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More "Foolishness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coward. He just lunched himself away from me on his back an' whined somethin' about only tryin' to show us the truth an' not wantin' any trouble, an' a lot o' such foolishness; but I soon wearied of it, an' grabbed him by the collar an' yanked him to his feet, an' sez, "Now answer me one question—who told ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... as a matter of fact, noticed anything. "He sometimes looks terribly tired," she said a little uncertainly, "but I dare say it's all my foolishness, Mr. Drummond. I am afraid I am inclined to be nervous about other people's health—" Estelle sighed softly. She often accused herself of faults which no one had discovered in her. "Winn, I am sure, would be the first to laugh ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... answering; I was too much disconcerted to speak. What would he think of my despicable vanity, my more than childish foolishness? ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... would have been the height of foolishness, and Larry did not try. The Tagals asked him a number of questions in their own tongue, but he shook his head to show them that he did not understand. On their part, not one could speak English, so neither party could communicate with ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... conception is found, not only in the literature, but also in the politics and the legislation; that Roman history is full, not only of invectives in prose and verse, but of laws and administrative provisions against luxuria, ambitio, avaritia—a sign that these laments were not merely a foolishness of writers, or, as we say to-day, stuff for newspaper articles. Other critics, instead, taking account of these laws and administrative provisions, have accepted the ancient theory of Roman corruption without reckoning ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... to stay at The Young Women's Christian Association, and I am sure they will expect her to be in bed before any midnight foolishness," said Miss Elvira, with a severe glance at the frivolous Mamie Lou. "I shall, of course, make her an evening dress or two, one especially to wear when the multitude calls her before the curtain to express their admiration ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... close in death. A Catholic goes out of the world thinking of Jesus crucified. So long as a Church holds on to that great fact, she will have a grip on human minds and hearts that can not be broken. The cross, as St. Paul said, a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes. The Catholic Church has picked up the fact of Jesus' death and held it aloft like a burning torch. Around the torch ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... wrong," said Mulvaney, with an enormous sigh. "An' I know that ev'ry bit av ut was my own foolishness. That night I tuk maybe the half av three pints—not enough to turn the hair of a man in his natural senses. But I was more than half drunk wid pure joy, an' that canteen beer was so much whisky to me, I can't tell how it came about, but bekaze I had no thought for anywan except ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... foolishness! Two good Southern soldiers trying to kill each other, when they've sworn to use all their efforts killing Yankees. It's a breach of faith and it's silliness on its own account. You've received the hospitality of my father's house, Captain Bertrand, and ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... do not think this peculiarity arose from any wish to withdraw his foolishness from the rest of the camp, nor was it probable that the combined wisdom of Five Forks ever drove him into exile. My impression is, that he lived alone from choice,—a choice he made long before the camp indulged in any criticism of his mental capacity. He was much given to moody reticence, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... said feebly after a moment. "Only the foolishness of it all ... I can forget like a boy ... the thing will never come to pass ... never, never, never! There stands the hero, splendid with success, rich in experience, eager, willing, a demigod whom the Irish could worship ... his word would destroy faction, wipe out ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... conviction. "That old woman is the most cold-blooded matchmaker in the State, and she's playing with you like a cat with a mouse. They want my money, I tell you—that's what they are after. I know how the old thing talks to you—she's always telling you her darling boy is dying of grief, and all that foolishness." ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... succeed in sowing distrust in our camp, they will thereby attain one of the principal objects of their letter-pilfering. Day before yesterday I took dinner at Wiesbaden, with Dewitz, and, with a mixture of sadness and knowing wisdom, I inspected the scenes of past foolishness. Would that it might please God to fill with His clear and strong wine this vessel, in which at that time the champagne of twenty-two-year-old youth sparkled uselessly away, leaving stale dregs behind. Where and how may Isabella Loraine ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... equality such as reduced fagging and the oligarchial "prefect system" to a minimum, and uniting in a real effort to keep abreast with the great world outside by means of a co-operative study of politics and the Press. The idea will seem mere foolishness and an impossibility to many of those who did not see it actually at work. At the best it will seem the kind of thing we may have read of in books about "freak schools," where so much loss has obviously to be set against whatever is gained. In this case, not only the ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... topmost steep. When they're come in, the vaulted roof beneath, Marsilium with courtesy they greet: "May Mahumet, who all of us doth keep, And Tervagan, and our lord Apoline Preserve the, king and guard from harm the queen!" Says Bramimunde "Great foolishness I hear: Those gods of ours in cowardice are steeped; In Rencesvals they wrought an evil deed, Our chevaliers they let be slain in heaps; My lord they failed in battle, in his need, Never again will he his right hand see; ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... inside of me responded to the call. Say it was romance if you like, say it was sentiment, say it was just foolishness. Something inside of me answered to the call. We worked all that night, patching that bad plate on the boiler. The other boilers were under steam, so you can believe it was hot down under there. My hands were all soft with office work, and in the first few ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... you want your mother and your wife for?" asked Brains. "Just foolishness, my friend. It's the devil tempting you, plague take him. Don't listen to the Evil One. Don't give way to him. When he talks to you about women you should answer him sharply: 'I don't want them!' When he talks of freedom, you ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... relation the youngster had—to fetch the boy down here and sort of bring him up. Perez knows as much about bringing up a boy as a hen does about the Ten Commandments, and 'Lizabeth made him promise not to lick the youngster and a whole lot more foolishness. School don't commence here till October, so we got him a job with Lem Mullett at the liv'ry stable. He's boardin' with Lem till school opens. He ain't a reel bad boy, but he knows too much 'bout some things and not ha'f enough 'bout others. You've ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... calm himself. He was furiously angry—angry with Bryce, angry with Mitchington, angry with the cloud of foolishness and stupidity that ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... them are too high-principled. They are that set on liberty that they won't take the trouble to safeguard it. They would rather lose the war than give up their little notions. I've a great regard for principles, but I have no use for them when they get so high that they become foolishness." ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... extremely dire results which seemed so imminent; and I am happy to be able to tell you that relief came through the efforts of one of my own sex. Just before the last ounce was added to the weight of foolishness and error which was to turn the world completely over, a girl made her appearance with sense enough to call a halt. She happened to be editing one of the fiery journals of her class, when it struck her one day ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... vehemence only surpassed by Shakespeare. As a philosopher he anticipates Nietzsche in the direction of his insight, though in his conclusions he is diametrically opposite. He teaches that out of weakness, abnormality, perversity, foolishness, desperation, abandonment, and a morbid pleasure in humiliation, it is possible to arrive at high and unutterable levels of spiritual ecstasy. His ideal is sanctity—not morality—and his revelations of the impassioned and insane motives of human nature—its ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... which a man should be measured as for a coat, but with a rod it is different, and should be made to vary with the type of fishing practised. The difference in weight being only a few ounces exposes the foolishness of this theory. All that matters is the question of balance; if that is all right, the size or weight matters ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... things were done. It must be sufficient for us to know that such was the will of God; when He thinks proper, He allows us to understand His ways; but to our limited capacities, most of His doings are inscrutable. But are we to suppose that, because we, in our foolishness, cannot comprehend His reasons, that therefore they must be cavilled at? Do you ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... best racing days (in the love stakes) were over"—especially where the woman was but a girl. So he sat down and planned it all out as he planned to win the Brooklyn Derby months later. And all the time he was as sincerely in love as if he had blundered into many foolishness; but his love making was to be diplomatic. Even now all the gods of Fate stood ranged on his side; Allis's brother was in his bank, more or less dependent upon him; Ringwood itself was all but in the bank; he stood fairly well with John Porter, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... "Not necessarily. Foolishness is one thing and discretion is another. Oh, well; his presence here was not absolutely essential. Presently he will marry and settle down and be a good boy." The next nut was withered, and he tossed it aside. "Is her voice ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... to hear my own African adventures, and perhaps yours too, which I am sure will interest me a great deal more," she exclaimed earnestly. "You think it is all foolishness, but it is not. Those Kendah priestesses told me much when I seemed to be out of my mind. For a long time I did not remember what they said, but of late years, especially since George and I began to excavate that temple, plenty ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... talking and talking foolishness till I said to him: If you goes on in that 'ere way I'll hit you a hot 'un on ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... Bannon, already in his shirt and trousers, stood with his back to the door, his face in the washbowl. As he scoured he sputtered. Max could make little out of it, for Bannon's face was under water half the time, but he caught such phrases as "Pete's darned foolishness," "College boy trick," "Lie abed all the morning," and "Better get an alarm clock"— which thing and the need for it Bannon greatly despised—and he reached the conclusion that the matter was nothing more serious than that ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... can't let you go that way. It's all foolishness to talk about ghosts. Probably the door was left open, and Snap might have taken the sandwiches, though I never knew him to take anything off the table. But it ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... the point of view of "the natural man" is the heavenly seed that God gives His people to scatter. "The things of the Spirit of God ... are foolishness unto him." "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation." His beginnings ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... hence cannot understand the spiritual solicitude of the latter. St. Paul was not quite at home on Mars Hill; it was hard to make those who were always hearing and seeing some new thing understand; the shame and humility of the cross were an unnecessary foolishness to them. So they have always been. The humanist cannot take seriously this sense of a transcendent reality. When Cicero, to escape the vengeance of Clodius, withdrew from Rome, he passed over into Greece and dwelt for a ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... one bowed down and of course so did I, on general principles. Somerfield didn't and the old buck whirled that bull-roarer over him ever so long, and the red-eyed hag cursed and spat at him, but he never budged. That sort of conduct is damned foolishness according to my notion. But then, you see, in a kind of a way he was backing his prejudices against theirs and prejudices are pretty solid things when you consider. Still, he took a hell of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sure it was only ignorance and foolishness on their part—onraisonable cratures all ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, when our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone. All the old ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... ain't going to be any of this hell-whoopin' stuff, Raine. You can't travel these trails at a long lope with yore hair flyin' out behind and—and all that damn foolishness. I've saw 'em in ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... to help him to make himself his own God—that is a devil. That some seem so little injured by their bad training is no argument in presence of the many in whom one can read as in a book the consequences of their parents' foolishness. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... on th' north side ontenable an' his position on th' south side onbearable, is thransportin' his troops up th' river on rafts an' is now engagin' th' inimy between Spitzozone an' Rottenfontein, two imminsely sthrong points. All this dimonsthrates th' footility an' foolishness iv attimptin' to carry a frontal position agains' large, well-fed Dutchmen with mud ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... damn foolishness altogether," said George gloomily and ignored the hurt look on the ...
— Mother America • Sam McClatchie
... proposals for settlement, no matter how generous in intent otherwise, must fail. Mr Lloyd George grossly offended Irish sentiment when he flippantly declared that Ireland was not one nation but two nations. This is the kind of foolishness that makes one despair at times of British good sense, not to speak of British statesmanship. Mr Asquith, whatever his political blunderings—and they were many and grievous in the case of Ireland—declared in 1912:—"I have always maintained and I maintain as strongly to-day that ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... from her ice-wrapped rail, and the three of us nigh came to joining Arthur, and Lord knows—a sin, maybe you'll say, to think it, John Snow—but I felt then as if I'd just as soon, for it was a hard thing to see a man go down to his death, maybe through my foolishness. And to have the people that love him to face in the telling of it—that's ...
— The Trawler • James Brendan Connolly
... without some joke or other. He remembered once seeing the place where he lived with his wife. "Granny Hill" the boys called her. Bedridden she Was; but so kind as Joe was to her! kept the room so clean!—and the old woman, when he was there, was laughing at some of "t' lad's foolishness." The step was far down the street; but he could see him place the ladder, run up, and light the gas. A longing seized him to ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... impact of practical life. These time-worn expressions pass current, at face value, among enthusiastic relatives and friends, but there are those in the audience who know them to be the veriest cant, with no basis either in logic or in common sense. It is nothing short of foolishness to assert that a young person must attain the age of eighteen years before he enters real life. The child knows that his home is a part of the world and an element in life, that the grocery is another part, the post-office still another part, and so on through ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... rising in the world: either by one's own industry or profiting by the foolishness of ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... goin' to be no foolishness about rules and sport, and hitchin' and hawin', is there? ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... "It was foolishness!" he cried in fierce reproof, yet with the same unnerved quaver in his voice. "You should have known you could find nothing on such a ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... answer. He slightly touched her. "What do you want?" she said, and turned her back toward him. "Tell me," he said, "what time the swan passed. I am following it, and come out and point the direction." "Do you think you can catch up to it?" she said. "Yes," he answered. "Naubesah" (foolishness), she said. She, however, went out and pointed in the direction he should go. The young man went slowly till the sun arose, when he commenced travelling at his accustomed speed. He passed the day in running, and when night came, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... providence, in a word, the natural and carnal mind is incapable of faith, of obedience, and of submission. There are many things revealed in the scripture, that the natural man cannot receive or know, "for they are foolishness to him," 1 Cor. ii. 14. Some spirits there are lifted up above others, either by nature or education, in which this rebellion doth more evidently appear, reason in them contends with religion, and they will believe no more than they can give a reason for. There ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... are aware that in Nicaragua there dwell a tribe who gradually kill themselves by an extraordinary predilection for eating a certain kind of clay. These people are of the lowest order, and may therefore be pardoned for their foolishness in turning themselves into plaster casts; but why the enlightened Americans choose to convert themselves into walking icebergs through drinking so much iced water is unaccountable to the alien. They certainly do play havoc with their digestions. They eat ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... my foolishness; I love to see you laugh, you who have laughed so little all these days. But I think the time of laughter has come for ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... conciliated them by kind treatment, and to have united them, gradually, to their own people, such an accession might have been made to the power of the king of Spain, as would have made him far the greatest monarch that ever yet ruled in the globe; but the opportunity was lost by foolishness and cruelty, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... retorted the Colonel, "Margaret and one of your pipers would be enough if we only had the townspeople to consider. There's no game much easier than walking into a lion's den when the lion isn't there, but it's pure foolishness to play the game till you're sure ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... teaching to his audience; he never was more unsuccessful in his attempt by all means to gain some. Was it a remembrance of that scene in Athens that made him write to the Corinthians that his message was 'to the Greeks foolishness'? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the rich, fresh evening came on, there was heard all over Rome, far above a whisper, [187] the whole town seeming hushed to catch it distinctly, the lively, reckless call to "play," from the sons and daughters of foolishness, to those in whom their life was still green—Donec virenti canities abest!—Donec virenti canities abest! Marius could hardly doubt how Cornelius would have taken the call. And as for himself, slight as was the burden of positive moral obligation with which ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... London Nina had one acquaintance, and an hour or so later, after drinking some tea, she set forth to visit this acquaintance. The weight of her own foolishness, fatuity, silliness, and ignorance was heavy upon her. And, moreover, she had been told that Mr. Lionel Belmont had already departed back to America, his luggage being marked ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... for its own sake is of course foolishness, but it is a very rare kind of foolishness. Nearly always the learned man pays his debt to society in full measure, if we but give him time enough. So it was with "The Learned Blacksmith." From his deep learning, Elihu Burritt at last drew the inspiration which made him a powerful advocate ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... his hand, with the cunning born of the fog in his brain. Shortly they went away again, leaving on the table a pile of silver. Cable the President! What a joke! and he chuckled aloud. He would teach them to come and worry him with their foolishness. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... to git up and go home, bein' tired of that foolishness, when I heard a little bird wakin' up away off in the woods, and callin' sleepy-like to his mate, and I looked up and I see that Ruben was beginnin' to take interest in his business, and I set down agin. It was the peep of day. The light come faint from the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... yo' Bibles 'stead of studyin foolishness. (He gets up and starts into the store. Clarke and the little girl follow him.) Reckon Ah better git dat medicine. (The three ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... afeared of, it's—oh; you will never understand for being a man," her voice lowered instinctively; "somehow I hate the thought of those strange men hacking and spoiling my body. That's just foolishness, I know, and my time's pretty well gone for foolishness. I've always sort of tended my body, Gordon, and kept it white and soft. I thought if a man asked me in spite of—well, my face, he could take pride in me ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Othello from the educational curriculum. The proposer declared with some heat that "no coloured gentleman would spifflicate his missus wid a bolster on de word of a mean white thief like dat Iago." The mere suggestion was dam foolishness and an insult to the most prominent section of the freeborn citizens of the U.S.A. "If dey gwine whitewash de Scotchman, why not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... making ourselves adored, but we lack one tiny thing, the understanding of the various kinds of caresses. In embraces we lose the sentiment of delicacy, while the man over whom we rule remains master of himself, capable of judging the foolishness of certain words. Take care, my dear; that is the defect in our armor. It is ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... highest work of the Law, and ascribe to this work justification. But deceived by human wisdom, they did not look upon the uncovered, but upon the veiled face of Moses, just as the Pharisees, philosophers, Mahometans. But we preach the foolishness of the Gospel, in which another righteousness is revealed, namely, that for the sake of Christ, as Propitiator, we are accounted righteous, when we believe that for Christ's sake God has been reconciled to us. Neither are we ignorant how far distant this ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... broached the subject again, two days later, Theodosia told him plainly that it was no use. She would never consent to leave Heatherton and all her friends and go out to the prairies. The idea was just rank foolishness, and he would ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to pray, lifting up his either hand, and saying, "O God and Father of our Lord Jesu Christ, which didst illuminate the things that once were darkened, and bring this visible and invisible creation out of nothing, and didst turn again this thine handiwork, and sufferedst us not to walk after our foolishness, we give thanks to thee and to thy Wisdom and Might, our Lord Jesu Christ, by whom thou didst make the worlds, didst raise us from our fall, didst forgive us our trespasses, didst restore us from wandering, didst ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... "That foolishness in the Legislature, as you call it, represented a sentiment all over the State," said Hilary. "And if I'd been you, I wouldn't have let Hunt in this year. But you didn't ask my opinion. You asked me when you begged me to get Adam out, and I predicted ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which enters into it. Ver. 19. "And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... chile? Don' I know a sunflower that's run ter seed las' summer, an' is empty an' dade as Furious [Pharaoh] now? I got no time to steddy 'bout sech foolishness." ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... sounding in the ears of the boy, on and on in the gloom, and through it, possibly from the still confused condition of his head, he kept constantly hearing the rimes she had repeated to him. They seemed to have laid hold of him as of her, perhaps from their very foolishness, in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... intensity of expression reigning over inanimate nature, contrasts with the almost absolute blank of the human countenance, with the smiling foolishness of the simple little folk who meet one's gaze, as they patiently carry on their minute trades in the gloom of their tiny open-fronted houses. Workmen squatted on their heels, carving with their imperceptible tools the droll or odiously obscene ivory ornaments, marvellous ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... by the Blackfeet. The Sun, the creator of the universe, giver of light, heat, and life, and reverenced by every one, is often called Old Man, but there is another personality who bears the same name, but who is very different in his character. This last Na'pi is a mixture of wisdom and foolishness; he is malicious, selfish, childish, and weak. He delights in tormenting people. Yet the mean things he does are so foolish that he is constantly getting himself into scrapes, and is often obliged to ask the animals to help ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... pictured them out there in the hall, peering through the crevice of the half-open door at the intruder with little, sad, troubled faces. He could almost hear them whispering amongst themselves. He felt a little shiver go over him, and threw back his shoulders and laughed softly at his foolishness. ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... "Don't talk foolishness." But she would flush like a bride. She liked a musical comedy with a lot of girls in it and a good-looking tenor. Next day you would hear her humming the catch-tune in an airy falsetto. Sometimes she ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... my woman says," agreed Snubbins. "Celia's 'bout growed up, she thinks. But I reckon if her mother laid her across her lap like she uster a few years back, she could nigh about slap most of the foolishness out o' Celia. Gals nowadays git to feel too big for their boots—that's what ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... descended from the same Satterlee hanged by King John in his war with the barons, but from the Sussex branch of the family that remained loyal to the Crown. But Tom Van Dorn wasted no time or strength in foolishness with the daughter of the house. His attack upon her heart was direct and unhalting. He fended off other suitors with a kind of animal jealousy. He drove her even from so unimportant a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... universe. For the first time is it demanded that JUSTICE be made our chief corner-stone. The ancient republics, not thus underpinned, fell. Our old foundations, too, are fallen. In God's wisdom, not in man's foolishness, let us henceforth build. And the work of our hands, feeble as we seem to-day, shall survive all the present kingdoms and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... I was young and inexperienced, I hired a yacht myself. Three things had combined to lead me into this foolishness: I had had a stroke of unexpected luck; Ethelbertha had expressed a yearning for sea air; and the very next morning, in taking up casually at the club a copy of the Sportsman, I had come ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... like him in the North Sea,' the mate answered, 'and all the arguing in the world won't convince them of their foolishness. After a time you will not find his ignorance and superstition amusing. However, what I want to say to you is this: the men in the foc's'le declare that the grub isn't well cooked, and that you haven't given them plum duff yet. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Clinton Place, in great distress because Clement does not come to her. What foolishness has overtaken these innocents now? Please set ...
— A Temporary Dead-Lock - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... one's lived in thet house sence; Some say 'tis haunted,-but I ain't no use fer foolishness, So all ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... it. As for him, he drank what was left in the cup, looking over the rim thereof meanwhile; and then filled himself another, and another, and yet more. But whereas it might have been looked for that his tongue should be loosened by the good mead into foolishness and gibbering, he became rather few-spoken, and more courteous and stately even than he had been at the first. But in the end, forsooth, he was forgetting Birdalone, what she was, and he fell a-talking, always with much pomp and state, as if to barons and earls, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto them which are saved it is the ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... began the lank man with that sort of persuasiveness which can turn instantly into bluster, "all this is pure foolishness, you know. We're here to stay. We've bought this place, and some other land to go with it, and we expect to stay right here and make a living. It happens that we expect to make a living off of sheep. Now, we don't want to start in by quarreling with our neighbors, and we don't want our neighbors ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... don't understand,' she said quietly, 'but I do, too well.' She paused, and in her overpowering sense of helplessness, of distrust, she found herself making, without a quiver, the confession of her own foolishness. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... could be saved, but the name of Jesus. Because they declared, even at Athens, the seat of learning and refinement, the self-evident truth, that "they be no gods that are made with men's hands," and exposed to the Grecians the foolishness of worldly wisdom, and the impossibility of salvation but through Christ, whom they despised on account of the ignominious death he died. Because at Rome, the proud mistress of the world, they thundered out the terrors of the law ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... No one pitied him, since his fate was of his own making. There were plenty of young ladies in England, of high birth and good looks, who would have been quite willing to help him to spend the Blakeney fortune, whilst smiling indulgently at his inanities and his good-humoured foolishness. Moreover, Sir Percy got no pity, because he seemed to require none—he seemed very proud of his clever wife, and to care little that she took no pains to disguise that good-natured contempt which she evidently felt ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... yours. And therefore," he lowered his voice confidentially, "you'll see, Bradley, that it will only be the honorable thing in you, you know, to look upon the affair as finished, and, in fact, to do all you can"—he drew his chair closer—"to—to—to drop this other foolishness." ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... pensive regret. He was a large, ruddy, white-haired man, with the slow and careful habit of speech sometimes found in those who live much with massive machinery. "No, he wasn't killed; he's in the hospital. But he wrecked as good a car as ever was built, through sheer foolishness. It costs money." ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... be rather nice to him! He's paid pretty dearly for his foolishness in bartering love for ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... had advertised them all. It seemed there was nothing you could cook that didn't need a dash of it. He kept me between a chill and a sweat all the time. Sometimes, but not often, I just had to grin at his foolishness. I remember one picture he got out showing sixteen cows standing between something that looked like a letter-press, and telling how every pound or so of Graham's Extract contained the juice squeezed from a herd of steers. If an explorer started for the North Pole, ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... started in to make Rawlins one of the "Hells" but the decent element had had enough and proceeded to clean up the town—showing they proposed to stand no foolishness. ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... returned to lemonade the following night, and remained faithful to that beverage until an event transpired which rendered further self-denial a mere foolishness. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... "I consider that you are entirely correct in all your positions. As to that unfortunate affair of the boat, I had intended coming to you and apologizing most sincerely for my share in it. It was an act of great foolishness, but that does not in the least excuse me. I apologize now, and beg that you will believe that I truly regret ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... of us know how kind-hearted we are till we are tried, or perhaps it is our foolishness that we ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... sounded like so much foolishness, and after waiting a moment Mr. Shawyer went on ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... hesitate between the obvious duty of obeying orders and an equally obvious conviction of the foolishness of the injunction laid upon her. The struggle resulted in her saying doubtfully, "If you please, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... some tale of rascality, successful or exposed, with his habitual cliche—"I wep a tear. I did reelly," which made you realize that the only tears it had in fact ever wept were in truth tears of suppressed laughter over the foolishness of mortals. It had never mourned over a lost sinner, though it had often winked over one. And it had ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... impatiently, "that in such a strait as this, girl, you can encourage such delusions! You are like the fool in the Scripture, of whom it is written, that though thou shouldst bray him among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... "Oh, quit your foolishness!" she burst out impatiently, "I guess I know my own mind. I came out to this country to try and recoup myself and I want to get in on this mine. No sentiment, understand me, I'm talking straight business; and I've got the ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... while it is difficult for a mature and sober judgment to countenance his next step, if one can look back a few years to his own youth he can at least find extenuating circumstances surrounding Jimmy's seeming foolishness. ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that foolishness and come down here!" But the junior Wharton, his eyes fixed upon the stage, merely danced the harder. When the exhibition ended he bowed, hand in hand with Miss Demorest, then leaped nimbly over the footlights and made his way ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... bought Carline. Lord, I certainly wuz gone on dat yaller gal! But I didn't know nothin' 'bout courtin'. Carline she wuz better qualified though, an' she made me ast Old Miss ef I couldn't hab her fer my wife. We didn't need no Bible nor preacher, nor sech foolishness in dem days. But when Old Miss wuz willin' we jus' dress up an' walk ober de place an' tell all de niggers we wuz married. Umph, umph! But I wuz proud dat day! I had on a bran' new pair ob pants dat cost two-hundred an' sixty-fo' dollars in Confederate ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... of the little I know to prove the foolishness of idolatry. I do not argue against knowledge; I argue against knowledge-worship. For here, I see in your Essay, that you are not contented with raising human knowledge into something like divine omnipotence,—you ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all foolishness. The papers are not necessary. Roderick will supply what cash I need without anything of that ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... the corner from her, he could not help a surreptitious studying of her. While he held his own in the general fun and foolishness, it was his hostess that mostly filled the circle of his eye and the content ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... see the world on a big scale. You know already what work and saving and steady habits and sense will bring a man, to; you don't want to go round among the rich; you want to go among the poor, and see what laziness and drink and dishonesty and foolishness will bring men to. And I guess he knows, about as well as anybody; and if he ever goes to preaching he'll know what he's preaching about." The old man smiled his fierce, simple smile, and in his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in their weeds, To the palace they climb the topmost steep. When they're come in, the vaulted roof beneath, Marsilium with courtesy they greet: "May Mahumet, who all of us doth keep, And Tervagan, and our lord Apoline Preserve the, king and guard from harm the queen!" Says Bramimunde "Great foolishness I hear: Those gods of ours in cowardice are steeped; In Rencesvals they wrought an evil deed, Our chevaliers they let be slain in heaps; My lord they failed in battle, in his need, Never again will he his right hand see; For that rich ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... means. We'll have to adapt ourselves to it. You talk foolishness when you make threats to drive out the nesters. That is the sort of thing Buck Weaver has been trying to do. It's absurd. The law is back of them. You would only come to trouble, and if you did succeed ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... to her insistence, but doubtingly. In six weeks I was perfectly convinced of her wisdom and my foolishness. Did it rain, Basilio came flying up to see if the roof leaked. If a window stuck and would not slide, I called Basilio. For the modest reward of two pesos a month (one dollar gold) he skated my floors till they shone like mirrors. He ran errands for a penny or two. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... his heart when came the time to go. Maybe she would get over her foolishness by the time he came in with the round-up. At any rate, the combination at the ranch did not tempt him to neglect his business, and he galloped down the trail without so much as looking back to see if Flora would wave—possibly because he was afraid ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... some delicate negotiations and many assurances of honourable intentions, they were told that, provided their letters were confined to a history of their movements and their doings, and without any foolishness, they might write twice a voyage to the girls and to herself. "But," said she, "there must be no proposals of marriage until you have both reached the head of your profession." This condition was gratefully agreed to, and when the young men joined the party again there were many ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... remains the one way possible of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least. How look a brother in the face and say, Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou yet art blind, thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length: and, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith! Say this as silvery as tongue can troll—the anger of the man may be endured, the shrug, the disappointed eyes of him are not so bad to bear— but here's the plague, that all this trouble comes of telling truth, which truth, by when it reaches him, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... that's been dead so long that it isn't even remembered except on Decoration Day and when Joe Wheeler signs the voucher for his pay-check. But it was all there was in sight; and somehow I thought Doc Millikin had something up his old alpaca sleeve that wasn't all foolishness. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... explain Lieutenant Fanning to me. He seems very immature. He's been telling me about a submarine destroyer he's invented, but it looks to me like foolishness." ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... "But the foolishness of his mother prevented it. For a suspicion growing up within her, she awaited her time, and one night peeped in upon [88] them, and thereupon cried out in terror at what she saw. And the goddess heard her; and a sudden anger ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... more than utter foolishness of this latter Charlie o'er the water nonsense, whether in rhyme or prose, there is but one word, and that word a Scotch word. Scotch, the sorriest of jargons, compared with which even Roth Welsch is dignified and expressive, has yet ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... attracting Mr. Gaston's attention. He's my friend now, by gosh! He's going to stand by me. He's the real stuff and shows up to me in the finest colours, never once hinting that your seeking him had made you cheap. He's a bigger feller than I ever thought, and I ain't going to have no foolishness. You understand?" ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the fool to talk foolishness? Dost thou then cast away the banana? Does not one talk foolishness also who is sick and yet discardeth good medicine, because he ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... as dreams usually are. If Professor Borrodaile wanted to get away from the toughs, why did he keep on his yellow stepping-stones? Why didn't he duck aside and hide in the bushes? All foolishness, ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... and I have no desire to see its prevalence diminish. On the whole, it is the latter meaning which certain foreigners have in mind when they speak of English prudery—at all events, as exhibited by women; it being, not so much an imputation on chastity, as a charge of conceited foolishness. An English woman who typifies the begueule may be spotless as snow; but she is presumed to have snow's other quality, and at the same time to be a thoroughly absurd and intolerable creature. Well, here is ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... jewelled arm of Queen Esther and obliged by her duty to look only at the Queen's face. Daisy thought even that was a good deal to look at, it was so magnificently surrounded with decoration: but at the same time she was troubled about Nora and sorry for her own foolishness, so that her own face was abundantly in character for the grave concern that sat upon it. This picture met with, great favour. The people in the library were in much glee after it was over; ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... "Because all that foolishness is really gone," she continued eagerly. "I know that whatever happened to poor Roger, it was not you who killed him. Even if I heard his ghost calling again to-night, I should have no fear. I can't think why I ever wanted to hurt you, Everard. I ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Prophet Jeremiah, Juvenem, a youth, where he saith, "Quis excitabit juvenem" (A young raw milksop boy shall perform it: he shall come and turn the city Tyrus upside- down). But yet Alexander could not leave off his foolishness, for oftentimes he swilled himself drunk, and in his drunkenness he stabbed his best and worthiest friends; yea, afterwards he drank himself to death at Babel. Neither was Solomon above twenty years ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... wealthy pork-butcher of Chicago, had known nothing of his daughter's culpable foolishness. Four years later he took her to London, where she met Mr. Francis Morton and married him. She led six or seven years of very happy married life when one day, like a thunderbolt from a clear, blue sky, she received ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... had hoped that I'd gotten over any foolishness by spending the fall and winter away from White Divide—or the sight of it—I commenced right away to find out my mistake. No sooner did the big ridge rise up from the green horizon, than every ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... Peuple" quite upset him, for he had hitherto thought it unlikely that Sagnier held any such list. However, he judged the document at a glance, at once separating the few truths it contained from a mass of foolishness and falsehood. And this time also he did not consider himself personally in danger. There was only one thing that he really feared: the arrest of his intermediary, Hunter, whose trial might have drawn him into the affair. As matters stood, and as he did not cease to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling-block. There are, indeed, severe things in it which no man should read aloud more than once.—"Seek first the kingdom of heaven."—"Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth."—"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... was he, Men called him good and just; But his wisdom seemed like foolishness, By ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... then why have you given us such anxiety? I know very well that love is only foolishness; there is nothing solid but marriage," she remarked, looking ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... old man, sit down and eat your grub. There's no use working up unchristian-like feeling between us simply because I'm not going to let any damn foolishness stand between me and my vittles. Eat while ye may, says I, and God bless you for a kind-hearted, gentle skipper. You says yourself that the Lord helps them as helps themselves, which goes to show I'll just make a stab for another piece ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... respectable man. But when the trousers wore out, I, too, fell off in the opinion of my fellow-men and had to come down here from the town. Men, my fine mannikin, judge everything by the outward appearance, while, owing to their foolishness, the actual reality of things is incomprehensible to them. Make a note of this on your nose, and pay me at least half your debt. Go in peace; seek, and you ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... confirmed by the Roman and the Jewish historians. But, indeed, the event itself is not the subject of controversy. It is the conclusions drawn from it by the followers of Christ that are disputed. "Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness,"[081] still raises opposition and ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... at first grown faster than his wife, and the change in his manner had been more perceptible; for with all her foolishness Dolly had a kind heart, and a keen sense of right, and wrong, and justice than her husband. She had opposed him stoutly when he raised his own salary from $4,000 to $6,000 a year, on the plea that ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Jehovah and places no other intelligence in his place as Creator and Ruler of the universe; and, being conscious of the odium that necessarily attaches itself to Atheism, on account of its everlasting foolishness, they steal the name of God ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... has no peer among modern novels. The purpose is plain: to show the evolution of a young middle-class Englishman, a tailor's son, through worldly experience with polite society into true democracy. After the disillusionment of "high life," after much yeasty juvenile foolishness and false ideals, Evan comes back to his father's shop with his lesson learned: it is possible (in modern England) to be both tailor ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... he doesn't understand a thing at once he dismisses it with "pooh." As I ascend the wide oak staircase, with room enough for eight people abreast on every step, I reflect on the foolishness of a man saying "pooh," hastily. How many great schemes might anyone nip in the bud by one "pooh." What marvellous inventions, apparently ridiculous in their commencing idea, would be at once knocked on the head by a single "pooh." The rising ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... restrictions would be an undue interference with private rights, and the old aphorism about a fool and his folly will be quoted. There are doubtless fools so infatuated that if they were brayed in a ten hundred-weight stamp-battery the "foolishness that had not departed from them" would give a highly payable percentage to the ton. Yet the State in other matters tries by numerous laws to protect such from their folly. A man may not sell a load of wood without the ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... set, weight about a hundred and ten; light complected with black hair and eyes. You can't help but find him. Tom's a good sort," he observed, coming back, "but he's young. He don't realize yet that when things get real serious this sheriff foolishness just nat'rally bogs down. Now I reckon we'd ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... "What foolishness is this that thou art talking?" I interrupted angrily, for it was growing late and I was beginning to feel tired, while there seemed to be no sign of an intention on the part of my unwelcome visitor to leave. "Return now to Machenga," I continued, "describe ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... is foolishness! In Argolis, a woman, somewhat vain, Preferred a fop to her own rightful lord And ran away; and then for ten long years The might of Hellas on the Trojan plain Grappled in conflict such as had been mete To guard Olympus, and Scamander ran Red with heroic blood-drops. And ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... fact that we had no next-door neighbors enabled us to live without ostentation. I have discovered that much of the trouble in the world to-day arises from a love of showing-off, and of course, if there is no one about to show-off to, you don't indulge in that sort of foolishness. Being the only family in the place we were not spurred into extravagances of living, either because we had to keep up an end in society, or because we wished to make a better showing than someone else was ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... observed Bertram. "It sounds like perfect foolishness to me; a swollen faced outlander who rules familiar spirits with a wand, and, between investigations in the realms of science, writes a girl's name all over the place like a lovesick school-boy! Is Mercy his spirit-control, do ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... not as ours should it be vaunted of. And again, when you speak of this strange vision as an impression on my fancy, and not a reality obvious to my senses, let me tell you once more, your worldly wisdom is but foolishness touching the things ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... he continued, looking at Vane with a smile whose significance he might have seen had it not been for those two spoonsful of brandy, "I suppose you've quite got over that—well, if you'll excuse me saying so—that foolishness about inherited alcoholism and that sort of stuff, and therefore you'll lay all your laurels at the feet of the fair Enid without a scruple? Of course, you remember that juvenile hiding you gave me on the "Orient"? Quite ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... mud-hens, a ruddy duck, and a dozen blackbirds. In the uplands they knew almost to a feather how many partridge each thicket had bred; to a covey where the quail used; and once in a great while, by strategy on their own side and foolishness on the part of the quarry, they caught one sitting and brought it down. What is quite as much to the point, they felt the season as it changed. The gradual transformation from the green of summer to the brown and lilac of late autumn, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... of Daisy's foolishness, doctor. It contains a gipsy, whom she induced me to hire ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... constriction is experienced. According to Suckling, pallor and profuse perspiration are usually present, but there is no vertigo, confusion of mind, or loss of consciousness. The patient is quite conscious of the foolishness of the fears, but is unable to overcome them. The will is in abeyance and is quite subservient to the violent emotional disturbances. Gray mentions a patient who could not go over the Brooklyn Bridge or indeed over any bridge without ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... if now, and not until now, she could unfold to her husband all the secrets of her heart, all its foolishness, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... man found himself blushing. "Now don't get to imagining foolishness. Miss Valdes hates the ground I walk on. She thinks I'm the limit, and she hasn't ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... had he stood, fatal enemy of himself. His Yea would hold fast while none accepted it, his Nay while no one obeyed. But the supple knees of men sickened him of his own decree. 'These fools accept my bidding: the bidding then is foolishness.' So when Fate, so when God, underwrote his bill, Le Roy le veult, he scorned himself and the bill, and risked wide ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... ideas became very extended. Many excellent private schools were founded on the Pestalozzian model, while on the other hand self-styled Pestalozzian reformers sprang up on all sides. All this imitation was both natural and helpful; the foolishness and charlatanism in time disappeared, leaving a real advance ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... eyes, and I was thinking so little about myself that I let them roll down without bothering to wipe them away. "Do, do forgive me," I implored. "But you never can, of course. All through my foolishness you're out of an engagement. And you depended upon it, I know, from ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... from their gun-rests, those Chechens! Some of them shoot even better than I do. I don't like it when a fellow gets killed so foolishly! Sometimes I used to look at your soldiers and wonder at them. There's foolishness for you! They go, the poor fellows, all in a clump, and even sew red collars to their coats! How can they help being hit! One gets killed, they drag him away and another takes his place! What foolishness!' ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... the clothing and all the little nothings that had once belonged to his wife revealed the depths of love—or the foolishness of it, all depending upon your point of view. Mrs. Millais tells of calling at Rossetti's house in Cheyne Walk in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, nearly ten years after the death of Elizabeth Eleanor, and having occasion to hang her wraps in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... prayers and the grave we should be thinkin', and not be having bold words on the bridge.' Wisha! but I fought I was after spaking very quiet, and up she got and caught up the basket, and I dodged it by good luck, but after that I walked off and left her to satisfy her foolishness with b'ating the wall if it pl'ased her. I 'd no call for her company anny more, and I took a vow I 'd never spake a word to her again while the world stood. So all is over since then betune Biddy Con'ly and me. No, I don't look at ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... but the words sounded like so much foolishness, and after waiting a moment Mr. Shawyer went on again, not ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... would pat the fat little fellow on the head, and, when the humour seized me, would show him my hoard of gold mohurs, even jingle before him a bag of silver rupees, or ask his opinion on the colour and quality of some gem, speaking words of foolishness the while, like a child playing with a toy. And when I lay back on my cushions, sometimes I fancied that the little jewelled eyes in the elephant head of bronze twinkled at me in merry and friendly ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... a sad Sabbath for the Covenanters. Defeat, dishonor, and distress turned the day into a painful memory. The calamity, doubtless, arose out of the compromise of Covenanted principles. Welch's wisdom proved to be foolishness; Weir's ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... evolution, no moral effort, no evolution of character, no progress of civilization' can alone lift life from the lower to the higher. Further, the lower can know very little about the higher, for 'the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned'. All of which means, I take it, that the higher must reach down to the lower and lift it up. Advancement in any line of progress is made possible by some directing power either seen or unseen. A man cannot simply grow better ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... the important business before the meeting? I could not spare valuable time for self-government foolishness to-night." ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... stop my foolishness long enough to get myself some supper; which I guess was what I needed, because I acted more sensibly afterward. Everything in the house was frozen, but I thawed out some meat, and ate some bread without its being thawed, and boiled a couple of eggs, and had a meal which tasted ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... answer, but he went and sat down on the step of the door, and was just beginning to think what the foolishness was in his way of asking his father, when a little bird came hopping along in the yard. He ran in to ask his mother to give him some milk to feed the bird with. She smiled, and told him milk was good for kittens, but not for birds; ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... without reconsideration. Though you will allow me to have my own opinion about her foolishness. Grammer is a very wise woman, and she was as wise in that as in other things. You think there was something very fiendish in the compact, do you not, Miss Melbury? But remember that the most eminent of our surgeons in past times ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... wouldn't see the foolishness o' being a heathen and a infidel, and turn to the Lord! You 'ain't got no teeth, and it takes your wife to herd you. 'And the Lord multiplied the tribulations of his enemy.' You got no more show standin' up agin the Lord than an insect ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... them giddy with passion. Men forgetting their birthright, And the glorious spirit of freedom, Made themselves slaves unto folly, And lust, and imbecile pleasure. Life was summed up in the Present, For foolishness ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... several other college mates. Then she discovered a thoroughly characteristic note from Aunt Clay, dry and dictatorial but enclosing a check for ten dollars on Monroe & Co., the Paris bankers. "For you and your extravagant mother to spend on foolishness," wrote that stern lady. ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... much verboten in America today. I can remember the time, not so long ago, when no dinner-party was counted a success unless four or five cocktails were served before we sat down at the table. But that era passed. It was soon evident that such foolishness would lead to grave disaster—if not to the grave; and the young business man who was seen to consume even one glass of beer at luncheon was frowned upon, catalogued as unsteady, even in the face of the fact that perhaps the most efficient ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... once saw through his disguise, and, despising him for his foolishness and conceit, began to peck him, and soon he was stripped of all his ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... awake that there is an emergency. Their awakeness is the thing that crowds in on us. And we waked them up. We must now do more and better, because we have done so well. We have indeed waked them up, but—to what? A business man would stamp it as rank foolishness to fail to take advantage of the splendid opening that we have made in ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... must approve of the way to life by Jesus Christ, before his mind will budge, or stir, or move, that way: "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (of the gospel); for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... your mother and your wife for?" asked Brains. "Just foolishness, my friend. It's the devil tempting you, plague take him. Don't listen to the Evil One. Don't give way to him. When he talks to you about women you should answer him sharply: 'I don't want them!' When he talks of freedom, you should stick to it and say: 'I don't want it. I want nothing! ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... unpleasant sting to the palms of my hands. The handle broke short off at the point where the helve meets the steel. The blade was driven deep in the oak wood. I suppose I should have regretted my foolishness, but I did not. The handle was old and somewhat worn, and the accident gave me an indefinable satisfaction: the culmination of use, that final destruction which is the complement ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... was no other name given under heaven by which men could be saved, but the name of Jesus. Because they declared, even at Athens, the seat of learning and refinement, the self-evident truth, that "they be no gods that are made with men's hands," and exposed to the Grecians the foolishness of worldly wisdom, and the impossibility of salvation but through Christ, whom they despised on account of the ignominious death he died. Because at Rome, the proud mistress of the world, they ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified; unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, Christ the wisdom ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... up, or when, as he says, one leaves off seeking through weariness (apokamnon). "What thought can think, another thought can mend." Another turn in the endless road may change the whole character of the perspective. You cannot, as the Sophist proposed to do (that was part of his foolishness) take and put truth into the soul. If you could, it might be established there, only as an "inward lie," as a mistake. "Must I take the argument, and literally insert it into your mind?" asks Thrasymachus. "Heaven forbid": answers Socrates. That is precisely ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... winds, and waves, and natural laws, and the physical and mental powers which had been given him, for the furtherance of his designs, was quite natural, he said; but to make use of God's word and His promises—tut! tut! he said, that was foolishness. ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... have taken to themselves no small airs of recent years—they dress, so far as their means will go, as flashily as servants in cities, and stand upon their dignity. This foolishness has, perhaps, one good effect—it tends to diminish the illegitimate births. The girls are learning more self-respect—if they could only achieve that and eschew the other follies it would be a clear gain. It may be questioned whether purely agricultural marriages are as common ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Merton, when there is need of it," I said. "Rash venturing is not bravery, but foolishness, ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... insisted on latitude, and Tynemouth gave it to her without thought or anxiety. He was too fond of outdoor life, of racing and hunting and shooting and polo and travel, to have his eye unnerved by any such foolishness as jealousy. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... say, such men shall at the day of Judgment, be judged, not only for what they are, but also for what they would be. For if the thought of foolishness is sin, {91a} doubtless the desire of foolishness is more sin: and if the desire be more, the endeavour after it must needs be more and more. {91b} He then that is not an artificial Atheist and Transgressor, ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... his opponents attacked, was a revelation direct from God. He knew too, that, in the words of St. Paul, he had to preach what to the holiest of the Jews was a stumbling-block, and to the wisest of the Greeks foolishness. He was none the less ready to do so, that Jesus Christ, his Lord, might say of him, as He said once of that Apostle, 'I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake.' Luther's enemies in the Romish Church have thought to see in these words an instance ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... tradition with Margaret Fuller as estimated by her friends, we shall assume that she was not a wholly balanced character,—that she must have been a great and noble woman to have had such friends, but that there may have been in her some element of foolishness which her friends excused and at which ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... shook her small glittering head, very sadly. "I do not understand you, and I fear you. For you talk foolishness and in your face I see the face of Jurgen as one might see the face of a dead man drowned in ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... it's all foolishness, this losing sleep and wearing ourselves out," declared a tall, thin, pasty-faced individual. "Here's my plan: just break up into parties of two or three and each party strike out for a different town and catch a freight out of the state. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... hardly even as wise as I - Nay, very foolishness it is. To die In March before its life were well on wing, Before its time and kindly season—why Should spring be sad—before the swallows fly - Enough to dream of such a wintry thing? Such foolish words were more unmeet for spring Than snow for summer when his heart is high; And why should ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... misjudged. I must plead guilty also to having wronged her in my thoughts. While I try to exercise the broadest charity, my calling, as a teacher, has brought me in contact with many girls that—through immaturity and innate foolishness—are guilty of conduct that taxes one's faith in human nature severely. Goodish sort of girls are sometimes infatuated with very bad men. I suppose it is evident to all that Miss Mayhew's early and, indeed, present influences ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... magnanimously into Father's shy eyes and, in a confidential growl which could scarce have been heard farther away than Indianapolis, condescended: "Well, here we are. I'm glad there's an end to all this wickedness and foolishness at ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... is, their sole gain from this ferment of matter and empty discord of words is, that when they step into the Forum, they think they have been carried into another world. And it is my conviction that the schools are responsible for the gross foolishness of our young men, because, in them, they see or hear nothing at all of the affairs of every-day life, but only pirates standing in chains upon the shore, tyrants scribbling edicts in which sons are ordered to behead ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... dear! how wise have I endeavoured to be! How anxious to choose, and to avoid every thing, precautiously, as I may say, that might make me happy, or unhappy; yet all my wisdom now, by a strange fatality, is likely to become foolishness! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... to be seen walking in the streets with them. Trajan also oppressed and banished the Pantomimists. Under Caligula, however, they were received with great favour, and Aurelius made them priests of Apollo. Nero, who carried everything to the extremity of foolishness, was not content in patronising the Pantomimes, but must needs assist, and appear himself, as a Mimi. Here again, in Nero, another claimant as the author of Pantomime has ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... pretty strong just then, I slipped it off an' hitched it atop o' the oar to dry an' be a flag at the same time, till I could rig up some kind o' streamer, out o' the seaweed. An' then I was forced to vomit. And that's about the last thing, Mister Geake, I can mind doin'. 'Tis all foolishness after that. They tell me that a 'Merican schooner, the Shawanee, sighted my shirt flappin', an' sent a boat an' took me off an' landed me at New Orleens. My head was bad—oh, very bad—an' they put me in a 'sylum an' cured me. But they took eight year' over it, an' I doubt if 'tis much ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the big malformed border ruffian with repulsion. "Man, you gi'e me a scunner," he said. "Have done wi' this foolishness an' be gone. The lass is no' for you or the like ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... I enjoy myself a little?" His manner was full of quirks and quips and eccentricities, waving his umbrella and gesticulating strangely, with a great deal of action. I suppose, to help his natural foolishness, he had been drinking. We parted, he exhorting me not to forget his message to his sons, and I shouting after him a request to be remembered to the widow. Conceive something tragical to be talked ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... admitted. "That is my one foolishness. All the rest does not matter, but I can't ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... was up in New York this spring she said she saw several old gray-haired women with bobbed hair. She said it was something terrible to see how the world had run to foolishness." ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... once, and it was vain to try and crack nuts, draw caricatures, or eat peppermint lozenges—the rod would come down immediately with a thump! and the offender, as he stood in a corner of the room with a fool's cap on, had time to fully realize the foolishness of his ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... far as concerned notice given, with a House that shall be nameless,—for the question on which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for waiters, and no House as commits itself to that eminently Un-English act of more than foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me,—I repeat, at a momentous crisis, when I was off with a House too mean for mention, and not yet on with that to which I have ever since had the honour of being attached in the capacity of Head, {1} I was casting about what to do next. Then it were that ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... flashes of intuition, that this choice of hers was a hideous mistake. The situation repelled me. But the very strangeness of it seemed to attract the morbid Alice. And it was this one curious strain of unexplained foolishness marring her otherwise strong and in many ways beautiful character which prevented my loving her completely and safely. Nevertheless, I cared for her enough to enter my feeble and futile protest; but it was waved aside with the superb effrontery of ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... the Devil fly away with such foolishness! Wherefore shall the dead rule the living? . . . ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... to reconcile this present foolishness with his very laudable display of commonsense of a year ago?" went on Mrs. Tresslyn, the red spot darkening in her cheek. "He played fast and loose with all of us. I agree with Braden Thorpe. There ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... that, before Costantine abolished the punishment of malefactors on the cross, the Christians, who well knew with S. Paul that Christ crucified was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the gentiles foolishness', prudently abstained from representing our Saviour nailed to the cross, and used rather to depict a lamb with a cross near it, of which instances may he seen in Rork's Hierurgia p. 520. The first mention of the crucifix in the church is believed to occur in the poem titled De Passione Domini ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... Treumann with perfect urbanity. And if this talk about protecting Miss Estcourt from adventurers in a place where there were apparently no human beings of any kind, but only trees and marshes, might seem to a bystander to be foolishness, to the speakers it was luminousness itself, and in no way increased their ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... with pity in her green eyes. "This I do not understand. I know nothing of right and justice. What are these things? Just words. Yet you will endanger our happiness for them. If it is my happiness you wish—then leave this foolishness alone. I have fifteen years I can live with you before I am old and you tire of me. With those ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... spoke of blackmail and the police, and of thrusting the miserable fellow out of doors, he told everything that he knew; Marianne's neediness, her weariness, her loves, the Dujarrier connection, the renting of the Hotel Vanda, the Vaudrey paper and its renewals, his own foolishness as a too artless and tender, good sort of fellow, relying on Claire Dujarrier's word, and not reserving to himself so much per cent in ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... him that Sleep and Death are not the same, as you, in your foolishness, believe, for there Bastin is wiser than you. Because for all his wisdom he remains ignorant of what happens to man when the Light of Life is blown out by the breath of Fate. That is why he fears to die and why he talks ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... all-important here, the melody itself is of no importance. Let us be precise about this point. To what other purpose should we spend our strength? Let us be characteristic in tone even to the point of foolishness! If by means of tones we allow plenty of scope for guessing, this will be put to the credit of our intellects. Let us irritate nerves, let us strike them dead: let us handle thunder and lightning,—that is ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... good characteristic, but if carried to an excess it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself, and therefore is certain to be exhausted ultimately; ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... round eyes grew rounder. "Nein! And why? Has he got into foolishness? He is young, ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
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