FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • More 'Sottish' Quotes from Famous Books

... rolled helplessly in the monstrous big collar of his great-coat; and his limp, lazy hands pottered about the wall on either side of him, as if they were groping for a imaginary bottle. In plain English, the complaint of "My son Benjamin" was drunkenness, of the stupid, pig-headed, sottish kind. Drawing this conclusion easily enough, after a moment's observation of the man, Trottle found himself, nevertheless, keeping his eyes fixed much longer than was necessary on the ugly drunken face rolling about in the monstrous big coat collar, ...

— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... raise thee from thy fall? Where else, but in a prison, could you get the silent, solitary hours leading you again to wholesome thought and deep repentance? Where else could you escape the companionship of all those loose and low associates, sottish brawlers, ignorant and sensual unbelievers, vagabond radicals, and other lewd fellows of the baser sort, that had drank themselves drunk at your expense, and sworn to you as captain! The place, the time, the means for penitence are here. The crisis ...

— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... those ancient times, especially since it was not onely received by the vulgar, such as were men of lesse note and learning, but believed also, by the more famous and wiser sort, such as were those great Poets, Stesichorus and Pindar. And not onely amongst the more sottish heathens, who might account that Planet to be one of their Gods, but the primitive Christians also were in this kinde guilty; which made S. Ambrose so tartly to rebuke those of his ...

— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins

... hearts. All that goes under the name of misfortune will but drive us from thee, never to thee, till thou teach us to profit, and lead us by the way that we should go. Thou callest, 'Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings;' but we have been foolish, sottish children, without understanding, wise to do evil, but to ...

— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... manner, rallying Hippias, —[Plato's Dialogues: Hippias Major.]—who recounts to him what a world of money he has got, especially in certain little villages of Sicily, by teaching school, and that he made never a penny at Sparta: "What a sottish and stupid people," said Socrates, "are they, without sense or understanding, that make no account either of grammar or poetry, and only busy themselves in studying the genealogies and successions of their kings, the foundations, ...

— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... him to it in 1606, when he was accompanied by his brother-in-law, Christianus, King of Denmark, and when the two monarchs were gloriously entertained by the Earl of Salisbury. The Danish king drank inordinately; so did the whole of his suite: and they soon inoculated the English Court with their sottish tastes. Bonnie King Jamie himself got fou twice a-day; and, melancholy to relate, the ladies of the Court followed the royal example, and, "abandoning their sobriety, were seen to roll about in intoxication." So says Sir John Harington, who has given a very diverting account of the orgies ...

— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... to break this wretched news to my father," said the Rev. George, turning disconsolately from his sottish cousin to Conolly. ...

— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... dolmens and menhirs and we have fallen on fetes and have seen costumes which they said had been suppressed but which the old people still wear. Well! These men of the past are ugly with their home-spun trousers, their long hair, their jackets with pockets under the arms, their sottish air, half drunkard, half saint. And the Celtic relics, uncontestably curious for the archaeologist, have naught for the artist, they are badly set, badly composed, Carnac and Erdeven have no physiognomy. In short, Brittany shall not have my bones! I prefer a thousand ...

— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... prediction is but a trifle; yet I will mention it to show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns: it relates to Partridge the almanack maker; I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, ...

— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... common sense, will pretend to remember everything the next morning, and think themselves very properly qualified to be accusers of their brethren. God be thanked, the throne of our King[5] is too firmly settled to be shaken by the folly and rashness of every sottish companion. And I do not in the least doubt, that when those in power begin to observe the falsehood, the prevarication, the aggravating manner, the treachery and seducing, the malice and revenge, the love of lucre, and lastly, the trifling accusations in too ...

— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... moved again and the white automobile with it, the sottish mouth widened in a smile of dull and cynical contempt: the look of a half-poisoned Augustan borne down through the crowds from the Palatine after supping ...

— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... his burden: therefore, Mr. Worldly Wiseman is an alien, and Mr. Legality is a cheat; and for his son Civility, notwithstanding his simpering looks, he is but a hypocrite and cannot help thee. Believe me, there is nothing in all this noise, that thou hast heard of these sottish men, but a design to beguile thee of thy salvation, by turning thee from the way in which I had set thee. After this, Evangelist called aloud to the heavens for confirmation of what he had said: and with that there came words and fire out of the mountain ...

— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan

... a bandage of muslin; and his arms being fastened in a similar way at the wrists, I I prevented him from helping himself too freely to the liquors upon the table; a precaution rendered necessary, in the opinion of Legs, by the peculiarly sottish and wine-bibbing cast of his visage. A pair of prodigious ears, nevertheless, which it was no doubt found impossible to confine, towered away into the atmosphere of the apartment, and were occasionally pricked up in a spasm, at ...

— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... likely, more in earnest in this wild Opinion: And in all appearance very many there are among us of such as a Learned Man calls Enthusiastick Atheists, viz. who deny the Existence of an Invisible, Omniscient, Omnipotent, first Cause of all things, only through a certain Sottish disbelief of whatsoever they cannot either see or feel; never consulting their Reason in the Case. That there are some who do thus, their Discourses assure us: The Actions of many others, are unaccountable without supposing them to be of this Number; and ...

— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... This is commonly seen, that those souls that have not regarded those convictions that are at first set upon their spirits, do commonly, and that by the just judgments of God upon them, grow more hard, more senseless, more seared and sottish in their spirits; for some, who formerly would quake and weep, and relent under the hearing of the Word, do now for the present sit so senseless, so seared, and hardened in their consciences, that certainly if they should have hell-fire ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... maid that milks, And does the meanest chares.—It were for me To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods: To tell them that our world did equal theirs Till they had stolen our jewel. All's but naught, Patience is sottish, and impatience does Become a dog that's mad. Then is it sin To rush into the secret house of death Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women? What, what? good cheer! why how now, Charmian? My noble girls!—ah, women, women! look Our ...

— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... "I cannot keep from telling the citizens of your beautiful city that none of the talent on this circuit have found a more charming spot or more enterprising and hospitable people." But the little man suggested that the architecture of Gopher Prairie was haphazard, and that it was sottish to let the lake-front be monopolized by the cinder-heaped wall of the railroad embankment. Afterward the audience grumbled, "Maybe that guy's got the right dope, but what's the use of looking on the dark side of things all ...

— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... energy to that at Ferney. There he exercised signorial rights with an active and restless guardianship which left him no illusions and but little sympathy in respect of that people whose sacred rights he had so often proclaimed. "The people will always be sottish and barbarous," he wrote to M. Bordes; "they are oxen needing a yoke, a goad, and a bit of hay." That was the sum and substance of what he thought; he was a stern judge of the French character, the genuine and deep-lying resources of which he sounded imperfectly, but the infinite varieties ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... and the silence while he addressed his audience had been almost oppressive. Was it possible that Foster could be in earnest? There was no mistake about it—every man was at once convinced of this from the vicar down to the most sottish of the anti-temperance gathering. Such a man as Foster would never have come forward in this way had he not had powerful and all-constraining motives to lead him to take such a step. When he sat down ...

— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... piece as though he had had an intimation it would be safer there than elsewhere on his person during the pot-valiant sleep he had deliberately courted. His hood had fallen back, displaying a bullet head, red cheeks and purple nose, while the wooden beads of this sottish counterfeit of a friar trailed from his girdle on the ground. From a stall in a far corner a large, bony-looking nag turned its head reproachfully, as if mentally protesting against such foul quarters and the poor company they offered. ...

— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... scorn the fool-born jest, The stage's scum, and refuse of the players— Stale topics against magistrates and mayors— City and country both thy worth attest. Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, More fit to soothe the superficial ear Of drunken Pitt, and that pickpocket Peer, When at their sottish orgies they did sit, Hatching mad counsels from inflated vein, Till England and the nations ...

— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... the King's hand, and told him "that he was now King, which he had never been before." [Footnote: See Pepys, Diary, November 11, 1667.] It was an odd change, from the dignified loyalty of Clarendon to the fulsome flattery of Bab May. Even the scanty pride that had survived in one degraded by sottish debauchery might have been nauseated by ...

— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... love of heaven, an ear To this, the landlord's tale, replete with lies, In shame and scorn of womankind; though ne'er Was praise or fame conveyed in that which flies From such a caitiff's tongue; and still we hear The sottish rabble all things rashly brand, And question most what ...

— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... or competence at home, as soon as the unfailing ennui arising from want of society in the backwoods begins to succeed the excitement of settling, too frequently drink, and in many cases drink from their waking hour until they sink at night into sottish sleep. This is peculiarly the case where there is no village nor town within a day's journey; and thus many otherwise estimable young men become habitual drunkards, and sink from the caste of gentlemen gradually into the dregs of society, ...

— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... superior of Mrs. Williams, but appeared to little advantage in her peculiar situation. She was the elder sister, by four or five years. At the time of which I am now writing, Mrs. Haller had five children, two of them grown up, and the rest small. Her husband had become so indolent and sottish, that all her exertions were needed to keep her little flock from suffering with cold and hunger. No woman could have laboured more untiringly than she did, but it was labouring against a strong current that bore ...

— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur