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More "Silly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... emphasis. "I see!" Then she added cheerfully, "I could have one, too, on a count like that, way back among my great-grandmothers. But I wouldn't have any real right to it. You have to be in the direct line of descent, you know, and it is silly for us Americans to try to hang on by a hair to the main trunk of the family tree, when all the world knows we belong ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... this kind prove how frequently letters are not returned or burnt when an affair of the heart is broken off. Correspondence between lovers should at all events be tempered with discretion; and, on the lady's part particularly, her affectionate expressions should not degenerate into a silly style ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... without the love-interest which is the prime attraction of our mostly silly fiction. Gabriel's association with the English girl who wanders over Europe with him is scarcely passionate if it is not altogether platonic; his affection for the poor girl for whom he has won her father's tolerance if not forgiveness ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "Don't be silly. You're worn out and irritable, both of you, and you're acting like perfect idiots. You'll have everybody laughing ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... pensive, and breathing hard as if stifled by the taint of unaccountable ill-will that pervaded the ship. "What's up amongst them?" he thought. "Can't make out this hanging back and growling. A good crowd, too, as they go nowadays." On deck the men exchanged bitter words, suggested by a silly exasperation against something unjust and irremediable that would not be denied, and would whisper into their ears long after Donkin had ceased speaking. Our little world went on its curved and unswerving path carrying a discontented and aspiring population. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... picked up the Bee and the Harp again the dancing all stopped, and the mother laughed for a long time. But when she came to herself, she got very angry entirely with Jack, and she told him he was a silly, foolish fellow, that there was neither food nor money in the house, and now he had lost one of her good cows also. "We must do something to live," says she. "Over to the fair you must go to-morrow morning, and take the black cow with you and ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... They bothered her, she said. As for having a particular friend of the other sex, which some of the girls in her class no older than she seemed to think a necessary proof of being in their teens, she laughed at the idea. She had her adopted uncles and Isaiah to take care of and boy beaux were silly. Talking about them as these girls did was ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... did not look very silly? My lord, smiling, and gazing at me from head to foot; Lord Jackey grinning and laughing, like an oaf, as I then, in my spite, thought. Indeed the countess said, encouragingly to me, but severely in persons of birth, "Lady Davers, you are as much too teazing, as Mrs. B. is ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... heavily, the corners of his mouth foamed, and on his face was an expression as if he wished to say something very important, but found it difficult to do so. The Captain stood with his hands behind him, and looked at him in silence. He then began in a silly way: ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... deprive people of their senses by magic arts and incantations. But I have never experienced anything of the sort until to-day. Compose yourself, my dear good comrade, and go with me back to the shore." Fadrique laughed fiercely, and answered, "Set aside your silly delusion, and if you must have everything explained to you, word by word, in order to understand it, know then that the lady whom you came to meet in the shrubbery of this my garden is Dona Clara Mendez, my only sister. Quick, therefore, and without further preamble, draw!" ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... my letter, you held up your hands, and exclaimed, "What! is the man a Traitor?" And you said that not one of my friends in Little Rock, and I had, you said, a great many, pretended to justify the letter. You have never found a friend of mine, or an indifferent person, silly enough to think, like you, that it savored of treason. It is only rarely one meets a man so scantily furnished with sense as to misunderstand and pervert what is written in plain English. I was vindicating myself, and still more the Government, and persuading the Indians to remain loyal, notwithstanding ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled, his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by another—a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... districts. The fool is induced to come to the city, where he is introduced to a woman who is perhaps a prostitute, or a servant girl, or one who is willing to marry any man who will support her. She readily enters into the arrangement proposed by the broker, and marries the silly fellow, who goes back to his rural home with her, thinking ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... look supremely silly, and ridiculously self-conscious, when directly addressed or appealed to by Counsel; or one that really understands that the Judge's politeness is only another ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... said, "This is the only place which can ever be home to me. Well, well! It's queer about people. Some, when they go, leave you desolate; others make you happy by their absence. I never dreamed that silly Mumpson could make me happy, but she has. Blessed if I don't feel happy! The first time in a year or more!" And he began to whistle old "Coronation" in the most lively fashion as he ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... silly talk," said the wagoner. "Come with me, and I will see what I can do for you." So the boy went with the wagoner, and about evening time they arrived at an inn where they put up for the night, and while ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... will folks think of you? Thalia, my beauty, behave like a good dog; come here, Euphrosyne, and don't be so silly!" cried the old lady in a voice which was both pleasant and peremptory, as she stood-wide awake now-behind her table, folding together the dried clothes. The little barking beasts who were thus endowed with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... over by the physicians. Three days later she died. She left her husband almost broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery and denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities which she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his affection had been concentrated on her. He had neither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she was as beautiful ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... "Silly ass!" said she to herself, and she went to lean over the rail and watch for the coming of the others. They arrived shortly and she took inventory. First Mrs. Abercrombie Brendon ascended the steps. She was a ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... in a frostie night To catch the long-bill'd woodcocke and the snype, By the bright glimmering of the starrie light, The partridge, phaesant, or the greedie grype; Ile lend thee lyme-twigs, and fine sparrow calls, Wherewith the fowler silly birds inthralls. ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... Now she shook her pretty pate And stamped her foot—'t was growing late: "Mister Picklepip, when I Drifting seaward pass you by; When the waves my forehead kiss And my tresses float above— Dead and drowned for lack of love— You'll be sorry, sir, for this!" And the silly creature cried— Feared, perchance, the rising tide. Town of Dae by the sea, Madam Adam, when she had 'em, May have been as bad ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... he drove away the wealthy and the noble who made court to him. In a little time, they grew intimate and Alcibiades, listening now to language entirely free from every thought of unmanly fondness and silly displays of affection, found himself with one who sought to la open to him the deficiencies of his mind and repress his vain and foolish arrogance, and "Dropped like the craven cock his conquered wing." He esteemed these endeavors of Socrates as most ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... unaware of the manners and customs of the house, could only look at Mme. de Bargeton and give embarrassed answers to embarrassing questions. He knew neither the names nor condition of the people about him; the women's silly speeches made him blush for them, and he was at his wits' end for a reply. He felt, moreover, how very far removed he was from these divinities of Angouleme when he heard himself addressed sometimes as M. Chardon, sometimes as M. de Rubempre, while they addressed ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... name; but whoever came or did not come, the father and mother of my lady Enide were not forgotten. Her father was sent for first of all, and he came to court in handsome style, like a great lord and a chatelain. There was no great crowd of chaplains or of silly, gaping yokels, but of excellent knights and of people well equipped. Each day they made a long day's journey, and rode on each day with great joy and great display, until on Christmas eve they came to the city of Nantes. They made no halt until they entered ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... Our silly Fabliaux, our absurd tales, assume with regard to this deadly outrage and all its further issues, that the woman sides with her oppressors against her husband; they would have us believe that her brutal treatment by the former makes her happy and transports her with delight. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... 'You silly boys think we must pair off as we did when children; but we shall do nothing of the kind. How well Parnassus looks from here!' said Nan, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... reality of her life. She affected a derisive attitude to the world at large and applied the epithet "old" to more things than I have ever heard linked to it before or since. "Here's the old news-paper," she used to say—to my uncle. "Now don't go and get it in the butter, you silly old Sardine!" ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... same time interesting to a boy. If the father feels that he is past the time when he has any sympathy with the fairy stories and the little poems that the infants like, if he thinks the nursery rhymes are silly and the fables too old to be true, that is because he has not recently read them. Busy men, men of power and influence, like to renew their youth by going to the simple things they loved as children, and not a few of them find that the years have given them new powers of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Dorsetshire I found the churches much occupied by Puseyite Parsons; new chancels built with altars, and painted windows that officiously displayed the Virgin Mary, etc. The people in those parts call that party 'Pugicides,' and receive their doctrine and doings peacefully. I am vext at these silly men who are dishing themselves and their church as fast ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... the silly, with his complaints," cried Cecily, in a sardonic and contemptuous tone; he does nothing but groan and lament, and has been for ten days shut up alone with a young woman, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... I said, "why aren't you old and wise and sensible instead of being just a silly girl like myself? Then you wouldn't sit here howling, but you'd kiss me and cuddle me and comfort me and tell me what ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... be sure that this gentle mother would have encouraged no silly notions of social distinctions in the minds of her children. Even Mr. Sedgwick seems to have had a softer and more human side to his nature than we have yet seen. Miss Sedgwick enjoys repeating a story which she heard from ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... Magazine" between 1864 and the date of this letter (1868).) I have never, I think, in my life been so deeply interested by any geological discussion. I now first begin to see what a million means, and I feel quite ashamed of myself at the silly way in which I have spoken of millions of years. I was formerly a great believer in the power of the sea in denudation, and this was perhaps natural, as most of my geological work was done near sea-coasts ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I couldn't ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... But silly we, like foolish children, rest Well pleased with colour'd vellum, leaves of gold, Fair dangling ribbands, leaving what is best, On the great Writer's ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... lad,— By some queer way or other, had Got quite the better of her heart; With him she always talked apart: Silly he was, but very fair; A greater buck was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... little tired of her, which was early in the honeymoon; let her know frankly that I had a wife living in Europe, though it was impossible for any one to prove it against my will. The very day that I told her this I managed to convey some of her letters to me—fond, silly things they were—into your wife's room. Then I sent Elsie home ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Chelford would see more clearly what was best for little Fairy. I am so very slow and so silly about business, and you so much my friend—I have found you so—that you ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... will have all the effect of surprise on most people. I sat to Mr. Graham till I was quite tired, then went to Lady Jane, who is getting better. Then here at four, but fit for nothing but to bring up this silly Diary. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... soul, like Judas; and, like the traitor Apostle, he was untouched by contact with goodness and unworldliness. Perhaps the parallel might be carried farther, and both were moved with coarse contempt for their master's silly indifference to earthly good. That feeling speaks in Gehazi's soliloquy. He evidently thought the prophet a fool for having let 'this Syrian' off so easily. He was fair game, and he had brought the wealth on purpose to leave it. Profanity speaks in uttering ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... my late experiences; nibbled, and was almost persuaded to be a Christian,—that is, to forswear thenceforth and forever all company which I could not afford to keep, all appearances which were not honest, all foolish pride, and silly ambition, and moral cowardice;—as I did after I had ridden in a certain carriage I have mentioned, and which I am coming to now ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... it is me. If it had been any of those silly girls, the house would have been roused by this time. What mischief is afoot that you leave your bed and play ghost in this ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... politeness of Highlanders) he burst rudely past me, dashed into the room, caught up a jar and a small horn-spoon, and began ladling snuff into his nose in most excessive quantities. Then he had a hearty fit of sneezing, and looked round upon me with a rather silly smile. ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had confidently expected. The obstreperous one remained, the one that was the shrewdly-developed cover for his everlasting scheming mind. "What an unending ass I've been making of myself," he burst out, "with my silly notions." He drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to her. "And this infernal thing of Grant's has been encouraging me ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... on the edge of the pool where the octopus dwelt, a silly young cormorant was standing gazing into the water, so fascinated with something it saw there that it forgot even to jerk its head in ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... like dumb and driven animals for bare life—struggling, shouting, quarrelling over a paltry precedence of a minute or so in going to the boats; within a hundred yards of them, out over the dark waters, Agatha's mother, thrown from an overturned boat, was struggling her last struggle, with her silly old face turned indignantly up to heaven. But they saw none of ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... you—nor had you told me this at Lowestoft: if you had I should not have wanted to ask again. And my reason for asking, was simply that, on Monday Mr. Moor here was asking me about what a Lugger's expenses were, and I felt it silly not to be able to tell him the least about it: and I have felt so when some one asked me before: and that is why I asked you. I neither have, nor ever had, any doubt of your doing your best: and you ought not ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... These silly tales were widely circulated and quite generally believed, and as a result of the fear thus engendered, and of the desire on the part of relatives and neighbours of stricken persons to escape disinfection and ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... am especially discouraged when I reflect that you are all my intimate pot-companions, who have heard me say a thousand silly things in conversation, and therefore have not that laudable partiality and veneration for whatever I shall deliver that good people have for their spiritual guides; that you have no reverence for ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... horribly spitting, the musketry cracking, and then look into the interior of the closed rooms. People are talking, eating, and smoking; waiters go to and fro. There are women too. The men are gay and silly. Champagne bottles are being uncorked. "Ah! ah! it's the fusillade!" Lovers and mistresses are in common here. This orgie has the most telling effect, I tell you, in the midst of the city loaded with maledictions, a few steps from the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... dare say because I am not respectable just now," replied the voice. "I fell in the ditch and have nothing on but the Sunday shirt of Pedro. I am the funniest looking thing! wish I dared ride home in it to shock them all silly." ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and Dunlap kept every one awake with the nightmare. Yes, kept fighting the demons all night. The next morning Miller told him that he was surprised that an old gray-haired man like him didn't know when he had enough, but must gorge himself like some silly kid. Miller told him that he was welcome to stay a week if he wanted to, but he would have to sleep in the stable. It was cruel to the horses, but the men were entitled to a little sleep, at least in the winter. Miller tempered his ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... You must not call Harrison or anyone else. There is really nothing the matter. I'm just a silly girl to act like this and I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself." Then she wiped her eyes and strove ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... tell you, sir," she said, after a pause, "when I said goodbye to you at Coimbra? That I would rather be your cousin. You were quite hurt, and I said that you were a silly boy, and would understand ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... and ungracious saints accurately when he says of them, "They think themselves to be something." Bloated by their own silly ideas and schemes they entertain a pretty fair opinion of themselves, when in reality they ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... would still be a sorry one," answered Mr Gosport, "for I believe they are equally weak, and equally ignorant; the only difference is, that one, though silly, is quick, the other, though deliberate, is stupid. Upon a short acquaintance, that heaviness which leaves to others the whole weight of discourse, and whole search of entertainment, is the most fatiguing, but, upon a longer intimacy, even that is less ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... to send a letter. (Pausing and thinking, then suddenly). Oh, the very thing! You know that silly Alick McCready that comes running after me. Well, look, I'll get him to ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... Carlo—the hour was roseate and matutinal—Henry had observed Tom staring at the scenery through the window, his coffee untasted, and tears in his rapt eyes. 'What's up?' Henry had innocently inquired. Tom turned on him fiercely. 'Silly ass!' Tom growled with scathing contempt. 'Can't you feel how ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... that Shakespeare worked upon the revision of this play with a big tragic conception. The first half of the piece is very fine. He makes the crude, muddy, silly welter of the Contention significant and complete. He reduces it to a simple, passionate order, deeply impressive. The poet who worked with him, worked in sympathy with his dramatic intention. If this poet were Marlowe, as some believe ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... invested in two little gun-boats which enabled them to enforce their tax on the Krumen in their small canoes. I do not feel so sympathetic with the Krumen or their employers in this matter as I should, for the Krumen are silly hens not to go and wipe out Liberia on shore, and the white men are silly hens not to—but I had better leave that ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the Germans over the way joined lustily in the hymns. He kept the men of the Antrims going on canteen delicacies and their officers in a constant bubble of joy. He swallowed their tall stories without a gulp; they pulled one leg and he offered the other; he fell headlong into every silly trap they set for him. Also they achieved merit in other messes by peddling yarns of his wonderful innocence and ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... for it, then?" asked Mr. Beech crossly. "I thought you were going to be of some use. Fooling around here with your silly ten-cent fortune-telling, having the time of your life while all of us are worrying about that Dragon's Eye. Why ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... and smiling over them, no matter what might be dealt you. And that is some improvement over the girl I've been, isn't it? For I've never had to struggle very hard for anything I've wanted. I want to be friends, but I'm not silly enough to think you won't tell me again that you—care. I want to be friends, but not at the price of your heart-ache and disappointment, and—why, I wonder, do I get all tangled up when I try to explain myself ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... laughing. She was a little reassured at Sunderline's toleration of the idea, even so far as to make calm and definite objection. "And it's pleasant at the time. I like going about. I like to please people. I like to be somebody. It may be silly, but that's ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... wrap which she had left open that he might admire the unadmirable, moved to where he sat and touched him. "You're the silliest kind of a silly. I told you yesterday. Perhaps the opera was last night. But how could I go? Except that old black rag I had nothing to wear. If there is no opera to-night, there will be a concert or something. Don't you remember now? I ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... serves only to separate the particles of bile and set them in action; but our practise is to drown them in a copious drench. Fear not, my good lad, lest a superabundance of liquid should either weaken or chill your stomach; far from thy better judgment be that silly fear of unadulterated drink. I will insure you against all consequences; and if my authority will not serve your turn, read Celsus. That oracle of the ancients makes an admirable panegyric on water; in short, he says in plain terms ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Nipen, again! If you will not mind what I say about your silly fears, you shall hear from the pastor how wicked they are. I see him yonder, in the ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... And then the silly fellow, having once inclined to admit there was something to be said for medical students, and having before considered all bad alike, became tolerant all round, more particularly of the really bad set, who appeared to him to ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... truthful and honest history of any country the historian should, that he may avoid overpraise and silly and mawkish sentiment, reside in a foreign country, or be so situated that he may put on a false moustache and get away as soon as the advance copies have been sent ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... see through you, Mr. Bold?" she said. "You are most desperately jealous of Mr. Cludde; you know you are; and of every other man in the room; and you show it, which is a very, very silly thing to do. Oh, don't speak; you would only tell me stories. Listen to me. Lucy is a dear friend of mine, and I know all about everything. You are a disgrace to your ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... Fears, by the Devils foolish glosses upon that Scripture, He that doubts is Damned; and that, the fearful shall have their portion in the burning Lake; The Devil sometimes has play'd the Preacher, but I say, Beware all silly Souls when such a ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... rushed to the conclusion that this girl had married an old and broken gambler for his money, and that she was of those to be easily won. Her air of demure reserve piqued him—pleased him. "She is no silly kitten," he mentally remarked, after their second meeting. "She's in for a big career. With beauty and youth and barrels of money she will go far, and I will be her guide—unless I have lost my cunning. She will share ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... of ludicrous effects. For example, keep a plain background behind your piano. Make sure that, when listening to music you are not distracted by seeing a bewildering section of a picture above the pianist's head, or a silly little vase dodging, as he moves, in front of, above, ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... novels his niece carried about, with a preposterous absence of success. He strove to arrange in some kind of sequence the things that he should say, when this momentous interview should begin, but he could think of nothing which did not sound silly. It would be all right, he argued to himself in the face of this present mental barrenness; he always talked well enough on the spur of the moment, when the time ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of the name of this fair has been much disputed. A silly tradition has been handed down, of a pedlar who travelled from the north to this fair, where, being very weary, he fell asleep at the only inn in the place. A person coming into the room where he lay, the pedlar's dog growled and woke his master, who called out, "Stir, bitch"; when the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... the cage and contemplated his fellow-captive—"foolish bird, the uneasiness and turmoil without have reached even to thee. Thou beatest thy wings against the wires, thou turnest thy bright eyes to mine restlessly. Why? Pantest thou to be free, silly one, that the hawk may swoop on its defenceless prey? Better, perhaps, the cage for thee, and the prison for thy master. Well, out if thou wilt! Here at least thou art safe!" and opening the cage, the starling flew to his bosom, and nestled there, with its small clear ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enough to think of tonight, without my teasing him," said Annot; "great soldiers like him have not time to talk to silly girls. I will walk across the green to Dame Rouel's, father; I ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Henson in Whitechapel debating alone against a hall full of opponents and with a fairness and infinite restraint, convincing those open to reason that they were mistaken. Moreover, I have seen Dr. Ingram doing just the same thing standing on a stone in the open park. It may all sound very silly when one knows that by human minds, or to the human mind, the Infinite can never be demonstrated as a mathematical proposition. But the point was that these clergy were proving that they were real ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... prevented all work, settling down with her friends in the very room he was writing in, and filling it with the silly chatter of idle women, who talked loud, full of disdain for a literary profession which brought in so little, and whose most laborious hours always resemble a capricious idleness. From time to time Heurtebise strove to escape from the life ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... preparing to slice bacon. "They're going to have one pretty soon—Cassidy's wife, I mean. They've given it a name already. If it's a boy it's Roger—if it's a girl it's Nada. They wanted me to tell you that. Silly bunch, aren't they? A ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... a poor silly girl by telling me What all those things they talk of really were, For it is true you did not help Chandos, And true, poor love! you could not come to me When I was in such peril. I should say: I am like Balen, all things turn to blame. ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... firmness, shed more milk of roses, I believe, upon my cheeks than tears; and why not? What should there be to her corresponding to an ignorant child's sense of pathos, in a little journey of about a hundred miles? Outside her door, however, there awaited me some silly creatures, women of course, old and young, from the nursery and the kitchen, who gave, and who received, those fervent kisses which wait only upon love without awe and without disguise. Heavens! what rosaries might be strung for the memory ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... good deal of watchfulness and patience; it is of greater value to a child to have grown one perfect flower than to have pulled many to pieces to examine their structure. And the care of animals may teach a great deal more if it learns to keep the balance between silly idolatry of pets and cruel negligence—the hot and cold ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... "It's silly," grunted the trainer. "'Course she wants to be on the course. It's only in Natur. It's her hoss, and her race. She ain't goin' to run no risks. And I don't blame her neether. There's only one way ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... it with bitterness. "I experienced in the Sound," said he, "the misery of having the honour of our country entrusted to a set of pilots, who have no other thought than to keep the ships clear of danger, and their own silly heads clear of shot. Everybody knows what I must have suffered; and if any merit attaches itself to me, it was for combating the dangers of the shallows in defiance of them." At length Mr. Bryerly, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... thrown her relations out of power; and, beyond her dowry, he obtained no worldly advantage with the lady of his mercenary choice. Mrs. Beaufort was a woman whom a word or two will describe. She was thoroughly commonplace—neither bad nor good, neither clever nor silly. She was what is called well-bred; that is, languid, silent, perfectly dressed, and insipid. Of her two children, Arthur was almost the exclusive favourite, especially after he became the heir to such brilliant fortunes. For she was so much the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... responded Richard, with a laugh." (There was nothing to laugh about; there never is. The writer puts it in from habit—automatically; he is paying no attention to his work; or he would see that there is nothing to laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly flat and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by enlarging the stage direction and making Richard break into "frenzies of uncontrollable laughter." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... out in her innocent glee,— "What a fool of yourself with the whistle you'd make! For only consider how silly 'twould be To sit there and whistle ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... back garden of the man from whom they bought the swords,[1] until the police intervene. They escape the police and gain the Northern Heights of London, and fight once more, with a madness renewed and stimulated by the peace-making efforts of a stray and silly Tolstoyan. Then the police come again, and are once more outdistanced. This time mortal combat is postponed on account of the sanguinolence of a casual lunatic who worshipped blood to such a nauseating extent that the duellists deferred operations in order to chase him into a pond. Then follows ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... added Wolston, "and then you may venture to assert in the face of kings that God alone is Great, should they, like Louis XIV., assume the sun as an emblem, and adopt such a silly scroll as 'Nec ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... do nothing but soothe her as he would a frightened child. This simple treatment, however, sufficed, for the sobs gradually diminished in violence, and at length ceased altogether; and presently Flora arose, declaring that she was herself again, and denouncing herself as a poor, weak, silly little mortal, who ought ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the Judge; I would have you above the idle fears of a silly girl. These canoes are the safest kind of boats to those who have skill and steady nerves. I have crossed the broadest part of the Oneida in one much ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... rubbed the knuckles of his right hand where the skin was barked off. He thought of the silly joke he and McGuffey had thought to perpetrate on Captain Scraggs by leading him up against a beating at the hands of a cannibal king, and with the thought came a grim, hard chuckle, though there was the look of a thousand devils in ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... too, is a second Elizabethan. It blossoms out daily into such flowers of fancy as never bloomed before, save then, on British soil. When men tell you nowadays we have "no great writers left," believe not the silly parrot cry. Nay, rather, laugh it down for them. We move in the midst of one of the mightiest epochs earth has ever seen, an epoch which will live in history hereafter side by side with the Athens of Pericles, the Rome of Augustus, the Florence ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... of Ephraim by the prophet Hosea. All the wicked dealings and defilement of Ephraim is uncovered—and the Lord said: "I will be unto Ephraim as a lion." Again Jehovah said: "Ephraim is like a cake not turned." "Ephraim is like a silly dove without heart." "Ephraim hath made many altars to sin." "Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone." But all reproof and chastisement did not bring Ephraim back. Nothing seemed to be able to draw Ephraim's heart away from the idols. At the close ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... just think!" and Betty looked much impressed by the fact, as well as uplifted by the knowledge that her friend did not agree in thinking her silly because she preferred playing with a harmless home-made toy to firing stones or snapping ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... wonder that she seemed so very silly. Incapable of finding any serious resource in her intellect, she had devoted her energies to outward things in a place where there was no one to applaud her efforts or flatter her vanity. Many women would have given it up and would have fallen into a state of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... "Have finished, you silly woman! Cannot you see that Captain Hocken is dying to leave us? . . . But you are to bring your friend, sir, at the ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... said Brownie. "An' a fair treat to work, with all them new improvements—no corners to the rooms, an' no silly skirtin' boards that'll catch dust, an' the water laid on everywhere, an' the air gas, an' all them other patent fixings. An' so comferable; better than the old one, any way you look at it. Miss Tommy's the lucky young lady to be comin' ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... herself—a quiet smile, half of disappointment, half of complacent feminine superiority. What a stupid fellow he was in some ways, after all! Even that silly Lord Connemara would have guessed what she was driving at, with only a quarter as much encouragement. But Ernest must be too much afraid of the social barrier clearly; so she began again, this time upon a slightly different but equally ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be,—and allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman who kept the house and attended ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... books, they told me, that nothing but knowledge could make me an agreeable companion to men of sense, or qualify me to distinguish the superficial glitter of vanity from the solid merit of understanding; and that a habit of reading would enable me to fill up the vacuities of life without the help of silly or dangerous amusements, and preserve me from the snares of idleness and the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... sir, have the goodness to step directly to Wrasp and Co.'s in Broad Street, and inquire if they have had instructions to appear in Carkem and Painter. THAT lad a robber,' sneered Sampson, flushed and heated with his wrath. 'Am I blind, deaf, silly; do I know nothing of human nature when I see it before ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... it very cunningly, Frank, as I expected you would, to return your compliment, but you must admit that with the boy, at any rate, you have no jealousy, no mean envyings, no silly inanities. There it is, Frank, some of us hate 'cats.' I can give reasons for my dislike, which to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... "You silly!" struck in Joan sharply. "That wasn't weally muver; it was only the bit of her that used to be tired and sick and have headiks. But the thinkin' place and the part of her that used to say 'Joan, darlin',' and 'Darby, my son,' in such a cuddlin' kind of voice, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... as silly as we can act!" she cried, speaking loud so that they could all hear her. "We mustn't give up hope. The boys, or Mr. Cameron, will find us. It ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... while this naughty person stepped in and robbed us of the only possessions worth having? No, no! It is not that he has done us harm—the one cheerful item in a universe of stony facts is that no one can harm anybody except himself—it is merely that we have been silly, precisely as silly as if we had taken a seat in the rain with a folded umbrella by our side.... The machine is at fault. I fancy we are now obtaining glimpses of what ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... a celebrity, of which we were ourselves at that time unaware. He was the identical bird which was brought from Marignan to Prince Maurice, governor of the Brazils, and whose pertinent answers to many silly questions are recorded in the pages of the greatest of English philosophers. My great grandfather was soon disgusted with the folly and cruelty of what is called civilized life; and having seen an Indian ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... there are people robbed of their rights—communities laid waste—faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and wellnigh destroyed—nay, in the very centre of royalty itself, what horrible stains and meanness, crime and shame! It is but to a silly harlot that some of the noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the world, are bowing down; it is the price of a miserable province that the king ties in diamonds round his mistress's white neck. In the first half of the last century, I say, this is going on all Europe ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Pucke, You do their worke, and they shall haue good lucke. Are not you he? Rob. Thou speak'st aright; I am that merrie wanderer of the night: I iest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likenesse of a silly foale, And sometime lurke I in a Gossips bole, In very likenesse of a roasted crab: And when she drinkes, against her lips I bob, And on her withered dewlop poure the Ale. The wisest Aunt telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stoole, mistaketh ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a couple of young ladies; one of them has the character of the prettiest company, yet really I thought her but silly; the other, who talked a great deal less, I observed to have understanding. The lady who is reckoned such a companion among her acquaintance, has only, with a very brisk air, a knack of saying the commonest ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... capital. I've lost mine. Unless I get help, an' a thumpin' big slice of it, my name figures in the Gazette. I want fifty thousand pounds, an' oo's goin' to give it to me? Not the public. They're fed up on shippin'. They're not so silly as they used to be. I put it to owd Dickey yesterday, an' 'e said you couldn't raise money in Liverpool to-day to build a ferry-boat. But 'e said summat else. If you wed 'im, 'e makes you a partner in the firm of Verity, Bulmer an' Co. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... of a man who in Chamisso's tale sold his shadow to the devil, a synonym of one who makes a desperate or silly bargain. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Peake. We made a leisurely journey up the country, as it was of no use to overtake our stores. At Beltana Mr. Chandler had got and kept my black boy Dick, who pretended to be overjoyed to see me, and perhaps he really was; but he was extra effusive in his affection, and now declared he had been a silly young fool, that he didn't care for wild blacks now a bit, and would go with me anywhere. When Mr. Chandler got him he was half starved, living in a blacks' camp, and had scarcely any clothes. Leaving Beltana, in ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... of the dead Squire in his hand, and examined it with frowning care. He put one finger through the hole in the crown and moved it meditatively. And Paynter realized how fanciful his own fatigue must have made him; for so silly a thing as the black finger waggling through the rent in that frayed white relic unreasonably displeased him. The doctor soon made the same discovery with professional acuteness, and applied it much further. For when Paynter began ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... it. "What if it is pretty? it is old-fashioned. No matter that the lace is rich, when nobody wears it. I must look as though I were dressed in my grandmother's clothes. I wish I was back in my poor home. There I am at least sheltered from criticism. I am a fool in daring to face fashion: I am the silly moth in the candle." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... been capable of receiving them; he tried his very best to help her; but she felt through it all that they were barbarians to each other, and that Father Bevis regarded her as partially incomprehensible and wholly silly. ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... it. It's all my silly fault that she went away. I thought she was getting on your nerves. But you want pulling together. That confounded place you've been to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... her mother and said nothing. There was nothing to say. I had four hundred dollars in the bank and I gave her that. I didn't ask her reasons. I didn't say anything. When she had gone I cried like a silly boy. Pretty soon I had a chance to sell the house and I sent ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... Silly, have you forgotten that this is Tuesday—Maggie's night out? She's gone—I told her she needn't wait to clear away. We've arranged master's supper. Master! You're ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... neutral on French internal affairs.[154] This little episode should open the eyes of detractors of Pitt to the extraordinary difficulty of his position. Of one thing we may be certain. The readiest way of assuring the doom of the hapless monarch was to take up some one of the silly or guileful schemes then mooted for pressing the British Government to take sides in the trial. Pitt's rigorous neutrality was the best means of helping the advocates of Louis in their uphill fight ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... What bolting, tramping, and rushing would they not have made through the ranks of the astonished professors and students? The Anniversary set, for example, who sweep the pews of men, or, coming upon one forlorn, crush him as a boa does a sheep. Our silly little flock only laughed, colored, and retreated to the volantes, where they held a council of war, and decided to go visit some establishment where possibly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... "he has no moral force, no imagination. He judges men by their manners, which is silly. He thinks that every one who is polite to him believes in him. He will have to send in ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... message of Rudyard Kipling, that upon which he has really concentrated, is the only thing worth worrying about in him or in any other man. He has often written bad poetry, like Wordsworth. He has often said silly things, like Plato. He has often given way to mere political hysteria, like Gladstone. But no one can reasonably doubt that he means steadily and sincerely to say something, and the only serious question is, What is that which he has tried to say? Perhaps ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... "How silly you are!—Don't look over there: I see M. Pincette coming to ask us to dance. The more I see of him, the more I detest him. He is stupid, he is fair, his whiskers are too large, he doesn't dance in time: he has no attractions. Don't you think he looks like the Abbe Julien, who used ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... ordinary expense. But while the funds arising from extensive farms, and the abundant produce of a fertile soil, enabled the rich to indulge extravagant habits, many of the less wealthy envied the enjoyment of those luxuries which fortune had denied to them; and, prompted by vanity, and a silly desire of imitation, so common in civilized communities, they pursued a career which speedily led to the accumulation of debt, and demanded the interference of the legislature; and it is probable that a law, so severe as this must have appeared to the Egyptians, was only adopted as a measure ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... man did.... Funny—how the sky fell down and turned over and over like a blue carpet rolling you up, and the grass caught at your face— it couldn't have been spiteful— it must have been saving itself. Hot road... silly wind playing with your hair.... The road smelled of horses. I only got up when ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... two things,' said Althea, who felt some remonstrance necessary. Miss Buchanan said no, she supposed not; it was silly to be superstitious; yet ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... that we heard the booming bark of dogs echoing from great buildings at the back. And now the half-weaned calves that have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible bark, doubtless supposing that it has ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... is the Queen of Nonsense Land, She wears her bonnet on her hand; She carpets her ceilings and frescos her floors, She eats on her windows and sleeps on her doors. Oh, ho! Oh, ho! to think there could be A lady so silly-down-dilly as she! ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... this means art taken off from leaning on any thing below Jesus for eternal life. It is likely, if thou wast not sensible of many by-thoughts and wickednesses in thy best performances, thou wouldst go near to be some proud, abominable hypocrite, or a silly, proud, dissembling wretch at the best; such a one as wouldst send thy soul to the devil in a bundle of ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... his bathing suit and was climbing into his clothes when I arrived. He beamed at me and his whole face crinkled into smiles. I was so afraid that he was going to make a silly speech that I pushed his automatic into his hands and said, "You'd better take this, old man. The other party's in swift retreat and, from the condition of his wrist, I don't fancy you'll receive another billet-doux ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... his chair, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him gently on the forehead. "Never mind, dear. You mustn't let these silly people annoy you. I'm sorry now I worried you to-night about my brother, Jimmy. I might have left it until the ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... chloroform, the smell of antiseptics, the shiny instruments, the cutting, the nipping of blood-vessels with forceps and tying them, the clipping with scissors, the sewing—all went to my head. And I constantly had to tell myself, 'Don't be silly! You're not going to faint. He might fail if you did. That tray, those forceps, those sponges, that thread, that's what he wants now. Keep your head. Don't be a quitter.' And so on through eternity—it seemed an eternity, anyway. I think ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... was silly enough to fall in love with you from the first, Francisco, and I was sure that you, in your dull English fashion, cared for her. My father confided to me, long since, that he hoped it would ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... failed humanity if it is so blinded by the monstrous agony in Flanders as to miss the essential triviality at the head of the present war. Not the slaughter of ten million men can make the quality of the German Kaiser other than theatrical and silly. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and solacing the weary hours, though doubtless they were as sly and kept themselves as unobserved as possible. Four Yarmouth men—old sea-dogs, perhaps, who loved their pipe—were in 1687 fined 4s. each for smoking tobacco around the end of the meeting-house. Silly, ostrich-brained Yarmouth men! to fancy to escape detection by hiding around the corner of the church; and to think that the tithing-man had no nose when he was ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... that we were actually a live club, come together with a genuine aim to do real good. I can see now that we are going to accomplish something worth while. We are not going to be merely a set of empty-headed, silly women with nothing to do. Oh, I tell you that I have some great plans, now that at last we are really started out right. Now, we can outline our plans of work among women less fortunate than we ourselves. We can find places for them, we can lead them on to better things, ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... Zaareth; farewell, Temainte. [Exeunt JEWS.] And, Barabas, now search this secret out; Summon thy senses, call thy wits together: These silly men mistake the matter clean. Long to the Turk did Malta contribute; Which tribute all in policy, I fear, The Turk has [30] let increase to such a sum As all the wealth of Malta cannot pay; And now by ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... to a widowed father, the home sister to two brothers, she would be consulted, leant on, confided in. Mr. Symons missed his wife at every turn, but he never felt Henrietta could take her place. Her nagging shut up his heart against her. He thought it silly, rather unfairly, perhaps, for she inherited the habit from her mother, and he had never thought ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... goodness to step directly to Wrasp and Co.'s in Broad Street, and inquire if they have had instructions to appear in Carkem and Painter. THAT lad a robber,' sneered Sampson, flushed and heated with his wrath. 'Am I blind, deaf, silly; do I know nothing of human nature when I see it before me? Kit ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... born at Maidstone, and has done eleven years' service. During the attack on the 6th he was sitting beside his gun waiting for Major Abdy's word to fire in his turn, when a 96lb. shell from "Bulwan" struck him in its flight, and shattered his left arm and leg. He says he was knocked silly, and felt a bit fluttered, but had no pain till they lifted him into the dhoolie. He broke the record, I believe, by surviving a double amputation on the same side, which left him only about 6 in. of thigh and 4 in. of arm. For every movement he ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... should be insulted so by a perfect stranger in my own home!" And the Countess wept some more. "What earthly connection is there between your silly questions about the Earl's cigars and the diamond-robbery, I should ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... of that," observed the lieutenant; "except a few silly young people of the better classes, and the poor, who look out for the loaves and fishes in the shape of coals and blankets and other creature comforts, I don't think many are influenced by him. He is more likely to empty his church, and to ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... Graham immensely, was seized with sudden diffidence. He was a connoisseur in all matters of art. Suppose he should say right before Miss Pritchard, that she was only a silly tomboy, or whatever such a gentleman would say to express that idea? She glanced ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... Almost he hoped he should not find the man, and could believe that he had dreamed the angel vision. But when he came, after a long, toilful walk, to the village, and the square, alas! there was the clown, doing his silly tricks for ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... the talk had to have a silly meretricious flavour in it which tired him further; in the afternoon they walked on the front; and they went to another hotel for tea. There was a blaring band and much noise and laughter from all the pleasure-people. The air ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... big, fat, red star-fish, who was sticking to the side of a rock. Why the dragonet snapped at him I have no idea. I do not believe he hurt him; but the star-fish gradually relaxed his hold, and fell slowly and helplessly on to his back; on which the dragonet looked as silly as the Sultan of Casgar's purveyor when the hunchback fell beneath his blows. Another dragonet came hastily up to see what was the matter; but prudently made off again, and left the star-fish and his neighbour as they were. I waited a long ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... be a Sunday-school teacher, but I average up pretty well, after all. I appear to a disadvantage. When Raimon died I took hold of his business out here and I've made it pay. I have a talent for business, and I like it. I've got enough to be silly with if I want to, but I intend to take care of myself—and I may even marry again. I can see you're deeply involved in a love affair, Mose, and I honestly want to help you—but I shan't say another word about it—only remember, when you need help ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... Barnaby, and the children of the place came flocking round him—as she remembered to have done with their fathers and mothers round some silly beggarman, when a child herself. None of them knew her; they passed each well-remembered house, and yard, and homestead; and striking into the fields, were ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and women's faces. 'I cannot go home,' thought the girl, and acting in direct contradiction to her thoughts, she walked forward. Her parasol—where was it? It was broken. She brushed herself, she picked bits of furze from her dress. She held each away from her and let it drop in a silly, vacant way, all the while running the phrases over in her mind: 'He threw me down and ill-treated me; my frock is ruined, what a state it is in! I had a narrow escape of being murdered. I will tell them that... that will explain ... ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... by her, but to some one else by some other woman?' In reality this should have been a matter of indifference to him ... and yet he had to admit to himself that he did not want this to be so. 'That would be too silly,' he thought, 'even sillier than this!' A nervous unrest began to gain possession of him; he began to shiver—not outwardly, but inwardly. He several times took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket, looked at the face, put it back, and each time forgot how many ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... will. It may hurt Milly, she is so gentle and dear, and you are their best friend. I won't have it! I won't! I'm tired, anyway, of having fun made of all the sacred things in life. All of us swing around in a silly whirl and when a woman like Mildred begins to live her life in a—er—natural way, we—ridicule! She is brave and strong and works hard; and she has the real things of life and makes the sacrifices for ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... which. Why, it is like a miracle, the finding of this bag out here in the desert. It is the clue I have been searching after for nearly five years." He seemed to pull himself together with an effort, realizing her presence. "Excuse me, Miss McDonald, but this thing knocked me silly. I hardly knew what I ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the doors an' winnocks rattle, I thought me on the ourie cattle, Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle O' winter war, And thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... his men, resolved to raise the siege for a time; but the defenders were so unfortunate as to have their powder damaged by the women they had within. Having sent them out by silence of night to draw in water, out of a well that lay just at the entrance of the castle, the silly women were in such fear, and the room they brought the water into being so dark for want of light, when they came in they poured the water into a vat, missing the right one, wherein the few barrels of powder they had lay. And in the morning, when the men came for more powder, having exhausted ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... cards bearing aces and spades, and cards with the likenesses of Dr. Busby's son and servant, Doll the dairymaid, and the like. When it comes to a question of profit, one is an amusement involving a good deal of healthy, mental exertion, while the other is about as silly and profitless a way of spending an evening as can well be imagined. Youth must not dance, but they may march to music in company, and go through calisthenic exercises, involving a good deal more motion than dancing. ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... artist, I mustn't be a comic-supplement wife and object to his using models!' Oh, I was going to be so good and reasonable. You would have loved me! And then, when it came to the real thing, I found I just could not stand it. I know it's silly of me. I know just as well as you do that Miss Vince is quite a nice girl really, and is going to make a splendid Mrs. Travelling Salesman, but that doesn't help me. It's my wicked nature, I suppose. I'm just a plain ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... much that a young woman may do for herself which I think you have done. A silly girl, though she had been a second Helen, would hardly ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... could see a ravenous hawk upon a tree, abashed at Mr. Prigg's presence and superior ability; and a fluttering timid lark seemed to shriek, "Wicked bird, live and let live;" but it was the last word the silly lark uttered, for the hawk was upon him in a moment, and the little innocent songster was crushed in its ravenous beak. Still the cuckoo sang on in praise of Mr. Prigg, with now and then a little note for Mrs. ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... you were too sensible to play such a silly game as this. If I had any Kitty-mouse I'd have a good one who liked you to play in safe pleasant ways, and not destroy and frighten. Just see what a ruin you have made; all Daisy's pretty dolls, Demi's soldiers, and Rob's new village beside poor Teddy's pet lamb, and dear old Annabella. I shall ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... And her silly hand clutching the window ledge. She let go, quick, afraid he would turn sentimental at the end. But no; he was settling down heavily in his corner, blinking ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... would not disgrace the poet and his admirer. Garrick produced a passage that he had once heard the Doctor commend, in which he now found, if I remember rightly, sixteen faults, and made Garrick look silly at his own table. When I told Mr. Johnson the story, "Why, what a monkey was David now," says he, "to tell of his own disgrace!" And in the course of that hour's chat he told me how he used to tease Garrick by commendations of the tomb-scene in Congreve's 'Mourning Bride,' protesting, that Shakespeare ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... At first only confused words, silly excuses, clumsy falsehoods, cruelly absurd phrases—caprices, nothing serious, whim, madness—so many avowals, so many insults, came to his lips. But then, before the silence of Adrienne, he could say nothing more, he was speechless, overwhelmed, and sought ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... is one bigger mistake than another," she said, "it is the mistake of being fond of any one. Oh, how silly girls are when they get engaged ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... earliest known specimen of Castilian prose; and several smaller works, now collected under the general title of 'Opuscules Legales' (Minor Legal Writings). It was long supposed that he wrote the 'Tesoro' (Thesaurus), a curious medley of ignorance and superstition, much of it silly, and all of it curiously inconsistent with the acknowledged character of the enlightened King. Modern scholarship, however, discards this petty treatise from the list of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... hopping around with leaves in their teeth would look silly," objected the man, "I doubt if I could ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... she ain't anything—that's about the worst I can say of her. There ain't anything bad about her—oh, no. Sometimes I've been driven to wish there was, if I do say it! She's just what I should call one of them characterless sort of folks—kind of soft and silly, like a silk sofy cushion without enough stuffing in it. Always talking, she is, without saying anything in particular. I don't know about the children. They were little things when I saw 'em last. What do ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... magic arts and incantations. But I have never experienced anything of the sort until to-day. Compose yourself, my dear good comrade, and go with me back to the shore." Fadrique laughed fiercely, and answered, "Set aside your silly delusion, and if you must have everything explained to you, word by word, in order to understand it, know then that the lady whom you came to meet in the shrubbery of this my garden is Dona Clara ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... for his mother had magnified his scruples—very pious and respectable scruples, but exaggerated. As he put this conclusion into words in his own mind he felt happy, as at the doing of a good action; and he resolved to be nice to every one beginning with his father, whose manias, and silly statements, and vulgar opinions, and too conspicuous mediocrity were a constant ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... wives in America are knocking the church debt silly, by working up their husbands' groceries into "angel food" and selling them below actual cost, is deserving of the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... "Come, come, my silly child; do you imagine that a contract is like a house of cards which you can blow down at will? Dear little ignoramus, you don't know what trouble we have had to found an entail for the benefit of your eldest son. Don't ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Don't be a silly idiot! I think Miss Strong's absolutely adorable. Don't you like the decorations in the corridor? Miss Godwin and some of the School of Art students did them. But just wait till you've seen the lecture-hall! Here we are! Now then, what d'you ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... cool and composed: "Oh come on, Kit don't be silly. There's enough to do, goodness knows, without you staging a ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... night, to keep the silly sheep, Hosts of angels in their sight came down from heaven's high steep. Tidings! tidings! unto you: to you a Child is born, Purer than the drops of dew, and brighter than the morn. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... themselves whether they ever said anything to their sweethearts, and those young men have answered, "No; that they didn't know as they did." So that I am inclined to believe that they are contented with that silent utterance of the heart which is so superior to the silly whisperings one hears ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... had no reason at all except wanton mischief. Perhaps he used the buttons for marbles; there cannot be any real reason for such a silly deed, though he may make one up. Well, why did ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... contemptible and silly as it was reprehensible for a late celebrated novelist to pretend that he believed there was at place called Bloomsbury-square, but he really did not know; because that was merely done for the purpose of raising a silly laugh among persons who were ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Oh! if one only knew what one puts one's foot into when we love a man, on my word of honor we would let you alone to take care of yourselves, you men! However, if you are going away to-morrow we won't talk of disagreeable things,—that would be silly." ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... To-morrow is their last day for walking, and, like loving fools as they are, they will be so absorbed in each others' feelings, and the silly sentimentality of love, as to be easily surprised. Yes, to-morrow ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... for suppositions and analysis," panted Fitzgerald, reknotting his silk tie. "As for me, I go to the Arctic; cold, but safe. I have never fallen in love. I have enjoyed the society of many women, and to some I've been silly enough to write, but I have never been maudlin. I'm no fool. This is the place where it would be most likely to happen. Let us beat an orderly retreat. What the devil ails my fingers to-night? M'h! ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... going to repeat her half-silly words?" demanded Miss Blake, angrily. "Poor dear, she was out of her mind half the ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... great merit as an artist. He was in Rome the winter I was there, and I met him in society, and saw several of his pictures. He was rather injured artistically, I think, by living with mad lords and silly ladies who used to pet and spoil him, which sort of thing damages our artists, who become bitten with the "aristocratic" mania, and destroy themselves as fine workmen in their ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... to be. But, she blushed with shame—what must he think of her? Of her defense of Bethune, of her deliberate rudeness, and worst of all, of her night ride with the horse-thieves? He knew she had suspected him—had even accused him. Would he ever regard her as other than a silly fool? Vividly she pictured him as he had looked lashing his way to her through the wildly crowding horse herd, determined, capable, masterful—and wondered vaguely what her answer would have been had he made love to ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... the sea, along the shore, In numbers more and ever more, From lonely hut and busy town, The valley through, the mountain down, What was it ye went out to see, Ye silly folk of Galilee? The reed that in the wind doth shake? The weed that washes in the lake? The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?— young man preaching ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... of his duties as a member of the guard he was very conscientious and ever on the alert. No stray pig, wandering sheep, or silly calf could pass in front of his part of the line without being investigated by him. It is possible that his vigilance in investigating intruding meats was sharpened by the hope of substantial recognition in the way of a stray rib extracted from the marauding ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... than that the Commissioners from the Confederated States will be received here and recognized by Abraham Lincoln. I will now predict that this Republican Party that is going to enforce the Laws, preserve the Union, and collect Revenue, will never attempt anything so silly; and that instead of taking Forts, the troops will be withdrawn from those which we now have. See if this does not turn out to be so, in less than a ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... solid, solemn fool. Another disguise they have, (for fools, as well as knaves, take other names, and pass by an alias) and that is, the title of honest fellows. But this honesty of theirs ought to have many grains for its allowance; for certainly they are no farther honest, than they are silly: They are naturally mischievous to their power; and if they speak not maliciously, or sharply, of witty men, it is only because God has not bestowed on them the gift of utterance. They fawn and crouch to men ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... no response. Her eyes were fastened upon the road ahead, and evidently my lady possessed no desire for the discovery of any such tie. Watching her, I pressed my lips together, and held her as a proud and silly fool. ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... criminal lieutenant to join with the others in signing the report, and almost at the same moment he learned that the cause of his adversaries was strengthened by the adhesion of a certain Messire Rene Memin, seigneur de Silly, and prefect of the town. This gentleman was held in great esteem not only on account of his wealth and the many offices which he filled, but above all on account of his powerful friends, among whom was the cardinal-duke himself, to whom he had formerly been of use when the cardinal was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mind racing. "This is silly," he said finally. "Perfectly idiotic. Those schools must ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... been to college together, and we were going to the Bar together, when - you know! Dear, dear me! what a pity that was! A life spoiled, a fine young fellow as good as buried here in the wilderness with rustics; and all for what? A frolic, silly, if you like, but no more. God, how good your scones ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suppose it is evident to all that Miss Mayhew's early and, indeed, present influences are sadly against her; but unfortunate as have been her associations of late, I am coming to the belief that, however faulty she may be, she is not naturally either silly or weak. But my acquaintance with her is very slight, and I must confess I do not understand her very well. For some reason she shuns me and has evidently disliked me from ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... moral. And there are so many histories for young people to read. They ought to have the real truth instead of silly make-believes and trashy ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... old-fashioned Dutch winders. I ducked my head, and he hit that. I knew it hurt him, for he did not use that duke any more. I got in under him, let fly with my head, and caught him square in the face. It made him grunt, but the next time I got one in on him I made him look silly, for the blood came out of his ears and nose. He said, ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... saying his prayers to mamma," says the little girl, who came up to her papa's knees; and my lord burst out into another great laugh at this, and kinsman Henry looked very silly. He invented a half-dozen of speeches in reply, but 'twas months afterwards when he thought of this adventure: as it was, he had never a word ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... think he will ever make a really good Hun. He is rather like a child who for four years has been crying incessantly for the moon. Having got it, he says, "Well, I'm glad I've got it; now let's get on with something else," and takes not the slightest interest in the silly old moon he has acquired with so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... in the darkness of the autumn night with frightened eyes. She hated herself for feeling nervous. She had told Aunt Raby that, of course, she would have no silly tremors, yet here she was trembling and scarcely able to pay ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... girl said—and she laughed a little self-consciously. "My reason tells me it's a silly way to feel. I can never quite consider theology and the preachers from the same dispassionate plane that dad can. There's a foolish sense of personal grievance. Dad had it once, too, but he got over it long ago. I never have. Perhaps you'll understand if I tell you. My mother was ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... set about it methodically, eagerly. It was something to occupy her mind and keep out a little of that burning sense of shame. One picture it could not obliterate, and that was the scene of Jacqueline and Pierre le Rouge laughing together over the love affair with the silly ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... air is full of the clamour of rich and prosperous people invited to pay taxes, and beyond measure bitter. They are going to live abroad, cut their charities, dismiss old servants, and do all sorts of silly, vindictive things. We seem to be doing feeble next-to-nothings in the endowment of research. Not one in twenty of the boys of the middle and upper classes learns German or gets more than a misleading smattering of physical science. Most of them never learn ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... it, but were hindered by the stupidity of the calf. The latter was placed between them in such a way that the heads of the bull and cow were in opposite directions, and thus both flanks were guarded. In this way the buffaloes might have held their ground, but the silly calf when closely menaced by the wolves foolishly started out, rendering it necessary for its protectors to assume a ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... some more about what you did last week—I mean, how you took a room across the street and spied upon that hateful man and saw through the whole thing when we were too blind to know what was going on. And I want to apologize for the silly things I said that Sunday morning. Will you ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... of much ignorance," he continued to Martin. "They have much fear. They know a silly story their mothers have told them, about the Evil Ones calling from the deep pit; it is a—what you say?—a folk story of the Japanese. These men are of ignorance. But we gentlemen know it is of absurdness, and most untrue. It is a story of ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... unusual degree. It seemed impossible that she could be acting as a decoy for unworthy ends. He laughed at the thought, and at the fun he would some day have in recounting his fears to her, and at her imaginary explanation of the driver's silly talk. At the same time he examined his revolver, which he kept well concealed, despite the law, in the depths of ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... women force us to the polls, or compel us to vote for this silly measure? Besides, the state constitution is a perfect protection; only males can vote. This is all a form of feminine hysteria, Stacey; it's bound to pass. Just sit tight in the boat and wait. I don't mind telling ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... trail of blood on the grass plot. Dr. Talbot, who was there, will remember how she looked on that occasion; but I doubt if he noticed how Abel here looked, or so much as remarked the faded flower the silly boy had stuck ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... his silly way of talking, sir. He would say, 'Tomlinson, if you tell the pater what time I came home last night I'll stab you to the heart.' When there was a bit of a family squabble he would threaten to mix a gallon of weed-killer and drink every drop. Everything was rotten, or beastly, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... I had several little caches in the holes of trees, or the chinks of buildings, where we concealed small coins or curious stones on our walks, and at a later date revisited them. We were frankly silly about certain things. He and I had some imaginary personages—Dr. Waddilove, supposed to be a rich beneficed clergyman of Tory views; Mr. McTurk, a matter-of-fact Scotsman; Henry Bland, a retired schoolmaster with copious stores of information; ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... boy. Do you think it is a nice thing, a gentlemanly thing, upright, and honest, and worthy of Papa's only son, to sneak about listening to what you were not meant to hear. Now don't begin to cry, Reginald," he added, rather sharply; "you have nothing to cry for, and it's either silly or ill-tempered to whimper because I show you that you've done wrong. Anybody may do wrong; and if you think that you have, why say you're sorry, like a man, and ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... person who could deliberately adopt such a conclusion should trouble himself any more to look for truth. If a mere absurdity could make its way out of a little fishing village in Galilee, and spread through the whole civilized world; if men are so pitiably silly, that in an age of great mental activity their strongest thinkers should have sunk under an absorption of fear and folly, should have allowed it to absorb into itself whatever of heroism, of devotion, self-sacrifice, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... freely. Places asked in this way are never out of place," said the minister, laughing; for there is no jest too silly ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... all?" asked Teacher. Then without waiting for a reply he added, "It is because of the way Mrs. Teacher and I build our nest. Some people think it is like an oven and so they call us Oven Birds. I think that is a silly name myself, quite as silly as Golden Crowned Thrush, which is what some people call me. I'm not a Thrush. I'm not even related to the Thrush family. I'm a Warbler, ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... the guard and seals to wear on festive occasions. But the watch, no. He has had enough of such silly things. Henceforth, as formerly, the sun will suffice him for a timekeeper. That is not given to dying, nor does it require sitting up with at night and such like attentions, and it manages its own ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... an Old Person of Chili, Whose conduct was painful and silly; He sate on the stairs, Eating apples and pears, That ...
— Book of Nonsense • Edward Lear
... a few days that nebulous mass of whirling particles—the disorderly children—began to take definite form. The children seemed to begin to find their own way; in many of the objects they had at first despised as silly playthings, they began to discover a novel interest, and, as a result of this new interest, they began to act as independent individuals." Miss George's subsequent expression is: "They became extremely individual." "Thus it came to pass that an object of absorbing interest to one ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... as he accepted this assurance, telling himself that his brother magistrate was as honest as he was silly. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... After which Spillikins used to be invited up to the house by Edward and Adelina. They both used to tell him how much they owed him; and they, too, used to join in the chorus and say, "You know, Peter, you're awfully silly ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... likely to make a man repose, with slumbering virtue upon them, for the distinction he is to receive in society, than to inspire the effort of rendering himself worthy of them. They are to men what beauty is to women, a dangerous gift, which has a natural tendency to make them indolent, silly, and worthless. Let property be hereditary, but let titular honours be the reward of noble or useful exertions. France, in her folly, has destroyed them totally, instead of making them conditional.” Howbeit, titled people appear to have been highly honoured ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... came home, resolved to pay the newly-married couple a visit; and, suddenly, told Athelwold to prepare for his immediate coming. Athelwold, terrified, confessed to his young wife what he had said and done, and implored her to disguise her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, that he might be safe from the King's anger. She promised that she would; but she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a queen than the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her best dress, and adorned herself with her richest jewels; ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... about as comfortable as a restless genius could be—that is, I should have been so had it not been for the damp and frigid influence of Aunt Sarah, who sympathised neither with genius nor youth, and certainly not with the two in combination. Twenty times a day she grieved me by calling me "silly little boy," and twenty times a day she exasperated me by reminding Harry, and, through him, me, that "little boys should ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... fifteen, when I overheard a young lady say I was growing pretty. I went to my mirror and spent some moments in unalloyed happiness and triumph. Then I thought, "Pretty face, the worms will eat you. All the prettiest girls I know are silly, but you shall never make a fool of me. Helen's beauty ruined Troy. Cleopatra was a wretch. So if you are pretty, I will ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... I did not look very silly? My lord, smiling, and gazing at me from head to foot; Lord Jackey grinning and laughing, like an oaf, as I then, in my spite, thought. Indeed the countess said, encouragingly to me, but severely ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... trusted him to carry out neatly whatever he undertook. Even over that he compelled my angry admiration. So neat! the fiend, the devil, he had got the better of me before I had had the chance to put up even the feeblest struggle. I curse myself now for my silly bravado in accompanying him when he asked me. I might have known I wasn't a match for him. But I'll be even with him yet," he said, his nervous hands fumbling at his collar, "I'll be even with him yet; I'll bide my time," and ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... distinguished from our naval, plans are permitted practically to ignore the possibility. Compulsion or no compulsion, those plans will be the same. They will be unaffected by any amount of invasion-scaring, and therefore to try to foster pessimism in the public by alarums about invasion is both silly and naughty. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... who were then at the head of our Government. The emigrants, who, as it has been truly said, had neither learned nor forgotten anything, came back with all the absurd pretensions of Coblentz. Their silly vanity reminded one of a character in one of Voltaire's novels who is continually saying, "Un homme comme moi!" These people were so engrossed with their pretended merit that they were blind to everything else. They not only disregarded the wishes and the wants ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Galitzin was clever, I was wrong; he has a kind heart, and is very fond of me. Now that he has lost his mother, I shall be more kind to him. He is a person one can depend upon; his letters are silly productions. Those Russians have always ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... me with its continual fog-horn, and I thought I would write to the owner (a small local dairy-farmer) to see if he could manage to find another field in which to batten this cow, where it could moo till it broke its silly tonsils for all I should care; so I indited this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... to-day the girl who will be your wife. How do you want her to be treated by the boys who are her school-companions? Do you like to think that they are rough with her, or playing at lovering with her? Is it a pleasant thought that she is allowing them to caress her or write her silly ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... philosophical smile with which doctors and nurses—and indeed, sometimes, anybody who happens to be feeling pretty well himself—console, or exasperate, suffering humanity. "A very good thing the poor silly child did come to me!" That was the form her thoughts took. For although Dr. Mary Arkroyd was, and knew herself to be, no dazzling genius at her profession—in moments of candor she would speak of ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... imagine, if we like, that there is nothing beyond the village limits, and nothing in it but that which relates to the village. We have the right to be silly, if we wish to be. And it is no sign of wisdom to say that there is a county beyond, but that the county boundaries end all, and only village and county politics may be studied. The European who believed—no ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... Mr. Busby's proposed means of checkmating a rival. In the words of Governor Gipps, this "silly and unauthorized act was a paper pellet fired off" at the hero of an even more pretentious fiasco. An adventurer of French parentage, a certain Baron de Thierry, had proclaimed himself King of New Zealand, and through the agency of missionary ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... "Oh, don't be silly!" admonished Cis, apprehensive, but calm, being buoyed up by hope based upon solid information. "Didn't I tell you, Johnnie, to 'wait till Mr. Perkins finds out'? Well, we waited, tied to the table like two thieves, or something. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... by the billy-goated dispositioned, vulgar plebeian, who could no more be made to read cold, scientific, ungarnished facts than you can make an unwilling horse drink at the watering-trough. Human weakness and perversity is silly, but it is sillier to ignore that it exists. So, for the sake of boring and driving a few solid facts into the otherwise undigesting and unthinking, as well as primarily obdurate understanding of the untutored ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... has occurred in this case must ever occur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.... Now that the election is over, may ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... general, the quantities in which Mrs. Lowder dealt. He would have liked as well to ask her how feasible she supposed it for a poor young man to resemble her at any point; but he had after all soon enough perceived that he was doing as she wished by letting his wonder show just a little as silly. He was conscious moreover of a small strange dread of the results of discussion with her—strange, truly, because it was her good nature, not her asperity, that he feared. Asperity might have made him angry—in which ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... Amos had foreseen was not long in coming. The Israelites flew spontaneously, like "silly doves," into the net of the Assyrians. Zechariah ben Jeroboam was overthrown after a short reign, Shallum his murderer and successor was also unable to hold his own, and was followed after the horrors of a civil war by Menahem ben Gadi ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... contrary, claim that we saved what of Columbia remains unconsumed. And without hesitation I charge General Wade Hampton with having burned his own city of Columbia, not with a malicious intent or as the manifestation of a silly 'Roman stoicism,' but from folly, and want of sense, in filling it with lint, cotton, and tinder. Our officers and men on duty worked well to extinguish the flames; but others not on duty, including the officers who had long been imprisoned there, rescued by us, may have assisted ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... it a very silly business," exclaimed Mr. Hartshorn emphatically, "for the workers in different industries to be proceeding with national movements independently of each other. A short time ago we had a national stoppage on the railways; that, as a matter of course, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... floor of the carryall, with her head in John's lap, crying and sobbing for joy that the visit was over and that she was on the way home. "If only I live to get there," she said, "I'll never, no, never, go into the country again!" which was silly enough; but we must forgive her because ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... right to go against the law? But you did go against it! Things are arranged in a certain way, and it's no use going against them! You mustn't even discuss them. But what did you do? You got some maggot into your head. A convent, indeed! Silly fool! What did the girl want? Did she want your convent? What a set of muddle-headed fools there seems to be now! Just think what's happened! You, you're neither fish nor fowl, nor good red-herring. And the girl's done for! ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... too often the simplicity of Mother Goose rather than of Chaucer. Instances of this occur in such poems as Peter Bell, the Idiot Boy, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, Simon Lee, and the Wagoner. But there are multitudes of Wordsworth's ballads and lyrics which are simple without being silly, and which, in their homeliness and clear {229} profundity, in their production of the strongest effects by the fewest strokes, are among the choicest modern examples of pure, as distinguished from decorated, art. Such are (out of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... matters together, and to set up housekeeping. But both were poor—poor as church mice; and, just for that reason, the father of Maud did not look very favourably upon the settled love-affair of his daughter. He would have been better satisfied if the silly thing, as he called her, had given her hand to one of the rich suitors, who would have given their ears to please her. Since, however, once for all, the mischief was done, he, like a good man, determined to cause his only child no heartache, and let matters get on as they might. One condition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... idea of the natural inferiority of the Negro as a silly excuse. He conceded that most of the blacks were improvident and poor, but believed that their condition was not due to deficient understanding but to their lack of education. He was very much impressed with their achievements in music.[1] So disgusting was this notion ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... He would have liked to make a theatrical bow and say something silly, too, but he only smiled, felt an awkwardness that was like shame, and waited impatiently ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... right; but I was afraid lest it should send the blood to my head. I have always had a horror of brides who looked as if they had just got up from table. Religious emotions should be too profound to be expressed by anything save pallor. It is silly to blush ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... are assigned to a Being, I have called the result 'Religion;' where the same Being acts like Zeus in Greek fable, plays silly or obscene tricks, is lustful and false, I have spoken of 'Myth.'[3] These distinctions of Myth and Religion may be, and indeed are, called arbitrary. The whole complex set of statements about the Being, good ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... day yesterday," said Mrs. Baines. And she added, "Come!" As if to say, "There's always this silly fuss with castor-oil. Don't ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... it is so,' continued Ovsyanikov. 'Fie! you spoil the boy! Well, tell him to come in.... So be it, then; for the sake of our good guest I will forgive the silly fellow.... Come, tell ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy lobsters' claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you didn't know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... oh! the silly, with his complaints," cried Cecily, in a sardonic and contemptuous tone; he does nothing but groan and lament, and has been for ten days shut up alone with a young woman, in a ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... for his women is another. Tom's nerves are racked with problems: How the dickens is he to steer his car and protect his women at the same time? And if it comes to a toss-up between his women and his wounded? You've got to stow the silly things somewhere, and every one of them takes up the place of ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... ioyes of heauen, vnles you becomes a Christian: for God saith, Whosoeuer beleeueth and is baptized, shalbe saued: but he that beleeueth not, shalbe condemned. At this word he modestly smiled: but the other Moals began to clap their hands, and to deride vs. And my silly interpreter, of whom especially I should haue receiued comfort in time of need, was himself abashed and vtterly dasht out of countenance. [Sidenote: The letters of the French King.] Then, after silence made, I said vnto him, I came vnto your soune, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... Agnes' brother met Penoyer in the street, he gave him a sound caning, ordering him, under pain of a worse flogging, never again to mention his sister's name. This he was probably more willing to do, as he had already conceived a great liking for Carrie, who was silly enough to be pleased with and ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... "Oh, you silly boy! of course you fell out of that narrow bed. What possessed you to all crowd in there when there are ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... her sister, in a kind tone, "we're all silly sometimes. You'll never be guilty of the folly again, at any rate, of supposing that girls can be married, in spite of themselves, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... shack door. Macartney had never been a winter at La Chance; he had no snowshoes. Charliet had some, I didn't know where. But I had two pairs in my own room. That inexplicable suggestion told me I needed them badly, though I knew it was silly; if Macartney had Paulette he would not be marching her through the snow. All the places I had to search for her were the stable and the assay office. And yet——I backed Collins noiselessly past the room where Marcia was still pulling ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... famous statue. The expression of woe is more manly and intense; in the group as we know it, the head of the principal figure has always seemed to me to be a grimace of grief, as are the two accompanying young gentlemen with their pretty attitudes, and their little silly, open-mouthed despondency. It has always had upon me the effect of a trick, that statue, and not of a piece of true art. It would look well in the vista of a garden; it is not august enough for a temple, with all its jerks and twirls, ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... making rods for her own back. And then, if our Father keep us from hurting ourselves, and won't let us have the bright knife to cut our fingers with, how we do mewl and whine, to be sure! We are just a set of silly babes, my dear—the best ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... didn't hurt her. If she's such a touch-me-not, she's no fun at all! But every-body's like that with their first baby! Silly! Fussy! Just ridiculous!" ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... he, "the coat squeezes me, that is all! Besides, it is not wise to fool away our time in silly talking. Let us ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... persuade themselves that they are wonderful persons, and that they ought to be very miserable, though they don't precisely know why. They are very conceited, and usually possess half an idea; but, with enthusiastic young ladies, and silly young gentlemen, they are very wonderful persons. The individual in question, Mr. Theodosius, had written a pamphlet containing some very weighty considerations on the expediency of doing something or other; ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... make that insinuation several times before, Fred. It is not merely silly, it is disgraceful. I keep you from church? Don't you know," she exclaimed, with a quaver of emotion, "that your refusal to go is a source of genuine grief to me, and that I just hate to go alone? Don't ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... it all foolishness, but resolved to go to their meetings until I found out all they believed. I continued to go until I began to understand a little of what they knew, not what they believed; and instead of spending my time telling others what a silly thing Christian Science is, I am now trying to find words to tell what a great and wonderful thing it is. I have been healed of so-called incurable spinal disease of ten years' standing by studying the Bible and Science and Health. Science and Health has been my only teacher, and I wish to ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... what we all learn. I am only a scholar," she said, shortly. And then she stood accused before her own truthfulness of having covered up her blush by a disclaimer that had nothing to do with it. She was conscious that she had colored like any silly girl, at she hardly knew what. She was provoked with herself, for letting the shadow of such things touch her. She hurried on, up the rough bank, before Mr. Kirkbright. When she reached the top, she turned round and faced him; this time with a ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... am a swarthy Lovel; The Gorgios say I be A witch of wondrous power; And faith they speak the truth, The silly, foolish fellows, For often I bewitch The money from ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... conclusion which at first reading piqued me extremely, and I was so unnatural as to curse the whole concern, as poor, bald, pitiful trash, in which a silly old man was saying a great deal about nothing at all. Nay, my first impression was to thrust it into the fire, the rather that it reminded me, in no very flattering manner, of the loss of the family property, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... slaughter threw themselves into the river, where they perished. Tallard, being surrounded, was taken near a mill behind the village of Sonderen, together with the marquis de Montperouz, general of horse, the major-generals de Seppeville, de Silly, de la Valiere, and many other officers of distinction. While these occurrences passed on the loft wing, Marsin's quarters at the village of Oberklau, in the centre, were attacked by ten battalions under the prince of Holsteinbeck, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... were passing through the Sargasso Sea (named from the Portuguese word meaning "floating seaweed"). Its thick masses of drifting vegetation reassured them, for the silly legend that it could surround and embed a ship had not then found believers. Many years after it was discovered that several undercurrents met there and died down, leaving all their seaweed to linger on the calm, currentless surface. But back in 1492 the thicker ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... work, settling down with her friends in the very room he was writing in, and filling it with the silly chatter of idle women, who talked loud, full of disdain for a literary profession which brought in so little, and whose most laborious hours always resemble a capricious idleness. From time to time Heurtebise strove to escape from the life which he felt was daily becoming ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... now the fit is past, I have no hesitation in declaring, that a mob of happy faces crowding up at the pit-door of Drury Lane Theatre, just at the hour of six, gives me ten thousand sincerer pleasures, than I could ever receive from all the flocks of silly sheep that ever whitened the plains of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... back behind her ears, which were red with shyness and modesty. She did not please me very much at first sight; I looked at her with prejudice. Chvabrine had described Marya, the Commandant's daughter, to me as being rather silly. She went and sat down in a corner, and began to sew. Still the "chtchi"[40] had been brought in. Vassilissa Igorofna, not seeing her husband come back, sent Palashka for the second time ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... wee sailed from Falmoth in the aforesaid Ship to Plimouth for convoy and there lay till the 15th January following, when wee sailed under convoy with a fleete of about 90 sail. our convoy went with us about 80 Leagues to the Westward of Silly,[2] then with about ten sail more were parted from the fleet and were making the best Emprovement of winde and weather to gaine our port till the 4th Aprill following, when wee between the houres of four and six ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... might excuse her. And if she could carry on a conversation with the other one in an ordinarily well-bred, friendly way—and confine it to the intervals between numbers—one might be able to forget her, which would be a relief. But all those silly tricks of hers—those smiles, those archings of the neck—those lengthy looks up into the eyes of ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... which they filed right and left as I chased square up to the inner door, where stood a stiff sort of person, whose clothes had grown on him—so tight were they. Surprised at my sudden approach, he first gave many nervous winks and blinks, and then added the silly airs of my Lord Spoonbill's menial, who, with hair buttered and powdered, knew but the servilities of flunkeyism. 'Is the General at home?' I demanded, adding before he had time to answer, that if ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... came here. All their ways are eloquent of condemnation of his tastes. And yet again, while his old skill fails to be understood, and his old outlook to be appreciated, he finds that the behaviour preferred in him is oftener than not a behaviour which his forefathers would have thought silly, to say the least—a finikin, fastidious behaviour, such as he would scorn to practise at home. Thus in all ways the employers most conscientiously humane are those who can least avoid, in their tastes and their whole manner of living, snubbing him and setting him down ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... immortal, and what of it? I see the death-side now as I saw the life-side then; and one has as little meaning as the other. As it has been, so it will be, now, henceforth, and for ever, in and out, in and out, without pause or stint, futile, trivial, silly, stale, tedious, monotonous, and vain!' The long pre-occupation of men with religion, philosophy, and art, seemed to me now as incomprehensible as it was ridiculous. There was nothing after all to be interested about! There was simply this! ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... being married, and having a whole week more to be silly in, I was both silly and suspicious. This was partly his fault. He was reserved, naturally and habitually; and as he didn't tell me he was tired and soul-weary, I never thought of that. Instead, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... should their contents be exploded by falling into wrong hands. Letters that should never have been written are put in evidence in court rooms every day. Many can not, under any circumstances, be excused; but often silly girls and foolish women write things that sound quite different from what, they innocently, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Other inconveniences await this silly speculation. Thus, the Colossal Man, (who was under Law from B.C. 1491 to the Christian ra,) proves to have been a marvellously precocious Infant. He wrote the Song of Moses in the year of his birth. Nay, he built pyramids,—had a Literature, Arts, and Sciences,—ages before he was born!... ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... to his account of the disposition of old Katie's body with deep delight. She clapped her little hands in her usual silly manner and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... so cross, that Reuben did not even like to cry, for he felt he had been very silly; so the poor little fellow stood where his brother had bade him stand, half afraid to breathe, and quite afraid of moving—lest by any noise he should again drive away the doves, and Marten should again be angry. And there we will leave ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... his bed, but also unarmed. Ah! how many men earn sudden death and yet in the mystery of Providence escape it! I have often wondered at the persistency with which habit has fixed on women the exclusive reputation of gossipers. For I say unto you, brethren, that Woman, who with empty head and silly tongue toys with her neighbor's character unto its destruction, is not more full of gossip than her brother Man, who knows better and yet cannot stand the temptation of a sick man and a safe chance to chatter about matters with which he has no business. I am afraid like the idea of original sin we ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... egotism of Brome Porter, who lived as if life were a huge poker game; the overfed, red-cheeked Caspar, whom he remembered to have seen only once before, when the young polo captain was stupid drunk; the silly young cub of a Hitchcock. Even the girl was one of them. If it weren't for the women, the men would not be so keen on the scent for gain. The women taught the men how to spend, created the needs for their wealth. And the social game they were instituting in Chicago was so emptily imitative, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of Elia. Those charming productions, now ranked among our dearly treasured classics, were not received at first with universal approbation. The long and justly forgotten Alaric A. Watts said of them: "Charles Lamb delivers himself with infinite pain and labour of a silly piece of trifling, every month, in this Magazine, under the signature of Elia. It is the curse of the Cockney School that, with all their desire to appear exceedingly off-hand and ready with all they have ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... position he had made. He liked to see his wife sweep along the streets in her fine robes of Indian silk, which seemed to set a great gulf between her and her neighbours. He allowed his son to copy the fopperies of the Court gallants, and even to pick up the silly French phrases which made the language at Court a mongrel mixture of bad English and vile French. All these things pleased him well, although he himself went about clad in much the same fashion as ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... straw in the whirlwind, I was seized with a childish desire to be the Duc d'Angouleme himself, to be one of these princes parading before an awed assemblage. This silly fancy of a Tourangean lad roused an ambition to which my nature and the surrounding circumstances lent dignity. Who would not envy such worship?—a magnificent repetition of which I saw a few months later, when all Paris rushed to the feet ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... which we might take, for instance, I suppose," said the Idiot, "the born idiot, the borrower, and the man who is knocked silly by the pole of ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... with Mr. Vandersee. He's on leave, you know, for private business. He cannot possibly be conducting official business now; and it's quite ridiculous to think of him as being responsible for Captain Barry's misfortune. Why—oh, Mr. Rolfe," she burst out, laughing a trifle unsteadily, "it's too silly. Mr. Vandersee is about the one man here that ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... With the insight of artists they perceived that hers was a talent which must be strictly let alone. But Parisian rumour has alleged, not merely that she was advised, but that she was actually helped in the writing by her admirers. The rumour is worse than false—it is silly. Every paragraph of the work bears the unmistakable and inimitable work of one individuality. And among the friends of Marguerite Audoux, even the most gifted, there is none who could possibly have composed any of the passages ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... too fond of turning young girls' heads," said Miss Opie, shaking her own; "'leading captive silly women,' as we read. If he attempt any foolish, trifling conversation, you should check ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... devilish," he said to Legouve, "tragic and silly at the same time? I should deserve to go to hell if ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... negro did not see straight, or he told you a lie. Molly was with me, and, as you see, her frock is pink. We were out walking. We both got on the horse. It was a silly, silly prank, and ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Opera?——What Tone! what Tone! (breaking in upon me abruptly) with what musty Questions are you going to disturb my Brains? One may easily perceive from what School you come. The Moderns, if you do not know it, acknowledge no other Tone but one[77]; they laugh, with Reason, at the silly Opinion of those who imagine there are two, as well as at those who maintain, that their being divided into Authentick and Plagal, they become Eight, (and more if there were need) and prudently leave it to everybody's Pleasure to compose as they like ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... correspondent from Williams College says, "We speak of a person whom we despise as being a nuts." This word is used in the Yorkshire dialect with the meaning of a "silly fellow." Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, remarks: "It is not applied to an idiot, but to one who has ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... tae me 'Rab, my man, I dinna ken a better plan, To ser' my turn wi'silly man An wark them ill, Than charming them to pleasure drawn ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... be getting mixed up between you, you silly boy!' said Aunt Annie, smiling, and trying to ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... of sin and strange folly for which I must always feel humiliated, and implore to be forgiven. And every generous person has long ago forgiven me and forgotten it. But in this case, if you weren't in such a silly rage, I could show you that I've done nothing wrong. Only I know you wouldn't listen now, and ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... "Oh, silly, unbelieving child!" came his voice, slightly distrait it is true, but containing sufficient of the lover's chiding tenderness to fill her ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... He started next morning; and we heard, a month or two later, that the coach was stopped the same afternoon in the plains of Perote, and Antonio was robbed not only of his money but even of his jacket and serape, and reached Mexico penniless and half-naked. He was always a silly fellow, and his last exploit ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... in the future. At present men eat without philosophy. They do not nourish themselves like reasonable beings. They do not think of such. But of what are they thinking? Most of them live in stupidity and actually those who are capable of reflection occupy their minds with silly things like controversies and poetry. Consider mankind, gentlemen, at their meals since the far-away times when they ceased their intercourse with Sylphs and Salamanders. Abandoned by the genii of the air they grew heavy and dull in ignorance ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... but with his taylor, when he is in conspiracy for the next device. He is furnished with his jests, as some wanderer with sermons, some three for all congregations, one especially against the scholar, a man to him much ridiculous, whom he knows by no other definition, but a silly fellow in black. He is a kind of walking mercer's shop, and shows you one stuff to-day and another to-morrow; an ornament to the room he comes in as the fair bed and hangings be; and it is meerly ratable accordingly, fifty or a hundred pounds as his suit is. His main ambition ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... "What a silly child I am!" thought she, taking courage. "It is really the most beautiful shrub that ever sprang out of the earth. I will pull it up by the roots, and carry it home, and plant it in my ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Mr. J. Harris Stone at their head. The people who cannot appreciate Borrow are those who will not lift their eyes from the pavement to be rapt in admiration of a glorious sunset, to whom, indeed, Borrow would appear a silly enigma, or a boor. For, when "the Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work," comes that rare time when the spirit—unconsciously worshipping—is uplifted in an ecstasy of wonder and joy, who then can but pity the dull ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... expecting; because of Anna's beauty and accomplishments, which I own might well merit a man of higher birth and fortune. But the little hussy has been so nice, and squeamish, that I began to fear she would take up her silly spend-thrift brother's whim, and determine to live single: therefore I shall not balk her, now she seems ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... regardless as to what humanitarian theories might be tested upon him. As the Arcadian Club recognized no such thing as caste, he was always admitted to our meetings, and understood just enough of our conversation to excite a silly ambition in his slow mind. His animal nature was predominant, and this led him to be deceitful. At that time, however, we all looked upon him as a proper young Arcadian, and hoped that he would develop into a second ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Then he was told, "Standing right in Urquhart's way like that! Urquhart doesn't want to be stared at by all the silly little kids in the lower-fourth." But Urquhart was, as a matter of fact, probably used ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... but the noise continues, and resounds in after ages." His doctrine of immortality is simply fame. His theory of influence is not flattering. "There are two levers for moving men,—interest and fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend upon it. Friendship is but a name. I love nobody. I do not even love my brothers; perhaps Joseph, a little, from habit, and because he is my elder; and Duroc, I love him too; but why?—because ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... chanst among the Khyber 'ills, The Boers knocked us silly at a mile, The Burman give us Irriwaddy chills, An' a Zulu impi dished us up in style: But all we ever got from such as they Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller; We 'eld our bloomin' own, the papers say, But man for man the Fuzzy ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and looked really in earnest. Artois felt as if he were listening to a silly boy who ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... ceremonies of the Mosaic Law, because, since under the Law, the priests, at the time of ministering, were separated from their wives, the priest in the New Testament, inasmuch as he ought always to pray, ought always to practise continence. This silly comparison is presented as a proof which should compel priests to perpetual celibacy, although, indeed, in this very comparison marriage is allowed, only in the time of ministering its use is interdicted. And it is one thing to pray; another, to minister. The saints prayed ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... or in any manner connected with the family of my Lord Poddle (and he was only one of the Revolution Peers, that got his coronet for Ratting at the right moment to King William III.), than that he was the Great Mogul's Grandmother. His gentlemanly extraction was with him all a Vain Pretence and silly outward show. It did no very great Harm, however. When the French adventurer Poirier asked King Augustus the Strong to make him a Count, what said his Majesty of Warsaw and Luneville? "That I cannot do," quoth he; "but there is nothing ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... thus for the first time praised herself to him, but Hermas exclaimed, "That is a good girl! and I will not forget it. You are a wild, silly thing, but I believe that you are to be relied on by those to whom you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... night and started at 6 A.M. on a buckboard for the next place, wound around the mountainsides by the picturesque Gunnison river, and reached her destination at 5 o'clock. She found a disbeliever of equal rights in her landlady, whom she describes as "a weak, silly woman and a wretched cook and housekeeper." To be an opponent of suffrage and a poor housekeeper Miss Anthony always regarded as two unpardonable sins. The husband, however, intended to vote for it. At the next stopping-place her hostess was a cultured woman, her house ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Her eyes said, "Silly fellow, don't you know every girl wants to be the one and only love ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... caused him by Helen Armstrong's refusal has terribly distressed, and driven him to more reckless courses. He drinks deeper than ever; while in his cups he has been silly enough to let his boon companions become acquainted with his reason for thus running riot, making not much secret, either, of the mean revenge he designs for her who has rejected him. She is to be punished ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... ones. Those blinded by ophthalmia were led by the hand. Those relieved from suffering were ready to kiss his feet, or even his shoes at the door. But it was a laborious and trying position. A thousand silly questions must be answered. Nor was there any certainty that the prescriptions would be followed, even if understood; and every Nestorian, though suffering under the most alarming disease, would sooner die than touch a spoonful of ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... those of a man fresh from a distillery or from a warehouse of cotton fabrics, or even from those of many fashionable women, whose only aesthetic accomplishment is to play languidly and mechanically on an instrument, and whose only intellectual achievement is to have devoured a dozen silly novels in the course of a summer spent in alternate sleep and dalliance! Nor does familiarity always give a zest to the pleasure which arises from the creations of art or the glories of nature. The Roman beggar passes the Coliseum or St. Peter's without notice or enjoyment, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... is easy to see that Ferdinand Frog was a vain and silly fellow. He was even foolish enough to repeat Aunt Polly's remark to everybody he chanced to meet that night, and the following day ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and crimson murders—things which a decent sailor should know nothing about, so that it seemed to me that for all his manners Captain had been more of a pirate than a gentleman mariner. But to draw sense out of that boy was as hard as picking cherries off a crab-tree. One silly tale he had that he kept on drifting back to, and to hear him you would have thought that it was the only thing that happened to him in his life. "We was at anchor," he would say, "off an island called the Basket of Flowers, and the sailors had ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... are we, the people of these free American States, invited by numbers of citizens to become. Just such, do I say? A thousand times more silly than such. Our national wolf meets us with jaws that drip blood and eyes that glare hunger for more. Instead of professing sanctity and innocence, it only howls immitigable hate and steadfast resolution to devour. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... upon the ridge-pole Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, Sat with fiery eyes, and, screaming, Flapped his wings at Pau-Puk-Keewis. 205 "All are gone! the lodge is empty!" Thus it was spake Pau-Puk-Keewis, In his heart resolving mischief;— "Gone is wary Hiawatha, Gone the silly Laughing Water, 210 Gone Nokomis, the old woman, And the lodge is left unguarded!" By the neck he seized the raven, Whirled it round him like a rattle, Like a medicine-pouch he shook it, 215 Strangled Kahgahgee, the raven, From the ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... been for many years a problem to me, aye, and to a great extent is so still, how the Sacred Books of the East should, by the side of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful and true, contain so much that is not only unmeaning, artificial and silly, but even hideous ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... depot, aunt Madge, Prudy, and Dotty Dimple, were waiting for them. A hearty laugh went the rounds, which Fly thought was decidedly silly. Aunt Madge took the young travellers right into her arms, and hugged them in her own cordial style, as if her heart had been hungry for them for many ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... relate, this is the smallest of all the manuals, and the cheapest, and the only one in which there is not so much as an allusion to ladies' ankles. All the others have a few pages of rules and a very immoderate quantity of slang; they are all liable to the charge of being silly; whereas the only possible charge to be brought against "Newport" is that he is too sensible. But for those who hold, with ourselves, that whatever is worth doing is worth doing sensibly, there is really no other manual. That is, this is the only one which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... where I go," muttered its strange owner with what seemed an involuntary emphasis. Then as the Curator turned upon him in some surprise, he added with studied indifference: "I brought it from Switzerland when I was younger than I am now—a silly memento, but I ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... is it, master shepherd, that you do such a silly thing as this? There is a trick in breaking the cocoa-nuts on the head of the priest. The people who break the cocoa-nuts are clever jugglers. They have a store of cocoa-nuts which have been previously broken and stuck ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... slightest idea, and I do not care so that it is somewhere. They pretend that I am learned; they are mistaken, commander. I know nothing, and if I have published a few books that don't sell badly, I ought not to have done it; the public is silly for buying them. I know nothing, I tell you. I am only an ignorant man. When I have the offer of completing, or rather of going over again, my knowledge of medicine, surgery, history, geography, botany, mineralogy, conchology, geodesy, chemistry, natural philosophy, ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Dolly for the moment was mistress of nothing. Mr. Shubrick looking at her, and seeing those lovely flushes and her absolute gravity and silence, was in doubt what it might mean. He thought that perhaps nobody had ever spoken to her on such a subject before; yet Dolly was no silly girl, to be overcome by the mere strangeness of his words. Did her silence and gravity augur ill for him? or well? And then, without being in the least a coxcomb, it occurred to him that her excessive blushing told on the hopeful side of the account. He waited. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... eyes of the Goblin danced and twinkled in their caverns; a merry, careless laugh came bubbling forth as it answered, "I will not leave your shop, nor will you throw me from the window, nor yet kill me, Nick Baba. Why, you silly fellow, the sharpest tool on your bench cannot draw blood from me, and that blackened lapstone, if driven with all the force of your great arm through my seeming substance, would leave me sitting here still, not to mock, but ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... to cry. "I want to think. It seems such a dreadful thing to sell the place. And why need you hurry to send off a letter to Mr. Hilary about it? Won't it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the writings ready? I think it will look very silly to send word beforehand. I could see that Mr. Putney didn't ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... only one thing more I can think of," she declared, screwing up her mouth and her eyes. "But I sha'n't ask you that—it's too silly. If I imagined for a moment that you could be thinking about ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... morality, the aim of his pieces, the general impression which they are calculated to produce is sometimes extremely immoral. A pleasant anecdote is told of his having put into the mouth of Bellerophon a silly eulogium on wealth, in which he declares it to be preferable to all domestic happiness, and ends with observing, "If Aphrodite (who bore the epithet golden) be indeed glittering as gold, she well deserves the love of Mortals:" which so offended ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... going to repeat all we said to each other. We were very young, and I dare say very silly. We exchanged vows, and hoped to marry when I became a commander, or perhaps, we agreed, it might not be so long; perhaps when I was a lieutenant. Many lieutenants had wives, and though, to be sure, some ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... earth, and social jeers only touched the woman. A member of all clubs, subscriber to all the absurdities generated by patriotism or party spirit ill-understood (a compliance which put him in the front rank a propos of all such matters), this loyal, brave, and very silly nobleman, whom unfortunately so many rich men resemble, would naturally desire to distinguish himself by adopting some fashionable mania. Consequently, he glorified his name principally in being the sultan of a four-footed harem, governed by an old English groom, which cost him ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... opening out of Cook Strait, Captain Furneaux sent a boat with nine men who were to go on shore and gather green stuff for food. A crowd of Maoris surrounded them, and one offered to sell a stone hatchet to a sailor, who took it; but to tease the native, in silly sailor fashion, this sailor would neither give anything for it nor hand it back. The Maori in a rage seized some bread and fish which the sailors were spreading for their lunch. The sailors closed to prevent their touching the victuals; a confused struggle took place, ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... your letter that you lend credence to certain envious and scoundrelly persons, who, since they cannot manage me or rob me, write you a lot of lies. They are a set of sharpers, and you are so silly as to believe what they say about my affairs, as though I were a baby. Get rid of them, the scandalous, envious, ill-lived rascals. As for my suffering the mismanagement you write about, I tell you that I could not be better off, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... keeping up this silly jest? My dear fellow, it is perfectly ridiculous—stupid! You had better tell me at once that you intend starving me ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... questions would settle all the enigmas of the universe. I know the answer. I am not a fool. And some day, if I am plagued too desperately, I shall give the answer myself. I shall give the name of him who mislays my pen and uses up my ink. It is so silly to think that I could use such a quantity of ink. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... along the square, was nearly empty. He found her hand and drew it through his arm. "Would you mind so very much," he said, "if those silly things were true?" He spoke as if to a child. His passion was never more clearly a single object to him, divorced from all complicating and non-essential impressions of her. "I would give all I possess ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... rabbit!—along the trail and had run into the stick, which had been jabbed into the ground where he could not fail to notice it—and at the very spot where the figure in black had been standing! Apparition—pooh! If there was one thing certain about the whole silly business it was that the note had been put there by that—that creature. Simon did not profess to be versed in the lore of spooks, but he could not vision an ambassador from another world leaving behind ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... lady. 'What lady?' says she. 'Why, Mrs. Cockburn, for I think she is a virtuoso,—like myself.' 'Dear Walter,' says Aunt Jenny, 'what is a virtuoso?' 'Don't ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and will know every thing.' Now, sir, you will think this a very silly story. Pray, what age do you suppose this boy to be? Name it, now, before I tell you. 'Why, twelve or fourteen.' No such thing; he is not quite six years old. He has a lame leg, for which he was a year at Bath, and has acquired the perfect English accent, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... It was I——of course it was awfully silly and we won't go to Deauville if you don't want to. Let it be Fontainebleau by all means—though really, it does not seem important whether we do get married or don't while you love me. Love after all is what matters, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... must be admitted, that the revolution, has had the effect of completely removing from the French character that silly veneration for high rank, unaccompanied by any commanding qualities of mind, which used to form a predominant feature in it. Yet it seems doubtful whether the equivalent they have obtained is more likely to promote their happiness. They have now an equally infatuated admiration ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... in a sing-song two or three times over)—"the devil who makes us dream and doubt, and who made life interesting by persuading Eve to eat the silver apple—what would life have been if she had not eaten the apple? We should all be in the silly trees of the Garden of Eden, and I should be sitting next to you" (he said to Mrs. Bergmann), "without knowing that you were beautiful; que vous etes belle et que vous etes desirable; que vous etes puissante ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... this, we must hold 'em at a distance; we must send expresses out to stop 'em short upon the road, and bring 'em on a mile or two a day, until we're properly prepared to meet 'em. Kiss me, Puss. Forgive! Why, what a silly child you are! If you had vexed and crossed me fifty times a day, instead of not at all, I'd forgive you everything, but such a supplication. Kiss me again, Puss. There! Prospective and retrospective - a clear score between us. Pile up the ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... little thrill, as she always did, when she passed the house. Since she could remember she had cared for Graham. She did not actually know that she loved him. She told herself bravely that she was awfully fond of him, and that it was silly, because he never would amount to anything. But she had a little argument of her own, for such occasions, which said that being really fond of any one meant knowing all about them and ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and we are to get there in time for it, going by the west side of the river, and they'll bring us home. They said I should ask you to go with me, and if you would n't go for me to ask Mr. Trench to go. They are too silly for anything." ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... for in the dedication of his Ecclesiastical Polity, speaking of these questions of Church discipline which gave occasion to his great work, he says they are "in truth, for the greatest part, such silly things, that very easiness doth make them hard to be disputed of in serious manner." Hooker's great work against the impugners of the order and discipline of the Church of England was written (and this is too indistinctly seized by many who ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... husband of his companion and his friend. The sin was Leonard's; but the fault was yours. You were five years older than Leonard, and a woman of sense and experience; he but a boy by comparison. What right had you to surrender your understanding, in a matter of this kind, to a poor silly priest, fresh from his seminary, and as manifestly without a grain of common sense as he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... playing your cards and smiling over them, no matter what might be dealt you. And that is some improvement over the girl I've been, isn't it? For I've never had to struggle very hard for anything I've wanted. I want to be friends, but I'm not silly enough to think you won't tell me again that you—care. I want to be friends, but not at the price of your heart-ache and disappointment, and—why, I wonder, do I get all tangled up when I try to explain myself ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... answered without turning my head. Since my illness I seemed to have lost all interest in life, and this, although everybody was kind to me. My mother gave me novels to read and money to go to the dances. The books I scarcely glanced at, and what I did read seemed so silly to me! And the dances had lost their charm. I went once or twice, but the music did not awaken any emotion in me, and I sat dully in a corner watching, without any desire to join in. And this, when I was hardly past ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... know that you are wounded, in a hospital, and that I cannot take care of you. Since the conscripts departed, we have not had a moment's peace of mind. My mother says I am silly to weep night and day, but she weeps as much as I, and her wrath falls heavily on Pinacle, who dared not come to the market-place, because she carried ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
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