asked himself why he had been so besotted with passion ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... a mean manner, which reassured him. "Look here," said I, "if I were to make trouble for you in Paris I'd be the most besotted fool in France, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... out alike to rich and poor, high and low. Though the foreigners laughed at the fables of the priests and ridiculed the monks, they yet were honest in their dealings with the people instead of taking by violence. As there are no people so besotted that they do not admire courage and honesty, so the Paisano looks upon the heretic as a man of a ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the result of prejudice, and of constant reading of articles extracted from the English journals, that influenced me; but I confess it seemed a much easier matter to re-take my ship from seventeen Frenchmen, than from twelve Englishmen. I was not so besotted as to suppose surprise, or artifice, would not be necessary in either case; but, had the issue been made up on brute force, I should have begun the fray with greater confidence in the first than in the last case. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... not expect it—you are too much besotted by her," pursued Nowell; "but I conjure you to cast off this wicked and senseless passion, which, unless checked, will lead you to perdition. You have heard what abominable rites are practised at those unholy meetings called ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... vastly improved, and America has been the chief agent in placing the lower classes in a condition which adapts them to a higher spiritualized life. I say lower classes, because under the system of monarchical governments, the peasants and laborers of Europe have been kept in a state of besotted ignorance, developing chiefly in the animal propensities, and not fitting themselves for the higher enjoyments ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... sorrow. Then in the air the crowd of angels, their forms invisible, raised their voices, saying: "Behold the great Muni; his mind unmoved by any feeling of resentment, whilst all that wicked Mara race, besotted, are vainly bent on his destruction; let go your foul and murderous thoughts against that silent Muni, calmly seated! You cannot with a breath move the Sumeru mountain. Fire may freeze, water may burn, the roughened earth may grow soft and pliant, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... the Grand Duke Peter—a king at four months old! But what of sons, or kings or countries—nothing could make up for the loss of his Queen! And to think that she had died to save him! Save him from what? A brush with three besotted drunkards, whom it would have ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... for the first time what an exquisite sensitive thing is a sweet, high-bred lady. Only such a one could have performed that act of grace. She converted me into a besotted little imbecile weltering in bliss. I would have pledged my soul's welfare to execute any phantasmagoric behest she had chosen ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... picture which I had worshiped a thousand times in soft, rich steel engravings! But in the engraving there was no desolation; no dirt; no rags; no fleas; no ugly features; no sore eyes; no feasting flies; no besotted ignorance in the countenances; no raw places on the donkeys' backs; no disagreeable jabbering in unknown tongues; no stench of camels; no suggestion that a couple of tons of powder placed under the party and touched off would heighten the effect and give to the scene a genuine interest and a charm ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thankless, and said to supply them with food was just what I should do, for the swagmen kept the squatters—as, had the squatters not monopolized the land, the swagmen would have had plenty. A moiety of the last-mentioned—dirty, besotted, ragged creatures—had a glare in their eyes which made one shudder to look at them, and, while spasmodically twirling their billies or clenching their fists, talked wildly of making one to "bust up the damn banks", or to drive all the present squatters out of the ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... doting citizen, who, it is thought, might be of the common-council for his wealth; a fellow sincerely besotted on his own wife, and so wrapt with a conceit of her perfections, that he simply holds himself unworthy of her. And, in that hood-wink'd humour, lives more like a suitor than a husband; standing in as true dread of her displeasure, as when he first made love to her. He doth sacrifice two-pence ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... upon whom the Spirit of the Lord had come, "the Golden Shoemaker" turned and preached, from the living text of his besotted friend, a telling impromptu Temperance sermon to the motley crowd. The whole incident was quite unpremeditated. He had never dreamt that he would do such a thing as he was doing now. But that by no means lessened ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... means of knotted sheets; some escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? A poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at least one telling word to say in his defence; for when the roof fell in and the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness,—then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke-wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream! Can we wonder if those bred in the rugged and manly school of science should feel like spewing ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the circumstances of the present time, You are bent on error and confusion in your government. Your virtue is subverted; You are besotted by drink [1]. Although you thus pursue nothing but pleasure, How is it you do not think of your relation to the past, And do not widely study the former kings, That you might hold ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... stated vaguely that they may expect the promised assistance early in the spring. It would indeed be a fine thing if you could commence operations during the Rhamadan; but I fear that is impossible. Any time, however, will do against the stupid, besotted Turks. Were they not led by Frenchmen, even the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... such a revolting personage? They are marching to the conquest of the sacred cabbage, the emblem of matrimonial fecundity, and this besotted drunkard is the only man who can put his hand upon the symbolical plant. Therein, doubtless, is a mystery anterior to Christianity, a mystery that reminds one of the festival of the Saturnalia or some ancient Bacchanalian revel. Perhaps this paien, who is at the same ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... ear of memory! Such is the fate of genius in an age, when in the unequal contest with sovereign wrong, every man is ground to powder who is not either a born slave, or who does not willingly and at once offer up the yearnings of humanity and the dictates of reason as a welcome sacrifice to besotted prejudice ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... vividly before her. What a terrible fate to be left in the hands of the public-house woman! Who knew what would happen to it? What if, in her drunken fury at the absence of Becky and Joseph, she did it a mischief? At the best the besotted creature would not take cordially to the task of bringing it up. It was no child of hers—had not even the appeal of pure Jewish blood. And there it lay, smiling, with its beautiful blue eyes. It ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of embodying moral truths. This remark might, perhaps, as well have been suppressed; for to those who may be in sympathy with the course of these Poems, it will be superfluous; and will, I fear, be thrown away upon that other class, whose besotted admiration of the intoxicated despot hereafter placed [A] in contrast with him, is the most melancholy evidence of degradation in British feeling and intellect which ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... round upon a lethargic, a luxurious, a self-indulgent, a self-seeking, a world-besotted professing Church, and asks: 'Are these the people on whose hearts a cross is stamped?' Do these men—or rather let us say, do we live as becometh the Gospel which proclaims the divinity of self-sacrifice, and that the law of a perfect ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... me, because I held it not according to conscience to kill Injuns as they did, and so refused. And so, friend, they drove me from their doors; seeing which, and perceiving the poor creatures were in a manner besotted, and bent upon their own destruction, and the night coming on fast, I turned my steps and ran with what speed I could to friend Bruce's, telling him the whole story, and advising that he should despatch a strong body of horsemen to the place, so as to frighten the evil ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... long-continued silence on any public topic was intolerable, felt it his duty to speak to the Judge upon the subject. This gentleman—his name was S. P. Escott—held, with others, that, for the good name of the community, steps should be taken to abate the infantile, futile activities of the besotted legatee. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... opportunities had been secured by franchises to monopolies, precluding future generations from opportunity of livelihood or employment, save as the dependents and liegemen of a hereditary capitalist class. In the chronicles of royal misdoings there have been many dark chapters recording how besotted or imbecile monarchs have sold their people into bondage and sapped the welfare of their realms to enrich licentious favorites, but the darkest of those chapters is bright beside that which records the sale of the heritage and hopes of the American ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... spent several days wandering about London to find real characters for a picture he was painting representing the jury in "Pilgrim's Progress." One day in Oxford Street he saw a hansom-cab driver with a face besotted with drink and "ripe" for production as a slave to Bacchus. Barnard hailed the hansom, jumped in, and directed the jehu to drive him to his studio on Haverstock Hill. In going up the Hampstead Road a tram-car ran ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... was all the more remarkable as his relations with Congress and the Committee were fast approaching a crisis. If McClellan failed-and by the showing of his own despatches, there was every reason to expect him to fail, so besotted was he upon the idea that no one could prevail with the force allowed him—the Committee who were leaders of the congressional party against the presidential party might be expected promptly to measure strength with the Administration. And McClellan failed. At that moment Chandler, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... know, The memory destroyeth so, That of our weal, or of our woe, Is all remembrance blotted; Of it nor can you ever think, For they no sooner took this drink, But nought into their brains could sink Of what had them besotted. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... reported at Termonde and Roosbeek, at Malines and Louvain. At close range it was easy to see that the prevalent conception of the "barbarians" was the purest kind of rot—the picture created and fostered by the Allied press, of a vicious and besotted beast with natural brutality accentuated by alcoholic rage. With such men as individuals it seemed to us that neutral observers could have no quarrel. To the Kaiser's privates who have been fighting for a cause they do not thoroughly understand, was due, we thought, the greatest respect; ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... men, it is universally conceded that they are by far the greater sufferers from these evils. Compelled by their position in society to depend on men for subsistence, for food, clothes, shelter, for every chance even to earn a dollar, they have no way of escape from the besotted victims of appetite and passion with whom their lot is cast. They must endure, if not endorse, these twin vices, embodied, as they so often are, in the person of father, brother, husband, son, employer. No one can doubt that ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... despair, is merely a confession of want in ourselves.' That's not sane, you know—it's the intoxication of the Corybant! It isn't the man himself we want to fix our eyes upon. He felt these things, no doubt: but we mustn't worship his raptures—we must worship what he worshipped. This sort of besotted agitation is little better than a dancing dervish. The poems are little sparks, struck out from a scrap of humanity by some prodigious and glorious force: but we must worship the force, not the spark: the spark is only an evidence, a system, a symbol if you like, of the force. And then ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... I now feel confident; nay, I am certain that my projects will and must succeed. The affairs of this world are regulated unquestionably by the immutable decrees of destiny. What is to be will be; and I, in putting this wretched, drunken, mad, and besotted being out of my way, am only an instrument in the hands of that destiny myself. The blame then is not mine, but that of the law which constrains—forces me to act the part I am acting, a part which was allotted to me from the beginning; and this reflection ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of princes' favour, and his melancholy keeping from Court, I am doubtful of some such thing; but I seemed wholly strange to him in it, but will make my use of it. We told me also how loose the Court is, nobody looking after business, but every man his lust and gain; and how the King is now become besotted upon Mrs Stewart, that he gets into corners, and will be with her half an hour together kissing her to the observation of all the world; and she now stays by herself and expects it, as my Lady Castlemaine did used to do; to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... weakness stole from his brain through his limbs. Unable to endure it longer, he betook himself to the garden. It was the first time he had done this since his arrival at Fontenay. There he found shelter beneath a tree which radiated a circle of shadow. Seated on the lawn, he looked around with a besotted air at the square beds of vegetables planted by the servants. He gazed, but it was only at the end of an hour that he really saw them, for a greenish film floated before his eyes, permitting him only to see, as in the depths of water, flickering ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... one more evil which will be avoided by having a child sleep alone. Many a mother has seriously injured her child by pressure. I do not here allude to those monsters in human nature, whose besotted habits have been the frequent cause of the suffocation and death of their offspring, but to the more careful and tender mother, who would sooner injure herself than her own child. Such mothers, even, have been known to dislocate or fracture a limb![Footnote: There may be instances where the debility ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... a terrible thought flashed through his mind that his wife might some day become to him an object of unutterable disgust. An image of a besotted, drunken woman always in his house, and bearing his name, stood out for a moment sharply and distinctly before his imagination. He shuddered, and paused; but almost before she could notice it, he went on in ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... quarrel ensued. One of the drunken brutes staggered into the room where we were lying asleep. He stood there, glaring first at one, then at the other. His actions aroused old Sarah, who, springing up and grasping a large bottle standing on the shelf, struck the besotted wretch such hard blow in the face that he fell heavily upon the cabin floor. This created a commotion, causing ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... was enjoying an afternoon nap, took it into his head, while in a tipsy state, to go down alone to bathe. He was seen only by a feeble old man, who was lying in his hammock in the open verandah at the rear of his house, at the top of the bank. He shouted to the besotted Indian to beware of an alligator which had of late taken to frequenting the neighbourhood. Before he could repeat his warning, the man stumbled, and a pair of gaping jaws, appearing suddenly above the surface, seized him round ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... you two together talking your poetry and your books till I was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you. But you were always a good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did. And I felt she didn't belong to me: and the children don't. And I besotted myself, and gambled, and drank, and took to all sorts of devilries out of despair and fury. And now comes this Mohun, and she likes him, I know she ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that through his own fault young Richard was all but penniless. The pious, nonconformist soul of Sir Geoffrey Lupton—the wealthy uncle from whom he had had great expectations—had been so stirred to anger by Richard's vicious and besotted ways that he had left every guinea that was his, every perch of land, and every brick of edifice to Richard's half-sister Ruth. At present things were not so bad for the worthless boy. Ruth worshipped him. He was a sacred charge to her from ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the man beneath the dim light of the unsuccessful lamp—a piteous specimen of humanity, depraved, besotted, without outward sign of a redeeming virtue, although a certain courage must have been there—this and such as this stood between him and Dorothy Roden. Uncle Ben had known starvation at one time, for starvation writes certain lines which even turtle ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... boys' club, the establishment of which had led to the opening of Polktown's library and free reading-room. However, the boys pursued Tim Narnay no farther. They slunk back into the lane, and finally, with shrill whoops and laughter, disappeared. The besotted man stood wavering on the curbstone, undecided, it seemed, upon ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the common hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in enlightened England: either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse than death in a criminal lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar quietus; it has stood on my table all night long, ready and pointed at my ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... revolutions, the great social reformations, ancient or modern, present themselves from this height as just as important—as just as unimportant—as the visions of saintly fanatics or the amours of besotted rakes. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the weight of my spurs when I walks. As I looks back to it, I must have been about as valyooable an aid to the gov'ment, as the fifth kyard in a poker hand when four of a kind is held. The most partial an' besotted of critics would have conceded that if I'd been left out entire, that war couldn't have suffered material charges in its results. However, to get for'ard, for I sees that Nellie's patience begins to mill an' show symptoms of ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... had attained in early manhood the highest worldly fame together with the friendship of a king, and the love of a people, . . yet what was he in himself? A mere petty Egoist, . . a poor deluded fool, the unresisting prey of his own passions, . . the besotted slave of a treacherous woman and the voluntary degrader of his own life! What was the use of Genius, then, if it could not aid one to overcome Self, . . what the worth of Fame, if it were not made to serve as a bright incentive and noble example to others of less renown? ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... in his new splendour. She admires it hugely, but is alarmed at seeing him in Clarice's favourite colour. An admirable conversation follows, in which she constantly draws her ill-bred, ill-blooded, and self-besotted suitor into addressing her with insults, under the guise of compliments, and affects to enjoy them. He next visits Clarice, with whom he finds Cleon, in the depths of despair. She begins to admire the coat, and to pride herself on her choice, when he interrupts her, and solemnly ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men.—Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the starlit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof and house and ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... statesmen do at the present day, and that all future orators will work upon to the end of time,—on the passions, the interests, and the aspirations which are eternally the same, unless kept down by grinding despotism or besotted ignorance, as in Egypt or mediaeval Europe, and even then the voice of humanity finds entrance to the heart and soul. "All men," said Rousseau, "are born equal;" and both Adams and Jefferson built up their system of government upon this ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... those whom it amuses, that forbids them to regard the novelist as a serious or right-minded person. If they do not in some moment of indignation cry out against all novels, as my correspondent does, they remain besotted in the fume of the delusions purveyed to them, with no higher feeling for the author than such maudlin affection as the frequenter of an opium-joint perhaps knows for the attendant who fills his pipe ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to work for the destruction of evil, chiefly through the lodgment and development of good. Both Christ and his apostles are exhibited in the gospel story as engaged chiefly in asserting and illustrating the truth, and not in combating error. Christ comes into a world lying in wickedness—besotted by it, plagued and tormented by it; full of abominations starting boldly out without pretense of concealment, from every phase of private, social and civil life. But he does not approach these as a mechanic would an old building, saying, "this beam is rotten and must come down; ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... He showed his love by it; indulgence is not love. It is no sign of meekness, but only of cowardice and carelessness, to be afraid to rebuke sin. Moses knew that he was doing God's work, that he was appointed to make a great nation of those slavish besotted Jews, his countrymen; that he was sent by God with boundless blessings to them; and woe to whoever hindered him from that. Because he loved the Jews, therefore he dared punish those who tempted them to forget the promised land of Canaan, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... you so besotted with her beauty that you do not see that she is impatient to reign in Egypt alone, and that her heart is set on ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... take it often, I really don't," Irene answered. "But I sometimes wonder if it would make any difference. I can sympathize with a hopeless drunkard, who, in a besotted condition, is able to forget trouble ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... abundance, we see the bounty of nature, which is a gift from Heaven; by the different little failures that have been, perhaps, unavoidably made in some of the nicer parts of the exhibition—and I would here particularly mention the besotted drunkenness of Antoine Giraud, the man who has impudently undertaken to play the part of Silenus, as a fit subject of your attention, for it is full of profit to all hard-drinking knaves—we may see our own awful imperfections; ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Buonaparte may say that he comes like a minister of grace, with no other purpose than to give peace to the cottager, to restore citizens to their rights, to establish real freedom, and a liberal and humane government. But can there be an Englishman so stupid, so besotted, so befooled, as to give a moment's credit to such ridiculous professions? ... What, then, is their object? They come for what they really want: they come for ships, for commerce, for credit, and for capital. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... wondrous is their variance! Yet in all the head low-bent Dulls the soul and blunts the senses, though their forms be different. Man alone, erect, aspiring, lifts his forehead to the skies, And in upright posture steadfast seems earth's baseness to despise. If with earth not all besotted, to this parable give ear, Thou whose gaze is fixed on heaven, who thy face on high dost rear: Lift thy soul, too, heavenward; haply lest it stain its heavenly worth, And thine eyes alone look upward, while thy mind ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... the Fugitive Slave Law, has ever had the unblushing effrontery to contend that the clause in question is not applicable to fugitive slaves. Nay, more, until Mr. Sumner appeared, the frantic zeal of no abolitionist had ever so completely besotted his intellect as to permit him to take such ground. By Dr. Channing, by Mr. Seward, and by Mr. Chase, such application of the words in question is unhesitatingly admitted; and hence we dismiss Mr. Sumner's discovery ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... friends proved themselves to have reached the level of that true enlightenment which distinguished the close of the eighteenth century. But the Vonckists, as they were called, formed but a small minority compared with the besotted mass; and, overwhelmed by fanaticism on the one hand, and despotism on the other, they were unable to act effectually for the public good. Vander Mersch, a soldier of fortune, and a man of considerable talents, who had raised ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... given me the deepest concern. I figured to myself his condition, besotted by brutal appetites, reduced to beggary, shut up in a noisome prison, and condemned to that society which must foster all his depraved propensities. I revolved various schemes for his relief. A few hundreds would take him from prison; but how should he be afterwards disposed of? How should ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... a slave, subject to her owner's will; she dare not approach him while in such an uncertain condition. Franconia cannot intercede, lest his companions, strangers to her, and having the appearance of low-bred men, taking advantage of M'Carstrow's besotted condition, make rude advances. M'Carstrow, snoring high above his cares, will take his ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... caste, and strengthened his hands, as Lafayette and Lincourt strengthened Louis XVI. They even drew up a plan of voluntary emancipation; formed an association for the purpose and gained many signatures; but the great weight of that besotted serf-owning caste was thrown against them, and all came to naught. Alexander was at last walled in from the great object of his ambition. Pretended theologians built, between him and emancipation, walls of Scriptural ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Leonard angrily. "Well, go your own way, foolish that you are, but beware of the beer and the spirits. Now you are beginning to know this language, and when you are drunk you talk, and do you think that there are no spies here? That girl, Saga, is great-niece to Nam, and you are besotted with her. Be careful lest you bring us ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... my speech in the best manner and the most gracious, laughing low, so that, verily, I was clean besotted with love, and marvelled that any could be so fair as she, and how I could have won such ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... treachery of the court by force. Too long have we remained passive, while thousands of our friends have, in defiance of the edicts, been dragged to prison and put to death. Fortunately the court is, as it was before the last war, besotted with the belief that we are absolutely powerless; and we have every hope of taking them ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... not an isolated one. There was Uncle Henrik, the youngest brother of Keith's father, who had gone to the dogs while still a youth, and in a more ignominious fashion, if possible. What was he now but a besotted tramp, begging shamelessly of friend or stranger for a few oere with which to buy a brief moment ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... write down what I'm about to say and stick it in your hat where you can find it and consult it when your mind begins wandering again. Those special mechanical devices to reduce fat people are contrived for the benefit of men and lazy women who are too slothful to take exercise or else too besotted in the matter of food indulgence to face the alternative of dieting. They may not do any harm—properly operated, they probably do not—but, at best, I would regard them as being merely temporary expedients specially devised as first aid to ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... juncture, and it ought not to be a cause of regret. His interest in the welfare of the church ceased not with his mortal life. How swiftly would his glorified spirit fly to see the landing of William, and hover with joy over the flight of the besotted James! He was now in a situation to prove the truth of that saying, 'the angels desire to look into' the truth and spread of the glad tidings. How he would prove the reality of his opinion, expressed in The Holy War, of the interest taken by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to take care of its affair. Within three nights afterward all his battles were taking a rest, for already his worshipers in the tap-room were so infatuated with the great tale of the Royal Audience that they would have nothing else, and so besotted with it were they that they would have cried if they could ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fool, Leopold," she cried, feeling that indeed, between her father and this madman, her life had ceased to be safe. She looked round her helplessly. Three or four besotted fools lying helpless across the tables, and all the village dancing and making merry some two hundred metres away, her father—implacable, as she well knew, where her conduct was concerned—and this madman ready to kill ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... find the Church, a body of priests, continually opposed to the sovereign power, and in virtue of their pretended divine mission and sacred office, pretending to give laws to all the sovereigns of the earth. We find the clergy, puffed up and besotted with the titles they have given themselves, laboring to exact the obedience due to the sovereign, pretending to chimerical and dangerous prerogatives, which none are suffered to question, without risking the displeasure ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... especially about foreign art: but they all pretended more or less to some knowledge of it: and often they really loved it. There were Councils which were very like the coterie of some little Review. One of them would be a playwright: another would scrape on the violin; another would be a besotted Wagnerian. And they all collected Impressionist pictures, read decadent books, and prided themselves on a taste for some ultra-aristocratic art, which was almost always in direct opposition to their ideas. It puzzled Christophe to find these Socialist ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... reach through government the sanction of law, the baptism of social order for their wickedness and misdeeds, have no business at any ballot-box, save that of recorded resolution to amend and repent. To put the ballot into the hands of the reckless, the besotted, and the profligate, is the sheerest abuse possible, and suicidal to all just protection ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... which had been kindled on the kitchen-floor tvas now remembered, and corroborated the inferences which were drawn from this spectacle. And yet that the mischief had been thus limited, that the besotted wretch who lay helpless on his bed and careless of impending danger, and that the mother and her infant, should escape, excited some degree of surprise. Could the savages have been interrupted in their work, and obliged to ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... cools again.—[Aside. True, she once favoured you; But now I am informed. She is besotted on an upstart wretch So far, that she intends to make him master Both of her ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... To their besotted perceptions this scene was like a play in a Bowery theater, and now that the dramatic denouement had come, they lost their interest and sauntered away singly or in little groups. In a few moments there were only three figures left in the light of the flaming torch, They were those ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... now. It did not suit his plans to go to Paris yet. He was trying to collect information for a game of his own. But where Harietta went he must go, he was besotted about her, and knew that he could not trust ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... out of the country. The favourite himself was made to take an oath (more oaths!) that he would never come back, and the Barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace, until they heard that he was appointed Governor of Ireland. Even this was not enough for the besotted King, who brought him home again in a year's time, and not only disgusted the Court and the people by his doting folly, but offended his beautiful wife too, who never ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... people of England. And you and we joined person and purse together in the common cause, and Will. the Conqueror's successor, which was Charles, was cast out; thereby we have recovered ourselves from under that Norman yoke. And now unless you and we be merely besotted with covetousness, pride and slavish fear of men, it is and will be our wisdom to cast out all those enslaving laws which was the tyrannical power the king pressed us down by.[108:1] O shut not your eyes against the light; darken not knowledge by dispute about particular men's privileges, ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... Did I not keep still proudly in my mind The power this priestcraft gives me o'er mankind— A lever, of more might, in skilful hand, To move this world, than Archimede e'er planned— I should in vengeance of the shame I feel At my own mockery crush the slaves that kneel Besotted round; and—like that kindred breed Of reverend, well-drest crocodiles they feed, At famed Arsinoe[1]—make my keepers bless, With their last throb, my ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Elvira: I have a spirit of divination; and this place is accursed. The landlord has been discourteous, the Commissary will be brutal, the audience will be sordid and uproarious, and you will take a cold upon your throat. We have been besotted enough to come; the die is cast - it will be a ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... almost after the proclamation of the President summoning a volunteer force to resist it, we ourselves, at the North, utterly refused to consider the Seceders as in earnest. We may have been stupid, besotted, infatuated even, in our blindness and incredulity. But none the less did we, that is, the great majority of us, regard all the threats and measures of the South as something less formidable and actual than open war and probable or threatening revolution. We were persuaded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... She sulked. She announced that, if she was not to be allowed to do her Christmassing at The Bear, she would not do it anywhere. She indicated that she meant to perish miserably of ennui in the besotted dullness of Sneyd, and that no Christmas-party of any kind should occur in HER house. She ceased to show interest in Stephen's health. She would not speak. In fact, she went too far. One day, in reply to her rude silence, Stephen said: 'Very well, child, if that's your game, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... dull, stolid, obtuse, sluggish, inept, bovine, beef-witted, beetle-headed, besotted, fat-witted, doltish, undiscerning; prosaic, vapid, prosy, humdrum, uninspiring tame; lethargic, comatose, stupefied, torpid, insensible. Antonyms: shrewd, sharp, apt, spirited, lively, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... time, however, it was hoped that something might be made of this liberty of conscience. All were not equally sunk in the horrible superstition, and those who were yet faithful to Church and King might be set against their besotted brethren. Liberty of conscience might thus be turned to account. While two great parties were "by the ears, and pulling out each other's hair, all might perhaps be reduced together." His Majesty was warned, nevertheless, to expect the worst, and to believe that the country could only ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... written the damn thing, but it'll go because it isn't time yet for the Clavering luck to break. You'll get it in the neck, old man, one of these days, and when you least expect it. You're one of Fate's pets, her pampered pup, and she'll purr over you until she has you besotted, and then she'll give you such a skinning that you'll wish you were little Jimmy Jones, cub reporter, with a snub nose and freckles. I only hope to be in at the death to gloat." Then he shot out his hand. "Good stuff, Clavey. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... nothing better than the circulation of the blood in the human body) the glory of Russia shall rest, not upon the extent of her dominions, but that of her civilization,—not upon the number of inhabitants, embruted and besotted, but the number of enlightened, prosperous, and free men; it will be enough for him, if he be considered to have laid the first stone of that great change,—if his labours be fairly weighed against the obstacles which opposed them,—if, for ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when a passion for Corot's opalescences (with the Critic's permission) was the latest and most knowing fad. As a realist I half mistrusted the fascination, but I felt it with the rest, and whenever any of the besotted dealers of that rude age got in an 'Early Morning' or a 'Dance of Nymphs,' I was there among the first. For another reason, my friend Rosenheim, then in his modest beginnings as a marchand-amateur, was likely to appear at such private views. With his infallible tact for future salability, he ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Frona's advent was quickly dissipated, and song and toast and merriment went round again. Nor was Frona above touching lips to the jelly glass in fellowship; and she contributed her quota by singing "Annie Laurie" and "Ben Bolt." Also, but privily, she watched the drink saturating the besotted souls of Cornell and the Virgin. It was an experience, and she was glad of it, though sorry in a way for Corliss, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... that had been first implanted in Lennon's mind by the repulsiveness of the girl's drunken father now prevented him from making any allowances for her difficult position. Had it not been for her relationship to that weak-faced besotted moonshiner, Lennon might have stopped to consider how love for her foster-sister had driven her desperate, and how desperation might have kept her from telling the truth of the situation to the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... been besotted with ceremonies. Miserable monks have ruled all, entangling men's consciences for their own benefit. Dogma has been heaped on dogma. The bishops have been tyrants, the Pope's commissaries have been rascals. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the good of retailing further follies," said Caius Nepos at last; "we all know that a madman, a vain, besotted fool wields now the sceptre of Julius Caesar and of great Augustus. The numbers of his misdeeds are like the grains of sand on the seashore, his orgies have shamed our generation, his debauches are a ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,—the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the villain. To this effect I own that I did myself drop a hint; conceiving that the divine Sophia must often have regretted our friend Fellamar when once she was bound to the oaf, and that Jones was capable of a resentful jealousy. By midnight I had to call a chair for my besotted challenger, and when the Avenger was there safely bestowed, I asked him where the men should carry him? His tongue being now thick, and his brains bemused, he could not find the sign of his inn in his noddle. ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... casket through the wars,' he cried, 'and if I choose never to open it, who will gainsay me? You besotted fool, to think that any theft of yours could hinder my destiny!' He was the blustering savage again, and I preferred him in the part. All that he said might be true, but I thought I could detect in his voice a keen regret, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... street, it consisted of solid blocks of ramshackle frame buildings, that housed all the varieties of sharks and harpies who live off Jack ashore; it was an ugly, dirty, fascinating way, a street with a garish, besotted face. But on this morning it seemed the most wonderful avenue in the world to me. I saw East street through the colorful eyes of youth—the eyes ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the ordinary humdrum, respectable, and comfortable country life was so intense, and his ideal of the free and austere life he would live so vivid, that he could thus see in this besotted vagabond a career and a degree of wisdom that he ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... direction—instinct guiding them—instinct, drunk with the noxious ferment of jealousy, whipping her mind down paths where no reason could follow, yet bringing her invariably to the truth with that same generosity of Providence which watches over the besotted wanderings ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... end," said the King, "of thy moral saws and religious maxims! But the besotted father who gave the son into thy hands—who gave the innocent lamb to the butcher—is a king, and thou shalt know it to thy cost. Shall the murderer stand in presence of his brother—stained with the blood of that brother's son? No! What ho, without there!—MacLouis!—Brandanes! ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... work, which will be appropriated by other men? Why? but because my son, whom I had brought up to replenish my ripe learning with young enterprise, left me and all liberal pursuits that he might lash himself and howl at midnight with besotted friars—that he might go wandering on pilgrimages befitting men who know of no past older than the missal and the crucifix?—left me when the night was already ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... in a City's gloom, A frantic fear of eternal doom, A wretch besotted and depraved And cries that cursed the curse they craved, Pollution all, no light! no light! "Oh, where shall be my drink, to-night!" A wretched garret, a straw-strewn bed, A husband stretched in a corner—dead. A shriek ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted as to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Isabelle pointed to a pile of unwrapped newspapers in the corner. "But I must go through them and see what John is grumbling about. It isn't like John to grumble at anything." Then she read from her husband's letter: "The President in his besotted vanity and colossal ignorance has succeeded in creating trouble that twenty Presidents won't be able to settle. The evils which he may have corrected are nothing to those he has brought upon innocent people.... So far as our ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... father! What curse could any superstitious mystic call down upon the head of Winifred? The heaven that would answer a call of that kind would be a heaven for zanies and tomfools!' I shouted, in a paroxysm of rage against the entire besotted human race. 'That for the curse!' I cried, snapping my fingers. 'I am Henry, and I am come to share the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... you must knowe, The memory destroyeth so, That of our weale, or of our woe, It all remembrance blotted; Of it nor can you euer thinke: For they no sooner tooke this drinke, But nought into their braines could sinke, Of what had them besotted. 680 ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... sound of the sermon which bindeth up their faculties, is manifest from hence, because they all awake so very regularly as soon as it ceaseth, and with much devotion receive the blessing, dozed and besotted with indecencies I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... that Betty—turn to the light, please, Senora—I could not have acted better myself—I think it is a little high on the left shoulder. He never guessed a thing, the besotted fool, and that was before I gave him the wine, for he wasn't likely to guess much afterwards. Did the senora say it was tight under the arm? Well, perhaps a little, but this stuff stretches. What I ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... have you been travelling? The whole wide heaven was not too wide for you then; but now you can be jolly in your "nutshell." Then, you held spiritual, or human, values to be final, infinite, absolute, and could gibe in your own incomparable way at the besotted conventionalism which would place commercial values above them; now, who chants with such a roaring, pious nasal at that apotheosis of Property which our modern commercial slavery essentially is? Then, with Schiller, you desired, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... v.; ill-judging, wrong-headed; prejudiced &c v.; jaundiced; shortsighted, purblind; partial, one-sided, superficial. narrow-minded, narrow-souled^; mean-spirited; confined, illiberal, intolerant, besotted, infatuated, fanatical, entete [Fr.], positive, dogmatic, conceited; opinative, opiniative^; opinioned, opinionate, opinionative, opinionated; self-opinioned, wedded to an opinion, opiniatre; bigoted &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... slight railing. Can it be that there is a spirit hovering over that grave whose influence is peace and love? May not some mighty man lie buried there, the once frail tenement of a great mind whose noble thoughts have years ago wakened a besotted world to truths and aspirations hitherto unknown? There is veneration and respect in every countenance that gazes upon that simple stone; a solemn tread in every foot that trenches on its limits. This is the grave of a great poet. A man whose works, though little read in modern times, were ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... had our senses; 560 We idly sit like stupid blockheads, Our hands committed to our pockets; And nothing but our tongues at large, To get the wretches a discharge: Like men condemn'd to thunder-bolts, 565 Who, ere the blow, become mere dolts; Or fools besotted with their crimes, That know not how to shift betimes, And neither have the hearts to stay, Nor wit enough to run away; 570 Who, if we cou'd resolve on either, Might stand or fall at least together; No mean or trivial ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... defend the household against the designs of greedy and sensual imposture; no service to society to quicken the penetration of those who may be made the dupes of selfish craft? While Organ and his mother are besotted by the gross pretensions of the hypocrite, while the young people contend for the honest joy of life, the voice of philosophic wisdom is heard through the sagacious Cleante, and that of frank good sense through the waiting-maid, Dorine. Suddenly a providence, not divine ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... still loaded with irons. A most heart-rending scene now takes place; every family follows them with their cries, and chants the prayers for the dead and the dying, while the unfortunate conscripts themselves, besotted with liquor, remain stupid and indifferent, burst into roars of laughter, or answer their ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... flock round her, anomalous citizens of Bohemia, vague hangers-on of the theatrical cosmos; all that strange melange of the happy-go-lucky, the eccentric, the ill-balanced, the blackguardly, the unprincipled, the hapless, the shiftless, the unclassed, the sensual and the besotted that shoulder and hustle one another in the world of the theatre; all the riff-raff recruited from the greater world without by the fascinating ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... sanctity of which, they neither could have risen, nor can oppose to their enemy resistance which has any hope in it; but I will ask, of any man who is not dead to the common feelings of his social nature—and besotted in understanding, if this be not a cruel mockery, and which must have been felt, unless it were repelled with hatred and scorn, as a heart-breaking insult. Moreover, this conduct acknowledges, by implication, that principle which by his actions the enemy has for a long time covertly maintained, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... refused to obey the constitution sanctioned by Louis XVI., because it destroyed their privileges; and who, for the same reason, had refused to acknowledge the new constitution, against which they had even dared to protest. His companions were so blinded, so besotted by their presumption, that they imagined that decrees and ordinances gave them the faculty of overturning the edifice which the nation had erected during five and twenty years of revolution. His confidents were those alone who, instead of wishing to reveal ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... so. Hooker's over-anxious friends have now turned into a public scandal what was generally understood as an exoneration, by intentionally distorting what was said into an implication that Hooker was so besotted as to be incapable of command. What I have written of his marching the army to this field and to the field of Gettysburg is a full answer to such unnecessary perversion. Let these would-be friends of Hooker remember that this calumny is of their own making, not mine. I am as sorry for it, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... she meets with less resistance. What has she not the power to impose upon our judgments and beliefs? Is there any so fantastic opinion (omitting the gross impostures of religions, with which we see so many great nations, and so many understanding men, so strangely besotted; for this being beyond the reach of human reason, any error is more excusable in such as are not endued, through the divine bounty, with an extraordinary illumination from above), but, of other opinions, are there any so extravagant, that she has not planted and established ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... melancholy keeping from Court, I am doubtful of some such thing; but I seemed wholly strange to him in it, but will make my use of it. We told me also how loose the Court is, nobody looking after business, but every man his lust and gain; and how the King is now become besotted upon Mrs Stewart, that he gets into corners, and will be with her half an hour together kissing her to the observation of all the world; and she now stays by herself and expects it, as my Lady Castlemaine did used to do; to whom the King, he says, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... through the lodgment and development of good. Both Christ and his apostles are exhibited in the gospel story as engaged chiefly in asserting and illustrating the truth, and not in combating error. Christ comes into a world lying in wickedness—besotted by it, plagued and tormented by it; full of abominations starting boldly out without pretense of concealment, from every phase of private, social and civil life. But he does not approach these as a mechanic would an old building, saying, "this beam ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... "I will think thee else one of those besotted and blinded Papists, who hold, that bestowing of alms is an atonement and washing away of the wrongs and oppressions which have been wrought by the almsgiver. Thou sayest, then, these were the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... little laugh. He had no desire to make boast of his prowess; yet he felt that he could settle a score of quarrels with such besotted creatures as the four he had put to rout so lately, and be no manner the worse for it himself. He was not at all sorry for the adventure. He felt a flutter of pride and pleasure in the shy glances shot at him from the dark eyes beneath the crimson hood. ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... half-past one," said Drysdale. "We've had a series of catastrophes. Never got into college till near one. I thought we should never have waked that besotted little porter. However, here we are at last, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... nights afterward all his battles were taking a rest, for already his worshipers in the tap-room were so infatuated with the great tale of the Royal Audience that they would have nothing else, and so besotted with it were they that they would have cried if they could ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... alone, having outstripped even the fishermen, and as he ate he arrived at conclusions. He had a great respect for youth, but a line must be drawn somewhere. "The man's a child," he decided, "and not like to grow up. The way he's besotted on everything daftlike, if it's only new. And he's no rightly young either—speaks like an auld dominie, whiles. And he's rather impident," he concluded, with memories of "Dogson.".... He was very ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... state, he told us, the Lord God had witnessed with Divine commiseration, and had determined that the light of Christian love should shine upon their darkness, and that Almighty wisdom should dissipate their besotted ignorance. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... opportunity of livelihood or employment, save as the dependents and liegemen of a hereditary capitalist class. In the chronicles of royal misdoings there have been many dark chapters recording how besotted or imbecile monarchs have sold their people into bondage and sapped the welfare of their realms to enrich licentious favorites, but the darkest of those chapters is bright beside that which records the sale of the heritage and hopes of the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... worked on the same material, substantially, that our orators and statesmen do at the present day, and that all future orators will work upon to the end of time,—on the passions, the interests, and the aspirations which are eternally the same, unless kept down by grinding despotism or besotted ignorance, as in Egypt or mediaeval Europe, and even then the voice of humanity finds entrance to the heart and soul. "All men," said Rousseau, "are born equal;" and both Adams and Jefferson built up their system of government upon this ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... servants was much taken with what she saw and heard, and gave herself up entirely to the will of the subordinate, who had quite as much dominion over her as his superior had over the ladies; the other maid, however, the one who had a kind of respect for me, was not so easily besotted; she used to laugh at what she saw, and at what the fellow told her, and from her I learnt that amongst other things intended by these priestly confederates was robbery; she said that the poor old governor had already been persuaded by his daughters to put more than a thousand pounds into ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... bleeve that the Memphis and Noo Orleans unpleasantnesses wuz brot about by the unholy machinashens uv them Radical agitators, actin in conjunction with ignorant and besotted niggers, to wreak their spite on the now loyal citizens uv ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... divination; and this place is accursed. The landlord has been discourteous, the Commissary will be brutal, the audience will be sordid and uproarious, and you will take a cold upon your throat. We have been besotted enough to come; the die is cast - it will be ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the besotted boy, on whom at their marriage she had bestowed the title of king, began at once to justify the enterprise and to play into the hands of all his enemies alike. His father set him on to demand the crown matrimonial, which would at least have assured him the rank and station ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... said the father, digging his heels into the comfortable flanks of his mule with some human impatience, "or art THOU, too, a lazy renegade? Thinkest thou, besotted one, that the heretic will spare thee more work than the ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... modern patriarch, spoke thus to a justice of peace before a large assembly of people: "Friend, take care what thou dost; God will soon punish thee for persecuting His saints." This magistrate, being one who besotted himself every day with bad beer and brandy, died of an apoplexy two days after, the moment he had signed a mittimus for imprisoning some Quakers. The sudden death with which this justice was seized was not ascribed to his intemperance, but was universally looked upon as the effect of the holy ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... lead in this splendid design; and he and his friends proved themselves to have reached the level of that true enlightenment which distinguished the close of the eighteenth century. But the Vonckists, as they were called, formed but a small minority compared with the besotted mass; and, overwhelmed by fanaticism on the one hand, and despotism on the other, they were unable to act effectually for the public good. Vander Mersch, a soldier of fortune, and a man of considerable talents, who had raised himself from ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... come prepared to adopt strong measures, but the sight of Ould Michael, besotted and broken, was ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... these words he spake: "Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk, Wherewith I ne'er enough could glut my tongue." My leader thus: "A little further stretch Thy face, that thou the visage well mayst note Of that besotted, sluttish courtezan, Who there doth rend her with defiled nails, Now crouching down, now risen on her feet. Thais is this, the harlot, whose false lip Answer'd her doting paramour that ask'd, 'Thankest me much!'—'Say ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... nothing, though, beside her son's! To see him, you would say he's ten times worse! His conduct in our late unpleasantness [1] Had won him much esteem, and proved his courage In service of his king; but now he's like A man besotted, since he's been so taken With this Tartuffe. He calls him brother, loves him A hundred times as much as mother, son, Daughter, and wife. He tells him all his secrets And lets him guide his acts, and rule his conscience. He fondles and embraces him; a sweetheart ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... prejudice, prepossess. Adj. misjudging &c v.; ill-judging, wrong-headed; prejudiced &c v.; jaundiced; shortsighted, purblind; partial, one-sided, superficial. narrow-minded, narrow-souled^; mean-spirited; confined, illiberal, intolerant, besotted, infatuated, fanatical, entete [Fr.], positive, dogmatic, conceited; opinative, opiniative^; opinioned, opinionate, opinionative, opinionated; self-opinioned, wedded to an opinion, opiniatre; bigoted &c (obstinate) 606; crotchety, fussy, impracticable; unreasonable, stupid &c 499; credulous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... second place, he then would ask, (And here he took several members to task, And wondered—"he really must presume To wonder" a statesman like—you know whom— Who ever evinced the deepest sense Of a crying sin in any expense, Should so besotted be, and lost To the fact that now, at public cost, Powder was being day by day Wantonly wasted, blown away);— Yes, he would ask, "with what intent But to perch the Greeks on a battlement From which they might o'erlook the town, The easier to batter it down, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... it, though it was greatly changed for the worse. Five years had wrought terrible havoc upon it. The scar on the left cheek was more conspicuous than of yore, and the features seemed to have settled into a perpetual frown. But, worst of all, the countenance was bloated and besotted. The nose had become bulbous and spongy, the eyes watery and weak. The man's clothes were patched and seedy, and presented a general aspect of being desperately out at elbows. His unsteady step indicated that he was at least half drunk at that moment. He did not see; or at any rate did ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... at old M. Langernault's expense. He got to know the Dedessuslamare couple, robbed them of their money and, before they had time to lodge a complaint against the unknown thief, took them to a barn in the village of Damigni, where, in their despair, stupefied and besotted with drugs, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... fifteen I could hear you two together talking your poetry and your books till I was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you. But you were always a good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did. And I felt she didn't belong to me: and the children don't. And I besotted myself, and gambled, and drank, and took to all sorts of devilries out of despair and fury. And now comes this Mohun, and she likes him, I know ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who, though their error was great, did not appear to me so far astray. I cannot understand it! I cannot understand it!" he went on; "I cannot understand the influence that he has obtained over our more educated class; for twenty years ago he was himself a low, besotted drunkard, and his wife is the daughter of a murderer! Still less do I understand how such people can claim to be religious at all, and yet not see to what awful evil the small beginnings of vice must lead. I tell you, if a man is allowed by Providence to lead an easy ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... yesterday, Morty, and I'm not so desperately asinine as you seem to think," was the besotted one's summing-up. "I know the Rajah doesn't split hairs in a business fight, but he is hardly unscrupulous enough to use Miss ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... only to be the People's: but Mexico may be a harder bone to pick. Already is a newspaper published there, named El Tiemps, The Times, to advocate a return to monarchy, in order to save the Spanish race from the Stars and the Stripes; and the besotted and wretched Republics of the South, conceived in folly, and born of the splendid dream of Canning, are falling to pieces from internal wars. Will his Ophirian Majesty, the Emperor of Brazil, humbly lay his crown at the feet of the Eagle, and are all our West India ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... her deep content with her new surroundings, wondered how she could ever have been so besotted as to object to the move. The place, the people, the mode of life were all delicious to her, and for the family at Lanarth, her enthusiasm was touching. Mrs. Mason was just her idea of "Mrs. Washington, or Cornelia, or Lady de Bourgainville," ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... The whole wide heaven was not too wide for you then; but now you can be jolly in your "nutshell." Then, you held spiritual, or human, values to be final, infinite, absolute, and could gibe in your own incomparable way at the besotted conventionalism which would place commercial values above them; now, who chants with such a roaring, pious nasal at that apotheosis of Property which our modern commercial slavery essentially is? Then, with Schiller, you desired, as a basis of political society, something ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... all something in common: they keep their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic BOURGEOIS. In fact, a besotted and brutalized France at present sprawls in the foreground—it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste, and at the same time of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo. There is also something else common to them: a predilection to resist intellectual Germanizing—and ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... only a few hours ago. In the natural exhilaration of the sweet mountain air, and the silence broken only by the singing of the birds, his fears fell from him. There must be some mistake which Phebe would clear up. It was nothing but the accusation of a besotted brain which had ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the town with his sister utterly destitute, and had, as Liputin said, at first actually gone from house to house begging. But having unexpectedly received some money, he had taken to drinking at once, and had become so besotted that he was ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ancient prophet, upon whom the Spirit of the Lord had come, "the Golden Shoemaker" turned and preached, from the living text of his besotted friend, a telling impromptu Temperance sermon to the motley crowd. The whole incident was quite unpremeditated. He had never dreamt that he would do such a thing as he was doing now. But that by no means lessened the effect ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... merriment scarce ever abated. We were a blare of revelry and a blaze of light. Excitement mounted to fever heat. In the midst of it the women with the enamelled cheeks reaped a bountiful harvest. I marvel now that, with all the besotted recklessness of those that were our pilots, we ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... begins, and, when it begins, how will it end? Ay—how will it end? It is not to be supposed that we can long be blinded by such a flimsy humbug as a transfer to Southern possession of these vessels 'for the Chinese trade!' Are the English mad, demented, or besotted, that they suppose we intend to endure such deliberate aid of our enemies? When those vessels 'for the Chinese' are afloat, and our merchants begin to suffer, let England beware! We are not a people to stop and reason nicely on legal points, when they are enforced in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... yet if the Widdow be not too much besotted on slights and forgeries, the revelation of their villainies will make 'em loathsome: and to that end, be it in private to you, I sent late last night to an honorable personage, to whom I am much indebted in kindness, as he is ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... interruption to the traffic. He will contrive so, that the hissing of the locomotive shall be as graceful a sound as the plashing of a fountain in the midst of our bisected squares; and he is indignant at the supposition that any human being can be besotted enough to prefer the prospect of a budding garden, to a clean double pair of rails beneath his bedroom window, with a jolly train steaming it along at the rate of some fifty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... day. Something of the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes; stooping all night over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy; breathing ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... mind The power this priestcraft gives me o'er mankind— A lever, of more might, in skilful hand, To move this world, than Archimede e'er planned— I should in vengeance of the shame I feel At my own mockery crush the slaves that kneel Besotted round; and—like that kindred breed Of reverend, well-drest crocodiles they feed, At famed Arsinoe[1]—make my keepers bless, With their last throb, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... that any day, any moment, may come to her ears? That you've been letting her grow up in ignorance of something that by this time she might have outgrown and forgotten? That you have been, like a besotted old ass, all these years slowly forging a thunderbolt that any one may crush her with? That"—but here Ridgeway's cough took possession of his voice, and even put a moisture into his dark eyes, as he looked at McClosky's aimless hand feebly ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... my soul, The uproar of battle. Ruin upon ruin is summoned, 20 The land is undone! Suddenly undone my tents, In a moment my curtains! How long must I look for the signal 21 And hark for the sound of the trump! [Yea, fools are My people 22 Nor Me do they fear.(213) Children besotted are they, Void of discretion. Clever they are to do evil, To do good ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... was the work of Simon Girty, one of the most detestable characters that the drama of American history ever brought upon the stage. He was the offspring of crime, his parents being irredeemably besotted and vicious. Of their four sons, two, who were taken prisoner by the Indian at Braddock's defeat, developed into monsters of wickedness. James was adopted by the Delawares, and became the fiercest savage of the tribe. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... me the deepest concern. I figured to myself his condition, besotted by brutal appetites, reduced to beggary, shut up in a noisome prison, and condemned to that society which must foster all his depraved propensities. I revolved various schemes for his relief. A few hundreds would ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... unexpected and unwelcome visit. In the exigency, the beldame was awakened and consulted; she averred that it was always unlucky to kill a seal, but suggested that the animal should be deprived of sight, and a third time carried out to sea. To this hellish proposition the besotted wretch who owned the house consented, and the affectionate and confiding creature was cruelly robbed of sight, on that hearth for which he had resigned his native element! Next morning, writhing in agony, the mutilated seal was embarked, taken outside Clare Island, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... Slave law. They even proposed a Constitutional amendment which would have made slavery perpetual in the Republic; but the pampered frenzy of the slave oligarchy defied all remedies, and hurried it headlong into the bloody conspiracy which was to close forever its career of besotted lawlessness and crime. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... misfortune even my besotted optimism could not prevail. My pioneering spirit, subdued by years of penury and rough usage, yielded more and more to the honor and the intellectual companionship which the East offered. To Fuller I privately remarked: "As soon as I can afford ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... his afternoon's nap, took it into his head while in a tipsy state to go down alone to bathe. He was seen only by the Juiz de Paz, a feeble old man who was lying in his hammock in the open verandah at the rear of his house on the top of the bank, and who shouted to the besotted Indian to beware of the alligator. Before he could repeat his warning, the man stumbled, and a pair of gaping jaws, appearing suddenly above the surface, seized him round the waist and drew him under the water. A cry of agony "Ai Jesus!" was the last sign made by the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... became tainted with self, and the image of God was, I fear, sometimes forgotten for that of His frail and unworthy creature. True it was, I still, without slackening, spoke comfort to the ear of suffering or repentant sin—I still exhorted the weak and strengthened the strong. I still warned the besotted in corruption that the fruits of vice, blossom as she will, are but like those of the shores of the Dead Sea, seeming gay, but only emptiness and bitter ashes. But alas! the bearer of the blessed message spoke as if the worm that bore, could add grace to the tidings he conveyed to his fellow-worm. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... been at least intelligently founded on hatred or revenge, with a definite object and murderous end in view. Now, for the first time, a furious battle had been fought for nothing, with no object to be gained, and no end in view; with besotted idiots for the champions, and with strong ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... come there just to hear her sing. And now he was broke, and Drusilla was going East to run the perilous gauntlet of the tenors. He jerked up the stylus in the middle of a record and cursed his besotted industry. If he had let his ore go, and gone to see her like a gentleman, Drusilla might even now be his. She might have relented and given him a kiss—he cursed ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... appropriated by other men? Why? but because my son, whom I had brought up to replenish my ripe learning with young enterprise, left me and all liberal pursuits that he might lash himself and howl at midnight with besotted friars—that he might go wandering on pilgrimages befitting men who know of no past older than the missal and the crucifix?—left me when the night was already beginning to fall ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... it often, I really don't," Irene answered. "But I sometimes wonder if it would make any difference. I can sympathize with a hopeless drunkard, who, in a besotted condition, is able to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... the letter. He was indeed a man of sorrows, and He early and all His life long had a close acquaintance with grief. Our Lord had come into this world on a very sad errand. We are so stupefied and besotted with sin, that we have no conception how sad an errand our Lord had been sent on, and how sad a task He soon discovered it to be. To be a man without sin, a man hating sin, and hating nothing else ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... borne on the fair sounds? for even the formless and the void was roused into life and joy by the wind that roamed over the face of its deep. No humanity jarred with hers. In the presence of the most degraded, she felt God there. A face, even if besotted, was a face, only in virtue of being in the image of God. That a man was a man at all, must he because he was God's. And this man was far indeed from being of the worst. With him beside her, she could pray with most of the good of having the door of her closet shut, and ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... feet high enough for the steps, and we had to pull and push to get her to the top. In the passage she dragged herself along, hanging on my arm, helplessly bent like an old woman. We issued into an empty street through a half-open door, staggering like besotted revellers. At the corner we stopped a four-wheeler, and the ancient driver looked round from his box with morose scorn at our efforts to get her in. Twice during the drive I felt her collapse on my shoulder in a half faint. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... thus may a wicked man doe, because there is an antipathy betwixt nature and death. But even while, even then, when Death and Nature are strugling for mastery, the soul, the conscience, may be as besotted, as benummed, as senceless and ignorant of its miserable state, as the block or bed on which the sick lyes: And thus they may dye like a Chrisom child in shew, but indeed like one who by the Judgment ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... light as the poor place can give," he said, and dragged forth the rickety-legged chair that he might prop it against its back, for the moment looking less drunk and less a vagabond in his eagerness to do his work justice; there lurking somewhere, perhaps, in his besotted being, that love which the artist soul feels for the labour ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... And he was right. He showed his love by it; indulgence is not love. It is no sign of meekness, but only of cowardice and carelessness, to be afraid to rebuke sin. Moses knew that he was doing God's work, that he was appointed to make a great nation of those slavish besotted Jews, his countrymen; that he was sent by God with boundless blessings to them; and woe to whoever hindered him from that. Because he loved the Jews, therefore he dared punish those who tempted them to forget the promised land of Canaan, or break ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... announced that, if she was not to be allowed to do her Christmassing at The Bear, she would not do it anywhere. She indicated that she meant to perish miserably of ennui in the besotted dullness of Sneyd, and that no Christmas-party of any kind should occur in HER house. She ceased to show interest in Stephen's health. She would not speak. In fact, she went too far. One day, in ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... first, and that the drapery went on afterwards. It was foolish to tell him these things, but one is tempted to tread on their ignorance, their bigotry; all they say and do is based on hatred of life. Iconoclast and peasant! He sent some religion-besotted ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... of fools!" he cried. "Which one of you knows whether I have said it or no? It might have been the Ratcatcher's Daughter in double Dutch for all that your besotted heads can tell! See what I have brought myself to—the crew ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Henry's father! What curse could any superstitious mystic call down upon the head of Winifred? The heaven that would answer a call of that kind would be a heaven for zanies and tomfools!' I shouted, in a paroxysm of rage against the entire besotted human race. 'That for the curse!' I cried, snapping my fingers. 'I am Henry, and I am come to share the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... touches, wall or rampire steep, Goes to the ground' where'er the monster wends, Each fortress opens; neither castle-keep, Nor city from her rage its wealth defends. Honours divine as well that Beast would reap, It seems (while the besotted rabble bends) And claim withal, as to its keeping given, The sacred keys which ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the more remarkable as his relations with Congress and the Committee were fast approaching a crisis. If McClellan failed-and by the showing of his own despatches, there was every reason to expect him to fail, so besotted was he upon the idea that no one could prevail with the force allowed him—the Committee who were leaders of the congressional party against the presidential party might be expected promptly to measure strength with the Administration. And ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Nobody is so besotted as to ask, "Does dram-drinking pay?" There is not a sane man or woman in America who would hesitate in the reply, and the answers ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... fact, that the publishers of the day will purchase the copyrights of only such works as "the libraries will take;" which libraries, besotted by the mystic charm of three volumes, immutable as the sacred triad of the Graces or Destinies, would negative without a division such a work as the "Vicar of Wakefield" were it now to undergo ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... his native good sense more conspicuously than in the pains he took over the rebuilding of London; but none the less it had its effect in getting rid once and for ever of that spirit of excessive (besotted is Hallam's word) loyalty ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... you; a braineles weake, besotted fellowe! But lett mee better recollect myself. Madnes nor folly, and add lust to them, Durst not in fury, heate, or Ignorans, Have tempted my unquestioned chastity Without a fowrth abetter, jealousy. The more I ponder that, I more suspect By that my Lord should have a hand in this, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... know, I belong to that besotted class of man, the invalid: this puts me to a stand in the way of visits. But it is possible that some day you may feel that a day near the sea and among pinewoods would be a pleasant change from town. If so, please let us know; and my wife and I will be delighted to put you up, and give ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sluggish, inept, bovine, beef-witted, beetle-headed, besotted, fat-witted, doltish, undiscerning; prosaic, vapid, prosy, humdrum, uninspiring tame; lethargic, comatose, stupefied, torpid, insensible. Antonyms: shrewd, sharp, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... old man, too; and after what Marian had told me, I just couldn't trust myself to meet or speak to either of them. So I bolted back here, took a stiff drink, changed from costume to these clothes, and went out to make a besotted ass of myself. Naturally I landed in Dutch House. And there—the first thing I noticed when I went in was old Shaynon, sitting at the same table you took, later—waiting. Imagine my surprise—I'd left him at the Bizarre not ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... said. "Well, thou besotted lad, if it be not too late when thou getst into the hands of Crookbacked Edmund and Red Gilbert, remember the way to Galilee, that ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that all would probably, nay, almost certainly, have gone as Messer Simone desired if only Messer Simone had not been so bullishly besotted as to leave the name of a certain lady out of his table of calculations; for Messer Griffo liked the scheme well enough. Though it was, as it were, a double-edged weapon, cutting this way at the Florentines of one party and that way at Arezzo, it was a simple scheme enough ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the common hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in enlightened England: either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse than death in a criminal lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar quietus; it has stood on my table all night long, ready and pointed ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... to send him out of the country. The favourite himself was made to take an oath (more oaths!) that he would never come back, and the Barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace, until they heard that he was appointed Governor of Ireland. Even this was not enough for the besotted King, who brought him home again in a year's time, and not only disgusted the Court and the people by his doting folly, but offended his beautiful wife too, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... Arthur Lovell, warmly. "First, the stupidity of guilt, the blind besotted folly which so often betrays the murderer. It is not the commission of a crime only that is horrible; think of the hideous state of the criminal's mind after the deed is done. And it is at that time, immediately after ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... passage;" just as the bones of the unbelieving Israelites whitened the sands of the desert. Of those who have reached the "land of" golden "promise," how many have died in despair, or worse still, are living so besotted by vice, so lost to all power of virtuous resolutions, that they shall never more see the happy homes from which they so thoughtlessly wandered, never more hear the soft accents of loving friends; never more ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... die he must, and die also must Oliver, who struck me that foul blow at court. Is it treachery to punish affronts like these? I have planned everything,—I have settled everything already with their besotted master. Orlando will come to your borders—to Roncesvalles—for the purpose of receiving the tribute. Charles will await him at the foot of the mountains. Orlando will bring but a small band with him: you, when you meet him, will ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... ensued. One of the drunken brutes staggered into the room where we were lying asleep. He stood there, glaring first at one, then at the other. His actions aroused old Sarah, who, springing up and grasping a large bottle standing on the shelf, struck the besotted wretch such hard blow in the face that he fell heavily upon the cabin floor. This created a commotion, causing a ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... brother. You and I were real pinched in our aims and longings in the offset. Do you remember how you always wanted learning and college, and how I actually was besotted about traipsing around the world? Such dreams as we managed to make up! I have the old geography now with pin points all up the side of the Alps where you and I counted the height and then said we didn't believe it! Well, you've found success ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... as Billy Sunday is trying to keep the neglected youth of our streets from drinking, gambling and whoring, no one could wish him anything but success; but his besotted ignorance, his childish crudity of mind, make it impossible that he could have any success except of a delusive nature. He is utterly devoid of a social sense; utterly unaware of the existence of the forces of capitalism which are causing depravity ten times as fast as all the evangelists ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... to you in your private wishes, Cecilia, unless my besotted vanity has led me to believe what it would now be madness to learn was false; and in your opinions of public things, you are quite as widely separated. I should think there could be but little happiness dependent on a connection where there ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Alas for the besotted soul who cannot bend the knee of humble adoration before nature's altar, where sacrifices are offered to the Jehovah, pavilioned in invisibility. There is an ardent love of nature as far removed from gross materialism or subtle pantheism on the one hand as from stupid inappreciation on the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... room, laid her babe upon the bare floor, kneeled down over it, and offered up the following petition: "O Lord, if thou wilt in any way remove from me this affliction, I will serve thee upon bread and water all the days of my life." The Lord took her at her word. Her besotted husband immediately disappeared, and was never heard of again till after her death. The church would now have maintained her, but she would not consent to become a charge to others. Although in feeble ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... going about looking after business matters. She called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... plates, all the dishes and all the bottles. Then, intoxicated with drink and food, besotted, red in the face, shaken by hiccoughs, his mind clouded and his speech thick, he unbuttoned his uniform in order to breathe or he could not have taken a step. His eyes closed, his mind became torpid; he leaned his heavy forehead on his folded arms ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... age, when in the unequal contest with sovereign wrong, every man is ground to powder who is not either a born slave, or who does not willingly and at once offer up the yearnings of humanity and the dictates of reason as a welcome sacrifice to besotted prejudice ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... not discern me by any of their senses. Few things enthral me more than that—and here I had my first taste of it. I remember that my heart beat, I remember that I trembled. Nothing could have torn me from the spot but what precisely did, an alien intervention. The besotted Harkness stopped short in his recital and asked me what I ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... was educated at Douai. I have no sympathy with the great bulk of the Maynooth men, who are mostly peasants and the sons of peasants. I do not think that the Maynooth course is sufficient in one generation to lift the sons to any great intellectual height above the besotted ignorance of the parents. I believe in heredity, and I say that most of my colleagues are only shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years. The low-bred men are now the dominant power. Instead of tranquillising the people, which I hold to be the duty of the clergy, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... a loud voice. "Why? Because I love it. I'm besotted by it. It's like strong drink to me. I doubt if there's a man in England who enjoys himself more than I do when I'm writing. The worst of it is, that it won't come out—it's beautiful enough when I think ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... terms. I have not mentioned your name; but I have stated vaguely that they may expect the promised assistance early in the spring. It would indeed be a fine thing if you could commence operations during the Rhamadan; but I fear that is impossible. Any time, however, will do against the stupid, besotted Turks. Were they not led by Frenchmen, even the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... says, this besotted race is not satisfied with seeing its multitudes swept away by the great epidemics whose causes are unknown, and of the justice or wisdom of which the human mind cannot conceive. It must also be ever at war. There has not been a moment since men divided into Tribes, when all the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... get the start of us, Helen, if we don't look sharp,' observed Huntingdon. 'They'll make a match of it, as sure as can be. That Lowborough's fairly besotted. But he'll find himself in a fix when ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... holy and harmless Master, against "their intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of their casuistry, their besotted cruelty." [273] We have been betrayed into speaking thus strongly of the extreme lengths to which superstition will carry those who yield themselves to its ruthless tyranny. But perhaps we have not gone far from our subject, after all; for the innocent Iphigenia, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... the aid of good Catholics,—when he returns, healed, of his wasting malady, high in health, and strong in limb, will not the glory of his faithfulness, and its miraculous reward, speak louder in the ears of this besotted people of Scotland, than the din which is weekly made ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... at the same time he did not let his mind run in only one channel, as some men do. He pitied rather than blamed the wretched females who frequented the miners' camps. More sinned against than sinning, was his humane judgment of these unhappy outcasts, and when he could, he helped them. Many a besotted creature had him to thank when the end came and short shrift little better then that accorded a dead dog awaited her—that at least she got a decent burial. The boys knew his attitude on the woman question, and it was a tribute to the regard ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... hill. Bullet, his nostrils wide, his ears back, raced parallel in the boulder-strewn stream-bed, wonderful in his avoidance of bad footing, precious in his selection of good, interested in the game, indignant at the wayward Dinkey, profoundly contemptuous of the besotted mule. At a bend in the canon interposed a steep bank. Up this we scrambled, dirt and stones flying. I had just time to bend low along the saddle when, with the ripping and tearing and scratching of thorns, we burst blindly through a thicket. In the open space on the farther side ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... I have with the feathered lady on a coster's donkey-cart or the Fat Woman at the Fair. I can see all this perfectly well in the calm seclusion of my library. But when I am in her presence my superiority, like Bob Acres's valour, oozes out through my finger-tips; I become a besotted idiot; the sense and the sight and the sound of her overpower me; I proclaim her rich and remarkable personality; and I bask in her lazy smiles like any silly undergraduate whose knowledge of women has hitherto been limited to his sisters ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... sheets; some escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? A poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at least one telling word to say in his defence; for when the roof fell in and the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged him to the public ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drowning. Here was a grand Oriental picture which I had worshiped a thousand times in soft, rich steel engravings! But in the engraving there was no desolation; no dirt; no rags; no fleas; no ugly features; no sore eyes; no feasting flies; no besotted ignorance in the countenances; no raw places on the donkeys' backs; no disagreeable jabbering in unknown tongues; no stench of camels; no suggestion that a couple of tons of powder placed under the party and touched off would heighten the effect and give ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... child he had been forced to fight a besotted father, in order to protect his mother, who had no other protector. This unequal battle had to be fought; and it necessarily blunted his capacity for feeling pain, and particularly his sense of danger. He knew what was in store for him, but he rushed blindly into the fray ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... down, and cried shame over, for such a stupid observation," said Miss Keeldar. "You might as well say men are to take the opinions of their priests without examination. Of what value would a religion so adopted be? It would be mere blind, besotted superstition." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... you should be so besotted as to refuse a man who offers so much. A man who has wealth, rank, ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... and his melancholy keeping from Court, I am doubtful of some such thing; but I seemed wholly strange to him in it, but will make my use of it. He told me also how loose the Court is, nobody looking after business, but every man his lust and gain; and how the King is now become besotted upon Mrs. Stewart, that he gets into corners, and will be with her half an houre together kissing her to the observation of all the world; and she now stays by herself and expects it, as my Lady Castlemaine ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... his look, it licked his hand, and, at the lifting of his finger, or the glance of his eye, would have sprung at the throat of King or Queen-Mother, minister, or minion, and devoured them all before his eyes. It was longing for the sign, for, much as Paris adored and was besotted with Guise and the League, even more, if possible, did it hate those godless politicians, who had grown fat on extortions from the poor, and who had converted their substance into the daily ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dupe in Madame Pernelle, incredulous of the revelations which have at last opened his own besotted eyes, is a scene of the double Comic, vivified by the spell previously cast on the mind. There we feel the power of the poet's creation; and in the sharp light of that sudden turn the humanity is livelier than any realistic work can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... even touching to see this glutton take a piece of wing almost from her mouth to give it to the old fellow, who did not appear to be very particular, and who swallowed everything with bowed head, almost besotted from having gobbled so much after he had forgotten the taste of bread. The Lorilleuxs expended their rage on the roast goose; they ate enough to last them three days; they would have stowed away the dish, the table, the very shop, if they could have ruined Clump-Clump ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... abominations of Baalism, we have seemed to regard as having equal force against the ethics of Confucius or Gautama. "Heathenism" is the one brand which we have put upon all the non-Christian religions. I wish it were possible to exchange the term for a better.[29] Baalism was undoubtedly the most besotted, cruel, and diabolical religion that has ever existed on the earth. When we carefully study it we are not surprised at the strong language of denunciation which the Old Testament employs. But as I have already shown, we find in the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... share in his sisters' novels, particularly in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. But Charlotte distinctly tells us that her brother never knew that his sisters had published a line. He was too much under the effects of drink, too besotted and muddled in that last year or two of life, to have any share in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... excess, Natures full blessings would be well dispenc't In unsuperfluous eeven proportion, And she no whit encomber'd with her store, And then the giver would be better thank't, His praise due paid, for swinish gluttony Ne're looks to Heav'n amidst his gorgeous feast, But with besotted base ingratitude Cramms, and blasphemes his feeder. Shall I go on? Or have I said anough? To him that dares 780 Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words Against the Sun-clad power of Chastity, Fain ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... I have knelt; Implore, beseech, and pray, Strive the besotted heart to melt, The downward course to stay; Be cast with bitter curse aside,— Thy prayers ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... ordinary humdrum, respectable, and comfortable country life was so intense, and his ideal of the free and austere life he would live so vivid, that he could thus see in this besotted vagabond a career and a degree of wisdom that he ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... since you danced before him at the great welcoming feast I made in his honour a month ago the man is besotted of you; moreover, he is mad with jealousy of this new-comer, the prince Aziel. He has demanded public audience of me this afternoon, and I have it privately that then he will formally ask you in marriage before the people, and if he is refused will declare war upon the city, with which he ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... long suspense is over, and that at last we are going to meet the treachery of the court by force. Too long have we remained passive, while thousands of our friends have, in defiance of the edicts, been dragged to prison and put to death. Fortunately the court is, as it was before the last war, besotted with the belief that we are absolutely powerless; and we have every hope ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... entity—he is no supernatural, fantastic being, but man incarnate: he is the evil part of a good whole, which loses its entity when once seen and recognised in its real nature; for Mephistopheles in reality is our own ignorant, besotted, animal nature, cultivated and developed at the expense of our ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... throughout the world which I can compare to nothing better than the circulation of the blood in the human body) the glory of Russia shall rest, not upon the extent of her dominions, but that of her civilization,—not upon the number of inhabitants, embruted and besotted, but the number of enlightened, prosperous, and free men; it will be enough for him, if he be considered to have laid the first stone of that great change,—if his labours be fairly weighed against the obstacles ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... really seems to be no more criminal to produce children with the deliberate intention of abandoning them to public charity, as Rousseau did, than it is to produce them in deliberate reliance on the besotted maxim that he who sends mouths will send meat, or any other of the spurious saws which make Providence do duty for self-control, and add to the gratification of physical appetite the grotesque luxury ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... of incarceration the natives are separated from their women-folk and families. The consequence is one of the most striking and shocking features of the compound system. A number of the lowest, drink-besotted, coloured prostitutes, estimated at about 5,000, have collected at Beaconsfield, where, so to speak, they constitute a colony, occupying a revolting quarter of the township. When the natives come out for a short spell these unhappy women receive them. It is, no doubt, convenient from the ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... usual round, I suppose, and he's either too much ashamed of himself or too besotted to turn up. I wish she wasn't quite so devilish good-looking," he remarked to himself. "If she goes about alone she'll get badly ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rouse him. It was safe with the Grand Duke Peter—a king at four months old! But what of sons, or kings or countries—nothing could make up for the loss of his Queen! And to think that she had died to save him! Save him from what? A brush with three besotted drunkards, whom it would have been great ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... of blood-hounds. Neither the imploring appeal for mercy, in her case, from her wretched mother, who did not ask for any in her own, nor the want of even the shadow of a ground for the charge, had the slightest effect upon the besotted prejudices of the judge and jury. Acquitted on one indictment, she is now put on her trial on another; the imputed crime being her having caused the death of a person, who did not even accuse her of being accessory to it, nearly eighteen years ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Thou hast a heart of flint: let my intreaties, My tears, the Sacrifice of griefs unfeigned, Melt it: yet be a Father to thy son, Unmask thy long besotted judgement, see A low obedience kneeling at the feet Of ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... treated me generously enough, but it hung fire damnably at first. At one particularly hellish moment I could have sworn it wouldn't do more than my usual fifteen or eighteen hundred, and I cursed myself for having been such a besotted fool as to pin my faith to it. [Sitting upright.] And then, suddenly, a rush—a tremendous rush! Twenty-four thousand went off in less than six weeks. Almost uncanny, eh? [Touching the tobacco-jar.] Oh, lord, sometimes I think I've been putting opium into my pipe instead ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... true character to be seen is a powerful aid to the will. Do not forget the method of Jules Janin, running from house to house in Paris for a few wretched lessons in Latin: 'Unable to get anything out of my stupid pupils, with the besotted son of the marquis I was simultaneously pupil and professor: I explained the ancient authors to myself, and so, in a few months, I went through ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... nothing to do (which was almost all the year round), he passed his time in reading books of knight-errantry, which he did with that application and delight, that at last he in a manner wholly left off his country sports, and even the care of his estate; nay, he grew so strangely besotted with these amusements that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of that kind, by which means he collected as many of them as were to be had; but, among them all, none pleased him like the works of the famous Feliciano de Sylva; for the clearness of his prose and those intricate ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... these criticisms and others are made, The White Devil remains one of the most glorious works of the period. Vittoria is perfect throughout; and in the justly-lauded trial scene she has no superior on any stage. Brachiano is a thoroughly lifelike portrait of the man who is completely besotted with an evil woman. Flamineo I have spoken of, and not favourably; yet in literature, if not in life, he is a triumph; and above all the absorbing tragic interest of the play, which it is impossible to take up without finishing, has to be counted ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... love at that juncture, and it ought not to be a cause of regret. His interest in the welfare of the church ceased not with his mortal life. How swiftly would his glorified spirit fly to see the landing of William, and hover with joy over the flight of the besotted James! He was now in a situation to prove the truth of that saying, 'the angels desire to look into' the truth and spread of the glad tidings. How he would prove the reality of his opinion, expressed in The Holy War, of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... so besotted but that lucid intervals now and again afflicted her. One seized her this afternoon, as she prepared to bid Damaris good-bye. Either conscience pricked with unusual sharpness, or the young girl's ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... as important; which all voices endeavour to announce to him as sacred? Can it, I repeat, be supposed, that any enlightened, any polished society, contains a citizen so completely blind, not to acknowledge his most natural duties; so very absurd, not to admit his dearest interests; so completely besotted not to perceive the danger he incurs in incessantly disturbing his fellow creatures; or in following no other rule, than his momentary appetites? Is not every human being who reasons in the least possible manner, obliged to feel that society is advantageous to him; that he ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... execution or transportation, were girls of twelve to senile, helpless creatures of eighty. All were thrust together. Hardened criminals, besotted prostitutes, maidservants accused of stealing thimbles, married women suspected of blasphemy, pure-hearted, brave-natured girls who had run away from brutal parents or more brutal husbands, insane ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... felt it his duty to speak to the Judge upon the subject. This gentleman—his name was S. P. Escott—held, with others, that, for the good name of the community, steps should be taken to abate the infantile, futile activities of the besotted legatee. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... to be made equally besotted, and even more helpless than they, in order that his senses might be sapped away, and he should remember no story to tell. Perhaps if he had not had before him so vivid an illustration of the malign power that swayed them, he might not have experienced so strong an aversion to it. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... portrayal of causes and effects that makes literary art contemptible even to those whom it amuses, that forbids them to regard the novelist as a serious or right-minded person. If they do not in some moment of indignation cry out against all novels, as my correspondent does, they remain besotted in the fume of the delusions purveyed to them, with no higher feeling for the author than such maudlin affection as the frequenter of an opium-joint perhaps knows for the attendant who fills his pipe ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Edward II., also described by Froissart. He says that when the Londoners found the King 'besotted' with his favourites, they sent word to Queen Isabella that if she could land in England with 300 armed men she would find the citizens of London and the majority of the nobles and commonalty ready to join her ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
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