"Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great Marquis of Steyne, the descendant of a hundred Gaunts and Tudors, should marry Miss Birch, the schoolmaster's daughter! It is true she has the sense on her side, and poor Plantagenet is only an idiot: but there he is, a zany, with such ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an idiot. The little girl knows who you are. She can't imagine that you are in the humor just now for flirtations. Put the note in your pocket and call. One can't tell. Your life has been so artificial that you've probably left off believing in any adventures outside story-books. My life leads ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... law unto his handmaiden," said Margaret demurely and icily, addressing him, but aiming point-blank at me. Her shot blew me clean out of the water, and I stood there guggling like a born idiot. "Curse you, will you never get out of your yokel's ways?" said I to myself. It was as if I had said to the sergeant, speaking of Jane, "She shall draw you a mug of beer." I was clean nonplussed, and felt as uncomfortable as a boiling ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... at them with rather an abstracted eye, and then, idiot that she is, announced that she'd like to have twelve. But talk is cheap. The modern woman who's had even half that number has pretty well given up her life to her family. It's remarkable, by the way, the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... have been permanently injured. For my own part, when I neared the stove I was nearly suffocated; but I took heart when I saw but three more men between me and the hole. At this moment a sound as of tramping feet was heard, and some idiot on the outer edge of the mob startled us with the cry, "The guards the guards!" A fearful panic ensued, and the entire crowd bounded toward the stairway leading up to their sleeping-quarters. The ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... Uncle Bernac!' I stammered at him like an idiot. 'But why did you not tell me so?' ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "But, you idiot," said the ferocious swindler, "you have only to be ostensibly Nucingen's mistress, and you can always see Lucien; he is Nucingen's friend; I do not forbid your being madly ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... loud illogical remark. Thus he salved his self-conceit. He also sought relief in reflecting savagely upon the speeches that had been made against him in the debate. He went through them all in his mind. There was the slimy idiot from Baines's (it was in such terms that his thoughts ran) who gloried in never having read a word of Colenso, and called the assembled company to witness that nothing should ever induce him to read such a godless author, going about in the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... then, and want till you're gray, and longer," retorted the little man. "So we might as well move on. Tummas, you idiot, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... office there came across the yard a loud and impatient voice. "Here, Bill, confound you, come and take this horse. Don't you hear me, you idiot? You infernal niggers are getting to be so no-account that the last one of you ought to be driven off the place. Trot, confound you. Here, take this horse to the stable and feed him. Where is the Major? In the office? The ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... bible-chapter o' them, and see mysel comin in at the tail o' them a', like the hin'most sheep, takin his bite as he cam? Na, na! it's time I was hame, and had my slip (pinafore) on, and was astride o' a stick! Gien ye had a score o' idiot-brithers, ye wud care mair for ilk are o' them nor for me! I canna ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... dwell in male or female bosom—as unsexed womanhood, booted and spurred, parading over rostrums, brawling in debates, and spouting sophistical sentiments on subjects of whose true signification they are as ignorant as an idiot of the laughter and derision his babble excites? O, 'tis woman's thrice-beautiful right to relieve and succor the care-worn and distressed, wherever on this goodly earth they fall within the circle of her sphere and influence! To give sweet, unobtrusive ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... I closed this door upon her last night. What had brought her here I don't know—at least she came with no intention of seeing me—and I reproved her sharply for being out so late. This is all I know about the affair, and all I intend to say to any one. If that idiot outside intends to make a disturbance, he must do it; I shall take no further trouble to clear myself of such an insane accusation. I think it right to say as much to you, because you seem to have your senses about you," said the Curate, pausing, out of breath. He was perfectly calm, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... brain, the man fell into a kind of insensibility, which deprived him of all feeling. BARTOLIN says, the brain of a man is twice as big as that of an ox. This observation had been already made by ARISTOTLE. In the dead body of an idiot dissected by WILLIS, the brain was found smaller than ordinary: he says the greatest difference he found between the parts of the body of this idiot, and those of wiser men, was, that the plexus of the intercostal ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... animals cannot laugh at us, else we might not be so peaceful in our assumption that they never criticise. Caius before this had always supposed himself happy in his little efforts to please children and animals; now he knew himself to be a blundering idiot, and so far from feeling vexed with the laughing face in the water, he wondered that any other creature had ever permitted his ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... And if you think I had it easy lying my way in and out of the hospital, you're a fool, Dan Feldman. If the man who took my place there hadn't been a native idiot, I never would have gotten ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... explained the little man proudly. "Helps tap the unused eighty per cent. The pre-symptomatic memory is unaffected, due to automatic cerebral lapse in case of overload. I'm afraid it won't do much more than cube his present IQ, and an intelligent idiot ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... days over when another letter arrives full of her literary work, yet adding that she longs for rest and if we will only tell her where Campton is, whither we had gone, she would gladly join us. "I was a weary idiot," she continues, "by the time the wedding was over, and said 'yes ma'am' to the men and 'no sir' to the women ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... idiot impotence arow you sit, One hundred, yes two hundred, am not I, think you, A man to bring mine action ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... manner of misfortunes, and to be disgraced in public, as she was. For you know the bandeau slipt over her great forehead; and instead of turning to the gentlemen, and ordering some man of sense to arrange her head-dress, she kept holding her stiff neck stock still, like an idiot; she actually sat, with the patience of a martyr, two immense hours, till somebody cried, 'Ah! madame, here is the blood coming!' I see her before me this instant. Is it possible, my dear Emilie, that you do not remember the difference between this buche of a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... goose fit for further plucking. So he forces himself to chaffer, tries to conceal his abhorrence of the practice and his inexperience, and ends, generally, by being cheated and considered a grass-green idiot into the bargain, which is not soothing to the spirit of the average man. When I mention it in this connection I do not mean to be understood as confining my remarks exclusively to Russia; the opportunities for being shorn to the quick are unsurpassed ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... an old idiot like Judith," he begged. This Linda declined to do. And, "Ask your mother if you won't come to dinner with the girls and me, cozy and ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... idiot, Henry!" she said. "Of course Pauline will help. What is it you want her to ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Idiot! Would you have me believe that iron falls from the sky? I say that you have struck me, you foolish, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... excellent friends when we meet, but he doesn't consider me worth writing to. His sister—little idiot—writes to me every now and then. But she has not vouchsafed me a letter since the summer. I should say from the last accounts that he ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... She had never run over anything before except a few chickens, and she regarded the incident as a blot on her escutcheon. She was incensed with this idiot who had flung himself before her car, not reflecting in her heat that he probably had a pre-natal tendency to this sort of thing inherited from some ancestor who had played "last across" in front of hansom cabs in the streets ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... replied she, in a peculiar dialect, 'she's washing your twa shirts at the next door, because they have taken an oath against lending the tub any longer.' 'My two shirts,' cried he, in a tone that faltered with confusion; 'what does the idiot mean?' 'I ken what I mean weel enough,' replied the other; 'she's washing your twa shirts at the next door, because—' 'Fire and fury! no more of thy stupid explanations,' cried he; 'go and inform her we have company. Were that Scotch hag to be forever in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... their work, and only ask, To be admitted to the drudging task. Well, said the former, if resolved to try, To their factotum instantly apply; Come; let's away. Lead on, the other cried; I've got a thought, which I'll to you confide:— I'll seem an idiot, and quite dumb appear.— In that, said Nuto, only persevere, And then perhaps the confessor thou'lt find, With their factotum carelessly inclined; No fears nor dark suspicions of a mute: Thou'lt ev'ry way, my friend, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... will you lend me a hand? Oh! within the limits we have marked out for our fooleries," he added hastily, perceiving a general hesitation. "Do you suppose I want to kill them,—poison them? Thank God I'm not an idiot. Besides, if the Bridaus succeed, and Flore has nothing but what she stands in, I should be satisfied; do you understand that? I love her enough to prefer her to Mademoiselle Fichet,—if Mademoiselle ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... we, who life bestow, ourselves must live: Kings cannot reign, unless their subjects give; And they who pay the taxes, bear the rule: Thus thou, sometimes, art forced to draw a fool: But so his follies in thy posture sink, The senseless idiot seems ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and perfection—suppose him likewise, if you please, nimble and active, nay, give him riches, honors, authority, power, glory—now, I say, should this person, who is in possession of all these, be unjust, intemperate, timid, stupid, or an idiot—could you hesitate to call such a one miserable? What, then, are those goods in the possession of which you may be very miserable? Let us see if a happy life is not made up of parts of the same nature, as a heap implies a quantity of grain of the same kind. And if this be once ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... mesmeric trick, or whatever artifice had been practised upon me by Brande and Grey, had now assumed its true proportion. I laughed at my fears, and was thankful that I had not described them to the strong-minded young woman to whose kindly society I owed so much. What an idiot she ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... Jew merchant secured it, and there and then he got a gun and shot it. Potter made a Hades of a fuss because he said it would injure the sale of the other three, and Padishah, of course, behaved like an idiot; but all of us were very much excited. I can tell you I was precious glad when that dissection was over, and no diamond had turned up—precious glad. I'd gone to one-forty on ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... have found him out! Never mind; he can beat the town at one or two things, and it is for these we will use him. Some call him an idiot. The expression is neat and vigorous, but not precise; so I have christened him the Anomaly. Anomaly, this is Mr. Little; go and shake hands ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... well the motes that are in the sun, the specks and stains that are in the flowing robe of nature herself—prone, in miserable contradiction to its better being, to turn them as proofs against the power and goodness of the Holy One who inhabiteth eternity—is now palsy-stricken as that of an idiot, and knows not even the sound of the name of its once vain and proud possessor—when crowded theatres had risen up with one rustle to honour, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... very far gone in drink—a condition in which no man ever before remembered to have seen him. As Wolverstone came in, the Captain raised bloodshot eyes to consider him. A moment they sharpened in their gaze as he brought his visitor into focus. Then he laughed, a loose, idiot laugh, that yet somehow was ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... butting matches between himself and a large gourd, which he suspended from the ceiling, and almost blinded himself by his attempts to butt it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of Mr. Ellis, who put a final stop to this diversion. Then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and made the pillow into a baby, and played the nurse with it to such perfection, that Charlie ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... the Boy scornfully, "does he think me an idiot? Why, I'd be the laughing-stock of the town. I should think he saw enough of me to know I have at least as much intelligence as most boys ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... stealing away the heart of an infant? O, no! I think of it now with interest, because it lends, in a stranger's ear, some justification to the excess of my fondness. But then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was perceived only through its effects. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not the less I must have loved thee, having that capacious heart—overflowing, even as mine overflowed, with tenderness; stung, even as mine was stung, by the necessity of loving and being loved. This it was which crowned thee with beauty ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... portions where some of the deep chords of human nature are swept with a hand which is strong even while it falters. We see throughout (I THINK) that Elizabeth has not, and never bad, a mind perfectly sane. From the time that she was what she herself, in the exaggeration of her humility, calls 'an idiot girl,' to the hour when she lay moaning in visions on her dying bed, a slight craze runs through her whole existence. This is good: this is true. A sound mind, a healthy intellect, would have dashed the priest-power to the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... forty were wounded. Some of these, however, were helpless persons, who were wantonly murdered in their houses by English soldiers, their brains dashed out, and their bodies hacked and stabbed. Women in childbirth were not exempt from the brutal fury of the flower of the British army; and an idiot boy was deliberately shot as he sat on a fence, vacantly staring at the passing rout. All, or most of the towns in the neighborhood of Boston contributed their able-bodied men to the American force during the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... man needs to be perfect to have the honor of wearing the blue shirt. Personally, when I finally emerged from the examining room, I felt that my teeth were all wrong, my eyes crossed, my heart a wreck, and that I was not only a physical ruin, but a gibbering idiot as well. That I really passed the examination successfully was no fault of the naval surgeon and ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... me in silence, his candle in his hand. Then the tall, lean figure inclined towards me. "I say, Watson," he whispered, "would you be afraid to sleep in the same room with a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... neither spoke nor wept, nor laughed, a world in which no living chord resounded. "What a country! 'Where is the chateau? I do not know; I have been here only once, in the marshal's carriage. I do not know the way. Not the great palace! The idiot of a driver has brought me to this great palace in order to see it, I haven't a doubt. Does Rouletabille look like a tourist? Dourak! The home of the Tsar, I tell you. The Tsar's residence. The place where the Little Father ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... might know a good deal and yet be an idiot. But I possess the knowledge of how to learn some of the innumerable things I do not know, and that is the reason I am so justly famous for ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... "Idiot!" muttered Maitre Quennebert; "swallow the honey of his words, do But how the deuce is it going to end? Not Satan himself ever invented such ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... among the specimens of normality of the brain cells that we may look for our examples of endocrine mental deficiency. Included are all sorts of examples of feeble-mindedness varying from the moron to the imbecile and idiot, arrested brain life. The cretin is the classic type of mental deficiency due to endocrine insufficiency, curable or improvable by the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the prospects of Christianity had not already decided the question for him, so far from receiving credit for political sagacity, as he ever has done, he would deserve rather to be considered an absolute idiot! ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... not able to walk, when your face is as white as a sheet and you are gasping for breath! Idiot!... What have you been doing in the Palais de Cristal? Own up ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... you cared," she breathed. "I have always known you cared. I would have been an idiot if I hadn't. But, oh, Olaf, I didn't know you cared so much. You frighten me, Olaf," she pleaded, and raised a tearful face to his. "I am very fond of you, Olaf dear. Oh, don't think I am not fond of you." And the girl paused for a breathless moment. "I think I might have ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... prove than that in this world nobody ever invented anything. So it may be proved that, Johnson having written 'Great thoughts are always general', Blake had countered him by affirming (long before Hazlitt) that 'To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the great distinction of merit': even as it may be demonstrable that Charles Lamb, in his charming personal chat about the Elizabethan dramatists and his predilections among them, was already putting into practice what he did not trouble to theorize. But when it comes ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... of a Communion Sunday Simon Idiot espied Dull Anna washing her feet in the spume on the shore; he came out of his hiding-place and spoke jestingly to Anna and enticed her into Blind Cave, where he had sport with her. In the ninth year of her child, whom she had called Abel, ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... messenger, Mr. Chase, and by him taken to Atlanta. When the pouch was opened, it was found that none of these packages were in it, although they were entered on the way-bill which accompanied the pouch, and were duly checked off. The poor messenger was thunder-struck, and for a time acted like an idiot, plunging his hand into the vacant pouch over and over again, and staring vacantly at the way-bill. The Assistant Superintendent of the Southern Division was in the Atlanta office when the loss was discovered, and at once telegraphed to Maroney for an explanation. Receiving ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... advice to the silly fellow was soon seen to be completely wasted. The idiot thanked her, solemnly, and with an air; but immediately spoiled it all by explaining that he did not want to learn to play any instrument; but was finding out the kind of sounds made by each one.—As if any but a person born silly could care to learn that!—And she ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... but is to be found wherever there is a true companionship of hearts. Unfortunately the effect of this passage was a little spoilt by what had just gone before—a rather slow and superfluous scene with the village idiot—and some of the audience imagined that the author was still ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... Geneva, my lord, from Ludovic Tiler," he began indiscreetly, and was angrily silenced by my lord, who called him "a triple-dyed idiot," and with a significant gesture towards me bade him walk away to some distance from ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... enough to have gone back to the city and, in fact, his father was writing for him. But he couldn't leave Beckwiths', apparently. At any rate he stayed on and met Nelly every day and cursed himself for a cad and a cur and a weak-brained idiot. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... friend. Noah Clegg was the warmest-hearted man in Forest Glen and would have given over his whole farm to Sandy if he would have accepted it. But, as Tom Teeter declared hotly, Noah had no tact and was a blazing idiot beside, and a well-intentioned remark of his sent old Sandy out of the community. Noah was not a man of war and was so anxious that his old friend should give up his untenable position peaceably ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... with you?" he demanded in a rage. "Shed blood? What if I did? What's that to you? Untie this handkerchief, you unmentionable idiot!" ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... make money, I say, at some sensible work? Make money for me, will you? I'll force you out to make money at some work by which there's money to be made; not the like of that idiot writing of yours, curse it. Answer me, and tell me you'll go out and work for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Shaw answered with really avenging irony, "What a light this principle throws on the defeat of the tender Dervish, the compassionate Zulu, and the morbidly humane Boxer at the hands of the hardy savages of England, France, and Germany." In that sentence an idiot is obliterated and the whole story of Europe told; but it is immensely stiffened by its ironic form. In the same way Shaw washed away for ever the idea that Socialists were weak dreamers, who said that things ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... predestined idiot!" said Alec, with an impious allusion to the Shorter Catechism, as he scratched his helpless head. "I ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... all in vain; the child knew neither them nor any one else. Such, in fact, was now their calamity, as a few weeks proved. The father by that unhappy blow did not kill his body, but he killed his mind; he arose from his bed a mild, placid, harmless idiot, silent and inoffensive—the only words he was almost heard to utter, with rare exceptions, being those which had been in his mind when he was dealt the woful blow:—"Daddy, won't you come to bed wid me, wid your own Atty?" And these he pronounced as correctly as ever, uttering ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... don't understand him at all. How vividly come back the words he spoke last December, 'What is the storm, and what the danger, to that which I am facing?' What was he facing? What secret and terrible burden has he carried patiently through all my coldness and scorn? Oh, why was I such an idiot as to offend him mortally just as he was about to retrieve himself and render papa valuable assistance,—worse still, when he came ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... saying, he may happen to get stoned or burnt for it, but that does not in the least matter to him; if the world has no particular objection to the saying, he may get leave to mutter it to himself till he dies, and be merely taken for an idiot; that also does not matter to him—mutter it he will, according to what he perceives to be fact, and not at all according to the roaring of the walls of Red Sea on the right hand or left of him. Hence the quarrel, sure at some ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... "Idiot!" cried d'Orgemont, pointing to his heavy shoes. "I have ten thousand francs in those soles; do you think I would be such a fool as to fight with ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... the night! If I were to tell you to cut off your nose, must you do it? You idiot! You animal with the horse's face, ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... "Why on earth, if she felt like that, couldn't she have gone to work in the ordinary way? She could have put herself in connection with some proper charitable society—I should never have objected to that. It's all that young Sanitary idiot!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... IDIOT, means merely the non-proficient in anything, the "layman," he who was not technically trained in any art, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... out. Finally I decided I had no time to waste, for several reasons. Through the clucking hens I strolled across to the dwelling house and there in the kitchen I found the mother, one of the pink-cheeked daughters, and the idiot son. They set about getting me some breakfast, and a few minutes later in came the father and another son, a strapping fellow not in the least resembling the idiot, and shortly afterwards ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... to wonder if the Creator had invented a new variety of idiot, and made a lot in order to supply the army with medical inspectors, or, if by some cunning military device, the Surgeon-General had been able to select all those conglomerations of official dignity and asinine stupidity, from the open donkey-market ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... example; but we never buy physical strength merely, nor physical strength at all, unless it is directed by some intellectual force. The descending stream has power to drive machinery, and the arm of the idiot has force for some mechanical service, but they equally lack the directing mind. We are not so unwise as to purchase the power of the stream, or the force of the idiot's arm; but we pay for its application in the thing produced, and we often pay more for the skill that has directed the ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... What! is it possible that the idiot does not understand when she says "You weary me"? [Aloud.] Vasantasena, your words have no place in the dwelling ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... days I will not spend to gain an idiot's praise; Or to make sport For some slight Puisne of the Inns of Court. Then, worthy Stafford, say, How shall we spend the day? With what delights Shorten the nights? When from this tumult we are got secure, Where mirth with all ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... he was rather a commendable youth; for, with the pedantic folly of his teachers, the blind affection of his father and mother, the obsequiousness of the servants, and flattery of the visitors, it was some credit to him that he was not an idiot, or a brute—though when he imitated the manners of a man, he had something of the latter in his appearance; for he would grin and bow to a lady, catch her fan in haste when it fell, and hand her to her coach, as thoroughly void of all the sentiment which gives grace to such tricks, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... humour, when they gibe: He spared a hump or crooked nose Whose owners set not up for beaux. Some genuine dulness moved his pity Unless it offered to be witty. Those who their ignorance confessed He ne'er offended with a jest; But laughed to hear an idiot quote A verse of Horace, learned by drote. He knew a hundred pleasing stories With all the turns of Whigs and Tories; Was cheerful to his dying day, And friends would let him have his way. He gave the little wealth he had To build a house for fools and mad; And showed by one ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... "Now, don't be an idiot, Tom," cried Si, angrily. "Do you want them to say that we can't have a good time unless they're along too? Our sleigh-ride will go ahead of anything they can get up, an' they'll be mighty sorry they can't go ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... in passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my own knowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. The latter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why it was that he was being beaten. The two were beside a wood-pile and the demented one was crying. In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of his conveyance, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... they can, even with tooth and nail. And when they can be suffered in no wise to keep it longer, but death taketh them from it, then, if it can be no better, they will agree to be, as soon as they be hence, hauled up into heaven and be with God forthwith! These folk as as very idiot fools as he who had kept from his childhood a bag full of cherry stones, and cast such a fancy to it that he would not go from it for a ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... definition of humanity? Where does it end and where does it begin? Does humanity end with the savage, the idiot, the dipsomaniac, or the madman? If we draw a line excluding from humanity its lowest representatives, where are we to draw the line? Shall we exclude the negroes like the Americans, or the Hindoos like some Englishmen, or the Jews ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... of relief. "Thank heaven! Isn't he maddening?" he exclaimed, reassembling his brushes. "Isn't he the most fatuous idiot that ever escaped from his native menagerie? Did you hear him commence to criticize my work? The oaf! I'm afraid—" glancing at her face—"that I swore at him, but he deserved it for butting in like that, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... contempt of those who "crane" or stick to the roads. It will sometimes happen to him to get invited—really invited—to an actual country house where genuine sport is carried on. Here, however, he will generally have brought with him his wrong gun, or his "idiot of a man" will have packed the wrong kind of cartridges, or his horse will have suddenly developed an unaccountable trick of refusing, which results in a crushed hat and a mud-stained coat for his rider. These little accidents will by no means dash his spirits, or impair his volubility in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... the idiot," returned she, "to bring me such stuff; if I had them, I would throw them into ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... which the rest of the race are too obtuse, even yet, to grasp save in an imperfect and limited degree. These hidden sages, it would seem, look upon our eager aspiring humanity much like the patient masters of an idiot school, watching it go on forever seeking without finding, while they sit in seclusion keeping the keys of the occult.[49] All of which would be very wonderful, if true. It is, however, only one more of those fascinating fictions with which mystery-mongers entertain themselves, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... the time I've been hunting, I've been haunted by the fear that even if I found where the gold had been hidden, the money would long ago have been taken and spent by the robbers. I've felt like all kinds of an idiot in keeping up the search on such a slender chance, and again and again I've been tempted to give it up. But this puts new life and hope in me. There's still a chance to find the gold ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... or I'll go over there on the next boat and kill you, you damned idiot," shrieked Peck. "Tell him his store ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... interesting him in your behalf. But the idiot has lost his head over her, instead of taking her advice and ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... wiping the window-pane that he might see more clearly. "Ay, that he is by the driving! So he squanders money along the king's highway, the triple idiot! gorging every man he meets with gold for the pleasure of arriving—where? Ah, yes, where but a debtor's gaol, if ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one to procure a cab in a short time. Yet, to Heman Atkins, that cab was years in coming. He paced the library floor, his hand to his forehead and his brain whirling. It couldn't be! It must be a coincidence! He had been an idiot to display his agitation and surrender so weakly. And ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and ceremonial enough, but cannot issue the most ordinary command except through legal forms and precedents, and with the counter-signature of a minister, then belief in a God is no more than an acknowledgment of existing, sensible powers and phenomena, which none but an idiot can deny. If the Supreme Being is powerful or skilful, just so far forth as the telescope shows power, and the microscope shows skill, if His moral law is to be ascertained simply by the physical processes of the animal frame, or His will gathered ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... insisted at first that she could not "parade around that church and stand up there before the minister. I'd feel like a reg'lar idiot, Louis." ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... eager to commit murder when I see a poor girl brought to ruin in this senseless way. Personally, it is a matter of utter indifference to me whether you marry Lida or go to the devil, but I must tell you that you are an idiot. If you had got one sound idea in your head, would you worry yourself and others so much merely because a young woman, free to pick and choose, had become the mistress of a man who was unworthy of her, and by following her sexual impulse had achieved her own complete development? ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... have been reading Walt Whitman, and know not whether he be me, or me he;— Or otherwise! Oh, blue skies! oh, rugged mountains! oh, mighty, rolling Niagara! O, chaos and everlasting bosh! I am a poet; I swear it! If you do not believe it you are a dolt, a fool, an idiot! Milton, Shakespere, Dante, Tommy Moore, Pope, never, but Byron, too, perhaps, and last, not least, Me, and the Poet Close. We send our resonance echoing down the adamantine canyons of the future! We live forever! The worms who criticise us (asses!) ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of them," said the court "If you were to roar at every one you meet you'd never have time for anything else. Life would degenerate into one long roar. Everybody knows that Professor Titcombe is a ninny and an idiot, but the decencies of intercourse require you to say, 'How nice!' or 'How ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... case where both father and son are represented. Thus the sons of criminals, though they have the tendencies to crime, keep out of the clutches of the law. Neither will Heredity hold good upon the plane of the intellect, for many cases may be cited where a genius and an idiot spring from the same stock. The great Cuvier, whose brain was of about the same weight, as Daniel Webster's, and whose intellect was as great, had five children who all died of paresis, the brother of Alexander the Great was an idiot, and thus we hold that another ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... just given him birth,—that desert moor, wide and dismal, broken and watery, the only bosom for him to lie upon, and the cold, clear night-heaven his only covering. The man had brought him home, and the parish had taken parish-care of him. He had grown up, and proved what he now was—almost an idiot. Many of the townspeople were kind to him, and employed him in fetching water for them from the river and wells in the neighbourhood, paying him for his trouble in victuals, or whisky, of which he was very fond. He seldom spoke; and the sentences he could utter were few; yet the tone, and even ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... step-mother and hard, To thy poor, fenceless, naked child—the Bard! A thing unteachable in world's skill, And half an idiot too, more helpless still: No heels to bear him from the op'ning dun; No claws to dig, his hated sight to shun; No horns, but those by luckless Hymen worn, And those, alas! not, Amalthea's horn: No nerves olfact'ry, Mammon's trusty cur, Clad in rich Dulness' comfortable fur; In naked feeling, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... my own temper was rising; "I am not afraid. There, get up and dress at once, and don't make an idiot of yourself." ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... he said as excitedly as I; "why, we should get on splendidly, and—tut, tut, tut! what an idiot am I! Hold your tongue, sir, ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... printed instead of the sculptures , with the second edition of the play." In this Settle was described as "an animal of a most deplored intellect, without reading and understanding;" whilst his play was characterized as "a tale told by an idiot, full of noise and fury signifying nothing." To these remarks and others of like quality, Settle replied in the same strain, so that the quarrel diverted the town and even disturbed the quiet of the universities. Time did ample ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... what about my letter? Is it what I told you that makes you so stupid? You played the prude—I didn't know—Oh! yes, yes, now I remember; that's what it is—What was it you said to me about the little one? I believe you didn't want anyone to touch him! Idiot!" ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean; In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... habits. He proceeds to quote Louis Agassiz, the famous naturalist, who bestows upon fish the following:—"Refreshing to the organism, especially for intellectual labour; not that its use can turn an idiot into a wise or witty man, but a fish diet cannot be otherwise than ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... against being roped in by a scheming woman the first time; but if it happens twice he deserves it, and he should be turned out to stay an idiot, for the signs are so plain. A man swindler takes a man's money and makes a fool of him; but a woman swindler takes a man's money and leaves a smirch on him. Only a man's nearest and dearest can help him live down ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... keen sense of humour from the very outset. It is precisely through this that there seems hope, from the very beginning, of his proving to be made of "penetrable stuff." When, after his monstrous "Out upon merry Christmas!" he goes on to say, "If I had my will every idiot who goes about with 'merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly in his heart: he should!" one almost feels as if he were laughing in his sleeve from ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... brought our own chairs with us would wait in the corridor for one of the blind to propel us along while we would do the guiding ourselves, giving directions to our steeds in nautical terms, such as: "Starboard a little!" "Steady, steady, you idiot!" "Hard aport!" "Quick!" "Now, you darned fool, you jolly nearly smashed that window!" When we got to the door of the hall, we would be piloted into the area reserved for carriages, and so tightly were we jammed that it took about twenty minutes to empty the ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... into his arms. She slapped his hands away. He laughed and flopped into a chair, giggling. She studied him with almost more interest than repugnance. He was idiotically jovial, as sly as an idiot ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Thorpe, and so's the idiot who wrote this stuff!" Laura exclaimed, thrusting the paper away from her. "I guess the Professor was dead right when he told French he was locking up the one man who could clear up the ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... family of daughters, the first is a smart, active girl, with an intelligent, well-balanced mind; the others are afflicted with different degrees of mental weakness and imbecility, and the youngest is an idiot. Another medical gentleman states, that the first child of a family, who was born when the habits of the mother were good, was healthy and promising; while the four last children, who were born after the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... Raskolnikoff went the day before for the purpose of pawning his watch to make his REHEARSAL. He knew all about this Elizabeth, as she knew also a little about him. She was a tall, awkward woman, about thirty-five years of age, timid and quiet, indeed almost an idiot, and was a regular slave to her sister, working for her day and night, trembling before her and enduring even blows. She was evidently hesitating about something, as she stood there with a bundle under her arm, and her ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... patience, Sir Knight," said the Sub-Prior, "and is adding insult to violence and injury. Do you hold me for a child or an idiot, that you pretend to make me believe that the fresh blood with which your shirt is stained, flowed from a wound which has been healed for weeks or months? Unhappy mocker, thinkest thou thus to blind us? Too well do we know that it is the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... about five feet five inches high, and very thin; his features were rather more prominent than those of a negro, his eyes were very small, very weak, and of a reddish hue. He appeared by his manner to be an idiot. He held out his hands to me in a supplicating manner. I gave him a small piece of money; he looked earnestly in my face, and mixed with the crowd. On returning to the town I passed three females with different ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... safety in numbers, whether it's the number of fools or anything else," he said. "One idiot's a risky proposition, but two or three in a bunch can watch each other. Come on, Judge, and be ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory of this unspeakable idiot—great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!—the memory of this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... their attorneys. "Do you suppose I will allow Mrs. Walker to go on the stage?—do you suppose I am such a fool as to sign bills to the full amount of these claims against me, when in a few months more I can walk out of prison without paying a shilling? Gentlemen, you take Howard Walker for an idiot. I like the Fleet, and rather than pay I'll stay here ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be remembered that this Virginia was of the seventeenth, not of the nineteenth century. And law had cruel and idiot faces as well as faces just and wise. Hitherto the colony possessed no written statutes. The Company now resolved to impose upon the wayward an iron restraint. It fell to Dale to enforce the regulations known as "Lawes and Orders, dyvine, politique, and martiall ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... but the liberty, I will not answer for it. Do you know that that idiot of an Abbe Brigaud has got arrested three days ago at Orleans, dressed as a peddler, and—on false revelations, which they represented to him as coming from me—has confessed all, and compromised ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... sometimes I must be going mad, or at all events growing into an idiot, and you can't think how wretched and despairing it makes me. Do you think medicine—tonic or anything of ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... to hear no more. What did he care about the idiot Creech? He strode down the lane to the corrals. Farlane, Van, and other riders were there, leisurely as usual. Then Holley appeared, coming out of the barn. He, too, was easy, cool, natural, lazy. None of these riders knew what was amiss. But instantly a change passed over them. It came ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... by age or experience. To such I shall reply, that if what is written is false or foolish, neither age nor experience should fortify it; and if it is true, it needs no such support. The propositions of Euclid would be no less indisputable were they propounded by an infant or an idiot. ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... realising that a couple of annas out here go as far as a shilling at home; but it is a mistake which should be rectified as soon as possible, for you get no credit for lavishness, but are merely regarded as a first-class idiot. No sane man would ever expend two annas ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... climax, the khaki-clad American raised his pistol, covering Hero Paul, the speaker. "Silence!" he rasped. "You're a thick-headed idiot not to see the truth. Can this priest save Altara? No! You know damned well he can't! And ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... wretch! from his cradle brought up as an atheist by a renegade father, he can have been hardly more responsible for his no faith than a born idiot. However, in these infidel last times, and with our very broad-church and no-church teachings, a man has only to be utterly godless (so he be moral) to make himself a name for pure reason. I'd sooner be the most unenlightened Christian than such a false philosopher. Let a Goldsmith ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... get mad, and hurt some of you 'fore I know what I'm about! What the Holy Moses did you shoot my thumb for? durn you! Don't you guess I've any feelin', you onery idiot? Needn't be skeered, Margaret, I'll make ground mustard out of anybody that dares touch a hair of your ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Star-Spangled Banner! It's the police. I want to save these poor souls—" she added, with a gulp in her throat; "quick, you idiot, the Star-Spangled Banner." But Arthur was almost fainting. His ringers fell listlessly on the keys, and they were too weak to make a sound. The police! he moaned, as the knocking deepened into banging and shouting. What a scandal! What a disgrace! He could never face his ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... daren't tell the one truth that would be profitable. The result is that women imagine themselves noble and glorious when they are most near the animals. This Miss Royston—when she rushed off to perdition, ten to one she had in mind some idiot heroine of a book. Oh, I tell you that you are losing sight of your first duty. There are people enough to act the good Samaritan; you have quite another task in life. It is your work to train and encourage girls in a path as far as possible from that of the husband-hunter. Let ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... that sensuous atmosphere of a warm summer night which induces a languor in the body and in the will. On such a night as this young Lorenzo, if he happens to have Jessica by his side, makes a confounded idiot of himself, to his life's undoing; and on such a night as this a reserved philosopher commits the folly of discussing his private affairs with a ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... she expatiates to her son on the unmanliness and indolence of his father. The old family servant takes up the tale, and says to the youth:—'When you grow up you must be more of a man than your father.' All the world are agreed that he who minds his own business is an idiot, while a busybody is highly honoured and esteemed. The young man compares this spirit with his father's words and ways, and as he is naturally well disposed, although he has suffered from evil influences, he rests at a middle point and becomes ambitious and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... "Well, my impression of Beatrix is that she is a bally idiot. I don't know just what bally means; but our English brethren apply it in critical cases, and so it is sure to be right. Yes, I think ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... poor dear soul took to plunging on the Stock Exchange and made his money. He had nothing to leave then but his best silk hat and a few paltry hundreds. Afterwards, when he'd feathered his nest in soap and cocoa, he discovered that Bertie—that's Lord Southminster—was a first-class idiot. Marmy never liked Southminster, nor Southminster Marmy. For after all, with all his faults, Marmy was a gentleman; while Bertie—well, my dear, we needn't put a name to it. So he altered his will, as you know, when he saw the sort of man Southminster ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... "You unsuspecting little idiot," she said, giving me a tender little shake that robbed the words of their harshness, "can't you see that that ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... 'arth-stone, sir: Some idiot must have put a scaffold pole on it and cracked it right down the middle, and it's thick enough you'd think to stand hanythink.' Geoffrey was silent for quite a minute, and then said in a constrained voice and ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... or run across his equal. Imagine a medium-sized, chicken-headed, tow-haired sort of man with mild blue eyes, and a mouth nearly from ear to ear, who walked with a shuffling, half-apologetic sort of a gait, and who, when his countenance was in repose, resembled an idiot. For hours he would sit in his chair, twisting his hair in little ringlets. Then I used to say, "Bill is studying up some new devilment." His clothes were always several sizes too large, and his face was as smooth as a woman's and never had a particle of hair on it. Canada was ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... him, but he scarcely looked at her. He shut the window sharply, then strode to the lamp, and turned it up. Then, abruptly he wheeled and spoke in a voice half-kindly, half-contemptuous. "Muriel, you're a little idiot!" ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Would you blame the ignorant nuns who, insensible of the danger of an eruption of Mount Vesuvius,[32] warmed themselves at the burning lava which flowed up to the windows of their cells? or would you think the French canoness an idiot who, at the age of fifty, was, on account of her health, to go out of her convent, and asked, when she met a cow for the first time, what strange animal that was? or would you think that those poor children deserved ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... so he discreetly took his seat and made no remarks. From sheer instinct, however, when he came to the coffee he threw a boot which caught Mahommed Seti in the middle of the chest, and said roughly: "French, not Turkish, idiot!" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no idiot, unfortunately. He has completely won the confidence of the Princess, despite his obvious trickeries. Now, however, I would like to attend to a few little tasks of cleaning up after that ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... you. In such a situation, there is neither doubt nor difficulty; the first rudiments of reason will determine the choice, for if peace can be procured with more advantages than even a conquest can be obtained, he must be an idiot indeed that hesitates. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... devil," he said, "I defy you to make this gentleman say yes when he has once said no. He turned me away like a dog; all right. Let them laugh that win. It was that old idiot of a Rousselet and that old simpleton of a coachman of Mademoiselle de Corandeuil's who told tales about me. I could tell tales also if ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... said Jack, "any idiot would have known that she would take it like that. How could she do otherwise? You, her brother, ought to know that to a girl like Miss Gordon the idea of marrying such a low brute as Durnovo could only be repugnant. Durnovo—why, he is not good enough to sweep the floor that she ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... he was in a deep reverie, a friend entered hastily: "Don't disturb me," cried the poet; "I am enjoying a moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish another who is an idiot." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a goose! A silly idiot of a goose! But such a dear, pretty little goose, that with all your faults we love you still! Now, I'll scoot, and you get dressed, for we're ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... mistress insisted, more out of thoughtlessness than cruelty, and the child went. On his way back he had to pass through Yalbury Wood, and something came out from behind a tree and frightened him into fits. The child was quite ruined by it; he became quite a drivelling idiot, and ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... heart, you idiot! You've all been spoiled; that's what's the matter with you. Elsie and Dutch are as law-abiding and honest ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... much," he said. "I'm on my own hook. Why, hang it all, Captain, you must see that no man of his own free will would be idiot enough to resurrect a long-forgotten niece just to ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... answered him. I said: 'The boys of our house, my lord, take that pride in it that they learn of their own free will what many an earl's son must be driven to with rods.' He took me. His own son is little better than an idiot, and naught but the rod to blame for it, I ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... accidental. At least he told himself so. And he also assured himself, with an involuntary shrug of his shoulders, that any woman or girl had the right to pass his door if she so desired, and that he was an idiot for thinking otherwise. The argument was only slightly adequate. But Alan was not interested in mysteries, especially when they had to do with woman—and such an absurdly ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... Luck Cullison, it's a damned lie," exploded the cattleman. He was furious with himself, for he felt now that he had been unsuspectingly helping to certify the suspicions of the sheriff. Like an idiot, he had let out much that told heavily ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... the London "Times" with regard to us have always proved such ludicrous failures, because they have been based upon this false estimate of our temper. Taking for granted that we are a mob, and that a mob is an idiot, whose speech and actions are void of reason, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," the Thunderer continues to prophesy evil of us; and when, where madness was most confidently looked for, we exhibit the coolest sense, it can think ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... idiot, what you will; I could not do it. I can only compare my feeling to what Livingstone says he felt when he found himself face to face with a lion. He stood staring in the lion's eyes, unable ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... keeping clear of them. I wish that I could go with you, but I cannot get along as fast as I used to do, and my beasts are pretty well knocked up. But this is what I'll do: I'll send my lad Greensnake with you; whatever I tell him to do, he'll do, and prove as true as steel. People call him an idiot; but he's no more an idiot than I am, if a person knows how to get the sense out of him, and that's what ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... you idiot! Yes, you should say, I have invoked God my Father! and you must set your words to the most piteous tune you have ever heard in your life. So—o! Once again! Come, that was better! But you must sigh like a horse down with the colic. So—o! ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... of your five wits, husband?" I exclaimed. "Would you have everybody take me for the latest incarnation of the oldest insanity in the world,—that of maternity? But I am really an idiot, for you could never ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald |
