"Foolish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... They might be very foolish, these White Geese, but they were sensible enough to know that Jehosophat ought to have been ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... of England, So famous for your looks, Whose sense has braved a thousand fads Of foolish fashion-books, Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe, And refrain From the train While the stormy tempests blow, While the sodden streets are thick with mud, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... it is foolish. But I'm glad to know you think Mr. Alcando all right. If we've got to live in close companionship with him for several months, it's a comfort to know he is all right. Now when are we to start, how do we go, where shall we make our headquarters ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... returned, it was to meet a combined volley of protestations against his foolish project of keeping watch all night, from his father, his mother, and Amy. But he declared it was no use talking; and where were the gun and the beans? So they adjourned from the piazza, a lamp was lit, the articles were hunted up, and the gun duly loaded with a good charge ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... make such an ado. "The primrose by the river's brim" would not have been seen by him at all. This is true of most farmers; the plough and the hoe and the scythe do not develop their aesthetic sensibilities; then, too, in the old religious view the beauties of this world were vain and foolish. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... were stuffed out with shirts and stockings," he said a homely thing in a homely way; that is, he fitted the language to the thought. To fit the expression to the thought on every occasion is the perfection of style. If Franklin had been a weak, foolish writer, his sentence might have taken ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... labors, crops out in almost every city. Consecrated pictures leave church walls for the garret; silver crosses go into the refining pot; auricular confession is neglected; many superstitious ceremonies and foolish restrictions, imposed by the priesthood, are regarded only as a curious relic of the past. We note, also, a growing friendliness towards Protestants, and occasionally very sensible efforts, in emulation of them, to educate ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... in a dream, I listened to words that I will not recall, making good those accusations. And through all that false witness there seemed to me to run, as it were, a thread of those foolish, boy-wise words of mine that had, and meant, no harm, but on which were now built mountains of seeming proof. So that, when at last all those men had spoken I was dumb, and knew that I had no defence. ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... is a god! Hanno is a god!—get out of here, Henry Myton,—get out of here, I say—this is my busy day," and he laughed the young senator out of the room. But he sat alone in his office grinning, as over and over in his mind his own words rang, "Hanno is a god!" And the foolish parrot of his other self cackled the phrase in his soul for ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... be foolish—she at once agreed—in the case of such dear indefinite angels as the Farlows, to dash off after them without more positive proof that they were established at Joigny, and so established that they could take her in. She owned it was but too probable ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... member of the crew, a lanky youth with whitish eyebrows and a foolish face. He stammered, and made a queer noise when he laughed: "Chee-hee-hee." Twice he had been turned down in the confirmation classes; after all, what was the use of learning lessons out of a book when nobody ever had patience to wait while ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... she had condescended to give the latter a supercilious nod. Her conversation was generally of the silly, vacuous sort, concerning chiefly new dresses or bonnets, and Shirley at once read her character—frivolous, amusement-loving, empty-headed, irresponsible—just the kind of girl to do something foolish without weighing the consequences. After chatting a few moments with Mrs. Ryder she would usually vanish, and one day, after one of these mysterious disappearances, Shirley happened to pass the library and caught sight of her and Mr. Bagley conversing in subdued and eager tones. It ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... reason why you should pity him. He brawled at random, and therefore got what he deserved. I know him: he is a good fellow, industrious, strong and not a bit foolish. But to argue is not his business; I may argue, because I am the master. It isn't simple to be master. A punch wouldn't kill him, but will make him wiser. That's the way. Eh, Foma! You are an infant, and you do not understand these things. I must teach you ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... having her doubts resolved, she was more uncertain, more perplexed than ever. "What" cried she, "can all this mean? How strange, and how inexplicable! Is it a real person that I have seen, or is it a vision that mocks my fancy? Am I loved, or am I hated? Oh, foolish question! Oh, fond illusion! Are we not parted for ever! Is he not gone to seek the mistress of his soul! Alas, he views me not, but with that general complacency, which youth, and the small pretensions I have to beauty are calculated to excite! He had nothing to relate that concerned myself, ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... groaned. When Rihoriho overthrew his idols and burned his temples he knew nothing of Christianity; but he had discovered that his idols were no gods, and that the religion of his fathers was utterly abominable and foolish. In many islands, when a chief lotued before his subjects, he did so at the risk of being deposed by them; and in every direction there are instances of rebellions being raised by the heathens against the chiefs who had professed Christianity. For many years the fact, that whole communities of ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... at the assured futility of my attempts. Plainly, if there was to be fighting over this matter, I ought not to seek a usurpation of Tom's right. And fighting there would be, I knew, whether I said yea or nay. Since Tom must have a second, that place was mine. And I felt, too, with a young man's foolish faith in poetic justice, that the right must win; that his adversary's superiority in age—and therefore undoubtedly in practice, Falconer being the man he was—would not avail against an honest lad avenging the probity of a sister. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... reminds me we have a small portable trench machine, which closes up like a valise, easily handled and carried about. One man near had a box full of needles distributed in his back by a bomb; he considers himself disgraced; he says it will be kind of foolish in years to come to show his grandchildren twenty-five or thirty needles and tell them that they were ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... a satire on Christian martyrdom (13). Peregrinus(140) is a Cynic philosopher, who after a life of early villainy is made by Lucian to play the hypocrite at Antioch and join himself to the Christians, "miserable men" (as he calls them), "who, hoping for immortality in soul and body, had a foolish contempt of death, and suffered themselves to be persuaded that they were brethren, because, having abandoned the Greek gods, they worshipped the crucified sophist, living according to his laws."(141) Peregrinus, when a Christian, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... while yet but a seed, A nettle rear'd up his inglorious head. The gard'ner would wisely have rooted him up, To stop the increase of a barbarous crop; But the master forbid him, and after the fashion Of foolish good nature, and blind moderation, Forbore him through pity, and chose as much rather, To ask him some questions first, how he came thither. Kind sir, quoth the nettle, a stranger I come, For conscience compell'd to relinquish my home, 'Cause I wouldn't subscribe to a mystery ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... 'tis not so warm. I feel so strange, I know not how— I wish my mother would come home. Through me there runs a shuddering— I'm but a foolish timid thing! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... did half make up my mind to speak to you, and came this morning on purpose; and then as soon as I saw you I felt that it was foolish—a sort ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... these "watered" stocks in good faith as an investment in the honest hope of dividends it seems sufficient to say, in the words of an ancient Roman, "Against stupidity the gods themselves are powerless." Laws that would adequately protect the foolish from the consequence of their folly would put an end to all commerce. The sin of "over-capitalization" differed in magnitude only, not in kind, from the daily practice of every salesman in every shop. Nevertheless, the popular fury that it aroused ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... going away with his money, thinking with delight of the pleasure he should have in skating, and also of the money that would be left to carry home to his poor father, when the gambler said to him, "You foolish boy, why won't you play longer, and double your dollar? You may as well have two ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... This American facility of electrical invention has one great cause, one specific reason for its fruitfulness. It is because so many acute minds have mastered the simple laws of electrical action. This knowledge not only fosters intelligent and fruitful experiment but it prevents the doing of foolish things. No man who has acquired a knowledge of mechanical forces, who understands at least that great law that for all force exerted there is exacted an equivalent, ever dreams upon the folly of the perpetual ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... at us," said Sahwah, feeling terribly foolish. "Quit telling fortunes, Hinpoha. It's all ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... France flashed up, to die down again the next moment. It was probably a stupid missal of Plantin's printing, about 1580. Where was the likelihood that a place so near Toulouse would not have been ransacked long ago by collectors? However, it would be foolish not to go; he would reproach himself for ever after if he refused. So they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and sudden determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he wondered in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some purlieu to be made away with ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Similar foolish questions were then put to her. Had the saints long hair? She did not know. And what language did they converse ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... whole truth when next I go down to Redman's Farm. In the meantime, you must not plague poor Miss Radie with your nonsense. She has too much already to trouble her, though of quite another sort. Good-night, foolish old Tamar.' ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... have begun to cry]. It has been so wrong and foolish of us. We have never learnt to ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... of our candid friends the syndicalists are not to be slighted. Their solution of the problem, that the workers should come into actual, literal possession and management of the industries, whether publicly or privately owned, may appear to us hopelessly foolish and impractical, but their misgivings regarding an ever-increasing bureaucratic control over a large proportion of the workers, who are thus made economically dependent upon an employer, because that employer chances also to ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... that he put Ebenezer down on the road again and was about to walk along about his business when what did that foolish little Ebenezer do but up and deny ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... utter these words, and others of the same kind, when I should have been thinking rather how my place in hell was pleasant in comparison with the place I deserved. But now and then my love makes me foolish, so that I lose my senses; only it is with all the sense I have that I make these complaints, and our Lord bears it all. Blessed be so good ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... (love-talker). He does not appear, like the Leprechaun, with a purse in one of his pockets, but with his hands in both of them, and a dudeen (short pipe) in his mouth, as he lazily strolls through lonely valleys making love to the foolish country lasses and "gostering" with the idle "boys." To meet him meant bad luck, and whoever was ruined by ill-judged love was said to ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... frequent mention in the Word of love and charity, works and deeds, and keeping the Commandments, and the declaration that the man who keeps the Commandments is blessed and wise, but the man who does not is foolish. They said that on reading these things they saw them only as matters of faith, and passed them by with their eyes closed, ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... who shall live for ever," said Dicky, his lips lost in an odorous cloud of 'ordinaire.' "But there be evil tongues and evil hearts; and if some son of liars, some brother of foolish tales, should bear false witness upon this thing before our master the Khedive, or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this, with his social position, his pseudo-heroic poetry, and his dissipated life,—over which he contrived to throw a veil of romantic secrecy,—made him a magnet of attraction to many thoughtless young men and foolish women, who made the downhill path both easy and rapid to one whose inclinations led him in that direction. Naturally he was generous, and easily led by affection. He is, therefore, largely a victim of his own weakness and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... she got the position at the office or got married. She certainly couldn't go back to the office and explain it all to them. At least, she wouldn't. It would be better, even if Cousin Anna did treat everybody as if they were ten and very foolish. . . . And she had refused the offer of a nice foursome and one of Lucille's cheerful friends, to stay home ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... seed of a king,' said I to myself, and really I was affected, Planchet, which leads me to think I am entering upon a foolish business. And that is why I wished to consult ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Arnold had just quoted there could not be a more foolish criticism. Keats was dogged by a curious vulgarity (which produced occasional comic effects in his work), but his self-abandonment was not vulgar. It may have been in a sense immoral: he was an artist who practised ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... Smyth were hanged. I was dreaming the most melancholy things in the world of poor Stella, and was grieving and crying all night.—Pshah, it is foolish: I will rise and divert myself; so good-morrow; and God of His infinite mercy keep and protect you! The Bishop of Clogher's letter is dated Nov. 21. He says you thought of going with him to Clogher. I am heartily glad of it, and wish you would ride there, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... marquis, perhaps endowed with the conjugal philosophy which alone pleased the taste of the period, perhaps too much occupied with his own pleasure to see what was going on before his eyes, offered no jealous obstacle to the intimacy, and continued his foolish extravagances long after they had impaired his fortunes: his affairs became so entangled that the marquise, who cared for him no longer, and desired a fuller liberty for the indulgence of her new passion, demanded and obtained a separation. She then left her husband's house, and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... hands which, too weak for the stern task assigned them, poured out the love-potion in place of the death-draught. "Woe, woe," she wails, "eternal, irredeemable woe, instead of brief death! Behold the pernicious work of a foolish fondness blossoming heavenward ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... was Boulson's father—if Boulson was tall and fair, with blue eyes, and a pepper-castor mark on his right arm, where a charge of dust-shot had lodged from a horse-pistol. There had, he informed me, been family misunderstandings about a foolish fancy formed by Boulson for a military career. And Boulson had gone off—God bless him—like the high-spirited Irishman that he was—to enlist as a private soldier. And then came the news of the serious ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... he rose from the table, and mounting the ladder, "On second thought," said he, addressing Skysail again, "I won't throw the cats overboard; the sailors have a foolish superstition about that animal—its d——d unlucky. No; put them alive in a bread-bag, and send them on shore ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... possess an unlimited power. It acts on matter if we know how to domesticate it. The imagination is like a horse without a bridle; if such a horse is pulling the carriage in which you are, he may do all sorts of foolish things and take you to your death. But harness him properly, drive him with a sure hand, and he will go wherever you like. Thus it is with the mind, the imagination. They must be directed for our own good. Autosuggestion, formulated with the lips, is an order which the unconscious receives, it carries ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... who decreed that the descendants of his brother Adolphus should govern Holstein, jointly with the King of Denmark, and that Holstein and Schleswig should belong to them in common, neither making any change in Holstein without the consent of the other A more foolish arrangement could not have been conceived, for anyone might have foreseen that it would lead to disputes and troubles. In fact, quarrels continually arose, until, at the Peace of Rosahild, in 1658, the ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... dealing with the same place and people. The calm face of Penelope would, it may be, begin to grow meaner before our eyes, like a face changing in a dream. She would begin to appear as a fickle and selfish woman, passing falsely as a widow, and playing a double game between the attentions of foolish but honourable young men, and the fitful appearances of a wandering and good-for-nothing sailor-husband; a man prepared to act that most well-worn of melodramatic roles, the conjugal bully and blackmailer, the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Fanny insisted; "it may be awfully foolish and ark-like to say, but you're all I want, absolutely." Her manner grew indignant. "Some women at tea today laughed at me. They did nothing but describe how they held their husbands' affections; actually that, as though it were difficult, necessary; ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... my affairs. You may each come, I mean you and your friend the Baron de Canalis, to Havre for the last two weeks of October. My house will be open to both of you, and my daughter must have an opportunity to study you. You must yourself bring your rival, and not disabuse him as to the foolish tales he will hear about the wealth of the Comte de La Bastie. I go to Havre to-morrow, and I shall expect you ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... glasses to wipe away the moisture gathering so fast upon them. Then resuming them, she continued: "I'm a hewer of wood—a drawer of water. God made me so, and shall the clay find fault with the potter for making it into a homely jug? No, indeed; and I was a very foolish old jug to think of sticking myself in with the chinaware. But I've larnt a lesson," and the philosophic woman read on, feeling comforted to know that though a vessel of the rudest make, a paltry jug, as she called herself, the promises were still for her as much as for the finer ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... having studied but little, must need take as their standard of beauty mere gold and azure, and these, with supreme conceit, declare that they will not give good work for miserable payment, and that they could do as well as any other if they were well paid. But, ye foolish folks! cannot such artists keep some good work, and then say: this is a costly work and this more moderate and this is average work and show that they can ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... by their taste. "They are hard and sour before they are full grown, and so the taste is not pleasant, and nobody wants to eat them,—except sometimes a few foolish boys, and these are punished by being made sick. When the apples are full grown they change from sour to sweet, and become mellow; then they can be eaten. Can you tell me of any other fruits which are ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... of the most foolish women in the world. She was very handsome at the time of my arrival in France, and her figure was as good as her face; besides, she was not so much disregarded by others as by my husband; for, before the Chevalier de Lorraine became her lover, she had had a child. I knew well that nothing had passed ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... After puffing and swelling for some time, "What think you," said she, to her young ones, "will this do?" "Far from it," said they. "Will this?" "By no means." "But this surely will?" "Nothing like it," they replied. After many fruitless and ridiculous efforts to the same purpose, the foolish Frog burst her skin, and ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... a pretty name, whichever way you put it. When I heard of the treasure she's so foolish as to keep on her sideboard, I felt sure that your father had made up his mind to rob Miss Stivergill—with the help of that bad man Bill Stiggs—all the more w'en I see how your father jumped w'en I mentioned Rosebud Cottage. Now, Tottie, we must save your father. If he had only got me to post ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... help it," she replied, turning to the house. "I had no natural liking for him, and I could not force it. I don't believe he has gone away for that trifling reason, Mr. Roy. If he has, he must be very foolish." ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the Springtime On the farm out in the West, When my world held nothing for me that I wanted, (Save a courage all undaunted), And my foolish little rhymes, Were but heart beats, rung in chimes, That I sounded, just to ease my life's unrest. Yes, I sang them, and I rang them, Just ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... his secret was at the woman's discretion. He answered in an apologetic tone: "It was certainly foolish of me to lose my temper with you, but I had some provocation. Forgive me, and let bye-gones be bye-gones. Whom do you suspect of ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... appealed to her, when she stood, all ready for bed in her foolish nightgown—a mere veil of chiffon—becomingly guarded by a Japanese kimono of the softest silk. She visualized the timeless desert outside her tent, the trackless ocean of silence, the uninhabited primitive ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... contract at the bidding of his master, or who can sue by the actions exercitoria or institoria, may in lieu thereof bring an action in respect of the peculium and of conversion to uses; but it would be most foolish of him to relinquish an action by which he may with the greatest ease recover the whole of what is owing to him under the contract, and undertake the trouble of proving a conversion to uses, or the existence of a peculium ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... are doing something very wrong and foolish," said Miss Ludington, feebly, as the carriage ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... foolish as that, then they have to spend a good lot to make up for getting a little. And the funny part of it is, the girls, who seem so wise, are the easiest fooled. Now, she acted like a real grown-up, but I'll bet my badge she would go along with the first person who offered her ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again. Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage — and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope! ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... a great deal about the "vile body"; and many are encouraged by the phrase to transgress the laws of health. But Nature quietly suppresses those who treat thus disrespectfully one of her highest products and leaves the world to be peopled by the descendants of those who are not so foolish. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... thee, I shall not die, Woman of high fame and name; Foolish men thou mayest slay I and ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... if he doesn't know that every time he looks at her, or speaks her name, he tells her. But I suppose he has some foolish mannish pride about waiting ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... could? It's an idle question, I know; wise men and musty philosophers say that regrets are foolish. But I speak for myself only when I say that I would gladly wheedle old, gray-bearded Tempus into making the wheels click backward till I could see again the buffalo-herds darkening the green of Northwestern prairies. They and the blanket Indian ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... It was, therefore, with astonishment that the young general received the enthusiastic letter of the poetess; and, while showing it to some of his intimate friends, he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, "Do you understand these extravagances? This woman is foolish!" ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... representative English audience, the males preponderating in number. They watched me intently as I mounted the steps of the rostrum and arranged my port-folio upon a musical tripod; then I seated myself for a moment, and tried to still the beating of my foolish heart. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... yourself, but it was for something. You have given papa such pleasure and comfort, as you can't help being glad of. That is very different from us foolish ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... was in a terrible fright at hearing this; she ran to acquaint her mother with it; and asked her what they had best do; but her mother, who was but a foolish mouse, bade her not be under the least alarm, for she was persuaded the farmer did not mean to take it in just then; and added, it was time enough to think of it when the men began; she told Downy to go to bed with ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... wanted for the grand orchestra was good musicians, and, when any one objected to our two colored performers, we triumphantly referred to the exacting and satisfactory test they had undergone as sufficient answer to the foolish clamors of all those afflicted with 'color-phobia.' Seeing the managers of the Jubilee thus resolved, and convinced that the two colored men were artistic performers,—superior in ability to many with whom they were to be associated,—no ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... you when you wanted a friend to come to me? Why did you doubt me, foolish fellow? Pick up those shillings; get a bed and a supper. Come and see me to-morrow at nine o'clock; you know where,—the same house in Curzon Street; you shall tell me then your whole story, and it shall go hard but I'll buy you another crossing, or get you something ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... run him through with my bayonet," he answered with the foolish intonation peculiar to soldiers; "and if he made off, I ought to shoot him," he added, obviously proud of knowing what he must do if ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... few necessary things, and make haste to go with him into the launch; adding that, by remaining in the ship, I should incur an equal share of guilt with the mutineers themselves. I reluctantly followed his advice—I say reluctantly, because I knew no better, and was foolish; and the boat swimming very deep in the water—the land being far distant—the thoughts of being sacrificed by the natives—and the self-consciousness of my first intention being just—all these considerations almost ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... be found, upon strict enquiry, that there is hardly one in twenty of those miserable objects who do not owe their present poverty to their own faults, to their present sloth and negligence, to their indiscreet marriage without the least prospect of supporting a family, to their foolish expensiveness, to their drunkenness, and other vices, by which they have squandered their gettings, and contracted diseases in their old age. And, to speak freely, is it any way reasonable or just, that those who have denied themselves many lawful satisfactions and conveniences of life, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in the soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy after all. There it was again. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... cap in his hand, and his gun at his feet. Beside him sat Vinie Mocket, dressed in her best. Vinie's eyes were downcast, and her hands clasped in her lap. She wondered—poor little partridge!—why she was there, why she had been so foolish as to let Mr Adam persuade her into coming Vinie was afraid she was going to cry. Yet not for worlds would she have left Saint Margaret's; she wanted, with painful curiosity, to see the figure in bridal ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... himself sitting there with a flush of heat at his hair-roots, half-angry and half foolish as he realized how he had ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... ornaments set with tiny pearls, diamonds, or sapphires. Of these I noticed that Jimmie admired the pearl-studded cigar-cases and match-safes most, but for some reason I waited to make my purchase in London, which was one of the most foolish things I ever have done in all my foolish career, and right here let me say that there is nothing so unsatisfactory as to postpone a purchase, thinking either that you will come back to the same place or that you will see better ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... another moment, it stopped; down went its head, up went its infernal heels; and Hans found himself some ten yards off, in the middle of a pool. He escaped drowning, but the cap was gone; he had been foolish enough to stitch some dollars, in hard cash, recently received, into it along with his paper, and they sunk it, past recovery! He came home, dripping like a drowned mouse, with a most deplorable tale; but with no more knowledge ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... yet farther apart,' said I, 'and that he might fairly find his way into the thickest of this foolish crowd, and take a short revenge upon his civilized tormentors. What a spectacle is this—more strange and savage, I think, looked upon aright, than that which we are going to enjoy—of you, Gracchus, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... a wobbly old buckboard sat a young couple completely engrossed by each other. That he was a Westerner we knew by his cowboy hat and boots; that she was an Easterner, by her not knowing how to dress for the ride across the desert. She wore a foolish little chiffon hat which the alkali dust had ruined, and all the rest of her clothes matched. But over them the enterprising young man had raised one of those big old sunshades that had lettering on them. It kept ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... set to work to organize the proper distribution of the food supply and the cultivation of the land. He wasted no more time on foolish pleasures, and in due course the land East of the Rising Sun enjoyed happiness and prosperity and even established fruitful colonies in the plain overlooked by the Palace ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... I laughed, but Strickland was not amused. He took his moustache in both fists and pulled at it till it nearly came out. Fleete, instead of going off to chase his property, yawned, saying that he felt sleepy. He went to the house to lie down, which was a foolish way ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... war does not invariably avert war any more than a fire department in a city will invariably avert a fire; and there are well-meaning foolish people who point out this fact as offering an excuse for unpreparedness. It would be just as sensible if after the Chicago fire Chicago had announced that it would abolish its fire department as for our people to take the same view as regards military preparedness. Some years ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... he did not know. He felt the water rushing about his head again; he felt that he had been drowned, and he knew, too—in that foolish way in which the half-awakened brain knows the supposed certainties of dreams—that the white hand he had essayed to hold had grasped his beard firmly under his chin, and that thus holding his head above the surface of the water, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... been thinking of me or of Herbert all this time! But then he had been thinking of a matter of life and death. How all, all my foolish feelings took to flight! It was some comfort that my lover had not either seen or suspected them. He thought he must have been nearly senseless for some time. The last he remembered was, we were looking at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... says, being so doggoned tired that I knew if I sat down I'd fall asleep. 'I'm for pushing back to camp, and if you ain't all kinds of a foolish boy, you'll do ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... Well, now ye see he is a king. Look to him, Theridamas, when we are fighting, lest he hide his crown as the foolish king of ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... and danger, for all her soothing of her crying babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the uncertainty of her situation, she still turned to look at the deserted and water- swept cabin. She remembered oven then, and she wondered how foolish she was to think of it at that time, that she wished she had put on another dress and the baby's best clothes; and she kept praying that the house would be spared so that he, when he returned, would have something ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... James should acknowledge the penalty of the fatal power he had to draw a whole nation into his quarrel, just or unjust, by risking himself the first, is so entirely just according to every rule of personal honour, yet so wildly foolish according to all higher policy; exposing that very nation to evils so much greater than the worst battle. Flodden was still far off in the darkness of the unknown, but had this description been written after that catastrophe, it ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... protest and to say them later. There were drinking temptations and one used to wonder with a sick heart, what mothers would feel if they could see these young boys of theirs sometimes, so pathetically young and so foolish. There was also in these great camps of men—let us realize that quite clearly—great good for the boys and the men—good that far outweighs the evil. All the good of discipline, all they gained by ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... her hatred of her late husband's elder son. Hers were not reasons that could easily be put into words. They were little reasons, trivial grains of offence which through long years had accumulated into a mountain. They had their beginning in the foolish grievance that had its birth with her own son, when she had realized that but for that rosy-cheeked, well-grown boy borne to the Marquis by his first wife, Marius would have been heir to Condillac. Her love of her own child and her ambitions ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... advantage of this division of opinion, and especially of the fact that most of their opponents were on the wrong path; and fought to keep matters absolutely unchanged. These men demanded for themselves an immunity from government control which, if granted, would have been as wicked and as foolish as immunity to the barons of the twelfth century. Many of them were evil men. Many others were just as good men as were some of these same barons; but they were as utterly unable as any medieval castle-owner to understand what the public interest really was. There have been aristocracies ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... was written before dramas were. Of the drama, Victor Hugo and Dumas are the well-known and respectable guardians. Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since "Hernani," has contained a monster—a delightful monster, saved by one virtue. There is Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrece Borgia, a maternal monster; Mary Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a humpback monster; and others, that might be named, whose monstrosities we are induced to pardon—nay, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was foolish, good Rupert. I did but smile at thy friends to make thy task easier. Now see; I leave thee unfettered, and thus." She drew his head down and lightly kissed his hair, laughing with a little tremor: "Think of what I asked of thee, Rupert. To-morrow I ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... I do abhor this your wicked saying; For, no doubt, they increase much sin and vice: Therefore I pray you, show not your meaning, For I delight not in such foolish fantasies. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... in the foolish hope that with the deductions of this section we should be able suddenly to win over any of the decided adversaries of faith in providence and miracles. For, as we have had occasion to remind the reader, the acknowledgment ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... of Commynes, after so judicious a sketch, we may add another: Please God that people may no more suffer themselves to be taken captive by the corrupting and ruinous pleasures procured for them by their masters' grand but wicked or foolish enterprises, and may learn to give to the men who govern them a glory in proportion to the wisdom and justice of their deeds, and by no means to the noise they make and the risks ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... be a remarkably foolish dog in his old age; but I, growing old beside him, would learn wisely foolish things from his excellent folly. I knew we should both be happier for it; knew it was best for us both to prove that my thin white friend had been ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Don Fernando," I answered. "I can easily understand that you find it exceedingly difficult to regard me as a welcome guest, and believe me, I am not going to be so foolish as to feel hurt at your frankly telling me so. And I heartily unite with you in the hope that as long as we may be compelled into intimate association with each other, we shall be able to forget that ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... took me that some harm had happened to her: till I could stand it no longer, but picked up the lamp and crept in for a book. There she lay sleeping, healthy and sound, and prettier than you'd ever think. . . . I crept back to my chair, and a foolish sort of hope came over me that, with her health and wits, and being brought up unlike other children, she might come one day to be a little lady and the pride of the place, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of trying to amuse silly little kids. I told the foolish little animal about people having arteries cut, and your having to cut the whole thing to stop the bleeding. And he said, 'Was that what the plumber would do to the leaky pipe?' And how pleased your governor would be to find it mended. And then he ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... impression of abject bowed heads and chains rattled beneath desks, was roughly correct. For all that was human in a man, this was a prison. These men who bent over foolish papers were evidently convicts of the most desperate character; so, at all events, you would judge when occasionally one or other of the prison-governors, known as "partners," passed among them with the lash of his eye. Such faint human twittering as ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... for you that you've thought about it thus deeply. You've found a gap in it, an error. You should think about this further. But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words. There is nothing to opinions, they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone can support them or discard them. But the teachings, you've heard from me, are no opinion, and their goal is not to explain the world to those who seek knowledge. They have a different goal; their goal is salvation from suffering. ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... coming back. But finally they did come. Josie received them with the calmness that comes of hope deferred. It had been three years since she last saw the play. She told herself, chidingly, that she had been sort of foolish over that play and this costume. Her recent glimpse of Haddon had been somewhat disillusioning. But now, when she finally held the gown itself in her hand—the original "Splendour" second-act gown, a limp, soft black mass: just a few yards of worn and shabby velvet—she ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... nature of contents, and radically elevated standard of editorship, mark an era in the progress of the Association; since the UNITED AMATEUR is really the nucleus of our activity and a reflection of the best in our current thought and ideals. We have this year helped to shatter the foolish fetichism which restricts the average official organ to a boresome and needless display of facts and figures, relating to the political mechanism of amateurdom. The organ has been a literary one, as befits a literary ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Sunday afternoon she had herself driven to Mrs. Finn's house in Park Lane, instead of waiting for her friend. Latterly she had but seldom done this, finding that her presence at home was much wanted. She had been filled with, perhaps, foolish ideas of the necessity of doing something,—of adding something to the strength of her husband's position,—and had certainly been diligent in her work. But now she might run about like any other woman. "This is an honour, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... foolish. One pulled up his shirt-collar, and the other turned, with a forced laugh, on his heel. Boy as Percival seemed, and little more than boy as he was, there was a dangerous fire in his eye, and an expression of spirit ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his tender mercy would not allow Satan to gain an advantage over me. By the grace of God my heart says,—Lord, if I could be sure that it is thy will that I should go forward in this matter, I would do so cheerfully; and, on the other hand, if I could be sure that these are vain, foolish, proud thoughts, that they are not from thee, I would, by thy grace, hate them, ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... judgment, derived from the nature of the object, by another judgment, derived from the nature of the understanding. It is certain a man of solid sense and long experience ought to have, and usually has, a greater assurance in his opinions, than one that is foolish and ignorant, and that our sentiments have different degrees of authority, even with ourselves, in proportion to the degrees of our reason and experience. In the man of the best sense and longest experience, this authority is never entire; ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... their appreciation was expressed in an unfortunate manner. It is a consolation or a misfortune that the wrong kind of people are too often correct in their prognostications of the future; the far-seeing are also the foolish. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... in Bacon's day that we only learn to command nature by obeying her. To ignore facts is to court disappointment in our measure of progress. The particular fact with which we have here come in contact is very vital and radical, and most subtle in its influence. It is foolish to ignore it; we must allow for its existence. We can neither attain a sane view of life nor a sane social legislation of life unless we possess a just and accurate knowledge of the fundamental instincts upon which ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... plainly impossible in the early centuries of the present era, and it is therefore foolish to ask why Pagan moralists did not do what we expect Christian moralists to have done. I have already mentioned, and have fully described elsewhere, how humanitarian sentiments were generally diffused throughout the old Graeco-Roman world. There is not ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... tried to understand the general course of events and to take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless members of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they did for the common good turned out to be useless and foolish—like Pierre's and Mamonov's regiments which looted Russian villages, and the lint the young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded, and so on. Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing their feelings, who discussed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... title, a 'catchy' title, and for this reason, which is surely a legitimate one, since it is strictly in accordance with the prevailing custom of advertisement—the firm of Hamar, Curtis and Kelson adopted it. They did not expect—they were not so extraordinarily foolish as to expect—any one would take them literally. They thought—as you and I think—that sorcery cannot be taken seriously—that it is confined to fairy tales—and that, as a fairy tale, it is potent ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... over the rail the glare of the sun on the tumbling water lit up his foolish, mongrel features, exposed their cunning, their utter lack of any character, and showed behind the shifty eyes the ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... her practical mind, he could never have been so foolish as to let himself care deeply for one who so obviously had only the most casual regard for him! She knew women did these silly things, but surely not men—and hard-headed men ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... threshold of our camp Shaw, in endeavouring to dismount, lost his stirrups, and fell prone on his face. The foolish fellow actually, laid on the ground in the hot sun a full hour; and when I coldly asked him if he did not feel rather uncomfortable, he sat up, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... mere repetition. Harnack is so certain that the German and Englishman are almost alike that he really risks the generalization that they are exactly alike. He photographs, so to speak, the same fair and foolish face twice over, and calls it a remarkable resemblance between cousins. Thus he can prove the existence of Teutonism just about as conclusively as Haeckel has proved the more tenable proposition of the non-existence ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... not to persist in this foolish curiosity," he said, almost fiercely, "it will bring you ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... fingers rested in his clasp, delighted to feel themselves so small, and his so strong. He had spoken to her in the low voice that was hers alone. She was jealous lest Bridget should have overheard it. But Bridget was at the other end of the room. How foolish it had been of her—just because she was so happy, and wanted to be nice to everybody!—to have asked Bridget to stay with them! She was always doing silly things like that—impulsive things. But now she was married. She must think ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this fervid enthusiasm and hero-worship was all very immature, very foolish, as the general public acknowledged after it had taken time to cool off. Yet there was something appealing about it, after all. At any rate, the press deemed the public sufficiently interested in the subject to warrant giving it considerable prominence, and the name of Darwin ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... of driftwood, cast up upon a summer shore where flowers and verdure smiled on every side and all was peace; but at the next tide, once more the waters would engulf her and drag her back to the sparkling, restless ocean. She smiled to herself at the foolish simile even as she thought of it. It was absurd to compare the gay life to which she had been accustomed to an engulfing ocean; but never mind, for once she would give her thoughts a free rein and be honest with herself, and acknowledge that the life ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... and joyfully, that of all things I had been wanting most to play in Shakespeare; that in Shakespeare I had always felt I would play for half the salary; that—oh, I don't know what I said! Probably it was all very foolish and unbusinesslike, but the engagement was practically settled before Mrs. Bancroft left the house, although I was charged not to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... a hundred foolish ideas about art, its nature and value, it is of the greatest importance that we should attain to a right idea of it, not only as a matter of theory to be discussed, but as a religion to be practised. And, if we can grasp this right idea of ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... said Mrs. Church. "And here's a fresh egg for you. Take your place, Tom; and when the others go into the yard for their foolish mummeries—for I can't make out that there's a bit of sense in this scheme from first to last—why, you and I will finish up what is ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... partition separating it into two sections, one of which may be kept, either by additional piping or less ventilation, several degrees warmer than the other. So, while a general collection of many plants can be grown successfully in the same temperature, it is foolish to try everything. Only actual experiment can show the operator just what he can and cannot do with his small house. Even where no glass partition is used, there will probably be some variation in temperature in different parts of the house, and this condition may be turned to advantage. ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... they discovered I was in correspondence with a Nihilist circle in London, and when I was arrested, I demanded the rights of an American citizen. That doomed me. I was sent, without trial, to the Trogzmondoff in April of this year. Arriving there I was foolish enough to threaten, and say my comrades had means of letting the United States Government know, and that a battleship would teach the gaolers of the ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... replied the giant, gravely. "He has seen so much to puzzle him since he went away, that he sometimes feels foolish." ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... view, is pleased to dote. Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted; Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone, Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited To any sensual feast with thee alone: But my five wits nor my five senses can Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee, Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man, Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be: Only my plague thus far I count my gain, That she that makes me sin ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... said Watterly, giving Holcroft his hand. "You know I didn't mean any offense, Jim. It was only one of my foolish jokes. You were mighty slow to promise to love, honor, and obey, but hanged if you aint more on that line than any man in town. I can see she's turning out ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... who have no such revelation, and who judge according to their own wisdom, such as the Jews, Turks and heathen, must consider the Christian's declaration the greatest error and rankest heresy; they must say that we Christians are mad and foolish in imagining that there are three Gods, when, according to all reason—yea, even according to the Word of God—there can be but one God. It would not be reasonable, they will say, that there should be more than one householder over the same house, more than one lord or sovereign over the same ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... each an hour long. Smoked and doubted eight hours. Slept twelve. As self-contained as an oyster. Rarely spoke save in monosyllables. But never said a foolish thing. Never laughed. Perplexed by a joke. Conceived everything on a grand scale. When a question was asked, would put on a mysterious look. Shake his head. Smoke in silence. Observe, at length, he had doubts. Presided at the council, in state. Swayed a Turkish ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... and there the other cot where Frank pretended to sleep and kept his vigil . . . there the chair . . . and there the dab of yellow in the rug that the sun struck into faded gayety in the morning . . . and there the crack across the mirror, the wriggling, distorted, foolish crack that seemed alive for all its sameness. And there was always the noise of wind which became a corollary of his pain, pulsing with it, never quiet, an overtone ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... foolish defiance and might have cost him his life, though Bucks knew he was well within the truth in what he said. Among the railroad men the feeling against the gamblers was constantly growing in bitterness. Perry instantly attempted to draw a ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... and to suffer, regardless of the applause of men, as St. Gregory Nazianzen observes. (Or. 3, in Julian.) That father, when he knew him a student at Athens, in 355, prognosticated (Or. 4, in Julian, p. 122) from his light carriage, wandering eye, haughty look, impertinent questions, and foolish answers, what a monster the Roman empire was fostering and breeding up. In his march to his Persian expedition, he was made a subject of mockery and ridicule at Antioch, on account of his low stature, gigantic gait, great goat's beard, and bloody sacrifices. In answer ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... no reaction either, to speak of, no gloomy disgust. She was physically acceptable to him. He could always talk to her in a genial, teasing way, even tender, for she did not offend his intellectuality with prudish or conventional notions. Loving and foolish as she was in some ways, she would stand blunt reproof or correction. She could suggest in a nebulous, blundering way things that would be good for them to do. Most of all at present their thoughts centered ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... been thinking over what he said. (Suddenly) But when you look at me like that, how I long to be a fool and say, "Come away with me now, now, now," you wonderful, beautiful, maddening woman, you adorable child, you funny foolish little girl. (Holding up a finger) Smile, Melisande. Smile! (Slowly, reluctantly, she gives him a smile.) I suppose the fairies taught you that. Keep it for me, will you—but give it to me often. Do you ever laugh, Melisande? We must laugh ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... probably remember also that when we were talking over the coming of our second child five years ago you said that I was foolish to be disturbed about it—that if I had not had the wherewithal to feed and clothe it I might have had good cause for complaint, but otherwise not. That is another matter we must settle before we reopen life together. Mere food and clothes ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger |
