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More "Stupid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had a rather stormy venture. All the old arguments and agreements had to be gone over. Men unaccustomed to business are quick in prosperity and stupid in adversity. They only had three-quarter wages: why should they be called upon to lose beside? It was little enough, and waiting five years,—and no one knew,—the whole thing might go to smash another year! A few wished, with an oath, that they were well out of it. They would never be bamboozled ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... tell that stupid Jack, that if he doesn't want to offend me so that I'll never, never forgive him, he is to bring his slate and pencil over here after supper this evening. And you'll come, too, with your geography. Yours truly, ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... Cupid Who made our days so bright; But he has grown so stupid We gladly say good-night. And if he wakens tender And fond, and fair as when He filled our lives with splendor, We'll ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... stupid not to think of that before. There can hardly be two men so singularly alike. I have come to ask you, Mrs. Merton, if you can spare me for two or ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... is not by any attempt to do away directly with the actually existing class distinctions and advantages, as if everybody could have the same sort of work or lead the same sort of life (which none of my hearers are stupid enough to suppose), but by turning of Class Interests into Class Functions or duties. What I mean is, that each class should be urged by the surrounding conditions to perform its particular work under the strong pressure of responsibility to the nation at large; that our public affairs ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... that Lady May was married in," said Raffles, "and that disappeared out of the room she changed in, while it rained confetti on the steps, I'll present it to her instead of the one she lost.... It was stupid to keep these old gold spoons, valuable as they are; they made the difference in the weight.... Here we have probably the Kenworthy diamonds.... I don't know the history of these pearls.... This looks like one ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... him—such were Mr Gresham's necessities—during the lifetime of the last old incumbent. Miss Oriel was in every respect a nice neighbour; she was good-humoured, lady-like, lively, neither too clever nor too stupid, belonging to a good family, sufficiently fond of this world's good things, as became a pretty young lady so endowed, and sufficiently fond, also, of the other world's good things, as became the mistress of a ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Territories, presenting great variations in climate and in the kind and quality of their soils. Among the Indians upon these several reservations there exist the most marked differences in natural traits and disposition and in their progress toward civilization. While some are lazy, vicious, and stupid, others are industrious, peaceful, and intelligent; while a portion of them are self-supporting and independent, and have so far advanced in civilization that they make their own laws, administered ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Father Peter, Dmitri's letters must have gone astray—perhaps the new postman can't read; he looks stupid enough, and Dmitri, why, he was the best fellow in the village. Do you remember how he shot the bear at the barn in the ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... said Ganglere: How comes it that summer is so hot, but the winter so cold? Har answered: A wise man would not ask such a question, for all are able to tell this; but if you alone have become so stupid that you have not heard of it, then I would rather forgive you for asking unwisely once than that you should go any longer in ignorance of what you ought to know. Svasud is the name of him who is father of summer, and he lives such a life of enjoyment, that everything that is mild ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... Biddy had seen the struggle in which the Senor Montefalderon had been lost, in a sort of stupid horror. Both had screamed, as was their wont, though neither probably suspected the truth. But the fell designs of Spike extended to them, as well as to those whom he had already destroyed. Now the boat was in deep water, running along the margin of the reef, the waves were much increased in magnitude, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... "That stupid Republic of yours makes me feel queasy. We sha'n't be able to carve a capon in peace, because we shall find the agrarian ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... brain is apprehensively busy with secret conjectures in which her husband even may not participate, is a species of torture which the average bride submits to with the best grace possible because social custom dictates the stupid programme. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... Eve was like Matilda Jane. The little pimple on her nose—her little, sweet, tip-tilted nose—how beautiful it is. Her bright eyes flash with temper now and then; how piquant is a temper in a woman. William is a dear old stupid, how lovable stupid men can be—especially when wise enough to love us. William does not shine in conversation; how we hate a magpie of a man. William's chin is what is called receding, just the sort of chin a beard looks well on. Bless you, Oberon darling, for that drug; rub it on our ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Is an indication of the (inward) virtue. People have the saying, 'There is no wise man who is not (also) stupid.' The stupidity of the ordinary man Is determined by his (natural) defects. The stupidity of the wise man Is from his doing ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... necessarily a celestial abode, and that its inmates do not inevitably enjoy consolatory peace. She found feminine spite there of the same texture with that wreaked by worldly women upon each other, and she notes the cruel taunts which good, old, ugly, and learned sister Sophia received from some stupid nuns, who, she says, "were fond of exposing her defects because they did not possess her talents." But her devotional fervor did not abate. She fainted under the feeling of awe in the act of her ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... apparent stolidity, the Indian is not so stupid as to be misled by talk like this. With a full knowledge of the situation— forced upon him by various events—the badinage of the brilliant militario does not for a moment blind him. Circumstances have given him enough insight into Uraga's character and position to know that the tatter's motives ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a lustreless and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep degradation, of such abject hopelessness, of such a miserable downfall, that she put her hands before her face and turned away, lest he should see how much it ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... the world's greatest poet, was intended, no doubt, as a warning to some stupid sexton, lest he should empty the grave and give the honored place to some amiable gentleman who had given more ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Rupert found us satisfactory pupils, for he never did give up the lectures in a huff, though he sometimes threatened to do so, when I asked stupid questions, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... I never used to be able to get along at school. I don't know why it was, but I was always at the foot of the class. I used to feel that my teachers never sympathized with me, and that my father thought that I was stupid, and at last I almost decided that I must really be a dunce. My mother was always kind, always sympathetic, and she never misunderstood or misjudged me. My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had someone to live for, some one I must ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... all," said Herbert. "Well, now, that's jolly; I thought you were going to be a good-for-nothing stupid creature. Come now, say it again; but give us ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... vision of Duncan Farll's hard, stupid face, and impenetrable steel head; and of himself being kicked out of the house, or delivered over to a policeman, or in some subtler way unimaginably insulted. Could he confront Duncan Farll? Was a hundred and forty thousand pounds and the dignity of the British nation worth ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... long ago, or he never could have written his history, stupid," said the mate, "but whoever they are ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... cattle and moving herds in the field. My farmer describes how they attended him one foggy day, as he was mowing in the meadow with a mowing-machine. It had been foggy for two days, and the swallows were very hungry, and the insects stupid and inert. When the sound of his machine was heard, the swallows appeared and attended him like a brood of hungry chickens. He says there was a continued rush of purple wings over the "cut-bar," and just where it was causing the grass to tremble and fall. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... there," rejoined Galen Albret, "the point is that I intend to keep it. I've had you sent out, but you have been too stupid or too obstinate to take the hint. Now I have to warn you in person. I shall send you out once more, but this time you must promise me not to meddle with ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... bound to it that gave her the expression of struggle. Chains held her when she wanted to be free. She was one too many here. Before her was Archdale's face as he had looked at Katie, and between these two a stupid woman whom she had no patience with, whom she hated—herself. And now there might be coming an added pain that she had brought. She did not care especially for Archdale's pain, except that it ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... believe that children abandoned in infancy in a savage country, and surviving this abandonment, to grow up in a state of nature, living on herbs and fruits, and sustaining existence as other wild animals, would be stupid, without language, without intellect, and with no greater instinct than that which governs the brute creation. We can conceive nothing reduced to a more savage condition; with cannibal propensities, an ungovernable ferocity, or a timid apprehension, there can be but a link that separates ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... always patting ourselves on the back and fancying ourselves mighty clever; but we're not. We're asses—always slipping and tumbling about, and when not doing that, running down the wrong road and butting our stupid heads against posts or walls. Asses, all of ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... some day, Paul, how amusing it is to make a fool of the world by depriving it of the secret of one's affections. I derive an immense pleasure in escaping from the stupid jurisdiction of the crowd, which knows neither what it wants, nor what one wants of it, which takes the means for the end, and by turns curses and adores, elevates and destroys! What a delight to impose emotions on it and receive none from it, to tame ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... wonderful eyes. Bauer's were like that. She could not help wondering what sort of people his parents were and what his home life was. The stubborn feeling prompted her to say to herself, "I'll make him speak first. He doesn't need to be so stupid. And besides it is not gentlemanly in him always to wait for ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... spar doesn't sound interesting, but it was; it got quite exciting towards the end as the wiry cavalry colonel, hero of many a stricken field, knocked out all comers, young or old. Egg and spoon races and threading needles were a little stupid, but what tableaux the groups of fair women made, with the bright dresses and complexions, and the jolly brown young men, all in the soft light that was filtering through the awning and blazing up from under its ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the natives must be!" said George; "for they apparently sleep as regularly in their own beds as any stupid Christian in England." ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... at last agreed upon. We all awaited the arrival of the two ladies in great suspense. The obligation imposed on us by the queen, of being intellectual at all hazards, had the effect of conjuring up a somewhat embarrassed and stupid expression to our faces. We presented the appearance of actors on the stage looking at each other, while awaiting the rise of the curtain. Jests and bon mots followed each other in rapid succession until the arrival of the carriage recalled ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... Jean protested. "You've done for her anyway. But you're wrong in thinking her stupid. She only comes to The Rigs when she isn't occupied with smart friends and is rather dull—I don't see her in her more exalted moments; but I assure you, after she has done talking about 'the County,' and after the full blast ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... "How stupid!" exclaimed Miss Melville, suddenly stopping, and turning round on the pivot of the music stool till she commanded a full view of the drawing-room. "I thought you would all be dancing by this time. There is no use in playing to such inanimate mortals. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the day Poppy's presents came she did not even stop for a moment to look at the wax dolls. What stupid creatures they seemed to her now! Her babies could open and shut their eyes, and none of these ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... not think Frisky Squirrel was stupid, when I tell you that the door was open all this time. It was open just the smallest crack, for Farmer Green's wife hadn't quite closed it when she went downstairs. Frisky had been too frightened to notice it. Besides, the attic had been ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey
... canoe, and not without nearly oversetting it, heavy-laden as she was—when I whispers, 'You'd best take a paddle here, Mas'r Harry,' when I felt two hands at my throat, my head bent back, a knee forced into my chest, and there in that black darkness I lay for a few minutes quite stupid, calling myself all the fools I could think of for helping someone on board that I knew now was ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... "Look at the stupid Frenchman!" I heard a brave say. "For all his red coat, and his manners, he cannot catch as well ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... that degrades every human emotion to the plane of utility and purpose, I heartily endorse. His method of achieving the ideal seems to me too full of red tape. However, I welcome every effort against the conspiracy of ignorance, hypocrisy and stupid prudery, against the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... System of Europe [general Diplomatic Dance of Europe, suddenly brought to a whirl by such changes of the music]; a new arena (CARRIERE) came to open itself,—and one must have been either without address, or else buried in stupid somnolence (ENGOURDISSEMENT), not to profit by an opportunity so advantageous. I had read Bojardo's fine Allegory: [Signifies only, "seize opportunity;" but here ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... his clamor for a job; the satisfied, brutal 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. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... asked them if they had ever been to Mull. 'We have passed it in the Clansman' said the elder boy. 'And do you know one Sir Keith Macleod there?' I asked. 'Oh no, ma'am,' said he, staring at me with his clear blue eyes as if I was a very stupid person, 'The Macleods are from Skye.' 'But surely one of them may live in Mull,' I suggested. 'The Macleods are from Skye,' he maintained, 'and my papa was at Dunvegan last year.' Then came the business of choosing the toys; and the smaller child would have a boat, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Had you been something of the man I thought, I might have gone with you and helped to baffle the police; but you were not. You were very dull and played a stupid part. When you thought you had won and I was in your power, I knew you for ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... as in so many other regions of life, upon your guide. If he is selfish, or surly, or stupid, you will have a bad time. But if he is an Adirondacker of the best old-fashioned type,—now unhappily growing more rare from year to year,—you will find him an inimitable companion, honest, faithful, skilful and cheerful. He is as independent as a prince, and the gilded youths and finicking ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... "Why how stupid of me!" Bet tried to look innocent. "Was that there all the time? Imagine me not seeing it!" There was remorse in her voice but a merry twinkle in her eyes ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... that instead of buying myself food for luncheon, I ate molasses and gingerbread that all but turned my stomach; and I was so eager to learn my law that I did not take my sleep when I could get it. The result was that I was stupid at my tasks, moody, melancholy, and so sensitive that my employer's natural dissatisfaction with my work put me into agonies of shame and despair of myself. I became, as the boys say, "dopy." I remember that one night, after I had scrubbed the floors ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... religious ceremonies. Merker, who observed him secretly during the early days which he spent in jail, declared that he was "in all respects like a child." Meyer, of the school at Ansbach, found him "idle, stupid, and vain." Dr. Osterhausen found a deviation from the normal in the shape of his legs, which made walking difficult, but Caspar never wearied of riding ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... thought that a stupid saying," remarked the Brat, as he helped himself to a ginger-nut with pink icing. "I have my cake, and when I have eaten it, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... on cloudy winter days From dawn to dusk and I soap heads, Shave them and powder them and speak Indifferent words, stupid, foolish. Most heads are completely shut, They sleep limply. And others read again And look slowly through long lids, As though they had sucked everything dry. Still others open the red cracks of their mouths wide And tell jokes. For my part, I smile courteously. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... not a babe." She replied to his mocking, literally. "Even if I am stupid and commonplace, I may have ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... cordially with the two men who are staring about the room in embarrassment. Carmody has very evidently been drinking. His voice is thick and his face puffed and stupid. Nicholls' manner is that of one who is accomplishing a necessary but disagreeable duty with the best grace possible, but is frightfully eager to get it over and done with. Carmody's condition embarrasses him acutely and when he glances ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... and going to speak: but he stamped with his foot, and said, Begone! I tell you: I cannot bear this stupid romantic folly. ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... thinking very much about spiritual things, things I mean beyond the material, those great forces which must be all around us, and I have wondered if we are not perhaps too ignorant yet to upset any laws. Perhaps I am stupid—I don't know really. I have only been wondering—but perhaps there are powerful currents connected with laws, whether they are just or unjust, simply because of the force of people's thoughts for ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... Often this stupid pondering over a book would madden the two brothers. It irritated them till they would move the lantern away from him. But he always followed the light with a sigh and uncomplainingly settled down again. Sometimes they even snatched the book out of ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... or three thousand people in the world," continued Berkeley, "supremely worth knowing. Why shouldn't I know them?—— I will! Everybody knows two or three thousand people,—mostly very stupid people,—or, rather, he lets them know him. Why shouldn't he use some choice in the matter? Why not know Thackeray and Carlyle, Lord Palmerston and the Pope, and the Emperor of China and all the great statesmen, authors, African explorers, military commanders, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... nothing—genius is nothing—but no! that is blasphemous. It is we that are nothing—if not stupid. Dullness is the universe. The grasshoppers are too faint to sing, the birds sit still on the boughs, waiting for the leaves to fan them. Children are wilted into silence and slumberous nonentity; boys do not bathe to-day—they ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... girl, brought from the alms-house, now did the drudgery of the family. Abner Dimock had grown penurious, and not one cent of money was given for comfort in that house, scarce for need. The girl was stupid and rude, but she worked for her board,—recommendation enough in Mr. Dimock's eyes; and so hard work was added to the other burdens loaded upon his silent wife. And soon came another, all-mysterious, but from its very mystery a deeper fear. Abner ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... her, without a doubt," he said slowly. For a moment he was like one struck stupid. Slowly he turned to the dock, looking up and down its orderly but unprepossessing clutter. Dim lights shone here and there, and a few hands were at work at the farther end. The dull silence, the unresponsive preoccupation ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... physically of the membership, he was the most active of all, ever running full tilt into every abuse or fault or complaint that might help to explain this unwonted, and, indeed, utterly purposeless and stupid incident of a British community. In my capacity as chairman, I appreciated Fawkner's untiring, or more properly, unyielding spirit, and under travelling fatigues, too, of no mean trial even to younger men. For the Colossus of Rhodes, as my energetic friend, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... necessity, that he is base, interested, dissimulating, without honour, in a word that he has the vices of the state of which he is a citizen. Almost every where he is deceived; encouraged in ignorance; prevented from cultivating his reason; of course he must be stupid, irrational, and wicked almost every where he sees vice applauded, and crime honoured; thence he concludes vice to be a good; virtue, only a useless sacrifice of himself: almost every where he is miserable, therefore he injures his fellow-men in a fruitless attempt ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... I have seen more about returned goods than you have," I said, "as I have been in the store so long, and see every package that comes in. I do get my back up over some of the stupid things the average retailer will do. It never seems to enter his head to drop the house a card and await their instructions about the goods that are unsatisfactory, but he fancies he is showing how smart he is by whacking them back at once, and always by express, no matter how ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... any inequality of ground and in half an hour find a hundred or two private lawns graded—from the house to each boundary line—on a single falling curve, or, in plain English, a hump. The best reason why this curve is not artistic, not pleasing, but stupid, is that it is not natural and gains nothing by being unnatural. All gardening is a certain conquest of Nature, and even when "formal" should interfere with her own manner and custom as slightly as is required by the necessities of the case—the ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... sure it will be very stupid," said Macloud. "It depends on how much you liked this froth and try, we have here. The want to and can't—the aping the ways and manners of those who have had wealth for generations, and are well-born, ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... that is what you get by walking with that stupid Humphreys," said Oriana. "She knows no better than to blab to any one who will be at the trouble to seem sweet upon her, though she may get nothing ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who doubts now the correctness of that vote? The law admitting those territories passed without any proviso. Is there a slave, or will there ever be one, in either of those territories? Why, there is not a man in the United States so stupid as not to see, at this moment, that such a thing was wholly unnecessary, and that it was only calculated to irritate and to offend. I am not one who is disposed to create irritation, or give offence among brethren, or to break up fraternal ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... and be unable to escape from their enemies. The Caribs abstained from the flesh of pigs lest it should cause them to have small eyes like pigs; and they refused to partake of tortoises from a fear that if they did so they would become heavy and stupid like the animal. Among the Fans of West Africa men in the prime of life never eat tortoises for a similar reason; they imagine that if they did so, their vigour and fleetness of foot would be gone. But old men may eat tortoises freely, because having already ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... view of those large classes of human nature he did include. His sympathetic insight was both serious and humorous; and he thus equally escaped the intolerance of taste and the intolerance of intelligence. What we would call the worst criminals and the most stupid fools were, as mirrored in his mind, fairly dealt with; every opportunity was afforded them to justify their right to exist; their words, thoughts, and acts were viewed in relation to their circumstances and character, so that he made them inwardly known, as well as outwardly perceived. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... is stupid to pray all your life, and not to pray now when we have nothing to hope for except through the goodness of Providence." He dropped upon his knees with a rigid, military back, but his grizzled, unshaven chin upon his chest. The Frenchman looked at his kneeling companions, and then his eyes travelled ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tried the chord of vanity, of her love of popularity. The people called her the beautiful Duchess—why not let history name her the great? But the mention of history was unfortunate. It reminded her of her lesson-books, and of the stupid Greeks and Romans, whose dates she could never recall. She hoped she should never be anything so dull as an historical personage! And besides, greatness was for the men—it was enough for a princess to be virtuous. And she looked as edifying as ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Ville-Handry's only daughter—the heiress of many millions, brought up, so to say, in a hothouse, according to the stupid custom of modern society—knew nothing at all of life, of its bitter realities, its struggles, and its sufferings. She ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the strength you have, and we will go to Strasburg in time to show those stupid people that, if it should be necessary, we live near enough to them to give them ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... plenty of common sense, a great power of resistance, shrewdness. By means of these, you have been able to subdue the tyranny of others: can you not escape from that of your failings? Your life has adapted itself to an evil and stupid environment; it must now adapt itself to the environment of ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... in Hazlitt precociously in the study of human nature. He characterized some of his schoolmates disdainfully as "fit only for fighting like stupid dogs and cats," and at the age of twelve, while on a visit, he communicated to his father a caustic sketch of some English ladies who "require an Horace or a Shakespeare to describe them," and whose "ceremonial unsociality" made him wish he were back in America. His metaphysical ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... were more like Plumbe And not so much like me— I hate to see the paper hum When it should stupid be. For when a lot of wit and rhyme Appears upon our pages, I know too well my men in time Will ask a ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the Hindu honour, influence, power, and culture. In his heart of hearts the Hindu highly respects, and is always ready to listen to, that man of the West who is true to himself and stands before him for what he is and for what he teaches. The ordinary Hindu is not stupid enough to be deceived as to a man's nationality or true position in life because of his change of clothing or food. Indeed, to nine-tenths of all Hindus, such a change of habits, on the part of a European, would mean nothing else than that he had lost caste among his own people ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... Isuppose, will doubt that we have here in the stories of the Pacatantra and Hitopade{s}a the first germs of La Fontaine's fable.[7] But how did that fable travel all the way from India to France? How did it doff its Sanskrit garment and don the light dress of modern French? How was the stupid Brahman born again as the brisk milkmaid, "cotillon simple et ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... trampling of dim forms swaying in the fight, the roaring of the gale, and the incessant crash of heavy spray made up a ghastly pandemonium. It was an orgy of terror, of wild abandon, of hopeless striving on the edge of the pit—a stupid madness at the best, as the ship's life-boats on the port side were on the spar deck; in their panic the men were endeavoring to lower a dingy. Yet Courtenay saw that discipline was regaining its influence. He thought to inspire ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... anything at all about the early morning of the next day, the 9th. We were dreadfully tired, and I suppose we slept late, and then lounged about, with nothing to do, yet, in a listless, stupid state. Everything was quiet around us, and nothing to attract attention, or fix it in mind. About mid-day, I recollect noticing bodies of troops, a regiment, a brigade, or two, moving about, here ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... Though shameless as he is, to face these eyes Is what he dares not: if he dares he dies;) Tell him, all terms, all commerce I decline, Nor share his council, nor his battle join; For once deceiv'd, was his; but twice were mine, No—let the stupid prince, whom Jove deprives Of sense and justice, run where frenzy drives; His gifts are hateful: kings of such a kind Stand but as slaves before a noble mind, Not though he proffer'd all himself possess'd, And all his rapine could from others wrest: ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... threw down the cards and said: "You had better do what he wants. I can't manage him." Perhaps she had it in her mind that she would have no tiresome tutor on the morrow, while I should be obliged to be back to those stupid lessons. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... and delineators of human character, Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goeethe, Scott, and the rest, cheer and invigorate us even in the vivid representation of our common humanity in its meanest, most stupid, most criminal forms. Now comes a woman endowed not only with their large discourse of reason, their tolerant views of life, and their intimate knowledge of the most obscure recesses of the human heart and brain, but with a portion of that rich, imaginative humor which softens ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Bon-Mots of Dr. Johnson[1266]. JOHNSON, 'Sir, it is a mighty impudent thing.' BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, could you have no redress if you were to prosecute a publisher for bringing out, under your name, what you never said, and ascribing to you dull stupid nonsense, or making you swear profanely, as many ignorant relaters of your bon-mots do[1267]?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; there will always be some truth mixed with the falsehood, and how can it be ascertained how much is true and how much is false? Besides, Sir, what damages would a jury ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... they emerged upon the garden at the right of his own house. The flowers were thinning out fast, but the place was still gay with marigolds and other late blossoms. As he passed the kitchen door he was aware of the maid's gaping face of stupid surprise, and he called out curtly to her: "Is my mother in ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "Oh, how stupid!" she exclaimed. "Of course, this is not your first visit to Dornlitz. Yet, it's a queer coincidence that you should have both the family name and the ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... caught her by the arm. "Oh, hush! I was only joking," she said hastily. "I was trying to balance Manley's wish for fifty thousand dollars, don't you see? It was stupid of me, I know." She laughed unconvincingly. "Let me guess what the surprise is. First, is it large ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... the colonel's recitals have been, this letter conveys a piece of information more surprising than anything we have heard this day. That stupid fellow who spoiled our champagne has come in for the inheritance of ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... anecdote. After plenty of other rappings and noises (I noticed by the way that all the metal things in the room, as castors and cruets—it was a dining-room—and wine coolers and bronze chandelier, were clicked and clanged), and after the usual stupid alphabet questions and answers had been exhibited; after also the heavy mahogany table on five substantial pillars had been miraculously moved about the room and tilted, as we failed to effect at the finale when we tried; all at once a thundering knock quite shook the table and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... fellow has heaped provocations, insults, and affronts on you, or something to that effect? He has done the same by me. He is made of venomous insults and affronts, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. Are you so hopeful or so stupid, as not to know that he and the other will treat your application with contempt, and light their ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... never a feast like that of the folk of Vaiau. All day long they ate with the resolute greed of brutes, And turned from the pigs to the fish, and again from the fish to the fruits, And emptied the vessels of sauce, and drank of the kava deep; Till the young lay stupid as stones, and the strongest nodded to sleep. Sleep that was mighty as death and blind as a moonless night Tethered them hand and foot; and their souls were drowned, and the light Was cloaked from their eyes. Senseless together, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so much obliged to you. I was so convinced that the bladders were with the leaves that I never thought of removing the moss, and this was very stupid of me. The great solid bladder-like swellings almost on the surface are wonderful objects, but are not the true bladders. These I found on the roots near the surface, and down to a depth of two inches in the sand. They ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... did not write to return thanks for this cordial invitation. I felt insulted to be thought stupid enough to ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... this respect, for the simple- looking lad who stood there staring at him so solemnly. Yes, diplomacy was undoubtedly the way out of this unfortunate scrape; the Englishman must be made to realise that the capture of Nombre was a stupid mistake, out of which neither honour nor profit was to be gained; and once convinced of this, he would perhaps withdraw himself and his forces peaceably. These thoughts flashed through Don Sebastian's brain while George ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... person on his knee, the whole garnished with the epigraph: Scenes de la Vie Cachee. They seem to have given him, personally, a very unnecessary annoyance, and indeed he was always rather sensitive to criticism. This kind of stupid libel will never cease to be devised by the envious, swallowed by the vulgar, and simply neglected by the wise. But Balzac's peculiarities, both of life and of work, lent themselves rather fatally to a ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... selling cast-off clothing and she was good to us,—and when father came in very drunk, she would take us children into her little place to be out of the way. So I hunted her up; and then, Mother Agnes, I did a very wrong thing. She is old and stupid, and very poor, and I could not take food and lodging with her for nothing,—so I gave her my Orphanage dress. She was pleased with it, and said it was worth quite ten shillings, and gave me a ragged old dress in exchange,—and something to buy a bit of print with to run up ...
— Daybreak - A Story for Girls • Florence A. Sitwell
... however are not of the least Use to themselves in the Conduct of their Lives. And hence it is certain, that tho the Gentlemen of a pleasant and witty Turn of Mind often make the industrious Merchant, and grave Persons of all Professions, the Subjects of their Raillery, and expose them as stupid Creatures, not supportable in good Company; yet these in their Turn believe they have as great a right, as indeed they have, to reproach the others for want of Industry, good Sense, and regular Oeconomy, much more valuable Talents than those, which any mere Wit can boast ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... the habit of examining evidence, they were content to accept ideas that threw a pleasant glamour on life. But the coming of Jimmy Simpson altered this agreeable condition of mind. Jimmy was one of those masterful stupid boys who excel at games and physical contests, and triumph over intellectual problems by sheer braggart ignorance. From the first he regarded George with contempt, and when he heard him telling his stories he did ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... He shook his head, and said at once, "I fear, if I could go, that I should be too late. That Pewsey doctor can kill much easier than I can cure. The taking of blood away at such a moment was most stupid, it was most damnable; he ought to have put blood into him, instead of taking it away. I fear, after that, there is no hopes. What says Bob Clare?" "I am sorry to say, sir, that you are too well agreed in your opinion; ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the Man! Or, rather think some God! Dull stupid Maid, Hast thou not heard of something more than mortal! 'Twixt Human and Divine! our Country's Genius, Our young God of War! not heard ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... she were not unduly frivolous even for a child of six; for she would refuse to study unless she could have the doll she called Bishop Wright with her and pretend that she taught the lesson to him, finding him always stupid and loth to learn. He hoped for better things from her mind as she aged, watching anxiously for the buddings of reason and religion, praying daily that she should be increased in wisdom as in stature. He had become so used to the look of her mother ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... "This stupid insistence upon confining me to manual labor. I'm the single member on Ragnarok of the Athena Planning Board and surely you can see that this bumbling confusion of these people"—Bemmon indicated the hurrying, laboring men, women and children around them—"can be transformed ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... a trituration (H.) is made of this fungus, and its spores, rubbed up with inert sugar of milk powdered, and it proves an effective remedy against dull, stupid, sleepy headache, with passive itchy pimples about the skin. From five to ten grains of the trituration, diluted to the third decimal strength, should be given twice a day, with a little water, for two or ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... raises one question: "If the interests of your army or your people or yourself are at stake or you have to keep your word on one hand and your pledge word and treaty is on the other hand, which path will you take? Who can be stupid enough to hesitate in answering this question? In other words, treaties are to be kept when they promote your interest, and shamelessly broken when you ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... been still half stupid with sleep and indigestion, and standing in the full blaze of this hot sun, he might have been rather struck by this last sentence. But he did have those disadvantages, and he saw in ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... theories about it. He could write an essay on the Understanding, but was unversed in Common-sense. His nature was more calm and normal than Shaftesbury's, but in their intellectual conclusions they were not dissimilar. The views about the common people which Sir William Berkeley expressed with stupid brutality, they stated with punctual elegance. They were well mated for the purpose in hand, and they performed it with due deliberation and sobriety. It was not until five years after the grant was made that the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... to this proposal as unworthy of the Republic, and moves that Pitt be declared an enemy of the human race. This is at once approved as worthy of the humanity and dignity of the Convention. The decree, then, was obviously a device for shelving the stupid and bloodthirsty motion of Garnier. The whole discussion may be compared with Pitt's declaration to the House of Commons on 12th February 1793, that the war, though undoubtedly provoked by France, would never be waged by England for ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... presence of Vasudeva, "Do thou, O suta, say unto Dhritarashtra's son, in the presence of all the Kurus, and also in the hearing of that Suta's son, of foul tongue and wicked soul, of little sense, stupid reason, and of numbered days, who always desires to fight against me, and also in the hearing of those kings assembled for fighting against the Pandavas, and do thou see that all the words now uttered ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... let her come again, and I '11 let you off... only, please, don't show your stupid phiz inside my tent, and leave us in peace; do ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... isn't quite heaven yet, and you will take cold. Honestly, girls, isn't it a sort of wonderment to you how the people up there can employ their time? In spite of me I cannot help feeling that it must be rather stupid; think of never being able to lie down ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... gallant falsehood. What harm can be done thereby, and why cause her useless embarrassment? "We simply have to be polite as our race and clime understand politeness, and no one except a naive is really going to take this sort of thing seriously." To thank a stupid hostess for the pleasure she has not given, is loving one's neighbor as one's self. "I know only one person whom I could count on not to indulge herself in these conventional falsehoods, and she has never been able, so far as I know, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... giving about two days, no end of little garments to alter and to make, with a husband whose clothes as well as himself have been neglected for three months, the garden to be covered up from the frost, shrubs to transplant, winter provisions to lay in and only one good-natured, stupid servant to help with all. This, Susan, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... right, too," said Dolly, with a little pout. "You know too much, Bessie—I'm glad to find there's something you don't do right. You must she stupid about some things, just like the rest of us, if you lived on a farm and don't know how to pitch hay ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... a smart fellow!" exclaimed Captain Miles with much gusto. "You're worth all the rest of those stupid lubbers of mine boiled down together! Haul away now, Mr Marline," he added, looking up; "I think we've fixed the cow ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... "All the more reason, Stupid!" he said to the moth, as it flew away. "A man goes and gets a girl to care for him, and then he goes and plays some fool trick—like as not this chap had his sheet tied—and leaves her alone the rest of her life. Just look at this sweet old angel, ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... is certainly stupid," she exclaimed. "Of course it isn't Weston Street; it's Weston Place, as the ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... The man bowed, smiling in a stupid way, then began to withdraw, explaining that he was cleaning the hall, and hoping that he had not disturbed "monsieur." The detective closed the door, uncertain whether the man had been watching him or not. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... worst of it," said the girl, with one of her sudden accesses of sweet candor. "I needn't have hurt him at all. I was stupid." She paused in her revelation. "But he was stupider," she declared vindictively; "so it serves ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... more advanced Roumanians of the plain also apply this term to their countrymen who live among the Roumanian mountains or, in Serbia, amid the heights of Po[vz]arevac and Kraina. It signifies a stupid fellow, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... of Thetford was as absurd as it was wicked. To imagine the disease to be contagious was the height of folly; to suppose himself secure, merely by not permitting a sick man to remain under his roof, was no less stupid; but Thetford's fears had subverted his understanding. He did not listen to arguments or supplications. His attention was incapable of straying from one object. To influence him by words was equivalent to reasoning with ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... clear to the saloon; and there they found him,—there he lay, perfectly stupid, and dead ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... bottom of the trench with a bullet through his helmet and through his brain. The young officer in command of the listening-post cursed softly. "I'm forever warning the men not to expose themselves," he said irritatedly, "but they forget it the next minute. They're nothing but stupid children." He spoke in much the same tone of annoyance he might have used if the man had been a clumsy servant who had broken a valuable dish. Then he went into the tiny dugout where the telephone was, and rang up the trench commander, and asked him to send ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... Samaritan gave him a ticket, and he reached our house at St. Kilda at last. There for above three weeks the poor creature lay in a sort of stupid doze. Food he could scarcely be induced to taste, and he only rose now and again for a drink of water. When my wife was able to be removed thither also, we found dear Mungaw dreadfully changed in appearance and in conduct. Twice thereafter I took him with me on Mission work; but, on ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... John Gait's "Life of Byron" occupies a conspicuous position. But for books written for the double purpose of downing the subject and elevating the author, Philip Thicknesse's "Life of Gainsborough" must stand first. The book is so bad that it is interesting, and so stupid that it will never die. Thicknesse had a quarrel with Gainsborough, and three-fourths of the volume is given up to a minute recital of "says he" and "says I." It is really only an extended pamphlet written by an arch-bore with intent to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... their greatness; "Familiarity breeds contempt," because men are so apt to judge one another by false standards and by that which is accidental and external and because so frequently men do not know those whom they think they know the best. This same stupid lack of appreciation shadows human lives to-day, and makes us fail to realize the worth of our friends and the value of our opportunities, until it is too late. It even has its tragic bearing upon the present ministry of Christ; some reject ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... "'He's a stupid thing, and thinks we don't see him,' said the miller. I walked round and round until I began to get dizzy, but that bird was all front, and all I could see was his striped breast and neck. Then I saw the miller ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... the dangers of class interests and individual interests. Individualism, class distinction and party politics and the independence of labor came near proving the ruin of England. The Bishop of Oxford has expressed himself as believing that the blank stupid conservatism of his country, as he calls it, is really broken and that a new sense of service is actually dawning in all directions. Trotter says (and he too is thinking of England) that a very small amount of conscious and authoritative ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... busy clearing the snow from the horses' hoofs. The driver, stupid or dazed, sat on the box, helpless as a parrot on ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the Hun comprehension elude, They're so cleverly crass, so painstakingly crude; For, in spite of his cunning and forethought immense, He is often incurably stupid and dense To the point of allowing his patriot zeal To put a large spoke in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... think I care," said the baroness, "for your stupid politics? Do you think any woman cares for politics who has found some stupid man to care for her? There is my stupid in ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Some stupid people suppose that imagination and philosophy are incompatible. Blockheads! Was not Bacon, the greatest of philosophers, one of the most imaginative of men? There is more true philosophy in the writings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... forth Alice was shy of speaking of him to his aunt. But she had kept his letter, and indulged herself with a reading of it occasionally; and every time she read it she seemed to understand it better. It was a mystery to her how she had been so intensely stupid as not to understand it at first. And when she found a copy of her own answer to it among her papers—one she had thrown aside on account of a big blot—she wondered if it was possible she had sent such a thing, and tears of shame and regret stood in her eyes. "How frightfully blind I was!" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Shipping Master! I was quite astonished at this discovery, though indeed the mistake was natural enough under the circumstances. What I ought to have admired was the reticence with which this misunderstanding had been established and acted upon. But I was too stupid then to admire anything. All my anxiety was that this should be cleared up. I was ass enough to wonder exceedingly at Mr. Powell failing to notice the misapprehension. I saw a slight twitch come and go on his face; but instead of setting right that mistake the Shipping Master swung ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... very plain and commonplace in appearance, without being hideously ugly. Looking up in my face with a stupid sneer, she said: "Isn't it a pity you haven't a pretty girl to walk all alone with you through this sweet country? How different everything would look? wouldn't it? Strange that one can never have what one would like best! How the roses would bloom and all that, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... get mast-headed and have my leave stopped, and I don't know what else—all for shying a bone across the steerage," argued Dicky. "What business had the boatswain and carpenter to hit each other, I should like to know. If that stupid Trundle had taken the joke in good part, there wouldn't ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... he babbled his apologies. "I'm really awfully sorry. It was extremely stupid of me, but I never thought——. Of course I ought to have looked at the petrol ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... An allusion to the Beast Epic, where the cunning fox laughs at the flayed condition of his stupid foes, the wolf and bear. We should say, "Don't stop to speak with him, but rather beat him black ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... you who speak thus to me? You, for whom I was prepared to endure any sacrifice! You, whom I would have served on my knees! And what reason do you give to justify your conduct? Money! Indispensable and stupid money! Nothing but money! But it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and in London?" I stammered, completely confounded at this extraordinary news, and fearing lest I had been too stupid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... "Oh, don't be stupid! I mean when they are well dressed. Princess, indeed! Catch ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... necessary for the gentlemen of England to band together in defence of their common rights and their glorious order, menaced on all sides by foreign revolutions, by intestine radicalism, by the artful calumnies of mill-owners and cotton-lords, and the stupid hostility of the masses whom they gulled and led. "The ancient monarchy was insulted," the Captain said, "by a ferocious republican rabble. The Church was deserted by envious dissent, and undermined by stealthy infidelity. The good institutions, which had made our country glorious, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... did it all mean? What was 'business'? His Papa was a wonderfully good man of business, his Mamma had often told him so—but he should never be one. It was hopeless, and very awful, for people were continually telling him that he would have to earn his own living. No doubt, but how—considering how stupid, idle, ignorant, self-indulgent, and physically puny he was? All grown-up people were clever, except servants—and even these were cleverer than ever he should be. Oh, why, why, why, could not people be born into the world as grown-up persons? Then he thought of Casabianca. He ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... holidays. Eunoe, bring the water, and put it down in the middle of the room, lazy creature that you are! Cats always like to sleep soft! Come, bustle, bring the water—quicker! I want water first, and how she carries it! Give it me all the same: don't pour out so much, you extravagant thing! Stupid girl! Why are you wetting my dress? There, stop, I have washed my hands, as heaven would have it! Where is the key of the big chest? ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... who, like the majority of such characters, had, for the sake of a title—the earldom of Bath—subsided into a courtier. Him Akenside lashes with unsparing energy. He committed afterwards an egregious blunder in reference to this production. He frittered it down into a stupid ode. Indeed, he had always an injudicious trick—whether springing from fastidiousness or undue ambition—of tinkering and tampering with ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... that stupid children are as well protected against the evil effects of the education system as the healthy children. In fact, to a large extent the stupid children are the healthy ones by reason of their stupidity. It is, however, a great mistake ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... another, knew little about their remote neighbors and often were quite willing to convert their ignorance into prejudice: The dweller in the uplands and the resident on the coast were wont to view each other with disfavor. The one was thought heavy and stupid, the other frivolous and lazy. Native Spaniards regarded the Creoles, or American born, as persons who had degenerated more or less by their contact with the aborigines and the wilderness. For their part, the Creoles looked upon the Spaniards as upstarts ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... the Sergeant, he had had occasion to complain of his bullying, of his arrogance, and of his unpleasant gibes and innuendoes. It was an opportunity then to be snatched at, both for the sake of himself and of this somewhat ancient sentry, who, whatever he might be, however stupid, was ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... that I stood staring and blinking at the empty ocean—where the moonlight lay like a painted stripe reaching to the horizon—stupid and frowning, till Hardenberg, who ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... rather stupid in that matter," exclaimed the Professor. "I had overlooked the fact that the Kurabus were the ones who attacked us at the Cataract, and as they know its locality it is but natural they should make ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... A more stupid production could not easily be found; but, as it must be scarce, if the story about the destruction of all but eight copies is true, I transcribe ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... carpenter and blacksmith are able to fix any part of them. 5. The majority of the news is unfavorable. 6. Search-lights would be an indispensable factor in a night attack. 7. Bishop Hatto lived in a country where all the productions were spoiled by the weather. 8. The whole of the stupid boys in Germany struggle to pass this test. 9. The police are looking for the guilty parties. 10. A lot of men from the country came to town to see the circus. 11. In the shed is a mixture[44] of oars, seats, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... had been simulating an interest in the cloudy firmament as an excuse for not looking at the girls until close at hand. Jane sent an eyeflash at Josephs with a skill which proved her favorite assertion that she was not so stupid as people thought. He blushed and took off his soft, low-crowned felt hat. Fairholme saluted very solemnly, for Agatha bowed to him with marked seriousness. But when his gravity and his stiff silk hat were at their highest point she darted a mocking smile at him, and he too blushed, all the deeper ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... amusing; the bolster fight on a spar doesn't sound interesting, but it was; it got quite exciting towards the end as the wiry cavalry colonel, hero of many a stricken field, knocked out all comers, young or old. Egg and spoon races and threading needles were a little stupid, but what tableaux the groups of fair women made, with the bright dresses and complexions, and the jolly brown young men, all in the soft light that was filtering through the awning and blazing up from under its ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... been more or less sane. The last two terms I have often wondered what was going to happen to you. You had no balance; you kept on doing silly little things so as to hold the attention of a more stupid audience. This term you have stopped that sort of rot. But what is the use of it going to be, if you go and do things like this on the impulse of the moment, merely because you don't want to look silly? You can't think how much ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... man came lounging in, unheard by Mr. Waverton's rapt mind. He opened his eyes at the back which Mr. Waverton turned upon Harry and the space between them. "Why, Geoffrey, have you been very stupid this morning? And has schoolmaster stood you in the corner? Well done, Mr. Boyce. I always told you, spare the rod and spoil the child. Shall I go cut ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... prayers to kiss it passionately. She did next to nothing all day long: needlework made her tired: Madame Alexandrine had not given her a taste for it. She did little more than read a few insipid tracts, or a stupid miraculous story, the pretentious and bald style of which seemed to her the very flower of poetry,—or the criminal reports illustrated in color in the Sunday papers which her stupid mother used to give her. She would perhaps do a little crochet-work, moving her lips, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... a job; the satisfied, brutal 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 ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... lightning, where were great white moons and life-giving suns, where was the serpent in the grass, and the unique tree, where were swift horses.... Beeves that had once been red awkward calves, and then sullen, stupid little bullocks, and then proud young bulls, with graceful horns.... Such as earnest Christians believed had lowed at the manger of Christ born in Bethlehem.... And stupid, suspicious sheep, that had ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... is true enough, Harry, and it is very kind and considerate of you to think of it; but who will we get? The women here are very ignorant and stupid." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a subsequent perusal of his own work, what an egregious blunder he had committed?"—"Very true," said I; "for if he wrote with a design to discredit the measures which he represents in such an odious light, nothing could be more stupid than not to commence his dialogue at a period which was subsequent to those measures. But he so entirely forgets himself, as to tell us, that he did not choose to attend a Senate which was held in one of Caesar's future consulships, in the very same dialogue in which ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... bring them here in about an hour,' she thought to herself in great flatness of spirit. 'How stupid of Reggie!' ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have become very stupid, and I shall detest you. That's all your knowledge will have gained you, Miss Lucy; nay more, I will not come here so often if you do not treat me as you used to do, and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... were indifferent to the rest. Some of them were on nettles till they learned your name was Dickson and you a journeyman baker; but beyond that, whether you were Catholic or Mormon, dull or clever, fierce or friendly, was all one to them. Others who were not so stupid, gossiped a little, and, I am bound to say, unkindly. A favourite witticism was for some lout to raise the alarm of "All aboard!" while the rest of us were dining, thus contributing his mite to the general discomfort. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... duty, you know, for Adela is the shyest of mortals, and recoils by nature from the underbred far more than we do. In fact, I rather like it. It gives me a sensation. I had ten times rather this man were a common sailor, or a tinker, than just a stupid stick of a clerk!' ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for dinner, and thought nothing of eating raw bacon. In the snow the men wound hay-bands round their legs to serve as gaiters, and found it answered admirably. One poor girl had been subject to fits ever since a stupid fellow, during the haymaking, jokingly picked up a snake and threw it round her neck. Yet even in that far-away coombe-bottom they knew enough to put an oyster-shell in the kettle ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... best to be with women,—to tell the truth he was an ignoramus where women were concerned,—"I think it would be better if you didn't look at them. There are reasons why—" he ambled on like this, stupid man that he was, till the lady naturally insisted upon seeing the ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... unattractive," said Miss Hugonin, calmly. "You're very stupid, Billy, to think of living abroad. Billy, I think you're almost as stupid as I am. I've been very stupid, Billy. I thought I liked Mr. Kennaston. I don't, Billy—not that way. I've just told him so. I'm not—I'm not engaged to anybody now, Billy. But wasn't ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... heavy blow on the head. Somebody had struck him with the butt of a whip or riding quirt. The pain was distressing; he felt dazed and stupid, disinclined to move, but he retained consciousness. There were sounds to which he could attach a meaning: a rattle of harness which indicated that his driving team was being loosened, a thud of hoofs ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... But a girl over sixteen is likely to be committed to prison, and may be locked in cells with criminal and abandoned women of the lowest order. Waverley House is the first practical protest against this stupid and evil-encouraging policy. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... could get angry with you and give you a jolly good hiding one day. But you know I can't, you dear old thing. I'm writing this in the orchard, where the H.Q. horses live, and Jezebel is standing sleepily in the shade of her tree. She looks intensely stupid. She occasionally tries to flick away a fly with her short tail. Occasionally she sighs deeply, with that blubbery, spluttery noise that all ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... the period abounds in illustrations of this fact. One day, in the midst of a Council of State, Napoleon grossly insults Beugnot, treating him as one might an unmannerly valet. The effect produced, he goes up to him and says, "Well, stupid, have you found your head again?" Whereupon Beugnot, tall as a drum-major, bows very low, and the little man raising his hand, takes the tall one by the ear, "an intoxicating sign of favour," writes Beugnot, "the familiar gesture of the master who waxes gracious." Such examples ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... the President called a hasty meeting of his Cabinet. And such a Cabinet! I wish you could have seen them, Louis, with me in the centre playing on them like an advocate before a jury. They were the most dreadful men I ever met, bourgeois and stupid and ugly to a degree. Two of them were commission-merchants, and one of them is old Dr. Gustavanni, who kept the chemist's shop in the Piazza Royale. They were quite silly with fear, and they begged me to tell them how they could avert the fall of the Republic and prevent your landing. And I said ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... throbbed more violently. He could stand it no longer, and, raising his hand toward the bell rope, he pulled it toward him. After waiting half a minute, he rang again—this time a little louder. No answer. To ring like a deaf man would have been useless, stupid even. The old woman was certainly at home; but, suspicious by nature, she was likely to be so all the more then, as she happened to be alone. Raskolnikoff knew something of Alena Ivanovna's habits. He therefore placed ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... she said in answer. "It is a stupid fashion to notice one's friends here. One should not be supposed to recognise them at the Academy any ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... because in many cases the task of providing for helpless children and an idle, lazy, husband, is imposed on the patient wife and mother; and, with this sudden elevation to citizenship, which the mass of stupid, ignorant negroes look upon as entitling them to great honor, I regard the future state of the negro woman, without the ballot in her hand, as deplorable. And what is said of the ignorant black man can ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... flirting her whip and lifting her shoulders. "M'sieur Le Capitaine is never a stupid man. You—you should say something ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... sort of girl, in short, that a full-blooded man must needs stare at, perhaps furtively, but with no thought of boldness. Stupid, indeed, must be he who would attempt anything even remotely ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... inherent and acquired, had shattered themselves futilely against the reserve he had set between them. Why had he offered her that kiss on board The Tigress? Perhaps that had been his hour of disenchantment. She hadn't measured up; she had been stupid; she hadn't known how ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... at him with amazement; there he sat, gravely, with a considering air. Before I had well given utterance to the stupid name which jumped into my head the man had accommodated himself to it, and pretended ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... "—For a big stupid who is too modest ever to think enough of himself," she completed. "Well, I do. I care a great ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... saunter upwards in search of a meal. The horses had unfortunately scented him before he was aware of their proximity, and, with that lively terror which all animals evince in the neighbourhood of bears, had broken madly away, to Bruin's great chagrin. If he had not been half asleep, and therefore stupid, he would have crawled upon them from the lee side, and been on the back, or at the throat, of one before they could have divined his presence. The noise of the men's voices had startled him, and he had gone into the wood heap to collect his thoughts and map out a new ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... in a man is ridiculous, and I always endeavour to avoid ridiculous people. James is a clever painter, but a very stupid fellow. Seeing him to-day reminds me of something I had meant to ask you, Flamby. Just before I last came on leave you wrote at Paul's request to enquire if I considered it wise that you should ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... place in society as if he were a member of what is termed "one of the learned professions." The treatment accorded our soldiers and sailors by some rich, ill-bred snobs in this country is to their lasting disgrace, and it is to be hoped that such stupid idiots may live to see the day when they will bitterly repent their ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... not write to return thanks for this cordial invitation. I felt insulted to be thought stupid enough to be ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... assistance; two of them, who evidently had been garroting and robbing the third, ran, leaving him lying motionless on the tow-path. He had either been choked until he was insensible, or else he had been made so stupid by drink as to be incapable of thought or action. Policeman Johnson coming up, they gave chase to the other two who, however, made good their escape. They carried the one who had been assaulted to No.—— Station, where ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... boy of twelve years when he was brought to me showed the mental powers of a stupid child of four. In a silly way he repeated every question which he heard without answering it; he talked steadily to himself in a nonsensical manner, mostly repeating nursery rhymes without end, never holding his attention to anything in the room, giving the impression that ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... case was complete, the whole bill of indictment stood forth a tissue of stupid malignity without a shred of evidence ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... it being Sunday, as a matter of curiosity; and there was enough there to gratify it. Though no larger than the Pilgrim, she had five or six officers, and a crew of between twenty and thirty; and such a stupid and greasy-looking set, I certainly never saw before. Although it was quite comfortable weather, and we had nothing on but straw hats, shirts, and duck trowsers, and were barefooted, they had, every man of them, double-soled boots, coming up to the knees, and well greased; ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... course, stupid," retorted Jenny. "Welcome Robin, with that black head, beautiful russet breast, black and white throat and yellow bill, not to mention the proud way in which he carries himself, certainly is a handsome fellow, and Mrs. ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... flowers, and read over the letter which he had sent her. "Poor wretch," she said, twirling round the little bit of paper in her fingers, "how I could crush her with this!—and it is for a thing like this that she must break her heart, forsooth—for a man who is stupid—a coxcomb—and who does not care for her. My poor good Rawdon is worth ten of this creature." And then she fell to thinking what she should do if—if anything happened to poor good Rawdon, and what a great piece of luck it was that he had ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... first and chiefest apostle of the desolation of men and morals, and might withdraw the scourge of the land. But what is to restore order and safety on the ocean? The death of George III? Not at all. He is only stupid; and his ministers, however weak and profligate in morals, are ephemeral. But his nation is permanent, and it is that which is the tyrant of the ocean. The principle that force is right, is become the principle of the nation ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... say one tender word, She felt so blunt and stupid at the heart: She only prayed him, 'Fly, they will return And slay you; fly, your charger is without, My palfrey lost.' 'Then, Enid, shall you ride Behind me.' 'Yea,' said Enid, 'let us go.' And moving ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... "Giants".—These are stupid, mischievous, evil and cunning in Saxo's eyes. Oldest of beings, with chaotic force and exuberance, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... dog, while washing the poor beast's nose and mouth. "The idea of trying to bite a huitzttacuatzin! Upon my word, I thought you knew better than that. No doubt it's a good thing to be brave, but you must manage to be less stupid when you are in the forests of the Terre-Chaude, unless you want to be devoured by a tiger, or scratched ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... He was a stupid, heavy, good-natured Englishman. He stuttered a little, and had a peculiar habit of wedging the monosyllable "why" into his conversation at times when it served no other purpose than to fill up the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... consideration for the manner in which Edwin had been shut away from the better class of society and the proper helps that are usually thrown about the young, they at once gave him a low and degraded place in their estimation and pronounced him dull, stupid, and idiotic. All commands were given in a harsh tone and in such a manner that he could not ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... the cave hollow (Missourian for "valley"), and there we staked out claims and pretended to dig gold, panning out half a dollar a day at first; two or three times as much, later, and by and by whole fortunes, as our imaginations became inured to the work. Stupid and unprophetic lads! We were doing this in play and never suspecting. Why, that cave hollow and all the adjacent hills were made of gold! But we did not know it. We took it for dirt. We left its rich secret in its own peaceful possession and grew up in poverty and went wandering about ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... a look, and, if the truth be told, her fingers tingled for his ears. Her own ears were on the alert, directed backwards like a hare's. Would he never come? Was he really so simple, so abominably stupid, so little versed in woman's ways? Or was he playing with her? Perhaps, he had gone into the town? Or trudged up the Salisbury road; if so, and if she did not see him now, she might not meet him until the next morning; and who could say what ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... care not to be wife, But to be with you still, to see your face, To serve you, and to follow you thro' the world.' And Lancelot answer'd, 'Nay, the world, the world, All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue To blare its own interpretation—nay, Full ill then should I quit your brother's love, And your good father's kindness.' And she said, 'Not to be with you, not to see your face - Alas for me then, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... sells fruit, and who was one of a group on the corner of Via Alessandro Volta. "It was a delegato! It was the police!" The members of that group are less enraged with the delegato and the policemen than with the stupid bystanders, who might easily have thrown delegato, policemen, cab, horse and driver into the river, and, instead, had allowed themselves to be dispersed by a few words and a few drops of water! The little ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... group of tatterdemalions, seated in the shade of some baskets of charcoal, a broad-shouldered and stupid looking boy rose to meet him. His face was streaked with red and his neck was scratched; he bore the traces of a recent fight. He walked along beside Tchelkache, and ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... world, to be sent before the judgment-seat of the Lord! A wicked and a troublesome meddling is that, with the business of One who has not made His creatures to be herded, like oxen, and driven from field to field, as their stupid and selfish keepers may judge of their need and wants. A miserable land must that be, where they fetter the mind as well as the body, and where the creatures of God, being born children, are kept so by the wicked inventions of men ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... health, and comes to look on disease as the normal state of existence and health as exceptional. The same is equally true of the child's mental and moral upbringing. How often do foolish parents tell their children that they are naughty, disobedient, stupid, idle or vicious? If these suggestions were accepted, which, thank Heaven, is not always the case, the little ones would in very fact develop just these qualities. But even when no word is spoken, a look or a gesture can initiate an ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... the hindmost in the transaction need expect only the fate proverbially promised to such. It is, possibly, superfluous to say that of the company of the hindmost was our poor friend, well-meaning and stupid Dick Talbot-Lowry, and also that his fate, as such, was sedulously pointed out to him by those friends of his own class, who, like the fabled fox, having lost their brushes, were eager in explanation of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... disasters to France, but for the life of me I can't see what can happen without the King's authority, and surely so good a king will let no harm happen to his country. As for myself, I could bless the States-General for having furnished so gala an occasion! Paris has been deadly stupid for months with all this talk of politics and elections and constitutions going on. I am glad it is all over and we have reached the beginning of the end. Is it not ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... detectives stupid from the drug, a low chuckle escaped the man, and he rose to his ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... on,' answers the ghost. 'I was alive when it struck eight bells in the middle watch, and its now only just gone two. I take it it is the morning watch, for I heard it strike just before that stupid sentry put out his light, and for some reason or other I couldn't make out, took ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... duty where Corvick had left it. I went still further—it was the only glimpse of happiness I had. I made up my mind that the duty didn't appeal to him. He wasn't interested, he didn't care. Yes, it quite comforted me to believe him too stupid to have joy of the thing I lacked. He was as stupid after as he had been before, and that deepened for me the golden glory in which the mystery was wrapped. I had of course none the less to recollect ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... no being whom I so much pity, as a young woman who, believing, perhaps, that a "reformed rake," once handsome, or it may be, a wit, makes the best companion, becomes chained for life to a stupid, shiftless creature—one whose energies of body and soul are exhausted, and seem unsusceptible of being renovated or restored—one, too, with whom, in that more intimate acquaintance which time and circumstances afford her, proves to be totally unworthy ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... her a feeling of pity came upon me—she looked so wan and frail. Still her eyes were bright with good-will, and her voice seemed to tremble a little as she said, "I am so glad to see you and your uncle good friends again. He was very stupid, and I ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... King. "Oh! how stupid people can be when they want to. Two persons are to meet us in New York to-morrow. I didn't tell you till I was sure; I had no desire that you should be disappointed. ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... head police office at Irun, and the chief asked me all manner of questions; but I kept on repeating 'no comprendo,' and showing the cards of Mr. George Smith. I couldn't understand all their jabber, but they mentioned your name, and from the way they looked when I put on my stupid airs, I thought they began to have their doubts. The chief policeman motioned me to stop where I was, and ordered two of the men to go somewhere. From my place, I could see the bridge, and the two policemen who seemed to be ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... prove that Vautrin is as innocent a work as a drama of Berquin's? To inquire into the morality or immorality of the stage would imply servile submission to the stupid Prudhommes who bring ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... unintelligent Me, stupid as an idiot, that has to try a thing a thousand times before he can do it, and then never knows how he does it, that at last does it well. We have to educate ourselves through the pretentious claims of intellect, into the humble accuracy of instinct, and we end at last by acquiring ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... neglected because they have been commonly regarded as merely "simple minded" or "foolish"; to be pitied, and the subject of many a jest, but entirely harmless. A large number of the feeble-minded are so nearly normal that they are considered merely shiftless or stupid. Nearly every rural community has one or more families, and not infrequently a small slum neighborhood, who are ne'er-do-wells, more or less delinquent and frequently requiring aid from the town. Thanks to modern psychology, we now know that many of these ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... to be talked out of my common sense, and me on my death-bed," said the old lady impatiently, and yet with some secret hope that Ingram would go on talking and amuse her. "I won't have you say he is anything but a stupid and ungrateful boy, who married a wife far too good for him. He is worse than that—he is much worse than that; but as this may be my death-bed, I will keep a civil tongue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... replied, with equal caution, as I paused with my eyes on a level with the rail. "How is it on board? Have the rascals drunk themselves stupid?" ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... for by Nature, this fundamental education needs comparatively little care from us. What we are chiefly called upon to see, is, that there shall be free scope for gaining this experience and receiving this discipline—that there shall be no such thwarting of Nature as that by which stupid schoolmistresses commonly prevent the girls in their charge from the spontaneous physical activities they would indulge in; and so render them comparatively incapable of taking care of themselves ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the first to congratulate you," Mrs. Stapleton said, taking Dulcie's hand and patting it affectionately. "It is too dreadful to think all those lovely things should have been stolen from you, things of such exceptional value to you because of their long association with your family. Oh, how stupid of me," she suddenly said, interrupting herself, "I have forgotten to tell you what I have come to see you for. I have some friends from town dining with me to-night—some of them are going to stay the night at 'The Rook,' ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... her fate had been quickly settled, it seems to me that (accepting the magical and supernatural elements on which the whole thing rests) it was perfectly reasonable. I fancy that Wagner, after some years with his very stupid wife, Minna, was getting thoroughly angry with the irrational curiosity of women and the idiotic demands which they make on their life-mates. Anyhow, though he gives Elsa some very beautiful music to sing, he does not spare her in drawing her character. It is one of the few characters he ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... his hand across his tightening forehead. Slowly over his face came a stupid expression. He felt himself going, without power of retraining himself. His lips twitched and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... bad to take the maidens away from the strand where they look so bonnie, and Rafe is splendid as the gude sailor, but Dandie looks so silly as one little dead Scots lord; if we only had one more person, young or old, if he was ever so stupid!" ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not finished yet. Monsieur Derues came back in an hour, and I was then feeling better; but before, I left I was stupid enough to say that I had been robbed in the confusion; my diamond earrings, which had belonged to my mother, were gone. You cannot imagine the trouble Monsieur Derues took to discover the thief, and all the appeals he made to the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... here! We aren't, but we are keen on what a title brings over your side. Take your Debrett—there are I don't know how many baronets and lords and marquises and earls, and all the rest of it. Do you realize that whatever public place I'm in, or even at a friend's dinner-party, the homely, stupid wives of those men have got to go in before me, and if they don't—why I know all the time it's a matter of courtesy? That's what makes me mad! Don't you dare to smile at me now. I'm in deadly earnest. In this country, so far as society goes, I'm at the top. ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... news of his lost father soon roused the prince from the stupid fit into which he had fallen. He followed in amazement the sound of Ariel's voice, till it led him to Prospero and Miranda, who were sitting under the shade of a large tree. Now Miranda had never seen a man before, except her ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... time, ma'am—or something like one," said this worthy person, confidentially. "A great, stout, awkward, stupid creature, with a man's hat on and a man's stick in her hand. She says she has got a note for you, and she won't give it to anybody but you. I'd better not let her ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... me for a moment with a look of pitying allowance, such as one bestows on a child who doesn't know any better than to ask stupid questions. ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... bear with a sore head, Miss Carteret thinks you're not much of a hustler, Jack," he said coolly. "She knows the situation; knows that you were stupid enough to promise not to lay hands on the car when we could have pushed it out of the way without annoying anybody. None the less, she thinks that you might find a way to go on building your railroad without breaking your ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... the North Country understand this double standard; but occasionally someone, either stupid or inexperienced or unobservant, makes the mistake of concluding that the town-character and the woods-character are necessarily the same. If he acts in accordance with that erroneous idea, he gets into trouble. Take the case of Silver Jack ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... In the most stupid ages there is more good taste than one would at first sight imagine. Even the present, abuse it with what contemptuous epithets you please, cannot be totally void of it. As long as there are noble humane and generous dispositions ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... too confused to utter a single word. I ordered him to call the corporal of the guard, and asked him if that was the way he guarded the camp. He began to stammer out denials of being asleep with a foreign accent and in broken English, which made his stupidity seem more stupid. I reported him to the officer of the guard, but finding he was a raw recruit, I refrained from ordering him before a general court-martial, and directed a lighter summary punishment that his regimental officers ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Duke of Tuscany, through England, 1669. 4to. 1822.—Amidst much that is very tedious and stupid, relative to the ceremonies observed in receiving this prince, and all his most minute movements and actions, there are curious notices of the state of England, the mode of life, manners, and agriculture at ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... I were half as cautious, I should die of the vapours in a month; the only thing that keeps me at all alive, is now and then making people angry; for the folks at our house let me go out so seldom, and then send me with such stupid old chaperons, that giving them a little torment is really the only entertainment I can procure myself. O—but I had almost forgot to tell you ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... United States frigate Brandywine, which had been put at his disposal by the Government. Soon after his return to France he was re-elected to the Corps Legislatif, and served as a member for most of the remainder of his life. The stupid tyranny of King Charles X. having caused an outbreak of the Parisians in July, 1830, Lafayette unhesitatingly espoused the popular cause, and, though nearly seventy-three years old, accepted the command of the National ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... quiet and confident gift of encouragement. And though so contrary to the spirit of childhood, these faults are found in children—often in delicate children who have lost confidence in themselves from being habitually outdone by stronger brothers and sisters, or in slow minds which seem "stupid" to others and to themselves, or in natures too sensitive to risk themselves in the melee. To these, one who brings the gift of encouragement comes as a deliverer and often changes the course of their life, leading them to believe ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... different sort of infirmities. This Lampe had originally served in the Prussian army; on quitting which he entered the service of Kant. In this situation he had lived about forty years; and, though always dull and stupid, had, in the early part of this period, discharged his duties with tolerable fidelity. But latterly, presuming upon his own indispensableness, from his perfect knowledge of all the domestic arrangements, and upon his master's weakness, he ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 'How stupid of Daisy to forget the mug!' thought Don. 'I could have brought things home to eat quietly then.—I don't know,' he replied to Jock; 'I ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... unforgivably stupid in me never to have thought of Jean," admitted David, looking deep disgust ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... one, Bally Dean, tall, bony, and green As green corn in the milk, stood fast at the foot— Stood day after day, as if he'd been put A soldier on guard there did poor Bally Dean. And stupid! God made him so stupid I doubt— But I guess God who made us ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... among them. It means only good sense, plain reason, reason set in operation, a first notion of ordinary things, a state midway between stupidity and intelligence. "This man has no common sense" is a great insult. "A common-sense man" is an insult likewise; it means that he is not entirely stupid, and that he lacks what is called wit and understanding. But whence comes this expression common sense, unless it be from the senses? Men, when they invented this word, avowed that nothing entered the soul save through the senses; otherwise, would they ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Bishop, we were taken on board with our seven trunks without being obliged to pay anything for our passage. The ship was a transport called the "Ceylon," and was delayed by contrary winds. The second day after we embarked the wind still being from a wrong quarter, I was stupid and imprudent enough to go ashore to see about some business that was not of grave importance—when lo! the wind veered round suddenly and became favorable. The ship sailed, but Father, Vincent remained and ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... went to the kitchen and got some warm milk. She dipped her finger in it, and offered it to the puppy, but he went nosing about it in a stupid way, and wouldn't touch it. "Too young," Miss Laura said. She got a little piece of muslin, put some bread in it, tied a string round it, and dipped it in the milk. When she put this to the puppy's mouth, he sucked it greedily. He acted as if he was starving, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... I am no good at helping Arthur about his mills is that I am stupid about machinery; and I was so vexed not to help him, that when I saw a book in the library which I thought would do so, I did not stop to take it out, for it was in four very large volumes, but ran off ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... thought with nature. To genius must always go two gifts, the thought and the publication. The first is revelation, always a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or incessant study can ever familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid with wonder. It is the advent of truth into the world, a form of thought now for the first time bursting into the universe, a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the time, to inherit ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of which no man could see, but which, to the close of time, should shed a lustre on the name of McMurrough. No more should their native land be swept along, a chained slave, a handmaid, in the train of a more brutal, a more violent, and a more stupid people! From this day Ireland's valour, that had never known fit leading, should be recognised for what it was, her wit be turned to good uses, her old traditions be revived in the light of new glories. The tears rose to the girl's ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Argyle Rooms, [8] which they liked extremely, but where they had small opportunity of exhibiting their new steps. There was first an Operetta, then a supper, and afterwards an attempt at a dance; but the stupid English voted it not ton, and there were only about fifteen couples who ventured to defy this opinion—Marianne and Mr Macdonald one of them. Anne remained a spectator. As the dancing did not seem to be approved, Mr Greville said, for the future there should ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... man was telling his love, was placing in her hands all he had to give; and once more she could but hearken in mute embarrassment, only saved from awkwardness by her immobility and silence. Town-bred girls had thought her stupid, when she was but honest and truthful; very close to nature which takes no account of words. In other days when life was simpler than now it is, when young men paid their court—masterfully and yet half ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... for bohemia is simply youth and poverty and high aspirations, combined, and can't be found by search. If these literary chaps are exceptionally fortunate, they are invited to great houses, where they dine with stupid, overfed people who pretend they have read their books, though they haven't, unless they are unfit to read. And so they go on wearily turning that treadmill—and wonder why their work has lost freshness, ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... after it was over to say that I must have thought him stupid yesterday evening, that now he knew the facts he thought Her Majesty had been put to most unnecessary annoyance. The Chancellor said something of the same sort. I never saw ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... scamp is no countryman of mine; nor is one of the whole kit. They are all from Wrexham, a mixture of broken housekeepers and fellows too stupid to learn a trade; a set of scamps fit for nothing in the world but to swear bodily against honest men. They say they will stand up for Sir Watkin, and so they will, but only in a box in the Court to give false evidence. They won't fight for him on the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... at all," he said. "Old Otto is a common enough type of German, painstaking, methodical, stupid, stubborn, ready to commit any crime for Prussia, but the young fellow is of far different material. He has brains and daring and initiative. He is far more alert and more dangerous. I cannot understand his finding you there and not trying ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... had succeeded in reaching the upper edge of the boarded wall by squeezing its body between this and the elastic covering of bamboo hurdle-work which lay firmly imposed upon it; so that the poor creature, which I had rashly concluded was stupid and awkward, had, under the circumstances, manifested the greatest possible ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named HISTORY; to which inspired Texts your numerous talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic Commentaries, and wagonload of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. For my study the inspired Texts themselves! Thus did not I, in very early days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, under that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena Highway; waiting upon the great Schiller and greater Goethe; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... massacre. But being defeated on the banks of the Boyn by king William, July 1, 1691. he set off to France never to return. Here he continued till 1700, or by some 1701, that he took a strange disease, which they were pleased to call a lethargy, wherein he became quite stupid and senseless, and so died at St. Germains in that situation, after he had lived ten years a fugitive exile. He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, &c.—History of popery under James, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... I'm not so stupid as to think of a poor man, Bless you! he has a title and an estate too. If I get him I shall make a ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... think the only Improvement beyond this, would be that which the late Duke of Buckingham mentioned to a stupid Pretender to Poetry, as the Project of a Dutch Mechanick, viz. a Mill to make Verses. This being the most compendious Method of all which have yet been proposed, may deserve the Thoughts of our modern Virtuosi who are employed in new Discoveries ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... at the tavern-keeper with an air of stupid astonishment for some moments, unable to comprehend his meaning. It was evident to his mind that Mr. Graves had suddenly become crazed about something. This idea produced a feeling of alarm, and he was ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... above all by promises. Promises cost less than presents, and are worth more. No one gives as much as he who gives hopes. It is not necessary for the man we choose to be of brilliant intellect. I would even prefer him to be of no great ability. Stupid people show an inimitable grace in roguery. Be guided by me, gentlemen, and overthrow the Republic by the agency of a Republican. Let us be prudent. But prudence does not exclude energy. If you need me you will find me at ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Shipley; you mustn't go to sleep out here; it isn't quite heaven yet, and you will take cold. Honestly, girls, isn't it a sort of wonderment to you how the people up there can employ their time? In spite of me I cannot help feeling that it must be rather stupid; think of never being able to lie ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... himself ... none of the girls in Ballyards bore the slightest resemblance to her. Sometimes, indeed, he thought that this beautiful girl was like Lady Castlederry ... only Lady Castlederry, somehow, although she was so very lovely, had a cold stupid look in her eyes, and he was very certain that this beautiful girl had ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... told a friend of his, that he had, however, learned one thing from all this talk about Tiedge and his Urania; which was, that the saints, as well as the nobility, constitute an aristocracy. He said he found stupid women, who were proud because they believed in Immortality with Tiedge, and had to submit himself to not a few mysterious catechizings and tea-table lectures on this point; and that he cut them short by saying, that he had no objection ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... "Discovery" days. Possibly the early date accounted for the absence of Emperors; however, half a dozen eggs were collected, and three of these found their way home to England. Wilson picked up rounded pieces of ice at the rookery which the stupid Emperors had been cherishing, fondly imagining they were eggs; evidently the maternal instinct of the ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... pause; then the young man said, frankly, "Cousin Elsie, I'm afraid I'm very stupid, but it's a fact that I never have been quite able to understand exactly what it is to be a Christian, or ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... it made him as dangerous as any stupid anarchist who toils by candle-light over his crude bombs. For by it he taught the great mass of citizenship who still retained their simple ideals of reason and respect that there existed a social caste, worshipers of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... for a certain strange, new hope, defining in its turn some new and weighty motive of action, which lay in deaths so tragic for the "Christian superstition." Something of them he had heard indeed already. They had seemed to him but one savagery the more, savagery self-provoked, in a cruel and stupid world. ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... clam to the bottom and draw it up gently. You'll get the knack of it in five minutes. It's all knack. There isn't anything else so stupid as ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... heart given over to oppression of an alien soldiery and unable to co-operate with their own long days to come; and across the face of the somber picture was drawn the track of the blood of hundreds of brave men; sacrificed needlessly, the people said—and in a manner stupid, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... nevertheless, his calumniators have dared to say that he rejoiced at an event, which, even considered apart from its political relations, caused him to lose a conquest which had cost him so much, and France so much blood and expense. Other miserable wretches, still more stupid and more infamous, have even gone so far as to fabricate and spread abroad the report that the First Consul had himself ordered the assassination of his companion in arms, whom he had placed in his own position at the head of the army in Egypt. To these ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... fancy yourselves men of pleasure; you fancy yourselves men of fashion; you fancy yourselves men of taste; in fancy, in taste, in opinion, in philosophy, the newspaper legislates for you; it is there you get your jokes and your thoughts, and your facts and your wisdom—poor Pall Mall dullards. Stupid slaves of the press, on that ground which you at present occupy, there were men of wit and pleasure and fashion, some five-and-twenty ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, 'There she rolls! there she rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... will not! It's stupid of you not to know this is serious. You could be dismissed from school for what ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... Chinese Communist diplomat in Berne, Switzerland, happened to see it and, one night at a dinner party, he said mockingly: "This stupid American general in Jerusalem is obviously ignorant of the world. Otherwise, he would realize that no nation on earth loves gambling so much as the Chinese. Anyone who knows the Orient will tell ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... and after following us a little way slink back to their own quarter again. Each alley and street of the city has its pack of dogs, and none venture on the domain of their neighbors. During the day they sleep, lying about the streets so stupid that they will hardly move; in fact, horses and donkeys step over them, and pedestrians wisely let them alone. After dark they prowl about, and are the only scavengers of the city, all garbage being thrown into the streets. The dogs of Pera have experienced, I suppose, the civilizing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... proceed, hoping that as the latter was also a man, he, too, might feel inclined to smoke or dine, and show some mercy on the rest. But the public prosecutor showed mercy neither to himself nor to any one else. He was very stupid by nature, but, besides this, he had had the misfortune of finishing school with a gold medal and of receiving a reward for his essay on "Servitude" when studying Roman Law at the University, and was therefore self-confident and self-satisfied in the highest degree ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... set their eyes upon an objective and immediately all intelligence, logic, good advice, unsolvable problems, and insurmountable obstacles go completely by the boards. The characters we refer to are obviously just plain stupid. What they want to do, just can't be done. The objectives they have in mind are unachievable and anyone with an ounce of brains can tell them so and give them good reasons. They are usually pretty sad cases and often land in the funny house. But then again, some of ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... his "cash boys," were of a radically different sort. But with the attainment of High School and Mr. Hilton the world changed. For the first time since his mother's death Tom met a congenial spirit. Mr. Hilton was gay, he was humorous, he noticed important things which other people were too stupid to notice or to appreciate. He was forever having amusing misadventures; and before long he took Tom off with him for week-end walks, and they had amusing misadventures together. No one else existed for Tom, and anything he suggested became law. In this way Tom ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... thinking a good deal about him. I have been wondering if, in his phenomenal way, he is not a final expression of the national genius,—the stupid contempt for the rights of others; the tacit denial of the rights of any people who are at English mercy; the assumption that the courtesies and decencies of life are for ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... ladies, only of dress or scandal; so that in the long hours, when they were left to their own discretion, after having examined and appraised each other's finery, many an absent neighbour's character was torn to pieces, merely for want of something to say or to do in the stupid circle. But now the dreadful circle is no more; the chairs, which formerly could only take that form, at which the firmest nerves must ever tremble, are allowed to stand, or turn in any way which may suit the convenience ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... long time, and the Twins were beginning to feel quite sleepy, when Hawk-Eye spoke. What he said made them sit up and listen with all their ears. Of course neither Hawk-Eye nor Limberleg thought for a moment that the Twins were awake or listening. Grown people are often very stupid about such things! Anyway, they were awake, and they did listen, and this is what ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Allyn returned fiercely. "He is a coward, too, and never goes for our crowd; but takes boys like Jamie Lyman, stupid, shabby little milksops that don't dare stand up to him. It isn't their fault that they are dunces, and he ought to know it. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... Mississippi, he makes the following interesting extract from the journal of Mr. Doty, a gentleman who accompanied the expedition:— "The Indians of the upper country consider those of the Fond-du-Lac as very stupid and dull, being but little given to war. They count the Sioux their enemies, but have heretofore made ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... fence-post with a scrambling knot of the reins that would have brought down Blue Bonnet's wrath upon her hapless head, Kitty hastened across the close-cropped meadow. It seemed to her they trudged miles, taking turns carrying the lamb, before they reached the little shack. A stupid young fellow, half-asleep, lay sprawled in ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... true enough, Harry, and it is very kind and considerate of you to think of it; but who will we get? The women here are very ignorant and stupid." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... daughter were induced to come on board, while the others went out in the canoe fishing. Before they came on board I shewed them our goats and sheep that were on shore, which they viewed for a moment with a kind of stupid insensibility. After this I conducted them to the brow; but before the chief set his foot upon it to come into the ship, he took a small green branch in his hand, with which he struck the ship's side several times, repeating a speech or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... was raly stupid wid love: there was not a bit of fun left in him. He was good for nothin' an airth bud sittin' under bushes, smokin' tobacky, and sighin' till you'd wonder how in the world he got wind for ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... said the bitter mother. "It was only a stupid, hare-brained fancy then, but now it is something worse. You're the first to whom I have admitted it," she continued, with illogical indignation, "because ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Yet, in spite of the latter inconvenience, she eats and drinks too much every day, and tosses off a glass of maraschino with a trembling pudgy hand, every finger of which twinkles with a dozen, at least, of old rings. She has a story about every one of those rings, and a stupid one too. But there is always something pleasant, I think, in stupid family stories: they are good-hearted people who ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... manners of an irresistibly fascinating woman, who, despite her sixteen years of age, looked as though she might be quite twenty. He stammered out a few halting and stumbling words of thanks for her kindly welcome of him, feeling all the time that he would have liked to kick himself for his stupid gaucherie; and then turned to receive the greeting of Senora Montijo. This lady was simply an older edition of her lovely daughter, with a more composed and stately manner, and her welcome to Jack was cordiality itself; and presently they ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... element of pleasure through many generations. I have not sought any recognition from the world in this matter, and even the mention of it became so intolerable to me that I eschewed all writing about it, in the face of the most stupid and misleading statements, till Mr Sidney Colvin wrote and asked me to set down my account of the matter in my own words. This I did, as it would have been really rude to refuse a request so graciously made, and the reader has it in the Academy of 10th March 1900. Nevertheless, Mr Gosse's ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... emphasizes gain to a few rather than benefits to the party as a whole, then it is time for honest men to abandon their party. Integrity is above party. The slogan, "My party right or wrong" is not only stupid but treasonable. Let the citizen be eager to coperate with his fellows for the advancement of common political views, but let the corrupt ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... of this immediately, and heartily, and recollected the only epigram he knew by rote, one which he had heard in conversation two or three months before this time. It was made upon a tall, stupid man, who had challenged another to make an epigram extempore ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... me for a dog, sir," said Colonel Ashton, turning fiercely upon him, "or something more brutally stupid, to endure this insult in my father's house? Let me go, Bucklaw! He shall account to me, or, by Heavens I will stab him ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... "'How stupid of me not to have mended it! said Melchior; but he had not mended it, and so there was nothing for it but to go to bed; and to bed ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... brought to the gray of the hills; In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills; In the startled wild beasts that bore oft, each with eye sidling still Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill {330} That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with awe: E'en the serpent that slid away silent—he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers: And the little brooks witnessing murmured, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... two of four, and two of three sheets each, containing in all two hundred and seventeen stanzas, octave measure. But I will permit no curtailments.... You shan't make canticles of my cantos. The poem will please, if it is lively; if it is stupid, it will fail; but I will have none of your damned cutting and slashing. If you please, you may publish anonymously; it will perhaps be better; but I will battle my way against them ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the Poor are old, cumbrous, unequal, as stupid as those who administer them. Forth steps the Reformer, and cries out—"Clear this wrack away! Get rid of your antiquated Bumbledom, your parochial and non-parochial distinctions, your complicated map of local authorities; re-distribute the kingdom on some more ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... When a stupid jury returns an obviously wrong verdict the judge must feel himself in an awkward position; but in such cases—if they ever occur now—a good precedent has been set by Mr. Justice Maule who, when in that predicament, addressed ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... to look at us without stopping their hubble-bubbling; and all about us, where nothing else was, a line of motley humanity—Greek, Turk, Egyptian, Nubian, Abyssinian, under hats, caps, tarbouches, turbans, hats Persian and ecclesiastical, and no hats at all—half circled us with mute and mostly stupid admiration. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... do with the system afterwards adopted towards me, but it was presently clear that private tutors, natural history, science, and the modern languages, were the appliances by which the defects of my organization were to be remedied. I was very stupid about machines, so I was to be greatly occupied with them; I had no memory for classification, so it was particularly necessary that I should study systematic zoology and botany; I was hungry for human deeds and humane motions, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... passion that Jason Bolt moved uncomfortably on his chair, reproaching himself with having been wanting in tact. There were good and sufficient reasons why Varr should react to the mention of the girl's name like a bull to a red rag, and here he had been stupid enough actually to praise the young woman whom the tanner had referred to contemptuously as Graham's lanky daughter. He opened his mouth with intent to change the subject, but an ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... which is to heal Ireland's wounds, it must be granted, and the voice of reason and right must rise above the stupid clamor which says that it cannot, must not, shall not be granted! Such expressions were common in inflammatory pamphlets which flooded the country on the eve of Catholic Emancipation, in 1829; and possibly ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... and victrolas if we had a more harmonious society. We really don't like each other much better than Alaskan dogs. Now what is the reason for that? Are we afraid of them stealing from us—our houses, sweethearts, or dollars? Or are we so stupid that we don't know each other, never get under the skin to find out what kind of a fellow this neighbor is? Certainly we are self- centered and we wonder that people don't like us when we don't try to find what is likable about them—and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... only," says the registrar at the gate, roughly. "The other cannot go through," he says, pointing to de Vaudrey, who tries to look as stupid and uncomprehending ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... faith is so great a blessing, that we seldom find it granted a second time to those, who, by imitating the ingratitude of the Jews, have drawn upon themselves the like terrible chastisement. St. Vedast found the infidels stupid and obstinate; yet persevered, till by his patience, meekness, charity, and prayers, he triumphed over bigoted superstition and lust, and planted throughout that country the faith and holy maxims of Christ. The great ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Holland House to meet Kean. He is worth meeting; and I hope, by getting into good society, he will be prevented from falling like Cooke. He is greater now on the stage, and off he should never be less. There is a stupid and under-rating criticism upon him in one of the newspapers. I thought that, last night, though great, he rather under-acted more than the first time. This may be the effect of these cavils; but I hope ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... abstract truthfulness. When a bad writer is inexact, even if he can look back on half a century of years, we charge him with incompetence and not with dishonesty. And why not extend the same allowance to imperfect speakers? Let a stockbroker be dead stupid about poetry, or a poet inexact in the details of business, and we excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cultured peasantry of this fair province. Non-co-operationists have come to the conclusion that they must not be deceived by the reforms that tinker with the problem of India's distress and humiliation. Nor must they be impatient and angry. We must not in our impatient anger resort, to stupid violence. We freely admit that we must take our due share of the blame for the existing state. It is not so much the British guns that are responsible fur our subjection, as our voluntary co-operation. Our non-participation ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... art of writing fiction as a science. He has wit, humor, charm, and lightness of touch, and ardently strives after philosophy and intellectuality—qualities that are rarely found in fiction. It may well be said of M. Bourget that he is innocent of the creation of a single stupid character. The men and women we read of in Bourget's novels are so intellectual that their wills never interfere ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... as illegal, seditious, heretical, idolatrous, or treasonable, I must, like every other subject, be content to take my chance of their being able to find a jury sufficiently facile or sufficiently stupid to carry out their behests against me. But they did not choose that course at first. They did not summon me as a principal, but they subpoenaed me as a witness—as a crown witness—against some of my dearest, personal, and public friends. The attorney-general, whose word I most fully ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... to decorate themselves even lavishly with ornaments rudely fashioned in this rare metal. Yet they seemed to know little of its value, and to care less for it than for fuss and feathers. Either they were a singularly stupid race, simpler even than the child of ordinary intelligence, or they scorned the allurements of a metal that so few are ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... they seemed to have got quite lost among the hills. At every stage of ten or twelve English miles they changed horses and drivers. The drivers on this particular stage were more stupid than usual, or Fred Temple was not so bright. Be that as it may, about midnight they arrived at a gloomy, savage place, lying deep among the hills, with two or three wooden huts, so poor-looking ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... M. WHITNEY,—Dear Sir—I have been absent for a day or two from the city, and did not receive your note until to-day. I enclose a note for publication—oblige me by letting it appear to-morrow. I cannot imagine how so stupid an error could have occured as the erroneous date of Kemp's discharge by Gen. Washington. But the error almost corrects itself—as Kemp's letter of July 2d, speaks of the battle of Monmouth on the 28th. I do not know whether the ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... dissipated classes. Betwixt the fumes of the brandy which he so freely drank and the folly of the melodramatic parts which he was wont to act, his brain became saturated with a passion for notoriety, which grew into the very mania of egotism. His crime was as stupid as it was barbarous; and even from his own point of view his achievement was actually worse than a failure. As an act of revenge against a man whom he hated, he accomplished nothing, for he did not inflict upon Mr. Lincoln ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... understanding, and her little advances of friendliness, her little appeals for sympathy, all glanced from the unconscious armor of his youthful innocence and reserve. She was forced to put him down after many weeks as merely stupid, and she sighed when she saw the hope of comradeship in her hard lot fade out and give way to a feeling bordering ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... with both elbows on the table, crouched over the newspaper, incoherent pictures of the past coursing through his mind, which was still dazed and stupid from the drink ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... such as never had a chance of being anything but wrong-doers. And it will not matter whether it was from original constitution or from unhappy training that these poor creatures never had that chance. I was lately quite astonished to learn that some sincere, but stupid American divines have fallen foul of the eloquent author of "Elsie Venner," and accused him of fearful heresy, because he declared his confident belief that "God would never make a man with a crooked spine and then punish him for not standing upright." Why, that statement of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... a TUTTI of battering rams, on our sheet- iron roof; the wind passing high overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or striking us full, so that all the huge trees in the paddock cried aloud, and wrung their hands, and brandished their vast arms. The horses stood in the shed like things stupid. The sea and the flagship lying on the jaws of the bay vanished in sheer rain. All day it lasted; I locked up my papers in the iron box, in case it was a hurricane, and the house might go. We went to bed with mighty uncertain feelings; far more than on shipboard, where you have only drowning ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Friend, The next day I felt almost as sailors must do after a violent storm over-night, that has subsided towards daybreak. The morning was a dull and stupid calm, and I found she was unwell, in consequence of what had happened. In the evening I grew more uneasy, and determined on going into the country for a week or two. I gathered up the fragments of the locket ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... in her comfortless room, and lay wondering over the waking nightmare of the past hours. Everything seemed so different in the morning. There was no thrill of excitement now, nothing to make her blood run quickly. She only felt flat, dull, stupid, and disinclined to move. How strange and unlike himself Emile had been. She had lost her nerve, raved, and threatened to run away, and he had neither sneered nor abused her. Her hand, still wrapped in stained linen, had now begun to burn and smart considerably, and was proof ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... wearing the garb of innocence; the ass in the lion's skin a quack trying to terrify, by assuming the appearance of a forest monarch (does the writer, writhing under merited castigation, mean to sneer at critics in this character? We laugh at the impertinent comparison); the ox, a stupid commonplace; the only innocent being in the writer's (stolen) apologue is a fool—the idiotic lamb, who does not know his own mother!" And then the critic, if in a virtuous mood, may indulge in some fine writing regarding the holy beauteousness of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... poor devil of a dwarf stealing along the slippery rocks of the river bed, a creature with energy enough to make him strong of body and fierce of passion, but with a brutish narrowness of intelligence and selfishness of imagination: too stupid to see that his own welfare can only be compassed as part of the welfare of the world, too full of brute force not to grab vigorously at his own gain. Such dwarfs are quite common in London. He comes ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... thank you for stopping me: for I am hoarse as well as stupid: I consider the foregoing only as the greater stars or constellations in the bibliographical hemisphere. Others were less observed from their supposed comparative insignificancy; although, if you had attended the auctions, you would have found in them ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... think this a stupid letter, perhaps, and not interesting. Just reflect on my surroundings. Besides, the interest will accumulate a good while before you get the missive. And I don't know how you ever are to get it, for there is no post-office near here, and on the Isthmus the mails are as uncertain as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... Harrigan turned in stupid amazement upon the Scotchman. The latter had dropped into his chair again and now looked ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... the fact that ten thousand persons have been thus proclaimed on ten thousand different occasions, and that my own name has often been so proclaimed before. But, in Heaven's name, Aeschines, are you so perverse and stupid, that you cannot grasp the fact that the recipient of the crown feels the same pride wherever the crown is proclaimed, and that it is for the benefit of those who confer it that the proclamation is made in the theatre? For those who hear are stimulated to do good service to the State, and commend ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... so commonly in the world, that I am persuaded that none of my readers but must have remarked that there is a certain settled and stupid obstinacy in some tempers which renders them capable of persevering in any act, how wicked and villainous soever, without either reluctancy at the time of its commission, or a capacity of humbling themselves so far as to acknowledge and ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... and then no more until the contest," Jack announced placatingly, when he spied a lone bull standing just before a thicket of chaparral and staring at them with stupid resentment that his siesta had been disturbed. "A kiss for luck, ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... this Manner the Heathens once worshipped their Bacchus. But I wonder, if this is their Way of worshipping, that St. Antony is not enraged at this Sort of Men that are more stupid than Hogs themselves. What Sort of a Pastor have you? A dumb one, or a ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... a brilliancy that is sometimes false. He is tricked out in paste for diamonds, now and then, like a vain, provincial beauty at a ball. "A clever man would frequently be much at a loss," he says, "in stupid company." One has seen this embarrassment of a wit in a company of dullards. It is Rochefoucauld's own position in this world of men and women. We are all, in the mass, dullards compared with his cleverness, and so he fails to understand ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... aroused. Did Ali think he was a stupid as all that? "If you'd take a look in there now you'd believe me," ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... indeed,' burst forth my companion, overjoyed at my verification of his theory, 'it does indeed; why, it is as plain as a pike-staff. Let us proceed at once; come, throw away all those stupid ideas about the Typees, and hurrah for the lovely valley of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... apples, nuts, and goose galore I chattered, like a stupid, And thought of shooting coneys, more Than being shot ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and exclaiming, "G—— d——! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... her sincerity, and buoyant, healthy enjoyment of life. She was teaching in a girls' school, and was very happy. Other women had always left the heavy man on the road, so to speak, marking him as stupid. But Alice Johnston was keener or kinder than most young women: she perceived beneath the large body a will, an intelligence, a character, merely inhibited in their envelope of large bones and solid flesh, with an entire absence of nervous system. He was silent before the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... One of his first thoughts was that a gang of desperate robbers had seized him. The next idea was, that he never met four more stupid-looking men in Mertonville, nor anywhere else. He resolved that he would not tell his name, to have it printed in the Inquirer, and ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... to clean her floor. The man thought he'd get benzine instead; and just as he got into the house, the fire from his pipe dropped into it, and the whole shanty was in a blaze before the poor woman knew what had happened. The stupid fool that was to blame got off, but the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... said the old yaze (daddy) "Ozaka looks just like Kioto; and as for 'the great ocean' those stupid maids talked about, I don't see any at all, unless they mean that strip of river that looks for all the world like the Yodo. I don't believe there ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... why I can understand the psychology of saying 'no' to a proposal. This stripling, who was at least five years my junior, proposed to me out of sheer gratitude. I actually succeeded in drumming quadratic equations into his stupid head, and he offered me his hand by the way ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... so far from such endeavours, that there hath been a stupid submission to our rulers and great ones, breaking down and ruining the whole work of reformation, razing the bulwarks thereof, rescinding the laws in favour of the same, and not only breaking but burning the covenants for preserving it, enacting the ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... a woman doing anything in the least useful. Do you realise that if anything in the world can save this stupid old ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... But sometimes, when I'm stupid, I simply can't bear it. It makes me feel as if I'd done something. Last night I got it into ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... was that, stealing, rippling, across the square? The bandmaster knew nothing of the tale of Tannhauser, but was wishing that he had violins at his beck, instead of stupid flutes and reeds. And Taffy had never heard so much as the name of Tannhauser. Of the meaning of the music he knew nothing—nothing beyond its wonder and terror. But afterward he made a ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... length, exhausted by his exertions—to say nothing of his having previously had more exercise than usual—he waddled away to his well-known rug, absolutely declined all invitations either to work or play, and lay there watching the company through his half-shut eyes, in a state of stupid repose, which those who had just watched his effervescence did not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... The stupid anecdote of the egg was a mere trifling invention, in fact a trick, and it is surprising that intelligent men have for so many years thoughtlessly been believing and repeating such nonsense. For my ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... returned the lady; "how stupid I am! However, I knew you were an inmate or a member of the Legislature the moment I looked at you. But how was I to know? It is ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... George Sand changed it to that of Indiana) is a typical woman, strong and weak, tired even by the weight of the air, but capable of holding up the sky; timid in everyday life, but daring in days of battle; shrewd and clever in seizing the loose threads of ordinary life, but silly and stupid in distinguishing her own interests when it is a question of her happiness; caring little for the world at large, but allowing herself to be duped by one man; not troubling much about her own dignity, but watching over that of the object ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... official religion and consequently in a common doom. Androcles is a humanitarian naturalist, whose views surprise everybody. Lavinia, a clever and fearless freethinker, shocks the Pauline Ferrovius, who is comparatively stupid and conscience ridden. Spintho, the blackguardly debauchee, is presented as one of the typical Christians of that period on the authority of St. Augustine, who seems to have come to the conclusion at one period of his development that ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... sweetness of which, Tmolus bids Pan to hold his reeds in submission to the lyre; and the judgment and decision of the sacred mountain pleases them all. Yet it is blamed, and is called unjust by the voice of Midas alone. But the Delian {God} does not allow his stupid ears to retain their human shape: but draws them out to a {great} length, and he fills them with grey hairs, and makes them unsteady at the lower part, and gives them the power of moving. The rest {of his body} is that of a man; in one part ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... all struck stupid. It frightens me to see him. If he would only speak, or cry, or fly out against the murderer—but he just sits there as if ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... pearl-fishery attracted their avarice; and as Britain was viewed in the light of a distinct and insulated world, the conquest scarcely formed any exception to the general system of continental measures. After a war of about forty years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most dissolute, and terminated by the most timid of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island submitted to the Roman yoke. The various tribes of Britons possessed valor without conduct, and the love of freedom without the spirit of union. They took ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the vital organs were decayed, nor had he the skill to support them by the chemical preparations of his predecessor; his only remedy was to let blood, which he drew so plentifully that the patient fell into a lethargy, and our medicaster was yet so stupid as to mistake this lethargy for a real state of health. The provinces, abandoned to the rapine of the superintendents, were stifled, as it were, under the pressure of their heavy misfortunes, and the efforts they made ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... Among the Indians upon these several reservations there exist the most marked differences in natural traits and disposition and in their progress toward civilization. While some are lazy, vicious, and stupid, others are industrious, peaceful, and intelligent; while a portion of them are self-supporting and independent, and have so far advanced in civilization that they make their own laws, administered through officers of their own choice, and educate their children in schools of their own establishment ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of "Macbeth," though attacked and derided and put to shame in many quarters, is as clear to me as the sunlight itself. To me it seems as stupid to quarrel with the conception as to deny the nose on one's face. But the carrying out of the conception was unequal. Henry's imagination was ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... great peril when he least suspected it. Once he lay for some time in the edge of a dark forest of water-weeds, only an inch from a lumpish, stupid-looking creature, half covered with mud, that was clinging to one of the stems. The animal appeared so dull and unintelligent that the young Trout paid little attention to him until another baby came up and approached a trifle closer. Then, quick as a flash, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... it. I simply happen to find myself on top, and I stay there and enjoy the view. [Seats himself at table.] As a matter of fact, Gerald, one of the things I intend to do with this world is to clean it up. Don't imagine that I will tolerate such stupid waste as we have at present... everybody trying to cheat everybody else, and nobody to keep the streets clean. It's as if a dozen mere should go out into a field to catch a horse, and spend all their time in trying to keep each other from catching it. ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... folly of pride to its highest pitch. In his Memoirs, he declared that the public (of course excluding himself) were an infamous tag-rag-and-bob-tail. The people of Paris, he protested, were more stupid and a hundred times more ferocious, in their caperings and revolutionary grimaces, than the baboons and orang-outangs of Borneo. Balzac at times adopted and expressed similar opinions. Gozlan relates that one day the owner of Les Jardies ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... shack of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderful pearl—glanced for a moment only; and carelessly he dropped it ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... knew little about their remote neighbors and often were quite willing to convert their ignorance into prejudice: The dweller in the uplands and the resident on the coast were wont to view each other with disfavor. The one was thought heavy and stupid, the other frivolous and lazy. Native Spaniards regarded the Creoles, or American born, as persons who had degenerated more or less by their contact with the aborigines and the wilderness. For their part, the Creoles looked upon the Spaniards as upstarts and intruders, whose sole ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... waited her approach, perplexed as to the cause of it; and was so unprepared for the box on the ear she dealt him, that it almost threw him down. Her ankle was instantly in Abdiel's sharp teeth. She gave a frightful screech, and Clare, coming to himself, though still stupid from her blow and his own surprise, called off the dog. The woman limped raging to the house, and Clare thought it prudent to go his way. He talked severely to Abdiel as they went; but though the dog could understand much, I doubt if he understood that lecture. For Abdiel was one ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... his vote, except on one condition,—"Would her Grace give him a kiss?" The request was granted. This was one of the votes which swelled the number of two hundred and thirty-five above Sir Cecil Wray, and Fox stood second on the poll. Of course much stupid poetry was written ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... how he had met the tiger, and how to save the bullocks he had promised the milch cow in exchange. At this the wife began to cry, saying, 'A likely story, indeed!—saving your stupid old bullocks at the expense of my beautiful cow! Where will the children get milk? and how can I cook my ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... till he knew all their ways, and loved God's creatures as did St. Francis d'Assisi, to whom every creature of God was dear, from Sister Swallow to Brother Wolf. So he learned, as he grew older, to love men and women and little children, even although they might be ugly, or stupid, or bad-tempered, or even wicked, and this sympathy cleansed away many a little fault of pride and self-conceit and impatience and hot temper, and in the end of the days made a man of John Carmichael. The dumb ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... the fly, small as he is, is too large to work his way out through the flap, or too bewildered or stupid to find the opening, or too exhausted after his futile efforts to get out through the overhead route to persevere, or too weak with hunger in case of long detention in a pistillate trap where no pollen ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... wheel of fire. Men, it was supposed, could sell themselves to the Evil One for a term of years, but they easily managed to elude the fulfilment of the contract, for there was usually a loop-hole by which they escaped from the clutches of the stupid Devil. For instance, a man disposes of his soul for riches, pleasures, and supernatural knowledge and power, which he is to enjoy for a long number of years, and in the contract it is stipulated that the agreement holds good if the man is buried either in ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... feeling, and made Strange melodies, scornful, but sweeter than strings whereon sorrow has played To enrapture the hearing of mirth when his garland of blossom and green Turns to lead on the anguished forehead—"you don't understand what I mean"? Well, of course I knew you were stupid—you always were stupid at school— Now don't say you weren't—but I'm hanged if I thought you were quite such a fool! You don't see the point of all this? I was talking of sickness and death— In that poem I made years ago, I said this—"Love, the flower-time whose breath Smells sweet through ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the haciendado with an air of vexation, "out of six servants which I counted yesterday I have not one to place at your service, except my mayor-domo here, for I cannot reckon upon those stupid Indian peons. The mayor-domo will ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... and that she begged to inform me that she had another servant at my disposal (otra criada mi disposicin), I returned for answer, that I was greatly obliged, but had just hired a recamerera (chambermaid). At this the man, stupid as he was, opened his great eyes with a slight expression of wonder. Fortunately, as he was turning away, I bethought me of inquiring of the Seora's health, and his reply, that "she and the baby were coming on very well," brought the truth suddenly before me, that the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... exclaimed Annie, in a tone of glee, as she entered, "do leave that stupid girl and come with me; I have some charming intelligence to communicate. And it really is no use boring yourself with Lilla; she will never play, try as hard ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
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