"Besotted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flock round her, anomalous citizens of Bohemia, vague hangers-on of the theatrical cosmos; all that strange melange of the happy-go-lucky, the eccentric, the ill-balanced, the blackguardly, the unprincipled, the hapless, the shiftless, the unclassed, the sensual and the besotted that shoulder and hustle one another in the world of the theatre; all the riff-raff recruited from the greater world without by the fascinating ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... sanctity of which, they neither could have risen, nor can oppose to their enemy resistance which has any hope in it; but I will ask, of any man who is not dead to the common feelings of his social nature—and besotted in understanding, if this be not a cruel mockery, and which must have been felt, unless it were repelled with hatred and scorn, as a heart-breaking insult. Moreover, this conduct acknowledges, by implication, that principle which by his actions the enemy has for a long time covertly maintained, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... refused to obey the constitution sanctioned by Louis XVI., because it destroyed their privileges; and who, for the same reason, had refused to acknowledge the new constitution, against which they had even dared to protest. His companions were so blinded, so besotted by their presumption, that they imagined that decrees and ordinances gave them the faculty of overturning the edifice which the nation had erected during five and twenty years of revolution. His confidents were those alone who, instead of wishing to reveal ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... so. Hooker's over-anxious friends have now turned into a public scandal what was generally understood as an exoneration, by intentionally distorting what was said into an implication that Hooker was so besotted as to be incapable of command. What I have written of his marching the army to this field and to the field of Gettysburg is a full answer to such unnecessary perversion. Let these would-be friends of Hooker remember that this calumny is of their own making, not mine. I am as sorry for it, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... you so besotted with her beauty that you do not see that she is impatient to reign in Egypt alone, and that her heart is set on ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... she meets with less resistance. What has she not the power to impose upon our judgments and beliefs? Is there any so fantastic opinion (omitting the gross impostures of religions, with which we see so many great nations, and so many understanding men, so strangely besotted; for this being beyond the reach of human reason, any error is more excusable in such as are not endued, through the divine bounty, with an extraordinary illumination from above), but, of other opinions, are there any so extravagant, that she has not planted and established ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... melancholy keeping from Court, I am doubtful of some such thing; but I seemed wholly strange to him in it, but will make my use of it. We told me also how loose the Court is, nobody looking after business, but every man his lust and gain; and how the King is now become besotted upon Mrs Stewart, that he gets into corners, and will be with her half an hour together kissing her to the observation of all the world; and she now stays by herself and expects it, as my Lady Castlemaine did used to do; to whom the King, he says, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... for the first time what an exquisite sensitive thing is a sweet, high-bred lady. Only such a one could have performed that act of grace. She converted me into a besotted little imbecile weltering in bliss. I would have pledged my soul's welfare to execute any phantasmagoric behest she had chosen ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... besotted no less than ever by his wife's leech-like family. Thou knowest my appointment to the government of Ireland; Isabel, like myself, cannot endure the subordinate vassalage we must brook at the court, with the queen's cold looks and sour words. Thou knowest, also, with what vain pretexts ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... through the lodgment and development of good. Both Christ and his apostles are exhibited in the gospel story as engaged chiefly in asserting and illustrating the truth, and not in combating error. Christ comes into a world lying in wickedness—besotted by it, plagued and tormented by it; full of abominations starting boldly out without pretense of concealment, from every phase of private, social and civil life. But he does not approach these as a mechanic would an old building, saying, "this beam ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... "I will think thee else one of those besotted and blinded Papists, who hold, that bestowing of alms is an atonement and washing away of the wrongs and oppressions which have been wrought by the almsgiver. Thou sayest, then, these were the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the good of retailing further follies," said Caius Nepos at last; "we all know that a madman, a vain, besotted fool wields now the sceptre of Julius Caesar and of great Augustus. The numbers of his misdeeds are like the grains of sand on the seashore, his orgies have shamed our generation, his debauches are a disgrace upon the fame of Rome. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... little laugh. He had no desire to make boast of his prowess; yet he felt that he could settle a score of quarrels with such besotted creatures as the four he had put to rout so lately, and be no manner the worse for it himself. He was not at all sorry for the adventure. He felt a flutter of pride and pleasure in the shy glances shot at him from the dark eyes beneath the crimson hood. ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... half-past one," said Drysdale. "We've had a series of catastrophes. Never got into college till near one. I thought we should never have waked that besotted little porter. However, here we are at last, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... nights afterward all his battles were taking a rest, for already his worshipers in the tap-room were so infatuated with the great tale of the Royal Audience that they would have nothing else, and so besotted with it were they that they would have cried if they could ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... alone, having outstripped even the fishermen, and as he ate he arrived at conclusions. He had a great respect for youth, but a line must be drawn somewhere. "The man's a child," he decided, "and not like to grow up. The way he's besotted on everything daftlike, if it's only new. And he's no rightly young either—speaks like an auld dominie, whiles. And he's rather impident," he concluded, with memories of "Dogson.".... He was very ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... state, he told us, the Lord God had witnessed with Divine commiseration, and had determined that the light of Christian love should shine upon their darkness, and that Almighty wisdom should dissipate their besotted ignorance. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... opportunity of livelihood or employment, save as the dependents and liegemen of a hereditary capitalist class. In the chronicles of royal misdoings there have been many dark chapters recording how besotted or imbecile monarchs have sold their people into bondage and sapped the welfare of their realms to enrich licentious favorites, but the darkest of those chapters is bright beside that which records the sale of the heritage and hopes of the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... worked on the same material, substantially, that our orators and statesmen do at the present day, and that all future orators will work upon to the end of time,—on the passions, the interests, and the aspirations which are eternally the same, unless kept down by grinding despotism or besotted ignorance, as in Egypt or mediaeval Europe, and even then the voice of humanity finds entrance to the heart and soul. "All men," said Rousseau, "are born equal;" and both Adams and Jefferson built up their system of government upon this ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... servants was much taken with what she saw and heard, and gave herself up entirely to the will of the subordinate, who had quite as much dominion over her as his superior had over the ladies; the other maid, however, the one who had a kind of respect for me, was not so easily besotted; she used to laugh at what she saw, and at what the fellow told her, and from her I learnt that amongst other things intended by these priestly confederates was robbery; she said that the poor old governor had already been persuaded by his daughters to put more than a thousand pounds into ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... bleeve that the Memphis and Noo Orleans unpleasantnesses wuz brot about by the unholy machinashens uv them Radical agitators, actin in conjunction with ignorant and besotted niggers, to wreak their spite on the now loyal citizens uv ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... divination; and this place is accursed. The landlord has been discourteous, the Commissary will be brutal, the audience will be sordid and uproarious, and you will take a cold upon your throat. We have been besotted enough to come; the die is cast - it will be ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the besotted boy, on whom at their marriage she had bestowed the title of king, began at once to justify the enterprise and to play into the hands of all his enemies alike. His father set him on to demand the crown matrimonial, which would at least have assured him the rank and station ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... said the father, digging his heels into the comfortable flanks of his mule with some human impatience, "or art THOU, too, a lazy renegade? Thinkest thou, besotted one, that the heretic will spare thee more work than the ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... modern patriarch, spoke thus to a justice of peace before a large assembly of people: "Friend, take care what thou dost; God will soon punish thee for persecuting His saints." This magistrate, being one who besotted himself every day with bad beer and brandy, died of an apoplexy two days after, the moment he had signed a mittimus for imprisoning some Quakers. The sudden death with which this justice was seized was not ascribed to his intemperance, but was universally looked upon as the effect of the holy ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... lead in this splendid design; and he and his friends proved themselves to have reached the level of that true enlightenment which distinguished the close of the eighteenth century. But the Vonckists, as they were called, formed but a small minority compared with the besotted mass; and, overwhelmed by fanaticism on the one hand, and despotism on the other, they were unable to act effectually for the public good. Vander Mersch, a soldier of fortune, and a man of considerable talents, who had raised himself from ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... come prepared to adopt strong measures, but the sight of Ould Michael, besotted and broken, was ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... these words he spake: "Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk, Wherewith I ne'er enough could glut my tongue." My leader thus: "A little further stretch Thy face, that thou the visage well mayst note Of that besotted, sluttish courtezan, Who there doth rend her with defiled nails, Now crouching down, now risen on her feet. Thais is this, the harlot, whose false lip Answer'd her doting paramour that ask'd, 'Thankest me much!'—'Say ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the result of prejudice, and of constant reading of articles extracted from the English journals, that influenced me; but I confess it seemed a much easier matter to re-take my ship from seventeen Frenchmen, than from twelve Englishmen. I was not so besotted as to suppose surprise, or artifice, would not be necessary in either case; but, had the issue been made up on brute force, I should have begun the fray with greater confidence in the first than in the last case. All this would have been ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... nothing, though, beside her son's! To see him, you would say he's ten times worse! His conduct in our late unpleasantness [1] Had won him much esteem, and proved his courage In service of his king; but now he's like A man besotted, since he's been so taken With this Tartuffe. He calls him brother, loves him A hundred times as much as mother, son, Daughter, and wife. He tells him all his secrets And lets him guide his acts, and rule his conscience. He fondles and embraces him; a sweetheart ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... prejudice, prepossess. Adj. misjudging &c v.; ill-judging, wrong-headed; prejudiced &c v.; jaundiced; shortsighted, purblind; partial, one-sided, superficial. narrow-minded, narrow-souled^; mean-spirited; confined, illiberal, intolerant, besotted, infatuated, fanatical, entete [Fr.], positive, dogmatic, conceited; opinative, opiniative^; opinioned, opinionate, opinionative, opinionated; self-opinioned, wedded to an opinion, opiniatre; bigoted &c (obstinate) 606; crotchety, fussy, impracticable; unreasonable, stupid &c 499; credulous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... second place, he then would ask, (And here he took several members to task, And wondered—"he really must presume To wonder" a statesman like—you know whom— Who ever evinced the deepest sense Of a crying sin in any expense, Should so besotted be, and lost To the fact that now, at public cost, Powder was being day by day Wantonly wasted, blown away);— Yes, he would ask, "with what intent But to perch the Greeks on a battlement From which they might o'erlook the town, The easier to batter it down, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... it, though it was greatly changed for the worse. Five years had wrought terrible havoc upon it. The scar on the left cheek was more conspicuous than of yore, and the features seemed to have settled into a perpetual frown. But, worst of all, the countenance was bloated and besotted. The nose had become bulbous and spongy, the eyes watery and weak. The man's clothes were patched and seedy, and presented a general aspect of being desperately out at elbows. His unsteady step indicated that he was at least half drunk at that moment. He did not see; or at any rate did ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,—the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revolution in France, and the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... been besotted with ceremonies. Miserable monks have ruled all, entangling men's consciences for their own benefit. Dogma has been heaped on dogma. The bishops have been tyrants, the Pope's commissaries have been rascals. Luther has been an instrument of God's displeasure, like Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar, or the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... at old M. Langernault's expense. He got to know the Dedessuslamare couple, robbed them of their money and, before they had time to lodge a complaint against the unknown thief, took them to a barn in the village of Damigni, where, in their despair, stupefied and besotted with drugs, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... fifteen I could hear you two together talking your poetry and your books till I was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you. But you were always a good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did. And I felt she didn't belong to me: and the children don't. And I besotted myself, and gambled, and drank, and took to all sorts of devilries out of despair and fury. And now comes this Mohun, and she likes him, I know ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who, though their error was great, did not appear to me so far astray. I cannot understand it! I cannot understand it!" he went on; "I cannot understand the influence that he has obtained over our more educated class; for twenty years ago he was himself a low, besotted drunkard, and his wife is the daughter of a murderer! Still less do I understand how such people can claim to be religious at all, and yet not see to what awful evil the small beginnings of vice must lead. I tell you, if a man is allowed by Providence to lead an easy ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... yesterday, Morty, and I'm not so desperately asinine as you seem to think," was the besotted one's summing-up. "I know the Rajah doesn't split hairs in a business fight, but he is hardly unscrupulous enough to use Miss ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... I now feel confident; nay, I am certain that my projects will and must succeed. The affairs of this world are regulated unquestionably by the immutable decrees of destiny. What is to be will be; and I, in putting this wretched, drunken, mad, and besotted being out of my way, am only an instrument in the hands of that destiny myself. The blame then is not mine, but that of the law which constrains—forces me to act the part I am acting, a part which was allotted to me from the beginning; and this ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... only to be the People's: but Mexico may be a harder bone to pick. Already is a newspaper published there, named El Tiemps, The Times, to advocate a return to monarchy, in order to save the Spanish race from the Stars and the Stripes; and the besotted and wretched Republics of the South, conceived in folly, and born of the splendid dream of Canning, are falling to pieces from internal wars. Will his Ophirian Majesty, the Emperor of Brazil, humbly lay his crown at the feet of the Eagle, and are all our West India ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... her deep content with her new surroundings, wondered how she could ever have been so besotted as to object to the move. The place, the people, the mode of life were all delicious to her, and for the family at Lanarth, her enthusiasm was touching. Mrs. Mason was just her idea of "Mrs. Washington, or Cornelia, or Lady de Bourgainville," ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... The whole wide heaven was not too wide for you then; but now you can be jolly in your "nutshell." Then, you held spiritual, or human, values to be final, infinite, absolute, and could gibe in your own incomparable way at the besotted conventionalism which would place commercial values above them; now, who chants with such a roaring, pious nasal at that apotheosis of Property which our modern commercial slavery essentially is? Then, with Schiller, you desired, as a basis of political society, something ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... all something in common: they keep their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic BOURGEOIS. In fact, a besotted and brutalized France at present sprawls in the foreground—it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste, and at the same time of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo. There is also something else common to them: a predilection to resist intellectual Germanizing—and ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... only a few hours ago. In the natural exhilaration of the sweet mountain air, and the silence broken only by the singing of the birds, his fears fell from him. There must be some mistake which Phebe would clear up. It was nothing but the accusation of a besotted brain which had ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the town with his sister utterly destitute, and had, as Liputin said, at first actually gone from house to house begging. But having unexpectedly received some money, he had taken to drinking at once, and had become so besotted that he was ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ancient prophet, upon whom the Spirit of the Lord had come, "the Golden Shoemaker" turned and preached, from the living text of his besotted friend, a telling impromptu Temperance sermon to the motley crowd. The whole incident was quite unpremeditated. He had never dreamt that he would do such a thing as he was doing now. But that by no means lessened the effect ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... of a dangerous flirt, he decided, though, at present, she was only feeling her way. Time would develop her powers and then, God help the young idiots who would lose their heads! Most of all, God help her fool-husband—the besotted idealist! In a few years, Joyce Meredith would be no better than most lovely women in the East—notably such as flourished in the hill stations ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... merriment scarce ever abated. We were a blare of revelry and a blaze of light. Excitement mounted to fever heat. In the midst of it the women with the enamelled cheeks reaped a bountiful harvest. I marvel now that, with all the besotted recklessness of those that were our pilots, we ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... begins, and, when it begins, how will it end? Ay—how will it end? It is not to be supposed that we can long be blinded by such a flimsy humbug as a transfer to Southern possession of these vessels 'for the Chinese trade!' Are the English mad, demented, or besotted, that they suppose we intend to endure such deliberate aid of our enemies? When those vessels 'for the Chinese' are afloat, and our merchants begin to suffer, let England beware! We are not a people to stop and reason nicely on legal points, when they are enforced in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... yet if the Widdow be not too much besotted on slights and forgeries, the revelation of their villainies will make 'em loathsome: and to that end, be it in private to you, I sent late last night to an honorable personage, to whom I am much indebted in kindness, as he is ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... interruption to the traffic. He will contrive so, that the hissing of the locomotive shall be as graceful a sound as the plashing of a fountain in the midst of our bisected squares; and he is indignant at the supposition that any human being can be besotted enough to prefer the prospect of a budding garden, to a clean double pair of rails beneath his bedroom window, with a jolly train steaming it along at the rate of some fifty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... day. Something of the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes; stooping all night over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy; breathing ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... murmurs through the comrades ran: Above the rest, were Thestius' sons,—their arms Out-stretching, clamor'd thus with a mighty noise;— "Let not thy beauteous form thy mind deceive, "When from thy eyes the donor of the spoil, "Besotted with thy love, shall far be mov'd. "Woman! restore the prize, nor hope to hold "Our intercepted claims."—Speaking they rob Her of the gift, him of the right to give. Nor passive stood the warlike youth, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... mind The power this priestcraft gives me o'er mankind— A lever, of more might, in skilful hand, To move this world, than Archimede e'er planned— I should in vengeance of the shame I feel At my own mockery crush the slaves that kneel Besotted round; and—like that kindred breed Of reverend, well-drest crocodiles they feed, At famed Arsinoe[1]—make my keepers bless, With their last throb, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... that any day, any moment, may come to her ears? That you've been letting her grow up in ignorance of something that by this time she might have outgrown and forgotten? That you have been, like a besotted old ass, all these years slowly forging a thunderbolt that any one may crush her with? That"—but here Ridgeway's cough took possession of his voice, and even put a moisture into his dark eyes, as he looked at McClosky's aimless hand feebly ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... my soul, The uproar of battle. Ruin upon ruin is summoned, 20 The land is undone! Suddenly undone my tents, In a moment my curtains! How long must I look for the signal 21 And hark for the sound of the trump! [Yea, fools are My people 22 Nor Me do they fear.(213) Children besotted are they, Void of discretion. Clever they are to do evil, To do good ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... was the work of Simon Girty, one of the most detestable characters that the drama of American history ever brought upon the stage. He was the offspring of crime, his parents being irredeemably besotted and vicious. Of their four sons, two, who were taken prisoner by the Indian at Braddock's defeat, developed into monsters of wickedness. James was adopted by the Delawares, and became the fiercest savage of the tribe. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... me the deepest concern. I figured to myself his condition, besotted by brutal appetites, reduced to beggary, shut up in a noisome prison, and condemned to that society which must foster all his depraved propensities. I revolved various schemes for his relief. A few hundreds would ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... unexpected and unwelcome visit. In the exigency, the beldame was awakened and consulted; she averred that it was always unlucky to kill a seal, but suggested that the animal should be deprived of sight, and a third time carried out to sea. To this hellish proposition the besotted wretch who owned the house consented, and the affectionate and confiding creature was cruelly robbed of sight, on that hearth for which he had resigned his native element! Next morning, writhing in agony, the mutilated seal was embarked, taken outside Clare Island, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... Slave law. They even proposed a Constitutional amendment which would have made slavery perpetual in the Republic; but the pampered frenzy of the slave oligarchy defied all remedies, and hurried it headlong into the bloody conspiracy which was to close forever its career of besotted lawlessness and crime. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... misfortune even my besotted optimism could not prevail. My pioneering spirit, subdued by years of penury and rough usage, yielded more and more to the honor and the intellectual companionship which the East offered. To Fuller I privately remarked: "As soon as I can afford ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... his afternoon's nap, took it into his head while in a tipsy state to go down alone to bathe. He was seen only by the Juiz de Paz, a feeble old man who was lying in his hammock in the open verandah at the rear of his house on the top of the bank, and who shouted to the besotted Indian to beware of the alligator. Before he could repeat his warning, the man stumbled, and a pair of gaping jaws, appearing suddenly above the surface, seized him round the waist and drew him under the water. A cry of agony "Ai Jesus!" was the last sign made by the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... became tainted with self, and the image of God was, I fear, sometimes forgotten for that of His frail and unworthy creature. True it was, I still, without slackening, spoke comfort to the ear of suffering or repentant sin—I still exhorted the weak and strengthened the strong. I still warned the besotted in corruption that the fruits of vice, blossom as she will, are but like those of the shores of the Dead Sea, seeming gay, but only emptiness and bitter ashes. But alas! the bearer of the blessed message spoke as if the worm that bore, could add grace to the tidings he conveyed to his fellow-worm. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... been at least intelligently founded on hatred or revenge, with a definite object and murderous end in view. Now, for the first time, a furious battle had been fought for nothing, with no object to be gained, and no end in view; with besotted idiots for the champions, and with strong ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... come there just to hear her sing. And now he was broke, and Drusilla was going East to run the perilous gauntlet of the tenors. He jerked up the stylus in the middle of a record and cursed his besotted industry. If he had let his ore go, and gone to see her like a gentleman, Drusilla might even now be his. She might have relented and given him a kiss—he cursed ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... appropriated by other men? Why? but because my son, whom I had brought up to replenish my ripe learning with young enterprise, left me and all liberal pursuits that he might lash himself and howl at midnight with besotted friars—that he might go wandering on pilgrimages befitting men who know of no past older than the missal and the crucifix?—left me when the night was already beginning to fall ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... it often, I really don't," Irene answered. "But I sometimes wonder if it would make any difference. I can sympathize with a hopeless drunkard, who, in a besotted condition, is able to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... the letter. He was indeed a man of sorrows, and He early and all His life long had a close acquaintance with grief. Our Lord had come into this world on a very sad errand. We are so stupefied and besotted with sin, that we have no conception how sad an errand our Lord had been sent on, and how sad a task He soon discovered it to be. To be a man without sin, a man hating sin, and hating nothing else ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... borne on the fair sounds? for even the formless and the void was roused into life and joy by the wind that roamed over the face of its deep. No humanity jarred with hers. In the presence of the most degraded, she felt God there. A face, even if besotted, was a face, only in virtue of being in the image of God. That a man was a man at all, must he because he was God's. And this man was far indeed from being of the worst. With him beside her, she could pray with most of the good of having the door of her closet shut, and ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... feet high enough for the steps, and we had to pull and push to get her to the top. In the passage she dragged herself along, hanging on my arm, helplessly bent like an old woman. We issued into an empty street through a half-open door, staggering like besotted revellers. At the corner we stopped a four-wheeler, and the ancient driver looked round from his box with morose scorn at our efforts to get her in. Twice during the drive I felt her collapse on my shoulder in a half faint. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... thus may a wicked man doe, because there is an antipathy betwixt nature and death. But even while, even then, when Death and Nature are strugling for mastery, the soul, the conscience, may be as besotted, as benummed, as senceless and ignorant of its miserable state, as the block or bed on which the sick lyes: And thus they may dye like a Chrisom child in shew, but indeed like one who by the Judgment ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... light as the poor place can give," he said, and dragged forth the rickety-legged chair that he might prop it against its back, for the moment looking less drunk and less a vagabond in his eagerness to do his work justice; there lurking somewhere, perhaps, in his besotted being, that love which the artist soul feels for the labour ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... And he was right. He showed his love by it; indulgence is not love. It is no sign of meekness, but only of cowardice and carelessness, to be afraid to rebuke sin. Moses knew that he was doing God's work, that he was appointed to make a great nation of those slavish besotted Jews, his countrymen; that he was sent by God with boundless blessings to them; and woe to whoever hindered him from that. Because he loved the Jews, therefore he dared punish those who tempted them to forget the promised land of Canaan, or break ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... announced that, if she was not to be allowed to do her Christmassing at The Bear, she would not do it anywhere. She indicated that she meant to perish miserably of ennui in the besotted dullness of Sneyd, and that no Christmas-party of any kind should occur in HER house. She ceased to show interest in Stephen's health. She would not speak. In fact, she went too far. One day, in ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... first, and that the drapery went on afterwards. It was foolish to tell him these things, but one is tempted to tread on their ignorance, their bigotry; all they say and do is based on hatred of life. Iconoclast and peasant! He sent some religion-besotted ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... of fools!" he cried. "Which one of you knows whether I have said it or no? It might have been the Ratcatcher's Daughter in double Dutch for all that your besotted heads can tell! See what I have brought myself to—the crew ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Henry's father! What curse could any superstitious mystic call down upon the head of Winifred? The heaven that would answer a call of that kind would be a heaven for zanies and tomfools!' I shouted, in a paroxysm of rage against the entire besotted human race. 'That for the curse!' I cried, snapping my fingers. 'I am Henry, and I am come to share the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... touches, wall or rampire steep, Goes to the ground' where'er the monster wends, Each fortress opens; neither castle-keep, Nor city from her rage its wealth defends. Honours divine as well that Beast would reap, It seems (while the besotted rabble bends) And claim withal, as to its keeping given, The sacred keys which ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the more remarkable as his relations with Congress and the Committee were fast approaching a crisis. If McClellan failed-and by the showing of his own despatches, there was every reason to expect him to fail, so besotted was he upon the idea that no one could prevail with the force allowed him—the Committee who were leaders of the congressional party against the presidential party might be expected promptly to measure strength with the Administration. And ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Nobody is so besotted as to ask, "Does dram-drinking pay?" There is not a sane man or woman in America who would hesitate in the reply, and the answers ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... fact, that the publishers of the day will purchase the copyrights of only such works as "the libraries will take;" which libraries, besotted by the mystic charm of three volumes, immutable as the sacred triad of the Graces or Destinies, would negative without a division such a work as the "Vicar of Wakefield" were it now to undergo ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... his native good sense more conspicuously than in the pains he took over the rebuilding of London; but none the less it had its effect in getting rid once and for ever of that spirit of excessive (besotted is Hallam's word) loyalty ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... you; a braineles weake, besotted fellowe! But lett mee better recollect myself. Madnes nor folly, and add lust to them, Durst not in fury, heate, or Ignorans, Have tempted my unquestioned chastity Without a fowrth abetter, jealousy. The more I ponder that, I more suspect By that my Lord should have a hand in this, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... know, I belong to that besotted class of man, the invalid: this puts me to a stand in the way of visits. But it is possible that some day you may feel that a day near the sea and among pinewoods would be a pleasant change from town. If so, please let us know; and my wife and I will be delighted to put you up, and give ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sluggish, inept, bovine, beef-witted, beetle-headed, besotted, fat-witted, doltish, undiscerning; prosaic, vapid, prosy, humdrum, uninspiring tame; lethargic, comatose, stupefied, torpid, insensible. Antonyms: shrewd, sharp, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... old man, too; and after what Marian had told me, I just couldn't trust myself to meet or speak to either of them. So I bolted back here, took a stiff drink, changed from costume to these clothes, and went out to make a besotted ass of myself. Naturally I landed in Dutch House. And there—the first thing I noticed when I went in was old Shaynon, sitting at the same table you took, later—waiting. Imagine my surprise—I'd left him at the Bizarre not ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... said. "Well, thou besotted lad, if it be not too late when thou getst into the hands of Crookbacked Edmund and Red Gilbert, remember the way to Galilee, that ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that all would probably, nay, almost certainly, have gone as Messer Simone desired if only Messer Simone had not been so bullishly besotted as to leave the name of a certain lady out of his table of calculations; for Messer Griffo liked the scheme well enough. Though it was, as it were, a double-edged weapon, cutting this way at the Florentines of one party and that way at Arezzo, it was a simple scheme enough ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... made up my mind; it is better than leaving it to the common hangman of this besotted country. I know what to expect in enlightened England: either a death unfit for a dog, or existence worse than death in a criminal lunatic asylum. I prefer my own peculiar quietus; it has stood on my table all night long, ready and pointed ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... know, The memory destroyeth so, That of our weal, or of our woe, Is all remembrance blotted; Of it nor can you ever think, For they no sooner took this drink, But nought into their brains could sink Of what had them besotted. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... to send him out of the country. The favourite himself was made to take an oath (more oaths!) that he would never come back, and the Barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace, until they heard that he was appointed Governor of Ireland. Even this was not enough for the besotted King, who brought him home again in a year's time, and not only disgusted the Court and the people by his doting folly, but offended his beautiful wife too, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... April forenoon was somewhat chilly, yet the benches in the center of the square were more than half-filled by men plainly "down on their luck." Some of these men, of course, were hopelessly besotted or vicious, and Uncle Sam had no use for any of these in his Army uniform. There were other men, however, on the seats, who looked like good and useful men who had met with hard times. Most of these men on the benches had not breakfasted, and ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... Arthur Lovell, warmly. "First, the stupidity of guilt, the blind besotted folly which so often betrays the murderer. It is not the commission of a crime only that is horrible; think of the hideous state of the criminal's mind after the deed is done. And it is at that time, immediately after ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... passage;" just as the bones of the unbelieving Israelites whitened the sands of the desert. Of those who have reached the "land of" golden "promise," how many have died in despair, or worse still, are living so besotted by vice, so lost to all power of virtuous resolutions, that they shall never more see the happy homes from which they so thoughtlessly wandered, never more hear the soft accents of loving friends; never more ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... die he must, and die also must Oliver, who struck me that foul blow at court. Is it treachery to punish affronts like these? I have planned everything,—I have settled everything already with their besotted master. Orlando will come to your borders—to Roncesvalles—for the purpose of receiving the tribute. Charles will await him at the foot of the mountains. Orlando will bring but a small band with him: you, when you meet him, will ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... ensued. One of the drunken brutes staggered into the room where we were lying asleep. He stood there, glaring first at one, then at the other. His actions aroused old Sarah, who, springing up and grasping a large bottle standing on the shelf, struck the besotted wretch such hard blow in the face that he fell heavily upon the cabin floor. This created a commotion, causing a ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... brother. You and I were real pinched in our aims and longings in the offset. Do you remember how you always wanted learning and college, and how I actually was besotted about traipsing around the world? Such dreams as we managed to make up! I have the old geography now with pin points all up the side of the Alps where you and I counted the height and then said we didn't believe it! Well, you've found success ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... as Billy Sunday is trying to keep the neglected youth of our streets from drinking, gambling and whoring, no one could wish him anything but success; but his besotted ignorance, his childish crudity of mind, make it impossible that he could have any success except of a delusive nature. He is utterly devoid of a social sense; utterly unaware of the existence of the forces of capitalism which are causing depravity ten times as fast as all the evangelists ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... to you in your private wishes, Cecilia, unless my besotted vanity has led me to believe what it would now be madness to learn was false; and in your opinions of public things, you are quite as widely separated. I should think there could be but little happiness dependent on a connection where there ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Alas for the besotted soul who cannot bend the knee of humble adoration before nature's altar, where sacrifices are offered to the Jehovah, pavilioned in invisibility. There is an ardent love of nature as far removed from gross materialism or subtle pantheism on the one hand as from stupid inappreciation on the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... room, laid her babe upon the bare floor, kneeled down over it, and offered up the following petition: "O Lord, if thou wilt in any way remove from me this affliction, I will serve thee upon bread and water all the days of my life." The Lord took her at her word. Her besotted husband immediately disappeared, and was never heard of again till after her death. The church would now have maintained her, but she would not consent to become a charge to others. Although in feeble ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... going about looking after business matters. She called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... plates, all the dishes and all the bottles. Then, intoxicated with drink and food, besotted, red in the face, shaken by hiccoughs, his mind clouded and his speech thick, he unbuttoned his uniform in order to breathe or he could not have taken a step. His eyes closed, his mind became torpid; he leaned his heavy forehead on his folded arms ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... age, when in the unequal contest with sovereign wrong, every man is ground to powder who is not either a born slave, or who does not willingly and at once offer up the yearnings of humanity and the dictates of reason as a welcome sacrifice to besotted prejudice ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... not discern me by any of their senses. Few things enthral me more than that—and here I had my first taste of it. I remember that my heart beat, I remember that I trembled. Nothing could have torn me from the spot but what precisely did, an alien intervention. The besotted Harkness stopped short in his recital and asked me what I ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... was educated at Douai. I have no sympathy with the great bulk of the Maynooth men, who are mostly peasants and the sons of peasants. I do not think that the Maynooth course is sufficient in one generation to lift the sons to any great intellectual height above the besotted ignorance of the parents. I believe in heredity, and I say that most of my colleagues are only shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years. The low-bred men are now the dominant power. Instead of tranquillising the people, which I hold to be the duty of the clergy, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... a loud voice. "Why? Because I love it. I'm besotted by it. It's like strong drink to me. I doubt if there's a man in England who enjoys himself more than I do when I'm writing. The worst of it is, that it won't come out—it's beautiful enough when I think ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... terms. I have not mentioned your name; but I have stated vaguely that they may expect the promised assistance early in the spring. It would indeed be a fine thing if you could commence operations during the Rhamadan; but I fear that is impossible. Any time, however, will do against the stupid, besotted Turks. Were they not led by Frenchmen, even the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... says, this besotted race is not satisfied with seeing its multitudes swept away by the great epidemics whose causes are unknown, and of the justice or wisdom of which the human mind cannot conceive. It must also be ever at war. There has not been a moment since men divided into Tribes, when all the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... street, it consisted of solid blocks of ramshackle frame buildings, that housed all the varieties of sharks and harpies who live off Jack ashore; it was an ugly, dirty, fascinating way, a street with a garish, besotted face. But on this morning it seemed the most wonderful avenue in the world to me. I saw East street through the colorful eyes ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... get the start of us, Helen, if we don't look sharp,' observed Huntingdon. 'They'll make a match of it, as sure as can be. That Lowborough's fairly besotted. But he'll find himself in a fix when ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... holy and harmless Master, against "their intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of their casuistry, their besotted cruelty." [273] We have been betrayed into speaking thus strongly of the extreme lengths to which superstition will carry those who yield themselves to its ruthless tyranny. But perhaps we have not gone far from our subject, after all; for the innocent Iphigenia, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... the aid of good Catholics,—when he returns, healed, of his wasting malady, high in health, and strong in limb, will not the glory of his faithfulness, and its miraculous reward, speak louder in the ears of this besotted people of Scotland, than the din which is weekly made ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... at the same time he did not let his mind run in only one channel, as some men do. He pitied rather than blamed the wretched females who frequented the miners' camps. More sinned against than sinning, was his humane judgment of these unhappy outcasts, and when he could, he helped them. Many a besotted creature had him to thank when the end came and short shrift little better then that accorded a dead dog awaited her—that at least she got a decent burial. The boys knew his attitude on the woman question, and it was a tribute to the regard ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... hill. Bullet, his nostrils wide, his ears back, raced parallel in the boulder-strewn stream-bed, wonderful in his avoidance of bad footing, precious in his selection of good, interested in the game, indignant at the wayward Dinkey, profoundly contemptuous of the besotted mule. At a bend in the canon interposed a steep bank. Up this we scrambled, dirt and stones flying. I had just time to bend low along the saddle when, with the ripping and tearing and scratching of thorns, we burst blindly through a thicket. In the open space on the farther side ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... I have with the feathered lady on a coster's donkey-cart or the Fat Woman at the Fair. I can see all this perfectly well in the calm seclusion of my library. But when I am in her presence my superiority, like Bob Acres's valour, oozes out through my finger-tips; I become a besotted idiot; the sense and the sight and the sound of her overpower me; I proclaim her rich and remarkable personality; and I bask in her lazy smiles like any silly undergraduate whose knowledge of women has hitherto been limited to his sisters ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... sheets; some escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? A poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at least one telling word to say in his defence; for when the roof fell in and the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged him to the public ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drowning. Here was a grand Oriental picture which I had worshiped a thousand times in soft, rich steel engravings! But in the engraving there was no desolation; no dirt; no rags; no fleas; no ugly features; no sore eyes; no feasting flies; no besotted ignorance in the countenances; no raw places on the donkeys' backs; no disagreeable jabbering in unknown tongues; no stench of camels; no suggestion that a couple of tons of powder placed under the party and touched off would heighten the effect and give ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... child he had been forced to fight a besotted father, in order to protect his mother, who had no other protector. This unequal battle had to be fought; and it necessarily blunted his capacity for feeling pain, and particularly his sense of danger. He knew what was in store for him, but he rushed blindly into the fray ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... down, and cried shame over, for such a stupid observation," said Miss Keeldar. "You might as well say men are to take the opinions of their priests without examination. Of what value would a religion so adopted be? It would be mere blind, besotted superstition." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... you should be so besotted as to refuse a man who offers so much. A man who has wealth, rank, ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical subtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavish tradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and heaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale of grandeur and intensity wholly without a parallel elsewhere in the literature or faith of the world. Brahmanism, with its hundred million adherents holding sway ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and his melancholy keeping from Court, I am doubtful of some such thing; but I seemed wholly strange to him in it, but will make my use of it. He told me also how loose the Court is, nobody looking after business, but every man his lust and gain; and how the King is now become besotted upon Mrs. Stewart, that he gets into corners, and will be with her half an houre together kissing her to the observation of all the world; and she now stays by herself and expects it, as my Lady Castlemaine ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... his look, it licked his hand, and, at the lifting of his finger, or the glance of his eye, would have sprung at the throat of King or Queen-Mother, minister, or minion, and devoured them all before his eyes. It was longing for the sign, for, much as Paris adored and was besotted with Guise and the League, even more, if possible, did it hate those godless politicians, who had grown fat on extortions from the poor, and who had converted their substance into the daily ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dupe in Madame Pernelle, incredulous of the revelations which have at last opened his own besotted eyes, is a scene of the double Comic, vivified by the spell previously cast on the mind. There we feel the power of the poet's creation; and in the sharp light of that sudden turn the humanity is livelier than any realistic work can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... even touching to see this glutton take a piece of wing almost from her mouth to give it to the old fellow, who did not appear to be very particular, and who swallowed everything with bowed head, almost besotted from having gobbled so much after he had forgotten the taste of bread. The Lorilleuxs expended their rage on the roast goose; they ate enough to last them three days; they would have stowed away the dish, the table, the very shop, if they could have ruined Clump-Clump ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... abominations of Baalism, we have seemed to regard as having equal force against the ethics of Confucius or Gautama. "Heathenism" is the one brand which we have put upon all the non-Christian religions. I wish it were possible to exchange the term for a better.[29] Baalism was undoubtedly the most besotted, cruel, and diabolical religion that has ever existed on the earth. When we carefully study it we are not surprised at the strong language of denunciation which the Old Testament employs. But as I have already shown, we find in the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... share in his sisters' novels, particularly in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. But Charlotte distinctly tells us that her brother never knew that his sisters had published a line. He was too much under the effects of drink, too besotted and muddled in that last year or two of life, to have any share in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... excess, Natures full blessings would be well dispenc't In unsuperfluous eeven proportion, And she no whit encomber'd with her store, And then the giver would be better thank't, His praise due paid, for swinish gluttony Ne're looks to Heav'n amidst his gorgeous feast, But with besotted base ingratitude Cramms, and blasphemes his feeder. Shall I go on? Or have I said anough? To him that dares 780 Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words Against the Sun-clad power of Chastity, Fain ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... I have knelt; Implore, beseech, and pray, Strive the besotted heart to melt, The downward course to stay; Be cast with bitter curse aside,— Thy prayers ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... ordinary humdrum, respectable, and comfortable country life was so intense, and his ideal of the free and austere life he would live so vivid, that he could thus see in this besotted vagabond a career and a degree of wisdom that he ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... since you danced before him at the great welcoming feast I made in his honour a month ago the man is besotted of you; moreover, he is mad with jealousy of this new-comer, the prince Aziel. He has demanded public audience of me this afternoon, and I have it privately that then he will formally ask you in marriage before the people, and if he is refused will declare war upon the city, with which he ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... long suspense is over, and that at last we are going to meet the treachery of the court by force. Too long have we remained passive, while thousands of our friends have, in defiance of the edicts, been dragged to prison and put to death. Fortunately the court is, as it was before the last war, besotted with the belief that we are absolutely powerless; and we have every hope ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... entity—he is no supernatural, fantastic being, but man incarnate: he is the evil part of a good whole, which loses its entity when once seen and recognised in its real nature; for Mephistopheles in reality is our own ignorant, besotted, animal nature, cultivated and developed at the expense of our ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... throughout the world which I can compare to nothing better than the circulation of the blood in the human body) the glory of Russia shall rest, not upon the extent of her dominions, but that of her civilization,—not upon the number of inhabitants, embruted and besotted, but the number of enlightened, prosperous, and free men; it will be enough for him, if he be considered to have laid the first stone of that great change,—if his labours be fairly weighed against the obstacles ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... really seems to be no more criminal to produce children with the deliberate intention of abandoning them to public charity, as Rousseau did, than it is to produce them in deliberate reliance on the besotted maxim that he who sends mouths will send meat, or any other of the spurious saws which make Providence do duty for self-control, and add to the gratification of physical appetite the grotesque luxury ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... of incarceration the natives are separated from their women-folk and families. The consequence is one of the most striking and shocking features of the compound system. A number of the lowest, drink-besotted, coloured prostitutes, estimated at about 5,000, have collected at Beaconsfield, where, so to speak, they constitute a colony, occupying a revolting quarter of the township. When the natives come out for a short spell these unhappy women receive them. It is, no doubt, convenient from the ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... usual round, I suppose, and he's either too much ashamed of himself or too besotted to turn up. I wish she wasn't quite so devilish good-looking," he remarked to himself. "If she goes about alone she'll get badly ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rouse him. It was safe with the Grand Duke Peter—a king at four months old! But what of sons, or kings or countries—nothing could make up for the loss of his Queen! And to think that she had died to save him! Save him from what? A brush with three besotted drunkards, whom it would have been great ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... of blood-hounds. Neither the imploring appeal for mercy, in her case, from her wretched mother, who did not ask for any in her own, nor the want of even the shadow of a ground for the charge, had the slightest effect upon the besotted prejudices of the judge and jury. Acquitted on one indictment, she is now put on her trial on another; the imputed crime being her having caused the death of a person, who did not even accuse her of being accessory to it, nearly eighteen years ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Thou hast a heart of flint: let my intreaties, My tears, the Sacrifice of griefs unfeigned, Melt it: yet be a Father to thy son, Unmask thy long besotted judgement, see A low obedience kneeling at the feet Of ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... treated me generously enough, but it hung fire damnably at first. At one particularly hellish moment I could have sworn it wouldn't do more than my usual fifteen or eighteen hundred, and I cursed myself for having been such a besotted fool as to pin my faith to it. [Sitting upright.] And then, suddenly, a rush—a tremendous rush! Twenty-four thousand went off in less than six weeks. Almost uncanny, eh? [Touching the tobacco-jar.] Oh, lord, sometimes I think I've been putting opium into my pipe instead ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... true character to be seen is a powerful aid to the will. Do not forget the method of Jules Janin, running from house to house in Paris for a few wretched lessons in Latin: 'Unable to get anything out of my stupid pupils, with the besotted son of the marquis I was simultaneously pupil and professor: I explained the ancient authors to myself, and so, in a few months, I went through ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... nothing to do (which was almost all the year round), he passed his time in reading books of knight-errantry, which he did with that application and delight, that at last he in a manner wholly left off his country sports, and even the care of his estate; nay, he grew so strangely besotted with these amusements that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of that kind, by which means he collected as many of them as were to be had; but, among them all, none pleased him like the works of the famous Feliciano de Sylva; for the clearness of his prose and those intricate ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... these criticisms and others are made, The White Devil remains one of the most glorious works of the period. Vittoria is perfect throughout; and in the justly-lauded trial scene she has no superior on any stage. Brachiano is a thoroughly lifelike portrait of the man who is completely besotted with an evil woman. Flamineo I have spoken of, and not favourably; yet in literature, if not in life, he is a triumph; and above all the absorbing tragic interest of the play, which it is impossible to take up without finishing, has to be counted ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... love at that juncture, and it ought not to be a cause of regret. His interest in the welfare of the church ceased not with his mortal life. How swiftly would his glorified spirit fly to see the landing of William, and hover with joy over the flight of the besotted James! He was now in a situation to prove the truth of that saying, 'the angels desire to look into' the truth and spread of the glad tidings. How he would prove the reality of his opinion, expressed in The Holy War, of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... so besotted but that lucid intervals now and again afflicted her. One seized her this afternoon, as she prepared to bid Damaris good-bye. Either conscience pricked with unusual sharpness, or the young girl's ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... as important; which all voices endeavour to announce to him as sacred? Can it, I repeat, be supposed, that any enlightened, any polished society, contains a citizen so completely blind, not to acknowledge his most natural duties; so very absurd, not to admit his dearest interests; so completely besotted not to perceive the danger he incurs in incessantly disturbing his fellow creatures; or in following no other rule, than his momentary appetites? Is not every human being who reasons in the least possible manner, obliged to feel that society is advantageous to him; that he ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... To their besotted perceptions this scene was like a play in a Bowery theater, and now that the dramatic denouement had come, they lost their interest and sauntered away singly or in little groups. In a few moments there were only three figures left in the light ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... execution or transportation, were girls of twelve to senile, helpless creatures of eighty. All were thrust together. Hardened criminals, besotted prostitutes, maidservants accused of stealing thimbles, married women suspected of blasphemy, pure-hearted, brave-natured girls who had run away from brutal parents or more brutal husbands, insane ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... felt it his duty to speak to the Judge upon the subject. This gentleman—his name was S. P. Escott—held, with others, that, for the good name of the community, steps should be taken to abate the infantile, futile activities of the besotted legatee. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... to be made equally besotted, and even more helpless than they, in order that his senses might be sapped away, and he should remember no story to tell. Perhaps if he had not had before him so vivid an illustration of the malign power that swayed them, he might not have experienced so strong an aversion to it. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... portrayal of causes and effects that makes literary art contemptible even to those whom it amuses, that forbids them to regard the novelist as a serious or right-minded person. If they do not in some moment of indignation cry out against all novels, as my correspondent does, they remain besotted in the fume of the delusions purveyed to them, with no higher feeling for the author than such maudlin affection as the frequenter of an opium-joint perhaps knows for the attendant who fills his pipe ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Edward II., also described by Froissart. He says that when the Londoners found the King 'besotted' with his favourites, they sent word to Queen Isabella that if she could land in England with 300 armed men she would find the citizens of London and the majority of the nobles and commonalty ready to join her ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant |
